Cale had a decision to make.

He didn't like the decision, not one fucking bit, but after spending so much time in this shitty other world where he'd apparently achieved prosperity and happiness Cale had a really unfortunate amount of time to reflect upon, well, everything.

One of the sticky matters that was becoming unavoidable as time went on was his family.

Cale had been able to call off work and after he'd affirmed that Eric was the same jerk he knew, it was easy enough to talk to or avoid him at his leisure.

Alberu was a good roommate, if not a bit on the gloomy side on account of losing his fiance, and he gave Cale all of the room he needed to recover without allowing him any rope to hang himself with.

Sobriety was a nasty thing to experience when you'd focused on burying your feelings of inadequacy and loneliness inside of a bottle for several years now.

Family was a complicated subject for Cale.

They were the reason he drank for starters.

There was also no truly apt way of describing his feelings towards them. Cale loved his family with a protective passion that burned even in his worst hours. He also resented them, not a hateful emotion but rather a wretched one.

The part of his heart that cried out miserably for his mother.

His guilt for those feelings also drove him to drink.

Basically everything in regards to his family filled him with unsettled emotions that he had never been good at coping with. So instead of coping he focused on protecting them in his own unique way and drove his life to shit.

The idea that this Cale was on good terms with his family and attended weekly dinners with them was... unsettling. Cale had avoided it for as long as he could. But everytime Alberu sent along the message that he couldn't make it because of one reason or another, the guilt pierced his heart.

It wasn't just that he was avoiding the people he loved more than anyone else.

It was the knowledge that he was ruining something so precious for his other self.

To be clear, he held no great love for himself. And he especially resented the version of him who had achieved happiness where Cale had failed. He thought that the guy seemed like a really shitty bastard who just did whatever the fuck he wanted and he hated being compared to him at every fucking interval of every moment.

Seeing his happy face reflected in photographs and knowing that he couldn't compare.

Cale had rather masterfully developed an inferiority complex with himself. It was honestly an impressive feat.

But.

Despite Cale's every resentful feeling raging up inside of him without a single reprieve, Cale could empathize with the bastard like no one else.

The intolerable ache and agony of never having the family he truly wanted in his heart was probably the deepest scar upon Cale's miserable soul. Of all things, it was the one thing that Cale couldn't ruin for his other self.

Which is why he didn't want to meet them.

He'd ruin it. He wasn't his 'better' self. He was the garbage given human form who'd never figured out whatever epiphany his other self had in order to turn his life around.

The fear that they would revile him was paralyzing.

Even more pertinent, the fear that he could never have a family crushed his heart mercilessly.

But he couldn't keep avoiding them either. One way or another, he was sure to ruin things for his other self and he hated that.

So Cale had a decision to make and it made his stomach turn to consider but even he could swallow his pride for a meaningful enough motivation.

"...I need your help."

Alberu gave him a puzzled look, having a dour Cale suddenly invade your personal space to ask for help was certainly an experience he hadn't had in awhile.

"Yes?" Alberu asked.

"How..." Cale grit his teeth. He hated this. But some things were important. "How does he act around his family?"

Understanding dawned on Alberu's expression. It was the promised date for yet another family dinner and Cale hadn't yet had him cancel.

Perhaps he was finally facing it.

Alberu wanted to hug him a bit but restrained himself. This Cale still lashed out and felt patronized at every little congratulations. Sort of like a tiny dog who took personal offense to everything in the world being bigger.

"He just acts like himself." Alberu said honestly, watching the pinched disbelief in Cale's expression with some amusement.

"...that's stupid." Cale said scathingly, turning away. "Clearly you don't know shit."

Alberu leaned against the door jam, a bittersweet smile playing on his lips while he thought about how to clarify. "What I mean to say is that he acts like himself. Not a persona or an act."

Cale stiffened at his words, he looked a bit like he'd been struck.

"He said that he spent too long lying to them." Alberu explained. "He wanted to show them who he really was."

"...well the piece of shit was probably a more tolerable bastard than I am so this shitty advice really isn't fucking helpful." Cale snapped, storming into the other room and stopping when he was face to face with his own photo.

He wanted to fight the photo frame.

The man held lovingly in Alberu's arms was smiling at the camera elegantly. Cale could see his own thuggish sneer in the reflection on the glass.

It didn't come naturally.

Cale had looked in the mirror for hours at a time, searching for the exact right posture and expression to portray the man he wasn't. To become the lout that no one wanted.

He didn't even remember what his face looked like when he relaxed those muscles.

Cale had a decision to make.

And he hated it.

The more time he spent here the more undeniable certain facts were.

Cale allowed his face to relax, resembling the man in the photo far more than before. He looked more exhausted though. Heavy bags under his eyes and he lacked the spark of happiness that was so clear in the other Cale.

Cale was Cale.

As much as he resented and fought against it and hated to be compared to his other self, Cale knew himself and he knew that the man in the photo was just the same as him.

