I fell asleep right as the final episode of season two ended.

My eyes opened the following day to my phone screen, also asleep. Pressing the power button would not unlock the phone, instead displaying a low power symbol in its place. Getting up, I plugged in my phone and went into the breakfast room to make myself some food.

After finishing my cereal and putting off getting dressed again, I returned to my bedroom and slumped back on the mattress. My eyes flickered over to the alarm by my bedside. 9:03 AM read the clock. Surprisingly (or not), that was the earliest I'd woken up for the past week.

I sighed and decided to get a little bit more shut-eye from my allnighter I pulled the night before.

A few minutes of restless stirring and I couldn't fall back asleep. Eventually, my hand was forced when I got bored of trying, and I stood back up and checked on my phone.

"15% is better than nothing," I supposed.

My charger only extended so far, so I just sat on the floor in order to consume my newest form of favorite media: An anime that had previously eluded my interest for the past few years had finally come into my focus.

The anime known as "Sword Art Online" came out nearly a decade ago, in 2012. It is now the beginning of 2022. It's pretty crazy how long I've been missing this.

The first season went by waaay too quickly. I began like two days ago, and instantly binge watched as much as I possibly could. As I mentioned before, I finished the finale of the second season just last night. The Gun Gale Online arc was one of my favorites.

That being said, I still wasn't done with the show, so I flicked my screen a bit and opened up Netflix. Scrolling through to my Watchlist, I slid through the list of shows, searching for Sword Art Online… but I didn't find it.

It's possible Sword Art Online's third season wasn't available on Netflix, which is unfortunate, but surprisingly, I couldn't find the first or second season I had already watched either. I looked through My List and History, but it wasn't anywhere to be seen.

I remembered a few other animes jumping on and off of Netflix not too long ago, though, so I just assumed the contract expired with Sword Art Online. Dismayed, but not hindered, I opened up my browser to go to one of my favorite anime websites. If Netflix or Hulu didn't have it, then this site did. Please do not think about the legality of the usage of this website.

Once the page loaded, I typed "Sword Art Online" into the search bar and came up blank. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Not a single result displayed.

I scrunched my eyebrows in confusion. If SAO wasn't on here, then where could it have gone?

I did a quick Google search to see which platforms it was available on, and, lo and behold, I didn't receive a single related search.

In fact, nothing appeared to even do so much as mention the franchise. The only place I could find the name "Sword Art Online" was on the ASCII-ization of Pi website, which should contain every possible string of text known to man, so that doesn't really count.

It's as if every single possible instance of Sword Art Online was wiped from the internet, right before my eyes. If I'm one of the first people to discover this, then it shouldn't take long for other fans to notice and begin posting articles about this curiosity. Annoyingly enough, though, I can only assume that it will take a while before I can actually watch the anime again.

Very unfortunate, because it was getting really good.

Another loud sigh escaped from my mouth as I pulled out my phone and sent a text to one of my friends online, Sinon. I didn't know his name, but when we discussed our ages, he revealed he's about a year younger than I am. Apparently, we're in the same grade as well and don't live too far from each other. Neither of us have talked about meeting up in person or anything, though, so I didn't bother bringing it up again.

Considering how Sinon is the same name as the deuteragonist from the Gun Gale Online arc, I always assumed he had watched the show before. We even talked about it in passing yesterday, but nothing concrete. He just said he stopped watching after the first season.

"Hey, Sinon, have you seen online recently?" I asked as I waited for the signature "Delivered" subtext to display.

Nearly immediately after it did, it changed to "Read" and the typing dots ensued.

"Well good morning to you too, Deruta. Surprised you're up this early to be honest. Anyways, no, what happened?" he responded tout de suite.

My online username is Deruta, but I suppose only really Sinon knows that. Somehow, I can be socially awkward online and in real life.

"Uh, sorry, good morning. But the weirdest thing has been happening to me this morning. I swear I'm going insane," I wrote back.

"What's going on?" Sinon asked.

"I just finished the second season of Sword Art Online. I know you said you hadn't gone past the first season, but could you search it up for me? I can't find it anywhere online."

"'Sword Art Online'? I've never watched that, or heard of it for that matter. Is it a new anime this season? I think you're mixing me up with watching Naruto; I only finished one season of that."

…What the hell?

He sent a follow-up text pretty soon after.

"I can't find it online. Where did you watch it?" he asked.

Wha- what?! He can't even remember watching it? But we talked about it not even a day ago!

"I- er, nevermind. Forget I said anything," I conceded.

"Okay. Are you getting online?"

"Yeah, I'll get on in a minute."

I ran a hand through my hair to relax myself from the random bout of stress I just tumbled onto. It's difficult to even understand the implications of what I just experienced. Either, A) everything on the internet relating to Sword Art Online disappeared, and all memories of the show except for mine were erased, or B) I'm just hallucinating about the existence of this show, and it's all completely made up from my imagination. Maybe just a dream, even.

Another heavy sigh left my lungs as I almost struggled to breathe in. It's best to just forget this ever happened.

Sinon and I played games together for the rest of the day.

