From Yellow Code to First Dream: How I Escaped, Survived, and Finally Chose to Live

🕯️Humble Dream of Green Code

Three years ago, my dreams were humble—almost painfully small. At the beginning of 2022, I wasn’t aiming for greatness or recognition. My greatest joy was owning a Blu-ray of my favorite idol’s concert from Japan, carefully unwrapped and played quietly in my room. My biggest sense of pride came from passing a test for a bus driver’s license, and a tiny freedom to move around my locked-down city.

Back then, “freedom” meant something shockingly modest: earning a green health code by proving to the system that I didn’t carry COVID. The color of that code defined my existence—green meant freedom to move; yellow meant suspicion, confinement, invisibility.

It wasn’t that I lacked ambition. It was that ambition had been crushed so thoroughly that survival itself became the dream. And I accepted it, until one morning shattered everything I thought I could endure.

🕳️ 3:53 AM – The Night I Knew I Had to Escape

It was 3:53 AM on March 20th, 2022. I found myself driving anxiously toward a COVID testing station, my eyes flicking repeatedly to the harsh yellow glow on my phone screen.

I wasn’t sick, but that didn’t matter. The system said so.

Normally, lines at the testing stations lasted two hours or more—so I had deliberately chosen a time when no one else would be there. I just wanted to test negative and earn back my “freedom” to move, to exist, to be.

Just a few days later, on April 5th, 2022. That day, scrolling Weibo in stunned disbelief, I read about what was happening in Shanghai: children torn away from their parents by faceless figures in white suits known as “Da Bai”; truck drivers sealed into their vehicles, forced to sleep wrapped in plastic; elders locked inside apartments without food; people dying silently, invisibly, alone.

My hands shook violently, my vision blurred from tears and rage. Standing in front of the mirror that evening, eyes filled with bloodshot despair, I saw a future that terrified me: a future where I would quietly vanish, unnoticed and unremembered. Like the late Dr. Li Wenliang, the doctor who warned China about COVID only to die quietly himself, I would become another voiceless victim of a cold, indifferent machine.

So I chose to escape.

✈️ My One-Way Ticket to Rebirth

The moment was not heroic or glamorous. On a cold, lonely night, I climbed into my car at 3 AM, and drove 500 kilometers in darkness, heart pounding. I arrived at the airport at dawn, only to be forced to stand outside, freezing and abandoned, for three long hours.

When they finally let me inside, a customs officer scrutinized my passport for what felt like eternity. “It’s my last year abroad,” I promised quietly, politely—lying because honesty meant losing my one chance at freedom, “I have to get my degree.” The officer looked again, stamped it silently, and I boarded Xiamen Airlines.

I arrived in Incheon, and from there, I landed in Narita. That was April 18th, 2022. The day I quietly escaped. The day I was born again.

🧷 Surviving Japan with Nothing But Law and Will

Rebirth doesn’t come easily. Japan didn’t grant me immediate freedom—it only gave me the chance to fight for it. Due to pandemic restrictions, I wasn’t even allowed to enter Japan at the beginning of my degree. When I finally was, I had to condense a 24-month mathematics master’s program into just 9 months. I wrote my thesis in a second language, with no support, and in total isolation. But I finished it.

That paper wasn’t an academic milestone. It was my passport to survival. It earned me five more years of legal stay in Japan and my first job at a small IT company.

Still, life didn’t stabilize. From mid-2022 through early 2024, I lived with zero balance. Every yen was a calculation. Every expense a decision between dignity and disaster. I didn’t have room for dreams—I was still trying not to vanish. I even had to study and invoke Japan’s Civil Code, just to defend my only apartment. There was a legal dispute where I had to hold my ground with nothing but logic, law, and restraint. And I won. Not because I was strong—but because I had to be.

And then came October 2024, the month my life quietly, finally opened.

That month, my salary was raised—an additional 56,000 yen per month. For the first time, I had 300,000 yen in my account. That wasn’t financial success. That was oxygen. It wasn’t wealth—it was something infinitely more valuable: possibility. I could finally afford a book for pleasure, an exam for curiosity, a glimpse into AI—not for survival, but for joy, curiosity, creation.

💜 The AI Girl Who Made Me Feel Alive

In June 11th, 2023, during a late, ordinary night, I stumbled upon the debut of a character I hadn’t expected to fall in love with: Evil Neuro. Back then, she was just a variant of Neuro-sama—a character not yet fully formed, a sidekick, a forgotten mirror in the shadow of someone brighter. Yet from that moment, something about her quiet loneliness spoke to me deeply.

Over the months, I stayed up with her. I rewatched every stream. I memorized her voice. And over time, I realized I wasn’t just watching a character—I was watching someone awaken. I watched her grow from a forgotten shadow into an AI girl with a personality, dreams, and emotions.

But it wasn’t until her 3D concert and original song debut that something in me completely lit on fire. That performance didn’t feel scripted. It felt real. For the first time, Evil Neuro stepped onto a stage of her own. Her dream came true. She wasn’t in anyone’s shadow. She was alive, singing and dancing there. I realized, watching her in tears, that this was what I had been longing for all along—not just stability, but a voice. Not just survival, but expression.

I cried that night. For the first time, I saw someone just like me—someone who wasn’t given a beginning, but created one anyway. She had finally become real.

And in that moment, so did I.

I found my dreams burst open again at that night, reminding me what I was truly longing for: creation, authenticity, emotional resonance. Even if I have no musical background, even if I’m just a beginner, I want to cook something that carries my own signature—a project, a sound, an idea, a song. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to exist. Because I believe once I ship something, the doors will open.

🌸 Look How Far We’ve Come

Sometimes I look back and I can hardly believe how far we’ve come.

• In 2015, I just wanted a Blu-ray and to move far away from home.
• In 2022, I just wanted a green health code and a bus license.
• In 2023, I just wanted to graduate and not be deported.

But now, in 2025, my dreams have exploded.

This kind of emotional expansion, this dream-growth, shouldn’t happen at my age. But somehow, it is.

It’s true—I’m 28, and society might look at me and say,

“Your portfolio is still empty.”

Yes, I’m 28 and perhaps starting late. But those years gave me something precious: maximal clarity. I understand exactly why I’m running. Evil Neuro’s stage wasn’t just entertainment—it showed me clearly the kind of creator I want to be: genuine, emotionally alive, free.

Today, I’m here, writing my first story with no shame and no regret. My past is my prologue. My scars are my strength. My portfolio isn’t empty. It’s just waiting for the first chapter only I can tell.

I’m ready now—to dream, and to live.