I See One Second Into The Future: Loner In The Apocalypse

After saying those words, the man continued to draw his fantastical castle. Before Kairos could ask for more clarification, he was pushed out of the memory, or whatever it was supposed to be.

He mumbled the words back to himself.

"Accept myself to understand myself?..."

Kairos thought about it for a while, really thinking about the words, not wanting to misunderstand. He was having trouble since he didn't exactly realize what he wasn't accepting about himself.

In reality, it wasn't as though he could just think of something off the top of his head that he knew about himself but was avoiding. If he had done a good job of avoiding, then naturally he wouldn't even be thinking about it.

But a bad job, then it probably wouldn't even be something he really had a problem with.

After pondering for a while, he suddenly decided to use some of his mana to create a moderately sized fireball in his hand, heating up the wall next to him. He carved away at it with a combination of his spear to get the rough bits before smoothing it out with the side of his claw.

There were crashing sounds of battle behind him, though he didn't seem to notice any of that.

Thanks to seeing a second in the future, he was able to reverse any mistakes before they happened, and soon found himself with a pseudo mirror. It was more off a shiny surface compared to anything else, but it showed a good enough reflection.

He placed both his hands onto the sides of the mirror before pressing his forehead against it as well, as though he could somehow push through into the reflection and show all of the secrets he kept from himself.

For starters, he took a good look at his physical appearance. He tilted his head down so he could continue pressing against the wall and look at himself. Though, there wasn't exactly anything pretty to see.

Still being in his Abyss Form, his entire body was black flesh, lacking any real eyes and a gaping maw with traces of what appeared to be saliva dripping from it. The appearance was anything but human-like.

Kairos didn't think much of it, but perhaps it was more than just a physical change.

Regardless, that was just pure speculation with no real evidence and wasn't really what he was trying to do here.

He thought about what kind of person he objectively was, thinking of his traits.

Kairos deemed himself a serious person.

A person who cares about things, but perhaps not as much as he should.

He wasn't the most proactive person.

While he wasn't simply sitting back at any time, he also felt as though he was only going along with the flow. Though he did acknowledge that might've been overly critical, considering many others were a far worse example than him.

And after just those two things, he found himself at a roadblock.

Kairos eventually deemed himself to be an introvert, though that was more or less useless.

However, despite not being the most successful in finding anything controversial with himself, he did eventually feel something that he did have resistance against. While he was completely fine with evaluating himself now, he was reluctant to do so when he was younger.

Kairos hesitated for a while on this but realized this might've been what the strange man had been talking about.

So he thought about his childhood memories.

His especially early ones were generally filled with nothing. Or more accurately, him doing nothing. For hours on end, with nothing to do, he would simply sit in the middle of a room. Simply because that's the only thing he knew to do.

For quite some time, his life was just like that. His parents were either working or if they went out they wouldn't bring him along since it was inconvenient.

Kairos didn't exactly have any toys or hobbies, so he just remained there.

Sitting.

He just considered himself lucky if they remembered to prepare him a meal. Not that they forgot most of the time, but it wasn't exactly rare either.

He found it hard to describe himself whatsoever at that time. After all, he hardly did anything at all. The things that came to mind as descriptors were male, boy, and maybe child which overlapped with each other.

Kairos accepted to define the him at the time as robotic since that was the way he acted. Only moving when prompted.

Eventually, he was old enough for his parents to allow him to go outside on his own, which felt like an entirely different world. Kairos could not remember the age, but he knew that it was realistically one that was too young for him to be off on their own.

Not that he was complaining.

During that time, it was almost as though someone breathed life into his corpse. He was filled with curiosity, going from one place to another all the time. There were several people who saved him from doing dangerous things like going out onto the street.

He first learned to lie when people asked him where his parents were.

He first learned that stores and people were everywhere, whether it was other kids or adults.

He also first learned that there were less than nice people as well, though it hardly bogged him down.

Everything felt new and magical.

Kairos couldn't help but feel a little sad as he defined the him at the time to be curious and cheerful. Looking back, it was almost hard to realize that it was actually him in those memories and not someone else.

It was simply the complete opposite of who he was now.

People change, and perhaps that change isn't always a good thing. Kairos felt melancholy. There was a part of him that wished he could be more of that kind of person, but there was another part that knew he just couldn't.

Not to mention, it would probably be a disadvantage to his survival if he were to shift to become that kind of person.

It was at this point that he understood who he was a bit closer.

Someone who was sad, but wanted to be cheerful. But it wasn't like he could become happy just because he desired it. Of course, there were things such as drugs, but he didn't bother trying since he knew they wouldn't fix his problem on a fundamental level.

He relaxed his hands that were unknowingly pressed hard against the wall.

There was a certain sense of relief at acknowledging this fact. Yet, there was also a sense of despair that weighed down on him. Frankly, it was something that he should've realized a while ago.

Especially when he was pseudo-diagnosed with depression by the smartest guy he had found after the apocalypse.

Yet despite all that, it wasn't something that had clicked until now.

Kairos took in a deep breath, before taking a step back from his bootleg mirror. For a moment, he just let himself be sad. Instead of denying it, ignoring it, or trying to distract himself, he plain and simple realized he was sad and let himself feel that sadness.

He cried ever so slightly, though it was hard to tell since his eyes currently weren't there.

After staring at his reflection for a while, the sense of despair gradually became lighter. It was still there, that was for sure, but it was no longer on his mind so much.

Kairos now had a new goal, to become happier, even if only a little.

He thought about why things made him happy as a kid. For him at the time, he hadn't seen much before and was pretty much shut off from the rest of the world. However, this sudden access to everything else was incredibly interesting.

Just finding new things out made him happy. In fact, simply walking around was enough for a smile to be on his face. It was a simpler time when the little things were big. But no matter what he did now, times were no longer simple. He understood more, and many things had become expected.

Even if things were different in the future, he had enough of a basis now to make sense of most of the things that were foreign, so that they didn't feel new.

However, Kairos had no plans of being pessimistic and calling it at that.

What if instead of hoping that happiness came to him, his perspective changed?

Instead of hoping that he would somehow be able to just be happy like those times before, what if he tried to shift his perspective so that he could view things in a happier light?

Of course, that was easier said than done, but Kairos decided this was what he was going to try.

And so, his first step was trying to smile a little.

It looked especially ugly, because it had been a while since last time and his monster form.

But it was a smile.