A strange numbness settled over me as I faced this next version of myself. His eyes, dim and hollow, held a profound emptiness that seemed to drain the color from everything around us. He stood still, listless, barely a shadow against the barren landscape that stretched endlessly, cracked and desolate.
I stepped forward, feeling a heaviness seep into my limbs with each movement, as though the air itself were pressing down on me. The once-blazing anger of the wrath reality had been scorching, overwhelming, yet somehow I preferred that intensity to this void. Here, every color, every sound, every sensation was muted, drained, leaving behind a vast, gray nothingness.
The other Takeru lifted his head to meet my gaze, and the look in his eyes made my stomach twist. It wasn't resentment or rage. It was… absence. A quiet surrender to despair.
"Why bother coming here?" he muttered, his voice so soft it barely broke the silence. "You think talking to me will change anything?"
I swallowed, the words sticking in my throat as I tried to push past the eerie lethargy clinging to me. "I'm here to understand you. To understand why… why you've given up."
He gave a low, humorless chuckle. "Given up? You make it sound like there was something worth trying for in the first place." He looked away, staring out at the endless wasteland surrounding us. "Do you even remember when it started? The feeling that nothing really matters? That no matter how much you try, it's never enough? You keep reaching, keep pushing, but it's all… empty."
I wanted to deny it, but his words resonated too deeply, tugging at buried doubts and memories I had tried to ignore. Times when the weight of everything—the failures, the endless cycles, the helplessness—had crushed any spark of hope inside me. This place, this version of myself, was a manifestation of every time I had let that hopelessness take hold.
"This isn't all there is," I said, struggling to keep my voice steady, to remind myself as much as him. "I know it feels pointless sometimes, but… we keep going. Even when it's hard, we have to keep trying."
He shook his head slowly, a faint, bitter smile on his lips. "You don't understand. You're still clinging to this idea that it'll get better, that there's a purpose to all of this." His gaze turned back to me, sharp and hollow. "But tell me—how many times have you watched everything fall apart? How many times have you seen your hopes crushed, your efforts amount to nothing?"
The words cut deep, dredging up memories of every failure, every loss, every moment I had felt like giving in. But that was exactly why I couldn't let him pull me down with him. I had to be stronger than the despair he embodied.
"I won't lie to you," I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. "There have been times I wanted to give up. Times I thought… maybe it wasn't worth it anymore." My fists clenched at my sides as I took a steadying breath. "But I kept going. Even if it was painful, even if it seemed pointless… I kept going because I had to believe there was something more."
The other Takeru scoffed, looking away as if my words were nothing more than a futile attempt to convince myself. "Belief. Hope. It's all a mask you wear to cover up the truth." His voice was hollow, echoing the bleakness around us. "You're just like me. Deep down, you're tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of pretending it'll change. You're just… tired."
His words wrapped around me, a suffocating weight pressing down on my chest. For a moment, I felt myself slipping, my own doubts creeping in like shadows, whispering that he was right. Maybe I was just running in circles, destined to repeat the same painful cycles over and over.
But then, I thought of Piku—of his laughter, his warmth, his unwavering presence. I thought of the friends I had, the people who had been there for me, the moments of light that had pierced through even my darkest days. They were real. They mattered.
I looked back at him, a surge of strength breaking through the numbness. "You're wrong," I said firmly. "I may feel tired. I may doubt. But that doesn't mean I'll give in to it. It doesn't mean I'll just… sink into the emptiness."
He blinked, a flicker of surprise breaking through the apathy in his eyes, and for a moment, I saw something raw and vulnerable beneath the surface.
"Don't you understand?" I continued, stepping closer. "The emptiness is only there because we let it be. Because we give in to it. But it's not everything. There's so much more out there, so many reasons to keep going, even if it's hard to see them sometimes."
The other Takeru looked at me, a faint, almost pleading expression in his eyes, as if he wanted to believe me but couldn't quite bring himself to. "But what if it never gets better?" he whispered. "What if… this is all there is?"
I held his gaze, the resolve inside me strengthening. "Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But we'll never know if we just stop trying. We have to find out. That's what makes life worth living—not the guarantee that it'll be easy, but the chance to find something real, something that matters."
He seemed to struggle with my words, a flicker of conflict crossing his face as he looked down, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. For a moment, it felt as though he were on the verge of breaking free from the emptiness that held him prisoner.
But then, his shoulders slumped, his gaze lowering, and the bleakness returned, consuming the flicker of hope I had seen. "Maybe you're strong enough to believe that," he murmured, barely audible. "But I… I don't know if I can."
A surge of desperation gripped me, a need to break through to him, to pull him back from the brink. But before I could reach out, the ground beneath us began to crack, the desolation shifting and twisting as the world around us unraveled. I stumbled, barely able to keep my footing as everything fragmented, breaking apart in jagged shards of darkness and light.
The last thing I saw was his face, his eyes wide with a mix of fear and resignation, as he was swallowed by the void. And then, in an instant, he was gone, leaving me alone in the endless gray.
The emptiness rushed up to meet me, threatening to pull me under, to drag me down into the hollow abyss. But I fought it, clinging to the slivers of hope and purpose that I knew were real. I wouldn't give in. Not here. Not now.
I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, letting the memories of everyone I cared about anchor me, their presence a lifeline pulling me back from the edge. And as I focused on those memories, the emptiness around me began to recede, the shadows lifting, the gray fading into light.
---
When I opened my eyes again, I was somewhere else—a dark, murky place filled with twisted branches and thick fog, the air heavy with an oppressive stillness. The ground beneath my feet felt damp, soft, like stepping on decaying leaves.
I glanced around, my senses heightened as I took in my new surroundings. The fog seemed alive, shifting and curling, whispering secrets I couldn't quite hear. There was an unease here, a tension that made my skin crawl, a feeling that something was watching, lurking just beyond the veil of mist.
And then, through the fog, I saw him—another version of myself, crouched low to the ground, his eyes gleaming with an unsettling intensity. This version moved with a silent, predatory grace, his gaze fixed on something unseen, his posture tense and alert.
This wasn't the numbness of sloth, or the consuming fire of wrath. This was something darker, something more primal—a hunger, a greed that seemed to devour everything in its path.
The next reality had arrived.
And it was the reality of greed.