You are not afraid to die.
You are fifteen years old, and it's harder to see than it should be, and even the air tastes like cotton. You bruise easily, sometimes without touching anything - your fingertips are purple. You're thin; you've always been thin, too thin, but it's getting worse, and your pants barely cling to your hips. You are going to die.
But you're not afraid.
--
Maybe it's because even while you see the signs, it seems so far on the horizon. You've thought for years that you'd die. That you should die. It's wrong, that you're not dead yet. It's wrong, that you ever started breathing.
Still, though, here you are, standing and staring, and your chest rises up and down and up and down and up and down, and you are alive.
Death won't be so bad. Quick, you hope, but it won't be bad. You wonder how dying feels.
Your ears ring.
--
Sometimes, at night, you lay under the covers, curled up and tangled in the sheets, and you touch your thighs, your stomach, and you shiver.
You are dirty. You are wrong. You squeeze your eyes shut. Your thigh feels so warm against your hand.
Yukimi asks why you don't bathe every day. You never answer.
He gets used to it.
(You are dirty and you are wrong.)
--
You are sixteen years old, and you haven't died yet, but it's hard to taste and hear and see and feel.
You are not afraid. You remind yourself of this, as it gets harder to stay awake for long.
You hear murmuring - scratchy, ringing, muffled, but you hear it - and you find that they know who the keeper of the Shinrabanshou is. You are told to find him.
You hold your breath. You are not afraid to die.
But maybe you can just disappear.
--
When you see him, he is small and thin and he doesn't amount to much, but he is the answer to everything you want.
And you hurt him.
He yells, he is afraid (you have seen people be afraid, you have been afraid, it shouldn't bother you), and you have to run away, but it doesn't matter. You'll see him again.
You want to see him again.
It's a relief.
--
When you do see him again, it's your turn to be afraid. You are afraid that he'll push you away, you are afraid that he'll hate you, that he'll shout like he did before, and that he won't grant your wish.
So you want to make him scared. If you make him scared, you shouldn't be scared of him. That is how it works; that's how it's always worked, for you. You are frightened of everyone. Hattori has made it so people will be frightened of you.
You need this boy to be afraid of you.
He has a soft voice.
--
You're like a spider, you realize, when you want to scare him because you're afraid. Yukimi says, "They're more afraid of you than you are of them."
"Why," you say, "Do you kill them, then?"
"They creep me out."
You understand. Father was like that, right?
--
At night, you touch the insides of your thighs and realize that you're thinking of eyes that look a little like leaves, if you squint and make things blur the right way.
--
He touches you sometimes.
You don't know why. You don't know why he'd want to put his hands on you. You don't know why he looks at you, why he whispers in your ear. Why you remember his smell at nighttime when your fingers are trembling and fluttering across your stomach.
You want to disappear.
He looks at you.
--
You fight for him. The girls from this school, they want to kill him - they don't care that he's supposed to be king here, that he's powerful. They don't care that he has small hands and a soft voice. They don't care that he's beautiful.
You can tell that he's beautiful, even though you can barely see him.
His body is probably very warm, isn't it?
--
She cuts you.
She cuts you, the girl with the white hair and the quiet laugh, and you are bleeding, you are dying.
"Miharu," you say, "Miharu, Miharu."
He is beside you, he leans in close, he is afraid - you've made him afraid. Your hand is at his face. You wish you weren't wearing gloves, you wish you could feel his cheek. He's so soft.
"Miharu, I don't want to die."
You are afraid.
"I don't want to die at all."
It's hard to breathe, and you are afraid, and Miharu is afraid, and he puts his arms around you-
You want to say, "Miharu, you are beautiful." You want to say, "Miharu, you are soft." You want to say, "Miharu, I love the way you smell, I want to touch your face, I want-"
You don't know what you want, and you don't say those things.
You sleep.
--
Later on, you're eating apples together. He smiles.
You are not afraid.