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“Forgive me,” I repeated. “But please, understand me. I can’t let you use this and lose your senses.”
“But you use it. Why can’t I?” she muttered irritably from the bed.
“I don’t have senses.”
“Then why do you need drugs?”
“I have to stop it.” I replied. “Rather than see you like this… I have to stop the world. I need to.”
“Only stop? Why don’t you destroy it?”
I glanced at her. Even though she wasn’t facing me, my gaze lingered. “You want me to destroy?”
“You’re strong, Remi.” she murmured, her tone fragile now. “You don’t need drugs, but I do. I don’t have an ‘off’ button like you.”
“You wish everything were that simple?”
“Yes. I… want to stop. To forget. I wish… I wasn’t a human.”
She sniffled, then burrowed completely under the blanket. When she broke down sobbing, I couldn’t say anything more. The louder her cries grew, the more my face contorted.
I wanted to get up, stroke her hair, and tell her that everything would be all right. That was what they always did in the books she loved, and I was good at imitation.
But I didn’t know if I was what she needed in that moment. I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t perfect.
It was all my fault.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t respond. Perhaps she fell asleep, and I also closed my eyes. Though my exhausted body needed sleep, my mind, a battlefield, resisted closing its shutters.
Was being human truly this painful? Or was it the rest of humanity that made it so?
If the world were emptied of everyone but us, would Mina finally be happy?
☾
“I need to find someone’s address. What should I do?”
In front of me was a tall blonde girl. She sat calmly with her legs crossed, painting her nails.
“Student?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s check the school records,” she said briefly.
Though I looked at her suspiciously, she remained indifferent.
“Thank you, Johanna.”
The priest’s daughter, Johanna, had traditional elegance. Due to her family’s obsession with the ‘angel in the house’, she had been raised flawlessly like a puppet for years. I had realized the first time I saw her at church: our personalities were nothing alike, but our families were chasing after the same absolute power. Both of us were lost, stuck in superficial roles. It seemed like until our nightmares ended, we had to cross paths. When my father began running telekinesis experiments on Johanna, we had grown even closer.
When we entered the registration office at Mina’s school, she reached for the keyboards. As she began to work, I sat down on one of the couches.
“Are you sure we won’t get caught?”
“And why do you care? Sebastian will save you.”
