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Chapter 53 Volume II - Chapter 19: Finding and Losing Himself

~bzzt! ~bzzt! ~bzzt!

The sound of an incessant alarm caused me to slowly open my eyes and face the ceiling of my dimly lit room.

I turned my head, then looked out the window.

The beams of light from the just-rising sun streaming through my window were the only source of light entering the room, which is why it was dim inside.

I sat up slowly, even though I had just woken up, my eyes weren\'t blurry and I didn\'t feel any burrs, so it felt quite strange, but I stood up anyway.

As I walked to the bathroom, I thought.

What were the classes today?

I let out a deep sigh as I washed my face.

Today will be another boring, ordinary day as usual...

After splashing the cold water on my face for the last time, I turned off the faucet and looked in the mirror like any other person would.

"Huh?!"

My heart skipped a beat and I gasped for breath. An intense trembling enveloped my whole body, combined with the horrified silence in the bathroom. I tried to step back in fear, but I lost my balance and fell to the floor.

In the mirror... in my reflection... there was no \'face\'.

I brought my trembling hand to my face. I checked my nose, and my eyes, but when all I could feel was a smooth \'flatness\', I stiffened.

I felt nauseous, quickly leaned over the toilet bowl, and tried to vomit.

I couldn\'t, I didn\'t have a mouth.

I felt nauseous again. I leaned over the toilet to throw up again, but again, I just stood there.

"Isn\'t that weird?"

Suddenly a voice echoed in the midst of the terrifying silence, and I shivered even more violently. I turned my head slowly, frightened.

There was someone, a child, on my bed, only part of which could be seen through the bathroom sink.

I gulped, slowly stood up, and despite my fear, stepped out of the bathroom and looked at the bed.

"You don\'t even know who you are, what you\'ve been through, and why you\'re here."

In front of me was a boy who could have been no more than nine years old. He had long brown hair and green eyes that had lost the luster that a child should have.

The boy looked into my eyes, or rather where my eyes should have been, and smiled bitterly.

"Did you think you could run away?"

He climbed down from the bed and approached me, but I couldn\'t move a muscle. Instead, my knees buckled and I found myself kneeling on the floor.

His words were going round and round in my head. My eyes wouldn\'t leave the floor. My head ached.

"Did you think you could change just because you had a new chance?"

He put his hand on my shoulder and moved closer to my face so that there were only a few inches between us.

"All the bullying, the running away, the attention seeking, the small and big betrayals, and the suicide attempts you didn\'t dare. So much more..."

His eyes were watery, he was crying.

"Can you easily forget all that just because you have a new chance?"

The boy sniffled, then took a deep breath and stepped back.

I had nothing to say.

"I haven\'t forgotten, I can\'t forget."

There was determination in his eyes.

"Neither could you. If you were \'you\'."

The room was suddenly enveloped in darkness. The boy disappeared in the same darkness.

I trembled, more than ever. I tried to cry but I had no eyes.

I was scared, more scared of this darkness now than I had ever been in my entire life. This pure, pitch-black darkness that felt familiar was penetrating me and tearing me apart.

"Who are you?"

A voice echoed from everywhere in the darkness, the voice of the boy from earlier.

"Aiden Tenebra..."

I stood there, so still that my body stopped trembling and all memory of fear was erased from my mind.

Because I started to remember.

What happened, what I did, even Aiden Tenebra, and who he was.

Most importantly, though, long before that.

"\'... or Ethan Subter?"

I remembered myself, who I was.

He was me.

That boy, that boy who called out to me... it was me. It was Ethan. He was the owner of a name that meant strong and resilient, the only thing I was glad my parents had given me.

"Who are you?"

"I\'m..."

I clenched my fist.

\'Aiden\' is nothing more than a second identity I\'ve created for myself and used to escape reality.

I am Ethan, but I don\'t want to let go of the \'Aiden\' persona I created for myself.

The days I spent in my old body are unforgettable for me. I spent twenty-one years in that body, but I already have so much more in this body than when I was Ethan.

I\'m not a \'good\' person... I never have been. I\'ve always strived for what was better for me. No matter what smile I put on my face, inside I was always the same person.

"You haven\'t changed. You just ran away."

When I accepted myself as \'Aiden\', I thought I had changed. I thought smiling and making friends with people would change me, but I\'m still the same person...

"You need to decide."

His voice, my voice... echoed in my mind again.

"Are you Aiden? Or Ethan? If you can\'t decide, you won\'t move forward."

I am greedy and selfish.

I don\'t want to lose my old self as Ethan. I feel like if I do that I\'ll deny who I am, but at the same time, I don\'t want to stop being Aiden.

