An Already Broken Toy (5)
"What the hell did I just say…"
I muttered it to myself, head buried in my hands.
I stayed like that for a long while, back pressed against the door.
Footsteps receded into the distance.
Those would be Seoa's, heading home.
Haa…
I let out a deep breath.
It hurt.
Old feelings had surged up without warning, and it hurt so much I could barely stand it.
The heart that once loved Seoa and the heart that hated her now were tangled together, and the confusion was unbearable. Feelings that starkly opposed each other had no business occupying the same place.
That was why my chest ached so badly. When two hearts that could never mix were forced into one space, they tore cracks through each other. Those cracks felt like they were ripping me open from the inside, splitting me in two. It hurt as if my heart itself were being torn apart.
It was a whirlwind of emotion I'd never felt before, and it shoved me so far into the deep end that I could no longer control my own actions.
What do I even want…
Why did feelings like these have to surface at a moment this important and torment me?
I had no idea what my heart was actually asking for.
I'd resented Seoa so bitterly, hated her so thoroughly — and yet the second I tried to treat her roughly, it was my own heart that hurt.
I pounded my chest with one fist, over and over, and demanded an answer from whatever was inside me.
Say something. What the hell do you want from me?
There was only the question. No answer came back.
A one-sided interrogation, nothing more.
It was Seoa's fault.
She was the one who'd dragged up the past and made me remember the days when things between us had been good. That was on her.
I had to think of it that way. If I didn't, I was going to lose whatever remaining affection I still had for myself. After all that resentment, all that hatred, the fact that I still couldn't fully shake her off — I was going to be disgusted with myself.
So I'd pin it on Seoa. That was the only way.
To sort through the mess of feelings, I turned to cigarettes again.
This time I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and smoked one after another.
Ash fell carelessly onto the sheets.
Whatever.
I was not a person who had the bandwidth right now to care about cigarette ash dirtying my bed. My head was already so crowded it felt ready to explode — fretting over something that small was a luxury I couldn't afford.
Smoke drifted into my eyes and they burned like hell. Tears leaked out in thin trails.
I clenched my fist and slammed it into the mattress.
I couldn't just lie there and endure this strange, itching feeling clawing at my chest.
Stop… just leave me alone.
I'm barely holding on. I've already hurt enough. So please, just let me have some peace now.
Why did you come back just to hurt me again?
Do you think I still haven't suffered enough?
That tiny heart of mine — the one that loved you so carefully, so quietly — was that such a terrible crime that it has to keep hurting this long?
No one ever noticed it. No one ever cared about that small, private thing I carried.
So was it really that unforgivable?
I gave up on you. I decided someone like me had no right to love you, and I let you go.
And you threw me away too.
So why are you reaching for me again?
After kicking me aside like that, why are you holding out your hand now?
Please… don't do this anymore.
Don't do something that cruel.
Don't make me go through that brutal process all over again.
Stop.
Just stop.
In a room that had gone dark without my noticing, I lay alone on the bed and slowly accepted myself sinking into the dark.
And then, in that pitch-black room, a single thread of light appeared — bright enough that even my vacant stare couldn't ignore it.
My phone, which had been sitting there perfectly still, suddenly lit up and cast a beam of light across the room. Some kind of notification, it seemed.
No vibration. No sound. Just the screen flaring to life on its own.
What is it?
I reached out, grabbed the phone, and checked.
Oh… just an email alert. So email notifications come through on the phone too.
That was all I thought at first.
But the preview showed just enough of the content that my mind snapped fully awake.
This was not an ordinary email that would leave only a fleeting impression.
I opened it immediately and read it on the phone.
……
I finished reading the entire email and scrambled to turn on my computer.
It had been a long time since the machine last powered on.
No way…
I pulled up the contest announcement for the one I'd applied to.
Fuck…
I'd missed the second-round submission deadline.
Between everything that had been going on lately, I'd stopped working, slowly fallen apart — and somewhere in that collapse, I'd let the deadline for a contest I was actively participating in just slip past me.
My head went hot.
My heart dropped like a stone.
With shaking hands I jammed a cigarette between my lips and lit it.
Just in case, I read the email again from the top. I double-checked the deadline listed in the announcement.
Nothing changed.
