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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +name: MocaKawai |
| 3 | +info: |
| 4 | + alias: Moca |
| 5 | + location: Sanya, Hainan |
| 6 | +desc: Here to make some friends too! |
| 7 | +--- |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | +## The Transit Enthusiast |
| 10 | + |
| 11 | +MocaKawai took her name from Aoba Moca of *BanG Dream!*. |
| 12 | +Whichever Moca you have in mind, |
| 13 | +both are impossibly endearing, |
| 14 | +both a little scatterbrained — the kind of person you can’t help but look at twice. |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +As a transit enthusiast, |
| 17 | +Moca played a wide range of simulation and management games, |
| 18 | +including *Rail Route* and *Cities: Skylines*. |
| 19 | +She would often stare at route maps, lost in thought, designing the perfect transit network for some imaginary city. |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +She also played *Fall Guys* and *Among Us*. |
| 22 | +She was always warm and lively in the comment sections of her videos, sometimes sharing little tips and tricks with her friends there. |
| 23 | + |
| 24 | +Having lived in Sanya for most of her life, Moca knew the city’s public transit system inside and out. |
| 25 | +She filmed a great many transit-related videos, the majority of which were front-window POVs of Sanya’s bus routes. |
| 26 | + |
| 27 | +For those who follow transit POVs, what matters most is not the footage itself, it is the mood. |
| 28 | +A different route, a different hour, a different state of mind, and the POV becomes something else entirely, something hard to put into words. |
| 29 | +Moca understood this. |
| 30 | +She gave each of her POV videos a carefully chosen title, passing on that sense of being *there* to her friends: |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +> “Express from the two major hubs straight to the westernmost tip of Sanya” |
| 33 | +> |
| 34 | +> “Drifting into nightfall in the hypnotic sway of a sightseeing route at China’s southernmost point” |
| 35 | +> |
| 36 | +> “Racing uphill through a downpour” |
| 37 | +> |
| 38 | +> “Chasing the sunset on the expressway!” |
| 39 | +
|
| 40 | +In September 2022, confined at home during the COVID-19 pandemic, |
| 41 | +Moca created a schematic map of [Sanya’s rapid transit network](https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv18624078). |
| 42 | +Nearly a year later, she [revisited and refined the map](https://www.bilibili.com/read/cv2497345811), adding several intercity routes to the original design. |
| 43 | + |
| 44 | +Her love for transit was much like the titles she wrote. |
| 45 | +Every bit of it sincere, and quietly romantic. |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +## Escape from the Island |
| 48 | + |
| 49 | +In the summer of 2023, Moca’s mental health deteriorated sharply for a number of reasons, and she began to overdose. |
| 50 | +The pressure of her final year of high school soon followed. |
| 51 | +At the end of August, a suicide attempt landed her in the ICU. |
| 52 | +She survived, but things did not truly get better. |
| 53 | +After being discharged, she lost her partner, lost her friends, and her physical condition worsened. |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +Afterwards, Moca took a leave of absence from school. |
| 56 | +She had few friends in Sanya, so she decided to travel to the Yangtze River Delta — to wander through cities she had never been to before. |
| 57 | +The trip allowed her to meet friends she had only known online, and for a while, it eased some of her pain. |
| 58 | + |
| 59 | +> Tried savoury doufunao (tofu pudding) for the first time? Not really my thing. Long live sweet doufunao! |
| 60 | +> |
| 61 | +> McDonald’s! It’s so much cheaper outside Sanya, I’m so jealous… |
| 62 | +> |
| 63 | +> The sticky rice is delicious! Totally different from what you get in Sanya! |
| 64 | +
|
| 65 | +For a brief moment, she had escaped the island — not just the geographical one, but the one inside her mind. |
| 66 | + |
| 67 | +But after returning to Hainan, |
| 68 | +the darkness closed in again. |
| 69 | +Her continued misuse of medication only made things worse. |
| 70 | +The substance she had purchased during her travels ultimately took her life after she returned to Sanya. |
| 71 | +She did not make it through that autumn. |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +“It’s so damp… or maybe that’s just my tears…” |
| 74 | + |
| 75 | +Rain or shine, silence or rush hour... All of it was scenery that Moca wanted to share with us. |
| 76 | +Every route she cared about, she recorded with care and posted for her fellow transit lovers to see. |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +She always liked to sit at the very front of the bus, watching the road unfold through the wide windscreen ahead. |
| 79 | + |
| 80 | +This last ride, though, had no final stop. |
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