I had no one left. School would only make things worse; even though no one wanted to be with me, I didn't want to go to the dormitory—but I had no choice. I was completely alone now. No one was going to stand up for me. I had to stand on my own feet. Yet while doing that, I refused to cast everything that had happened aside as if it were meaningless and simply forget it.
Even if remembering everything slowly drove me out of my mind, I wanted to know the truth. When my brother Darian said that everything was for me, was he lying? And if he wasn't, what was the thing that made him do it? Who shot him? If he had committed suicide, then where were the bodies of the police officer and the social services worker? How had an arm been torn off? None of it had answers.
Was Officer Josh a victim of murder, or was it really just a heart attack? But could a heart attack make someone's eyes roll back and foam form at their mouth? What kind of thing could cause that? My head was overflowing with questions, yet I couldn't find a single answer to hold onto.
Because at the end of the day, I was human. Even thinking about the reality of having witnessed my family's death was enough to make me bite my nails raw. My hands trembled, my breathing grew uneven. My eyes filled with tears. All the beautiful moments I had spent with my family passed before my eyes, as if my mind deliberately wanted to torture me. Their smiles, the ordinary days, the moments when nothing felt missing… all of it now felt like an unreachable dream.
As tears streamed down my cheeks, I felt like I was only just beginning to realize everything, and that realization shattered me completely. The truth stabbed into my heart like a dagger. In that moment, I couldn't think of a single thing. There was no tomorrow, no future—only the growing emptiness inside me.
As that emptiness slowly swallowed me whole, midnight had long since passed. My mind was still full, but my body could no longer endure it. My thoughts tangled together, the sounds faded away, the images blurred. And eventually, without even realizing it, I fell asleep.