The reflection next to him frightened him.
The sound of shattering glass echoed from the antique shop as a man in his forties quickly left the room. Without apologizing for the incident, Hiroshi fled. He ran for an awfully long time, avoiding everything around him, as if what he saw in the store was more horrible than death itself. It was Guilt.
Exhausted, Hiroshi collapsed on a bench next to a pond on the other side of town. Tears mixed with dust rolled down his face as he tried to calm himself by looking at the white petals on the smooth surface of the water. Can death help you escape? Can Death defeat an irresistibly oppressive, rotten feeling? Thoughts mercilessly captivated the man's brain, whispering from everywhere that even the desired death would never bring peace. Hiroshi woke up when a white petal fell into his eyes. His rough fingers picked up the flower, pulling it away from his eyes to examine it. The innocence of the white colour struck Hiroshi, momentarily soothing his sadness. He stood up, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand, and walked back to the shop.
The shopkeeper looked at Hiroshi with undisguised pity. They knew each other. Hiroshi looked fearfully at the broken glass as memories flooded back to the men in the shop. The events of thirty years ago, which had been playing like a broken record in Hiroshi's memory all this time, were now shared by the shopkeeper.
On that fateful day, Hiroshi, his best friend Shuichi, and a group of other children went on a desperate adventure through the overgrown forest behind their neighbourhood. The game they invented was known as "Veil of Shadows." They took turns being the seekers and the others were hiding, using the thick foliage to help them hide. As the game began, Hiroshi felt himself swept up in a competitive fervour he had never experienced before. He wanted to win to prove his worth and prowess to his peers. But in his desperation to win, he made a terrible choice.
The game was divided into three rounds, and in all three, one person was chosen as the seeker. This time it was Hiroshi. For two rounds in a row, he successfully outed the other children until the third round began. In any case, Hiroshi would be the winner, but in the next round he would have to fight against Shuichi, who was a master at this game. Shuichi had won the previous rounds, so he would definitely become the “king” of the game, which Hiroshi could not allow. According to the rules, if the last child is not found, then the penultimate child must become the seeker. Subsequently, Hiroshi cursed the stupidity of whoever had invented these rules more than once.
So, the third round was surprisingly easy. All he had to do was find Shuichi to win the game. Shuichi found the perfect hiding place in an old rotten tree.
However, the fear in his eyes paralysed him. He realized that he could not get down without help, and the branch he had climbed was about to break. As Hiroshi, the searcher, approached his friend, he was suddenly overcome with fear. Thoughts of being called a failure, a loser, ran through his mind. The weight of potential ridicule weighed on him. He was afraid that if he won this time, Shuichi would definitely beat him in the next game.
Hiroshi remembered that if he didn't find a friend, his opponent would be another kid who was far from being as skilled as Shuichi, so our hero stopped worrying. Even though Hiroshi was far away, he noticed that the branch was curving unnaturally above the ground. Something inside him clenched tightly, and scary images flashed before his eyes. However, the desire to be approved outweighed his loyalty to his friend, so Hiroshi quietly walked away from the tree, not even showing that he had ever been there.
The consequences of Hiroshi's betrayal were much more serious than he could have imagined. When they emerged from the forest, Shuichi's absence was immediately noticed. Panic gripped the group of children, and a frantic search began. It was only when Ai, a quiet and perceptive observer, led the search party back into the forest that they found Shuichi's lifeless body, hidden behind a curtain of shadows.
From that day on, Hiroshi became an object of sympathy and was perceived as a victim, as the children who witnessed the incident believed that he was playing in ignorance, that he had not even found poor Shuichi.
"You managed to fool them all, Hiroshi. They thought you were a martyr, a poor martyr who now needed to be protected. Because you lost your best friend. You lost me."
"Shuichi, you didn't know the truth. I repented all my life, I wanted to atone for my guilt and feel your eyes on me at least once," the man's voice was filled with pain and sincere truth, "Shuichi... Don't you remember Ai?"
Memories once again overshadowed everything. On that day, the events were not as most children saw them. Ai, who had witnessed the truth unfold, decided to manipulate the narrative by portraying Hiroshi as an innocent victim who did everything possible to save herself. As the years passed, Hiroshi felt guilty for his actions, haunted by the realization that he had sacrificed his friend's life for his own recognition. Ai used Hiroshi's vulnerability and guilt to her advantage. She organized a campaign of compassion, portraying Hiroshi as an obscure hero who had experienced tremendous trauma. Ai herself nurtured a passion for Hiroshi, a deep and twisted love that made her protect him at all costs.
Ai's manipulations went far beyond the childhood tragedy. She carefully constructed a series of events that isolated Hiroshi from his loved ones. The image of a martyr, in which Hiroshi himself finally began to believe, bored her, and she dispersed her friends around the boy. For years, Hiroshi remained trapped in Ai's suffocating web of deception. He lived with guilt, his self-esteem dependent on her assurances. But over time, the cracks in Ai's facade became apparent.
"She said that if I ever wanted to tell anyone what happened that day, she would ruin my life. That I was really to blame for everything that happened that day and that she was the only one who would ever accept me."
Hiroshi could not understand Ai's deception for a long time, getting further and further entangled in his own guilt and confusion. The ghost of Shuichi slowly tilted his head to the side, looking at his old friend. Ai's perverted love truly made him feel sorry for her, but deep down inside, he had the opposite opinion.
"My appearance didn't scare you at all, did it?"
"I've been waiting. I always knew you'd come for revenge, Shuichi," Hiroshi's voice began to tremble with sudden realization. The emotions that had been blocking the fear of the unknown for some time began to recede, opening the veil over a reality that was saturated with something paranormal."
"Hiroshi. There is only one step to forgiveness - repentance."
Deep down, Hiroshi knew what he needed to do. He was indeed on the path of repentance until he discovered Ai. His naïve belief that he was guilty, and later her manipulation that it was a coincidence, confused Hiroshi so much that he was left with a shattered truth.
"By revealing Ai, you have found yourself an excuse, Hiroshi. You realized that you could lie to yourself, hiding behind Ai's shadow, that she made your life worse. Now open the veil on the truth yourself, you coward."
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