CHAPTER 31: CHAPTER 31- BAD MEMORIES

A low hum from the television seeped through the apartment walls, murmuring distant drama, laughter, and advertisements. It was the only sound in the room besides the faint rustling of cloth and the subtle scratch of bare skin against the cold, tiled kitchen floor.

Kaidren lay sprawled across the floor, unmoving, his limbs slack like a puppet with cut strings. The weakness debuff still lingered in his body, like a phantom vice squeezing the strength from his muscles. His cheek was pressed against the tiles, the chill slowly seeping into his skin.

Then, a twitch.

His right index finger flexed with the smallest motion, like a spark dancing back to a dead ember.

He noticed it—how the nerves in his hand prickled faintly, like they were finally thawing from a long freeze.

It’s wearing off, he thought, the idea arriving not with excitement, but a dull acknowledgment.

Slowly, carefully, Kaidren focused on his hand, urging more movement from his fingers. They obeyed, sluggish but willing. From there, he moved to the wrist, then the forearm, feeling the sensation creep back inch by inch. It was like rediscovering his body part by part, as if he’d been trapped in it rather than inhabiting it.

His movements remained minuscule. Even slight exertion sent strange waves of tiredness washing over him—not exhaustion in the typical sense, but a strained fatigue, as if his body rejected the idea of motion. He didn’t push. He listened.

One step at a time.

The spine came next, then his shoulders, his core. Finally, his legs responded, tremoring faintly. Kaidren slowly shifted to a seated position, his movements as slow and delicate as folding paper.

The brown cotton pants he wore crinkled beneath him, pressing against the frigid kitchen floor. His body sagged like that of a man at the end of a very long night, or someone reeling from too many liters of alcohol. His black hair hung around his face, dull and tangled.

He looked like a drunkard in the middle of a hangover from hell.

Yet, this wasn’t alcohol. This was a potion.

He took a deep breath, then exhaled through his nose, nostrils flaring subtly. With methodical care, Kaidren placed his hands on the floor and assumed a low crouch—frog-like, knees wide, arms bracing his trembling body.

"...It’s a weird feeling," he muttered under his breath. "To be tired, but not tired. Like the body’s pretending."

He pushed upwards, muscles aching under the effort, until he was upright—wobbling slightly, like a newborn animal. His hand flailed to the side and grabbed hold of the kitchen counter for support. Cold marble met the warmth of his palm.

He steadied himself, head still bowed.

In this quiet stillness, Kaidren’s thoughts stirred.

I’m strong, he admitted silently. But also... very weak.

The potion had revealed something. Not just about his body, but his concept of strength. His powers—his six body-enhancing abilities—were all at the apex of Grandmaster mastery. That alone made him an anomaly among espers. And yet, a single concoction, a mere bottle of unstable magic, had brought him to the floor.

A weakness beyond durability. Beyond regeneration.

His eyes lifted.

There was no fire in them. Just black—still, deep, unreadable. And yet, behind that void, something stirred.

Conviction.

This is why I need strength, he thought.

Not for pride. Not for fame. But for peace.

He needed the kind of power that no one, not even fate itself, could disturb. Because ever since he was eleven—ever since that one accident—his life had never known peace.

The image returned vividly.

The scream of twisting metal.

The flash of headlights.

The silence that followed.

His parents had been gone in an instant. And with them, any sense of family, of safety, of belonging. There were no relatives, no warm arms to retreat into. Only questions from teachers who looked at him with polite concern and suggested half-hearted routines to distract him.

"Try to focus on your studies, Ryujin. Maybe join a club. Keep busy," they said.

Quotes from posters on the wall. Not comfort. Not answers.

He didn’t want to talk. Not then. Not ever.

And so, he turned to games.

The first was that block-building one—a sandbox with survival and crafting. He played it in single-player mode, wandering the endless terrain, punching trees, building cabins, creating something that was his and his alone. It taught him self-reliance, even in a digital world. It taught him how to keep going with no one around.

Then came Espers of the World.

That game changed everything.

It wasn’t just a game. It was chaos, adventure, planning, survival. The players were left in an unforgiving world, and the only way to survive was to think smarter, move sharper, and evolve faster than everyone else.

There was no room for softness.

No room for hesitation.

Just like real life.

Kaidren learned strategy. He learned patience. He learned how to calculate risk and hide strength. He learned how to pretend, how to deceive, how to strike.

He learned how to grow up on his own terms.

While others his age laughed with friends or ate dinner with parents, Kaidren watched pixels move across a screen in silence, thinking, always thinking. Every defeat in the game was another lesson. Every victory, a reminder of his will.

His teachers never understood.

They saw a silent boy and assumed he was broken.

Now, here he was, leaning against a kitchen counter, recovering from a self-induced weakness, eyes staring into nothing.

