"ULTIMATE MEGA-LOVE"

CHAPTER ONE

Without a doubt, it was her! UML — Ultimate Mega-Love. Ethan had only heard about the existence of UML from his older friends. He was fourteen years old and had never experienced such an intense feeling himself. Sure, he liked girls at school, especially the older ones when he was a bit younger. Some of them, very much. Actresses from movies. Singers. He was even sure that he had a slight UML for a few like Jennifer Lopez or Sandra Bullock. But! Alas, he had no idea what real love was. More precisely, what true Ultimate Mega-Love was. A neighbor, who regularly tinkered with his retro car in the yard, told him about it. The elderly man, around sixty, would, for some reason, strike up conversations with Ethan as he hurried past on his way to school. And Ethan, being too polite to interrupt an old man mid-speech, patiently listened to the man's long monologues about anything and everything. More often about politics than everyday matters. But one day, he was genuinely intrigued by the old man's story about this very "UML." The old man called it True-Love.

"Only one in a thousand experiences True-Love in their lifetime, boy! Remember this. I knew many girls who seemed innocent at first look turned out to be real vixens. Believe me! But when True-Love hits, you're done for! There's nothing you can do about it. You won't be happy, you won't sleep, you won't eat. All your thoughts will be about her! And the strangest thing is, despite all this, you won't be happy! This feeling doesn't make you happy. Yes! No matter how strange it sounds, it will only bring you suffering. You'll try to shake it off almost ninety percent of the time. Just get rid yourself of the feeling of someone else's strange authority over you. The power of another's appearance over you. Oh! How humiliating it is! Damn..."

That time, the old man rambled on for a full twenty minutes, and Ethan could never have imagined that anyone could talk so much about such nonsense. Naturally, he didn't believe the old man. He chalked up the old man's love woes to lust, although the old man hadn't forgotten to mention that too and said, "Remember one thing, boy. You'll easily distinguish true True-Love from mere infatuation, no matter how intense it is. True-Love is always without lust. Always! You don't even have a fleeting thought about anything indecent. The object of your True-Love is like a precious gem in a jewelry box that you handle with extreme caution, afraid to cause any harm. Nothing about sex. Zero thoughts about sex! It would even feel unpleasant to think about her in that way. It's as if you might tarnish her with such dirty thoughts. She becomes sacred to you, too sacred... It's like having dirty thoughts about the Madonna in a church. You wouldn't do that if you're normal boy. Although people these days have completely lost their minds. When I was young..."

The old man's complaints about the youth followed. Ethan, of course, tuned out this part. Still a teenager, he had once read in a book about Egyptology that in the Nile Valley, scientists had unearthed a stone with an inscription in hieroglyphics in the ancient Egyptian language. The inscription literally read: "Today's youth are not like they were in our time." Complaints about the younger generation, it seems, have existed throughout all ages. Perhaps were born with the first human generation change.

And so, Ethan got caught in Ultimate Mega-Love. All the way home from school, he repeated to himself under his breath. Talking to himself was a habit. As a loner, a nerd, and a bookworm, he didn't like hanging out with his peers. They were too different and had completely different interests. They always talked about things that didn't interest him at all: cars, blockbusters, music, smartphones... none of that really appealed to him. His circle of interests was entirely different. He loved reading books, especially historical ones or philosophy. However, not just that. He also loved reading about different countries and their histories. His peers' conversations about carburetors and turbochargers quietly gave him heartburn, though he pretended to be interested.

"UML, UML, UML... this is really it!" he repeated to himself as he walked, muttering these words under his breath. He didn't notice that people were anxiously stepping aside to make way for him on the sidewalk. This was typical, as people often assumed that those talking to themselves and staring into space usually were crazy. For the most part, this was true: madmen frequently talk to themselves. Especially people with Asperger's syndrome. A lack of social interaction, as Ethan had read in a smart book, compels them to talk to imaginary companions, as ordinary people don't interact with them. Unconsciously compensating for his lack of social interaction in this way.

