khr ain't mine
This is the revamped version of phoenix tears. Plus the rating's gonna change cos some of the stuff I've written for the work is pretty explicit (gore) and it's not gonna stop even after the latest chapter 15
Hope you like the story, and feel free to let me know what you think of the work.
Chapter 1
Murphy's Law
When the going gets tough, you persevere! You aim for something beyond yourself, for a greater cause-
To make your parents proud
To make your friends happy
To make your team win
To learn something new
To ...
You aim for a goal- for acceptance. You need a reason to survive and something to hold on to, especially if you're not stuck in a web of relations.
Maybe it's to eat all the delicious goodies the world can cook up or maybe it's to see the wonders it has to offer- the ingenuity of mankind or the beautiful accidents of nature.
Or perhaps it's the sense of fulfillment which comes with helping someone out in need and make a difference. It's a need to connect with others, to belong somewhere.
You are living to fulfill some purpose. There's a reason why you exist. There is someone who needs you and only you- yes you, from the 2 billion (and counting) people in the world.
And the universe exists to be explored and was made in the way it is currently for a reason.
'Bah. I'm not living for any of those. I just don't have the courage to die'
Eyes looked at a shiny blade at a table across the room wistfully. They darted to the slumped posture of the male sitting on a small bed in a comparatively small cozy room.
The room although tiny had pictures with a family around a boy with spiky auburn hair and huge hazel eyes. It had toys like cards, video games, and books of the middle school level, others being of comics.
It looked that of a room of a totally average middle school boy.
The boy absentmindedly swept his eyes through the room taking in its contents but did not move an inch. He remembered searching 'painless, fast ways to die.'
Ignoring the search results which came up with therapy sites or phone numbers -because he was fine thank you very much- and checking things out for reference sakes (yes purely)
He saw statistics of how painful and how successful some methods were, the topmost being a gunshot with a 99% success rate and the lowest being 6% at cutting wrists... made him glare at how complicated dying would be.
Picking up the knife which wasn't made for slicing at human skin, but rather fruits (and yes their skin, note fruit -not human) he sat back on top of the bed with a flop, releasing all his energy from yet another unfulfilling day, making the bed creak loudly in protest... just like his palpitating heart.
It screeched out an SOS, clearly not willing to die.
It was backed up by his body- his hair stood straight, opposing the foreign danger. His muscles were tense, his breathing shallow. He took stiff gulps as his mind fought a one army battle against the rest of his body which were begging him to see reason.
His fingers trembled against the knife handle, the blade close to his wrist.
'And here I am struggling against the 6% success rate, but most-easy-way-I-can-die method... It's a mouthful. I'll shorten it into MEWID...
...Where was I?
Ah right'
He opened a notebook beneath his bed.
'Experiment 40: date xx/xx/xxxx
From previous experiments...' he peeled his long sleeves back to see cuts at his upper arm.
'cut wounds burn and don't disappear. Blood clotting on failed attempts give feelings of dizziness and reduce capacity to think or analyze making school a lot harder. Which in this case, makes the group x have more followers or more passive followers. So, more people don't want to get involved, and more people engage in giving more bruises -which increases the medical budget for months coming.'
He felt too tired to clean up the 'bruises of the day' and opted to jot down the observation.
He then flipped to the next partition of the book and crossed out cutting.
'It's too obvious and will make a pity story. Mom would be upset and dad... maybe would come back for the funeral... which is the only good thing here.
And they'll be the spotlight of Namimori. Plus...'
He thought back on the day's event. He was at the school gate, preparing himself to limp back to school when he saw the chairman of Namimori middle school. He narrowed his eyes when he saw the prefect focussing on his biceps.
'That guy might know...
Who am I kidding! That demon's got better people to bite. I'm not damaging Namimori in anyway, I'm helping it- in fact. Reducing the population and removing one nuisance from the town...' His lips quivered by the end of it.
