Desk, textbook, notebook, chalkboard… a teacher monotonously mumbling something 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 memories, doesn't it?" — came a sly voice from the seat next to me 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 me at this point in time — my eighth-grade self. Slightly messy 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 remember, smiling was more of a rare exception than one of my usual emotions.
"Not exactly. I am you. But you — are not me. 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, same grin intact, kept looking at me.
"Am I… really the one to blame 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 some 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 come to realize that none of it meant 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 same time, Night was fighting Raphtalia and Filo, keeping them away from me.
"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 me, it ended long ago. You'll figure it out on your own once your brain starts working again."
Will I? Even now, somewhere 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 become like this?"
"Ha-ha. Yeah… when, indeed?"
The setting shifted. Still the same school, but now the scene had changed — a quiet corridor, with a sixteen-year-old boy walking through it. That boy, clearly, was me. Only this time, I was watching it from the outside.
Aside from me, 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 me. Maybe he saw a kindred spirit or something. And I even replied to him sometimes. Our brief, mostly meaningless conversations could've eventually grown into something more, but…
In that moment, our eyes met. 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 me. But that only applied to me.
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, time seemingly grinding to a halt. After a few moments 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 me.
That boy never tried to talk to me again.
I wonder… what was his name?
"Interesting, but not quite it. Maybe we should dig a little deeper?"
The scene changed again. The same boy, but this time 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 home.
As I passed by an alleyway, a moment later I heard a girl's voice behind me — desperate, struggling against something. Turning around, I saw two men 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 resumed walking. Once again, the world echoed with the same lifeless words ringing in my head…
This doesn't concern me.
"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, some 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 met by… her.
"Back already? You're early today." She gave me a knowing, faint smile and stepped aside to let me through.
A fourteen-year-old girl, with naturally long, silky black hair that always seemed to have a kind of mystical shine to it. On those rare occasions when Father was somewhat sober, he used to say she looked just like our mother — the same delicate, doll-like face, the same gentle smile, the same soft, attentive look in her blue eyes.
Her face… it reminded me a lot of another black-haired girl.
But the name of the one standing in front of me now kept slipping away, as if it desperately wanted to remain buried deep in the darkness of long-forgotten memories.
That girl… was my sister.
"Yeah. I hate literature."
"Skipping classes might come back to bite you at the end of the year. Weren't you planning to apply to university?"
"I'll figure something 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 same crooked smirk was the only thing ruining the image.
"Looks like this is the one. Somewhere around here… this is where it all began, right?"
Something clenched inside me. 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 name only. So somewhere in that little head of hers, she came to the conclusion that she had to take on the responsibility — for both me and him. She always put herself last.
Morning. A new day. My sister in the kitchen — the same look on her face as so many days before. That same gentle smile she always greeted me 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 frame — my sister, breaking her own habit, stayed late at school and came home much later than usual. Second frame — Father, drunk far beyond his usual, nearly unconscious. Third — the kitchen, cooking; my sister, slicing vegetables mechanically, distracted, cutting her finger with the knife — something 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 same 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 come home. Two hours passed. Then three. Four… but she never came 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 come to treat as something ordinary.
In the morning, someone 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 time. And then we were driving somewhere. My mind couldn't piece together a full picture. Everything flickered — like that same kaleidoscope again. But one frame, like a nail driven straight into the fabric of memory, 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 claimed that my sister, severely exhausted, simply didn't notice the car speeding through the yellow-to-red light. That same exhaustion stopped her from reacting. At all.
The few people she spoke to confirmed that lately she'd often come late or left early from class. Sometimes 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 someone, doesn't she?"
I stayed silent. For a long, long time — at least it felt that way. I said nothing until I had the strength to finally move my lips.
"…Anna."
"Hm?"
"Her name is Anna."
"You remembered, then?"
"Yeah."
Anna was gone. My father, who had drowned himself completely in alcohol, passed away a year later. By that time 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 me 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 time ago, I made mistakes I was never meant 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 came 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 same 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 someone 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 someone — forced me to come up for air.
"What will you do now?"
"I… don't know. So much has changed. And at the same time, 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 moment, despite the massive stat boosts she was getting both from my own status and the enhancement potions she had consumed.
I saw the tanuki girl seize the moment. She didn't waste even a second — in one lightning-fast movement, she lunged toward me. 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 ephemeral 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 me 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 me.
I'm just… so tired.