Layer 1 - Illusion: Memory 2; Forever Birthday Party - DeLuSiOn!!!!!

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Because this website is stupidly limited and constantly changes my format, I have removed the original format and text effects. Some things may not make sense because of this. However, I've added subtle alternatives to replace these. W.I.P DRAFT - WILL HAVE ERRORS. READ OUR READER'S GUIDE IF YOU'RE STUCK WITH HOW TO READ WITH THE WRITING STYLE AND SPECIAL GRAMMAR (ALTHOUGH SOME RULES/STYLISTIC TEXT ARE DIFFERENT IN EVERY CHAPTER DUE TO THE LIMITS). Summary: Right aligned text in italics is extra simultaneous background information/thoughts (ignorable). Center aligned text in bold is inner voice/separate identity. Emoticons are stylistic expressions. Crossed-out text are glitched, filtered, replaced text.

I AM LOOKING FOR CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM, GOOD AND BAD.

C.W: OVERSTIMULATION...?

MUSIC PLAYLIST (choose): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32y4BlBSZN7ZRxJnuFbzWE?si=74JF1f39QU2VNgy0T1uK-g

Memory 2: Forever Birthday Party – Delusion

AGE: BLISS???

YEAR: BLISS???

DATE: 1ST JANUARY FOREVER AND EVER AND789561437568-

He drags me to another world—

—A dull, dark afterparty room, scattered with messes of cardboard boxes. Lifeless. Empty.

The room is dead silent—not even a breath, not even a heartbeat, not even a footstep from the gliding ghost that I now am.

I’m back at this place again. This is where it happened.

But...I feel...watched...

I look down at the cold, dusty, damp concrete floor beneath my feet. It lingers with a stench of fizzy drinks and sweets old like a moldy afterparty. I notice something else though—my fragmented hand—most of it is back in place...but it doesn’t look like mine. It’s only bone. No skin, no flesh. Bone. Despite this, it feels right, though, as if it belongs... And my shadow—gone…did I ever have one to begin with…?

As I falter, I glance behind and see the scribbling door of black-

STATIC

Beside a window, a dinner table waits static, decorated with dull party decorations and paper plates. Static, like the lingering, stalking shadows around, as if anticipating something.

Something chaotic.

I rush up to the window.

I take a peek outside.

No land—just—fog...

The lavender fog, warping unsteadily, is thick and off—dream-like and abstract. Almost...crimson?

Where...am I...?

Static crackles from an old TV, playing radio warping, cut out sounds of a birthday party I’ve lived through before.

I see a sickly and gloomy cake, lonely and gruesomely melted onto the table.

It has 3 candles, labelled—I close my eyes:

3.

2.

1.

When I open my eyes again—somehow—it feels like they open inside out.

My vision bends—

"HAPPY FOREVER BIRTHDAY BLISS!! ===D" Illusia?—no—it’s Delusion!!!—the red figure from earlier! He yells again and again, voice glitching like a corrupted cassette tape. He tackles me in a tight hug—a fixed grin like a cute baby Cheshire cat.

Flying glitter and confetti burst the bright rose-mist-tinted world devoid of that lavender fog into life with a BANG like a balloon popping, followed by the sounds of party poppers from every angle. A hazardous amount of glitter and confetti reveal some sort of weird, colourful wonderland—the fresh air and colours, jaw-dropping with pure bliss.

The room has turned into a whimsical large, open paradise—the floor now the top layer of some sort of sugar-coated HUGE 3 tier birthday cake, over decorated and filled to the brim with seemingly delicious confetti and googly eyes like a tasty D.I.Y project from a silly kid.

Delusion shouts obnoxiously loud with overly exaggerated cartoon expressions and actions. "Bliss! Bliss!! I really really REALLY wanted to celebrate my best friend’s forever birthday today always!” he flimsily waves his arms in the confetti air like a sock puppet.

The top layer—the floor we’re on—is covered in dark chocolate icing and melting sauce—as dark as space—with spiralling patterned sweets like some sort of kaleidoscope, and choco stars, moons, and planets, decorated with white sprinkles as if they were distant stars. In the middle, there’s a red scribbling sparkling spiralling carpet—overly decorated with happy kid stickers. And in the middle of that, there’s a rectangular hole—almost as if something’s missing.

