The End of The World
AN: Phew, I know my updates are sporadic but I really appreciate anyone taking the time to read this through! It means a lot!
Amu scrolled and watched the words fly by in the computer screen. She wasn't sure what she was doing. Her arms felt heavy and her eyes stung from the brightness and lack of sleep. However, she somehow couldn't bring herself to do anything. She had, somewhere in the last 6 months, accidentally lost her vitality.
"Amu, you can't keep doing this to yourself!" Her friend said, aghast at the state that Amu was in. It was her friend's first visit to her house since she had changed but Amu only wrapped a thick blanket over her head to drown out the sound. It was 30 degrees Celsius outside but she couldn't care.
"Amu, you're only making yourself feel worse." Amu didn't answer and she only wrapped her blanket around her head even tighter.
"XX wouldn't want this!" She suddenly felt nauseous at the thought of XX. Dull feelings of guilt ripped through Amu's body but she weighed a million tons. She could not move. What has she become?
Knock, knock.
Amu shuddered. It was her demon again.
"Why, Amu, what's wrong?" It asked. "Are you feeling bad again? You know, I can give you something that will make you feel alright." Amu knew, whatever it was offering, wasn't what she wanted. "Amu. Don't you want to feel better? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong? What's wrong?"
Amu jammed her headphones on and turned her ipod in max volume. The voice however, got only more distinct and more sinister.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Amu gasped. She fell off her chair. The world was shaking! As she slid across the floor she grasped for anything. She had to grab onto something or surely she'd fall off the face of the Earth-
"Amu?" There was silence. Amu looked around and everything was still as they can be. As if everything, including the floor, had been bolted down. She looked down and found that she had dug her fingernails so deeply into her palms that she was bleeding.
Her friend quickly was on her side.
For a split second, as Amu looked at her friend's face, she felt like the sun had come out of the clouds. However, almost as soon as she felt energy, darker clouds loomed forming her hope into something much uglier.
The demon, still present in the room, softly whispered, "You know. If you don't let me in, how are you going to live? Do you really think your friend is here for your well-being? No one cares about you. Nothing is free. No one is free. How dare a person visit you uninvited." Suddenly, there was a surge of anger Amu had never felt before. She was no longer in her own body but watched in slow motion, horrified, as her bloody fists slammed against her friend's face.
Things happened in a blur but she found herself running outside. It was a humid evening and cars were luckily absent. Amu only ran. She ran and ran and felt like she could only do so. However, whether it was because of a rock or a banana, she suddenly tripped and the world swerved underneath her feet, finally putting her to a stop.
As she laid flat on the ground and watched the polluted sky, she noticed a tower. It was a funny looking tower with many floors and stairs. Though it had been scheduled for demolishment for many years, it somehow always stood. She remembered always thinking it was quite scary however today, she wasn't scared of anything. In fact today, she was drawn to it. As if controlled by a puppeteer, she slowly got up and clumsily began to climb the stairs.
The stairs were mostly built against the outside walls of the building and it was only at the very top did it enter an open room. As she climbed and climbed and climbed, though the railings for the stairs got more rickety and unstable, her fearlessness only increased. The thought of going to the top made her almost happy. The wind screamed but to her, this was real silence. Her demon couldn't speak to her anymore. For the first time in such a long while, she felt light. In fact, she was sure if she were to jump off, she would be able to fly. What a wonderful feeling that would be. After what seemed just a few steps, she finally entered the archway leading her to the area where she could prepare her flight.
Except she wasn't alone. She heard a faint sound.
There stood a tall man with a black, well-groomed cat on his shoulders. With his eyes closed he was playing a soft melody with the violin. With her feelings suddenly dampened, Amu turned to go back down but her eyes widened at the sudden steepness of the stairs. Fear flooded right back to her body. Was she really climbing these same stairs? If she tried to climb down without extreme care, she would no doubt topple off and crash to the ground many feet below.
