The Light At the End of the Tunnel... Finally

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Standard Disclaimer: The poem is my original work, however, I don't own Weiss or Schwartz. If I did, I wouldn't be spending my time writing this disclaimer.

'Well, that really bit the cake.' Omi thought bitterly. He had, yet again, picked a fight with Ken over breakfast. 'Course, it wasn't breakfast they had been fighting about. Somehow, someway, Omi had managed to kick over three flowerpots on his hurried way out the door and Ken started bitching about the amount of work he would have to do before he left to train the kids for the next soccer game. Aya hadn't said anything. It was in Omi's personal opinion that Aya had been stoned that morning. It was that, or his silence said he was nursing another bad hangover. Either way was incorporated with things Omi had no idea about as of he was still too young to drink and was smart enough not to do drugs. Or was he? 'Of course I am! Do they really think I'd turn to artificial ways to take care of my problems? I'm not Youji!' Omi thought angrily as he trudged the rest of the way to school alone.

Alone. Now that was a feeling Omi was very familiar with. No matter if the guys were with him in the flower shop, no matter if he was surrounded by people at school, no matter if he was being jostled by people in the park en route to school, the feeling that constantly permeated through out Omi's body was loneliness. He felt that this would be something he would have to grapple with until the end of time. He had to face the facts; he had no family left. He had killed off his family line, morbid as it sounded. And if he did have family out there somewhere, who would want him for the cold-blooded murderer he was? No one. This was a thought that constantly ran through Omi's mind and always, without fail, provoked tears.

As he sat down at the base of a water fountain (the one thing in his life that did not contradict Omi for his pain) he felt that he had nowhere to run, that this feeling would swallow him whole one day. Via suicide or his own murder, Omi didn't care. He just wanted an end to it all right there and then. So what if people loved him (friendly or otherwise), so what if he had his whole life ahead of him, so what if people said he should have gotten help when he could have? So what! He was going to die any ways, alone as usual, so why bother to keep on going in life as he was. No one would care if he died. To them, he would just be another statistic on the line graph of teen suicides. He would be a person of no importance, a name of no recognition, another anonymous face on the paper. Probably a side column in the school paper done by a desperate teen journalist struggling to make ends meet in his goal to be a successful writer one day. Omi laughed at the thought. Then his laugh came to shuddering halt as he was slapped in the face with a handful of reality.

He had contemplated suicide.

He had thought no one cared.

He had thought, at the prime of his life, to end it all with a swish of a knife across thin wrists, or downing 'a few more' sleeping pills to get a 'good nights rest', or...

Omi stopped his train of thoughts with a swish gold-auburn locks. He slowly spaced off from the world into one continuous, looping thought. 'Dear God, do I really see life like that? Do I really think no one loves me? Well, maybe not romantically-wise, but still!' Once the realization hit him again, he buried his head in his hands and cried his heart out to the pavement. The only sound to cover his quiet anguish was the splash of water running down the fountain behind him. And, quite frankly, Omi was glad there was at least one sound in this world that didn't make him cringe. He could sympathize with water. There was a poem that Omi had once taken solstice in:

My life is like a river

Rushing and flowing

I have troubles and dangers greet me along the way

But I gladly give myself to a poor hermit

He wants a drink

So I poor my heart out to him

Who the author of that poem was would remain a mystery to Omi. All he knew was that that poem was symbolic in his life. If you meet troubles that you know you cannot control, talk to someone. And that was just what Omi was going to do. As he dried his eyes, he heard the distant clang of a familiar school bell. 'Shit, I'm going to be late!' Omi grabbed his backpack and ran towards school, hoping against hope he would make it.

^*^*^

Omi got to his physics class just as the last bell clanged. His hair was tousled and he was sweating, but to his teacher, he looked just like he did every day of the week. When he decided to show up.

"Sit down Mr. Tsukiyono" The teacher gave Omi one of his reserved 'I wish you had been late, so that I could have given you a piece of my mind' glares, then he returned to the chalkboard. He didn't notice that the chalkboard was the only thing in the room that had not fallen asleep on him due to his lecture on elementary particles. Though, the board did look like it was drooping a little bit. Omi chuckled at the thought and sat down. He took out a sheet of paper and started to write down what was intelligent in the teachers' lecture, which was very little.

Suddenly the intercom turned on (to the physics teachers' disgust), and the voice on the other end began to read the days announcements. Bake sale for the soccer team had been canceled, cheerleaders had practice after school, tryouts for the Musical Theater's play had also been canceled due to lack of participation thereof, yadda, yadda, yadda. It seemed to go on forever until, finally, the monotonous voice in question ceased to be with a quick click of the intercom button. The teacher smiled and turned back to the board… only to be interrupted again. The intercom came on and a pleasant female voice resounded throughout the school.

"Will Mr. Omi Tsukiyono please report to the principal's office? Again, will Mr. Omi Tsukiyono please report to the principal's office? Thank you." The physics teacher turned to Omi as if this were entirely his fault as he gave Omi and orange slip of paper for a hall pass. Omi grabbed his things and gratefully slipped out of the room amidst the despairing looks of his classmates. He knew they didn't feel any pity towards him. They were just upset that they couldn't think of a good enough excuse to get out of this boring class.