I thought about the only person who has ever shown me love; Clara.

And the moment I did that, I paused.

Clara doesn\'t love me for me. She thinks I\'m her real brother Aiden. I... I\'m fooling her as much as I\'m fooling myself.

I\'m... just a weak person who wants to be happy. All I\'ve ever done is convince myself that I\'ve changed.

I remembered all the things I thought about after what hit me in the chest before I fainted. As my life flashed before my eyes, I saw and heard about the people I had met in this world.

I smiled bitterly.

I am a liar. Yet... even though I realize it, I am still afraid to tell the truth.

I am a human being, not a perfect one. That is precisely why I will choose to be selfish and greedy, an imperfect human being.

I stood up, ignoring the darkness that surrounded me.

Ethan? Aiden? Who cares which one I am? If I want to be happy, I can\'t choose one of these two personalities, but I can\'t be in between either.

If I want to change, I have to start by changing \'me\' directly, not by assigning myself a new personality or going back to my old self.

"Don\'t hide."

The pitch darkness slowly began to change and beams of light surrounded everything.

I found myself back in the dim room.

There was a little boy sitting on the couch in front of the computer. His back was to me.

"I\'m an idiot."

He had a childish voice, but he sounded fed up with life. Yet there was a glimmer of hope in his voice, he was determined.

"Nine years old..."

I sighed lightly.

"I never grew up after that day, right?"

The boy\'s shoulders dropped. Then the room I was in twisted strangely, and I found myself in a corridor again.

I was nine, it was one of my days in the orphanage, and I had a smile that I never took off my face. Today was the day this smile faded.

I was walking down the hallway when I overheard the director of the orphanage talking to someone. They were talking about me being a troubled child; they thought there was something wrong with me. And then somehow it got to my parents.

"What do you expect? He\'s weird like his parents."

"Like he has parents? Neither of them were even adult yet, yet they didn\'t want him."

"He\'s a mistake, it\'s normal for him to be stupid like his parents. You shouldn\'t worry too much."

They said other things, but the main theme was the same; they kept saying bad things about me, about my family. And I just kept standing in front of the door.

That day my world collapsed around me.

I had never cared about people calling me stupid. I believed that one day my family would come and take me away from here, but that dream was shattered that day.

That was the day I realized that people are alone in the world and nothing will come directly to me unless I work for it myself.

So I worked and I worked and I didn\'t want people to talk bad about me.

"You\'re running away again."

The boy spoke again, and a smile appeared on my face.

How pathetic I am...

I just didn\'t want people to talk about my family behind my back. As a successful person, I wanted other people to say behind my back, \'His family should be successful too.\' Even if they abandoned me, I didn\'t want to abandon them. I wanted to love them, to be loved by them.

I refused to believe that I was abandoned.

I thought that if I achieved something, maybe they would come to me with a smile on their face and at least say \'well done\'. That\'s exactly why I never grew up after that day and no matter how much I try to change, I do nothing but run away.

And now... Now I understand what I have to do, even if it\'s painful.

The boy turned in the chair and locked eyes with me. One of his eyes was now purple.

"I have nothing to say."

He got up from the chair and headed for the door, behind which there was only endless darkness. He took a step outside but paused one last time before disappearing into the darkness and turning back to me. His other eye was starting to turn purple too.

"I was never happy, I was a fool, I just ran and ran, and now much, much worse awaits you."

The boy paused, his voice a wheeze. His last remaining green eye was now all purple. It was as if he was turning into someone else.

"I hope you will succeed."

He had a bitter smile on his face.

"Thank you."

My true self, the one I had left in that hallway of the orphanage that day, looked resolutely into the darkness behind the door. He sighed lightly, looked at my face one last time, and then, without a word, walked into the darkness and closed the door behind him.

Bad days ahead for me, is that it...?

Maybe, since the first day I came to Lunerra, I never thought that good things would happen forever.

Still, I will do my best to avoid bad things, at least I will try.

I turned my head and looked at the only source of light in the room, the computer screen. On it was the game I had played for three years and six thousand hours, The Lands of The Lunerra.

A smile reappeared on my face and I slowly moved to the chair. Although I was nervous because of the strange feeling of holding a mouse after a long time, I slowly moved the pointer over the \'play\' button, but I didn\'t click on it right away.

I slowly turned around and looked into my room.

This small room was where I used to find myself. I had spent three years here and now there was another place where I felt I belonged.

I took a deep breath and turned back to my front. I pressed the \'play\' button, which looked quite sweet to my eyes, and then my world went black in an instant.