"15 minutes," she heard the man mumble. She suddenly noticed the melody had stopped. Amu turned around to see that he was watching her. She opened her mouth to speak but realized that no sound came out. She hadn't spoken in ages. "It doesn't matter what you do here. You have 15 minutes." Amu cleared her throat and forced a sound.
"..till...at?" She frowned. She sounded like a dying whale.
"The end of the world." Amu rolled her eyes. Please. She had heard enough 2012 conspiracies. The man smirked. "It's true, you know? You came here for a reason right?" Amu shrugged.
"It was to get rid of a demon, right?" Amu felt like she was tasered. His eyes looked cautiously at hers. "Many people go to high altitudes to get rid of these demons."
"..ow..you...know?"
"Well, I guess you can say I'm an alien." Amu frowned once more. The voice sounded so familiar. There was also the black cat who had jumped off the man's shoulders and it, too, watched her intently from a corner. "I play the violin. It's not always helpful but I hear that it can sometimes, at least temporarily, heal." Amu quietly admitted that the music was indeed beautiful.
"I am from Easter. I've been studying X-eggs. It's not identifiable by humans but it grows in one's mind and feeds on negativity. However, really all what these eggs are trying to do is go back to the skies."
"Skies?"
"Yep. I suspect that if you jumped right now, the X-egg would sweep from your body through your eyes, nose and mouth and as you plummet to your death, it'll use your momentum to spring towards the skies."
"...at...ounds...umb."
"It is what it is. Well if you remain on the ground and do nothing, it will progressively sap energy and your inevitable death will become your oh so sweet relief."
"So...ow do you get rid of it?"
"Well, these eggs have been sprouting longer than humans have been around. You know, humans are interesting in that they're so weak but they're also pretty strong. Even with X-eggs inside them, many continue to live. They combat ways in fighting the egg inside them, like listening to music, and sometimes they can actually make the egg dormant. Though...from what humans know, there isn't any way to actually get rid of the egg."
Amu shuffled her feet and decided to humor the stranger. "So why do I have this egg?"
"Well, you probably had this egg since you were born. It's often genetic but it usually is dormant and hence, doesn't do any immediate harm at a young age. Probably something triggered it." She suddenly remembered herself a few months ago crying so hard that she had difficulty breathing and in a few weeks she could no longer shed tears.
"The world is...going to end...'cause of these X-eggs?" Amu said as calmly as she could. Ikuto shook his head.
"No. It's going to end because Easter decided it too." Amu felt particularly annoyed by the statement.
"What is Easter then? What gives you guys the right to do something like that? Shouldn't you be telling the people of the world? This sounds crazy!"
"I wonder about that myself. But I am just an underling of Easter. I don't really have a say on what goes on."
Amu swallowed. The end of the world? It sounded like a total joke. This whole situation sounded like a joke. She decided to rear the conversation to a more normal topic. "What's your name?"
"Ikuto Tsukiyomi." Amu nodded. "My name is Amu Hinamori. X is named..." Amu stopped. Why was she bringing up X? "Your favorite ice cream?"
"Chocolate. You?"
"Same here. X liked vanilla," Amu blurted out. What the heck?
"Oh? You seem to be bringing up X a lot."
"I don't usually."
"Hmm true. It didn't seem like you were bringing XX up before."
"You know what? Nevermind." Amu thought of going down but she didn't want to go down the stairs.
"You don't hear anything strange, do you?" He looked at her with eyebrows raised. She took a step back.
"What do you mean?"
"Can you say their names again?" Their?
XX." No. Wait. She suddenly noticed something. Not X but XX but not also XX. Amu was driving herself crazy.
"I see." Ikuto pulled out a notebook. "I was wondering what this would lead to but you have a misleading system. You can't hear the names, right?" After some hesitance, Amu shook her head.
"Let me say the names again. X and X." Amu shook her head. She wasn't sure where he was going with this.
As she looked out to the town she saw the little houses. She spotted the beautiful ferris wheel in the distance. That was also scheduled to be demolished soon.
"Let's visit that amusement park when I get back," Ikuto said softly. Amu's eyes widened. That was the last thing that XX had . But...he also didn't.
