AN: Hey there. I probably shouldn't be writing this until I've played KH3 but whatever. A few warnings to consider before diving in:

1) This is a Soriku story so if that's not your ship, you might not want to continue.

2) Trigger warnings for suicide attempt and homophobic behaviours. Please note I do not endorse either of these and advise anyone with suicidal thoughts to contact someone who can help.

3) This has been checked for spelling and grammar errors but I was in too much of a hurry to post so might have missed some things. If anyone is willing to beta for me, I would be over the moon. Please PM me if you feel up to it.

I do not own Kingdom Hearts.


They Eat Hearts

Tuesday January 16th 2007

Here I am.

I'm hanging from the highest edge of the main high school building at 14:00 on a not so random Tuesday. The wind is frigid because it's winter now, blowing in from the beach and causing my hair to whip over my face in a storm of wretched silver.

I shouldn't be hanging here like this. By now, I should be nothing more than a sanguine smear of blood and brains on the solid concrete below.

But I'm not.

Someone is holding onto my arm.

It's him.

Of all the people that could have caught me, it just had to be him.

Of course.

His hand is sweaty and his fingers slip over the smooth flesh of my wrist even though he's gripping me so hard I can feel my racing pulse pressing against my wrist bone rapidly going numb.

"Ri…ku…grab the…"

How is he doing this? I must have 10 pounds on him but he hasn't dropped me. His face is red going purple with exertion and his eyes are screwed tight shut.

He's so small. It's only a matter of time before I slide clean through his saturated fingers. Maybe this is just his final cruelty, prolonging the inevitable, considering what I did to him.

I wish he hadn't caught me.

The wind picks up and my body is buffeted like a weightless paper bag to a slight left. It causes a change in our precarious equilibrium and his strained expression morphs into one of abject fear. His eyes snap open.

Blue.

"…Please…"

The word is a whisper almost lost to the howl of the wind but I hear it like it's been shouted in my ear and it's like waking up from some kind of sleepwalking episode. Suddenly, everything is pulled into terrifyingly sharp focus. The reality of what I'm trying to do slams into me and I let out an involuntary whimper. My free hand scrabbles at the sill of the closed window beneath me and my feet kick against flaking stone to try and find purchase. My eyes stay glued to his and although he's obviously as petrified as I now feel, that blue is so solid, unwavering.

It makes me want to live.

Oh God, I want to live…

But my panicked squirming causes the friction between my wrist and his slick fingers to weaken. In a single second, my arm has slipped over his palm bending his fingers back in a harsh snap and then there is nothing stopping me from free-falling as I'd initially planned to the cold concrete beneath us.

Despite my sudden burst of self-preservation instincts, this is really for the best.

The last thing I see is his face warping in blind hysteria set against the backdrop of tumultuous grey clouds and it almost makes me feel sorry.


2005

I wasn't very good at making friends at school.

I had a knack for picking up skill sets quickly and for some reason, this trait of mine tended to drive people away. I guess that when people make friends, they want to pick people that will be their equals, that they can relate to. They don't want someone that will show them up at every turn.

I didn't realise this at the time, that maybe I should try to play down my talents or something to make people feel more comfortable. Instead, I started to think that maybe I was too good for the average Joe, that the world owed me something better because I was some sort of golden boy, something special.

That was why I joined up with the organisation.

Organisation XIII was the 'in' crowd of Destiny Middle and High school. It was made up of a group of thirteen kids of various ages that lorded it up over the school in matching black trench coats. They were the sort of kids that carried spray paint cans around in ripped canvas bags, that smoked pot by the back wall of the gym and cut class in the afternoons without repercussions because everyone knew they were a lost cause.

I could be one of them.

I knew it as surely as I knew that the Earth was round. I was just that cool.

I started eating lunch by the back wall of the gym no matter what the weather. At first, when they ordained to show up, they pretty much ignored me and that suited me just fine. I was there to bide my time and I was good at waiting. I was good at everything.

Eventually, one of them actually condescended to speak to me like I knew they would.

"Move asshole."

The command was harsh enough to make me jump and it took every ounce of composure I could muster not to show how ruffled I was. Instead, I simply turned a slow glare on the girl that had spoken to me, an unnatural blonde with hard eyes and a mean, pissed off demeanour.

I took my time responding, aware of the eyes of the other organisation members on me.