“A~nd as you know~” he points his finger on my forehead, slipping it down quickly to boop my nose, “YOU deserve it more than anyone buddy!!! ;DD" giggling and bouncing like a Disney cartoon child, his voice constantly shifts into different tones like a kid on 100 energy drinks—never-ending overwhelming kid excitement like pressure overbuilding in a happy balloon before it pops-

The second layer is themed full of green chocolate mint icing and sauce like grass, and it has flowers of sweets and banana stripes like sunlight.

He's fully formed now—chaotically scribbling a red humanoid over a black canvas with a familiar body like mine (only older), overloaded with tiny sketching eye patterns, overdesigned like a D.I.Y primary school project and covered in doodles—more solid now but still slightly transparent. He has a lavender bandage on his face, but over it he has these bright red cartoony eyes—as large and open as the shape of a sun—with faint lost and chaotic scribbles in them, always animating frantic joy—but he has no pupils. A large, cartoony mouth over his bandage, along 10 pixel emoticons that hover around him in a spiral, all displaying what he wants. And above, a lavender halo the shape of an eye hovers over him. Almost..fake..Today, he’s wearing a crooked paper crown made from math homework and glitter glue that sparkles with particles of blue eyes.

The third layer is purely white chocolate—though barely sticking out, it has many different scattered and lovingly ripped apart teddies and buttons—tasty and edible—hidden, stuffed into the cake.

A blue psychedelic shadow follows behind, and to Delusion's left, a ghostly red and spinning sun with a smiley face like a sticker emits a ray of scribbling blazing light—seemingly the sun for the world. Both the shadows have ghostly trails like fog from their “bodies”, patterned in tiny eye particles. Disillusion’s shadow has red-coloured particles emitting behind from his body, while Delusion’s sun has blue-coloured particles as if preparing the colours for their next memory switch. Delusion, too, has the drifting blue eye particles from behind—but these are only vaguely noticeable.

An overwhelming and unhealthy number of oversized treats like lollipops and gummies stick out of the cake’s layers like a replacement for nature. Rainbow banners hang from the large sweets, spelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLISS! as they flimsily wave in glitter glue, over and over—some banners even glitched out and misplaced, paused in the skies.

I feel a strange euphoric bliss overwhelm me like home—like I’m free, like I can do anything I want.

The 3D cardboards have now grown into 2D entities of pastel blues, yellows and reds, decorated in smiley face stickers and wearing cute, animalistic, but lifeless decorated cardboard boxes and spiralling layers of paper cones like party hats. Their eyes have safe plastic round knifes through one, and a plastic round fork through another, and behind their eyes flash bright birthday-coloured lights, synchronised like their every move. But their mouths seem to be scribbled tight—the same colours as their eyes—as if to prevent them to have a bite themselves! Although they do smile. They only smile—which is good!

A giant fork, removed of sharp edges, is nicely stuffed into the cake. Around the cake, there’s an abyss. And in the abyss and the sky, are bright pastel colours—like the pallete of the rest of the world—as if they’re parallel like a mirror, both buried with digital images of sweet wrappers. And in the sky above and below, there always watches these big eyes like Delusion’s that blink alongside his. Everything is full of colour, and I don’t see any black except for everything’s scribbled outlines like a kid’s drawings. Everything that should be sharp is round and safe. Piles upon piles of dolls, teddy bears, and childhood toys are neatly trashed around the place and make towering walls that block the outside. Streaks of lavender light stretch from the gaps.

But why would I wanna leave?

They all jump like children—synchronised and in a coded-like loop.

“SUR—PRI—SE!” They shout constantly in hyperactive glee—their voices mangled with thousands of other high-pitched children that sound from behind the walls of toys, repeating in static like the sounds of scribbles overly-intensified, just barely audible! Somehow at the same time, they all sing happy birthday on loop over the joyful music in the background. The music doesn’t sound like it’s in the room, though. It sounds as if it’s built into my ears.

I attempt to speak his name, lost in shock.

“D—Delusion? My name...my name isn’t Bliss...”

But nothing comes out. I only think. Curiously, with the new piece of my hand, I gently tap my throat.

I feel nothing...

I panic, feeling sweat drip down my throat that I don’t have—I can feel the phantom sense of it still out there...somewhere...

Delusion giggles back, almost like he heard me.

