The mem­o­ry of that fate­ful day replays in Johnno’s mind with ago­niz­ing clar­i­ty, the moment they took a cru­el joke too far. What start­ed as a child­ish prank—another round of their twist­ed game, “Survival”—turned into some­thing much dark­er when they set their sights on a qui­et, unsus­pect­ing boy known only as “Lon­er.” At first, it had seemed harm­less, just a way to test his lim­its, to see how much he could endure before break­ing. But when Lon­er stum­bled upon their stolen exam papers, the stakes shift­ed, and sud­den­ly, Will wasn’t just play­ing a game anymore—he was cov­er­ing his tracks. The plan to scare Lon­er into silence esca­lat­ed into some­thing sin­is­ter, their reck­less­ness fueled by arro­gance and fear. They had tied him to a handrail at the base of the cliffs, laugh­ing at his protests, nev­er tru­ly believ­ing that the ris­ing tide would reach him. By the time morn­ing arrived, the real­i­ty of what they had done crashed down on them with the force of the waves that had swal­lowed Lon­er whole.

John­no had spent the years since then liv­ing in the shad­ow of that sin­gle, unfor­giv­able act, unable to escape the guilt that clawed at his con­science. Every deci­sion he made, every failed attempt to move on, was stained with the mem­o­ry of the boy they left behind. Will, on the oth­er hand, had built a career, a life, an iden­ti­ty that did not include the stain of their past. It enrages Johnno—the ease with which Will has buried their sins, the way he can stand here now, meet­ing Johnno’s pain with indif­fer­ence. He demands answers, des­per­ate to know how Will can sleep at night, how he can jus­ti­fy what they did. Will, ever the prag­ma­tist, shrugs it off, call­ing it an acci­dent, a mis­take of youth that they could not have fore­seen. He argues that dwelling on it won’t change any­thing, that they did what they had to do to pro­tect them­selves, and that there is no point in rehash­ing the past. But John­no refus­es to let him rewrite his­to­ry, refus­es to let him escape account­abil­i­ty so eas­i­ly.

The cave feels suf­fo­cat­ing now, the walls clos­ing in as John­no real­izes the futil­i­ty of this con­fronta­tion. Will will nev­er con­fess, nev­er break under the weight of their shared secret, because he sim­ply doesn’t car­ry it the way John­no does. The moral chasm between them has grown too wide, and for the first time, John­no sees Will not as a friend but as a stranger—someone capa­ble of bury­ing the truth so deeply that it no longer touch­es him. Their voic­es bounce off the walls, the echoes stretch­ing out like ghosts demand­ing jus­tice, but jus­tice will nev­er come. John­no want­ed clo­sure, want­ed to believe that con­fronting Will would bring some kind of abso­lu­tion, but instead, it only solid­i­fies his iso­la­tion. As he looks at Will, stand­ing there unaf­fect­ed, John­no real­izes that he has been alone in this all along. Some peo­ple, he now under­stands, can walk away from even the worst sins untouched. Oth­ers, like him, are doomed to car­ry them for­ev­er.