"No."

Her eyebrows shot into her hairline. I took a pointed bite of my lunch.

"No?" The question was repeated with warning venom and I swear I could feel my insides shrivel up. I made sure to count how many times I chewed my sandwich before I swallowed.

"You heard me," I said.

A collective hiss followed this. At the back, one of the younger members, a boy from the year above me dropped his hood to stare at me with an awed expression.

"Dude, you have a death wish or something?"

I turned my gaze from the girl who literally looked like she wanted to set fire to my hair with her eyes to the boy in the back. It was hard not to stare at the elaborate Mohawk of his hair.

"I just like eating my lunch here," I told him simply.

There was a scoff and another hood was pulled down by a guy with a shock of outrageous crimson hair. He was a high schooler and therefore automatically higher ranking in the organisation than either the girl or the boy with the Mohawk.

He had an easy-going look on his face that made my insides settle slightly.

"Why? There's nothing here. Just us and the occasional fag butts because Larxene and Xaldin are fucking slobs."

The girl immediately lashed out, elbowing the redhead in the ribs for his trouble causing him to let out a reflexive 'oof' and hold his hands up in the universal sign of surrender. His good-natured grin diffused any real hostility in the exchange. It was interesting.

"Shut up Axel!" the blonde girl snapped at him.

I waited until the attention was on me again before shrugging, a vague shoulder raise perfected by apathetic teenagers everywhere.

"Beats eating inside," I told them.

There was a pause as the group considered this and then someone, a figure a head shorter than Axel, held up a hand.

I had thought I was something special.

It was like watching a puppeteer controlling his toys, tugging the strings so they parted and he could walk towards me. His gloved hands lifted towards his hood, dragging the black fabric down to reveal the face of a silver haired, tanned boy probably in his first year of high school. For a split second, I didn't get it. I had thought that the organisation revolved around someone older, probably a 6th former or a 10th grader, not someone barely older than me but then I got a look at brown eyes so light they were almost gold and I understood.

He had this gravity that was like charisma only it was more dangerous. It was like…he had seen things, dark things and if he accepted you then you had been measured against the dark things he had seen and had been found just as interesting.

There was a formidable silence as he walked towards me. The others held back, their heads bowed like reverent worshippers as he stood in front of me, exactly my height actually, and read me.

It felt like he was staring into the depths of my soul that I hadn't even discovered for myself yet and for that split second, I wondered if maybe I wasn't going to make the cut.

When he smirked at me like I'd passed some sort of test, it felt the way Christmas morning had when I was a kid.

"He's cool," the boy had said, his voice a deep and level monotone that sent goose bumps washing over my skin.

Of course I was.

I was with the organisation from then onwards. The other's accepted me like I'd always been there and within my own year, I became notorious. There was only one other member younger than me, a boy called Roxas, but he was there because of Axel. He hadn't gotten in to the organisation on his own merit like I had so that made me the youngest true member. The best bit about this was that the people that I had tried to befriend, that had drifted away because they were intimidated or fed up with always being beaten out, started talking to me like they'd never tried to cut me off. Because everyone wants to be friends with someone organisation approved.

It probably should have pissed me off but honestly, it was nice being so popular.

My life was on a high. My classmates were talking to me again, pretty much worshipping the ground I walked on to boot. The organisation members were nothing like the regular Joes I was so sure I was above. They were…fleshed out…and experienced. They knew about things that I probably would never have conceived of on my own and they were tight – more than friends. More like family.

We spent our school days loitering round the back of the gym. With the all black attire and gang mentality, a lot of people assumed that we cut class but only Demyx, Axel and Larxene really did that. The rest of us actually had dreams for the future. After school we'd catch the tram up to Twilight Town and loiter round trying to find trouble. Most of the time if we were caught, we were called in for graffiti and that was ok because I was good at it and this time, when I was good at it, it made Axel sling his arm over my shoulder or it made Zexion smile that tiny smile of approval.

I really liked having friends. Real friends. People that I saw and that could see me. I didn't even know you could connect to people like that.

Then he came along.


