Eternal Malediction (RE)

Graham continued eating quietly for a while. The cabin around them remained noisy with laughter, arguing, and terrible dancing in the background, but strangely enough, it all felt distant from where they sat.

Then Graham suddenly asked. "...Roy."

"Hm?"

"If you had the ability to turn back time... would you?"

Roy glanced toward him briefly. What an interesting question. "To fix mistakes?" Roy asked.

"To change anything."

Roy leaned back slightly against the wall while thinking about it. "...Depends on the mistake or things I want to change, really."

Graham smiled faintly at that answer before looking out the window again. The morning sunlight reflected softly in his eyes. "Even if we did turn back time and chose another decision..." he said quietly, "would our lives truly change?"

Roy stayed silent.

Graham continued calmly. "No. Because those decisions are what made us who we are."

His voice remained soft but steady. "We are who we are, why we are, and where we are because of every decision we made along the way."

The sounds of laughter, chatter and conversations behind them faded into background noise.

"If you changed those decisions..." Graham looked down at his hands slightly. "...Then the person standing here now wouldn’t really be you anymore, would it?"

Roy’s eyes narrowed slightly, trying to understand what Graham was getting at.

"Even if I had the ability to manipulate time and reality itself," Graham said, "even if there was something important enough to justify changing..."

He paused briefly. "I still wouldn’t do it."

His smile remained calm. But for the first time since Roy met him... it looked tired.

"Because if I changed that moment..." Graham said quietly, "...then I wouldn’t be who I am today because of it."

Silence settled briefly between them.

Outside, the wind rolled softly through the countryside while distant birds chirped faintly beyond the cabin windows.

Then Graham spoke again. "I’ve felt grief."

His eyes remained fixed ahead onto the people in front of him as he waved his hand to each emotion he listed. "Love. Joy. Hatred. Relief. Happiness."

The words sounded strangely hollow coming from him. "But not a single one of them ever truly felt like mine."

Roy looked toward him properly now, eyes wide.

Graham laughed softly to himself. "I even tried to force it sometimes too."

His fingers tapped lightly against the plate in his lap. "I tried convincing myself that what I felt was real."

Another pause. "But it always felt slightly... distant."

Roy didn’t interrupt.

"In the moment, I can understand emotions," Graham continued. "I can laugh. I can smile. I can reminisce. I can feel sadness."

His eyes lowered slightly. "But actually, realising what I’m feeling?"

A faint smile crossed his face again. "...I still don’t know even after reaching my mid-twenties... and I still wouldn’t change that, as that is who I am... I now have a woman that loves me, I have a little sister who looks up to me, and I have people that I can rely on and more."

The honesty of that statement lingered heavily as Roy quietly stared at him. For someone who always seemed so composed and relaxed, Graham spoke about himself like a person trying to understand his own existence from the outside. "But if I went back in time and changed who I was, these people that I now have around me wouldn’t have any connection with the me that you know now; they like me for who I am now, not the one without the mistakes."

Then Graham looked toward Roy again. "Roy."

"What?"

"Your actions have consequences."

Roy frowned slightly.

"When people see you hurt..." Graham said quietly, "...they hurt too."

The words hit more directly than Roy expected. "That," Graham continued, "is the consequence of being alive."

Roy looked away toward the window again.

"You may feel like something was always wrong within you; people can see that you are hurting, but if you do not explain or be able to communicate it to others, people can’t help but just watch you suffer in silence while they suffer watching you."

Roy’s brain started to roll past events; Mella was clinging onto him yesterday. Tanaka’s quiet honesty on the bench. Kieran is standing beside him in silence without any conversation.

Roy always wanted to tell someone. Talk to someone. Connect with someone. But for some reason he was unable to, partially because he never spoke about it or it was brought up, but the fact was...

Roy exhaled softly through his nose. Roy felt something tighten in his chest; it was not pain but recognition. Graham Rose was just like him. Graham’s words weren’t just observations; they were aimed directly at him.

"...How would I know who I’m meant to be," he muttered quietly, "when I don’t even know who I am?"

Graham stayed silent. Roy rested his head lightly against the wooden wall behind him. "Being human is difficult."

His voice sounded strangely genuine now. "...But I’ll slowly get better at it."

A small smile appeared on Graham’s face after hearing that.

Just... approving, as Graham launched his hand over Roy’s shoulders and held it there for a while, embracing him as he swayed left and right.

The cabin remained loud behind them while people continued arguing over food and music like normal teenagers again.

But Roy barely paid attention to any of it now. Instead, his thoughts drifted elsewhere.

Recently... he and Kieran hadn’t been talking as much. Not because anything happened. Not because they disliked each other. It was because he wasn’t talking about it. Roy wasn’t talking about it. Both of them didn’t want to talk about it.

Just Surviving. Just thinking. Just trying to adapt. Trying to understand themselves.

Existing itself took effort, and being alive was exhausting sometimes. It required too much from people.

Too much emotion. Too much patience. Too much strength.

Yet somehow... people continued living anyway. Roy stared quietly out toward the people within the cabin, and for once... he didn’t completely hate that fact.