This is based on chapter 16 of the ever-amazing Zombie Loan manga, and I would reccomend at least skimming it before you read this oneshot. (Unless you're a Zombie Loan expert and think you can handle it, or are just too lazy. [Like me. :D] ) There are no intended pairings. Maybe some Shiba/Michiru or Shiba/Chika if you squint rrrreeeeeeeaaallll hard, but it wasn't intentional. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: All things Zombie Loan=Not mine. Credit to Peach-Pit.
It's a long split second in which the gun bangs and the bullet enters.
My body turns almost as if in a dream world—that's how it feels, anyway—and those eyes that told me I'm tainted now tell me she's never pulled a trigger before. I'm wrong, she says, as the pure, pretty tears sparkle in her wide, pretty eyes.
Wrong? Maybe I am. Who knows?
As the world tilts and the sky becomes a glittering black sea, I feel my unnaturally preserved heart leap into my throat from the sudden shift in gravity. The sensation is not unlike the anticipation that has been building, building, building up in my chest until his face blanched with betrayal and fury. Everything was for that explosion of excitement.
My freedom is in seeing that brilliant moon eclipsed in bloody claret while the ties that bind smolder and strengthen even as they burn. Our relationship has not broken; it has only changed to something much stronger, much angrier. That hatred in his eyes, spawned from all the trust and affection, is so much more gratifying because I know he is too proud and too strong to shed tears. And I drank it in, relishing the taste of love and hatred, meshed and warped. And then the gunshot rang out.
I hear my name. It's a desperate alarum of "No wait don't go" and I know I still haven't broken him. If I had, his death grip on my arm wouldn't be my lifeline right now. He wouldn't have to ask me how this is freedom because he would see the twisted path I've taken, even though I know full well that it has twisted me until I emerged a monster from my cocoon of boredom and suicide.
Why does he keep calling me Shiba?
Doesn't he know I'm the Butterfly?
But as I listen to him insist on chasing a different kind of freedom, one without a black collar, I notice something new. My crimson light is haloed by the full moon, commanding me to accept the salvation this delinquent saint offers.
And I realize I can still break him.
It's so wonderful it hurts when his determination melts into despair. It's a long split second in which I wonder why the hell I tore myself from his outstretched hand, his shrinking face all terror and unshed tears, and I'm so full of freedom I want to cry too.
I smile instead—that lonely kind of smile that says "I won't cry." I smile because I don't want anyone to see the impure, ugly tears sparkle in ambitious, ugly eyes that looked into the darkness and found it absolutely—
Beautiful.
Hope you liked it, gained a new perspective on Reiichirou Shiba, gained a new perspective on Zombie Loan, enjoyed the writing, all of the above, none of the above, etc...