Preface

What evoke one to translate the video into a book, is perhaps an urge. Life is hard. 2023-4 was a little eventful, plus a lot of emotions. And from the rise and fall of emotions, one would like someone to walk by my side, but one don't know yet how; and if one know, if one could muster the courage to do it. In the moment of learning more and more from reading more and more books and linking knowledge together for application, one had a proxy to guide one, when life was still. Or at the very least, to fill in the time where one do not want to do anything else. And so starts the translating that, little by little, took more than half a year to complete. In the process, the journey of the protagonist walks alongside the journey one walks in this real world. Together, hand in hand, we aim for our destiny.

One used the word "translator" to signify oneself. Initially, one uses "writer", meaning "someone who writes". But the definition one suggested for the word 'writer' might be confused by readers whom does not read this paragraph, and consider 'writer' = 'author'. Searching through the writing world, one came across some non-English books being translated into English, and they called themselves "translated by" (and hence "translator"). They translate from one language to another. Isn't that the job of one? To translate a video cutscene into words; that's also a translation! Therefore, one'll refer to oneself as "translator" when one make notes here and there.

Ever since 2021, one had written a lot of blogs, but most of them are about one's feelings, one's learnings (work and non-work), and basically, non-fiction. This is the first time one touches anything fiction; and to be honest, it's really hard. The method of writing non-fiction and the method of writing fiction, even if one's just translating, is totally different. For a non-fiction that does not include philosophy, the difficulty came from verifying the facts -- the researches from hundreds to thousands of sites can make you eat a headache painkiller every day as your eyes multitask to syntopically read through text here and there. Luckily, most non-fiction one writes on one's blog are philosophical, so one uses one's experience and opinions as a basis to write about, throwing away most nerve-wracking researches and ask the reader to actively proof that one is wrong themselves instead (passing the buck/responsibility, eh!). But the difficulty of fiction is different -- for words, words that are bland and straight and all looking the same, trying to express emotions, is futile. Honestly speaking, they cannot replace the variation of "sound" that more easily expresses emotions. That the author and playwright of some wonderful plays and fictions, to one, is not something one could copycat -- they're too excellent one cannot.

So, in the writing ahead, you'd see that the writings one did improve with chapters. One initially started bland conversations, and try to fill in the pause with descriptions and explanations and whatever one can notice on the screen. This section had greatly improved one's observation skills -- when combined with books like Outside Lies Magic by John Stilgoe, and Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit -- now one can notice things one don't see. Then, as writing proceeds, one focused more on expressing the emotional parts, dropping most of the "watery words" (explanations and descriptions to add more to word cound but makes the reader felt, 'all these have no meaning, it's just there to fill the space and increase the no. of word count' stuffs). Of course, there are still some, just less dramatic, and if it's only purely conversations, why do one even translate it? Everyone can hear what's being spoken! One also have difficulty refraining from explaining some emotions from one's point of view, unfortunately. Towards the end, that was less -- for one thought more on letting the reader interpret the emotions more by themselves. But on the beginning, one'll state it clearly how one perceived such emotions. Also at the back, after some experientation, one finally manage to adapt a range of loudness, from "soft", to "normal", to "loud", to "DESPERATE". Different people have different baseline, and actually, they don't just have 4 classification. In fact, one don't know how to do "very soft". More confusingly, the italics and bold are solely adapted to loudness. When the person speaks in their heart/brain, one'd encase it "in italics, to signify thinking in their brain." Then, when one want to emphasize some "soft desperate", one unfortunately also uses italics. Markdown isn't integrated with "underlining" feature; perhaps there's an extension/library one could use to make it happen, but one didn't. So, reader might have a hard time trying to immediately understand. In all case, feel free to compare it to the actual video and you'd experience something of a more fuller sense than this book, purely in words.

Now that the road had come to the end for one, it's time for you to start your road, to walk alongside the characters in the story, and intertwine your feelings with them. Read on!

Note: the actual main storyline isn't exactly as below. In fact, one added some extra stuffs (like the Side Stories, and some others, which one'll notify you at the start of the page that it's added in) that feels like it belongs there. Those that cannot belong will either be added at random, or added in the More About. Some of the stories in More About assumed you have a previous knowledge of another story. One had been careful to remind you the need, but one isn't perfect, hence one can't know all. In any case, post them on the discussions on GitHub and one'll check.

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