𝐇𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐭𝐡 | Toji Fushiguro.

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟕: 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞

please use dark mode and it's recommended to listen to the song when reading; looping it is even more perfect

🎧 Song: Viva la Vida- Coldplay 🎧

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What exactly is a home?

        Is it simply a residential building? Or is it something more? There are many definitions one would associate with the word. For example, a familiar environment—one that comforts you. Or maybe it's the people that will love and support you. Perhaps you may not have a home. But maybe most of us have felt that feeling. The feeling of not just joy, but calm. The state of stability where you are neither happy nor sad—only somewhere in-between.

After so long, he had found that feeling. It wasn't at the same apartment he had lived at for so many years. Nor was it the same old railing where he would smoke a cigarette every evening; he finds even the place that calms him down the most from his stressful life is when he sees their faces. To even know their presence somehow calms his racing mind and keeps him grounded to his responsibilities. Maybe that's what caused him to fall apart in his last life.

The constant regret. The constant frustration. The never-ending disappointment. All of these emotions he kept building up and distracting himself from with alcohol and gambling soon came back to haunt him. To haunt him to the point of turning himself into what he feared of becoming. Into becoming who he was before.

A broken individual.

What was different in this life? Is it the fact she's alive? That he has another chance? He thinks this has to be the answer. Is this healing his fractures to become whole again? To go back to the loving father and husband that he strives to be? Is this truly helping him right his wrongs? Has he changed?

Without the light there would be no shadows. His burdens, his troubles are still constantly rooted in his heart—rotting inside. When he looks at her, he feels joy yet it's as if his chest has been anchored to the bottom of an endless pit. Guilt weighs him down. It pulls him deeper and deeper until finding a way out becomes fruitless. He realizes this on the bridge. As he watched the droplet of rain hit the surface of the lake he desperately wanted to end that weight on his chest. That small but ever growing feeling that he can't seem to let go off.

But something stopped him.

He failed to react to the frantic footsteps running towards him. The small arms pulling him back. His knees crashing onto the wet concrete as he gets slapped and yelled at by her. He can't help but focus on her eyes. The desperation, the worry, the fear, but there was something else too. It was emitting itself through her gaze as she yelled at him.

It was love.

This is what was different.

She's alive and breathing. She thinks. She feels. She's a conscious being. She loves.

She loves him.

A tear disguised as a raindrop fell down his cheek as he felt a the weight lifting back up. He felt lighter. Love was the potential to grow from the emptiness in his heart. He felt loved. This wasn't a twisted fantasy of him trying to right his wrongdoings. He was alive with her.