This ain't a song for the broken hearted...

I don't belong.

That much was obvious.

You'll never belong.

I'm only part of this group because of Nakatsu. If you took notice of the way we sat during lunch, you'd understand.

I sit on one side of Nakatsu, the outside of the table, reading a book most of the time. Noe and Sekime sit next to him. Mizuki and Sano sit across from Nakatsu. Nakao sits on the other side of Mizuki.

Everyone has a place at the table. A place that makes conversing with their best friends easy. Each place is a puzzle piece, together they fit together to make one picture.

Except me.

I am the only piece that doesn't fit.

"Mizuki, are you really eating nothing but sweets again? I feel diabetic just watching you..."

"Don't hate on the sweets!"

"At least eat a piece of fruit or something..."

Sano and Mizuki arguing about her eating habits.

"Hey, Mizuki, that looks good! Can I have a sip?"

"You're such a creep."

Nakatsu battling for Mizuki's attention. And Nakao seeking to embarrass him.

How do they do it? Just chat over nothing at all? How?

"I told you, Elicia is totally getting me chocolates this year! You're just jealous because you don't have a girlfriend!"

"Sure. You just keep telling yourself that."

Noe and Sekime duke it out over St. Valentines Day.

Everyone fits perfectly into the puzzle. Everyone plays their part to perfection.

And I'm still on the outskirts.

Alone.

"Look, Kayashima is eating a salad! He hasn't exploded from lack of sugar intake yet!"

I look up. Sano points at me, and the entire table whirls their heads around to stare at me. Everyone besides Noe and Sekime, of course, who are still deep in conversation about different types of chocolates.

Mizuki's aura has turned a muddy red, so I can tell she's become angry and Sano. I didn't want to incur her wrath, so I decided to defend her.

"Everyone has different taste in food."

I went back to my book, not caring enough to watch their reactions. Nakatsu changed the subject anyway.

That's about all the social interaction I can do. Even pointless small talk...a struggle for me. If it's just me and one other friend, like Nakatsu, I can deal, but I can't talk to a group of people at once.

I don't know how people do it.

"Hey. Kayashima." Nakao kicked me in the shin. I looked up to glare at him.

"Quit kicking me. I'm not a soccer ball." I said, then felt bad. Nakao was as closest I've got to a friend here at Osaka High, besides my roommate. He's the only one who will listen to me when I babble uncontrollably about the ghosts, and I'm probably the only who listens while he rants about his sexual orientation. We had a fragile friendship built on this. I didn't want to piss him off and jeopardize that. Thankfully, he ignores my comment.

"Are you feeling alright? You look awfully pale." Nakao's normally intimidating features were twisted into an expression of concern. "Let's take a walk."

Before I could argue, he grabbed hold of my hand and yanked me out of my seat. He led me outside of the cafeteria, into the freshly fallen snow. The sun was still setting; bathing the school campus in a red glow. Only I can see the spirits wandering the school. It makes the view even more beautiful, yet spoils it at the same time.

"Are you feeling alright?" Nakao asks me, after staring out at the scenery for a minute. "You seemed tense. And you were doing that thing where you dig your nails into your arm while we were waiting."

I was? Shit. If Nakatsu noticed...

He'd be all over me.

I think Nakao could read my expression, because he chimed in to reassure me. "No one else noticed. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Was I okay? Depends on whose definition of 'okay' we were using.

He knows I'm not okay by his definition. He wants to hear that I'm not angry about anything, or that I'm upset over something, but we both know that's a lie.

I'm upset over my aunt's definition of 'okay.' I have never been 'okay' in her standards. I've never even been acceptable to her.

Most of you know who I am. My name is Taiki Kayashima, and I see ghosts.

My aunt, my mother's sister, thinks I'm crazy.

But I really don't want to talk about it right now.

So I swallow my feelings and lie through my teeth to my friend.

I've been this way...as long as I can remember.

I can understand why people think I'm weird. I can even understand why they'd want to avoid me because of the ghost thing.

It's not normal. Even I can appreciate that. I'm not normal.

But that doesn't make me crazy.

Even the heat of the shower can't stop the shivering. Ever since I spoke with my stepmother earlier today, I can't stop shaking.

Psychiatric care facility.

I'm not going back. Never.

I learned of my aunt's distaste for me on my second birthday, when I proudly showed her a picture I drew of my family. In her eyes, all I should have drawn were me and my father.

But even though my mother died giving birth to me, I was able to draw a stick figure that resembled her.

My father tried to convince her, and himself, that I was only two years old, and I'd grow out of it, and she called me the devil's child.

Bracing myself against the walls of the shower, I breathed in and out while I chased away thoughts of the tiny, antiseptic box she had me locked up in, three times before.

It's okay...never going back...never going back...

I was never like the other kids as a child. I never cried as a child. That alone I think frightened my relatives more than anything.

I knew I looked different. My eyes were darker than anyone else's.

And I saw things they couldn't.

I turned the shower off, and I heard Nakatsu bopping around our room. I quickly shoved my legs into my pants and sat on the floor. Nakatsu's such a nice guy... This is going to destroy him.

"Kayashima! You about done?" I jump. Nakatsu wasn't being impatient; he was simply asking a question.

"Just a minute!"

I waited until I heard him walk away. Slowly, I pulled out the pearl handled knife from it's hiding place in the back of the cabinet.

The first time they locked me up, I was nine and underweight. My body was black and blue because I passed out and fell down a flight of stairs. My father heard the crash and called an ambulance.

My injuries weren't bad. I cracked my knee and fractured my ulna, but they were fairly mild injuries compared to, say, a snapped neck.

I came to in the hospital, nurses swarming around me. My pain medications made it impossible for me to stay awake for more than twenty minutes at a time. Those first few days, I didn't do much other than sleep.

