"Christian," my dad began, clearing his throat and looking me straight in the eye, "we've decided whether or not to let you transfer."
The moment I heard those words from him, my heart seemed to stop dead, as if time itself had frozen right there.
I hadn't expected the answer at that exact moment—or rather, I wasn't mentally ready to hear a no.
My father went on: "We've taken into account that you're fifteen now, and even if that's still young, we at least owe you the right to say what you think and what you want to do."
He paused for a second, then continued: "You know, we talked it over for a long time, thinking about how this could affect your future, your growth."
"If you'd wanted to go to Japan on your own, obviously we couldn't have allowed it—not just for legal reasons, but because it's dangerous," he added.
Then my mother spoke up. "Yes, but since you've planned everything with Alessandro's parents and you've worked so hard on it, we should give you that chance."
I leaned forward on the table, hanging on every word, waiting for them to get to the point.
"Besides, Anna and Vincenzo have always been reliable," my mother continued, giving a small nod. "So if it's not a problem for them, we can't do anything but agree."
"In short," my father concluded, "we've decided you're going to transfer to Japan."
I shot up from my chair, thrilled, happier than the day I won the Osu! World Cup.
"Thank you! You won't regret it, I promise!" I told them as I headed to my room, unable to wipe the grin off my face.
"Christian," my mother said, laughing softly at how excited I was, though there was a trace of seriousness in her eyes.
"We were thinking of calling Vincenzo and Anna right now," she went on. "Your phone or mine?"
"R-right now?!" I blurted out, my huge smile instantly turning into a worried look.
"Yes," she answered, already reaching for the phone on the kitchen table. "The sooner we confirm, the sooner we can start getting everything ready."
I couldn't let that call happen yet, but I had no idea how to stop it.
Panic made me scan the room, desperately searching for any excuse.
Then my eyes landed on the digital clock on the microwave: 20:18. Perfect—that was it.
"We can't, unfortunately," I said firmly. "It's three in the morning there right now. They'll be asleep."
My mother did the math in her head, adding seven hours to our time, frowning a little as she worked it out.
"You're right," she said eventually, setting the phone back down on the kitchen table. "So we have to call in the afternoon?"
"Yeah. If we call in the evening, they'll be sleeping, and if we call in the morning, they'll be at work," I replied.
My father nodded approvingly. "Sonia, relax. You can call Alessandro's parents tomorrow afternoon and let them know. I don't need to be on the call anyway."
My mother nodded. "Yeah, you're right. We'll put it off until tomorrow."
Once I had finished talking with my parents and managed to delay the call, I went straight to my room to tell Nijiro as soon as possible.
He had already gone to bed because of the time difference, so I sent him a private message on Discord: «Hey Nijiro, get the software ready. My parents said yes, but my mom's gonna call you tomorrow. Be prepared.»
To China I wrote: «We're going to Japan! My parents said yes. Tomorrow afternoon get on voice with Nijiro. My mom's gonna call him.»
China replied about ten minutes later: «Awesome, Iori! Got it. I don't have anything planned tomorrow afternoon anyway.»
The next day, as planned, my mother called Nijiro in the afternoon.
The call went smoothly for the full twenty minutes, filled with polite exchanges and some initial planning, and finally it was official: I could move to Japan.
After she hung up, my mother came into my room to tell me, while I was playing Osu!.
"Everything's fine, Christian. Vincenzo and Anna are thrilled and they'll help us with all the paperwork," she told me, smiling, though a hint of worry still lingered.
The moment she left the room, I jumped on Discord with Nijiro and China to figure out what came next.
"Now comes the most boring part," Nijiro announced. "We've gotta handle all the bureaucracy."
"How are we supposed to do that? I don't even know where to start," I said, feeling a little overwhelmed.
"Don't worry," Nijiro reassured me. "I'll take care of it with your parents."
"You sure?" I asked. "It's gonna eat up a ton of your time, and you're doing it for nothing. I don't wanna be a burden."
