In a place with no name—
no land to claim—
Elise stood.
No sky.
No horizon.
Not even shadows.
Only a black sea, perfectly still,
its surface lifeless,
and beneath her feet—no bottom…
yet she did not sink.
She was standing because falling was no longer a concept.
Because she had fallen before—
and it had already ended.
---
She thought.
How selfish I am.
No—
rather…
how honest I finally am.
I don’t want to save anyone.
I don’t want to fix the world.
Expose evil.
Punish monsters.
I just want…
to not be crushed.
I want to live.
And that alone is crime enough.
---
She laughed inwardly.
A soundless laugh.
Everything I said to him?
A lie.
Every word that sounded brave?
Acting.
Every tear that fell?
A physiological malfunction.
An eye releasing fluid under pressure.
Nothing more.
I don’t cry because I’m in pain.
I cry because my body betrayed me.
Because the machine glitched for a moment.
---
I don’t hate him.
I don’t love him.
I don’t even despise him.
Adrian is merely…
a variable in an equation.
If my survival required stepping over him—
I would.
If it required walking past his corpse—
I would do that too.
And I wouldn’t look back.
---
People think contradiction is weakness.
They’re fools.
I am contradictory because I am free.
I fear—and advance.
I tremble—and strike.
I cry—and calculate profit.
I am not kind.
I am not cruel.
I am efficient.
---
This world adores masks.
And I adore them more.
Kindness is a mask.
Mercy is a mask.
Even madness is a mask.
As for the truth?
It’s far too ugly—
that’s why no one wants it.
And the truth is this:
I don’t have a heroic heart.
Nor a pure soul.
Nor a moral calling.
What I have is instinct.
The instinct to survive.
---
They told me:
Be good, and the world will be saved.
But the world was never good to me.
So why should I be?
---
In this black sea,
she saw her reflection.
No face.
No features.
Just an idea.
An idea named:
Elise.
A being who chose not to die for anything,
nor live for anyone,
who lies only when it’s useful,
and tells the truth only when it costs less.
---
And if I must be a monster
to sleep without fear…
So be it.
Monsters—
at least—
never apologize for their fangs.
---
She lifted her head into the darkness,
and the black sea remained still.
Because it resembled her.
Calm…
deep…
and free of guilt.
So-Rin sat alone,
the wall before her deaf to everything—
but she could no longer stay silent.
---
She remembered.
And remembering was never gentle.
She remembered her mother’s voice…
not when it screamed,
but when it decided.
“This is what’s best for you.”
“Don’t think too much.”
“Your sister is smarter about these things.”
Cold words,
wrapped in borrowed wisdom,
spoken like kindness—
driven in like a knife.
---
She remembered her father.
The way his eyes looked past her.
His silence—
a verdict.
He never hit her.
Never raised his voice.
It was worse than that.
He ignored her.
As if she were a failed idea
left to gather dust on a shelf.
---
Her younger sister…
Ah. Her sister.
Always the “success.”
The “beauty.”
“The real woman.”
She married first.
She was celebrated.
Her every step blessed.
And Soo-Rin?
“You should focus on studying.”
“It’s not your time yet.”
“You’re not suited for dreams like that.”
Her dreams…
were broken quietly.
Like someone snuffing out a candle
and saying, *We don’t need this.*
---
Even her university major
was never hers.
“This is more secure.”
“This suits you.”
“You don’t know what’s good for you.”
She knew.
But no one asked.
She studied what she hated.
Excelled at what repulsed her.
Became good at something
she had never loved.
And that—
that disgusted her the most.
---
Then came the children.
Her sister’s children.
Dropped at her apartment
like a free daycare.
“You’re free anyway.”
“You need to learn responsibility.”
“What are you even busy with?”
She raised them.
Cleaned.
Endured the noise.
Swallowed the insults.
While her sister laughed.
Mocked.
Sneered:
“Look at yourself…
If you’d married,
you wouldn’t be living like this.”
---
That was where she broke.
She didn’t scream.
Didn’t throw anything.
The tears—
they just fell.
She didn’t wipe them away.
Didn’t feel ashamed.
She let them fall
like a final confession.
---
She was disgusted.
Disgusted with their voices.
With their faces.
With the word *family*—
a word that had always meant a cage.
Disgusted with herself
for trying to please them.
Disgusted with the idea
that all of this was called “love.”
---
She spoke, her voice shattered—
but honest:
“They stole everything…
my choices,
my dreams,
even my exhaustion.
And left me with nothing
but this revulsion.”
---
She was crying,
but her eyes were no longer weak.
Deep within them,
something was forming.
Not forgiveness.
Not forgetting.
But a decision.
That this past—
would never touch her again.
Twenty-seven years.
They passed…
not as a life,
but as a long, hollow stretch of nothing
where nothing worth remembering ever happened.
No warmth.
No real achievement.
No meaning.
If God—or whatever mocking force rules this universe—decided to grant me a second chance in this world,
then it chose the wrong person.
I never asked for it.
And I don’t want it.
And Adrian?
They call him a monster.
But even monsters don’t deserve this sick, obsessive attachment to me.
So what does he want?
What is he chasing, clinging so desperately to something that never wanted to be touched in the first place?
Leave me alone.
That’s all I ask.
I want to be alone.
Isolated.
Invisible.
I want no one to think of me.
No one to speak my name.
To disappear—
without anyone noticing I’m gone.
What disgusts me the most…
is that someone *sees* me.
My sister’s gaze—
the look that reduces me to something incomplete,
a shadow,
a postponed failure.
If I could,
I would erase that gaze from existence.
Not because it hurts—
but because it assumes it has the right to define who I am.
And my mother…
How many times did I wish your voice would disappear one day—
not in screams,
but in absolute silence.
The kind of silence where nothing demands,
and nothing decides in my place ever again.
And you, Father…
Your silence was never neutrality.
It was a verdict.
Your neglect was never weakness.
It was a choice.
And I was the result.
If this world thinks I will forgive—
then it does not understand me.
If it thinks I will save anyone—
it is delusional.
I am not searching for salvation.
Not for justice.
Not for love.
I am searching for a space
where no hand reaches for me.
And if I must be cold,
cruel,
beyond sympathy—
So be it.
Because that…
is far kinder than being a doll
in a life I never chose.
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