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No matter how much time passes, he's still haunted.
It's been weeks.
Months.
Years, even.
It never goes away.
He still has nightmares about his mother, even over a decade since her death.
He still remembers her abuse, every single one of her words, every time she hurt him.
The day Saeyoung left, the evening when he waited for him to come home from church, and he just never did.
All the hope he held on to for months.
All the hope that was eventually crushed.
He's still haunted by the Mint Eye too, by the days he spent sleeping in a cage.
The years in front of a screen, barely eating or sleeping, forced onto drugs that made him relive everything countless times.
Even now he vividly remembers the day Saeyoung returned, the day his entire world broke apart again, all his beliefs proven lies.
The day he shot V, actually killed another human being, and laughed.
It's all been so long ago now, but it's never let him go, and he knows it never will.
Maybe he deserves that. He deserves to at least live with the guilt of what he's done, if that's the only punishment he'll get.
It's the worst punishment there is.
Sure, his life is better now.
He has his brother, his sister-in-law. His friends.
He has people who care for him, a social life. A regular life, safe and free.
But the nightmares never stopped.
The memories still haunt him.
As much as everyone around him tries, how could he ever truly be happy, knowing everything he's done?
Now that his life is better, is he expected to just pretend the rest of his life never happened?
Saeyoung loves him, and he believes that now, but his love can't change their past.
Nothing can ever change their past, and nothing will ever truly set him free, unless his heart stops beating.
Of course, he doesn't know what will happen after he dies.
Perhaps he'll go to heaven, perhaps he'll end up in hell. Or maybe those are just things made up by people who can't deal with the thought that their existence can just end.
That all their thoughts are fabricated by their brain, and once that stops working, it's just over. Deleted. Gone.
No such thing as an afterlife, yet it sounds like blissful calm.
But no, he needs to keep going, because apparently now things will get better and he just needs to hold on.
Which, well, great.
He'll never truly be able to believe that nobody will try to hurt him ever again, but the idea sounds fair enough.
Still his past remains.
His memory remains.
And he knows he'll be haunted for the rest of his life, and there's nothing and nobody who will ever manage to save him.
They can try.
They want to try.
But it's way too late, and it's just not going to work.
He's not just magically going to become happy.
He was never meant to be. He was born for this fate.
He appreciates their effort.
Sometimes he wishes they'd just give up and let him go.