In a dark room where the windows were sealed tightly and the air was suffocating, darkness enveloped the entire space. The gloom reigned supreme, except for the glimmer of golden eyes shining in the dark corners. Silence dominated the atmosphere, broken only by the slow drip of water falling from a decaying ceiling, amplifying the melancholy of the place.
In the midst of this darkness, a solitary figure sat on an old wooden chair. His features were barely visible, but shock was evident on his face. His eyes were wide, and his body was stiff as if the truth he had uncovered had drained him of all strength. Suddenly, he instinctively sprang up from his seat and rushed towards the nearby bathroom. He barely made it there when he leaned heavily over the sink and began to vomit. His body mirrored the turmoil within; feelings of disgust, fear, and anger flowed out relentlessly.
After moments of retching, he collapsed onto the cold bathroom floor, his exhausted body trembling slightly. He whispered in a terrified voice, barely audible, as if trying to convince himself that it was all a nightmare:
"How can... how can everything... be just a fiction?"
The protagonist sat in the frigid bathroom after enduring an unbearable shock, trying to piece together his shattered thoughts. The droplets of water continued to fall slowly, but they felt distant amid the noise of his fragmented mind. Each thought that circled in his head echoed the same terrifying question: How could his life be nothing more than words on a page? How could his actions and decisions, even his feelings... be mere figments of someone else's imagination?
He recalled the moments when he began to doubt his reality. The signs were clear, but they had passed him by unnoticed: the recurring events, the people who seemed to act according to a predetermined script. But he had dismissed those thoughts then, considering them mere hallucinations. Yet tonight, the truth was starkly evident: his entire existence was just a chapter in a book, and he was merely a pawn of a third-rate villain, destined for failure and betrayal by everyone, even by the woman he loved who had betrayed him with his master.
Tears streamed down his face, but they were not just tears of sorrow and pain; they were tears of betrayal for everything he had lived for. "Who am I?" he asked himself, "and what is the purpose of my life?" The decisive moment came after moments of silence. He no longer wanted to be a tool used to elevate others. If his end was written in advance, he would choose how and when it would conclude.
With a gaze full of determination, he struggled to stand, dragging his weary body out of the bathroom. He approached his bag and pulled out an old rope. He tied the rope to the ceiling and fashioned a simple noose. Standing on a small chair, he placed the noose around his neck. He took a moment of silence, inhaled deeply, and then kicked the chair away with his foot.
In the first moments, he felt a sudden shock as the noose tightened around his neck. His body convulsed violently, and his feet flailed in the air, desperately searching for ground that no longer existed. The air escaped him, and all he felt was the pain coursing through his throat and the sound of strangulation in his ears.
His vision began to fade gradually, and the world around him grew darker. His body fought for a while, but strength was giving way bit by bit. His hands futilely tried to reach for the rope, but to no avail. He knew this was the end he had chosen for himself, but even in that moment, he felt no peace.
The pain gradually lessened, and the darkness seeped deeper until all sounds and pains disappeared, as if the entire world had faded away.
But suddenly, the rope snapped, and he fell to the ground, unconscious. The darkness that had enveloped the place grew more terrifying, and only the sound of dripping water and his quiet breathing remained. An hour passed before he began to open his golden eyes, which appeared like tiny suns amidst the gloom.
He looked around, questioning if this was hell. But the place felt even more desolate and mysterious than anything he had imagined. When he noticed the rope still wrapped around his neck, he murmured softly:
"It seems I even failed at ending my own life."
As he felt the pain around his neck from the noose, he tried to stand, but his exhausted body lacked even an ounce of strength, so he fell to the ground again. He muttered between his ragged breaths:
"Is this my fate? To remain weak forever?"
He tried to rise once more, and with great difficulty, he managed to stand. He began to stagger toward his old chair, opened a drawer, and pulled out a bottle of wine. He quickly opened it and began to drink greedily. Though he was not of legal age yet, he didn't care. He only wanted to forget his pain.
He drank half the bottle in one gulp and then whispered with a voice filled with hatred:
"My entire life has been pathetic... even the one person I thought mattered betrayed me. My family abandoned me, and even the stars themselves left me alone." Those stars he believed were watching over him, he thought they would not abandon him, that they would grant him their blessing. But they, like everyone else, had betrayed him.
His hands began to tremble as his fingers tightened around the neck of the wine bottle until it nearly shattered under his grip. His golden eyes ignited with a dark gleam. His breathing quickened, every inhale deepening the pain in his chest. Before he realized it, he hurled the bottle to the ground with all his might; the glass shattered just as every hope he once held had been shattered.
He stood fiercely and began to destroy everything around him, like his life that had been shattered, screaming in rage:
"Why?! Don't I deserve happiness? Don't I have the right to live?!"
He fell to his knees in the center of the room, weeping bitterly. He cried and cried until his tears ran dry, then raised his head, his red eyes filled with wrath.
"If my life is just a story written by an author, then I will destroy it. I will rewrite the narrative myself. I will break this predetermined fate. I will make everyone who betrayed me regret it... whether it's my family, that whore, or that foolish noble... even the stars themselves will regret it."