There is a strange thing about a portrait.
No matter how many years pass, the person inside it never ages, never leaves, and never once looks away.
People find comfort in that, they like staring at it.
They call it remembrance, and they hang it where they can see it every morning.
But the hard truth is…
A portrait does not remember you back.
And the longer one stares at it, the harder it becomes to tell whether it is a comfort, or simply a wound that has been framed and put on a wall.
I was the same.
Never in either of my lives have I once been able to guess just how tragic one's single fate could be.
It was cruel.
Even to me, the one who wrote it.
Even to me, her creator.
And that was the strangest part of it.
I built her, I gave her a name, a sword, and an ending.
I decided how long she would live and I decided what she would be remembered for.
And still, when I saw her standing there, I felt it in my chest like something shattering.
