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I stood up from the bench and faced one of the windows on the cabin, looking outside at the blinking stars and unraveling threads. As always, I continued watching like I was looking at a TV screen, or perhaps a stage. There was another analogy to make, but it was too obvious to mention. I thought back to the other Oldest Dream, to the one who was gently held as he left this eternity.
Maybe this is presumptuous of me, but I think I can finally understand what Secretive Plotter was feeling at the time.
I should be happy, and I am happy--happy and relieved, that at least another version of myself could have been saved one last time and didn't need to be saved again. Unlike me, who was always being saved and was still helpless, up until the end.
As I remembered that child, I also thought back to myself at that age. The 'myself' whose life I remembered having experienced. Back then, there was no one out there for me. There was no one to hold me, no one to save me, no one to protect me.
No one to panic over me,
as a monster tried to take my life.
But that Oldest Dream did, and alongside the feeling that something within me could finally be put to rest was an undeniable sense of jealousy.
Especially once I realized what would have to happen for the universe to continue existing.
I surveyed the cabin as if I was looking for anything new, a new detail to spot, a lost item having been left,
Another person who sat, or was going to sit as they entered the train.
Of course, I wasn't just surveying, I was hoping. Like an idiot.
Like a fool.
'Really, why does the hope of hearing someone call me that warm my heart?'
And of course, there was no one and nothing but myself.
Questions were flooding my head--some I know the answer to, some new even to me--like they were creeping into my peripheral through flying letters. Perhaps they were.
'How was he able to escape this?'
But not me.
'How was he found by such people?'
But not me.
'How was he able to reach that happy ending, alongside everyone?'
But not me.
'Where were they, when I was at that place?'
'Why were they not real for me, when I also dreamed that they were?'
Eventually, familiar words struck me, and I let out a bitter laugh as I said them to a void, amused that such words could finally be used by me to summarize my own feelings.
"Why couldn't it have been me?"
[Why is it not me, but you??]
I continued looking at the stars, and wondered if my other half and my other self were now watching the same sky with me. If they had someone sitting beside them as they did.
[K im Do k ja sh ould sle ep]
I close my eyes, still standing, and dreamed of a view I wished I could see again once I opened them.