Chapter 21: 21. Jace

Jace had a terrible day yesterday, a terrible night, and was now having a really terrible morning.

Before being reborn, he was chased out of his home, and had to live by jobbing in a supermarket. He could not say how much hatred he felt as the days were going by. From being everybody's darling to a life of a middle class. He really hated Lance.

Everything was not as it should be.

He was already told since childhood that he was a substitute. He was aware that his dad found a child similar to his son, only for pulling his mother out of depression. His mother had no idea about him not being her son. He played his role according to the script provided by his adoptive father. With time, he learned to really love at least his mother; he also began to develop the need to prove himself to his father.

He loved his school; he loved the lifestyle; everything about it.

Jace often thought inevitably that it would be perfect if he were really Lance. And after a few years, he thought,

'Maybe I am Lance?' He didn't remember much of his childhood in a random slum.

'Perhaps I have always been Lance; then I was kidnapped and got lost. My father found me, but had his reasons for lying to me?'

Several variations of this thought wandered through his head for a few years. He was constantly staring at Lance's childhood pictures, finding himself more and more similar to the kid. He checked photos on the beach and searched for similar moles, finding a few of them—but he had grown, so naturally they could not be in the exact same place.

His eyes were the same blue as Lance's; just because of a picture shot by an old camera, they had a gray hue, and anyway, how many people had such piercing eye color? Not many. It all made sense.

And someday, he really believed it. He was sure of it, and he let go of his worries, living honestly as Lance. He was Lance.

And then came the day. The day when he came back from interning in his dad's company, he saw a fucked up student in his class. He had seen so many photos, had seen all the damn moles, he knew the moment he saw in these goddamn light gray eyes. Then, come on, they fucking had the same surname. Many times he told his schoolmates that it was just a coincidence, but who would believe that.

They were said to first look like cousins, later like brothers, and after that, they 'looked like twins'. Some fucker even said that it would be possible for them to be swapped as children, being the real live true and false son of the common novel trope.

It was so damn near the truth; he felt torn apart. Already on the first day Jace saw him, he had hired a private detective to find out everything about this guy.

He couldn't stop laughing when he saw the results of the investigation. He had thought this guy just had a strange disease for the sweating, but he was not only a junkie, but he was also raped! And the cherry on top was that he was raped by men.

'Oh my goodness, thank you for this,' he had said to the ceiling.

Then, a few months later, he grew bold and meekly presented the documents to his father. He knew he couldn't keep it a secret forever, and one year was already the limit. So he had to confess first about Lance being in his school, in his class.

He told his father. But he had apparently lived his life in naught. He had underestimated his father's love for his mother. And he had underestimated his mother's love for her son. Father Walker knew that Mother Walker loved Jace with all her heart. But he also knew that she had some doubt about him being really their son. She would never find true peace if he did not let her reunite with her real son.

So after nearly a year of making Lance withdraw from his addiction, they did just that, and like this, Jace had accelerated his inevitable demise.

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