~Because there is someone I value, I no longer have the feeling to hate myself.~
1. A Path Opened
Eight years.
It sounds small when spoken,
but it feels like an entire lifetime when lived behind bars.
And now, after time has slowly eaten my name from the prison walls,
I finally breathe air that does not smell like iron.
Free.
Yet freedom is a strange word—
sometimes it feels like a blessing,
sometimes like a different doorway to punishment.
Wasn't it supposed to be ten years?
Yes.
I should have had two more years left.
But good behavior, discipline reports, and my family's appeal
reduced the sentence to eight.
I smiled when I heard it—
smiled like someone who has forgotten how normal feelings work.
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2. Portraits of Life
Inside prison, I came to know many faces.
Some were portraits of human failure.
Others were simply people lost at the wrong turn of fate.
Some truly belonged there.
Some were only too weak to resist their circumstances.
Me?
I still don't know which category I fall into.
The first six months were the longest season of my life.
I lived like a shadow—
silent, isolated, avoided.
It took half a year before I could truly breathe
inside that small hell.
And in all that silence,
the name that saved me most often from myself was:
Misaki.
Every three to six months,
she came like a fragment of the outside world
slipping between the bars.
Because of her side jobs,
I haven't heard from her for the past two years.
But strangely, I'm not disappointed—
what I feel instead is admiration.
She managed her time, balanced her studies and her work,
as if her life slowly found its own rhythm.
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3. A Step Called Freedom
The first day of freedom.
My parents picked me up.
Their embrace was the same.
No disgust.
No fear.
Only exhaustion held too long.
I am grateful—
to God, to fate, to whatever still allows me to be loved.
But there is one name I haven't informed yet.
Misaki.
I want it to be a surprise.
I want to see her expression when she realizes I have truly returned.
Six or seven more days, I thought.
After I finish family matters.
After I make sure the world still recognizes me.
And the world…
turns out not to have changed much.
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4. When the World Looks at Me
What about Hiroshi's family?
Just as I expected,
they never truly forgave us.
But when the truth about what Hiroshi had done to those girls surfaced,
they chose to seal everything tightly.
They let my name be buried
under newer waves of news.
I do not regret what I did.
But guilt…
still exists.
Not because he was a victim—
but because I know:
no matter how cruel someone is,
I still had no right to take his life.
That is why I still visit his grave.
I pray for him in silence.
Maybe in another life,
we could have truly been friends.
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5. A Return
My mind is more open now.
And I know—
without Misaki,
I might never have survived as the person I am today.
I would have drowned in hatred,
blaming fate,
stopping the effort to rise,
and slowly fading inside my own thoughts.
At least now I understand—
every wound that ever happened
forged me into someone stronger.
For the first time,
I learned to value myself.
Today—
the sixth day of my freedom—
I decided to visit her.
I planned to go to her house.
She once gave me her contact number and address,
but I chose not to call first.
I wanted my presence to be a small surprise—
a quiet step born from longing.
I bought a classic Hemingway novel she once loved.
Wrapped it neatly.
Held it like someone guarding a final hope.
I took a taxi to her neighborhood,
then walked through the complex
as dusk spilled red across the sky.
A perfect hour for nostalgia, I thought.
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6. A Foggy Dusk
It didn't take long to reach the address she once entrusted to me.
But the moment my steps stopped there,
my chest tightened.
The address was correct.
But the house…
was covered with boundary tape.
Wooden supports held weak pillars.
The left side was badly burned.
I stood frozen.
A terrible premonition squeezed my heart.
An elderly couple lived nearby.
I asked them.
According to their story,
a small family with two children used to live there.
My certainty grew—
that had to be Misaki and her sibling.
"They were a warm family," the grandmother said gently.
"Always greeting us during evening walks."
A soft light appeared on her face as she remembered.
"And… where are they now?" I asked carefully.
"They have passed away," she said quietly.
My breath stopped—
until the grandfather added:
"She means the parents."
It happened more than nine years ago.
Sudden deaths.
Rumors of murder.
No culprit ever found.
My thoughts raced.
Before I even knew Misaki—
everything had already fallen apart?
"What about the children?" I asked softly.
After the tragedy, the siblings lived alone there.
Then about two years ago,
a night fire damaged the house badly.
No one knew the exact cause.
An uneasy feeling tightened in my chest—
not just worry,
but dread of a truth I might not be ready to accept.
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7. Stories from the Edge of Memory
I tried calling Misaki's old number.
Again and again.
Inactive.
A door closed without letting me knock.
So I stayed and listened.
The grandfather—once a doctor—
suspected the children had often been hurt physically.
He noticed recurring marks,
fearful reactions,
apologies spoken like reflexes of trauma.
Not long after those suspicions arose,
the parents were found dead.
Some said it was suicide.
Some said murder.
Truth was left in fragments.
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8. Truth Through the Dusk Fog
After that, the siblings continued living there.
The older one worked freelance photography jobs
to support their schooling.
The grandmother searched her phone
and found an old family photo.
When she showed it to me—
my chest collapsed inward.
Father.
Mother.
Two children.
The girl on the left—
was Misaki.
And the child beside her—
the one who should have been her sibling—
was Hitomi.
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9. The First Note Before the End
That was when I understood
the most frightening truth:
The ending of this symphony
did not begin in prison.
Not with Hiroshi.
It began long before I met Misaki—
inside a house that hid fire behind its walls,
inside a family that looked whole in photographs
but was broken behind closed doors.
And I…
had only just touched
its first note.