Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 274. Devotion

The sorrow and remorse I felt made me dizzy.

Everybody makes mistakes and wishes to go back in time at some point, but with regret so all-consuming, with the need to change something in the past so evident, it is no more than the worst torment.

There is no way to change the trajectory of a path that has already been taken, not when the way back is barred.

I looked at the blood and vomit before me and noticed that time seemed to have halted.

When remorse overwhelms, when the path must be changed, when everything is already over but HAS to begin anew, another change, another life, another try, then what is left to do?

How to achieve the impossible with just your mind as your weapon and just your sorrow as your company?

"There is no fucking solution," I whispered.

"If there is neither a solution nor a way to live without said solution, then..."

"Kenneth. What can you do other than fucking die? Other than hoping that you won’t be reborn into one of the counterparts you have slaughtered?" I asked, slowly regaining myself as I lay bound to the overturned chair.

"Other than hoping that next time, without memories and without the experiences you have gained, you will take a different path?"

There was no answer, which I figured, because the giant was already dead; his remaining memories, together with the deaths and chaos he had left behind, being the only evidence of his existence.

As I felt hands on my hips—my lifeline reminding me that this was nothing other than a glimpse of the past, accompanied by the owner’s deepest feelings, which stemmed from a closer past—blue smoke emerged from the ground, and the picture changed.

From lying on the floor, I suddenly sat on Henry again, straddling him. I looked into his eyes and covered them with my hand before I placed my lips on his.

"Thanks."

I felt my real body again as I woke up from the hypnosis, this time with an acquired memory that came without overwhelming additional feelings.

"That approach was a good one." I said as I slowly opened my eyes.

"Then we will continue like this in the future," Dr. Lawrence nodded, and Henry pushed himself up from the door, coming to my side.

"How was it?"

"I want a smoke," I chuckled.

He pulled me from the couch, and we left the room after I said my goodbye to the doctor.

"How was it?" Henry repeated, hanging on to me, scrutinizing me as we walked on.

"Much better." I didn’t explain until we were outside and each had a cigarette in hand.

I shortly reviewed what Henry knew about the giant so I wouldn’t slip up: The giant was my counterpart; he was not always a giant; he was a depressed kid, and I told him that I knew of someone who could open portals since a fall combined with a tumor that activated his pineal gland or whatever.

And he still hadn’t figured it out?

That the giant had been the beginning?

Or... did he figure it out and was planning his revenge silently?

I looked at Henry in front of me with narrowed eyes, my gaze sharpening. There was only blind devotion and worry on his face...not even giving me the chance to fall into another paranoid episode.

I took a deep drag from my cigarette and looked at the sky before closing my eyes in pain.

As long as he didn’t know that there had been another Emilia Henrietta Devin called Emily Devlin, whom the giant had grown up with, which had been made aware by the giant, gaining the ability to contact her other counterparts. ... As long as Henry didn’t know this, he couldn’t possibly piece anything together.

I lowered my head before looking straight at Henry.

"The giant left his home, and the regret because of that lingers in each of his memories. That’s what I saw and felt during the hypnosis."

Henry nodded slowly before mumbling absentmindedly,

"Can we exorcise him out of you if we fulfill his regrets?"

I laughed and tapped my cigarette.

"The giant is dead, so there is no need for that. These memories are what I took from him, together with his life." I just needed the fucking headaches to stop and to get his power either out of me or under control.

Henry’s eyes snapped to me before he nodded again and looked at the ground like a droopy little dog.

"Wanna hear my opinion about that motherfucker?" I asked him, taking another drag.

"Yes."

"A guy drifting into delusions, unable to cope with his existence as a human. Just your average lunatic, wanting to be someone special that he wasn’t, this fucking crazy..." I stopped, suddenly thinking of what I had seen from his childhood, and changed what I intended to say.

"Just someone... depressed and sad." Someone who would have probably killed himself if he hadn’t been given an ability he shouldn’t have.

"Your counterpart from the Commander world, who is currently in prison, said that everyone is able to do anything given the right circumstances," Henry said, as if telling me not to hate the giant too much, maybe because he still viewed it as some variation of myself, the one he was so devoted to.

It makes me sick to be even remotely related to any of my counterparts. It makes my skin crawl that Henry could view them as me or me as them.

If something ever happened to me, and Henry went to one of my counterparts to be blindly devoted to them... Well, this would be a reason for killing them ahead of time.

Not for power or experiences, but simply because they could be sought out as your replacement, like Henrietta had done with her parents.

Would you do that, Henry?

Would you ever look at someone else like you look at me, no matter if they are my counterparts or someone that has nothing to do with me?

Because... there is a good chance I would come back from the dead to eradicate their existence if that were the case.

"Which is probably true. I hate my counterparts nevertheless, if only because of the possibility that I could have turned out like them if just my childhood had been a bit different. That fucks me up badly."

Why was I ’different’, albeit not so much, if we think about my recent behavior?

Because of luck?

No, it was a coin that had been flipped, circumstances that had been dealt out like cards, a destiny that had been assigned by random: live with it or die with it; it was just that, and only that.

Henry’s hand grabbed my jaw, forcing me to look at his face as it came closer, in his eyes that bound me more than rope or a chain ever could.

"But you turned out to be the best of them, better than each and every one of us."

Ah... I am so fucking in love with your devotion to me; I can’t tell you how greedy I am for that side of yours.

"Kiss me." I commanded, looking at his lips, his white teeth, and his beauty mark before I came back to the eyes, so full of emotions.

When his lips met mine, the feeling of his tongue invading and the usual hunger and lust he displayed gave me the answer to my prior question, if I wanted to accept it or not.

And that was: there was only me, and there would be only me.

Why...? If I disappeared, you would just destroy cities, grow your hair, turn your eyes silver, and start developing a strange taste in music?

Fine by me; then I wouldn’t have to come back from the dead because of plain, simple jealousy.