title; Alive
series; Kagerou Project
pairings; Some ShinEne
summary; Shintaro doesn't feel like his birthday is worth celebrating. Ene disagrees.
warnings; Mentions of suicide
a/n; happy birthday tessa! i hope you like this ;;
Sometimes he's convinced she's a ghost.
He had let his life grow stagnant and die off at the dawn of youth, deciding the only person worth living with or for was himself.
Until Ene had come along, haunting his computer and being a physical echo of the noise that grew silent when he locked himself in his room for good.
Yet, she's relentless and annoying and fascinating. A blue comet dashing from one side of the screen to the other like a homeless pinball.
Shintaro's not all surprised when she reminds him it's his birthday.
"Don't tell me you've forgotten, master! I know you're like an old man, but I didn't think your memory was that bad…" Ene pouts and Shintaro can see the blush swelling beneath the bandages on her cheeks.
She'd be kind of cute, in an alternate universe where she couldn't speak and he had an IQ of 70.
"I didn't forget…" Shintaro sighs and lifts his finger under his shirt to scratch at a rib. He feels like a monkey at a zoo being watched, even if Ene's the one boxed in.
He reflects on his last birthday. Ayano giving him that red jersey with a smile that could create peace between nations.
"I think it suits you…" she insisted with an innocent shrug.
The jersey now lay somewhere unworn.
Shintaro stopped scratching and his chin fell against his palm as he studied Ene, her hands now behind her back.
"I just don't like celebrating my birthday. I was born and then I'll live, and eventually die. It's nothing to celebrate and nobody cares. I'm just a morsel feeding a bigger monster here, not even a spark that can light a room, let alone a candle. It's… it's… whatever." he further explained to fill in space when nothing more had been said.
He tried to remain impassive yet something boiled in his stomach at his own speech, as if tar had flood his gut.
Ene tilted her head to the side, narrowing her blue eyes in contemplation. It was kind of funny seeing her think like this, Shintaro always assumed she was the type who just felt.
Sometimes she seemed more human than himself.
"Hold on…" Ene said before quickly floating away into one of the folders on his desktop, looking like a plastic bag carried off by the wind.
Suddenly a window sprang up and Ene appeared from behind it.
At first Shintaro was surprised at what he saw before him. Lively words Ene had created enhanced with colors on a sort of "birthday card". Yet Shintaro wasn't shocked by the obvious effort she had put into the colorful message, so much as to what it had to say.
"Yeah, I guess I'm glad too…" Shintaro sighed, slipping in a half smile.
The frown on Ene's face burned off and a grin rose in it's ashes.
—-
Months later when Shintaro let scissors rip into his neck they would cut into his mind too and his memories would bleed out as he recalled the words Ene had given him on his birthday.
'I'm glad you're alive.'