How we meet

Chapter 28

Fate is a series of coin tosses. Wishes of the soul that are to be granted or denied. With each coin tossed into the wishing wells, it's a question of what side the coin lands on as it reaches the bottom of the well. It's too deep to see the answer, to see if your wish is to be granted in full or if you'll never be given the chance to dream of such luxuries a wish could grant. The possibility is hard to calculate when you struggle with math. The stars have no such weakness.
To them, numbers are nothing but a chore, a boring task they must fulfill as they work through the stack of papers and jobs they must complete before their time burns out. Their lives are much longer than humans, their knowledge much wider too. Do they laugh at humanity? Do they deem our lives worthy of praise or pity by those same coin toss wishes?
N feels conflicting emotions about what he was given in life. Abandoned in the woods and adopted by a no-good man. His sisters who he loves with his whole heart. His friends that he swore to protect. The crown of thorns and lies he was given.
On one hand, N had been given many good things but did the bad outway the good? Could he step back and forgive and forget destiny's cruelness? Sometimes he struggled with understanding how people could ignore the bad thing that happened and could focus on the good things in their existence. He wondered at what point it all became an unbalanced exchange. Would a person benefit society and the world as a whole for the better and would the world still treat them with unkindness?
He could spend years of his lifetime comparing how his life was good in bad. Listing the bad and the good until it became too long. We realized that even though things were less like black and white but a whole spectrum of contradictory colors. One thing was good but bad in another, yet that same thing could never be praised by many, then if he were to change a variable it would be considered a hero's job. Morality was a human concept. That was a fact. To teach a robot morality would be impossible since so much of it is based on purely human emotions and experience. You can say something is wrong but still indulge in it yourself. It's simply the contradictory nature of humanity. To love those you hate and to hurt those you love.
So much of human life is set up with a list of unspoken rules. Yet N wasn't raised by humans for a good portion of his life. He did not learn about humanity as an infant. He learned it from a corrupt man who never truly loved him, so was he even worthy of being called a father?
N held your hand as you slept. He couldn't sleep. He rain his thumb across the back of your hand. He kissed your finger tips with care and devotion. He clubg to tou as if you were proof that he was alive. That he was tangible and that he would be okay. He choked himself silently the tears never came he sat there and observed you in its place. Instead of letting himself break down and cry by your side he rested his head beside you arm. Letting you go would be the one sin that kills him.
He knew something was wrong with you. That there was something that conected the two of you together. There was something in common. He held your hand and he could only guess what you shared. He knew at some point you would trust him enough and he would tust you enough. So resting with his head on the thin hospital sheets he fell asleep.
He fell into his dream. Sitting atop a throne that he did not want. He was silent unable to voice his opinion unable to speak. His father stood besides him. While N was unable to object his father agreed. He sat their silent and unmoving as his father took control. The chains of gold were cold against his skin. The crown was heavy on his heart even though it didn't weigh much.
N sat theire silent as tears ran down his cheeks. No one noticed no one asked for his opinion. No one wanted his thoughts. This is what could have gone wrong and no matter the amount of crying and pleading he wished to scream to the heavens he watched as the castle was set aflame and he sat there chained to his throne.
N was haunted by his past mistakes. It made sense really. To have a purpose and to believe in it so much; to believe that you would make the world a better place, yet was lied to. His whole purpose didn't truly exist. N believed with his whole heart that he was going to be a savior of pokemon. That he was going to help the entire world stop depending on pokemon. Yet he had no such purposes.
In reality he was like everyone else. Using pokemon as weapons. He cared so much he did, you could see it with his every action. His whole heart cared more about pokemon than people. He was scared now. He was scared of himself, scared of his past mistakes, forever to be chased by this phantom of the past, he would suffer silently as it choked him. How could he explain it to anyone? How? How could he fix this? How can he stop running from the past? Would it get better? Could it even get better? Would N ever change? How can N say that he wants to help pokemon to free them from any form of danger, if he can't even free himself?
