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The most important new walls were at the very back by the emergency exit from the condo. For security reasons, the new walls were creating a small chamber between Damian and Jun’s room and the actual exterior door. It would be a good storage closet, and it felt safer to not be sleeping directly by an exit.

It was going to be beautiful. It was going to be theirs.

Jun hugged himself a little harder. It didn’t feel right that he was still haunted, still waking up feeling those hands grabbing him at the hotel, dragging him away from Yohei. He was thousands of miles away from Bak, but he still felt the pain of that one last look back at Damian, both of them helpless to stop what was happening.

He came for me.

Damian, Richard, Yohei, Gigi—all of them—they had come for him. Damian had fought for him. Richard had declared war for him.

But he was still afraid. Not in his head. In his body. In his nerves, down into his gut. The fear was still there, not always awake but present, a piece of himself trapped in time, dragging him back in unconscious moments.

He came for me.

Jun let his head fall back on a crate full of supplies. Nights like this, when he couldn’t sleep, he usually wrote and composed. But there were warring emotions inside himself this time. He couldn’t just scare himself into working on whatever project had been assigned to him anymore. He was his own person, and he’d run out of fear. There was no more ability left to just force a song out his fingers. He had to listen to himself now. The muse inside of him was freer and angrier than any part of his waking mind.

Words floated around his head. He reached deeper, down into what felt like the place below his stomach, into his core, searching for the essence of something.

He scratched lyrics in his notebook, propping it up against his knees.

The hours, the nights

The days of sleepless years

Forgiven, forgiven, released

I could let it all be gone and stricken

But the monster you left inside

The horror you inscribed

The visions behind my eyes

The knowledge I can’t defy

Unforgiven. Unforgiven.

You are unforgiven

The knife came down and hit the floor

I thought I had survived.

Looking back, the boy I was before

He’s crying in the mirror

You killed him, killed him.

He fled and I

I’m the man he left behind.

You are unforgiven

For my existence

You are unforgiven