A few days later, school had started back up again after winter break. I'm a thirteen year old in seventh grade, the second to last year of middle school in the Saitama prefecture. I have dark black hair that's cut thin everywhere except for my bangs, I wear glasses, and I was wearing my gray school uniform for reasons that are rather obvious. I don't want to conflate my appearance with opinions, but supposedly, I have deep, blue eyes. Like, ocean-level kind of deep. Don't even ask what that's meant to mean, because I don't know.

I tried my hardest to ignore the strange occurrence over the winter, but I gave in to asking a few students around the school about it. Mostly the nerdy, weebish ones. None of them knew anything I couldn't have already told them. Except for one.

Apparently, there is this new piece of hardware coming out later this year that has been under the wraps for months. It's supposedly a video game console that will "revolutionize gaming as we know it". Now, I don't know too much about the generational history of consoles, but I'm pretty sure just about every console has promised that.

But this time, it felt different somehow.

A new, revolutionary gaming console coming out later this year? The year 2022? There was something about those two facts that lined up a bit too well. I just couldn't place my finger on the coincidence.

Without any other leads to go on, I tried to stop thinking about it for the time being. A few weeks passed, and nothing new really came up. I was just doing my schoolwork like a good student during the day and playing video games with Sinon at night. Just like I normally did.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened during that time period. We'd just play games and talk as I stressed out over midterms and my lack of a real social life at school. Sinon was cool with me ranting on the occasion as he would do the same himself from time to time, but I had the feeling both of us were holding something back. It's pretty hard to be really close friends when you've got an entire fake identity separating you two.

Slowly, the last day of school crept up on me.

I had just turned in my final midterm in my algebra class and sat back to revel in my hard work that has finally paid off. A girl with light brown hair and glasses turned in her test after mine before sitting down in the chair in front. I shifted my gaze to her and almost had a double take. Probably the cutest girl in the grade sat in the chair in front of me, but I hadn't even noticed her before now. Her hair was shoulder length, and she was only an inch shorter than me.

I'm not much of a person to randomly get a crush on someone, but I couldn't help but blush a little when her sharp eyes glanced over me and glared. Uugh, what's going on here? For whatever reason, my heart had started to beat much faster during that minor interaction.

I leaned over to the guy sitting in the chair next to me and whispered a question.

"Hey, the girl in front of me, do you know her name?" I asked quietly.

He nodded and wrote something down, but I couldn't see what it was. Before I had the chance of reading what it said, the bell rang and everyone immediately stood up and raced for the door. No one wanted to stay any longer than they had to during finals.

Once the classroom was absolutely emptied of everyone but me and the teacher, I walked over to the sheet of paper lying on the guy's desk. It held a half-written name, much to my disdain.

Asada-

The rest of the page was blank. I don't know why this affected me so much since I hadn't even been introduced to the girl yet, and yet, it still felt heart crushing at the same time. Asada isn't that uncommon of a last name, and there are probably multiple people at this school alone who have that name.

A breath I didn't know I had been holding in escaped my lungs at that moment. She was gone, and the class was over. I'd be lucky to even see her again given the size of the student body. I wasn't sure why I was getting so worked up over this, since she was way out of my league anyways. It still hurt.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and began my commute home. I had to walk the whole way, but my house wasn't too far from the school, so it wasn't too bad.

When I finally reached home and let myself in, I found myself walking into a surprise - confetti bursted from a popper and into my face as the lights flicked on on their own. My father stood in front of me with a party hat strapped to his head and the small confetti device in his hands.

"Congratulations on passing seventh grade!" he cried, before moving in to hug me with all his might.

My grin could not have been wider. I hugged him back while saying, "You say that as if you didn't know I could do it."

"Oh nonono, young mister. I'm not just celebrating you passing, I'm celebrating your finals' grades!"

"They've already come in?" I asked.

He held up a piece of paper that vaguely resembled an official school document. On each of the classes was an A letter grade and a high nineties numerical.

"You made the A honor roll for all of your classes- even Algebra, which I know you hate. That's deserving of a party," he said, smiling and patting me on my shoulder. "Now c'mon, I got you a cake and everything!"

I don't think I realized just then how great of a dad my dad is, but looking back on it, I definitely could tell. He always made time for me, even with work. Heck, he found a work-from-home job just so that he could stay at home and raise me properly. He made my lunch everyday, for goodness' sake.

We sat down at the dinner table and dug in. It was a chocolate cake with vanilla icing on top - my favorite. Once we were done, we pulled up a show we had been watching together on TV and finished a few more episodes.

"Hey, dad?"

"What's up, kiddo?" He looked over at my spot on the couch as I got up, my back cracking and making a sound.

"Thanks for doing all of this," I said, moving in for another hug. We embraced for a few seconds and then let go.

I didn't know it at the time, but that would probably be the best day of my life for a while.

Later that night, before I fell asleep, I was scrolling through my feed on my phone when a text message popped up at the top of my screen from Sinon. He had sent an article that had over twelve million views within the first few hours, so I clicked on the link and…

New Groundbreaking Virtual Reality Console Announced

From the Indie developer Kayaba Akihiko, a new video game console known as the NerveGear, said to completely change how we play games as we know it using FullDive technology (see here), is coming out later this summer. Its launch title, Sword Art Online (see here), will be released not too long afterwards. A closed beta signup form is being provided to new product owners of the NerveGear, so the developer urges interested customers to pre-order as soon as possible.

I barely slept that night.