Thursday July 7th 2005

There were only a few days left before the summer holidays. It was hot. That's the price you pay for living on the beach, sweltering days from March onward, permanent sweat marks under your armpits no matter how much deodorant you use, and a perpetually dry mouth. We were kicking back outside the gym as usual because Vexen wanted to poke fun at the sporty kids and then he was there, this tiny guy maybe a year or two younger than me. He had this wild starburst of brown hair dusted with flecks of gold where he obviously spent most of his time in the sun like a real sun worshiper. He had tanned skin, a baby face and big hands and feet, like he was due a growth spurt.

We all watched him like he was someone's lost puppy and I realised in this weird moment of clarity that I had probably been looked at the same way in the beginning.

At first, I didn't give him a second thought. He was probably like me, wanting in on the organisation and that was down to Xehanort so whatever.

But then his eyes found mine and they locked there like we were polar opposite magnets or something, like he couldn't look away if he wanted to. His eyes were blue. The bluest blue I had ever seen. Almost neon. They unnerved me so I glared at him but unusually, this didn't put him off. He continued to stare at me with this really off expression. His eyes were too wide and bright, his lips were pursed like he was clenching his teeth, his shoulders were up by his cheekbones with tension and his face flushed bright red.

Larxene started laughing.

"Ha ha, I think he loves you Riku, isn't that just about the sweetest thing you've ever seen? It makes me want to throw up my lunch!"

She made an elaborate show of pretending to vomit up her sandwich but then Axel pointedly stood on her foot and that shut her up.

I didn't know what to make of the whole affair.

No-one had ever liked me before. I hadn't really ever thought about that sort of thing before. Love was something that happened to other people. Like natural disasters. I was happy just having friends.

I waited for him to deny it, to vehemently shake his head and set the record straight about why he was hanging around, with far less coolness than I had hung around in the beginning thank you very much, but he didn't. He just continued to stare at me with all these complicated emotions playing over his face.

We all knew it was true before he spoke the words but as a general, unspoken rule, teenagers aren't supposed to be so straight forward. Especially not when surrounded by other teenagers with the calibre of awesome that the organisation had. He was supposed to deny it, to reject the idea completely, even if it was true.

But he didn't.

"A-actually, I did come here to tell Riku that I…like him."

And he was. Still. Looking at me. With those too blue eyes and this expression that was all expectant and naively hopeful and I wanted to…I mean, I didn't really…

He didn't even know me.

What was I supposed to do?

"Uh, you know Riku's a boy, right kid?" Larxene drawled out, a lazy smirk on her face betraying just how much she was enjoying this. "I mean, I know his hair is pretty impressively girly but we try not to draw attention to that too much coz it'll probably just upset him."

She leered at me. I said nothing. My insides had caught on fire.

"So?" The boy countered, blinking like this was a totally insane question to ask. "And his hair's not girly."

She ignored him.

"Oh, so you're gay? That's cool. I had a friend who preferred a good bum fuck. It's a shame he died of AIDs like you probably will."

"Shut up Larxene."

I remember registering at the time that Larxene's comment had made Axel mad. It was real hard to rile Axel. If I wasn't so mortified by this boy's confession, maybe I would have thought to look into it a bit more. It's weird though. In that situation, Larxene's antagonism was sharper than Axel's defence, like she was speaking louder or in high def and Axel was speaking with the slightly muffled quality that comes with standard SD. Everything she was saying bit into me, even though it wasn't aimed at me.

"I think you're lying," Marluxia raised a lazy hand to point at the boy who looked warily bemused. "We're with Riku during all social hours and you're never there. That either means you hardly know him enough to like him or you're with him during unsocial hours."

He smiled then and it was this Cheshire cat smile that set my teeth on edge. He cocked his head slightly, his eyes turning from the boy's suddenly stoic expression to me and I knew then that the unsavoury implications were meant as an insult to me as much as to my admirer.

It made me feel sick.

"Hey yeah Riku, is that what you get up to when we all go home? Naughty boy."

"And here I thought that wittle Rikipoo was a virgin."

Xigbar's catcall and Larxene's response caused this burning chill to roll along the back of my neck like a wave and my tongue felt like it had grown to twice its usual size in my mouth. I wasn't used to being ridiculed like this and I never in a million years would have thought that it would come from the people that I had thought of as my first real friends. I didn't like it. I didn't like it at all.

It was his fault.

I watched him with a desperate, newly budding hatred as his eyes darted over my friends, most of them snickering at my expense. He looked like he was starting to panic at just how wrong everything appeared to be going. What did he expect? That I would just fall into his arms like some kind of swooning princess? That my friends would applaud us and we'd disappear into the sunset to get ice cream or something?

