Note: This is purely a work of fiction. Additionally, please read the intro chapter in the auxiliary first of all.
ERA Calendar. 2nd Month of the Year 3115.
Southern Hemisphere.
Ren Aristella.
A normal boy who was supposed to live a normal life.
It's a situation not so different from the happy life that other children his age were living.
However, if there was one thing that was different about him, it was that.
No matter how much he tried, he could never truly kill himself.
"It all started that day."
The day was the day he went to go visit his grandparents alongside his parents. Originally, plans were supposed to be suspended due to the weather that day.
However, the six-year-old him at that time had refused and forced them out so.
Well, they adored him so much, so they had no choice really.
Both were scientists and were on leave that particular month after having made a breakthrough in a particular subject they were researching.
That was where it happened.
A fatal accident.
He had been sleeping in the car, and rain had begun falling that particular day; his father, who could barely see it coming, was too late to react.
A truck had veered off the other side of the road and had tumbled over to the other side of the road where the Aristella family drove across.
Like that, anyone can infer what happened next.
And he, despite the car being fatally destroyed to the point where the car had basically been crushed, by the time they found him, other than his bloodstained and dishevelled clothes, was found alright.
Miracle child, or so doctors glorified him as.
However, to Ren, what was the point of living when the people he loved so much had met their end due to his wilfulness?
He couldn't allow such!
Aristella Ren could not live with himself.
He had been taken to the hospital and had been there; the doctors had continued to observe him like that; however, no matter how much they toiled, they could never find anything.
It was a miracle, really.
Having been discharged from the hospital, in which at that time his grandparents had come for him, he had attempted to kill himself.
A kitchen knife to the throat, a deep plunge to the throat.
That was what he had attempted.
Of course. He died, successfully killing himself like that, but then, he resurrected.
He came back to life.
Obviously, the aftermath was there; his blood still obviously stained his clothes, visible there; however, he was still alive.
His grandparents, who eventually came to see this scene, had scolded.
They had told him—
His parents dying wasn't his fault. They had told him it was God's plan for that to happen.
Though Ren didn't believe it, he had simply believed them back then.
From there on, he followed his grandparents to church.
Everything was finally seeming to piece together.
At least, that wasn't until his ninth birthday.
His grandparents followed his parents in suit.
It was a day when he had come back from school, only to receive a call on his home landline as soon as he got home, as if it were fate.
Their message was such: "I'm sorry, Mr. Aristella. Your grandparents are… dead."
Despair.
An overwhelming despair overshadowed him; the mobile phone he held had dropped to the ground as he now stared at the empty living room.
Silence was how it began.
It was an overwhelming silence that had always been there even before he entered.
Now, it felt like the overwhelming silence was drowning on him.
"Mr. Aristella?"
The voice asked over and over again, and as seconds passed, his knees dropped to the ground, followed by a piercing scream in the next, while clutching his head together, blocking out that feeling of his head splitting apart.
"AHHHHHHHHH!"
Living with his grandparents, Ren had come to be emotionally closed off to other people.
Of course, it had been different for his grandparents though, as they were the closest to him.
His entire being and psyche depended on them.
Everything was finally… At the very least, things were coming back into full circle.
But then, the world came crashing down on him, again.
Like before, he had tried the means to escape by committing suicide, knife to the neck, but no, he still lived.
Then, like that, he followed through, plunging the knife deep into his neck, over and over, and over, and over, and over and over, and over, and—
It was useless.
No matter how much he tried to escape. For some reason, he wasn't allowed.
It was like the world was making an attempt to make fun of him for his pathetic means of escape.
Eventually, the next day, he went to the hospital and had followed through the proceedings.
Throughout the entire proceedings, till their burial, the nine-year-old Aristella hadn't shed a single tear.
However, his eyes were hollow; he had lost the means to keep living, and no matter how he tried, something kept on anchoring him to the world of the living.
He hated it.
He didn't like it.
He wanted to escape.
But why?
Why wouldn't this world let it happen?
No matter what he did.
"I can't escape."
Following that, Ren had gone back to his former home, where he lived with his parents.
By the time he would return? Of course he didn't empty-handed.
He had received everything both his grandparents and parents had.
From the grandparents were pieces of land; he eventually went to estate management to sell them off by himself.
And, from the government came hundreds of millions of RHN, this world's equivalent to currency, due to the immense contributions they had as scientists.
Not to mention, his parents personal fundings and assets, and even the labs they owned, everything, on his father's will, as if he'd knew this would happen, had long transferred everything to Ren's name.
Hence, at the age of nine, Ren became a legal multi-millionaire through inheriting his entire family's fortune.
Obviously, Ren had never been happy; he considered it as though, he was enjoying the success of his family after all.
If anything, he hated it.
However, he couldn't exactly throw their hard work away; hence, while hating himself, Ren had continued living with it.
Still, he continued trying.
In hopes he'll eventually escape this living prison called reality.
But no matter how much the Aristella heir continued, he could never escape.
Even attempts at desecrating his features had been made; however, if anything, he seemed to even be more handsome than he did.
Of course, with more than three years of bottling everything up, with an addition of seven years, it's only natural his mental health would have degraded beyond what was normal.
If trying to kill yourself through any means was normal, then nobody alive would be normal in the first place.
"...Father, mother, grandpa, grandma…"
In an empty room, with sleek wooden tiles, the walls painted in a cream colour.
The room was empty, with the only thing there being a table with some plants, incense, and frames of pictures.
Ren sat down on the ground in seiza style,
Young, he was, with dark hair framing his face, and on his left, the hair had been styled with red threads around them, wearing all black clothes as he looked towards the picture frame.
Even his nails were painted black.
He had been at it since morning, as early as 7AM, miserly there, sitting, his mind wandering off. Things like tears, he couldn't express anymore.
Joy, happiness—when was the last time he felt such?
The answer…? For more than five years now.
Even a genuine smile was hard for him with this state of being.
Still, he forced a smile onto his face, but it came out as a self-deprecating one, a vain smile, something he almost can never show anymore.
And since 7AM since he'd been here, it was now 9AM, and the sun had already rose above the horizon, filtering warm light into the room.
"...I had that dream again today…"
He continued.
"Every day, ever since you died… I've been seeing dreams of my death."
Obviously, this wasn't the first, second, or third time he'd sat like this before their images like this and spoke about these words.
But it didn't matter; he was already senile.
At this point, there was no trying to convince anyone or even himself that he was sane.
But, at the very least, this was the only way for him to retain his semblance of self.
"Today too… it felt real."
Then, his hands went towards his neck, as his fingers lightly trailed a semi-circle across his neck.
"The feeling of the cold, thin guillotine blade against my neck."
Saying that, his head then tilted towards his right side.
"I had that dream, surrounded in gallows, as they held me strapped to a guillotine device, and like that, I had my neck chopped off."
Saying "chopped off," Ren adjusted his neck back as his gaze fell to the ground as he continued along the lines of—
"The numb feeling of the blade slicing my neck in half is exhilarating—"
With slight mania in his eyes and a flushed expression, he had said that, and then slowly, as he realised what he had done, he held his mouth before quickly bolting out of the room.
From there, Ren sprinted towards the nearest toilet in his mansion, vomiting into the sink, almost sickly, and then, as he did, he wiped the trail of vomit off his lips as he then sat there, curling himself.