There was a bitter, metallic taste in my mouth. It was warm, too. I didn't know what it was exactly. Did I even care?

The feeling was familiar, though. I remembered this as something I'd known for a long time, ever since I was a little girl.

Long, silvery ribbons of smoke twirled in front of my eyes; they were beautiful. I tried to raise my hand to touch them, to grab them, but my hand wasn't there anymore.

I felt a tiny pinch of sorrow; again, I couldn't get what I wanted. I tried to touch them, grab them, keep them as mine, but they found their way out, they always did. And as they slithered out of my grasp, I was left alone, carrying a heart too full for just myself, feeling as if it could burst with everything weighing down on it.

It was unfair, but what could I do? What could anyone do about it?

I shouldn't have been born like this. I shouldn't have been born in this body, with this DNA and instincts. They're afraid of difference; if I never had my horns or my vectors, nothing would've been the same. I wouldn't have found myself in this state today. And for what? For love?

How… Why did it have to come to this?

I made mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes, but god-damn it, I wasn't the only one to have made too many mistakes.

Is all this really, entirely my fault?

I closed my eyes again. It was a tiring gesture, more tiring than it had ever been before; closing one's eyes deserves to be a tiring move, though. With that simple move, you shut down the world around you. Everything disappears, and after a while, how are you supposed to know if it was ever there?

I can't care anymore. I've cared too much over everything and that is the worst thing someone can do to oneself.

I closed my eyes.

"You know what has horns, freak? Animals."

"Yeah! No human would ever have horns; you're more like an ox than a normal girl!"

"What are you still doing, sitting here? Farm animals don't sleep inside."

"He's right! Animals go outside to sleep, in the forest, behind bushes and dirt and mud!"

"Yeah, freak! Get outta here! Go sleep underneath a bush or something!"

"That way you won't have to steal our breakfast again; you can just squat down and eat the grass!"

"Yeah!"

"Get outta here!"

And they were pushing me too strongly, and suddenly I was outside and it was raining and I was cold. I walked; I didn't know where I was going. Then I started running; I couldn't see them anymore, I couldn't see the orphanage anymore, but I could still hear them. All that laughter, all that snickering, pushing me around and making me fall down, stealing my lunch or pulling chairs from underneath me; I couldn't take it anymore, didn't want to listen to it anymore.

I knew I was going to get sick in the rain with my soaking clothes, so I removed them and put them under a few rocks so they would stay dry. I stood there, naked under the rain, and found something almost comical in this situation; I was like a cave man, without clothes and outside, gazing up at the sky in wonderment. Maybe I was more an animal than a human; the rain, at least, gave me some solace.

That night, I crouched down underneath bushes –just like they'd predicted—and put my arms around me to keep myself warm. It wasn't that cold anymore; the rain was a warm kind of rain, heavy and loud and overbearing, but it didn't laugh. It was so loud it drowned out any other noise; the cruel snickering got lost in the great, gray drops of water falling from the sky.

But suddenly there was a new, completely different sound; I looked down and saw a tiny little creature, furry and soaked, looking up at me with big, brown eyes. I'd seen pictures of it in books, at the orphanage: it was a dog, a little dog with brown fur and a tail that wagged happily as I patted its head. Suddenly there was a ball if light in my chest; the light came from the eyes of this little creature, an animal, with nothing human about it. What was so great about being human? No human had ever given me this sense of hope and almost-happiness.

- The memory faded away; the dog had died, gone, disappeared, left me as everything else, everyone else had done. The boys at the orphanage had beaten it up and killed it. I could still see its unmoving tail amidst the pool of red. I could still smell the cruel boys' blood, and watch the stains of crimson and copper ruin the yellow walls.

I closed my eyes again, letting myself get lost in the madness of remembrance. Maybe madness is not as painful as love.

"Cool! That's the coolest thing I've ever seen!"

Kouta… My eyes had softened, and my vectors had withdrawn themselves. It was stupid, really. I felt myself blush, my face went as red as a tomato. I was so silly! It wasn't as if he'd just told me he thought I was pretty. He'd said my horns looked cool. He probably compared it to stupid stuff he saw in cartoons.

But still… He was the first one.

Black hair, deep blue eyes, a little nose, and a smiling mouth. A face. A human face… Smiling at me. Something I'd thought I'd never see.

In that moment, everything ended, and everything began. Only because of a smile, really! How stupid and foolish of me to expect so much of him, of them. I had nothing to expect of them. But I let myself hope, and all defenses crumbled away. I didn't want to fight anymore.

It was as if he'd grabbed my hand firmly and said "come with me!"

And I'd followed him…

I was actually foolish enough to believe I could let myself live again. I could live, and laugh, and run in the forest, and have silly water fights without pouring all the blood I'd shed in the clear, cool water of the river. I could go to the zoo, and eat sugary, vividly-colored ice. I could live, I could be forgiven, I could forget…

No. I couldn't forget. Not every wound can be healed over time. I learned that some things can't ever be forgotten, no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you believe in your hopes.

Deep down, I still knew that. But Kouta somehow managed to make me forget it, if not forever, at least for a few sun-filled days. I told him after our water fight that this was the most fun I ever had and ever will have. He'd thought I was being melodramatic. But I knew I was more or less right.

I couldn't be like him and hope for the future. I couldn't picture myself having a job like other people, drawing, playing musical instruments, or even go to school in a blue and white uniform with a backpack like other kids. I'd imagined myself in someone else's life, for a short time, and I knew it would hurt when I realized this person had nothing to do with me. I was making up pretty dreams.