Kaidren exhaled slowly and lifted his hand to brush back his hair. It stuck slightly to his forehead from sweat, then fell messily back into place.

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That’s why Kaidren hated it.

He hated the version of himself that used to cry. That 11-year-old boy who wailed into the void of an empty apartment, who curled into blankets like they were shields, who resented the world for continuing to spin while his own had come to a dead halt. Yes, it was natural for a child to grieve—natural, maybe, but not useful. Not to him. Not to the him of now.

The years had changed him. Or more accurately, he had changed himself.

By the time he was fourteen, he’d begun to understand just how inefficient, how foolish, emotions could be. He had no guardian to guide him, no adult to anchor him. Only games—pixels and storylines—gave him structure. In the glow of survival simulators and chaotic open-world adventures, he discovered something the real world never taught him: if he didn’t steel himself, no one else would do it for him.

And so he suppressed it.

The expressive boy he once was—the one who cried, who shouted, who envied, who loved—was buried. Buried deep. Deeper than even he could dig now, unless memories forced their way through. When that part of him leaked through the cracks, Kaidren didn’t feel relief or nostalgia.

He felt disgust.

And now, eighteen, he was a fortress. Cold, still, detached. And it wasn’t just the world he wanted to rest from—it was himself, his past, his emotions. Everything.

The fog in his mind lingered, like the residue of the weakness potion still clouding his body. But the worst had passed. Strength was trickling back into his limbs, slow but steady. Kaidren pressed one palm to the counter and pushed himself upright. He stood with deliberate care, spine straightening inch by inch, body still reeling from the phantom strain.

The TV buzzed in the background, its volume lowered by time but still present enough to fill the kitchen with meaningless noise. Static chatter. Kaidren didn’t bother turning it off. It was better than silence.

His feet padded softly on the cold tiled floor as he approached the stove. The two pots sat idle on the black induction surface. He reached for the open one first—the source of his earlier mistake.

He stared into it. The liquid inside had thickened slightly, a sludge-like consistency with an unnatural dark hue that pulsed faintly in the low kitchen light. He gave it a half-hearted glance, expression unreadable.

"At the very least, I made a potion," he muttered under his breath, the corner of his mouth twitching—not into a smile, but something resembling irony. "Not the good kind. Not the bad kind. Just... a kind."

He exhaled through his nose, then looked at the closed stainless steel pot beside it. The sealed one. The one that hadn’t yet been tested.

Kaidren tilted his head slightly, dead eyes fixed on the glint of the metal lid. His thoughts drifted back—back to the moments that had passed only minutes ago, but felt far longer. That moment when his body collapsed, when the weakness potion had stripped away everything. It hadn’t just dulled his muscles. It had pried open the vault he’d locked his emotions in.

Weakness. Emotional, physical, mental.

All the same.

He should punish himself for letting that door open. That door to his past. To that useless version of himself.

Fine. Let this be the punishment.

He gripped the glass lid and lifted it, slow and steady, like unveiling something sacred—or cursed. The moment the seal broke, a thick yellow gas burst upward in a sharp hiss, wafting into his face.

It was vile.

The scent slammed into his nose like a wall. Sour. Rotting. Metallic. Something in it reminded him of rusted coins soaked in vinegar, or the damp air of a sewer drenched in ammonia. It wasn’t just a smell. It was an invasion. It pushed through his nostrils, crawled down his throat, wormed into his lungs.

But Kaidren didn’t flinch.

He just stared.

His face remained flat, unchanging. If anyone had seen him, they might’ve thought he felt nothing.

But his eyes told a different story. Behind those black irises, something deeper stirred. Not fear. Not even anger.

Dread.

It wasn’t the smell that unsettled him. It was the familiarity. The sensation of being submerged in something he couldn’t control. Like back then. When grief consumed him whole, and the world kept going, and no one stopped to look back.

The yellow gas curled around him like a ghost.

And yet he stood there. Breathing it in. Enduring it.

His punishment.

He stared into the pot. The liquid inside was bubbling in slow, syrupy convulsions, each pop releasing more of that poisonous fog. Kaidren imagined an esper villain hurling it at their enemies...

"Millions," he murmured. "If I do it right."

But even as he said it, there was no real hunger in his voice. No ambition. Just obligation.

This was one of the strength he sought. Not the flashy kind of energy blasts and flashy weapons. But control. Over his body. Over his mind. Over the emotions that had once nearly broken him.

Control was peace.

Peace was what he wanted.

He leaned against the counter again, breathing slowly, the air heavy and bitter.

His head lowered, eyes blank.

He didn’t think of his parents.

He didn’t think of the crying boy.

He only thought of tomorrow. The next plan. The next moment where his strength would mean he wouldn’t have to feel anything at all.

And in that silence, Kaidren whispered to himself:

"Just a little more. A little more, and no one will ever reach me again."