DMITRI’S POV
Remembering something like that hurt every single time, without fail, no matter how many years had passed. It felt like a small, deliberate punishment handed down from somewhere far above me, a quiet penance for the harm I’d caused that day, one I was never meant to fully put down.
I knew what my closest friends would say if they were sitting here with me right now because they’d said it so many times over the years that I could recite it word for word. It wasn’t my fault. I was just a kid. There was no way I could have known something like that would happen. I’d honestly tried, more than once, to believe every word of comfort the people who knew the full story had offered me. But something deep inside me, some stubborn, unshakable part of my conscience, refused to accept it
