I wake up to the sound of my phone alarm. I swipe the dismiss alarm button, yet nothing happens. I specially designed my alarm to only work for true gaming deities. I tap my phone screen at a pace that puts woodpeckers to shame. I gaze back at my phone. I see no major problems; only a few holes, nothing a true master like myself can't handle. I need to make sacrifices in this lifestyle of mine. I march out of my room at a perfect 180bpm, my mind replicating the sound of a metronome perfectly. I march to my G-fuel storage center, stocking up on pocky and liquid energy. I retreat back to the taiko cave, drumming on the walls with the pocky I retrieved. I am ready to be the taiko.



The desktop of my taiko machine has but one game, formally referred to as "osu!", called taiko. As if being a taiko player wasn't enough authority, taiko forces me to do an obstacle course in order to play it. Effortlessly, I navigate through the menus. I then type in my gamer cheat code in the bar at the top: "mode=taiko". It was now time to warm up. I open up the map "Jackhammer 25x speed 10 minutes edition". A true piece of cake for a person of my caliber. Alright, it's time to game for real. I instantly find the only other beatmap I downloaded, titled "1000 bpm metronome but every time it ticks the bpm doubles". Wasn't as much a walk in the park as the earlier map, but the bpm is nothing compared to how many keyboards I have obliterated. For you see, my fingers serve one purpose: tapping. Likewise, my keyboards also have one purpose: to be tapped on. Symbiosis at its finest.



I see millions of notes whizzing by per second. I don't understand what's going on, but my fingers do. They move automatically, to the point where I could do this map blindfolded, and probably should in order to protect my eyes. My eyes, of course, have contacts. The contacts are identical, and colored both blue and red. I stare back at the screen with my perfectly colored eyes, and still see a flurry, no, blizzard of notes. My fingers move mechanically, while my eyes stare at the blue and red tapestry. The notes seem to blend into a mess, like if somebody spilled purple paint on a treadmill. But it matters not what I observe, for I am slowly detaching from my self. My arms and fingers have become taiko, and soon I will too.