You felt your body swaying, as if you were floating, when your eyes opened slowly again.

It was a small yacht. You'd seen the exterior when you regained consciousness last evening.

You remember sunset, as if the light in your life was disappearing too.

The cabin you were left in was dark.

Your hands and feet were still bound, but the tape on your mouth fell off at a point when you were kicked in the mouth.

The blood you tasted the last time you were awake had dried, only leaving a metallic aftertaste behind.

For more than a year, you escaped even being near his shadow.

But the last few hours- or days, you're not sure, made up for it.

You lay awake on the floor for a while, all the energy in your body lost, despite the drug having worn off long back.

The door opened suddenly, making you flinch before you started to scramble back to the wall.

Well, you attempted to.

Your hands had been tied behind your back the whole time.

Every part of your body hurt, and try as you might, you couldn't move an inch.

Your uncle walked in and stood before you, staring at you for a few seconds.

Bending your head down and away from him, you tried to pretend that he wasn't there.

You thought you could fool yourself into believing that your life was perfect all along.

Everyone else is happy, so why can't you be too?

This was just a nightmare.

You felt clarity when he grabbed you by your hair, starting to drag you out.

And it was a nightmare indeed. One that you were living.

Your worst fears become your reality once again.

Some kind of light made you squint your eyes, and you couldn't even react any more than that.

Then there was confusion when he let you go, walking away as your body slumped down on the wooden floor.

You felt too many emotions again, and you couldn't comprehend any of them.

They were never enough. Always too much. And those emotions made you a simple, complicated, perfectly flawed mess.

Your uncle stood dangerously close to the bow of the yacht, holding a bucket and emptying its contents into the ocean.

"How difficult it must've been," you heard his voice and tried opening your eyes again.

It was sunlight, you realized. The light that made you squint your eyes.

"To leave home, all the memories attached," he went on. "Going to a new place, trying to start a life there, and then not even looking back at that home."

It was then you noticed what he'd been dropping in the water. Live bait, and dead too, their cold brine appearing red.

The swaying made you feel sick, and your stomach was hurting from an earlier blow too.

Your uncle walked to the other side of the yacht, maybe thinking you couldn't see, but he was clearly within your line of sight.

Despite the grogginess, you watched as he pulled out a gun, trying to check if there were bullets.

You noticed the way he tried to pull back the slide before hiding it in his woolen sweater again.

And for the first time in almost a day, there was a tiny flicker in your eyes.

He walked back with another bucket, continuing to empty the bait in that as well before placing it aside.

Were these waters shark-infested?

You mumbled incoherently, making your uncle raise an eyebrow. "What was that?"

"I never had a home," you repeated, louder this time.

Your throat felt dry, and your eyes closed by themselves as you coughed a little.

There wasn't this feeling of loneliness or the darkness that filled you despite the looming pain of emptiness.

It was the realization that you had lost yourself completely, sinking in your past again, because you lost the ability to sleep and you don't even care anymore.

"Why did you both hate me so much?" Your voice was hoarse, already sick of crying.

Your uncle grabbed an empty crate and placed it in front of you, flipping the container before sitting on top of it.

It was near another crate, unbeknownst to you, stacked up with explosives and weapons. Just in case. As well as beside two steel barrels of fuel.

He stared at you for a few seconds, the look on his face the way you always remembered it to be.

Void. Unempathetic. Diabolical.

"She was happy," he started, looking away for a moment and then back at you; he does that a lot, by the way. "For a while. She thought you'll be born and that she'll still be happy."

You said nothing and just listened, prepared to hear whatever their 'reason' was.

At least you had a right to know whatever it was.

"Then you were born. But you only made things worse," your uncle's gaze turned intense at that point. "We worked for you, to raise you, and you just had to be everything she had not hoped for."

You still laid on the deck, hands and feet bound.

"An asset," he added. "That's what you are. A resource to give her an advantage-"

"So you both came up with your own solution," you ventured. "Do you think that justifies what you did?"

"And what about what you did? You killed my sister!" His anger still shook you to the core, but you tried not to fall apart. "What we did was to make sure you were perfect-"

"Damn it," you muttered. "You both made my life hell!" Your voice heightened with each word. "You made me think dying was better-"

The rest of your words were cut off with a slap to your cheek, and you turned silent.

Your uncle pulled one of your hands up, shaking his head slightly before he pulled out a pocket knife.

During the conversation, you managed to get your left hand free, albeit by dislocating your thumb.

"You should've never wished to live above your means," he pressed the cold blade against your forearm, and then dragged it abruptly.

Tears poured from your eyes without any change in your facial expression.

It's pure pain and surrender, when your soul cries without any fight from your body.

And that's how you knew what you were going to do was right.

You brought your right hand forward, though it hurt from not having moved for a while, and it fell limply over your uncle's back.

