Not just a number.

It means twenty years spent in a single hell.

Burned, frozen, starved, beaten, silenced, shattered—again and again.

Every twenty years, an “order to move on” is issued.

To another hell.

Someone once said, “At least the scenery changes.”

But hell is still hell, no matter where you go.

Your voice can’t reach anyone.

Your thoughts begin to stall.

Even your very existence starts to fade.

> “If I could just die… how easy that would be.”

But you can’t.

This is a place where death never comes.

---

Then one day, as I stepped onto another scorched piece of hell,

I realized something had changed inside me.

---

> “Bullying? Being ignored? Having my stuff destroyed? Getting hit?”

I trace the memories of my former life.

> “…What did any of that even mean?”

The agony of walking barefoot through a thousand years of needles.

The silence where demons stripped me of my name and voice.

The emptiness of floating in nothing, forgetting who I was.

Nothing compares to this.

> “What… what the hell have I done…?”

In life, I chose to die.

That moment was when I knocked on the gates of hell with my own hands.

And now, only now, do I feel regret.

That brief, desperate hope—

That maybe I could escape by dying.

> “But… it’s too late now. Once you’re here, there’s no going back.”

---

And so, I climb the stairs of hell once more.

Still holding on to the hope that maybe, just maybe, forgiveness lies ahead.

Or even if I already know—it doesn’t.

Still, I walk.