I found myself in the inky darkness, floating weightlessly. I didn’t hold my breath, and yet I didn’t draw breath either; a strange fullness warmed my lungs instead. I reckoned the sea must’ve claimed me, and wherever I was must be the afterlife, until slowly rising from below I spied the museum-like hall where I viewed other’s Vanta memories. My feet lightly touched down on the white marble, and I looked around at the many pools that stretched out before me. As I approached one and looked in, I saw a memory: standing in an alley, I slit the throat of a man on the ground, and lingered for a moment to watch the blood gush from the wound before looking up at a familiar figure, the Siphoner.

  These were my memories.

  I stepped back instinctively, confused. How could I be looking into myself like this? The memory replayed itself, over and over, as if it were taunting me. I looked away, but saw another pool’s memory instead: I stepped into a sparring ring, and with three strikes, sent Joon-hu to the ground, breathless. I rubbed his back to soothe him, but I could feel the smile on my face as I did it, standing over my conquered prey. I closed my eyes, and fell to my knees; this place must be hell. If I could breathe, I’d be hyperventilating; panic was settling into my bones at the idea of being trapped in here forever. I couldn’t handle this for another second.

  “Hey there, stranger,” said a familiar voice. As I whipped in the direction of the echoing sound, I spotted an unsettling sight; myself, as a human, stood before me. “I know you’re scared, but I promise, it’ll be okay. You just need to accept this.”

  “Accept what!?” I responded, agitated at the sight of my old form. Just seeing it disgusted me; I wanted to leave it all behind when I changed.

  “These are all your ‘mistakes.’ Well, you call them mistakes. To me, they are just a part of you. Just like I am. As much as you hate the idea of it.” It gave me a soft smile, one I didn’t know it could make.

  “They are mistakes. And I can’t make mistakes. I don’t get to make mistakes,” I told it, my fingernails beginning to scratch at the skin on my arms.

  “Why do you think that? Why do you think you run loose when you have too much Vanta?” it asked, kneeling down to my eye level, though still slightly taller than me.

  “Because… Because… I’m a ruiner… I ruin things. And when I let myself go, I become a monster,” I sadly responded. I sat down with my back to the wall, my knees tucked into my chest, my forehead at rest. “I am evil. I’m violent, and destructive, and I need to cut that off of me if I’m going to be a Champion.”

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  “I see. So, since you’re evil, you can’t be a Champion. So you aren’t going to be evil anymore. Even though your power involves eating people’s evils to strengthen yourself?” it asked, innocently.

  “Yes, I can’t rely on that power anymore.” I was resolute in this decision.

  “Well, can I tell you a secret?” it asked, sitting next to me. I nodded in response. “Good and evil, right and wrong, don’t really exist. There isn’t a polarity like that in the world. Folks are always doing the best they can at any given moment, you know? Take that drug lord girl, for example. You took her Vanta, and she became someone willing to do the right thing. She had the potential to do right all along, but she couldn’t because of her upbringing, and her natural wiring, and the hand she had been dealt. It’s the same for you. You look at these pools and see mistakes, but I see someone trying their best with what they were given.”

  They stood up, and offered me a hand. “Come with me, I want to show you a memory.” I softly took their hand, and led me to a pool far in the back. “Please brace yourself for this one, Avery,” they warned me, before showing me what lied within.

  I saw myself talking with the building manager, who was practically screaming at my Mom for being behind on rent for the second month in a row. My mother was already sickly looking, suggesting this was closer to the end of her life, and she kept telling me things in Korean to try to assuage the man. But everything I said to the man was met with harsh reprimand, until he finally reached a point where he struck me, hard, in the face. My mother screamed, and he just yelled for us to have everything my next month or we were going to be on the streets. As I sat there, bleeding from my head, my mother knelt over me, crying, but her first words to me were not comfort or remorse; she simply asked, “why didn’t you say it right?”

  Tears began to fall from my stone-like face as I watched the memory loop and loop, and my other self placed their hand on mine. I looked at them, and they just smiled softly, and said, “drink.” Without hesitating, I drank deep of the memory, feeling the blow to my head, and the agony of my mother’s disappointment, and for the first time, I knew my own suffering. Was Vanta not just evil? Was Vanta their anguish and suffering as well? I looked around the hall at all of the pools, and then to my other self, who took my hands in theirs, and said “now you know what to do. Drink deep, Avery. Accept yourself, even the dark parts, and you can be free of this place.”

  “But what if I don’t like those parts of me?” I asked them.

  “You don’t have to like them, hun. You just need to acknowledge them, in order to grow, and move on,” he said.

  So I began drinking deep of my misery and shame, the lowest memories of my life. The pain was almost unbearable, but every time I was about to give in to this feeling of abject agony, I felt the warm hand of my other self on my back, and I felt the strength to keep going. As I drank the last Vanta, I felt the burden on my back double, then triple, threatening to crush me under its awesome weight; and then, just like that, it was gone, and the weightlessness returned. I felt a peace I had never known, and I looked back to see my other self, but couldn’t find him anywhere. As the room began to fade away, a light appeared overhead, and I found myself floating up towards it, knowing that this place would always exist somewhere inside of me.