His hand made contact with your cheek once again before he stood up.

"Do you still think he's going to save you?" He asked rhetorically, walking towards the front of the yacht.

"Shubman?" You asked back, answering anyway. "I don't think he will," you shook your head a little, and a smile appeared on your lips. "I know he will."

You managed to raise a weak hand up and stared at your wrist.

"He loves me too much," you mumbled, more so to yourself. "And I, him."

The same wrist Shubman would always kiss so lovingly, looking into your eyes every time he did.

Your skin around the cut puffed, red like wine. The blood beaded up perfectly in a crimson dotted line.

It tingled and burned at first.

A solitary drop of blood fell to the wooden floor, staining it in dark red.

The vital fluid started trickling down your forearm, then the tips of your fingers as you dropped your hand.

And you knew no matter how much pressure you applied to the cut, you can't stop the blood from flowing out. From draining your body.

"Bury that hope," your uncle said venomously, his back still facing you. "You're going to hell."

"And you're going with me," you replied, making him turn around.

You watched him panic, shuffling on his feet quickly, and checking behind him for the gun you now held in your hands.

The slight smile was still on your lips as you pulled the trigger, the bullet hitting the middle of his chest.

When you pulled the trigger again, you missed and shot the steel barrel, resulting in the fuel to start flowing out.

Cursing under your breath, you tried again and still unsuccessful, shot at the explosives.

You've done a lot of things in life, but this one takes the cake.

Taking a deep breath, but not for too long, you remembered Shubman's words.

"Squeeze the trigger," you mumbled to yourself, aiming again. "Not pull."

You kept your hold on the gun steady until you fired and it recoiled backwards.

Holding his chest exactly where the bullet entered, your uncle stumbled back, falling over the low railing and into the water.

And to think that all of it happened within the span of a few seconds.

"Déjà vu," you muttered. Glass in your mother's neck. Bullet in your uncle's chest. But analogous with water in a way.

The gun in your hand dropped, and you tried sitting up with your feet still bound.

Water. All you could see around was water and nothing else.

You could jump. You could try to get out. And drown.

Because like said, you couldn't swim even if your life depended on it.

To make things worse, the rapid combustion that was taking place will make sure you burn.

If not that too, you got the answer by staring at your bleeding wrist.

All ways by which you told Shubman you didn't want to die.

Alone.

In a completely isolated place.

Bleeding.

Burning.

Drowning.

You lost the strength you had mustered up.

As the steel barrel exploded, you fell back to the floor, shuddering.

Your vision started to blur and the sound of the fire crackling faded, playing out a scene on mute.

All you could decipher was the smell of the fuel and fire.

As if your soul was levitating, but your body was still unmoving.

Your limbs, never mind, you weren't even sure if they were intact.

If there was an angel of death, it was walking towards you. Maybe it was the grim reaper.

You wondered if grim reapers were really as handsome as they're in K-dramas.

If you could find out, maybe you'll tell Shahneel about it. Hopefully after decades. You pray that she gets the longest life.

And Shubman.

Every memory you had with him played in your head.

The first time you met, your first conversation, his confession. The first date at the beach, your first kiss.

And the time when you moved in with him, when he cuddled you to sleep for the first time, every time he cooked something for you in the middle of the night.

All those dates, holding hands, feeding each other.

His eyes when he'd look at you, his kisses when he tells you how much he loves you.

You could live with that.

Or rather, you could die with that.

Yeah, that sounded more appropriate for the moment.

It felt like angels were dancing around you comically in long white dresses, holding wands that had stars in the end.

Your caliginous vision wasn't helping at all.

There was no stopping yourself from the warmth flowing through.

You felt like you were being given a ticket to watch a seven minute movie of your life.

Blood kept dripping and rolling down your skin.

The smoke made you tear up and it became difficult to breathe.

All the stars in the sky appeared closer. Violins played in your head.

The pure white haze, the color of death, took slow steps in the direction of the red sac that pumps blood through your veins.

In the meantime, you listened to the scuffle of life in its final form, waving its fingers at you.

A hollow wave, languid; reminding you that the galaxies you were seeing in your head were mere tornadoes of lividity.

Soon, the warmth of your body was replaced by an icy embrace that withheld you in immobile rigidity.

You managed to take in a breath.

Silence.

Then you let out a distorted final breath.

Silence.

And the sound, the light, the color became one to merge into something that only the dead could fathom.

With your last thought being of Shubman, your eyes closed.

-

You walked out of the diner and turned your head to the side where you knew Shubman would be waiting. And there he was.

When you saw his smile, the same damn smile like every other day, it became difficult to control yours.

"You didn't think I stood you up, did you?" He asked as soon as you were near him. Then your eyes met.

"That's one of the many things I thought," you answered, facing him as you did.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I promise, I'll never be late again."