I met this guy on MySpace around five years ago. I was in eleventh grade, was in the anime club, had weeby friends, so on and so forth. However, unlike those friends, this guy… was unique. To say the least. He went beyond the garden variety weeaboo. No, his insane demeanor was a level above that.

Kaoru, as we will call him (his favourite character from Ouran High School Host Club), had a twin brother. We’ll call him Hikaru since that’s the character he liked to be referred to as. They also had a friend in real life who was Tamaki.

Now, these three were actually really nice in the beginning. I met them through the MySpace chat rooms when they were still up. Kaoru and Hikaru had been going through a bit of drama, trying to understand themselves, typical teenage things. They were apparently adopted into an Asian family and were originally from California (opposite side of the country from me). Tamaki was from a wealthy family and got along with the twins just swell. They all hit it off quite nicely with me.

As time progressed, I became more intimate with the three, mainly with Kaoru. I was aware that he was female-assigned at birth, as I am, but he had promised up and down that he was a male on the inside. I stuck with that. I’m a soft person and I really liked his personality; we had gotten close to one another on various levels. He had dreams of going through the surgeries and procedures required to physically transition.

It all went downhill from there. We found out that, lo-and-behold, he lived only thirty minutes away from me. That’s a pretty big deal for me, considering I live in Bumfuck Nowhere. We decided to meet up one day at the mall in the city he lives in. Upon our first visitation, I was excited. Shy, but excited. He turned out to be rather touchy-feely. He wanted to hold my hand in the mall, embrace me, nuzzle me in public. Despite his gender, I’m not attracted to female-assigned people, and while I was still holding onto his dreams and promises, I just couldn’t bring myself to confidently hold his hand in that ‘lovers’ sort of way.

I need to mention that this guy was completely and utterly delusional. He confessed to me that Hikaru was not real, that he had died before he had been born. Tamaki? He was traveling through foreign countries to escape the clutches of some secret agents that wanted him and his family dead for something they had done, and his only way of communication was via his laptop. How convenient.

Not only all of that, but he had a ‘spiritual connection’ with his dead twin brother if he just closed his eyes and concentrated. So he was dead.. but not dead. He lived on another planet (after his body here became deceased, he was reborn there), far from earth, in a civilization far more advanced than ours, where the people lived for hundreds of years, where people could fly by themselves or on dragons if trained appropriately, where each soul was defined by its strength and quality, where their energy sources were more or less provided through some spiritual substance, where there was a war going on between the ‘humans’ of that world and some monsters, and where their leader was…me.

Yes, I was supposedly the leader of this planet I had not heard of before now, that I had no physical or mental contact with. I was the leader simply because he, his brother, and Tamaki liked me enough (and were heirs through heritage) and wanted me to rule this world alongside them.

Well, needless to say, this all caught me quite off guard at first by how serious he was. However, I was very naive and hated my life. It was as if he KNEW I wanted to leave this world and when I asked for proof of all of this, well…his evidence of that place, while now I can poke holes through some of it, seemed very reliable and true enough to me. Anyone put in that kind of situation would know what I’m talking about.

He told me there was a way I could leave this world, leave my body behind, and escape to that planet and become the rightful leader I was so inclined to be. I just had to focus my mind and dreams hard enough. Yes, that’s really about it. He told me to describe my dreams to him, my thoughts of the planet. He told me that he and the others had created a body just for me on this planet and then, when my spirit was strong enough and my mind focused enough, I could ‘transfer’ into it. Yes, I believed all of this (though wary I was) and yes, I feel just as bad for having believed it as I do now.

During this time period of show and tell, Tamaki had allegedly died. It seemed that he had gotten ‘caught’ by those agents or whatever and was shoved off a balcony and tried to run away but died from his injuries. And yet, he could still talk through the INTERNET in the middle of a field while dying. After that, his spirit was brought forth to that other planet because he seemingly had a body in that world that he was using too.

After that encounter, we visited at the mall again around early spring of the next semester. This time, he got to spend the night with me.

When we got back to my house, all went fine at first. We played Frisbee, played video games, watched anime, drew and colored scans and things like that.

Fast forward to that night and suddenly, everything is serious. This is the night that he’s going to ‘test’ my spiritual strength and see if I’ll be ready to ‘transfer’ over soon or not. Things go over well for about two hours - we seriously got into it.

But then the topic changes. He wants to discuss our future together. I’m fine with that, sure, whatever. We talk about the surgeries, how we’ll finance it together, how we’ll live together here and on the other world, hand in hand, blahblahblah. He then gets close, physically. Hugs, embraces, that’s fine. But it stops there.

The next day is spent lamenting over the fact that he won’t be able to stay much longer. We granted him another night to spend but that was it. He spent more time telling me details about his background, Hikaru’s background, and Tamaki’s. How they all became friends, that sort of stuff. We work on focusing our energy again, trying to expend as much as we can into this other planet. Into a body I’ll get to have on a world far from here.

But then the guilt begins to set in. He reminds me that we’re supposed to be romantically intimate with each other. He really wants that. Now. I’m extremely nervous and cautious of that kind of thing—I told him repeatedly that it’s hard for me to get intimate with people because of past events. Furthermore, while I accept his decisions regarding his gender and support him, I just can’t will myself to do those kinds of ‘things’ openly.

It took about two hours and he broke me down. He guilted me enough into allow myself to be half-naked and touched. I won’t get too graphic but he remained clothed, I didn’t let him kiss me, and he got to fondle and molest me in my guilt-ridden and broken state because by that point, I honestly believed I would get to leave this world and he was strong enough to keep me in place. I thought this would be the only chance we’d get to be close or something, outside of the internet. I wanted to believe in him and I wanted to hold onto something.

I now know better; a lot better.

Before I met him, I had already had severe trust issues with people and had a good knowledge of what physical harassment was. I was a very naive individual as well, and probably chose to be that way because the world had been so cruel to me in the past. You can’t judge a book by its cover or the wear of its pages.

Three months passed and I lost what real life friends I had, partially because of him. By that time, I had graduated. Over the summer, he cut me off as a friend. He screamed at me over the phone when I tried talking out a conflict with him we’d had on messenger and threatened to call the police and get a restraining order. I cried hard that night.

When I look back now, though I left out many details, I realize he was just trying to live out some sick fantasy that started with an anime fling and addiction. I believe Tamaki was not real in the sense that I had actually spoken with this boy, and Hikaru was just a figment of his imagination. I believe he was glued to these kinds of obsessions, these fantasies and ideals; he wanted the world to be like his made-up one. He went beyond innocent online role play and manipulated me into his ideas. I got lost and, in the end, paid the price.

I now hated everything anime related. I was confused and questioned a lot of my beliefs, ideas, emotions, and own willpower for the longest time after that. I went into depression, lost hope, and hated myself for what I had succumbed to. I didn’t tell anyone for five years.

Just now, after having told my one and only closest friend, am I willing to tell this to the public and still under an anonymous guise.

The moral of this story is that you must always be wary of those around you. Hold true to yourself and keep your will strong. Don’t lose sight of what is real.

Because the only thing—the only person—that can bring you happiness, is yourself.