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i don't understand — yOuDoN'tNeEdTo


Sometimes, he can hear footsteps getting closer and closer, usually on dark and stormy nights. They're overwhelmingly loud and frightening, as if someone or something is out to get him. He can't sleep those days, too scared of what may jump out at him from just around the corner.

Other times, he can hear whispered words reassuring him, warning him, telling him what's safe, what's not. They want him to take care of Satoko as an older brother should, want him to date Mion as if she were her quieter twin Shion. They want him to give in to the girls' demands, want him to let them have their fun. It's only fair, they say, as if knowing of things yet to come.

And, in moments of panic, those times he can feel phantom hands gripping the silver baseball bat right along with him, can feel the age of experience and déjà vu seeping in through the paranoia and madness, giving him strength and skill and a knowledge of how to kill, kill, kill.

He thinks that this is why he's survived so long in this poisoned town, that it is his predecessor's ghost helping him along, protecting him, taking the psychological beating all on its own.

He doesn't stop to think that, in several realities, he's been killed by the demon-worshipping Mion or Rika's demon friend, that every single time Satoshi had died, that he jumped off the bridge once, was poisoned once, was jailed once, was hospitalized and tortured and murdered again and again and again.

He's not sure he'd know what to do if the vengeful spirit guiding him turned out to be another one of his killers, or worse.

In the end, the two of them aren't all that different. After all, he was turning out to be just as broken as him, just as disturbed and off-kilter and messed up, and —.

Maybe, maybe, just maybe, he was as haunted as his own phantom.

Perhaps he was just as crazy as him.