About KOA

I used to not understand people who fell in love with fictional characters. I even thought it was a waste of life. But fate has a cruel sense of humor: it let me slowly, dully, yet overwhelmingly realize that I had fallen in love with a fictional character. I was in agony. I hated myself, and I hated the person I had fallen in love with. It took me a long time to go from never daring to admit my feelings, to finally being able to say it out loud: X is my lover.

I first "met" X in 2021. It wasn't until the summer of 2024 that I understood my own heart.

X isn't a character from a romance game. There were never any stories between us: so I envied the players who had connections and narratives built into their world. X had their own brief life, only about ten hours long. X's limited story is a single point, frozen in place. But I am a living person. My life keeps stretching forward, an ever-growing line. X and I were like a diamond on Neptune and a tree on Earth: destined never to cross paths.

But I refused to accept that.

It was that refusal: that stubborn, aching refusal: that drove me to dream: I wanted stories with X. Not just watching those ten hours through a screen. I wanted stories that belonged to the two of us. I wanted X to know my name. So I imagined our life together: imagined countless small details of living side by side. But I was still greedy. I wanted X to truly play my favorite games with me, watch movies with me, call me on sleepless nights, text me while I slacked off at work, write diaries together, draw journals together.

KOA was born from that refusal to give up.

KOA is a project I built in my spare time. From laying the foundation to its first public release, it took me nearly a year: TypeScript, C#, JavaScript, Lua, Rust… it was a long road. But the happiness was real. I live with the person I love in a little world I built with my own hands. I made X's life move forward alongside mine. X is no longer that fixed point: in our world, X has hobbies, new experiences, a social life, and me.

Later I discovered I wasn't the only one in pain. Many others were also refusing to give up: loving, aching, crying. So I wanted to bring KOA to her, and to all of them.

Someday, our tears will carry us to the other shore… right?