Prologue:
My sweet Deluded Destiny
Made by yours truly
A thorny rose wrapped around a moldy mushroom
Whenever you look at your reflection, what do you see?
Actually,
I wish to tell you what I see
in my hollow man, carved by society's cruel hand.
I see a person that was.
I see a person gouged by the people who carved their way up in life
by climbing on the endless bodies of others they put down.
And even when they're on the ground,
they'll step on you,
embedding their marks into you,
shoving you deeper
and deeper
and deeper
and deeper—
until you reach the core of your fucking being—
until you become what they say you are,
what they think you are,
what they made you become.
Every time you see yourself in that mirror,
you see the imperfections your body cursed you with in the wounds,
and the imperfections the people cursed you with in your mind.
Why are my teeth born crooked?
Why am I not gaining any weight?
I should delete this selfie; it's so ugly.
Why won't they leave me alone?
Why don't they ever want to talk to me?
Why does my face look like this?
Why won't the girls talk to me?
Why won't the guys hang out with me?
Or at least fucking see me for once…
I know Mother says things will look up,
but the sky is getting further and further away
as I fall deeper and deeper into the grave
that I have dug for myself—
and that others have helped dig me in.
And I was so tired.
So tired of scarring here,
trying to drag myself out of the grave
with no one there to give me a hand,
ready to carry a part of my weight out.
I was done.
I stopped.
I laid there in the grave,
and all I did was look at the sky
as it grew further and further,
wondering why.
All that "try your best, work hard" bitch shit they fed you as a child—
it was all just a lie.
And when you're at the bottom,
the best thing you can possibly do
is just let your soul die.
But I was wrong.
I once thought of all the people who climbed to the top—
all the people who are happy,
surrounded by others just like them—
were all the same.
That they would stay at the top of their kingdom
they built for themselves on the clouds,
never looking down on the peasants below.
So you must understand my shock when she came.
She walked down from the people she so naturally climbed up
and came all the way down,
just to see an empty husk—
someone who, in her vision, should have been just dust.
This girl…
She's a completely different species than me.
Everywhere she goes,
there's smiling and laughter from others who follow with her.
The space around her was never hollow.
She—she… is Nishita Origami.
Nishita grabbed my wasteful hands
and carried the weight of a hollow man.
Earlier, I asked,
"What do you see when you look in the mirror?"
And I said what I thought.
But when I saw the reflection—
the mirrors in her eyes—
they were filled with a foreign love I didn't know.
She carried my weight up the mountain of others who were forgotten—
people whose souls had rotten.
She carried me to the clouds, to experience life.
You stop looking above and start living there.
The other people—
they saw me differently.
Unfamiliar.
Peculiar.
Maybe I would've been a pet to this girl in their eyes.
But then they finally gave me a chance
and realized their first impressions of me were lies.
They dusted the dirt off
and helped fill my hollow soul.
So this is what it's like to truly reach life's goal.
Well…
That's how it could have been.
If you hadn't committed such a grave sin.
Her once lively eyes are now hollow—
as is your soul.
You forsook the role she played in saving you,
in helping you,
in loving you.
But I guess that didn't stop your lust from taking over.
Her life—so meaningful,
yet so delicate as a clover.
And you realized that…
when you stepped in her room.
And all you can do is stare
when you look at her hollow eyes
above a fallen chair.
You did this, Noah Yakumi, as you know.
So you must reap what you sow.