The Mega-Love had been tormenting Ethan for a whole week. To make matters worse, the old man with the car had disappeared, depriving him of the chance to "consult." The old man lived in the neighboring building, but Ethan didn't know on which floor. He didn't even know the neighbor's name. But the neighbor's words were perfect for his situation. It was really the same thing. One in a thousand. Maybe even one in ten thousand. Ethan made no attempts to talk to or impress the object of his mega-love. This confirmed the old neighbor's theory that the first thing people hit by UML try to do is get rid of it, but in this case, it wasn't entirely accurate. The issue was entirely different. The girl who had caused his "deadly" UML (he had added this adjective himself to denote the hopelessness of the situation) didn't exist in reality! She was an animated character, just a moving and talking picture. A girl fighter from an anime series created by a Japanese artist!What could be more hopeless, more foolish than such an UML? Absurd! In Japan, they call this "waifu" — from the English word "wife". It's when an otaku — a passionate fan of anime and manga — assigns himself such an object of virtual affection.

"Really, what could be?" Ethan asked himself the same question, wiping his damp cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt. "How can I suffer so much because of a cartoon? Because of a picture? And how embarrassing! You can't tell anyone. They'd laugh at me at school. It'd be a whole year of teasing!"

Coming home, he changed his shoes in the hallway and closed the door behind him. Ethan hesitated in front of his computer. For a while, he wrestled with himself, but he knew he would watch her again. Until evening, until he fell asleep in front of the monitor."Obsession. Damn! Damn! Damn!"

Ethan pressed the power button. The computer whirred to life, the fan starting at full speed before switching to "silent mode" after a few seconds, the sound becoming a barely audible hum. Ethan hurriedly, and with a sense of shame, found the downloaded anime file and started the twentieth episode of the first season. The one where the main characters argue and temporarily part ways. The twentieth and twenty-first episodes were his favorites. He had watched them over a hundred times and no longer needed a translation. He knew all the Japanese phrases by heart, comparing them with the English "subs" — subtitles, as avid otaku — anime enthusiasts — called them.

He stood in front of the monitor as if glued to the spot. By the end of the episode, large tears were involuntarily streaming down his cheeks. As always, he hurriedly wiped them away with his sleeve and sat down on the chair in front of the computer. He would give anything to be there, even just for one day!In this world, there's a strange magical war for the Grail, which grants the victor's wish. In this war, the souls of seven long-dead heroic warriors fight each other, each representing a different class: Saber, Lancer, Archer, Rider, Assassin, Caster, and Berserker. The girl who had triggered Ethan's UML belonged to the first class — Saber. She was an astonishingly beautiful blonde with large dark-green, almost emerald, eyes, dressed in a blue gown and matte-silver armor over her attire. She played King Arthur from the famous medieval legend, whose soul was transported into a modern parallel world similar to ours, where this grand clash between mages and their servants for possession of the Grail took place. 

At first, Ethan laughed at the Japanese animators for turning Arthur into a female king — Artoria Pendragon. "What idiots! Who else could come up with something like this!?" But gradually, the character captured his attention, just like the main character — Shirou, a Japanese high school student. He "fell" for Artoria and, as if he were inside the anime himself, experienced the same emotions throughout the storyline, until it caused him real suffering from his unrequited UML. Expecting a response from a show character was, of course, extremely foolish. But Ethan could do nothing about it. That was his Mega-problem. Foolish, strange, unserious to an outsider, but deadly to him. He even contemplated suicide to end it all. Worse still, Ethan, being a very intelligent yet secretive guy, realized that he had fallen in love with his own imagination. He had fallen for his own conception of an ideal girl, constructed in his mind from the script of the Japanese animators, a mosaic of phrases and images from each episode. But in his head, she existed as a real, complete entity. He could even speak for her, knowing in detail what she might say to anything. This schizophrenic division worsened his problem, and by the end of the fourth week, he was mentally conversing with her, even hearing her responses — responses he himself had no idea about! High school student Ethan Thornton had gone mad...