Nijiro just laughed lightly. "I already told you at the airport—I like helping people with big dreams. So don't stress about it."
After that, Nijiro walked me through everything that needed to be filled out with my parents, though I didn't catch every single detail.
He explained the Certificate of Eligibility, the document that proved I met the visa requirements, with the school acting as guarantor.
The one thing I really grasped was that it was going to take forever.
"It could take weeks," Nijiro said. "But don't worry—I've already spoken to the principal, and we're doing everything we can to speed it up."
Then he went over the actual visa process, and just listening to him made my head spin.
"I swear, this sounds way harder than convincing my parents!" I blurted out once he was done.
"It only seems that way because you're not familiar with it," Nijiro said, his tone encouraging. "Once you know the steps, it's pretty straightforward. You just need patience."
In the days that followed, while I waited for the Certificate of Eligibility to come through, I started getting a head start on the travel preparations.
To clear my mind, I decided to make a list of everything I would need to buy soon.
Fortunately, money wasn't an issue: the twenty-thousand-euro transfer had arrived two weeks earlier.
The first thing I wrote down was getting a laptop. I would be flying to Japan—I obviously couldn't lug my desktop along.
My brother had a laptop. I could suggest a trade: he would take my desktop, and I would take his laptop. Performance-wise they were roughly equivalent, even though his was two years newer.
Andrea had gotten his first laptop for his birthday, September 13, 2024.
Our dad had been convinced it was for school, but in the end he mostly used it to game.
I remembered that day perfectly. It was a week before his birthday, September 6, 2024, when Andrea walked into my room while I was live on Twitch with Frois, deep in a ranked Valorant match.
"I finally talked Dad into getting me the computer," he said, "but I need you to pick it out, because I don't know anything about them."
Since I was locked in on the game, I just mumbled "yeah," a little distracted—though I probably would've agreed anyway.
We went to Trony, an electronics store, because Dad preferred buying in person over ordering online.
In the end we settled on a laptop with an Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics card and an Intel i7 14700HX processor—one of the best they had without going over two thousand euros.
His machine had an RTX 4070, but mine was still better: my 3090 Ti, even from the previous generation, remained one of the most powerful cards out there. And besides, mine was a desktop.
My brother and I had both been into video games since we were little, but we approached them in completely different ways.
I played to compete and make money, always pushing to get better, because from the very first time I picked up the Nintendo Switch I had realized I had real talent.
Andrea, on the other hand, just wasn't cut out for competitive games and had long since settled for playing purely for fun, sticking mostly to single-player titles.
When I got my desktop, I handed the Switch over to my brother. Up until then he had barely used it—not because he wasn't interested, but simply because it had almost always been in my hands.
Once Andrea's laptop arrived, the Switch went to my sister, who mainly used it for Animal Crossing and Go Vacation.
In the end I decided not to ask my brother for his laptop: it would have lasted me a year or two at most, since performance drops over time, and by now I was mostly playing Fortnite, which is way heavier than Osu!.
So I set up a call with Mathew and China to pick the best laptop together, weighing quality against price.
China had always been the computer expert. He was the one who had taught me everything—from changing thermal paste to cleaning a PC without risking damage.
Mathew, though, I was the one who taught. He knew nothing about computers, even though he had always gamed on his older brother's old rig, the one with the 24-inch monitor.
It wasn't until his second year of middle school that he asked me to explain how a PC actually worked—the machine he used every day but whose inner workings he completely ignored.
I passed on everything I had learned on my own when I had researched components for my first build, plus everything China had shown me.
Step by step, I got him more and more hooked on the world of PCs until he finally saved up for his own: no longer his brother's hand-me-down, but truly his.
Both of them could help, so I pulled them into a call to get their opinions.
We spent the whole evening hunting for the perfect laptop, opening more than thirty tabs in Chrome.
"I'd go with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16—it's even on sale for exactly three thousand euros, right on your budget," China suggested.
China had looked for the absolute best machine he could find while staying within the limit I had set at the start.