He cleared his thoughts. And moved to the next thing in his checklist; Drowning.
He had a tub in his bathroom, and it seemed painless. And his mother thought that he was careless enough to drown himself ...Plus she thought he absent-mindedly swallowed the bleach at the bathroom. He even remembered her specific words.
"Oh! Tsu-kun! What can I do with you? You've got my genes when it comes to being careless" she said, eyebrows furrowing and her lips forming a stiff smile.
'It must have been her tension fading.'
He reminisced the day.
That day, he had read online that bleach ingested could kill a person very fast, seeing that a lot of articles he found, told of people dying from swallowing the powder or the liquid form.
It tasted salty with a sour taste, but he could forgoe its flavor- the end justifies the means after all. His stomach was doing flips that day. He made his mother accustomed to a new habit he developed for the scenario to happen- he conditioned her to allow him to store his snacks at the bathroom
He first started taking them there for twice a week, claiming that he'd need all the time he could to study so that he could pass for once.
Then it became thrice, then 4 times... and finally everyday in the week.
The plan was perfect. He was a clumsy blubbering fool who tripped over nothing... so if bleach fell on his snacks, it wasn't much of a deal right? He could say he never noticed he swallowed that much bleach- because as it turned out, his mother also called him absent-minded, careless.
He just didn't expect his body to be so uncooperative. His mind was gung-ho with the operation, since it was one of his biggest experiments- but his body... no, his body just had to protest! His eyes were swimming, his vision blurring and his mouth was choking on his breath. His fingers shivered and didn't allow him to hold the bleach and snack piece near his partially open mouth- which did not open wider regardless of what threat his sobbing voice told it, his stomach felt like lurching whatever he wanted to ingest- just like the day he heard his mother was throwing expired pills and he decided to swallow them after he scavenged them from his garbage disposal can ; needless to say, he puked it all out, bile and everything tears burning in his eyes, vowing to get more poisonous pills next time if this was the result.
The most horrible part of the plan was that in the end, his mind wanted out- voices filled his head.
'Let me write something behind! I need to leave something behind- I don't want to die without letting them know -I don't want to be forgotten!'
But then, he shut it off with a glare- he was doing this because he didn't want to be the tragic hero. If he survived he'd be put on the suicide watch- a bad thing because there WASN'T ANYTHING WRONG with him.
So he took a big breadth and munched on the snacks- food he considered a comfort, appetizing to his past self, covered with the taste of harsh sour and salt which turned bittersweet like some medicine.
'Bases taste bitter and soapy, like detergent' his chemistry teacher's voice rung inside him, making him quirk a smile at things he'd never thought he could remember popped up.
But the smile was quickly gone as his body immediately rejected it. His eyes widened, and his throat burned, and he realized if he doesn't do something fast, he will fail. So he hurriedly swallowed the remaining of the food. His throat hurt and his vision was blackening, and he felt the intense desire to puke everything out, but he drank water not letting anything out until finally, a ringing in his head became the loudest part of the experience, and he couldn't see anything else.
When he woke up, it was a shitty feeling.
His mother was right outside the door and his ears, probably heightened by his life-threatening ordeal heard the conversation outside. It was with his mother and a ...cop.
He couldn't hear everything since he was in close quarters.
Apparently, his mother was being questioned for child abuse! That sweet lady who he was lucky enough to have as his mother was being accused of attempted murder!
He tried getting up, but he couldn't sit up, because his mouth had a TUBE lodged into him! He felt choked and immediately started coughing, alerting his mom and a dazed cop.
Wait that wasn't the worst part- it was the first meeting with the accursed prefect- Hibari Kyoya, who made it his lifelong duty to make people uncomfortable- in Tsuna's case, it was giving an unnerving feeling that he KNEW!
They came in, and he immediately schooled his face into that of surprise, noting that the prefect widened his eye a fraction the moment he did that and started panicking about his current situation in as shrill of a voice he could- knowing that it would fluster them enough to not think too straight.