Yeah right.

"Hey no, I don't...I mean we don't hang out but I really do like him…" the boy supplied weakly. I hated the way that his eyes skipped back to mine every so often and the way his face would change into this apologetic cringe. Like he was genuinely worried about the fact that he was ruining my life.

If he really liked me, he would have known what would happen if he confessed like this. Maybe he was just an idiot.

"Prove it!" Luxord shouted out from the back, hopping off of the wall he had been perching on and landing on graceful feet with a mile wide grin.

I was instantly wary. Luxord had a gambling problem. It wasn't just casino gambling, winning or losing money. He liked gambling of a much more dangerous nature. He liked gambling with people. The fact that he was speaking at all right now meant that he was already playing some kind of game. I just had to figure out what the game was before things got out of hand which was what tended to happen when Luxord started to play.

"I can already tell that Riku's getting pissed off kid. You've got, like, seriously bad judgement if you thought telling him you liked him like this, in front of all his close friends, was a good idea. It just comes off as a joke."

He paused to let that sink in, his platinum eyebrows raised in a prompting gesture that made the boy seem more like a feckless idiot than ever. I felt my eyes narrow in cold distaste when the boy's expression slipped from apologetic to a gradual, dawning horror.

"No, this is real, I swear!" he said, turning revoltingly honest eyes on me.

It was enough to make me shiver.

"Prove it," Luxord repeated. "If you're really serious about Riku then prove it. Do something that will make Riku believe you. Coz at the moment it just looks like you're trying to mess him up and that's not cool."

Luxord glanced at his fingernails in a nonchalant manner. Whatever game he was playing, it was going exactly his way at the moment.

I wish I'd been able to figure it out.

"What? Anything! I'll do anything!"

Why was he telling me this? I didn't care whether he was genuine or not. This was Luxord's thing. All I wanted was for him to go away so that everything could go back to normal. The organisation would bad mouth the kid for a while and then we'd forget about him. We had to.

"Well Riku, what do you want him to do to prove himself?" Luxord asked. My head jerked in his direction like I'd been prodded with a hot poker. I didn't realise I was so stiff until I moved like that. My usual fluid composure was long gone.

My mind was working at a thousand miles per hour. I didn't want any part of this and Luxord must have seen that so why was he making me…

Luxord likes to play with people.

He was just having fun with this kid, trying to lighten the mood because of Larxene and Marluxia's antagonism. The realisation hit me like a real 'no, duh' moment and I almost felt like laughing. We'd get this kid to do something stupid, joke about it and then move on like I so desperately wanted. Luxord was giving me an out to save face so I didn't end up getting the piss ripped out of me like this stupid boy.

I let myself grin, hoping to God it didn't come off as shaky as I felt.

"I dunno," I huffed out, my voice sounding a little tighter than I would have liked but I was in control enough to make sure I sounded mildly amused by the whole affair. "S'gotta be something pretty big."

There was a mild ripple over the group as the atmosphere changed from a low buzz of hostility to something more excited, an anticipatory thrum. The only ones that still seemed to be caught up in the negative side of all this were Axel and Roxas hanging in the back and being unusually quiet.

I twigged at the time that they were still upset but it was hard enough trying to keep everyone else on my side. I guess I figured I'd have time to deal with them later on.

Besides, my mind was occupied with things I could get this kid to do. If it was creative enough than I might just be the hero of the hour rather than the idiot that received a gay love confession.

Stealing someone's underwear? Nah...too cliche.

Water bombing the seventh graders? Easily forgotten.

The sun was starting to set which meant that the hottest part of the day was almost over. I was thirsty and the discomfort stirred up by this freak had made my mouth feel like I'd been scraping my tongue over the sand at the beach. Reflexively, I glanced up at the old water tower just visible on the far end of town and that's when the metaphorical light bulb clicked on over the top of my head.

"The old water tower. Meet us there when it gets dark."

I let myself smirk when the kid's face paled though he set his jaw and nodded at me with determined eyes. He knew without further instruction what he would have to do. Everyone did.

Once, a few years ago, the water tower burst and the water that had been held there flooded the suburbs. If we didn't live in such a ridiculously hot place, the whole area might have been siphoned off as newly made marshland but luckily, the water dried up within a matter of weeks though the base of the water tower, already built in a natural ditch to accommodate the occasional leak, became home to a fairly deep water well that just never dried.

