It happens to me quite often, seeing people call Ash’s death a suicide. Saying that he wanted to die, that in some way, he chose it.
And honestly, I find myself agreeing with them. At least a little.
Ash was tired. God, he was so tired. Not just in his body, but down to his soul—tired in a way that no amount of sleep, safety, or even love could fully heal. He had fought for so long, survived for so long, clawed his way out of hell again and again, only to find that peace was always just a little bit further, just a little bit out of reach. Even when freedom was right there, he was too exhausted to chase after it anymore.
I don’t think Ash sought death in the traditional sense. I don’t think it was hopelessness, exactly. I don’t think it was the desperate self-destruction of someone who wanted to disappear, nor was it despair.
It was laying down his sword, finally, after a lifetime of fighting battles that no boy, no teenager, no person should have ever had to fight. It was choosing, in those final moments, to sit with Eiji’s letter—the one thing in his whole life that had been purely good—and letting it be enough. Letting himself be enough, for once.
It wasn’t about giving up in bitterness. It wasn’t about hatred. It was a kind of soft resignation. After everything, he was finally giving himself permission to stop.
Ash’s death wasn’t just another act of violence. It wasn’t another defeat. It wasn’t just loss. It was, in its quietest way, an act of reclaiming. Reclaiming even the smallest shred of agency that the world had ripped from his hands over and over again.
It was Ash, who had been used, hunted, abandoned, and brutalized, finally deciding: This is where I stop. This is enough.
And no—it doesn’t make it fair. It doesn’t undo the tragedy of it. It doesn’t make the grief any easier to carry.
But it’s comforting, in a way, to think that at least in those final moments, he had a choice. Maybe not in how or when or why the end came. But in the way he met it.
We’ll never really know what was going through Ash’s head when he chose to stay in that library instead of calling for help. We’ll never know if he even had a real chance of surviving, or if the wound Lao gave him was already fatal, something no ambulance could have saved him from.
But what we do know is what he chose to do with the time he had left.
He chose to hold onto love, instead of fear.
And in a life that had been defined by cruelty, by survival, by endless brutal choices made for him—that one, tiny choice? That mattered.
vaporwave
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
dededos
areudirty
romaincrisis
