You are the monster you fear.

I had planned everything meticulously. For months, I studied a new language, absorbed the nuances of a different culture and saved just enough to vanish. I left behind everything I knew without so much as a backward glance. I told myself it was for peace.

It was a difficult decision yet not nearly as difficult as it should have been. As the world slid closer to a third war, I grew weary of the life I'd been taught to desire. A job that allowed me to survive, a man everyone praised as "husband material" waiting for when I’ll become his and bear his children, a comfortable apartement. I had what others would die for and yet, it killed me softly, every day.

No one warned me that comfort could be a slow execution. That the very life I was told to chase would become a cage made of soft linens and polite smiles. I couldn’t take it anymore, the way people froze on sidewalks while others stepped over them in thousand-dollar boots. The constant hum of death on the news layered under ads for facial cream and luxury watches. I wasn’t living, I was complying.

So I left. I left my name, my family, my lovers. Everything. For a while, I was happy.

I fled to the Japanese countryside. It welcomed me like a long-lost child. The air tasted different. Cleaner. Kinder. I built a routine. Mornings with burning tea and the breeze brushing my skin. Walks to the tiny school where I taught children who still believed in magic. On the way, I always passed a bookstore tucked into a wall of green, run by the sweetest woman I had ever met; Mrs. Abe.

Her shop smelled like paper, rain and time. Stepping into it felt like slipping out of the world. I often stopped just to talk. She had the kind of smile that warmed you from the inside.

A little further down was the river. A living, breathing thing, curling around the rocks like a lover. I must have walked by it a hundred times yet it never looked the same. It moved differently each morning with the choreographed dance of the fishermen casting lines like spells. I watched them every day, not once did they rush. They had the kind of patience that made you ache.

Twelve months passed. A year where I thought only of myself. A year where my peace came before anyone else's pain. I was disconnected. I thought I was free.

But peace is a liar. It doesn’t last. It never intended to.

On a hot, drowsy afternoon, I stepped into the bookshop, expecting the usual comfort. Mrs. Abe greeted me but this time she didn’t let me wonder around. She guided me to the round table and placed an envelope in my hands. Her voice was serious as she explained: her son had joined the army shortly before I arrived. and this was his first letter since but it oddly wasn’t written in Japanese.

I opened it with careful fingers. Inside, a death. He was gone. Bombed. Thanked for his service. Called a hero. They offered their sincerest condolocense.

The world stilled. I heard the buzz of a bee outside, felt every thread in my shirt but I could not meet her eyes. When I finally did, her face had collapsed in on itself. My voice betrayed me.

“I’m so sorry.”

My words meant nothing. Her body dropped to the floor, she begged the earth to swallow her whole as it had done to her child.

Weeks passed, but grief doesn’t understand calendars, it sat with me at every meal.

Then, one morning, as I rushed past the bookstore, I heard shouting. By the river, a crowd had gathered. Mr. Egawa, usually silent as stone was shouting at a man in a suit. His face was cracked open with rage.

"They’ve poisoned the water!" he cried. "My father fished here, his father before him. This river fed us and now you tell me it’s nothing but chemicals? How dare you!"

The suited man didn’t blink. His silence was polished, practiced. He knew these people had no teeth left to bite.

Someone pointed at me. "You were a lawyer, weren’t you? Help us !"

All eyes turned even the man in the suit. He smirked like he already won, he knew I wouldn’t do anything.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat with my food, cold and untouched. The TV in the corner—a box I barely remembered—whirred quietly. I turned it on, hoping for distraction.

And there it was.

War. On every channel.

Not just one. All of them. Cities reduced to ash. Camps overflowing. Children screaming into silence. A planet cracking beneath the weight of our indifference. Footage from drones, from phones, from people who hadn’t realized they were filming their own deaths.

I watched. I couldn’t stop. I tried to mute it but even silence echoed. My hands trembled as I realized I was a coward. Perhaps you are too.

You scroll past bleeding children. You mute the live feed from the rubble. You sip coffee while hospitals are flattened. You repost slogans and call it care.

You think you are clean because you didn’t drop the bomb. But you watched it fall. You saw the mother wailing on your screen and thought, that’s sad, then tapped away.

You think you’re better because you feel bad? You’re not. You’re worse because you know and you still choose silence.

The stench of burning forests and mass graves will find your nostrils. The cries of those who were displaced, erased, enslaved will ring in your ears. You will trip over the corpses you chose not to see. When you fall, you will realize they looked exactly like you.

Do not turn your back. Do not dare.

Speak. Act.

You cannot turn a blind eye to human suffering, to this earth dying because eventually it is you who will suffer and you who will pay the price of it.

So do something. Before it is your son. Your river. Your life.

Before you are the one handed an envelope and it is already too late.