Desk, textbook, notebook, chalkboard... a teacher monotonously mumbling sothing to an openly bored crowd of students. After surveying the entire classroom, I blinked, picked up my pen, opened the notebook, and started jotting down the lecture.
"Brings back mories, doesn’t it?" — ca a sly voice from the seat next to on my left.
"It does, actually... How many years ago was this? Ten? Or maybe a bit less?"
"Eight years ago. Exactly eight years from this day."
"Yeah..."
We both fell silent. The quiet was broken only by the teacher’s endless droning — and the faint scratching of pens dancing across notebook pages. None of the surrounding students reacted to our conversation, as if neither of us existed in this world. Although... why ’as if’?
"So I’ve fallen into the cliché of fighting my inner demon too, huh?" — tossing the pen aside, I turned to my companion with a smile.
He looked like an exact copy of at this point in ti — my eighth-grade self. Slightly ssy dark hair, dull gray eyes, a completely average, unremarkable face, thin build, pale skin.
The only mismatch was the mocking smirk that hadn’t left his face since his very first word. Back then, I rember, smiling was more of a rare exception than one of my usual emotions.
"Not exactly. I am you. But you — are not . And that’s the real problem."
"Very informative."
"It is what it is."
Another short pause. I kept staring forward, leaning back in my chair — while the demon, sa grin intact, kept looking at .
"Am I... really the one to bla for her death?"
"I told you — I am you. And with that in mind... do you really want to hear the answer?"
Silence. It felt like even the faint sound of pens scratching across the poor pages had vanished. For so reason, I always saw my own life in those school notebooks. The pages, just like it, gradually filled with lines, covering one white sheet after another. But then, many years later, you co to realize that none of it ant anything. You open the notebook and understand that all those filled pages were nothing more than a fabricated necessity — tear them out, and nothing, at its core, will change.
At least, that’s what I always preferred to believe.
"You do understand what’s happening right now, don’t you?"
"..."
Images flickered before my eyes — crumbling walls, scarred earth, scenes shifting one after another. I saw... the battle against the Shield Hero. My battle.
And there, off in the distance, at the sa ti, Night was fighting Raphtalia and Filo, keeping them away from .
"She’s not... under any kind of control, is she?"
"No. She acts entirely of her own will. Just like you."
"..."
"And you do understand that every excuse you’re frantically sorting through in your head right now — is only for yourself?"
"...What do you want?"
"Nothing. For , it ended long ago. You’ll figure it out on your own once your brain starts working again."
Will I? Even now, sowhere deep inside, still gnawed by guilt... I don’t truly feel guilty. In fact — I’m certain the feeling won’t last.
I never cared much for the fate of others. That’s how I lived back in my original world. That’s how I lived even after the world changed. And that’s how I’m still living...
"I wonder... when exactly did I beco like this?"
"Ha-ha. Yeah... when, indeed?"
The setting shifted. Still the sa school, but now the scene had changed — a quiet corridor, with a sixteen-year-old boy walking through it. That boy, clearly, was . Only this ti, I was watching it from the outside.
Aside from , there were a few other kids in the hallway. Three of them, just around the corner, had pushed another boy against the wall, throwing occasional punches at his stomach. Not particularly strong ones, but enough to hurt. To inflict pain, mock him, laugh at his weakness.
Just... the usual.
The victim was the quiet kid from our class. To be honest, I wasn’t all that talkative myself. But even so, I’d never gone through anything like that.
This boy, by the way, was one of the few who had ever tried to talk to . Maybe he saw a kindred spirit or sothing. And I even replied to him sotis. Our brief, mostly aningless conversations could’ve eventually grown into sothing more, but...
In that mont, our eyes t. For a second — just a fleeting instant — hope lit up in his gaze. One of the reasons I wasn’t treated like that myself was because I could fight back. No matter the cost, no matter the state I ended up in afterward, I never let anyone walk all over . But that only applied to .
The steady rhythm of footsteps didn’t falter in the slightest. And just as "I" walked past the unfolding scene, the perspective suddenly shifted — now I was seeing the boy’s face through my own eyes, ti seemingly grinding to a halt. After a few monts of eye contact, I simply turned away, indifferent. In my head, a lifeless voice echoed off the walls like a bell...
