There was something that Suguru never understood in life. A question that would make his insides twist and churn, his throat burn with the familiar feeling of bile that would rise when the same boys that harassed him every day so much as breathed in his general direction. A twisted question that haunted his every waking moment as he’d sit and count the days that would pass him by on his calendar.

One… two… three…

Days became weeks, and weeks slowly turned into months - but every passing moment seemed to only make the question haunt him. So much that the question became so devastatingly rooted in his soul that it mocked him from every corner of every room, every surface of every wall - it was suffocating.

Was he twisted because of their hatred, or did they hate him because he was twisted?

He was never an extremely violent person in school - sure, he was like every other teenage boy. The same amount of twisted anger that was directed at nothing just because it could be, but he never hurt anyone. What little raising his parents did do, they never raised him to be such a monster.

But god would his mother be disappointed, now.

He wasn’t ashamed of that. The world had made his soft skin grow calloused, and he had nobody else to blame but the boys under the bridge after school, the teachers that would turn a blind eye just because those boy’s daddies had money. He could put the blame on anyone - anyone but himself. Because maybe there was a twisted part of him that he had somehow expressed during his teen years, he couldn’t recall it, and he simply didn’t care to. Not anymore, at least.

He wasn’t born a hero - but he sure as hell wasn’t born the monster that time had forced him to become. He wasn’t some… villain. He was a twisted and sick individual that needed help - whether he would admit it or not, it was your choice to convince him.

He walked on eggshells around you, treating you like a ticking time-bomb that was ready to explode at him at any given second. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy the sense of stability it gave him, because you had managed to keep him in line with just a single glance.

The same way that single glance in school kept him holding on for what he could before he dropped out, the same way that single glance made him keep true to his dreams and become a game developer.

It still made him melt.

He didn’t know how to feel.