Elysium

42. FOR TH3 FISRT TIME, AGAIN

Yuno:

What is reality? What are its signs? Are our feelings, bodies, memories real? Our environment, our problems, our dreams and fears? Is our life real? Or is it a collective dream?

Nobody knows the answer to this question. I ask myself this every day. I am looking for an answer in the carriers of information, in the faces passing by, in my thoughts and my memories. And no matter how hard I try, I can't find the answer. But I still believe that we are exist. That we are real. And that our reality is not the only one. I believe that somewhere there is the same, only with different outcomes and events. That each of us is happier there than here; where we live for happiness, not survival; there we are able to love, feel freedom and joy. In that world we are even more alive than here.

The first time after the complete removal of Elysium, adaptation is difficult. People are depressed, and there are no pills anymore. A complete rejection of them has been announced. Strange state. It's like you're losing a part of yourself.

And then something unusual starts to happen. Apathy and anxiety fade into the background until they disappear forever. As if life energy began to return to us. I have been trying to connect these events for a long time. What exactly affected the mental and physical well-being? The disappearance of Elysium or the rejection of tranquilizers? What if both factors triggered the improvement? At the same time, internal loss doesn't go anywhere. We all seem to have just been born, not knowing who we are, where to go... Lack of understanding of what is happening. Personally, I feel like I'm in a lucid dream.

I have many memories of Elysium, but they are not clear at all. Again this feeling of being asleep. Dream within a dream. I wildly yearn for someone or something, but the image is so blurred in my memory that at one moment I think that I just screwed myself up, I invented it in my imagination. In this regard, it is very difficult for me. I was mentally devastated and taken away from something that I loved so much. This is why I can't find my place.

Otherwise, life seems strange. In the past, I often fantasized about what would happen if Elysium disappeared, and I imagined it in a completely different way. In my mind it was like an apocalypse, like mass protests, like a world war. But what happened to us was more like life after death. Incredible serenity. Amazing calmness.

I wander around Neo-Seoul aimlessly, looking at the people I meet along the way. And the thought that there is no more Elysium is constantly pulsing in my head. That our life is completely different now. We didn't appreciate what we had. Now what? Emptiness.

It's windy and quiet here. The sky is clear, it's summer time, the night descends to the earth in a bluish veil. I take the subway and go nowhere again. Lights flicker outside the window, the sun finally disappears below the horizon, leaving behind only a thin strip of orange light.

Suddenly my gaze falls on a girl sitting by the opposite window. Somehow I can't stop looking at her.

She notices me, and then turns back to the window. Her large light green eyes are amazingly beautiful. Her long dark hair carresing by the gentle draft wind. I can't help but sit down next to her.

"It may sound strange, but I have the feeling that we have known each other for a long time."

She gives out an incredibly sweet smile, which I don't think I've ever seen here - a kind smile, without a hint of arrogance.

"Everyone tells me this."

I'm a little embarrassed, but I try not to dwell on it.

"My name is Yuno," I extend my hand to her.

She answers quite reservedly and politely.

"Aya."

Welcome to Elysium.