Six months after my death—after everything—I was sent back.
Back to my own personal hell. Back to the demons I had briefly escaped.
I never saw anyone from the juvenile center again. They were gone, as if they had never existed. Whatever connections I had made, whatever fleeting warmth I had felt—it was all erased in an instant.
And I was alone.
I tried again to make friends, to find even the smallest sense of belonging. But all I got in return was rejection. Bullying. Being left behind, over and over.
And then there were the relationships—if I could even call them that.
I had tried before. In elementary school, I had gathered the courage to confess to a girl, only for her to turn her back on me and laugh with her friends. Then there was the missed chance I never realized I had. Then the blind stupidity of trusting a girl from another center.
By the time I reached the final two years of secondary school, I was relentless—not just in wanting to be with someone, but in trying to find a way out of my personal hell.
But every time, I found nothing more than distant, hollow connections. Never something real. Every time, I was used. Abandoned. Reduced to nothing more than a psychologist for the other person, listening to their problems while mine went unheard.
Even when I tried with someone seeking redemption—a girl who had been cruel in the past but claimed she wanted to change—it led to nothing but betrayal.
At first, I rejected her completely. I wanted nothing to do with her. But something made me reconsider, made me give her a chance. And for months, I poured myself into it, supporting her, spending time with her, playing games together, trying to build something genuine.
But in the end, she proved to be exactly who she had always been.
She was bisexual, and she betrayed me with one of her school friends—the very same friend who ended up telling me the truth. The situation had been twisted beyond belief. That girl had assumed I knew about them, assumed I had agreed to something I never even imagined. She believed we had broken up long before I even knew what was happening.
So I ended it. Right there, in front of her friend, I told her we were done. And then I walked away.
I never had any resentment toward the friend—only toward her. But whatever connection I had with the friend faded away too, lost to time.
Even my first real, in-person relationship felt… wrong.
I got my first kiss from a human. And my reaction? Disgust.
It tasted awful. Unnatural. But I kept trying, convincing myself that it was supposed to be good, that I just wasn't understanding it yet. I forced myself to believe in something that wasn't there.
I had fallen for her because she seemed kind, seemed affectionate. But in truth, she was colder than ice. She didn't care. She never wanted anything real.
So, in the end, I turned to the only relationship that felt real. The one I had always had. The one with her.
My personal demon.
The only one who had ever truly stayed. The one I had shared my first real kiss with, the one I had experienced deeper moments of love and care with. The one I had lived as if married to.
I had always questioned her existence.
Was she real? Was she just a figment of my mind? An illusion, a manifestation of something deeper?
I doubted everything. But her touch… her warmth… it felt real. More real than any so-called "human" I had ever been with.
She never punished me for trying to form relationships with other girls. She never interfered. She simply stayed.
And yet, deep down, a thought always lingered.
Maybe—just maybe—she was the reason I was always left behind.
Maybe she had been protecting me.
Maybe she had been keeping me for herself.
I'll never really know.
But I don't think I want to.