“Bliss!! B—B—Blissyyyy!!!!!! Tell us, tell me, tell you!” he screams in excitement, “How do you want to—wan—wanna—wa—wa—wanna celebrate your HAPPY FOREVER 10th BIRTHDAY!!? @O” on his final word, his voice distorts pitches like a radio.

I can’t answer, but I would say, “I wanna explore this world.”

“Look outside again silly!” he chucks me a kaleidoscope again and again on loop like a glitch until he finishes talking, “Your missing fake eyes are back, inside out and this time they’re~—” he sings, “—real~! ;P”

He doesn’t seem aware of my body at all. Or maybe he doesn’t try to.

Normally, I’m embarrassingly horrible at catching. But in this world—I catch it in an instant without fail or hesitation. Almost like a different me. A new me? Or an old me?

Just as I’m about to look out the window, I pause—what...window?

Delusion notices my one second of hesitation and jumps on me, shaking me like crazy.

“The window! Window!!! Window over THEREEEE!!! =DDD” he whisper-shouts with his hand, gleefully pointing to a door-shaped picture frame filling that familiar rectangular hole in the carpet. I could’ve sworn that wasn’t there before…

This...is a picture frame...

When I hesitate and try to think straight for even a single second, Delusion throws his finger-tied lavender strings leading down to plastic stars. With them, he gently pokes the kaleidoscope, me, and the picture frame as if trying to instruct me.

“Believe...” he whispers into my ear.

With his arms spread out, he sings in bliss, “Remember, it’s all real, Blissy boi! ;}”

I chuckle lightly as I put it over one eye—the other closed—I know what I’m doing, it just seems silly—

The kaleidoscope slides through my eye. I can’t open my other.

—Woah...

I pause in disbelief.

Through a whirlpool, the world opens like a split kaleidoscope:

In a red-pink ocean full of doodles like stars, scribbling pentagrams and small toy planets, I see endless spiralling fragmented lands upon lands full of attractions I would’ve never imagined, stacked and drifting like mismatched jigsaw pieces rotating slowly.

Some are crooked carnival grounds spinning in reverse.Others are alternate birthday parties like this one being held by balloons, and hallways that bleed into paper playgrounds. One looks like a melted school full of dancing cartoons, desks floating, broken clocks liquefying down the walls in paint.Another—a glitching pixelated arcade spiralling into a toy shop made of pillow teeth, blinking softly with every second. Smiling clusters of reversing cars racing in looping, twisting roads made from rainbows with no finish line.

The cloudy heavens of darkness are overcrowded full of Delusion’s massive eyes—observing each world. Just like the ocean from earlier but fleshed out, except the psychedelic worm is missing—the one at the start of this dream reality. Beaconing stage lights of neon colours in the centre of the ocean (galaxy?) parade the world in a hypnotising yet irregular trance:

Left, right, left, right, left, left, left-

The doodles and plastic planets float endlessly like particles, drifting in the ocean of heavenly joy.

Many overstimulating worlds, sketched from flashy, crayon-scribbling rainbows, artificial cardboard cutouts, and cartoony D.I.Y kid-crafted decorations, all illuminated by more dazzling eye-catching lights that burn into my vision just like this one! Though the worlds unique in their own ways and themes, they also have many similarities; The skies are all a bright red like no other’s but Delusion’s—so intense but hypnotising as they sway along the natural spiral patterns of the ocean—and the worlds are a neon glitch in chromatic aberration, like looking through an old digital screen from the 2000’s.

Illusions are everywhere and trippy like psychedelics, overly animated and vibrant colours swirling. So surreal. So abstract. I’m mesmerized by the many hues and unreal surreal friends of creative variety that fill this universe.

Each world I look at, I can clearly smell the strong, tasty and fresh aroma of it, and I can hear my friends cheer and laugh in the distant worlds, projected as larger digital holograms.

Cities and foods and objects and scattered lands and buildings and messes and abstractions and beings that float guided by Delusion’s trusting eyes, drowning out—what was ever amiss? with rainbows that tinge the heavenly multicoloured red skies.