This doesn’t concern .
That boy never tried to talk to again.
I wonder... what was his na?
"Interesting, but not quite it. Maybe we should dig a little deeper?"
The scene changed again. The sa boy, but this ti a little younger. Probably... around fourteen or fifteen?
The setting was a city street at dusk, the kind I used to walk along countless days "before" and "after", on my way to the place called ho.
As I passed by an alleyway, a mont later I heard a girl’s voice behind — desperate, struggling against sothing. Turning around, I saw two n dragging a girl, about my age, into that very alley.
One of them, noticing my attention, smirked and casually pulled back the edge of his shirt — just enough to reveal the handgun tucked underneath.
I turned away, indifferent, and resud walking. Once again, the world echoed with the sa lifeless words ringing in my head...
This doesn’t concern .
"Not exactly heroic, wouldn’t you say?"
"..." — I opened my mouth, about to say that I was only fourteen, but... I knew nothing would’ve changed even a year later. Or two. Or five. I... just didn’t care.
"Glad you understand that."
Another shift. Cracked wooden walls with torn wallpaper. A kitchen table cluttered with empty bottles — I noticed it in passing as I walked deeper into the house. The noise of the TV filled the background, so overexcited announcer yelling passionately. A drunk father slumped half-asleep in front of the screen, only responding with the occasional grunt or jolt as the noise stirred him.
And then, as I walked further in, I was t by... her.
"Back already? You’re early today." She gave a knowing, faint smile and stepped aside to let through.
A fourteen-year-old girl, with naturally long, silky black hair that always seed to have a kind of mystical shine to it. On those rare occasions when Father was sowhat sober, he used to say she looked just like our mother — the sa delicate, doll-like face, the sa gentle smile, the sa soft, attentive look in her blue eyes.
Her face... it reminded a lot of another black-haired girl.
But the na of the one standing in front of now kept slipping away, as if it desperately wanted to remain buried deep in the darkness of long-forgotten mories.
That girl... was my sister.
"Yeah. I hate literature."
"Skipping classes might co back to bite you at the end of the year. Weren’t you planning to apply to university?"
"I’ll figure sothing out." — I shrugged and just kept walking.
A head peeked out from behind my left shoulder — a perfect replica of my own face. And once again, that sa crooked smirk was the only thing ruining the image.
"Looks like this is the one. Sowhere around here... this is where it all began, right?"
Sothing clenched inside . My body kept moving forward like clockwork, showing no sign of what was stirring within.
My sister had always been that way. Neither of us ever knew our mother, and our father, who treated our existence like an inconvenient fact, was around in na only. So sowhere in that little head of hers, she ca to the conclusion that she had to take on the responsibility — for both and him. She always put herself last.
Morning. A new day. My sister in the kitchen — the sa look on her face as so many days before. That sa gentle smile she always greeted with. Everything was as usual. Nothing had changed. I thought it never would, but...
I was wrong.
The scenes started flashing faster, picking up pace. First fra — my sister, breaking her own habit, stayed late at school and ca ho much later than usual. Second fra — Father, drunk far beyond his usual, nearly unconscious. Third — the kitchen, cooking; my sister, slicing vegetables chanically, distracted, cutting her finger with the knife — sothing she had never done before. Fourth — late again. Fifth, sixth, seventh...
The images flickered like an old black-and-white film, looping over and over. And with them, one detail remained constant, stuck in an endless cycle...
Her smile.
It couldn’t go on forever. Every story has an ending. Every scene has an epilogue. Even this makeshift kaleidoscope of my life had one.
On an ordinary day, no different from the rest — everything changed. People often say gray is the absence of color. I used to think so too. Always believed that gray and emptiness were two sides of the sa coin, but...
Once again, I was wrong.
Gray is still a color. Faded, dull, damp... but a color nonetheless. A kind of paint.
But then, even that dull color vanished from my life.
My sister didn’t co ho. Two hours passed. Then three. Four... but she never ca back. The creaky, half-dead door didn’t groan. There was no soft rustle as she stepped into the kitchen. No trace of the smile I had co to treat as sothing ordinary.