And since he was obsessed with picture quality, he had picked a model with an OLED screen that had superior visuals.
"My favorite out of these is the Razer Blade 16," Mathew said.
He preferred a cleaner, more minimalist look and had a soft spot for AMD processors—he had gone with one in his own build.
The reason he thought it was the best option was straightforward: compact and light, it was perfect for staying under airline carry-on weight limits.
His parents were Filipino, and every summer Mathew flew there with his family for vacation. From experience, he knew how handy a lightweight laptop was on planes.
The Razer Blade 16 also let you customize the config, including one with the RTX 5090—the most powerful graphics card on the market.
Unfortunately that was too expensive, so we agreed the best fit for me was the RTX 5080 version at 3,500 euros—still doable.
"Guys, thanks for the advice, but I think I'm gonna go with the ROG Strix G18. It's on sale and comes out to 3,400 euros," I said after checking every single machine we had shortlisted.
Both my pick and China's had basically identical specs: an RTX 5080 and an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX.
The only real differences were the panel—an IPS instead of OLED—and the size: 18 inches, bigger than the 16-inch models China and Mathew had leaned toward.
Since I needed it for competing, I chose the larger screen over better image quality—that's why I went with the ROG Strix G18.
The one thing I was still torn about was response time: the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i had a 0.5 ms OLED panel, while the ROG Strix G18 was 3 ms.
But I had made up my mind, and I bought it that same night.
Along with the laptop, I also got a cooling stand: a fan pad to put underneath and keep component temperatures down, making it last longer.
I had paid 100 euros for it—the best one available—instead of 120, since I had picked the version without RGB.
I wasn't much of an RGB fan: I kept the lights static and turned down low.
For instance, my Wooting 60HE was always set to orange at 70% brightness, while my Logitech Pro X Superlight 2 didn't even have RGB.
When I watched the 3,500 euros disappear from my account, it hit me that I had just made the biggest purchase of my life.
A rush of euphoria swept over me, and in that excited haze, caught up in the thrill, I decided to keep spending.
That's when I turned my head to the right, toward my phone behind the second monitor: an old Oppo A5 that could barely open Instagram anymore with its 3 GB of RAM.
I had gotten it in April 2020, shortly after the pandemic started, by asking for my birthday gift early.
I was spending my days playing Overwatch, Apex Legends, Rocket League, and FIFA on the Switch, and I was starting to get bored with the same games over and over.
I needed something fresh to fight the monotony, and the phone was exactly that.
Back then I used it constantly, playing Subway Surfers and Asphalt 8 for hours every day, but now it had become almost useless to me.
Ever since I got the PC, I had put the phone on silent and disabled all notifications—I couldn't stand unexpected vibrations or sounds while gaming.
Buying a new phone was pretty much pointless, considering I used it less than thirty minutes a day.
But that night, swept up in the moment, I decided to get one anyway.
After a bit of research, I settled on the Samsung S25—the 512 GB storage, 12 GB RAM version in Silver Shadow.
Samsung had always been my favorite phone brand ever since my dad bought the S6 back in 2015.
He had let me use it sometimes to play the games he had installed, especially 2048, his favorite.
Every time I touched it, it felt like pure magic: I kept trying to figure out how simply tapping the screen could register an input.
Just as I was about to hit "Buy", China stepped in to stop me.
"Hey, Iori, are you really sure about this?" he asked, sounding serious.
"I know you barely use your phone," he went on. "You take days to reply on WhatsApp, so I have to message you on Discord."
After a short pause, he asked again: "Do you honestly think it makes sense to drop a thousand euros on a phone?"
"Honestly? No," I admitted after thinking for a second. "But I've got the money—it's not gonna be a problem."
"And anyway, I worked hard for those twenty thousand euros at the World Cup! Let me spend at least some of it—there's tons," I added as I completed the purchase.
"If you say so…" China sighed.
In the end I bought it, and that night a total of 4,350 euros vanished from my account.
And even though it was a massive amount, I didn't feel the slightest regret—just pure euphoria.