Since then, kids have been challenged with jumping off of the top of the water tower into that water well in wicked games of chicken. No-one had actually ever been stupid enough to do it because it was basically a death trap but we'd get a laugh out of watching the boy standing at the top quaking in his shorts.

"Oh hey, good call man," Demyx congratulated me as we watched the retreating back of the kid as he made his way from the gym up to the school.

He patted me on the shoulder but like almost everyone in that group, I wanted to know what Xehanort thought. He'd been markedly silent through the whole exchange exuding his gravitational presence without needing to get involved in the day to day exchanges of us mortals.

He stood from where he'd been leaning up against the wall and his smile was all the approval anyone would ever need for anything.

"Tonight then," he said simply and, following after the boy that had been my first ever admirer, he led the way back up towards the school.


19:00

I wasn't surprised when he showed up in a pair of tatty red swimming trunks with a smiling Mickey Mouse design visible along the bottom right of his cuff. He was shaking like a leaf and he looked smaller than ever out of uniform, especially when Xigbar and Lexaeus took turns patting him heartily on the back and throwing out barked phrases of mocking encouragement.

Despite obviously not liking what was going on, Axel and Roxas had both shown up, hanging as far back from the rest of the group as they could without looking like they were outrightly opposing our plans. Xehanort had already given his approval and no-one could go against it without being kicked out of the organisation. It was just how we, and probably the whole world in the end, worked.

He came up to me before he was due to start climbing the ladder, pulling an equally tatty hoodie over his head to reveal a skinny torso that looked like it hadn't even heard of the word 'muscle'. His eyes were blue enough to cut through the darkness. Seriously, had his parents been druggies before he'd been born?

"I promise this is real," he said and held out his hoodie for me to take like it was some sort of token, like he was the knight off to do some jousting and I was the bloody maiden holding on to a scrap of his shirt or whatever willing him not to get his insides skewered.

Fuck that.

I glowered at him through the moonlight but he was undeterred, simply setting the hoodie down by my feet like some sort of reverential offering instead.

Which was better.

Shouts and whistles followed him as he made his way around the edge of the water well to the rusted ladder. We all watched with this mounting sense of a thrill as he ascended. He was pretty agile for someone that appeared so awkward. He didn't slow down or stop to take a look around, not even when Larxene called out that I had taken my shirt off as well. I jabbed at her but she was expecting it, dancing out of the way and cackling as she hid behind Marluxia.

Then he was at the top of the water tower and everyone fell pretty quiet, just the occasional whisper slipping through as we watched him.

Minutes passed.

He looked small up there but still distinct. His star burst of hair was unmistakable.

He wasn't going to do it.

I turned a triumphant smile on my companions. He had failed like so many before him to do something basically suicidal as proof of a love that obviously wasn't as real as he promised. Even though I knew this meant I was off the hook, that we could have a laugh at this kid's expense and the whole thing could be forgotten, I still felt this sinking feeling in my chest that might have been relief...or maybe...

"What're you waiting for, an invitation? Riku's watching!" Luxord shouted out.

There were a few snorts but then the kid put his arms out like he was presenting at the county diving show and…

...jumped.

He actually jumped.

"Fuck!"

"He did it!"

My heart was in my throat and the hole it left in my chest felt like it was bleeding out. His body tumbled through the air, dropping faster than I'd imagined and his limbs flapped around him like they'd been broken, like he was a rag doll or something and then he hit the water with a loud smack and sunk.

'He's dead.'

The thought crashed into my brain like an out of control car and then exploded outwards, smothering sense altogether.

He was dead. He was dead and it was our fault. He was dead and we were going to go to prison for manslaughter or murder.

He was dead.

Why did he do that?

To prove himself to you.

It wasn't our fault. It was my fault.

Dead.

"Shit! SHIT! We've got to go! We've gotta get out of here!

"Come on Riku!"

A tug on my arm, someone trying to get me to abandon him. My eyes were stuck on the place where his small body had impacted the water and then something bobbed to the surface, a distinct, though drooping, star burst of dark brown.

He might've been alive.

I lurched forward. Whoever was holding on to my arm tried to drag me back but I couldn't…

What if he wasn't dead? We'd all be okay.

