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When one of the masks reached my feet, I stepped on it. I climbed the steps made of black colored masks, and my witch-self gazed at me in astonishment.

I no longer fear you, I no longer hate you. You are me, you tried so hard for me. You are a part of me. I’ll embrace you for your efforts. I won’t allow you to despise yourself. I’ll embrace everything again.

I finally reached the end of the masks, a tiny smile on my lips. The witch on the throne looked at me in dread, and I hugged her with all my strength. There were two heads under the hat now, so wide it protected us like an umbrella.

“Thank you. Thank you for protecting me.”

Witch Mina tried to push me away, but I didn’t let go. She squeezed my flesh, slapped me, but I still didn’t pull my arms away. At last, her wand slipped from her fingers. She threw her arms around me and began to sob uncontrollably, her body shaking against mine. I pulled the trembling witch tight to my chest and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead.

I’ll hold on to everything about myself. I cannot let go of them, knowing how fragile they are, I cannot abandon them again. They tried so hard. They tried until they were sure they were evil and unloved. But no. They have been abandoned enough, they have suffered enough, now I just need to hold on to them tightly. Even though I continue to fear making mistakes, I’ll keep walking, knowing there are my old selves support me and are proud of me.

When I woke, I sat up. The blue spilled across the carpet. I curled into myself. The war is over. I would no longer feel ashamed to bring daffodils to Angelica’s grave.

I had finally faced myself, the outside world, my inner world. My real freedom. I could enjoy sweet dreams even without Raymond now.

I was breathing again, my room no longer felt like a prison cell.

When I met Prisne and started working at the 12-Hour Bureau, Little Mina began to accompany me more often. Whenever she spoke to people, she would hide behind me in fear, placing her tiny hands on my leg and listening to people with a shy demeanor. When the conversation ended, her big brown eyes would grow with anticipation, and she would ask hopefully.

“Do you think they’re ashamed of us?”

I would stroke her hair and say in a reassuring voice, “Never. I’ll never let them be ashamed of you.”

I continued to be helpful to others until Little Mina was set free. I kept pleasing them, but this time I was no longer afraid of embarrassing them. I stopped going crazy when I saw things were beyond my control. I learned the limits of my power and made peace with myself—with Little Mina.

There was only left one thing, one person, that I failed to make peace with.

“What you’ve developed with him was codependency.”

The psychotherapist had said this, and my world had been enlightened since. We were very young, had tried many things for the first time, and we were inexperienced in love. After all, we were both humans. Not a guardian robot, not a theater actress. Raymond wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t far away.

So imperfect, so close.

We could make mistakes. We had the right to make mistakes. If I was able to talk to him, perhaps Raymond could’ve tried to love me with appreciation, not with blind devotion. This thought relieved me greatly, but a new feeling arose within me.

Regret.

Everything could have been better, our relationship could have been healthier. If only I had the mindset I had now at that age. After ending most of the battles inside me, I imagined facing him. What would happen?

So regretful.

But… everything was over now. I had to get used to not sleeping with him. I had to understand there was no body to hold me whenever I had a nightmare. Still, the journey ahead was daunting. Escaping the labyrinth was hard enough; facing the outside world was a reckoning all its own.

Contrary to what Raymond said, the fact that he never contacted me sped up this process. I stopped getting carried away with foolish fantasies. Over time, he became a painful memory for me. He had given me beautiful memories, but it was the wrong time, and unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it.

I would have corrected my mistakes and asked him for forgiveness, maybe. But I had no idea what he was up to; Raymond never gave the media anything to work with. Even though I was a journalist now, it was impossible to find out anything about him.

So, you forgot me.

Although the mature part of me was relieved by this thought, the teenager in me was angry deep down. It shouldn’t have happened; it was the result of my own decisions, but fury still visited me.

You swore it would be forever, whispered that you belonged to me, but you forgot me and probably fell in love with someone else. Liar.

I spied him at high-society galas, slipping into the masked ones just to capture his shadow from a distance. Yet every time I saw him, I remembered how far I was from his world. How suffocating that world was… Still, if he was by my side, I felt like I could suffocate even more. I wouldn’t suppress my feelings this time; I would tell him everything that crossed my mind. I would continue this until the suffocation finally eased. In those waters, Raymond and I would reach the shore together. We would be honest with each other, as we had been in the old days.

We would walk together on that ghostly road.

But I had no right to do so. I began to understand why Raymond hadn’t come after me. Not yet. It wasn’t because he loved me.