Gigantic, crumpled paper whale-like abstractions swim through the ocean, drifting like video game sprites. From their paper-torn blowholes, bursts an elegant fountain of dancing and swirling lavender strings that lead to frozen and shattered clocks of rainbow spirals, swinging like a pendulum. The clock’s broken shards float away like litter in space. Upon closer inspection, the spiralling clock’s entrancing dance are what keeps the whales in the ocean skies like wings—as if they were flying. The paper whales—despite being paper—have textures of a real brain. Their eyes are scribbled out, and they have the tail of a rat. Noclipped inside each other and stitched together from beneath, swims mirrored whales. The mirrored whales have inverted colours, patterned with binary code in a playful font. Every breath and synchronised swim together, they reverse inside out and sswap appearances. Every move I take, they blurt out some sort of rambling indistinct radio static, switching between voices I know I’ve heard before—only this noise is too far to understand.

I stand in disbelief.

When I pay attention to my surroundings, though—still blissfully lost in the happy trance—, I can hear Delusion’s friendly and cheerful voice—whispering something that softly rings in my eardrums on loop.

“Stay.”

“Forget.”

“nois—uleD.”

I don’t stop him. I smile.

Naturally, I lift my hands to pull the kaleidoscope away—but there is no kaleidoscope. Was there ever one? The view to the ocean is still in place—tv frames displayed around it like a passageway—or I feel like more of a pit through a screen. Maybe it was always here...

They all stare. Everyone, is staring...

Happy. Smiling back.I can see the others singing—in hundreds of different chaotic, robotic-like, glitching tones, layering and rewriting voices of my past.

Everything is bent and shaped in all sorts of surreal, whimsical ways to make—absolute perfection.

Pure bliss.

Here, I feel like I can do anything. Here, I feel unjudged. Here, I feel like Bliss.

Y o u  a r e  B l i s s.

“I am Bliss!!”—I giggle in my head!

Delusion freezes for a moment like a paused cartoon—his eyes replaced with digital loading icons spinning. The noises of a music box rewinding sounds as if he himself is rewinding!

A rush of anemoia punches me in the chest—or I guess the nothing?—flooding my senses with a high stronger than any drug, stronger than any dream. I am weightless. Warm. Found.

The feeling of daze without a lost haze. I feel regained, I feel found. I feel at Home. This isn’t a house but it’s Home.

Comfort hums loud enough to deafen every question inside me even if I could speak.

I begin to spread my jumbled missing arms open, free like a kid again, to forget and ignore, to be dumb again!

Comfortably, I dance like a lunatic euphoric wild smiling friend without judgement (despite having no proper body but a piece of hand). Millions of synchronizing, unfamiliar 2D friends copy me from everywhere like laughing sheep steppuP.

Each time I blink, colours change order, the world feels like a balloon, it IS a balloon, stretching—NO, shrinking? Elastic? I—I—I—I feel like I’m going to burst—burst—burst—burst—burst—BURST!!!-

Delusion jumps me from behind with his voice and I hear his giggles as he resumes from being frozen.

He smiles in an overwhelming ectasy almost like he heard me say who I know know know I am, “YOU ARE BLISS!! YOU ARE BLISS!!! YOU—YOU—YOU—YOU—" suddenly, his voice glitches and loops his last word—he vomits rainbows and smiley stickers as he continues talking like nothing happened, “I’M SO SO SUPER PROUD OF YOU! NOW THAT’S—” his voice breaks and for a moment, he sounds just like me. He clears his throat, “THAT’S THE SOUL MY BESTEST FRIEND!!!! :DDDDDD” Delusion races around me and wraps his arms around my missing back from behind—but I can still feel his obscure phantom touch. He lets out a few light tears of static on my missing shoulder, showing his overwhelming admiration—though weirdly, I can see the droplets fall from where my shoulder would be...as if it were there.

He twirls a 180 around and then like a stranger, hesitates to turn as if unsure if I just tapped him or not—then when he sees me, his casual face beams with joy with his finger on his cheek as if saying “lil old me?”. He sways to the side like he’s about to fall over, then leaps onto me and tugs me into a big bear hug, patting me on the back like a long-lost favourite uncle I haven’t seen in 10 years!

He sings, “Look who it is~!” his voice mocks dramatically, "It’s—BLISS!!! Bliss Flores—the big small birthday boy!! We’ve got so much fun and adventures to be had have and WE and YOU and I are just STARVING to celebrate your arrival for your special day forever here!! We wanna give you as much bliss and fun as cartoonly possible and beyond the limits unlimited!! Always and only forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and—” he rambles stuck on loop until I gently poke him, “—so don’t you worry your little head about it ending! :]” With a stiff and straight arm, he pats where my head should be and smiles at me with his scribbling red eyes—they always leak what seems to be long downwards lavender mascara (like tears), but as thin as string,

I turn, curious but happily locked in a grin towards the smiling friends.