His mother scolded him, and he looked sheepish, still keeping the corner of his eye at the cop and the prefect. The incident ran smoothly from then on, with the cop having an impression of him that he was a bumbling idiot (something which he actively advocated to the police force and the Namimori inhabitants to prevent any further accusations. It was a win-win- more experiments for him and his parents' reputation was kept intact... leaving Hibari aside)
There was one thing he learned from the issue: that he loved the thrill from surviving an experiment of his, especially because it did him or anyone else, no harm.
Just then, an intense stare came up to him from the mirror. It was a delusion that indulged him lately..
A person who looked just like him would look at him with an unreadable expression. They had his same orange spiky hair and hazel eyes. They had the same complexion, but lately, they had the literal expression of a drowned rat. He meant their hair was so wet it stood down ...just like how defeated the actual person was.
"What now? Another mafia incident?" he asked, tired but slightly interested. His delusion told him that he was a mafia boss (of all things) and whined to him about the details of his family's status, enemies and their general psychology... Like how he analyzed what they were thinking about, what their posture spelled, what kind of actions would they take.
Since he was an abysmal student with bullying problems, he had no choice but to listen to his delusion talk and talk when he wasn't doing any experiments -simply because he had nothing else to do.
His mirror image looked at him and told him sardonically.
"Funny that the only person I can talk to always tries to kill himself. Don't you care that you're leaving me all alone in here? What's wrong?"
"Says a person who's the boss of a famiglia. Whether I live or not has no impact on your life. And for the last time, drop it! I'm completely fine!" the brunette bristled defensively at his mirror.
"You're awfully defensive at a 'delusion' as you call it. I could put the same thing at you."
He didn't know why he bothered replying to his delusion. His experiments did do a toll on his mentality- like the bleach incident left him unable to eat any of his snacks, not that his mom knew- she simply thought he was going healthy.
"Okay, no need to glare."
"And you don't need to play tough with me. Your pupils are completely dilated, and you're a soaking rat. Plus you're shivering, and your body is closing on itself with how your hands are clutching your arms."
"Glad to see, my lectures on behavior are getting to you."
"Why are you at a place which is triggering fear in you anyway? Your famiglia's not there to bust you out yet?"
"...
...
What famiglia?
...
They're dead. Byakuran Gesso killed them.
"
Tsuna felt a pang of disappointment since the brunette always spoke so enthusiastically about them. It was like an untouchable dream- a daydream. It seemed like his delusion was finally catching up to reality.
"You said the guy was small fry. How badly did you screw up to get -"
"I was playing tough! Byakuran Gesso ruled all the other dimensions! Yours and mine were the only ones left! I thought ours would be the exception! You're there killing yourself, and I'm here drowning!"
"Right, the 'parallel universes' 'Irie Shoichi, Talbot and Spanner' duplicated "
"You're so damn skeptic! So I'm the delusion where my family and I don't and never existed huh?! What about the stuff you're hearing from me!? I'm passing information to you which is too densely packed to be considered imaginary!"
"Uh huh, so you were talking about drowning. I kept that as the next experiment. How's it like?" His twinkling eyes made the brunette on the mirror give him a dark, desperate expression.
"...
...
..."
"Don't be so stingy. You have to share. Besides your confessions aren't gonna affect my decisions. I am going to try it out. I could just play the I slept in the bath excuse."
"...Do you honestly think... people don't suspect...
...
..." the delusion choked and started to answer when he saw that Tsuna was planning on changing his focus when he realized the mirror version of him wasn't going to tell him.
"I'm a kind of war spoil... They want information from him.
When I'm submerged in water... along with the starting splash, my ears get an echoing ringing and I hear bubbles from my mouth and the hand which grips my neck burns and won't let me emerge to the surface. After some time, my lungs and eyes burn and my brain feels heavy- I can't think of anything.
