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I don't know. I've never had much love for mathematics, and I don't like counting. Sometimes, all it takes is being left alone for everything to come apart, like a sandcastle crushed mercilessly under someone's foot. When everything around you is swallowed by absolute silence, you're forced to listen to everything you've forbidden yourself from hearing all day. Everything that buzzes inside your head like a vile swarm of wasps. And suddenly, it all becomes painfully obvious: in the end, you don't really have anything at all.

I piece myself together from scraps, because I never properly learned how to be anything. A little bit of everything, and somehow all you're left holding is something average. You don't even know what this “average” is supposed to be between. You're not a whole person. You're just some incomprehensible arithmetic.

Across from me, I see my own face. Only smaller. Thirteen at most, I think. She looks awkward, frightened eyes staring back at me, and she's clutching something very tightly in her hands. I know what it is. I know better than anyone.

She looks at me as though she's waiting for my permission. Or my approval. And I look back at her, unable to understand why she's still here.

This is what you always wanted, isn't it? For everything around you to finally go quiet. Quieter than a vacuum. For that horrible little voice inside your childish head to finally shut up. For there to be nothing left to explain, nothing left to prove, nothing left to fix.

So make up your mind. Either do what you wanted to do, or close this subject forever. Never come back to it again.

So much time has passed, and every now and then I still glance at you over my shoulder and wonder: maybe, when you chose the latter, you were wrong after all?

I don't feel sorry for you. I'm sorry you chose the latter. I know it was the right decision. I'm still sorry.