i'm so sorry for not uploading last week!! i don't really have an excuse, i just kinda forgot it was saturday, lol. sorry again!! but without further ado!:

(also this chapter is gonna be darker than usual so prepare yourself)

[tw: depression, dissociation, depersonalization/derealization, insomnia, intrusive thoughts, (implied (attempted)) suicide]

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Hanta Sero is a rather chipper and sociable person, getting along soundly with his peers with a constant smile on his face. He's also fairly talkative, being loud and showy at times, often attempting to impress his classmates somehow. His plain face was the butt of many jokes, but he took it in stride and laughed alongside the others. He was all in all a fun person to be around, and a good person at heart.

He was sociable and talkative, an aforementioned fact. A lesser known fact about him, though, is that he didn't really feel like himself whenever he was chatting with people. He felt like another person, in a sense. It was almost as if he was watching himself from outside his own body, eavesdropping on his own conversations. Like it was just another one of his TV shows, like nothing around him was real.

It was terrifying.

Another lesser known fact about himself is that he couldn't get out of bed, sometimes. Just the thought of doing so and facing the outside world made him want to die. Well, not die, exactly. He didn't want to kill himself (most of the time). It was more like he just wanted to sleep forever. And yet, whenever he settled into bed for the night, he couldn't fall asleep. His mind would race into odd hours of the night and leave him utterly exhausted.

Usually it was just stupid, simple thoughts. For instance, what he was going to have for lunch tomorrow, or what class was going to be about. Some nights, though, it would be about darker things. What if he never existed in the first place? What if everyone around him actually hated his guts, and they were just being nice to him out of pity?

Those were the worst nights. Those were the nights when he could barely breathe, the nights when he would shoot out tape and tie it into a loop without thinking, when he would have to catch and stop himself before he went too far. Those were the nights when he didn't sleep at all.

The day after was always so difficult, as well. It was hard to maintain his smile, the smile that was always there even though he could barely manage it. On those days, the times where he felt that sense of unreality, that detachment from himself and his surroundings, were intensified. It was so much worse than usual. It made him want that eternal sleep even more.

Hanta Sero was a fun and sociable person, but he wasn't really. He never actually felt like one, anyways. He just wanted to stay in bed and sleep forever, to avoid those thoughts and feelings that weren't his, to avoid the sleepless nights and the constant pain and the smile that he always had to have.

Hanta Sero wanted to escape everything, but it wasn't like anyone actually cared, because he was just the kid with the plain face who didn't have a care in the world.

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SO I THINK THIS SOUNDED REALLY SELF-PROJECTED BUT I SWEAR THAT IT WASN'T. Like, I had to look half of that up, especially the dissociation. I also don't have depression, so I had to look that up too, though I'm a tad more well-informed on that one. It made me kinda sad tbh, it's a scary topic. If you suspect you or a loved one has depression or a dissociation disorder, please contact a licensed professional! (I forgot to put that in the earlier chapters oops)

But anyways!!! It's almost the end of the book! I don't really know how to handle that, it's gonna be so bittersweet when we reach that final chapter. But I'll have more on that next Saturday, this A/N is already way too long.

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the super angsty chapter this week! Have a great day/night!

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