"Let go!" I shrieked and my voice was high pitched with enough hysteria that they did let go. My head jerked back as I fell into a loping run and I was just able to catch sight of Roxas' immaculate side sweep of blonde hair before he was being dragged away himself by Axel, the pair of them disappearing over the furthest mound and under a hole in the barbed fence as sirens started sounding in the distance.

It took me barely more than 10 seconds to make it to water's edge, to kick off my shoes, fling off my organisation coat and throw myself into the murky water but they might have been the longest 10 seconds of my life. The water was unpleasantly warm and slimy with algae. The sensation of it seeping through my shirt might have made me shudder if pure, unbridled adrenaline wasn't shutting everything down but basic functions. My mind was an inferno.

God, I was going to go to prison because I'd killed someone.

I'd fucking killed someone.

I was a murderer.

Once upon a time, I'd gone over to Demyx's place to watch The Shawshank Redemption. It was pretty cool but I couldn't help wondering as the harsh red and blue of police sirens started to illuminate the water well and water tower in this awful strobe on and off effect if I was going to end up like the main guy being targeted by some asshole looking for a blow job. Especially when they found out what I was in for.

And the boy?

He was dead.

I didn't even know his name.

When I reached him, my fingers gripped on to his flesh made slick by the gunge on the surface of the water. His shoulder was a hard line of bone beneath the pads of my index finger and thumb.

"Hey!" I spluttered, pushing at him fairly ineffectually so his body spun like a cork in the water and his slack face was suddenly exposed.

I knew then that I would never forget that face.

He looked dead. I mean, it wasn't like when someone sleeps. There's still a tension in their facial muscles. Their eyes move. They drool. When I looked at this boy, there was nothing there. Nothing.

My fault.

I heaved myself forward through the water and followed the line of his limp neck down to where I thought his shoulders ought to be now before slipping my arms underneath his and starting a really dogged backstroke to the edge of the water well. There were people waiting there now, adults shouting out encouragements and I felt like crying. They probably thought I was some kind of hero.

When I made it to the edge, there were hands everywhere trying to prise the boy away from me and I had this stupid surreal moment where I didn't want them to take him because I didn't want them to find out he was dead but then rationality kicked in and it was this feeling that just sort of hollowed me out. It felt like my arms were suddenly balloons pumped taut with air rather than made strong with budding muscle and then he was gone. They laid him on the ground to check out his airways and his circulation and someone shined a light in his eyes and I wanted to be sick.

I think I threw up on someone's shoe.

"What happened kid? Are you alright?"

There must have been a thousand voices barking out commands, screaming out questions or yelling about something but that single enquiry put to me in a calm but no-nonsense voice sounded out like the speaker had used a megaphone right next to my ear.

I glanced up at a female police officer and she was already looking at me like she knew the truth so I looked back at the boy who was being surrounded by paramedics with tubes and first aid kits and a stretcher had already been laid out and I just lost it. I could hear someone breathing harshly in my ear. I thought I saw my heart lying in the puddle of vomit on the ground and it was beating so fast I almost wanted to ask a paramedic about it. I opened my mouth to do just that but all that came out was this weird gurgling noise and then I wondered if I had died instead of the boy.

"Hey, easy kid."

The female officer was reaching for me and I remember thinking that I was going to hit my head if I fell over now and that was it.


Friday July 8th 2005

The hospital was bright with fluorescents. It smelt weird. Nurses and doctors in colour coded uniforms moved briskly over the floor space. People sat in sunken mounds on chairs in the waiting room, some of them with this air of infectious panic, some of them staring vacantly into space.

I wondered where they took the boy.

Eventually, I was seen by someone. They checked me out, proclaimed me healthy but I didn't need a doctor, I needed a Goddamned priest.

Because I killed someone. Aren't you supposed to confess when you've committed a sin? Maybe that's only helpful for the devout.

Once the doctor had finished, I was taken to a little room with a desk and no windows. The female officer from before was there and in the overhead light, I realised that her hair was this real unique shade of pastel pink. She stood off to the side with her arms crossed over her chest like she'd gotten a raw deal, like this whole thing was a hassle and I thought that it should have made me feel scared and angry at the same time but all I felt was this numbness.

They asked me standard questions.

What happened?

Why were you there?

Did you realise that site was off limits?

