Monika snapped her eyes open.

She saw the foggy sky clouded, clouded unlike her mind.

Although they shared the same soul, the two consciousnesses had to tread a single path thinner than their sanity.

That had hindered their reason and logic.

How hard would it be to think if you had two streams of thought running inside your mind?

Whereas one tells us to go right, the other goes left.

Whereas one mourns in lament, the other cheers in joy.

All the while the two contradicting themselves are the exact same people with equal sets of memories!

The only difference is the chronology.

Monika watched the movie A first.

Monica watched the movie B first.

Monika cannot judge movie B without bias from movie A, and similarly, Monica cannot judge movie A without prejudice.

Yet we had to sit and watch movie C together and have the same opinion!

The pain excruciating beyond any is when you cannot come to an agreement with yourself.

So, one had to compromise.

Between Monica, who had given up on her life, succumbing to hedonistic needs and living from day to day, sucking cocks on drugs and destroying her life, and Monika, who was also living day to day to destroy but to destroy everything, not just the lives, but the very world itself, at any cost—

Monica had given up on her life.

Monika had given up on everything but her life.

So, the one who took over was Monika.

Monika did many things in her first life as the Warbringer. She fought in the first war, head-to-head and toe-to-toe, despite being a woman, and rallied up a group of other lunatics to prolong the war.

She didn’t care about the sides. She wanted everything dead.

Yet she lost.

The second life also went awry. She gave up on her existence altogether.

In the third life, the two consciousnesses, Monika the wargirl and Monica the fuckgirl, had to inhabit the same body.

At first, it was tortuous. Most would give up on their lives within the first day.

At times, Monica would prevail over and take hold of the body.

At others, Monika.

It took them years to reach perfect symbiosis—thinking without overlapping and moving without obstructing each other.

Monika was at the command while Monica supported her.

We were one and acted as one.

A perfect fifty-to-fifty balance.

Yet, the fourth life broke it all all over again.

Her emotional instability caused the balance to break.

Monika was never psychopathic. It was quite the opposite. She felt emotions better than others did. She felt for others more than others did.

She not only had empathy but also sympathy—and compassion.

Why? She didn’t know. Since her birth, she could discern whether someone was lying or how they were feeling.

It was absurd, as if she had a superpower.

But what was more absurd was that while she understood others perfectly, she couldn’t understand herself, ever. She loved everyone except herself.

No, there was perhaps one more being she couldn’t stand.

Demon Lord of Destruction.

The one who brought the emotional instability.

She lived a shitty life, the second life shittier than the first, and the third even more shittier than the first two combined. Not many prospects for the fourth.

She was sure of it. All the misery—

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

All was due to this Demon Lord.

All the answers she was looking for would be with him.

This superpower to feel others so well and the consciousness split… They were his doing! She was but a puppet in his hand!

And now, in the fourth life—

She felt something bizarre…

“Monika…”

Familiarity with that bastard.

She could make out his appearance in her mind.

Blonde hair… serpentine eyes… looking neither like a man nor a woman… yet undoubtedly a man.

Just who was he?

How were they related?

Who was she to him? What was he to her?

“Monika!”

Monika was curious.

He is the first person I have truly only hated.

If I like destroying the things that I love…

What will I do to someone I hate entirely?

“Monika!”

“Shut the fuck up.” I try to say.

“Shav da fav af.”

“What the fuck?” I try to say.

“Whah a fav?”

Why do I sound like the time I overdosed and was fucked at the bar counter? Shit, this brings back memories. Though those were pleasant memories, and what I’m experiencing right now is anything but pleasant.

My hands are black and bloodied. Not only that, my nerves are drying and dying out.

Hah, I’m totally fucked. Michael Jackson took years to whiten himself, and all it took me was a blackout to blacken myself. Yet no real people look this black. My skin is blacker than even charcoal. It's also burning more lividly than charcoal. Though I bet it looks badass. Black skin, black hair, black blood, and the only thing left is having black eyes. I currently have all my teeth out, and my mouth is filled with black blood, so white teeth aren't a problem.