In the morning, soone knocked on the door. A tall man in the typical dark blue uniform. He asked to speak with my father. They talked. Talked for a long ti. And then we were driving sowhere. My mind couldn’t piece together a full picture. Everything flickered — like that sa kaleidoscope again. But one fra, like a nail driven straight into the fabric of mory, stayed lodged there forever.
A body. Pale, fragile, with silky, glistening black hair draped over it like a fine veil. A perfectly calm, peaceful face. And blue lips. She looked like crystal — straight out of a painting. Just as cold. Just as lifeless.
The police said it was an accident. The report claid that my sister, severely exhausted, simply didn’t notice the car speeding through the yellow-to-red light. That sa exhaustion stopped her from reacting. At all.
The few people she spoke to confird that lately she’d often co late or left early from class. Sotis she skipped it entirely. Her grades were still perfect, so no one objected. None of them ever imagined it would end... like this.
Neither did I.
"She was a good girl, wasn’t she? And so beautiful... Kind of reminds you of soone, doesn’t she?"
I stayed silent. For a long, long ti — at least it felt that way. I said nothing until I had the strength to finally move my lips.
"...Anna."
"Hm?"
"Her na is Anna."
"You rembered, then?"
"Yeah."
Anna was gone. My father, who had drowned himself completely in alcohol, passed away a year later. By that ti I had just turned eighteen, so I didn’t end up in an orphanage. Not long after Anna’s death, while going through her things, I found an envelope in her desk. It had money inside — and a short note.
"Please, stop skipping classes."
Since then, I hadn’t missed a single one.
But I never did make it into university.
"Yeah. This is where it all began, isn’t it?"
How long had it been since I truly lived? Since I saw anything in people beyond a cardboard cutout? Since I stopped looking at them — and started looking through?
The scene dissolved into a blank white canvas. Standing in front of was... myself, again, with that now-familiar smirk.
I... felt strange. People don’t dig this deep into themselves for no reason. Under normal conditions... I wouldn’t want to admit it, but I could never have gone this far on my own. No, I wasn’t the one digging at all...
"So, what do you want?"
"I already told you — nothing. A long ti ago, I made mistakes I was never ant to fix. Not even at the cost of my life. Think of this as... an attempt to make my own existence a little easier to bear. After all — I am you."
I had accepted it. Long ago, I ca to terms with everything that happened and buried it so deep that it never even crossed my mind in everyday life.
I was... a coward.
Trying to escape guilt and my own hollow shell, I built up illusionary walls around myself with my own hands — walls to shut out the outside world.
And then... that summoning happened. Like a drowning man clutching at a straw, I threw myself into that "new life" with the sa desperate fervor — turning those flimsy walls into a near-impenetrable fortress.
Because it’s so easy, isn’t it? To just forget everything and fall into a fantasy world. A story written long ago by soone else. With characters you don’t have to understand. Characters you don’t have to see as people — because they’re just text.
I willingly drowned in that illusion.
But soone — forced to co up for air.
"What will you do now?"
"I... don’t know. So much has changed. And at the sa ti, nothing has changed at all."
The white canvas slowly began to regain color. The Shield Hero, barely alive and battered. Countless craters in the ground. Raftalia’s voice, screaming through the chaos, echoed as she and Filo managed — just barely — to push Night back for a mont, despite the massive stat boosts she was getting both from my own status and the enhancent potions she had consud.
I saw the tanuki girl seize the mont. She didn’t waste even a second — in one lightning-fast movent, she lunged toward . Dodging her, landing a counterattack in the process, would’ve been easy. My body was already preparing to do exactly that, purely on reflex.
But I... smiled at the flying girl — and simply turned toward the dense mass of magical energy shaped like a sword blade.
A heartbeat later, the epheral blade pierced my chest.
Through darkening vision, I caught a glimpse of Raftalia’s shocked face.
We still have things to discuss. But not now. You still have so much to learn... about what it is you’ve inherited.
The voice faded, leaving behind only the image of that toothy grin — no longer as sinister as before.
And then I saw her — the black-haired girl, rushing toward at full speed, her face filled with raw fear and emotion so uncharacteristic of her.
My eyes slowly closed.
Yeah... this day had really taken it out of .
I’m just... so tired.
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