TW: DEATH

Not too long ago I returned to a mobile game. I stopped playing in 2020 or early 2021 because I ended up getting another phone, and it turns out the phone couldn't handle games... so I just sat with the phone until I got another one literally a year after... oh, that couldn't handle games either... finally this year, I got another phone... this time it was a Samsung, so I KNEW it had to handle the game... and sure enough it was able to run it.

But, back in 2019 or 2020, I knew somebody from the game. We talked enough to the point where every time I got on, he would send me a team invite and chat. We had our negative moments but we'd also joke about random stuff, mostly about the game and how we play.

When my first phone was tearing down and slowly couldn't handle the game, I exchanged social media with him. We started talking through there but not as much. (usually I'm the type of person to let somebody message me first because I don't wanna interrupt anything)

I did however tell him about me getting a new phone and how it couldn't play games fresh from the box... (in 2021) that might've been the last time we legitimately spoke.

He did occasionally message back here and there for a bit... so I respected his time. But for some reason we just stopped messaging each other in late 2022 or so.

Finally, in 2024... I return... I saw him on my friends list... I was amazed to see he was still on top in the friends leaderboards. Only thing that disappointed me was, he's been offline for 170ish days... I thought, OK maybe he's just out there enjoying life outside of the gaming. Maybe he found something better.

A part of me was thinking he'd bounce back, since he had very high stats... I mean I know he was on there a lot even when I was gone.

But later on I got a bit eager when I saw he was away for 188 days... so I decided to find out how I can contact him.

I tried messaging him on that said social platform... I saw his messaging was randomly disabled... OK, well... since he happened to use his real name on there, I decided to Google it. (I know this was wrong, but he was normally understanding, and I would never intend to harbor anyone's info)

Googling his name, may have been the worst time I've ever used Google... (aside from freaky news)

I found an obituary... I almost didn't react until I saw the birth year... the birth year was the same as it was in his user name... that kinda got my attention.

But even worse... the death date was very identical to the estimate of when he stopped playing... it's been 188 days... I used a website to calculate when the death date was and it was 184 days ago. (Four days after he stopped playing)

Same country, same name...

I feel terrible. I don't know what happened, but if it was some deadly disease I wish I could've been there to know what was happening... I also wonder if it was an accident... since accidents occur easily in some areas (asian region, where he was from). He was young too... we were/are the same age so I know it couldn't have been good.

I know it's just a game we talked on but he's practically why I'm skilled at the game in the first place. He was already better than me at it when we started talking from guilds.

Every time I open the game now, I'm gonna think about what and who got me to keep playing thanks to skills.

Also I'm sorry if this might not be the story for this platform... but I don't use a lot of apps and I know there's people here with more common sense.

Obviously I'm not going to disclose information about the guy, out of respect.