Just a version who had made very different decisions in his life and achieved a different result. According to Eric and Alberu, Cale hadn't started out all that different in this life.

He'd just chosen at some point that enough was enough and fixed all of the broken things that Cale believed could never be mended.

Perhaps for Cale it was too late to do the same. He'd persisted for longer and harder than his other self had. He might have really broken everything into such fine shards that they could never be repaired.

But the fact remained that he hadn't tried to fix it. He'd shied away from the pain and the fear and now he hated looking into the face of the coward he was.

That was really why he hated his other self so much.

He revealed every single one of Cale's cowardly flaws into the light of day and exposed his inner weaknesses that even he hadn't understood. He couldn't hide behind the idea that there was nothing he could do anymore.

Cale needed to choose.

Would he remain a pathetic coward or accept responsibility and change?

He wanted to retreat into a bottle and then just die drowning in the bitter drink.

Maybe he couldn't have everything that his other self had achieved. He certainly wasn't going to be able to seduce the crown prince or some other garbage like that but...

...couldn't he try to change things? Just a little bit?

A strange feeling overtook him and caused him to feel dizzy and for a moment while blinking his eyes, he wasn't sure where he was. But once he'd focused again, he was still in Alberu's apartment with his 'fiance' helping him stand up with worried little fussing noises.

"...tell them I'll go." Cale said. Closing his eyes as he focused on the task at hand. Meeting his family would help him to understand how hopeless it really was and refocus his thoughts. "You come too."

Alberu nodded, guiding Cale to the couch where he lay back and stared up at the ceiling.

By the time Cale returned from his contemplations of inadequacy, self-hatred, and conviction, Alberu was ushering him to the car. The drive was shorter than Cale envisioned and longer than his nerves could handle.

He tried not to appreciate the way Alberu held his hand silently on the ride over.

He hated how Alberu could know how important this was to him but he craved the comfort nonetheless.

"We don't have to go." Alberu said when he'd parked and Cale had sat rigidly in place for much too long.

Cale shook his head.

He had to do this. He needed to face this. He needed to know.

It didn't make it any less daunting. His family but not his family. Something similar to his experience with Eric but so much worse in a million different ways.

"...I'm ready." He said and to his shock, his voice was shaking.

Alberu squeezed his hand comfortingly and it grounded him in the moment. He let out a shaky sigh and nodded, reaching for the door and stepping out.

The front door to the massive house opened and a happy young woman rushed forward to give him a hug with a cry of oppa!

Cale's eyes widened as he accepted Lily's hug, mouth agape as his little sister beamed at him with a happy trust that he'd never seen on her before. "I missed you!" She cried out and that cheerful smile morphed into a disingenuous pout. "If you were sick, why didn't you just invite me over? I could have helped out."

Cale glanced helplessly from his affectionate sister to Alberu and back again, noting with even more mounting panic that he could see others exiting the home to greet him.

Be himself? Which himself? Cale wasn't sure who the fuck he even was anymore and he'd never been able to experience such unfettered affection from his baby sister.

Mostly because he'd actively ruined that relationship by being as trashy as possible and discouraging her every attempt to get to know him but still–it was startling.

"Give him a break." Basen interjected as he approached, smiling at his brother. "It's good to see you, hyung."

This was a bit much.

Cale's shaking pupils searched his siblings for whatever reaction they were expecting from him and he drew a blank. He'd spent so much of his life reading others and learning exactly what they expected of him and now when it mattered most, he couldn't hardly breathe, much less come up with a way to reply.

"Oppa!?"

"Hyung?!"

"Cale?"

The cascade of worried exclamations didn't help as Cale touched his cheek and found the tears that he hadn't the faintest hope of stopping. He dried to speak but all that came out was watery hiccups and he couldn't even see the people around him that were fussing over him through the blurry stinging mess that the tears were doing to his vision.

Fuck.

This wasn't what he intended at all.

His bottom lip warbled as he attempted to find the words but they were lost to him.

He felt the broken smile that overtook his expression but he hadn't summoned it. He'd lost complete control over his facial expressions.

"...I missed you too."

It took quite a bit of fussing and assurances and patience before Cale was able to calm down. Mostly because the general affection that came with the above three only made his emotional collapse so much worse.

By the time he had calmed down, he was seated on the couch between Lily and Basen with a warm cup of tea in his hands while Alberu explained the situation to his parents.

They'd already come up with a cover story should anything unfortunate happen, partial amnesia, limited memory of the last couple years, struggling to adjust, he was nervous to meet with the family because his strongest memories are from the bad days, and so on and so forth. Cale just hadn't expected to need to use the cover story. Especially not because of such a pathetic reason as this.

Basen gave him a half hug and Lily leaned against his shoulder and the both of them assured him that it would be okay without a hint of fear or disdain.

Cale sniffled miserably and sipped his tea.

Somehow he hated his other self more than ever but in the same breath, he felt grateful to him.

It was a complicated emotion.