“All your friends invited, Bliss!!! They wouldn’t wanna miss out on the most special cartoon’s birthday after all, now would they!?” He giggles over ecstatically (a bit more than me).

Is—is he...crying...?

“NO!! I’m SMILING!!!” He says with a trembling voice and glittery, watery eyes of static.

You can hear me?

He doesn’t say anything, he just...laughs...?

His laugh sounds natural, but it feels almost forced like someone elses laugh—oddly nostalgic but fake...

We laugh and smile together in a senseless joy I’ve never felt in my life.

But for a moment—and only a moment as my broken head takes a breath of air—I thought I saw the empty room again, but...at the same time—I see the outlines of this world like an xray, and below the outlines of this cake, I see an upside down mirrored side fleshed-out, twisting in blood and neon-

A mind-numbing screech with layered glitches of static louder than a siren whistle pierces my ears. I jump and see Delusion screaming, then as soon as I look, he resumes talking like a cassette tape, and as he talks...like 10 ads for toys from the 2000’s plays? “AHAHAHA!!! GO ON!—Is that teeth—WHAAAAT! ME TOO!” he screams nonsense?, giggling nervously as he scribbles indistinct happy doodles on his body with his fingertips, “—OH—you’ve GOTTA try this cake! It’s ezitonpyH flavour! :0” he giggles increasingly louder in hyper-excitement.

I want to question Delusion about the other side—but—I have no mouth to...

Something in his face flickers—a face of fear—a face of...regret...?-

No! No! No! A face of chaotic bliss!!!

He swings happy and jolly in an instant, and races me toward the circuluar (with that universe ocean in the middle) carpet in the middle (is it just me or has the floor extended longer for space to run?). Just before I sit down on an animal pillow around the carpet, he waves his finger, “Nuh uh uh~!” then quickly boops my nose and begins to giggle loudly like it’s the funniest joke ever. He then pats my pillow down with a loving shine in his smile as dust of blue eye particles literally cough themselves out and disappear from the...animate pillow...?

But anyways, it makes me giggle!, and then- then we both collapse with laughter—me on my pillow, Delusion on the carpet!

Were the pillows here before?—wait—was there always food here too???

I sit on the pillow, dangling my feet into the universal blissful ocean.

All the emac eno oN’s (the cardboard-head friends) jump and fall onto the carpet, too—the same motion, the same times—except they don’t have any pillows. There’s just one, and it’s mine.

The table is a feast loaded with perfect and scrumptious cupcakes, cookies, mum’s famous cinnamon apple pie crunch, all my favourite snacks, and mum’s nostalgic honey and ginger tea for when I was ill.

Overflowing, the weirdly familiar tea...bubbles with some sort of black ink...but something about it’s familiar, everyday darkness instinctively pulls me to drink it. Though—it’s much different now. The darkness was never this much before...

Excitedly, I begin to rush to take a bite—but—I don’t even have a mouth...

From Delusion’s scrawling body, he throws his arm into it as it submerges like ripping his heart out—then pulls out a scribbling fishing rod-like thing. It has a star on the end, and he throws it into the ocean—literally—and not even a second later, the star shoots slowly ascends from the ocean—but instead, attatched onto a different thing. Floating above the middle of the pit, the star trails a fountain of rainbows and red-pink ocean drenched glitter. I feel the ground tremble for a moment—then halt when the star stops. Floating above the star, my favourite sugar-coated birthday cake with a fork in it and piled with sweets and decorations—completely identical to the large cake we’re on now. Delusion jumps, catching the cake with his strings—and does a spin upside down—the cake stays on the plate! He throws the cake uncomfortably close towards me on now 2 balloon dinner tables phasing through eachother like a cross. They stretch like a bridge either side of the kaleidoscope.

The animal pillows have now evolved into animal pillow chairs—as light as a dream! I feel him scratch my head just like dad.

Exactly like dad.

Every time I lay a “finger” on the cake, it screams and grows floppy Claymation hands that go crazy.

I stare—laughing but slightly baffled. “What-”

“It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real It’s real.. :)” Delusion whispers.

I just look at him with silent blinks of confusion, assuming or at least imagining eyes on me—how pretty they would look...