"Iku-X. Ikuto."
Wait a second. Amu's eyes widened. Ikuto? This Ikuto was actually IKUTO? Blue hair. Violet eyes. Black cat. Chocolate ice cream. Amu spun around and she froze. How could she not have recognize Ikuto? It was Ikuto! Ikuto had come. The person she had loved more than anyone had come back! Amu's ecstasy however faded quickly. Everything about him told her that the person who stood in front her was Ikuto but there was also something wrong. Something in her memory.
Ikuto scribbled something in his notebook. Amu was quiet for a moment.
"You're not Ikuto."
"Ah, we're getting somewhere. I'm sorry. I bent my words. You can call me Easter, actually. I don't have a physical form but I generally take the form of someone that one misses the most."
"That's cruel."
"It doesn't seem like you've been particularly kind either. So what happened to Ikuto?"
"Died from car accident. X was driving and was coming back from a violin session and..." her memory was blank. What did happen then? She only remembered tragedy. She remembered reluctance and running away. She remembered guilt and cowardice. Refusal to accept.
"Let me clear this up for you. XX refers to Ikuto and Ta-X. X refers to Ta-X."
"Ta-X?...Tadase...?" Amu whispered. Easter nodded.
"You don't have a separate way of saying 'Ikuto" so if we do end up talking about Ikuto, you want to talk about Tadase as well. There were two people in the car and one of them, the driver, is not dead."
"Tadase."
"You forgot Tadase."
"How do you know this?"
"You can think of Easter as a very knowledgable being."
"Knowledgeable, huh? Well, I was angry at him. I blamed him for Ikuto's death. He had fallen asleep on the wheel and some other reckless driver crashed into them." It was horrifying to hear herself say it but it was finally out. She had become afraid of the outside because Tadase was outside. She was afraid of seeing him and afraid of being angry. She was afraid of being reminded of Ikuto. "I'm so dumb," Amu laughed. "Till the end of time I was just an unreasonable girl with hormones stupidly angry at her best friend." She saw the remnants of her nail marks on her palm. "And oh, god, I punched him! When he visited me today, I punched him!"
Easter glanced at his watch again. The orange haze that was a remnant of the passing sunset was now gone. "You have about three minutes."
"Well, then, with my last three worthless minutes, instead of being around a creepy stranger, I should apologize to someone, shouldn't I?" Amu smiled.
"It's your three minutes."
"I'll see you around, Easter." Amu turned to the archway once more. She questioned Easter's motive for the destruction of the Earth but a gut feeling told her it didn't matter. Nothing would change Easter's mind. As she ran down the stairs, she realized they were no longer scary. They were instead, giving her momentum to go forward.
The tower had been once special for a reason. It had served as a sign when she was a child that a certain someone's house was nearby.
She passed the homes of her classmates and friends, Utau, Nagihiko, and Kukai. They had been pouring emails and gifts always reminding her of their support. Amu wished that she hadn't ignored them. She wished that she had listened to them. She ran faster at the thought of them.
5 seconds left.
She saw a slumped figure with a small frame walking towards a house. His golden hair reflected across a street light.
4
"TADASE!" She screamed. Tadase stopped.
3
"Tadase, I am so, so sorry." Her voice shook so much she wasn't sure if he understood.
2
She reached out and hugged her friend tightly.
1
0
'Uh...excuse me?" Amu let go and saw a very puzzled and a very unfamiliar face staring back at her. Amu turned into stone. On her way here, she had thought of many different scenarios but she wasn't prepared for this one.
"Amu?" A familiar voice from behind unfroze her. Tadase with some toilet paper crammed to his bloody nose, smiled warmly. There was a moment of awkward silence. Tadase held out his hand. "Friends?" Amu looked at the offer for a moment and started to laugh and cry as she shook her friend's hand. She wanted to get better.
The next day, she discovered that the tower and the amusement park were both demolished 15 minutes after she met Easter. True to Easter's word, it had been the end of the world for Amu Hinamori but it was also the renewal.
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