Chapter 77 - The World Against Him : Part 1

"So I don't see why your Rune would hate you since you've been friends way longer than us." Demon Rune stated that day, giving Axel false hope.

Because that was a lie.

The longer you've known each other, the bigger the hatred would be. Maybe Axel's counterpart was lucky for having a different outcome in his and his Rune's friendship. But he was dead. Axel should have known that their story was different from the start.

So when Rune said, "I can be your home if you want to."

It would be a lie after she found out the truth.

Axel knew it wouldn't last. It was easy to tell because the foundation of their home was already ruined from the start. Nothing could fix it.

Aster had said, one night when the moon accompanied the two. "Dude, I'm sure she'll accept you. I mean, you two are like soulmates."

That turned out as a lie.

Because if they were soulmates, then they wouldn't be facing each other like this with an invisible wall between them, as if they were never friends in the first place. Hazel eyes were drowned in betrayal while the blue ones swam with guilt in the same ocean they were in.

"You are still the best in my eyes no matter what happens." Rune had said that yesterday, and it did not last long.

That was the biggest lie from her mouth.

Because now, she looked at him like he was the worst person on the earth. Her mouth spat venom at him, melting his heart as it killed him slowly.

"I could never hate you." She had reassured him yesterday and how the table turned now.

Because it was just another lie.

The angry tears in her dark hazel eyes with her shaking, rage-filled voice as she screamed at him defensively was a sign of easy hatred. As if the words from yesterday meant nothing.

"But in the end, you're still Axel in my eyes," Rune stated that day, believing her sweet words that Axel started to believe too.

That was another funny lie.

Because now, both of them did not trust those words. Axel was not just Axel in her eyes, he was a criminal, the lowest being in the world. The prince had opened his mask and became the monster.

"Then I wish you were never my best friend." Rune spat harshly, like a dagger that was planted in his heart.

That was the truth.

Because there were no lies left between them. No masks to hide and no truth to be revealed. It was just them and the truth.

But Axel, like the naive boy that he was, still hoped. He did not heave anything left, so he desperately tried to cage the only thing that he had.

"We've been together for so long. Does that mean nothing for you, Rune?" Axel began, almost hopelessly, despite the fact that he tried to hold hope. It was almost laughable.

"You're the reason I'm alive." He continued, being as true as ever. Because there was no point in lying when all your words sounded like a lie.

Axel grasped the vague hope within him, gripping at it like he would die the second he let go. He pleaded to the universe, begged God to give him at least one hope to hold onto.

"Then I wish I had died."

Like being struck by lightning, Axel stiffened. Sudden coldness hit his core, swallowing the inside of him. Her words were like shredded ice that was thrown rapidly at him.

"I see you, and I see my mother's corpse." She spoke with a black mood that no one could dispel. Her face pinched with too much hatred. "I look at you, and I see a monster."

"-not the sweet boy I used to know. Because that part of you is just a lie." She darted, hazel eyes filled with darkness rather than the usual bright light. "-Everything is."

"I wanted to change, Rune." Axel put a hand on his heart, leaning a little to the front as he retorted back, despondent.

The wavering hazel eyes looked at him with disgust, something that Axel usually received from Cain, but now it was plastered on his best friend's face. "Can you?"

"Can you change those lives you took?" She spat; tears had dried from her face as the sadness turned into a wave of glowering anger.

"Can you change the lies of our friendship?" There was a slight taste of betrayal in her tone that she covered with her fury.

Axel did not know the truth nor the lie of what answer should be given to her. The tongue stuck in his mouth, entangled within.

Upon not getting any answer, Rune's face darkened with tears that were threatening to fall. "You should go with your mercenary, right? Killing people again?"

"I don't- I don't want to kill anymore." Then the truth finally came out, the thing that Axel had been wanted to do since the first time he killed the man at the very age of twelve.

"Then maybe you should consider killing yourself, murderer." The last words from her mouth caught Axel off-guard. The bitterness somehow turned into a deadly poison that was eating the boy alive at the very moment.

His eyes became empty, and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. His heart thudded in his chest, finding it hard to breathe, to just take a gasp of breath.

"Rune!" Aster yelled and went to drag her away from Axel. "That's not an appropriate thing to say to a person." The blond gripped her shoulders tight with worry on his face.

Without looking away from Axel's empty blue eyes, "Then thank god he's a monster."

Axel could not focus on anything as he felt the world begin to crash around him. He felt it would burst, his heart. His hands shook, and his feet tingled. His vision became disfigured, as if he were looking through a fish-eye lens.

The words kept repeating unwillingly in his ears. They taunted him, pushing him further to fall down from the cliff of the sudden panic and hurt he felt. They kept telling him to kill himself with the sweet voice of his best friend, that had turned bitter.

And then suddenly, a tear finally flew down his cheek, staining it black.

Axel could not control the tears that kept falling and falling, tinting his clothes black—dropping onto the floor like a messed up fallen ink.

His vision was blurry, and he could not see the sudden shock in everyone's faces that were all looking toward him like he was some kind of a museum figure whose sole purpose was being watched.

The black tears on his right eye slowly absorbed the blue contact lens, revealing a bright red eye that had been hidden.

Everyone but the mercenary took a step back away from him as some of them let out terrified gasps. Even Aster took a step back.

"Loser, your eye-" The blond choked, tremblingly looking at him as he relived the moment where the mindless demons chased him down.

Axel wiped the tears on his cheeks, only to stain his hand black. A short intake of breath came from his mouth as it trembled.

Kiaran smiled maniacally at the sight of his little brother, totally unfazed by him. He was enjoying the drama, it was fun to watch something crumble.

"Poor Axel. You can't choose dark and light at the same time." The mercenary sang, walking closer to his murderer with the madness surrounding his being.

Kiaran put a hand on the boy's shoulder, hauntingly. "You have to choose one."

"Now, what are you?" He asked, sneering and probably trying to hold a laugh at his little brother's naiveness.

"A hero?" He tilted his head and grinned widely. "Or a villain?"

The older brother almost fell when Axel's body was suddenly gone for a moment, completely disappearing from his sight. Kiaran let out a noise of amusement as he watched Axel fell into a pit of panic attacks.

Axel's body kept flashing back and forth from disappearing to appearing, causing everyone to even try to get farther away from the young murderer.

Kiaran took a step back, letting Axel continue his little play. He watched his younger brother like a person who was attending a theatre play. He waited for the next scene to play with amusement.

Hero? Villain? Axel did not want to choose.

Why did he always have to choose? Why? Why couldn't the world just let him rest for once?

His mismatched eyes looked over to Rune and Aster, who were now looking at him as a real monster, terrified and scared. He moved his gaze to Kiaran, watching the manipulative blue eyes that just kept taunting him again and again.

He did not want to choose.

So, just like he did last time when he was given two choices between the bad and the worst, he did not choose. He ran.

He thought he created a choice of his own but in the end, he was faced with the same things over and over again. And he realized he was never able to create an actual choice for him, he just ran.

Axel looked at himself and made him disappear. In a haze of conflict, you always managed o do something you weren't able to do earlier.

So he ran without no one knowing where he went. He just ran without a home to come back to. The boy just ran.

Rune's words rang in his ears as the wind fought with him. No, it wasn't the words that she just uttered venomously from her mouth, it was her words from yesterday that somehow managed to hurt him more than anything.

"I will always be here for you, Axel."

That was a fucking lie.