A neon-coloured sparkler almost larger than the cake, made from sparkling rainbow trails is stuffed into it—labelled: 1—and somehow, it brightens the already bright enough room.

I giggle to myself—I’m not 1.

He giggles back, “That’s not your age, silly!”

“So you CAN hear me?”

“Of course I can, silly!”

“But I don’t have a mouth—I’m speaking in my head right now!”

Delusion just laughs some more AS IF HE CAN’T HEAR ME!

I watch as the beings all dance and sing along to the birthday music in perfect sync yet again...unnaturally...like—puppeteered retro npcs. Their voices have changed—now different and less familiar voices this time. Every moment in this world, everything grows less familiar, and yet, more familiar in a strange way like waking up from a coma and remembering reality again.

Delusion sits on a misplaced chair aside me, wrapping his arms around as my best friend. My best best bestest friend!!

Everyone smiles.

My chair...breakdances...?

Everything feels so fun, I never wanna leave.

They all stare. Everyone, is staring.

Everyone is happy. Everyone is smiling.

I’m thankful the world is like this.

I’m thankful to have been born here.

"Make a wish...”

"Make a wish...”

"Make a wish...”

The world chants with no worries, just bliss.

“OH BLISSS BLISS BLISS BLISS!!!” he squeals like a whistle, “AHH I CAN WAIT!!! :D” Delusion chuckles, leaning close.

He whispers into my ears with a voice of broken bells. “Come on already! If YOU blow out the candle~...

...you can stay forever. ;)”

I look at my smiling friends.

“This is what you want, right? :D”

Their chants slowly twist into a question.

“Are you happy?”

Over and over.

“Quickly! :)” Delusion shouts in encouraging glee.

I blow.

...

I can’t...

The world flickers.

Next, growing louder into worsening desperate screams, he doodles on himself harder and faster.

I try to blow.

I CAN'T—

“QUICKLY! :(”

The world glitches into flickering chaos, shifting between realities red and blue. The outlines surround the missing see through pieces of the world like an x-ray again. My heart pounds in my hollow soul. I try to blow and feel my face, but all I feel is air. Delusion hurriedly doodles on himself

“QUICK! >:(”

The world feels like it’s quaking—the colours paling and the surrealism vanishing. I can see Disillusion’s blue shadow now. It’s growing—everywhere like a fire. A surge of light pressure builds where my mouth should be. He scribbles on himself desperately now and sharply.

“NOW! :”

The cardboard people melt—their clay flesh draining into clumps of a staining liquid in the cardboard box. Delusion begins to glitch out and split with Disillusion’s shadow, fighting and scribbling down on his whole body now—still some sort of positive rushed doodles—so fast and so hard that it’s turned into stabbing and carving.

“NOW! [??]”

The sky cracks into a deep calming blue. Sounds of nature distort into clarity. The blue stretches down like long rain pillars, reaching for my hand. As everything begins to die out, I pay attention to the cake.

I remember...

Before I can even take a bite, the cake dissolves. It swiftly sublimes into a gas like before the candle smoke, and the remnants of the cake illusion reach through into my brain like anemoia.

Now, through each desperate blow, finally I feel some surge of air form. I can finally feel my mouth, and with my hands channelling my breath, I blow!

I blow...

The candle goes out.

Delusion smiles—a smile so cartoony yet mad. 

That moment, when he let out a real, descending cackle...I began to regret my delusion...

The smoke swiftly fills the room, twisting into a lavender fog. I feel my soul submerge into another world.

My emotions fade.

I feel...I feel pale.

The blue swallows me into a tunnel of lavender strings that twist and pull me back to the other side. I see the silhouette of delusion again, this time fighting against a serene blue from the drowning neon fog. The blue corrupts the red and engulfs it. I see the shadow of Disillusion again. Softly and slowly, he rests his hands on my shoulders to make sure I’m okay.

“What...have you done...?” he whispers, voice shaky but calm as more of a genuine question.

“I just...did what he said.”

“Do you really trust yourself?”

“...I...don’t know...”

“You don’t know how much you can change a person based on your choice...”

He closes his eyes, and smiles with a deep but loving breath.

“It's okay...it’s just you and you...let's stick to what's real... Can you remember for me...?”

“...I...don’t know...”

Indvidual echoes distort throughout my mind, overlapping others and gradually getting clearer and clearer. They call out my name from the depths.