Chapter 89: Fractures in the Self
The world around me feels foreign, like a landscape I've wandered into without understanding. The sky that hangs above me—its color, its light—it feels wrong. It's all wrong. Was it always like this? My feet drag across the ground, a ground that now seems to reject my presence. The air clings to me like a thin film of confusion, thick and suffocating.
I stop walking. My chest tightens as the realization sweeps over me—this isn't my world. This isn't the place I belong to. I don't understand what's real anymore. When did the world change? Or… when did I change?
Voices echo in my head, cold and sharp, mocking me for my confusion. I'm not alone, am I? No, not truly alone. They're still there, deep within the shadows of my mind, waiting for moments like this.
'You thought this was your world?' The child's voice, small but cutting, rings through me. 'You never had control. You never belonged here.'
I flinch. My hands are trembling, and I stare at them as though they're foreign too, like they belong to someone else. My thoughts scatter, a thousand broken pieces of something that once made sense. But now… now, they're slipping through my fingers, intangible.
'I've always known,' the adult Ren's voice joins in, colder, more detached. 'You don't even know who you are, do you? The more you try to hold on to this illusion, the more pathetic you become.'
I feel like I'm drowning, every breath heavier than the last. The world around me blurs, its edges fraying into an incomprehensible mess. What am I holding on to? What truth did I believe in? Every answer I thought I had is unraveling.
'Why do you keep pretending, Ren?' the child scoffs. 'You're just a shadow, trying to exist in a world that doesn't even care if you're real or not.'
"I… I belong here," I whisper, though the words feel hollow, barely audible even to myself.
But do I?
The question sinks deeper, like a blade twisting in my chest. What is it that binds me to this place? Every moment I've lived, every breath I've taken—it all feels so fragile now, like a dream I've woken up from too soon. Maybe I've never belonged here. Maybe… I'm nothing.
'That's because you are nothing,' the adult voice presses on, relentless. 'You don't have a place. You've just been drifting, clinging to an identity that was never yours.'
The world tilts, and I stumble forward. I clutch my head, trying to silence the voices, but they're too loud. Too real.
'You thought you were someone,' the child says, almost laughing. 'But who are you really? Who have you ever been? You're a ghost, a fragment. A lie.'
I shake my head violently, trying to push the thoughts away, but they're persistent. They keep coming, wave after wave, each one crashing over me harder than the last.
"No," I whisper, more to myself than to the voices. "I am someone. I am Ren."
But the moment I say it, the doubt swells again. The name feels foreign on my lips, like it doesn't belong to me. Do I even know who I am anymore?
'You keep telling yourself that, but you're losing grip,' the adult says, his voice dark and threatening. 'You've been lying to yourself all this time. The life you thought was yours? It's not. You've just been borrowing it.'
Borrowing it?
The thought lodges itself deep in my mind. Borrowed… as if I'm some kind of impostor, walking in someone else's skin, in someone else's world.
'Look around,' the child chimes in, almost gleeful. 'Does any of this feel like it's yours? Do you even recognize it anymore?'
I look, but all I see is the unfamiliarity of everything. The way the light falls, the shadows it casts—it all feels off, distant, like I'm peering into a world I don't quite belong in.
"Then where do I belong?" I whisper, the question burning through me like fire.
'You don't,' the adult replies simply. 'You never have.'
The words hit me harder than I expect. I stagger back, clutching my chest, trying to hold onto something—anything—that feels solid. But nothing does. Everything is slipping, fading away.
'I'm you, but I'm not you,' the child says, his voice laced with something between pity and malice. 'I'm the part of you that you've ignored, that you've pretended didn't exist.'
I close my eyes, my heart racing. Their voices are inside me, but I can't silence them. Every word they say feels true, like they're unraveling the very fabric of who I am.
'You've been living a lie, Ren,' the adult voice says again. 'And now, you're waking up. You're finally realizing that none of this was ever yours.'
I sink to the ground, my knees hitting the dirt as my body feels heavier, weighed down by the crushing reality of it all. The world around me spins, and I press my hands to my face, trying to hide from the truth, but I can't escape it.
'I belong here… I belong here…' I keep repeating it, but with every repetition, the words lose their meaning.
Do I really believe it?
'Stop lying to yourself,' the child sneers. 'You've been pretending for so long that you've forgotten what's real. This world, this life—it's not yours. You're just a glitch, a mistake.'
A mistake. That's what I am.
The thought claws at me, tearing through the remnants of whatever identity I had left. I'm a mistake. I don't belong.
The ground beneath me seems to shift, like it's rejecting me, pushing me away. And I can't fight it. I don't have the strength to fight it.
