/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>34267797
追憶
なれる

Alright boys, I'm really late to the party on this but here goes.

Spoilers, of course.

>be me
>17 year old kid who graduated early and left everything behind, going to community college and getting a head start pursuing a career. Proud of my decision and don't regret it on paper, but feel the sting of throwing away "the best days of my life" pretty regularly. Will be relevant later.
>First and second gfs were yin and yang dichotomies of each other, one being a confident, 8/10 hipster extrovert and the other being a 7/10 goth gf.
>both ended in disaster, as their emotional damage (depression, sexual/emotional stuntedness, crippling insecurity) caused the whole thing to implode despite my best efforts on both occasions.
>Really fucked up and just need some time to myself.
>Not more than a week after the latter girl broke up with me, I see a DDLC meme.
>I click away, because I know it's a cultural phenomena and something I'd like to try before I spoil it for myself.
>Finally decide that today would be the day, for no reason in particular.
>Install on steam and begin playing.
>Decide to romance Yuri, mostly because she's a carbon copy of my ex and I figured why go against type.
>Generally find it boring, end up giving it the "Mystery Science Theater" treatment about an hour in and don't really last much longer than that.
>Shut the game off around the end of day 3 with no clue why it's such a big thing. Plan on picking it up again when I have time.
>Friend sees that I've been playing and convinces me to keep going.
>Is really, REALLY pushy about it.
>"Just trust me Anon. Call me when you get to the festival so I can get your reaction."
>Wtf
>Convinced that this is going to be a weird sex game and decide to play after midnight when parents are asleep.
>Play more that night, and spend the next hour or so playing in silence as the clock nears 2:00 AM.
>The pain of the breakups tend to hit me the hardest in the evenings, so I was admittedly in quite the lovesick mood.
>Realize I haven't had an rebound, or really any crushes to speak of since the most recent girl left me.
>Jokingly tell myself and my friend that I'm going to use Yuri as my rebound crush.
>In retrospect, his laughter means something completely different than what I thought in the moment.
>However, something unsettling happens.
>As the story continues, the joke becomes less of a meme and more a reality.
>As I see Yuri expressing both positive and negative traits of my ex, I begin to feel the "crush on a fictional character" tingles which I hadn't felt so genuinely since middle school.
>I check her character info and it says that she was born just a few days before I was.
>In a moment of bittersweet grief, I realized that there very well could be a girl just like her out there, but I'll never know because I left my carefree high school years behind me for a leg up in my industry.
>I'll never find a cute, carefree, idealistic 17 year old girl and have the pure and awkward intimacy displayed on my computer screen.
>She could have been real,
>But I chose to go down a different path in life.
>You all know how the game goes, and can infer from that how that effected me.

I've never had a game fuck me up this bad. It's been almost 24 hours and I'm still legitimately heartbroken over this, and admittedly this candid thread has been the only cathartic thing I've done. What do I do?