Knowledge was a poison. Not a quick poison that paralyzes the heart, but a slow one, seeping into the blood and turning every beat into a dull throb of pain. Standing in the storm-lashed hallway of my own history, the revelation of the last level brought me no clarity or peace. It brought me overwhelming paralysis.
The guilt over Yuki had been like a knife wound: sharp, deep, and clearly localized. I could point to it, isolate it, and finally, by accepting it, cauterize it. This was different. This was cancer. An ailment not in a single act, but in the very essence of my relationships, in the way my love and my fear and my parents' love and fear had intertwined into a Gordian knot of pain. Knowing we were all responsible didn't divide the blame; it multiplied it. Now I carried not only the weight of my own teenage anger, but also the weight of my mother's fear and my father's anxiety, which I now understood so intimately.
The paper vortices continued their chaotic dance, ignoring me. They were monuments to futility, reminders that words, once spoken, cannot be unsaid. The cuts they inflicted no longer felt like attacks, but like a condition of the weather, as inevitable as the oily rain hitting the windows.
What was I supposed to do? Navigate the storm? How? Walk these halls until I found an exit by sheer chance? The goal of the first level had been clear: accept guilt. What was the goal here? Accept that everything was irredeemably broken? That love could be as great a source of pain as hate? The idea was so exhausting it stole my breath.
I moved, not by plan, but by a basic instinct not to stay still, not to let the mold of despair grow over me. I decided to try to apply logic, a last pathetic homage to the man I used to be, the one who believed problems could be solved. I walked down a long corridor, trying to find a pattern. The wind seemed to come in gusts. Perhaps if I moved between them...
It was a stupid thought. Halfway down the hall, a gust of unusual violence howled from a side corridor. It lifted me off the ground and slammed me against the metal locker wall. The impact resonated in my skull, and my back exploded in pain. Before I could recover, one of the paper tornadoes swooped down on me. It wasn't an attack, it was an absorption. I found myself engulfed in a whirlwind of paper, each sheet a tiny knife. I felt hundreds of small cuts on my face, my hands, my arms, any exposed skin. I screamed, more from shock and humiliation than from pain. The vortex dissipated as quickly as it came, leaving me battered and bleeding on the floor, while the sheets of paper rejoined the chaotic dance of the hallway once more.
I stayed there, my cheek pressed to the cold, damp terrazzo. Tears mingled with the blood from my small cuts. The futility was crushing. I got up, trembling with pain and impotent rage.
The next attempt was brute force. If logic didn't work, maybe pure, stupid endurance would. I lowered my head and started walking, directly against the wind. I didn't try to dodge anything. I let the papers cut me, the wind hit me. I endured the slamming lockers that almost broke my eardrums. I walked and walked, passing through identical hallways, going up and down stairs that always seemed to lead to the same floor. The building felt infinite, a labyrinth designed by a sadistic god, and I was the rat condemned to run until exhaustion. The physical pain became white noise, but the emotional exhaustion was what was truly killing me. Every step was a reminder that I was getting nowhere.
Finally, my legs gave out. I collapsed in the middle of a hallway, gasping, my body aching and my spirit shattered. There was no way out.
I saw a door ajar. A classroom. "Advanced Biology." I dragged myself towards it, pushed the door open, and slipped inside, closing it behind me. The sound of the storm instantly softened, replaced by a heavy, dusty silence. The chaos outside was torture, but the silence inside was infinitely worse.
In the stillness of that dark classroom, there were no distractions. No wind to fight, no papers to dodge. Just me and the echo of three voices screaming in my head. The memory of the office replayed in an endless loop. I saw my mother's wounded gaze. I felt my father's frustrated tension. I heard the poison in my own voice. Over and over.
Here, in the silence, true depression began to take root.
There's no way out. The thought was simple, clear, and absolute. There's no way out. Just more pain. One level after another. One mistake after another. The park was my childhood. The school, my adolescence. What's next? University, with its apathy and superficial friendships? My adult life, a procession of meaningless jobs and failed relationships? This place was forcing me to take inventory of my soul, and I discovered that the shelves were full of debts and regrets. My life wasn't a story. It was a collection of failures.
And the reappearance... the central mechanism of this hell. It wasn't a second chance. It was the denial of the only mercy life offers: the end. I was condemned to feel this pain, to relive these failures, to die and be returned to the beginning of each torture, forever. Eternity was no longer an abstract concept. It was a storm-lashed high school hallway.
And then, for the first time, the thought changed. It wasn't a stratagem. It wasn't a way to try to restart the level. It was a wish. A genuine, deep longing that arose from the depths of my exhausted being.
I want to die.
Not the death of this place, that temporary dissolution before the violent pull of reappearance. I wanted the end. The real one. The void. The nothingness I had tasted for an instant between my death in the park and my return. That nothingness had been the only peace, the only real silence I had known since all this began.
I got up and walked through the dark classroom. My fingers brushed the dusty desks, the cell models, and the plastic skeletons. My mind raced, feverish. How? How do you achieve a real end in a place where death is a revolving door?
What if I'm in a coma in a hospital? And this is all a fever dream? If so, how do I wake up? Or how do I tell my brain to give up?
What if this is hell? A personalized hell. If so, there's no escape.
But what if the rules can be broken? The system is designed for me to play, fail, and repeat. It punishes me for my past mistakes. It forces me to face the truth. What would happen if I made a mistake that wasn't in the script? An act that wasn't a reaction to the level, but a rebellion against the game itself. An act of self-annihilation.
My eyes fell on the large classroom windows. The oily rain hammered them, the wind made them shake in their frames. We were on the second floor. I remembered. I knew. A fall from the second floor. It probably wouldn't be fatal in the real world. But here... here nothing was real. The laws of physics were suggestions. But what if intent was everything? If my intent wasn't to restart, but to end... would the system understand? Or would it grant my wish simply for doing something so drastically outside the intended path?
A strange calm came over me. The calm of final decision. The panic had disappeared. Despair had transformed into a quiet resolve. I was no longer fighting. The fight was over.
I approached the window. The wind howled on the other side, as if it knew what I was about to do, as if it challenged me. I put my hands on the metal latch. It was icy and stiff from disuse. I pushed with all my weight. For a moment it didn't budge. I grunted, with a surge of strength born of finality. With a protesting metallic screech, the latch gave way.
The wind blew the window open, with explosive force. The storm air burst into the classroom, throwing papers, books, and dust into a chaotic whirlwind. The roar was deafening. It was the sound of chaos calling me home.
I didn't hesitate. I climbed onto the window frame, my body trembling from the whipping wind. I looked down. The concrete courtyard was an impossible distance away, swirling in the gloom. It looked like a gray, hard ocean.
I didn't think of my parents. I didn't think of Yuki. I thought of nothing but the silence. Of the promise of peace in the void. It was the only thing I wanted. The only prize worth playing for.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, though I didn't know to whom. Perhaps to myself. For not being stronger. For not being able to bear it.
I closed my eyes, felt the oily spray on my face, and leaned forward.
For one glorious instant, I flew. The roar of the wind was all that existed. There was no guilt, no pain, no memories. Just the sensation of falling. The sensation of, finally, letting go.
Freedom.
And then, nothingness claimed me before the ground did.