How long has it been? I’ve spent close to a day in that dream of mine. How traumatizing to re-experience it. Except I’m too used to it. Instead of reporting him to the police, I embraced his love and even got pregnant at one point in time. He was perhaps also traumatized, so traumatized he traumatized a random woman that got him to jail.

She had to work. She had to look after her blind, hysterical mother and an unborn baby in her stomach, only for the baby to die at birth. Can you imagine the pain the girl went through? I can. I was that girl. But it was all my fault.

The choice not to act is also a choice. I was scared of them, but I was more scared of losing them.

I hated my mother, but I loved her. I hated my father, but I loved him. I hated the baby, but I loved her.

Since I understood them, I could feel their pain. Circumstances often shape our lives. There is no inherently evil or good. Every human comes in thirty-three shades of gray. Or fifty? Who knows.

The system broke him. He was exploited and looked down upon for being an ex-drug addict. He fought so much and won. He even got to have a family, and yet…

His wife got ill and deranged soon enough. He broke again.

I endured. I valued him more than I valued my body. It happened once, twice, thrice—an unending nightmare. I endured. I endured.

Until I slowly started losing my values.

So, now, I am entirely exempt from any such shackles.

At one point, I hated myself more than anything—

That nameless baby of mine is better dead. Being born into the world would only bring him suffering with such a mother as myself. My father wouldn’t sit in jail if I didn’t run that night. My mother wouldn’t have taken her life if I didn’t tell her the truth.

How funny.

One side of me viewed life as the reinforcement of the idea that this world is hell, a worthless cesspool of death with no meaning, just there to be destroyed, desiring to exact vengeance upon the system to leave not a trace of the old world order behind.

The other me claimed it is so easy to give up and submit to hatred, believing that the key is to fight through troubles and protect what you value so that the light can shine again, not destroy.

They both failed miserably.

Is it really worth it to suffer in the hopes of a better day, even when it all seems lost? Is the duality of our condition a tragedy worth persevering through, or is it just better to give up?

Who knows. Who cares. One thing I know for sure is that things will spiral out of control if we’ve already left the labyrinth. Thankfully, I’ve fully regained my reason. Now, I have to clean up after the mess I’ve caused and the risks I’ve taken. Stupid Monika.

“Do you feel good?” the vampire asks.

Do I look good to you, you senseless bastard? The pain is so ungiving that even the effects of the relic don’t cloud my mind. I’m so fucked that I don’t even want to fuck with him anymore.

I tilt my head up and left and right. The chromols upside brighten me. We’re still in the B sectors. Good. I glance downward and see rotten land with small and gargantuan skeletons strolling around.

I am a really terrible mother. Only six of my kids remain.

Oh, there is no more land. Except there is a deep chasm.

We slowly start flying downward.

Let’s connect to the radio.

‘...Including this passage, there are two in total. There is a grand canyon between sectors B1, B2, and B3…’

Thanks, Hel. How convenient it is to turn on your favorite TV channel at the perfect time and not have to listen to all the nonsensical advertisements before the show.

On the other side of the chasm is a sector filled to the brim with greenery. Waterfalls flow down into the darkness. Is this the passage toward C sectors?

Hmm… Speaking of waterfalls.

I narrow my eyes.

There is one particular area that irks me. How to put it?

Not only do I have a superpower for reading others, but I also have weird instincts. This instinct of mine tells me-, no, urges me fervently to go there.

I’ll check it up later.

After I kill my lover.

Now is the time to check the love letters I got from the interface and buy some elixir or something.

…

Yelena shuddered while walking inside a dark passage with the wolf beside her.

The snake who was slithering at the front tilted her head to glance at her.

“It’s nothing,” she whispered.

Was it really nothing?