And of course the real kicker:

Who else was there?

I'd been in trouble with the police before but only ever for minor offences, congregating, underage drinking, graffiti…

This was different.

This was a murder.

It was written all over their faces just how serious this all was so I told them. I told them every tiny detail because I was terrified of hiding the truth and making everything worse further down the line for everyone involved. I kept thinking, as I spewed my guts and destroyed the last ruined vestiges of my life, of what my mum and dad were going to do when I saw them, of the boy's mum having to come to the hospital to identify his body before they covered him up with a sterile white sheet and he was buried to rot in the ground.

I had to do something, I don't know.

So I talked.

For the first time in my life, I'd found something I wasn't actually any good at.


Dad hit me.

It was a full on strike to the face, swift, sharp and open-palmed. It stung enough to make my eyes water. I blinked burning moisture from my eyes and turned shocked eyes on my father. I'm pretty sure that the expression I saw on his face, a mixture disappointment, barely suppressed rage and, yes, a black hatred that I would find mirrored in my own heart for myself in a few days time, was the start of my need to end it all.

"Get in the car," he snapped.

He didn't wait for me to comply or say anything at all, he just grabbed my elbow through the black of my organisation coat, clamping down hard enough that I was afraid my arm might snap in two, and dragged me to our family car.

I could see mum sitting in the front seat. Her hair was in disarray and her mascara was smudged with tears. Her hands shook as she pulled at a packet of cigarettes obviously wedged into the car door and I had never seen my mother smoke before. Not even when grandma had died.

The fumes of it curled up in thick purple streams from the car window as dad pulled out of the hospital and took us home.


September 2005

"Hey, don't you know? That's Riku Tonchi, the boy that almost killed a guy."

"I heard he dropped all his friends in the shitter and they've all got permanent records now."

"He's a bully. You'd better stay away from him. He made that Sora kid jump off the water tower."

I was still notorious when I went back to school but it was no longer for being cool. Apparently the principal had made a school announcement the day after the incident so everyone knew what had happened and instead of reverence and awe, people now looked at me with fear or disgust. My friends, the only people I had ever connected with, had dropped me the moment they'd found out I'd given their names to the police. I couldn't blame them. It's not like it was something they could ever forget what with it being on their records and everything. Every time they went to get a job in the future, they would have to explain themselves all over again if they weren't rejected instantly for being involved in criminal activity.

I'd basically ruined their lives.

I saw the boy, Sora his name was, in the crossover from first period to second on the first day back, not dead and the feelings that bubbled up inside of me at the mere sight of him made me want to throw up so I simply turned around and headed to the boy's bathroom on the third floor - the one that no-one used because it was too far away from anything useful.

Unfortunately, it wasn't an isolated incident.

That bathroom became my refuge. I started going there whenever I found the word 'squealer' or 'monster' scrawled across my desk in permanent marker or whenever I passed my former friends in the hallways and they'd shout out something incriminating about my sexuality or my big mouth. Most of the time though, I found myself hiding in there whenever I saw him. The initial flood of nauseating emotion I'd felt upon first seeing him alive and well mutated into something else as time wore on, an aversion so profound that I couldn't occupy the same space without breaking in to instant cold sweat, without my hands curling into fists and shuddering violently, without my stomach threatening to eject itself through my eyeballs.

And so the school year passed.

"He doesn't care about anyone but himself, did you know he snitched on his friends when he tried to kill some guy?"

"Better stay away from him, he's a complete psychopath."

"He's the reason that-

I kept assuring myself that it would pass, that the storm would blow over and people would move on. I struggled through each and every day with that assertion on my mind and eventually, it did blow over but I was left alone in its wake.

Totally isolated.

I guess that when people make friends, they want to pick people that will be their equals, that they can relate to. They don't want someone that could potentially get them killed at every turn.

I thought about trying to make some new friends after the summer of 2006, after simply existing through every day watching the world go by through a crack in society but haven't you heard?

I'm Riku Tonchi, the boy that almost killed a guy.

Sometimes I hope, in the darkest moments, when I can't take what I did or what my life has become, that this is all just a dream but then I remember the way that the boy, Sora, held out his hoodie to me and told me with eyes bright enough to pierce the night time dark:

"I promise this is real."


AN: Edit 05/02/2019 Story title changed from 'Regardless of Warnings'. Next chapter explains why.