Depths of Both Sides

The Color of Blood

(Post SDR2. I don't own SDR2)


It was 7 a.m.

The electronic beeping filled the otherwise stagnant air of the room, breaking the dead atmosphere.

A hand slowly rose from under the thin blanket, shutting the shrill alarm off. Rather than immediately jumping out of bed, the man with his awkwardly lanky limbs lay surprisingly languid on the piece of furniture, having already been awake.

His body always woke at five- a habit that he had forcefully taken up by himself, so that he could rise early to tinker on his projects. However it was painfully clear that the days then and days now were different, the anticipation and determination replaced with swallowing, crushing fatigue. It was strange, it felt like so much have occured during the time he was recovering from what the others called, 'brainwashing', while in reality, not much actually happened.

It was to the point where he had almost wanted to crawl over and lay comatose with the other ten, just so he wouldn't have to go through the awful feeling. Almost. He closed his eyes, recalling the conversation what he surmised to be about two weeks ago.


"Do you remember the time you spent on Jabberwock Island?" the man outside the confined cell asked him. The prisoner turned away nervously. Looking at the suited man made him sick to his stomach, for reasons he didn't know.

"I know it's in there. I've already seen it," the man said with such certainty, that it made him jealous. "So you can do it. I'm sure of it.

Do what? He didn't understand- the man should know this, from how lost he looked.

Why didn't they just end it already...?

The man continued to stay, rattling off about something called the 'New World Program', which the tired boy only listened to halfheartedly. What was the point of listening- understanding anything- if he just wanted to disappear...?

As he listlessly stared into space, flashes of images flickered into form, like a shaky image in an old TV.

A sparkling ocean complete with a white beach. Colorful figures so bright it was hard to see them clearly. Wooden, home-like huts. A polished courtroom, full of wooden stands, filled with the same bright figures. Bright, neon pink splotches...

He shook his head harshly, shaking away the mirages from his mind. Even so, the images still remained at the corner of his consciousness, occasionally phasing in hazily with a glimpse or two. He didn't bother dispersing it after that, already done caring about this oddly bright, hazy world.

...Or had he?


Rubbing his eyes furiously, he wearily sat in an upright position, his body groaning in protest.

Everything still felt so surreal to him; starting from the meagerly furnished room, to the situation he was stuck in. It felt like one wrong touch could send the entire thing evaporating into thin air.

Then he noticed something. Something he couldn't believe he hadn't noted before. Something that almost made his heart stop.

His bed was smeared with pink.

He scrambled out of the thin coverings, tumbling down the bed with a solid thump. Heart pounding frantically, he wildly looked around the room. His body felt strange, uncomfortable heat rising from his chest, swamping his entire frame.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew what the source of the smears were. But his mind was on overdrive. A frenzy of poisonous memories filled his pounding head, each one stifling him to the point that he choked on bile.

He ran- rather, it was more stumbling, than running- to the small bathroom. He desperately twisted the shower knob, releasing a waterfall of ice-cold water that pounded upon his thin frame and swept away the wrenching pain in his gut. He tried calming down his stomach, to keep from retching right then and there.

The water- however soothing it was- did nothing for the succession of images bursting in his mind's eye.

Dying screams, mangled corpses, twisted expressions, an air that spoke of death and despair...

And the overlying stench of blood.

He choked, the nonexistent salty fumes clogging his nose. The water that splattered on the floor was pink.

Florescent pink of dye.

Florescent pink of blood.

PLease LET me LIvE.

Please don't kiLL me, pleASe DON'T KILL ME, PLEASE.

Head pounding from the sound of bullets- that sickening sound when it punctured human flesh- he clawed at the shower tap. The water came down mercilessly, the intense deluge of frigid water freezing him to his bones. But it still wasn't enough.

One of his past tormenters in middle school reduced to a pile of inner organs and mush.

A fellow student from Hope's Peak Academy, who gruesomely had his head hacked off by an electronic saw.

A town laid to waste with automatic weapons, the ground covered with corpses and rotting flesh.

He didn't know he was crying- the tears had mixed well with the icy water- until chest tightened, and his cries caused him to start hyperventilating. Wracking sobs engulfed his body, burning hot tears dripping down onto the tiled floor to mix with the pink water.

Collapsing on to the hard marble floor, he lay there with the shower still pelting him, each drop feeling like pellets of ice rather than water.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, the hoarse words dying as soon it left his throat by the roaring water. Those words he kept on muttering, the same phrase repeating until he didn't know who he was even referring it to.

He kept repeating the worlds, stumbling over them, making them mix together into a garbled mess. Repeating them so much that he kept biting his tongue with his sharp teeth. Repeating them so much, until he realized what it reminded him of, remembering that unbidden memory of him peeking into a dark room of the cramped house all those years ago, where his father sat alone crying, repeating that lonely phrase over and over again.

Sorry, old man, Kazuichi Souda thought bleakly, as he painfully bit down on his lip, the rivulets of blood joining the pink on the cold tile. Guess I didn't keep my promise of growing up to be a good, successful person.