I Heart You
"Did you hear, Ryou?" A friendly voice broke the walls of his carefully planned imagination world like a huge hammer, making him flinch on his uncomfortable seat so that it almost fell and took him with it to the just as uncomfortable floor.
"H-hear what?" Ryou's voice shook but he managed to smile at his friend who he had met shortly after moving to Domino.
"One boy from our school, different class, disappeared yesterday and no one knows where." Yuugi sat on a chair next to his and leaned his head on his hand. "Ishiya, I think. The whole school is talking about it. They say that he's been cut to pieces or maybe burned, I can't remember which."
Ryou's hand had instinctively grabbed his other wrist, which still hurt after yesterday's bully attack.
"I'm sure they find him soon." In school, the rumors tended to grow to impossible sizes and Ryou was sure that was the case here, just some students exaggerating. Ishiya was probably sick and would come to school soon. Ryou, or many others, didn't wish him back soon, but it couldn't be helped.
"Doesn't he usually bully you?" Yuugi asked, eyeing Ryou's bruised wrist suspiciously.
"And many others." Ryou smiled and covered the bruises with his sleeve. He didn't want Yuugi to ask about them or worry over nothing. Soon they could go home where he was waited by a hungry cat and an empty apartment. It was a relief to know that he wouldn't be bothered on his way home, even if it wouldn't last longer than a few days.
School ended and it was time to go home after saying bye to his friends. Ryou remembered that he had run out of cat food and decided to stop by a store on his way. This time he had money because it hadn't been stolen.
The store was small, more like a kiosk, and no other customers were in sight. They only sold one type of cat food, but luckily it was a brand his picky cat agreed to eat. The lady behind the cash register was a nice elderly woman with who Ryou exchanged a few words before leaving.
On his way out of the store, Ryou concentrated on counting the money he had left and didn't notice the man just stepping into the store before he ran into him, making some of the smaller coins fly onto the floor.
Ryou faced the other to apologize but froze for a moment when their eyes met.
Red…
He didn't even realize he was staring before he saw a white eyebrow rise and heard the rude words.
"Watch where you're going."
They broke his trance and he managed to choke out an apology, but it sounded pathetic even to him. The stranger ignored it and walked so close past him that their hands brushed against each other. The quick touch gave Ryou goose bumps.
Cold hands…
He hurried out of the store, not slowing down before reaching his door and clumsily opened it in his hurry.
"Tora! I brought you food!" Ryou called. Normally, the greedy cat came running to scratch his leg, demanding food, but now it was nowhere in sight.
"Tora?" Ryou put down his bag and went looking for the mysteriously disappeared cat. He didn't see him in the kitchen or living room so he made his way to his room, worried about the cat.
A sigh of relief escaped him when Ryou saw the creature crouching on his floor, just in front of his desk.
"There you are, you silly thing. You had me worried." Ryou said before noticing him licking something off the floor. "What's there, Tora?"
Closing in, he noticed that there was a puddle of something thick and red and quickly shooed his cat away. The cat hissed at him but scurried off. Ryou kneeled on the floor and touched the thickened liquid with his finger, brining it closer to his eyes. His brown eyes widened and he jumped up so fast that he almost fainted back on the floor.
Blood.
While jumping up, something caught his eye, an unfamiliar object on his desk. When his eyes focused, he stumbled backwards, falling on the floor on his back. The yell that had born in his throat came out as a forced whimper and his hand flew to cover his mouth before he could start screaming without being able to stop.
A heart.
There, on his dark wooden desk was a heart a bit bigger than his fist, in the middle of a large and coagulating spot of blood.
Ryou took a couple of deep breaths before rising to his feet, curiosity knocking somewhere in the back of his brain. He walked slowly back to his desk, careful not to step on the blood on the floor. The heart lying on the table looked suspiciously like it could belong to a human but that couldn't…
Ryou covered his mouth again, the taste of vomit in his throat, and noticed something else strange. On one side of the heart, the left side, "I" was written and on the right side "you".
"I… you…" Ryou's eyes skimmed over the heart in the middle. "I heart you…"
Ryou's eyes went impossibly wide; he took a few steps back and screamed.
A/N: I'm not sure if this was inspired by a drawing I made or if the drawing was inspired by the idea of this but… It's something I've wanted to write, also to try writing in Finnish for once. I think the Finnish version turned out better than the English one but that was to be expected; Finnish is my first language after all.
Tell me what you think?