'Why are you still trying?' the adult voice asks. 'What are you holding onto? The illusion that you matter?'
I stay silent. Because… what do I have left?
'Look at yourself,' the child presses on. 'You're a mess. You've always been a mess. You've been pretending to be something you're not, living in a world that isn't yours. You're not even a person. You're just… fragments.'
Fragments. The word echoes in my mind, and I feel something inside me crack, shatter even further. I'm not whole. I've never been whole.
I've been splintered, broken from the very start. A life that I thought was mine, a world I thought I understood—it's all been a lie.
'You're nothing without us,' the child says, and there's a viciousness in his tone now. 'Without us, you'd be lost. You don't exist without us.'
I want to scream, to shout, but I can't find the words. The weight of the realization is crushing me, suffocating me. I can't breathe. I can't think.
"I… I don't know who I am," I whisper, my voice barely audible.
'You're no one,' the adult voice replies, cold and final. 'And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll stop fighting this losing battle.'
My vision blurs, tears welling up in my eyes as the hopelessness of it all sinks in.
Am I really no one? Is that all I've ever been?
'You've never had control,' the child says, almost softly now, like a cruel whisper in the dark. 'You've just been watching, pretending that you mattered. But you don't.'
I curl into myself, the voices overwhelming, drowning out everything else. The world fades, and all I'm left with are their words, circling around me, tearing me apart.
'I… don't belong,' I whisper one last time, and the truth of it stings.
The child's laughter echoes through my mind. 'Finally. You're starting to understand.'
And with that, the last bit of hope slips away, leaving me hollow, lost in a world that was never mine to begin with.
〔" Where do I go from here?"〕
The question echoed in the vast emptiness inside me, bouncing off the walls of my mind with no answer, no direction, no sense of hope. I stood still, the rain pouring down heavier now, as if the sky itself was mocking me, drowning me in the weight of my own despair.
I looked up, but the dark clouds were unforgiving, offering no glimpse of the stars, no sign that there was anything beyond this suffocating world.
〔 "Why can't I feel anything?"〕
It was more than just the numbness in my fingers or the cold in my bones. It was deeper than that. My heart... it felt hollow.
Like it had been emptied of everything that once made me who I was. Like everything I thought I knew about myself was nothing but a fragile, fleeting illusion.
〔"Was I ever real?" 〕
The thought settled into my mind like a cold stone sinking into the abyss. It terrified me. The idea that maybe, just maybe, I was never more than a collection of fragmented moments.
Nothing but echoes of a life that was never truly mine.
〔"What if everything I've ever known is just a fabrication?" 〕
The world around me seemed to blur and waver, as if it were unraveling. The familiar streets, the faces, the laughter—all of it felt distant, distorted, and unreachable.
〔" Is any of this real?"〕
I couldn't grasp what was real anymore. The certainty I once had about my place in the world had eroded, leaving me adrift in a sea of confusion and disillusionment.
〔" What if I'm nothing?"〕
Tears streamed down my face, mingling with the rain, a physical manifestation of the emotional storm raging within me. The pain was unbearable, and yet, it felt numb, a cruel paradox.
I don't know who I am anymore.
It was as if I were fading, becoming less tangible with each passing moment. The person I thought I was seemed like a shadow slipping through my fingers.
What do I have left?
I feel so small. So weak. So broken.
No one can help me.
No one could reach the depths of this despair, not even the closest friends or family. The isolation was profound, a chasm that seemed insurmountable.
I don't belong here...
The realization hit me with crushing finality. I had never truly belonged in this world, and now, as everything around me crumbled, I felt more lost than ever.
And now... now it's all crumbling around me, and I don't know how to pick up the pieces.
I don't know how to keep going when I don't even know if there's anything left for me.
Am I even real?
What if I'm not? What if this body, this mind, this soul—what if none of it is real? What if I'm just a fragment of something else, something I can't understand?
I don't know who I am...
And it scares me. It terrifies me to my core, this feeling of not knowing, of being lost in a world that doesn't belong to me. A world that was never mine to claim.
〔 "What do I do now?"〕
I don't know.
I don't know what to do. I don't know how to be anymore.
How do I move forward... when everything behind me is a lie?
There's nothing left for me to hold onto. Nothing to keep me grounded. Nothing to stop me from falling into this abyss.
And I'm scared.
I'm so scared.
I don't want to disappear...
But I'm already disappearing, aren't I? Bit by bit, I'm fading into nothingness. The person I thought I was... he's already gone.
And what's left... is just emptiness.
No hope.
No future.
No me.
I can't stop crying. I can't stop feeling like I've already been erased. Like I never existed in the first place.
This world... it was never mine.
"So what am I supposed to do now?"