I don't know what happened but, suddenly I broke down. I could feel warm yet cool tears slide down my face. Suddenly my nose became runny. For some reason my face slightly burned because of my tears. But, that didn't matter in that moment. All I could focus on was the voice.

"You're a coward. You just run away from your problems. You always procrastinate. You're too scared to even ask your 'friends' for help. You're afraid to let them down but, you're too scared they'll think you're needy. You keep telling yourself that you're doing good and that you can do it but, can you really? Your actions say other wise.

Why are you afraid of everything? You can't do anything. People will leave once they see how selfish and useless you are. You can help with group projects or presentations for school. You try to help but it just makes everything worse. You're not smart. You can't help. You just get in the way. They would be fine without you.

Does your existence really matter? Do your choices matter? Because right now it really doesn't seem like it. Why live when you can die and be young forever? You don't want to grow up. I know it. You can't fool yourself.

You can't even express your emotions properly. I heard it's bad for you to bottle up emotions but, we both know you can't help it. You're afraid. You're a coward. That people will judge you. That people will worry about you. You want to make everyone happy. You want to be the sun that lights up their day but, are you really doing that? Attention seeker. You only make yourself seem sad or depressed for attention.

Stop it. You just hinder everyone else. I bet your 'friends' don't care. They didn't even notice when you were gone that one time at school. They didn't even bring it up. You were the one that brought it up. They didn't even ask you. You dumbass. They don't care. If they did they would have asked. They would have been concerned. But were they? No, they weren't."

The voice rang throughout my mind. The voice sounded too familiar. I looked up at Ex to see them smirking. "Sound familiar?" I heard their voice call out to me. "Why?" I could feel my body shake.

"Don't worry, David. We can fix this. We can fix everything. We can make Ex go away." I heard Valor say as she pulled me into a tight hug. "I'm confused." I say softly not wanting to pull away from the hug.

"Let me explain then. Both Ex and I are you. Ex is a representation of your bad thoughts while I'm a representation of your good thoughts. Your special, David. Your thoughts were so strong it resulted in us coming to life. So, we can get rid of Ex. It might take some time though. You know, in order to weaken those thoughts."

"I have a question."

"What is it?"

"Where were you while we were in that death game? I needed encouragement. Why didn't you say anything?"

"I did. Did you not notice the change in wording between the two of us? Although Ex spoke for most of it, as they were more powerful when you were trapped, I spoke a few times trying to encourage you to keep going. Now that I'm a bit stronger, we have a chance to bring things back to normal."

She took a deep breath and continued, pulling away from the hug I wanted to savor, "Your friends already agreed to help us out with this task. That's the real reason Cody wanted to kill you. The longer you stayed in that place, the more powerful Ex would get."

"Now that we've cleared that up, will you join us in getting everything back to normal?"

~~~
(A/N: Sorry for the short chapters. I'm going to try and make them longer. Fun fact: All the thoughts David has had in this book are all thoughts I've had when writing this. Well, with that note just wanted to say: Stay strong and love yourself <3)