"I hated everything."
She heard the words, but she couldn't understand them. Couldn't even fathom what he was saying. This was Shima, good natured Shima, lazy Shima, good-for-nothing Shima – the boy who took Izumo to a death metal concert out in the sticks and made her heart squeeze in her chest. The boy who she thought was stupidly handsome. The boy who she thought was the polar opposite of herself, heightening and yet dulling every bad quality that festered in her mind and body like the rotten food that lay in the gutters of her once beautiful home town.
He was beautiful because he wasn't her.
He didn't hate people.
He wasn't angry.
He wasn't broken inside and she admired him for that.
"Bon, Koneko-san, my brothers, the myouda..."
She should've known it was too good to be true. That a boy like him who said harsh things and gave her such awful looks at times – looks that burned into her bones and made her stomach flip in discomfort. For a boy who smiled so sickeningly bright and whose hair was the same shade of ridiculousness as his character, the look of apathy, of disinterest (dare she think it, disgust) hit her like a bus, and then left just as quickly. He never looked that way for long, never behaved that way long enough for people to question it – simple immaturity and selfishness is what she had chalked it up to be.
Nothing like this.
"Everything was too troublesome."
Now, now she realized it was simply the master actor missing his cue.
"I thought about throwing everything away."
Bile threatened to creep up Izumo's throat. This wasn't right. Stupid Shima, idiotic and moronic and pretty Shima shouldn't hate anyone. Hating people was her thing. Shima was too thick, too nice to really hate anything, even if he always said things were troublesome. Troublesome never constituted hate – not with Shima. Even when she had said the flower girl was troublesome, when she said she hated her, she never really meant it.
Not like how he meant it right then. Not like how he spit out the words in that too-sugar sweet voice he uses to act none-too-casual-to-be-actually-casual and she felt fire erupt in her brain when she picked up the acid edge to his tone. It burned at her vision, making it hard to think when the next words tumbled from his mouth-
"The only thing I never hated was girls!" he cheered, as if this was a simply, lazy conversation on a sunny and all too warm afternoon.
Just like they always had, with her on pins and needles and him being so happy, so cheerful and warm, like the sun even if it was pouring out. It was all so sickeningly Shima of him that she wanted to die and burn away into nothing because he was not supposed to betray her. Not like this.
She swallowed back the hate and tears in her throat, but the hate and the anger of betrayal bubbled in her brain and when he leaned in – like so many wonderful times he did before, when his eyes were beautiful as the light passed through them and made them look like distilled amber and she felt the nagging urge to kiss him breathless just to shut him up – and the familiar gesture made the red hot rage build in her brain and she swings at him.
She was duped.
She was tricked into thinking of him in that rosy glow of frustration and affection that first crushes plagued young minds with.
But above all, when she wasn't looking, he got her to trust him – and he ripped it up like it was nothing but a used summoning charm – there, you are done, I don't need you anymore, you've fulfilled your purpose. She wasn't a comrade or a companion but simply a means to an end, and that thought burned in Izumo's brain like acid.When they fought, it was as if she could rely on someone for the first time in years, and where had that reliance land her?
In the waiting jaws of the wolves.
The anger, the hate, the feeling of being ripped open and exposed in such an indecent way hit her and Izumo's vision turned black.
Boney fingers connected with the soft skin of his cheek and she was glad to feel the grind of his cheekbone against her knuckles. There was no split skin on her knuckles, and there was only a small red patch on his cheek, the only indication that she had ever fought back, but she did not feel satisfied, and painful words tumbled out of her mouth like he tumbled out of her bed one rainy morning in July.
"Those who let themselves be deceived are fools... I know that."
Except she didn't, clearly she didn't because she had been stabbed so deep in the back the knife was poking through her sternum and made her heart and insides writhe in metaphorical agony.
"But -"
The words burned, they burned like the fires burnt up her mother to a crisp and she felt like vomiting. She wanted to grieve for her loss, bury herself in self-pity and hatred like she did so many years ago and wrap herself inside a cocoon of disdain for people yet again.
"I thought of all of you as my comrades!"
She did, she really had thought of all of them as her comrades. Her friends. Her companions who would have never hurt her intentionally.
"Traitor!"
When had she become stupid enough to believe such utter horseshit?
He smiled, and she let the rage take control. She let it mold her face into something that wasn't tear-stained and ugly with snot and she focused on that so she didn't ever have to think of how invaded she felt. How naked and unsafe she felt around him, in this nightmarish hellhole of a place where the ghosts of her past lurked around every corner, ready to devour her whole.
He giggled, and she felt her eyes widen and the rage cleared from her mind as quick as it came.
"You got angry, that was unexpected!"
How could it not be expected? Didn't he know her well enough-
"I thought you and I were the same."
Maybe they were. Maybe that's why she had liked him, instead of him being the opposite of her, they were the same hateful people.
She felt her heart give a shudder of disgust. Izumo felt her blood run cold and her head was strangely empty as she struggled to listen to him.
"Ah, I almost forgot!"
He shuffled in his pockets, and she couldn't think straight. She was drowning in memories and feelings and trying to make sense of it all, trying to process how he had ripped her heart, and more importantly, her trust, right from her chest so coldly.
Izumo can only read his lips, something about a maid outfit, something about her, and she's handed that beautiful, wonderful little fox. She felt her heart smash against her chest in terror, realizing it wasn't on her person, made her innards squeeze uncomfortably and run cold all at once.
"Bye." Is all he said, and she stared at him as if he were an alien.
She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
What she heard.
What he said.
She didn't have a heart to give him, not a strong one, not one that was easy to break and certainly nothing that was warm and pulsing with lifeblood or love that would be readily given. She wasn't like Shiemi, stupid flower girl, idiot lover-girl who turned everyone she met into putty in her hands. She wasn't truly confident like Shura, that beautiful red haired demon-woman with natural talent and the proud heart of a born warrior queen. She wasn't like Paku, beautiful, feminine Paku who made her feel human again after 'the accident'.
Izumo only had a little a little stone of a heart to give, only gave affection sparingly, as if too much would spoil anyone who got too close, and yet he still crushed it all the same. She didn't even know she did it, didn't even know he took her heart from her in the night and never even notice that she didn't care. She was so unaware of herself, of him and his lazy boy smile.
She said she did not trust anyone, but she knew, she knew she did …
Izumo resolved not to make that mistake again.