Perhaps the hardest thing of all is watching someone you care about suffer. Watching them tormented by doubts, by memories of things the world calls wrong. Yes, society has its laws that condemn certain actions. Lies, betrayal, cowardice… Stealing is wrong too.

Killing…

Why do the heavens not judge?

As long as you do not know what lives inside a soul, you too will judge.

But Guardians know everything.

And I know everything about him.

I see how shame retreats for a while when he drowns it in wine, filling every vein with poisonous alcohol, while acrid smoke settles like tar inside his lungs. His body fights to survive—there is no room left for shame, for reflection, for empathy. He drags his unwilling body into a filthy restroom, where he empties himself inside out, buying a little freedom from the poison.

He stares into an empty mirror and cannot see himself. Fragments of reason break apart into dirty curses…

And in those rare moments of clarity, I tell him there is another way. Another choice. He is still far from faith, and so he cannot accept it.

But the mirror will not let him go.

It will catch his gaze and settle somewhere deep inside his mind…

And whisper about a choice.

His choice.

—

Well… feeling better now?

The hands of the clock race toward noon. The familiar route. The passageway, the train, the roar of the tunnel, and the lights blending into a single glowing line.

I remember that almost magical transformation from childhood—the first time I came to the capital with my father and descended into the underground. We were on our way to a shooting range. He was telling another story about the army, about his friends…

Only now do I understand how young he really was back then. Much younger than many of my friends’ parents. Yet he tried to act the part. He wasn’t very good at it, but he tried. He puffed himself up as best he could…

Hmm. A boss. A politician. A car. Status. Business trips…

The truth is, he barely had time to grow up himself before becoming someone else’s teacher. There was no time. No experience.

Though I didn’t need his experience.

I needed a friend.

Just a person beside me.

Without ambitions.

With ordinary human mistakes.

He hadn’t finished being a child himself. He wanted to taste adulthood as quickly as possible.

Now I understand that more sharply than ever.

Yes, he overwhelmed me with his army stories. But he wasn’t cruel. He gave what he could, the only way he knew how.

And it wasn’t enough for me.

By my teenage years, I was already angry with him.

Shoot a neighbor’s window with a slingshot—let him deal with it later. At least that might earn me some attention…

I remember it.

The first time I took a life.

I didn’t mean to.

I didn’t even understand what could happen.

Shooting cans with a slingshot? I was good at that. Even my father used to say:

“Good genes.”

And there was a pigeon strolling nearby…

Whoosh…

A hit.

Feathers flew in every direction.

Could that really be all?

Maybe it would survive…

I’d better go look.

Every step deepened my fear of seeing something irreversible.

It lay motionless, wings spread wide, beak open, eyes closed. Completely intact—except for a large red swelling on its chest.

I sat there watching, trying to catch even the smallest sign of life.

But there was none.

And I had done this.

Horror flooded through me. I wanted to hide somewhere, to disappear, to hear words of comfort.

I didn’t know this would happen…

Damn…

I felt something like that one more time.

Yes, in the war…

On that clearing.

When I saw the face…

“You little brat!” I heard my mother’s voice behind me, and a sharp slap landed on the back of my head.

Tears burst from my eyes—not from pain, but from hurt.

I was already suffering.

And then came the shouting, the scolding, the blows.

Why?

I had taken a life.

I felt terrible.

Why?!

Fine then…

So a dead bird mattered more than your own son?

“Damn you all, miserable creatures with feathers.”

Would no one see the pain of a child who had done something terrible and irreversible for the first time?

Do children truly know what is allowed and what is forbidden?

And more importantly—why?

We eat chickens, pigs, cows.

Someone kills them too.

Calmly.

Legally.

For a purpose.

But a child who kills a bird is a brat?

Who knows all the tangled paths that lead us to the edge?

Or into sin?

Perhaps sometimes the edge is necessary so that we may understand for ourselves.

Who?

Who sees my paths?

“I do.”

…

“The mirror?”

“If you wish.”

The mirror.

—

I saw you.

I saw you staring into the mirror, sorting through the tangled roads of your life.

I saw the cold.

And the desire to walk toward the edge.

Toward the darkness…

I saw resentment, pain, and hatred.

Hatred of judgment—but not of the bird that died.

The pigeon…

It had happened before.

The pigeon…

The clearing…

I stand.

I stand here, at the Edge of the World.

Waiting once more.

Listening to the silence and waiting…

No footsteps.

Not today.

I let go…