After that, everything goes much faster. The woolen hat, the rain, the zoo, the bus ride back…

"If I ever happen to kill a lot of people, then Kouta, please kill me".

And then the bloodbath at the festival. That brown-haired little girl, holding him as if he was hers. He did nothing to stop her.

And I had never felt anything more violent, more savage, more strong than this gut-wrenching pain.

What else could I have done to stop it from tearing me apart?

The artist girl who had saved me… and doomed me. I remember her well, too.

Her pain was a kind of pain I'd never known. But it was pain nonetheless, and I could understand pain. I'd felt so much in my childhood years, it was almost as if I could absorb any other kind of pain, from anyone else.

I still don't understand how I decided not to kill her. How did I, myself, emerge again from underneath the killing instinct programmed in my DNA?

But I knew that the real me saw a friend in her. And the real me hadn't been wrong. I admired her, too: all her dreams, all her sadness, all her hope… Her life wasn't perfect, but I'd have done a lot to trade it with mine. A human life.

Maybe I'd rubbed off on her. Maybe the evil of all my crimes and murders sullied her innocence, and made her commit murder herself. Or maybe she just didn't have any other choice.

She'd never even meant for it to happen; and yet when I saw her face after she had stabbed her father, I told myself that I had never seen her face look that calm and… if not peaceful, at least it was painless.

I'd helped her get into the art exhibition. Her face lit up when she saw the painting of her mother, cradling her in her arms.

But then they'd come. All my fault, everything was my fault. I protected her from as long as I could, but I couldn't save her. She threw herself between me and a bullet, and took the bullet in her chest.

I remember watching with wide eyes as Kouta had been shot in the house, because of me, again. The blood poured from the corners of her mouth, Kouta was bleeding out because he protected me, and she was dying and I could do nothing except watch, and stay with her and tell her everything would get fixed somehow. And we'd go painting together, just the two of us. And we'd all be like a family again, me, him, and even Yuka.

But she'd died, right after I agreed to go with them so they could save her. "How does it feel", I was asking him as he lay in the dirt with wild eyes, after his daughter had died. "To lose someone close?" She was dead, and I was trapped in their claws, and he was crying over his daughter's remains, and Kouta glared at me with hateful eyes at the lighthouse.

Everything is getting mixed up in my mind. It hurts even to remember. What doesn't hurt?

Curiously, remembering the pain and shock I first felt when my hand fell off helps distract myself from the pain right now.

This body has its limits, I guess. Everything has its limits, including happiness.

But I never asked for eternal happiness. I just wanted a home, and a warm bed, and food every day, someplace away from the voice in my head, away from the bloodshed and the killing. Like the home I had, for a short while, with Kouta, and Yuka, and Nana and Mayu.

A human life. A bit of peace.

Was that too much to ask?

The ribbons of silvery smoke are there again. They remind me of my vectors, but not quite with the same kind of energy. These ribbons of smoke hold a different kind of energy, something too big for words, something that I won't have time to appreciate. I have minutes, no, seconds left.

The ribbons of smoke turn colorful and bigger. I see Kouta, Yuka and Mayu looking at me with tearful eyes. Suddenly, I feel almost joyful. Why are they so sad? This is the end for me; I won't hurt anyone anymore. All the pain I have caused other people in my life is now destroying me from the inside out; this is fair, this is justice, this is payback and after this, it won't be long until I'm gone for good, and every other diclonius with me.

This is the end of all things for me, I know it. But I can't help hating the pain right now: my body is melting away like ice, only my flesh and blood will never be as pure and clean as the frozen water of a clear stream; I'm being punished, and I'm supposed to feel this pain, but I don't want it to last so long.

I remember a certain someone making a promise to me, eight years ago. And I'm going to make him keep it.

He let go of the gun, and it's on the floor next to me, but I'm going to make him do it.

It'll be my last crime, and I know it's cruel and unfair but I need him to do it. I won't let anyone else do it.

He's kneeling down next to me, and I can see his eyes are full of tears. He has beautiful eyes, and that is something very stupid to say when you're about to leave the world, but it's true, the deep blue color of those eyes is beautiful, and I remember them from eight years ago. At that time he was smiling at me; a human smiling at me. I fell in love eight years ago; if I hadn't met him, I would've kept killing people until I got caught and locked away forever, too full of drugs to even care. But he stopped the blood-thirsty beast inside of me; I know I could never be a human, no matter how much I want to. But what I failed to do, he succeeded for a few days. He made me human.

I was still a diclonius, with vectors and horns, but I felt human. I don't understand exactly what makes someone or something human; it's definitely not innocence, or tolerance, though. Maybe it's best not to be human. Maybe I am closer to an animal.

But I have no more time to ponder over this. I have to get this done now.

I stretch out one of my vectors –it's terrifying and wonderful that they're so weak now—and pick up the gun.

I hand it to Kouta, the weapon facing my head.

He looks at me. He's crying. And I'm crying too, because I'm so, so sorry for everything that happened. Because I never meant for anyone to hurt this much. And I especially never meant for Kouta to be crying again.

"If I ever happen to kill a lot of people, then Kouta, please kill me".

He takes the gun, slowly, reluctantly, from me. He points it at my skull, just above my eyes.

And this is it. My liberation. The killing instinct of my DNA is gone at last, and finally I'm just me, only and completely myself. Nyu. The Nyu that Kouta fell in love with.

I close my eyes for the last time. At the very last moments of my life, the sounds I hear don't make sense.

There's laughter, but not the cruel snickering of the orphans.

There's splashing from a water fight.

There are tender and affectionate voices from Kouta and Yuka and everyone else. And Mayu's little dog Wanta is barking happily.

And then there's a gunshot.