"How?" he whispered, he prayed to no god, to no higher power. "How?" he asked again, tears rolling down his eyes in his sleep. "How?" he asked again, still the only response was silence.
No divine being answered him. No messenger of the gods arrived with a letter written in gold to explain the suffering of the world. It wouldn't erase the trauma of it. It would only be another sickeningly sweet apology from someone who set you up for failure.
N had to wonder what coin toss he failed. What coin had landed wrong. Why did a randomized chance either set him up with loving parents or a depressed heart? Was he a failure or was he unlucky? If the most kind is the most hurt does that mean the cruel are the least hurt? N had seen many things go wrong. He lived in the world and knew so much yet so little about how it functioned.
He was a flower on a dirt road. Able to see the world around him. Able to observe and understand humanity. He would watch learning as much as he could but he couldn't understand some of the more human aspects we learn as children from our parents. Many things are in human nature but need human care to activate.
You weren't like that. N was in the center of it all missing the outermost details. The things tucked behind closed doors and drawn curtains. You sat indoors. You couldn't see humanity outside of the yard. You'd see glimpses of children with balloons and fluffy pink candy yet you would sit there with a book in hand. Even the things you understood you didn't understand were wrong.
You were tended to with care and good food. Many things that could be useful. Yet you didn't understand how the other kids were raised. You hardly left the house. You had been choking, slowly drying out and the people around you moved too fast and cared too little to listen to you. N was tugged from the earth pulled inside to a place he had never been, a place he had never gotten to see before.
His roots were ripped from the rocky soil, and it was replaced with a clay pot. He was thrust into a new life. He was surrounded by things he didn't understand and left to slowly drown in confusion as things piled up. How could someone leave such a sweet child alone like that? Left alone in a playroom surrounded by rich luxuries that he couldn't comprehend, he was left alone if not for his few friends he would have gone insane.
You did go insane. You struggled and begged for someone you think of you as perfect. You clung desperately to dry clay soil in the hopes that you could be praised. You were quiet. You did everything that you were asked. Yet you weren't looked at. You dried out fast. You were so deprived of human interaction that you were shocked when you first stepped out of the pot. You didn't realize the world had such flavor.
You and N had exchanged flower beds. Yet when you changed them you were both treated differently still. Neither of you got to choose the starting place yet you still held some form of understanding. A child shouldn't have been left on a dirt road to watch from afar. No child should be left in a beautiful ceramic pot yet still suffer in silence in the hopes of praise.
Yet none of you could fathom living in anything different than that. You couldn't see yourself worthy of such basic necessities. Consistent and routine care was something you couldn't understand. Or rather, you didn't want to understand. You hated it you know? Watching parents at least keep up the illusion of happiness and love.
You wanted to be happy, everyone did. It was as natural as needing to eat. Yet with the human mind when it craves validation and praise when it's starved of attention and stimulation, humanity succumbs to something directly against all logic. When left in a room alone, in silence, but with a button that electrocutes them, people press the button. Perhaps its pain and adrenaline are addicting when you're starved of something, but it's more so humans would rather be in pain than have nothing to do.
We need stimulation, we need to use our brain but what do we do when we crave validation? In the same way as pressing the button even though we don't want to be in pain, we want validation for being ourselves. If we aren't perfect, if we aren't what people want, then we become what they want. It's not surprising, humanity wants to be seen. We want to be consumed, we want people to be jealous of what we have, to compliment us.
You just can't please some people. That is what you and N learned. You both understood that, you both knew it. Yet the pain was addicting. After all of it for this long. That constant pain and burning just below the surface, something that can boil over at a moment's notice. That was addicting, without the only thing that was constant in your life, what are you? Are you still the same person? Is a ship the same ship if it's only a single plank? What if that plank is turned into a ship with wood fresh from the tree? Can you even compare that to a person?