Last Resort
By: Witness in the Silence
"Sometimes the end is just a new beginning." When Rei Kon moved into his gorgeous, cheap new apartment, he got a bit more than he bargained for...it didn't help that he was afraid of ghosts. Shonen-ai KaiRei
Prologue: Whiskey Lullaby
They found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said, "I'll love her til I die"
When they buried him beneath the willows
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby.
The window was open.
He knew because he could feel the cool breeze brushing against his wet cheeks, the dampness amplifying the chill carried in the air. His bangs were brushing against his closed eyelids, and his eyelashes were clumped together as though he had been crying...but he hadn't been. Not him.
His hands were fisted in the dirty, dank sheets. They could do with a washing; it had been almost three weeks, after all. But he couldn't bring himself to leave his apartment, not yet. He would eventually, he knew. Sometime later. When he felt like getting up...or when the room felt like slowing down. Either way.
He sat up slowly, his head filled with half-thoughts and empty ideas. He concentrated on the concrete facts, trying to pull himself back into reality, trying to tug himself back down from the heights to which the alcohol spurred him. It was useless, but at least concentrating on the smoldering cigarette between his lips helped him focus on the here and now.
He tapped the cigarette against the side of a nearby ashtray, noting that it was spilling over with gray ashes. Cancer's more physical form, he guessed. Hmm. Kinda poetic. Who knew.
He tried to stand, but his knees knocked together violently and he fell, halfway on the bed and halfway off. He turned his head into the blankets, the cancer stick dropping from his mouth. He closed his eyes and let the tears fall as he laugh half-hysterically into the filthy sheets.
That damn window just wouldn't close.
He could have sworn he had shut it when he had woken up yesterday morning. He had cursed the sunlight that had cut through his eyelids like some kind of knife, blowing the remnants of his brains out one ear. Hmph.
But here it was, open again, and he couldn't make his body move enough to close it. Oh well.
He lifted a lighter to the gray-ish stick in his mouth and lit it. He inhaled and then pushed out a gentle puff of cancerous smoke. In and out. In and out. In and out. Nothing too complicated; nothing too hard. He took it out and leaned it on the edge of a random ashtray and took a deep swig of whiskey, straight from the bottle.
He'd been sober today, he thought as he lifted the cigarette back to his lips. He might've actually passed a Breathalyzer test for once in about a month. He intended to fix that little flaw.
He chuckled a little bit to himself. "How proud of me are you now, Dad? Huh?"
It was that window that had put this idea in his head.
It was a pretty good one, so he figured he had to give credit where credit was due. He always thought about the sun blasting his brains out every morning...so it was only a short jump from there to him buying a gun at some seedy shop downtown.
He had considered writing some sort of fancy suicide note..."To whom it may concern" and all that crap. He dismissed the idea three seconds after it entered his mind. He wasn't like that...and so he just wrote what he was feeling. He had the note in his left hand and the gun in his right. His nose was digging into the now horrible filthy pillow, his elbow pressing into the mattress. He felt the cold steel barrel of the gun against his head.
He smiled sadly into the pillow as he cocked the gun. He was all too ready for this, all too ready for the peace of mind that awaited him when he pulled the trigger...
And so he did.
...next to an open window in an apartment near the downtown area. He was twenty five years old and was found with a note reading, "I'll love her til I die". In this apparent suicide, the world lost what might have been one of the great minds of the century, according to his teachers. "He was a wonderfully talented young man...intelligent, funny, concise, enjoyable. He was someone who everyone loved very, very much. I had no idea he...he was capable of this." So spoke one Professor J. Thomas, teacher of Advanced Life Sciences at the university. This wonderful young man was set to graduate this coming Wednesday.
"The window was open..."
"Oh, I'm sorry...I was sure I closed it this morning. Still, no harm done, eh Mr. Kon? This apartment was only rented by one other young man. He - "
"I apologize if I seem rude, but I'm rather desperate. I'll take it."
"...Very well! I'll bring up the paperwork then, shall I?"
"Please."
The landlord left, leaving a beautiful young man standing in the center of the empty bedroom. Amber eyes looked around him, coming to rest on the window. He sighed, his eyes soft.
This was a sad room.
This was a room that had seen far, far too much.
If only he knew.
A/N Only the prologue. The chapters will be longer.