"You see your life, Eren… you just stand there without even reacting…" Kyte let the words slip, her exhaustion striking through me like a whip of blood.
"It's like I'm dating a woman instead of a man… you're pathetic… I feel sick," she said, almost vomiting.
I froze on the threshold, my fingers clenched around a bouquet I had bought only minutes earlier with a near-stupid devotion.
The petals crumpled under my palm, a vegetal agony echoing the widening fracture in my own chest.
Before me, the room seemed to have transformed into a warped memory, a dreamlike vision I couldn't fully escape. The woman I loved was in another man's arms with a ease that felt like a slow poison…
I remembered the ridiculous hope that had filled me as I climbed the stairs, the certainty that these flowers would reignite the flame of our love. That gesture, meant to be sincere, was now only proof of my own naivety, a worthless shard amid a lie.
"You're just going to stand there… friend?" the man asked, his voice thick, his gaze shining with quiet malice.
"If that's the case, get lost, kid, we're busy." Yes, I was just a kid in his eyes… He was handsome and looked rich by the way he was dressed.
His arm tightened around Kyte's waist with brutal authority, a claim of ownership that excluded me completely… Should I throw myself at him? But why bother? I'd only look more pathetic.
The man seemed to savor my silence, his self-satisfied smile gleaming with the contentment of someone who has already won without a fight.
I remained unable to respond, my body strangely distant, as if I were nothing more than a spectator to my own collapse…
"Kyte… why are you doing this to me… after everything we've been through…" My voice escaped, strangled, as if forcing its way through a throat knotted by disbelief.
I immediately lowered my eyes, the image of their skin so close becoming an unbearable burn I could no longer face.
A heavy pain began its slow climb from my diaphragm, threatening to suffocate me if I didn't look away. It was a condemned man's question, I felt it, but it came out anyway, the last gasp of a man refusing the obvious.
Should I just run away…? Yes, that was probably the best solution in that moment… but I couldn't.
Then she sprang from the couch, her hand crashing violently against my left cheek. The sharp, definitive sound tore through the heavy atmosphere of the room, leaving an echo that buzzed painfully in my ears.
"Do you really need me to explain it to you?" she spat, her face twisted in a hatred I had never known. My head jerked back, my skin instantly heating under the impact, but it was the coldness of her gaze that truly paralyzed me.
"Did you really have to ask, you pathetic fool?" Pathetic fool… yes… I was, but stop insulting me and give me a reason… give me a reason or my heart will shatter into a thousand pieces.
She looked at me with disdain. "I thought with your father's fortune, we'd be safe, but look at you…" By the way she spoke… she seemed to have held her words in for far too long.
She continued, "Your old man is dead, and he gave everything to someone else. You're useless now."
Since when had she become so cruel… And why hadn't I noticed… Was I too absorbed in my studies? I didn't know.
"Leave him alone, Kyte, he doesn't even understand what's happening to him… just look at his face," the man added, sinking deeper into the couch where we had spent our evenings curled up together.
"Look at him, he's going to water his flowers with his tears," he said, a small smile on his lips.
He watched the scene with undisguised pleasure, like a spectator before a well-staged tragedy. His gaze shifted from my flushed face to my companion's with an almost clinical curiosity, savoring his triumph.
At that precise moment, I realized with icy horror that I was nothing more than a passing distraction in their lives, yet I tried to cling to the possibility of a mistake.
"But you swore money was just a detail, Kyte…" I said in a broken voice… feeling a tear slide down my nearly swollen cheek.
"We had plans, we were supposed to leave, do you remember what you told me that night?" I said, my face a mask of death.
If anyone else had seen me, they would have said I was going mad… yes, I was.
Kyte was the only person left to me in this world… the only one giving me the strength not to throw myself off a bridge.
I wanted to believe that a moment of our life had been real, that everything wasn't a cold calculation from the start.
"Plans change when the bank account is empty, Eren…" she replied, turning her eyes away with deep annoyance… How could she have changed so quickly… Was I too foolish not to have noticed sooner? Maybe.
I still remember the times she had tried to behave decently to please my mother… but this was not my Kyte… no, I couldn't believe it.
