The world likes to believe that life is a gift, a flickering candle in a vast, dark room. They tell you that kindness is a seed that grows into a garden. They lied.
I was a girl of sunshine once. I believed in the warmth of a smile and the safety of a promise. I was innocent, until they dragged that innocence to the edge of the world and set it on fire. They didn't just hurt me; they neglected the girl I was, enslaved the girl I became, and broke the girl I tried to be until there was nothing left to kill.
Then, they threw the remains away.
I remember the water. The Dead Sea didn't feel like a grave; it felt like an ending that no one bothered to write down. I died alone, the salt stinging my open wounds one last time, and the world didn't even blink. The sun rose the next day, the school bells rang, and my name was scrubbed from the ledgers as easily as chalk from a board.
That was their first mistake.
Their second was thinking I would stay gone.
There is a rhythm now where my pulse used to be. a cold, mechanical hum that never tires and never forgets. My heart doesn't beat for love or the hope of a "nice day" anymore. It beats for wrath. It beats for the calculation of every slap, every chain, and every laugh that echoed on that rooftop.
Through the genius of the Director and the steady, iron-willed hand of Chizuru, I have been reconstructed. I am the ghost they built; the girl who was too broken to live and too angry to stay dead.
You ask what a dead girl wants?
I don't want an apology. I don't want a "different way." I want the debt paid in full, down to the last drop of blood and the last spark of pride. I am going to paint the Dead Sea red with the lives of every person who watched me fall and did nothing.
They wanted a toy? They got a weapon.
And weapons don't forgive.