Then my arms, hands, and toes curl up - my entire body convulses then it fills my lungs with something and makes me feel like my lungs are going to pop out and my heart's going on overdrive and it hurts so much... I don't want to do this anymore."
"...And why don't you?"
His delusion looked patronizingly at him.
"Reborn, my tutor, has trained me for worse. This is about prying from my dead body what my family and I are protecting."
"They're dead!"
"My famiglia might be...! But the Vongola still exists! And we're the Vigilante keeping the mafia in check. Byakuran's ideals... are too radical. They've cost my family their lives. I'd be damned if I can't even protect it!"
"Then die!"
The other Tsuna had a look full of despair as he looked over at him.
"Byakuran, if nothing else... is persistent. I'll not be dying so soon. But I've called you for just one thing. It's my very last favor. I'll keep a recording of whatever transpires here, so you can see it whenever... Consider it my dying will."
"...Why?"
"Because you're going to be the next mafia boss of the story."
"In my universe, I'm not that important. And besides, I'd rather die than have your kind of treatment."
"Sawada Tsunayoshi, there is no universe where you are alive since you're being targetted by Byakuran for his hunting sport, apparently. And don't interrupt me, I don't have the time to debate on this.
Since you love those life-threatening experiences of yours, watch these recordings... because it's a premonition of how your life is generally going to be. And my intuition says your life is going to be more painful than I could ever imagine."
"Pure conjectures!"
"Panicking already, Tsuna? Here's a thought. Know Hibari Kyoya?"
looking at the startled ,yet disdainful expression at his name, he continued.
"There are people bound to you in every universe. Heed my words: these are people who're by your side, as in they play and share a major role of your or their life together- by whatever coincidence or luck you think you have; Hibari Kyoya, Rokudo Mukuro, Yamamoto Takeshi, Chrome Dokuro, Gokudera Hayato, Bovino Lambo and finally Reborn. There are other people who come in and out of your life sometimes in some parallel universes, but you've heard me speak of them-"
Tsuna threw the mirror on the ground, not willing to entertain the mirror any longer. He sat on the edge of his bed and tried his bed to ignore the sound of water splashing as well as desperate gasping along with harsh questioning coming from the mirror.
His hand trembled towards his notebook and scratched the drowning checkbox, tears burning as he heard the choking sounds from the mirror, his morbid curiosity not controling his actions as pure self preservation made him feel more scared than before.
"It was bad enough that people pick on me at school. How can that be the rest of my life?! I refuse to believe it!
Refuse to! You hear me! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse!
I refuse! I refuse! I refuse! I refuse!
I refuse! I refuse! I refuse!
I refuse! I refuse!
I refuse!
Please! No! That can't be true!"
He sobbed into his blankets glancing at his clock.
It read 6 pm.
He had an hour before he was to reply cheerfully to his mother's.
"Tsu-kun! Time for dinner!"
And he had to get his wounds coated with concealer by that time.
But he was tired and his cuts were burning reminding him of how he messed up.
His bruises reminded him of how badly he failed at being human since he couldn't even get accepted by his own species.
And the food his mom carefully made were fed to the ground everyday by the people who in a way hung out with him.
He looked again at the mirror.
It's fine, one of the methods he noted should make his life as that of a firework... Without getting anyone a guilty conscious.
It wasn't their fault he wanted to die... so badly.
If just one Hibari Kyoya knows... it was fine, since no one would believe him... and he was fine with him thinking of the brunette as a weakling... since the demon prefect thought of everyone as weaker than him.
The feeling that he'd disappoint someone was just his self-preservation talking that's it.
Preview:
"Herbivore"
Tsuna looked at the demon prefect glaring at him. Well it was natural, seeing that he was holding a dead ,bruised up cat while he was muddied up like usual.
He sighed ,waiting for a beating- ready to be accused of animal abuse.
Because being muddied up- was expected of him, but the cat didn't deserve it.
And it was all his fault.