The Butterfly Effect

Intense Guilt

I still can't sleep.

It's not a good thing. Losing sleep is never a good thing. Most people try to pretend that 'sleep is for the weak' and that they can go for ages without any, but it's not true. Everybody needs to sleep, but I haven't slept in ages. The most I get are those few hours where I pass out from sheer exhaustion. The rest of the time I just lay in my bed, tossing and turning, thinking about everything that I did.

Why did you forgive me, Valt? I really, really didn't deserve it. To think that I threw away everything that meant the most to me for the sake of beating Shirasagijo Lui, just because I felt embarrassed and ashamed about breaking that promise to meet Valt in the finals. I'm such an idiot. I still beat myself up over it, even to this day. The guilt eats me alive.I already mentioned that I haven't been able to sleep, but I can barely eat, either. I can't even look at a Beyblade without feeling sick to my stomach.

I can't stand it. The guilt and regret are slowly killing me. Daina told me that writing down what I'm feeling can help me get through it, and that he did that while his little brother was in the hospital and it helped him out a lot, but it honestly isn't working for me. No matter how much I write about feeling bad for what I've done, that feeling bad never stops. I guess there are certain emotions that it works better for, like grief and anger. Guilt and regret are emotions that never really go away.

Since I can't sleep, though, I might as well just get it all down on paper. I don't have to write everything that happened during Project Requiem, since that's never going to leave my mind. What I do need to write is some of the aftermath.

We all celebrated my return; all of my friends somehow miraculously forgave me for what I did to them. I didn't remember much that happened while Requiem had total control over me, so everyone gave me a run-down. I apparently did a lot of things that Lui probably would've been the only one to do otherwise. Slapping Kensuke's hand when he tried to cheer me up with the puppets seems like a Lui thing, shoving Valt aside and telling him to stay out of my way sounds like something Lui would do. However, I can't just say that I turned into Lui, because I didn't.

Lui, as much as I dislike him, there are some things about him that honestly I can say I admire. That's saying a lot, coming from someone who almost lost an eye to him. His passion for Beyblade is something I can say I admire, and it leads me to wonder what got him into the game in the first place. Other than his sadistic tendencies in the ring, never once have I seen him resort to cheating. He wins from skill and strength alone, and I know for a fact he trains nonstop for it. I can admire him for his hard work and dedication, especially when I can clearly see the payoff in the arena.

I can also say I admire Lui's confidence, though it borders on arrogance, and sometimes can come back to bite him when he least expects it. He's overly confident in his ability to win any battle he gets into, and that cockiness has been the reason for his downfall once or twice.

There isn't a lot I admire about Lui, mostly because we're still not civil with each other. Whenever we're in the same room, you can feel the tension in the air. This isn't like the friendly rivalry that I share with Valt: this is pure hatred. Understandable when you think back to Lui leaving a scar on my face. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if Lui had managed to take out my eye. My hair wouldn't just cover my scar; it would've covered one entire side of my face. I might wear an eyepatch, who knows? My parents probably would've come home.

My parents. Sure, they still pay the bills for the apartment in Japan, but that's because they think I'm still living there. Right now I'm staying in a penthouse in New York City owned by Alexander Gilten. I doubt they even know where I am. I don't think they've been keeping up with my Beyblade tournaments. I haven't told them anything about my journey to the Snake Pit and my personality change and everything else. They know nothing about what I went through, because I haven't heard from them in over a year.