I glanced at the man sitting on the couch. "What did you do to her… what…" I shouted, rushing toward him, but with a slight kick from his foot, I nearly flew into the hallway.
He stood up. "I've never seen such a pathetic loser…" He tried to come toward me… probably to finish me off.
But Kyte intervened. "Stop…" She approached me. "Go away… it's over between us, Eren."
What… No… This couldn't be true.
"No, Kyte… please, I can forget all this, I'll act as if you never did anything and I'll work twice as hard, I promise you won't lack for anything… But don't leave me, I'll die without you… you know that… you know." The urgency in my words matched my despair, a litany of empty promises trying to fill a chasm.
I promised her my sleep, my health, my time, sacrificing what remained of my life for an illusion. But the more I spoke, the more I saw the disgusted pity grow in her dark eyes.
"You bore me with your whining, you're as soft as your father predicted," she said.
Then she moved close to my tear-streaked face… "You're already tired, Eren… it would be better if you just disappeared," she finally said.
Yes, she was right… Why struggle, I had already lost everything once, I was foolish to think it could last…
"Didn't you hear? She doesn't want you anymore, get out before I throw you out the window." His low voice carried the threat of imminent physical violence.
And if I got beaten… That would be a better way to die, right… Here, in this room where we had shared moments full of love.
"No, wait," Kyte intervened as the man moved to actually throw me out the window.
"If he wants to stay so badly, let him watch."
She then wrapped her arms around him and kissed him with a predatory fury that seemed to devour me from a safe distance. Her eyes stayed wide open, fixed on mine as she gave herself, probing my reaction for power.
I stood frozen for a few seconds, letting horror saturate my senses, then slowly pivoted on my heels, movements mechanical.
"Alright, you've won… I'll leave…" I said, the bouquet still in my hands.
My body took over my failing mind, guiding me toward the exit with a stiffness like a corpse whose heart had stopped. I crossed the threshold, closing the door behind me with terrifying gentleness, as if not wanting to disturb their pleasure.
But the wood was not enough to muffle the first moans that rose, chasing me like hideous demons.
I lingered against the door for an endless moment, eyes fixed on the tile patterns that seemed to dance under my distress.
A nervous, frighteningly exhausted smile stretched across my lips as I realized the absurdity of my entire existence up to this moment. I pressed my hands against my ears, but the tears forced their way out, flooding my face without my needing to act.
Eventually, I descended the stairs and found myself in the street, struck by the harsh light of a city that kept breathing. "Hey, watch where you're going!" a driver shouted as I crossed without seeing, my mind trapped in the apartment. Passersby brushed past me, engines roared, and this normality insulted me with a violence I could never have imagined. How could the world keep turning when every atom of my being had just been reduced to ashes?
I slipped into a dark alley, seeking shadow like a wounded animal wanting to die away from prying, mocking eyes.
I collapsed against a cold brick wall, my fingers clawing at the stone while the crushed bouquet lay between my legs. "Haaaaaaanhh… why me? why always me… Hhh… snf… hic…" I asked the void, my face twisted by a pain that could no longer find words. Every memory of loss surfaced, a black tide of failures and griefs converging to suffocate me.
My sobs eventually subsided, leaving a hollow lethargy, and I raised my eyes to the gray sky. At that precise moment, an impossible light tore through the darkness of the alley, a translucent interface floating before my incredulous eyes.
The message glowed with a cold, precise blue, offering an escape I didn't dare imagine in my deepest delusions.
[You have accumulated too many misfortune points in your life… for this, a single wish is granted.]
I stared at the letters, my mind too broken to question the reality of this apparition that defied all laws.
"Misfortune… hmm even my hallucinations know I'm miserable," I said, a bitter laugh shaking my emaciated chest.
In this blend of extreme exhaustion and bitterness, I realized I no longer wanted anything to do with humanity.
A wish, huh?
If I were to make one, it would be to become someone else… Yes, I don't wish for my mother, nor my sister… nor Kyte whom I just lost.
I simply want nothing more to do with this world… I want to be reborn… I no longer want to be the Eren everyone knows.
I don't want to feel this pain anymore… I never want to cry for someone again.
"I want to be a demon," I finally said.