I ran a hand through my hair and bowed my head.
This opportunity had meant everything to me.
My first released game had done well, and this was supposed to be the chance to step straight into the next stage. Partner with a company, get development funding, take everything that had been lacking in the previous title and build something that could aim higher. With the support a company could provide, I would have been developing games at a completely different level, in a completely different environment.
And I'd thrown away that precious, critical chance for the stupidest reason imaginable.
I'd let it go with my own two hands.
School might not have been as important as I'd made it sound earlier. But this — this was the most important thing I had.
The only reason I'd been able to act so cocky was because I'd been establishing myself as a developer, growing, building something real…
Maybe I'd just taken a step away from my dream.
And I had no idea how far I'd have to run just to close that single step again.
What the hell am I doing right now?
You pathetic piece of shit.
What am I even doing, rotting in this corner of a room?
I punched myself in the head with my own fist. Without that kind of self-punishment, I couldn't have held on.
Have I really fallen apart so badly that I forgot the most important thing in my life?
Over a girl?
The hand that had been hitting my head came down hard on the desk. The keyboard and mouse jumped and rattled.
Reaping what I sowed, I guess…
It felt hollow.
Disaster after disaster had crashed into me without a single moment to breathe, and I'd been left unable to touch anything — everything just collapsed.
How much further am I going to fall? Now even my dream is slipping away from me.
The one thing that was still holding me up — even that is gone.
I didn't cry. I was too furious at myself for doing something this monumentally stupid. The rage was enough to drive me insane.
And this contest rejection email wasn't a tragedy that belonged to me alone.
If it had only been me who was miserable, that might almost have been a mercy.
The illustrator I'd been working with — this was bad news for them too.
I grabbed the mouse and opened the messenger we used to talk regularly.
Even after all this time away, my illustrator was still active.
I had to tell them. We'd been preparing for this contest together.
I managed to send the message more calmly than I'd expected. Maybe because I wasn't saying it face to face. Delivering the bad news turned out to be surprisingly easy.
A reply came almost immediately.
Passing along the news itself had been easy. Explaining the reason was harder.
Because it was entirely my fault. Because I had to confess that.
I hesitated for a moment, then just said it straight.
There was a reason they said that to me.
An ordinary illustrator probably wouldn't have put it that way. But our relationship was a little different.
We weren't just a client and a freelancer trading work for money.
This was the illustrator who'd done the original art for the first game I ever released. And like me, they'd made their debut with that same project.
Back then I hadn't had the money to hire anyone properly, and they were still an amateur with no credits to their name. So we'd agreed that once the game launched, they'd get a cut of the revenue.
It worked out for both of us. I think we were genuinely grateful to each other — at least, I was.
After that, they rose fast. I heard work inquiries started pouring in from all over.
But when I told them I wanted to collaborate on the next project too, they accepted without hesitation.
And once again, it wasn't a simple freelance arrangement — it was a revenue share, same as before. That was the deal.
Which meant, of course, that they couldn't take on any other commissions. In effect, they'd signed an exclusive contract with me. If I stretched it a little, they were basically my dedicated illustrator.
They'd been preparing everything on my development timeline — and now the whole project had fallen through like this.
The losses they'd taken in the meantime had to be enormous…
Which meant I might owe them something like a penalty fee. Damages for the work they'd set aside for me.
Kill myself…
Yeah. If I could, I really would.
If I could.
I had no idea where things had started to go wrong. Nothing in my life was working out. I couldn't even tell where to put my hands first — where to start standing up again so I could stand properly at all.
Working with this person again after this was probably out of the question.
I'd really liked them… and I'd lost them through my own pathetic screw-up.
All I could do was keep saying I was sorry.
In the end, even as a developer, I'd hit rock bottom.
I couldn't even be bothered to shut the computer down properly with the mouse. I just held the power button on the tower until it died.
Everything was exhausting.
I was supposed to tell my family about this too… but I was terrified of saying the words to them.
They'd been cheering me on so hard.
I couldn't face them.
I pushed the chair back and sat there staring blankly at the dead monitor.
My brain felt like it couldn't take any more. Too much misfortune had flooded in all at once, and it was like my mind had simply shorted out.
For a long time after that, I just sat there like someone whose soul had left their body.