"Stay back; that is a command." I pulled myself out of Henry's arms and walked toward the figure as if under a spell, thinking nonsense like,
'Are you the proof that I am not initially bad?'
'Do you know what I have been through? And if you knew, would you feel the same?'
'If you knew, would you be as helpless, scared, and fucking angry as I am?'
'Can you take over a part of this suffocating responsibility that constantly weighs on my shoulders?'
I felt the eyes of the other survivors as I took step after step, my counterpart doing the same.
I couldn't look away, not scared at all, as if the dreams in which I had been beaten or killed by the crystalline figure had never happened.
Maybe because I had misunderstood him, the counterpart that would only attack after I did—a harmless reflection bending to what was shown to it—maybe because I finally understood its nature, there was nothing to be afraid of.