When I woke up without the weight of morphine on my eyes, my father was there, staring out the window. Just him; he hadn't married Miyako at that point. He told me that my aunt had spoken to the doctors, without consulting him, he adds; and told them all about my 'hallucinations.' It landed me three months in the nut house.

The windows in the insane asylum (psychiatric care facility, they kept telling me) were painted over black so we couldn't see outside. I really didn't understand this, I mean, do they think we're going to suddenly get better if we can't see the trees, or the sky? It just messed with my sleep cycle. Everything but the windows was white. The linoleum floors, the walls, even the standard hospital shirts we had to wear, though the state-issue jeans (same ones prison inmates were given; no pockets) were a normal blue. I thought I'd go completely insane thinking I was in the middle of a snowdrift. I thought maybe that's what they wanted.

I was given four pills a day; a circle red, a long green, a fat purple, and a white. The lady who handed out the crazy seeds was a whale. She was some nurse studying overseas; she was from America. She was so fat her skin stretched tight. The anorexic girls on my floor eyed her with fear. It almost seemed like they purposely put her there as if to tell them: 'this is why you stopped eating.'

My first night at the prison, I thought 'they brought me here so I'll really go crazy. Then they can lock me up and throw away the key.'

The doctors kept trying to get me to admit that I made it all up. The said since I was an only child to a single father with a busy job, I must be feeling neglected and seeing ghosts is just a way to get attention. I told them if I really wanted attention, I would think of better ways than landing myself in a mental hospital.

They also thought I was anorexic, (I wasn't) so they shoved food into me. I wouldn't have cared if hospital food was any good. If they really served that kind of crap to the real anorexics and not just crazies like me, it's no wonder they don't eat.

After a few weeks of trying to get the quack doctors to understand that no, I was not hallucinating, there were really ghosts about and they just weren't sensitive enough to see. I figured out the only way they'd deem me 'sane' and let me loose on society was to see what they wanted me to see and tell them exactly what they wanted to hear.

I made stuff up about being home alone and having no friends; they nodded and smiled at me. Told me I was a good boy.

For three weeks, I lied and lied and lied to get out. I endured snotty comments from the other boys on my floor; I put up with my roommate stealing my clothes while I was in the shower. I didn't want to make waves. I didn't want to do anything that might delay my release.

When I moved back to my father's, the doctors told him I'd been cured; or whatever. I was just lonely. Dad bought a cat. She was pure white, with icy eyes. I named her Hikari. She used to curl up on top of my feet as I slept.

Something must have been wrong with the doctor's calculations, because even after I left, I still saw the ghosts.

"Kayashima! Are you alright in there?" Nakatsu's voice yanks me out of my stupor. He isn't annoyed at having to wait for the bath; there's concern for me in his voice.

"Yeah, just a second!"

I grabbed hold of the knife, positioning it carefully over the inside of my forearm. Old scars jump out at me; proclaiming my many sins.

You have to do this, Taiki. There isn't another way.

I use my index finger to push the tip of the knife into my skin. There is no pain yet, just a needle-like sensation.

Do it. Do it now.

I breathe. Inhale.

And slash.

Ahh.

Warm blood rushes up and slides down my arm. The anger I've been holding in all day dissolves. I feel almost weightless.

Holding the already bloodstained towel to my arm, I reach for my sweater. I slip my intact arm into one of the sleeves, then I carefully thread my other arm through the other sleeve. I wrap the knife in the towel and stow it back in it's place in the cabinet.

The knife was part of a set my father inherited after my grandmother passed away. While my father wasn't looking, I slid it into my bag before I left for this place.

Nakatsu runs past me on his way into the shower. He doesn't say anything to me. He's completely unaware of what I was just doing to myself.

No one would care, anyway.

I pick up my phone. It's Friday night. Usually I call my father on Friday nights, but his wife called me today to tell me my aunt wants me put in a straitjacket.

Does that take care of the parental communication obligation for the week, or do I still need to speak with the man who donated the sperm to my existence?

I run my fingers through my soaked hair. So many decisions. Why would anyone want to be social? There's so many things you can do wrong.

It's snowing outside. You know, I feel like a walk. I'll decide whether to call my father after that.

Everybody has a face that they hold inside,

A face that awakes when I close my eyes,

A face that watches every time I lie,

A face that laughs every time I fall.

It watches everything.

So that I know that when it's time to sink or swim,

The face inside is haunting me,

Right inside my skin.

Ok, so there's a long story behind this. I wrote a one-shot on Kayashima before, and, basically, it was a piece of shit. I deleted it like, twelve hours after it went up. Then I decided to try again with another one-shot, and it just. Kept. Growing. I think I was at 7,000 words before I realized that I was nowhere near the end, and it was poor quality anyway. (I kinda feel like this wasn't very good either)

So I think Kayashima is the most awesome character ever. I've only read 1-14 & 19-20 of the manga and watched 1-7 of the drama (mind you) but it doesn't seem like Kayashima has that big of a part... Also, my twin brother is also named Taiki (So Kayashima would have automatically been our favorite anyway) and he's suffered from depression and he's cut himself for years. This is kinda a coping mechanism for me. So forgive me if Kayashima ever acts OOC, I'm probably just confusing him and my brother.

Oh, and I heard somewhere that Kayashima's mother died giving birth to him (I heard it...didn't just make it up) and his father is a priest or something, is this actually true or did someone else make it up? Did it actually tell the story of Kayashima somewhere in the manga or the drama? If so, then I am embarrassed...

Alright, this is my very first story I'm daring to post on Fanfiction, I have an account on FictionPress (but you'll never find it) buuuut that's it. So constructive criticism is greatly appreciated.

-Kameko