Epilogue.

Everyone knows how the ending to a tragedy goes. Tragedies always follow the road to ruin, and at the very least one of the most important characters is dead or better off dead at that point. A tragedy ends in despair, they are not meant to end with hope or any form of joy, unless it is in black humor or sadistic pleasure. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was not a tragedy. It had every opportunity to become one, as Roskolnikov was most certainly on the road to ruin, but he found his redemption. He had the opportunity to turn back. A tragedy passes the point of no return.

But what happens after the fact? After a tragedy ends, what is left? What happens next? I mean, of course you don't want to think about that, because in the despair that's left at the end, what is the point in going forward? But there's always an 'and' after the tragedy, whether we want to think about it or not… Right?

The Phantom of the Opera goes past the point of no return. Maybe Raoul and Christine have their "happily ever after," but the phantom himself is left with nothing but the negative feelings that will haunt him to his end. What happens to him? He shrinks back into the darkness and stays there for the rest of his days in sorrow, regret, and self-loathing. Eventually he'll cease to exist, and then he would merely be a legend; a myth; a ghost of the past. Christine and Raoul would live haunted by his memory, but they would move on, as all people do.

Shakespeare's Hamlet. The entire kingdom is dead, leaving Fortinbras to become the new king. We've lost Hamlet, who has succeeded at last in avenging his father, but is left lying on the ground, struggling to give his final speech before drawing his last breath. His death marks the end of the story; there is nothing left to say. But there is. Fortinbras takes over as ruler of the kingdom, and then what? He rules well or he rules poorly, and the people of Denmark slowly forget about the former rulers; they become written in their history books. The complexity of what happened to lead to their deaths is lost. All of the emotions fade and rust and come out to nothing in the end.

Gregor Samsa in Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis met a tragic end at the hands of his own family, in a sense. Shunned by those most close to him, he died sick and alone without any hope of recovery from his state as some kind of deplorable insect. And what did that lead to, in the end? The parents had once relied on Gregor, and then he was a problem, a nuisance, a hindrance – a tumor to their lives. The family was relieved at Gregor's death, and then what? They look to their daughter, instead, ready to utilize her to find a good, wealthy husband. Gregor is gone now. History repeats itself.

Both the monster and its creator have passed on in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. What is left after they are gone but Walton's records of Victor Frankenstein's recollections? Who would believe them? Their story becomes nothing more than an urban legend over time, and eventually, perhaps they pass from memory altogether.

After Oedipus dies in the plays written by Sophocles, his daughters are left to mourn. And yet, they return to Thebes to prevent war as the Chorus tells them to stop their weeping. Someday, they will. The stages of grief will run their course, and they will reach acceptance. Time will pass.

The tragedies pass.

Almost like they hadn't happened. As if they hadn't mattered.

Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare's works, Stephen King's, Takatsuki Sen's, all of them pass on into normality and peaceful times. They are forgotten, in their fictional realms. It only matters in the moment, it seems.

Once upon a time, there was a human boy who often visited a certain coffee shop in Tokyo called Anteiku. Due to a tragic turn of events, he became a half-ghoul and began to work at the shop. He made friends, felt at home. Some terrible things happened, and he'd already known his share of misfortune, but everyone supported one another there. One day he was stolen away and everything fell apart. He changed, and decided he wouldn't come back. Piece by piece, everything began to break, shattered slowly, crumbled quickly. His end was inevitable. He suffered greatly, and those close to him at Anteiku feared in their hearts what was to come. He went down a dangerous path that wasn't meant to be. He became someone he wasn't supposed to.

His name was Ken Kaneki.

Where am I now? What happened to everyone else? Anteiku is destroyed and I am gone, gone, gone…

Now that I'm dead, I wonder if the tragedy's ended. Will it ever end?

All I am is a passing memory,

A story of a boy that used to work at that old coffee shop.

The manager

was so kind.

Where did it all go?

One day, a girl who worked there starts her own coffee shop with renewed hope and a warm, if nostalgic, smile. The Anteiku raid is in the records, the lives lost are kept in memorials and in memories.

Ken Kaneki is a boy she'd met once.

But now, I am merely a transparent story to tell of a place long gone.

Close the book; let it accumulate dust.

I lived.

I died.

The end.