Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights are retained by the original creators. This is a non-profit work.
Recommended Music: You Found me ~The Fray~ and You Won't See Me Tonight Part one and two ~Avenged Sevenfold~
AN: Medical terms and situations are a work of fiction, and I repeat should not be used to make appropriations in reality.
Chapter 2: Falling in the Dark
She just looked at me, but I was unable to truly meet her gaze. The illogical part of me held nothing but scorn for her right now, but deep inside I knew. It wasn't anybody's fault, but my own. Unable to really say anything, Orimoto had her head hung low, the marks left by the dried up tears still visible.
"Hikigaya" she softly let out my name, head still hung low.
"I promise you. Even if you don't want to be my friend" she paused for a moment.
"Even if you don't want anything to do to with me anymore, I'm still gonna try", she announced with her head raised up now, looking straight into my eyes.
I wanted to refute her claim. Call her a hypocrite for not intervening before, when she could have. Blame all my growing problems on her, but I didn't. Some part of me still hoped. It wanted me to believe in Orimoto. The part of me that I resented. The part of me that I wanted to kill off. The irrational part of me, that still held some feelings for her. Despite these conflicting emotions raging inside of me, I would not waver. Hope was the first step to disappointment in my life. Making mistakes in life is fine, as long as you learn from them, but making the same mistakes twice, just means that the person is, quite simply put, a fool. Life would not make a fool out of me again. At least, that's what I thought at the time.
"Orimoto-san.", I began.
"Don't bother. This whole thing blew out of proportion, because of my mistake, and misguided expectations, not because of anything you might have had to do with it. At some point or another, what I did would have gotten out, and even if it didn't", I paused for a second to catch my breath.
"And even if it didn't get out, they would have found some other reason to bash my skull in" I continued in a tone, neither harsh nor weak, but neither devoid of any emotion as I had originally intended.
"And be honest with me here, you were going to reject me anyways" I added as an afterthought.
"It's just better for both of us, if you just walk away, and pretend like we never met."
She did not refute my speculations about her supposed response to the confession, but she still stood there, almost as if to show defiance.
"I don't know what's going through your head right now, and I'm not going to assume that I understand what you're going through, but hear me out Hikigaya.", she paused and looked at me meaningfully.
"I'm going to prove it to you, that I really am your friend and that I really do care and-"
"Save it. I don't need your pity anymore" I cut her off, my temper slowly rising. "Why can't you just please leave me alone? ? ", "Is that really too much to ask for?", I continued.
"I don't believe we were ever really friends, and even if for some reason we did fall under that category, we're not anymore. So get that through your head, and just go. Please"
The hurt was explicitly tangible on her face. Her eyes spoke more, more than I wished to know. I was being an ass. She didn't deserve this, not when she was only trying to help. She apologized, even when she didn't need to. I felt worse off than before. She slowly turned around and walked away. I could still hear her sniffling in the dead silence left in our wake. My rationale concluded, that the storm of negative emotions brewing within me, only justified what I had originally intended to do. It was time, the moment of truth. Do and die, as they say.
I grasped the pills in my hand again, after making sure that Orimoto was gone. I looked at the Zolpidem pills in my hand. I had managed to convince Dad to get me these sleeping pills, citing insomnia as the cause. It wasn't like it was the first time I used them. I recall using them on multiple occasions, citing the same cause. So dad wasn't too worried about getting them to me. I looked out of the window, at the sky.
"I know I don't really deserve heaven. I know that this makes me a quitter, but life never really dealt me a fair hand, to begin with. I didn't ask for any of this. I never had a choice. So here's to hoping, that maybe you could make an exception for me"
With a final sigh, I grabbed the bunch of pills and downed them in one go. I was in a daze. I only realized I was crying and had only realized that after my shirt began puddle up. I felt afraid. I didn't know what was going to happen to me. The true reality of what I had set out to do dawned on me. I had slowly begun to lose cognitive reasoning. I was becoming dizzy. I had lost my balance and had fallen on the floor. An intense pain was brewing within me. I was slowly losing consciousness. The last thing I really remember is the rays of the sunlight pouring in, and just how beautiful they looked.
Well, it's almost about time for lunch, I guess I'll make the curry Oni-san love's so much. I bet that will earn me a lot of points!. I heard yelling. I've never heard Oni-san yell before, especially not at a girl. I wonder what happened that got him so riled up. I had gotten up to prepare some food and saw the pretty onee-chan scramble out of the house. She looked really upset. Was she crying? Geez, Oni-san. What did you do? I bet it's all your fault. Stupid Henchman, no curry for you.
I wanted to go upstairs and see what had happened to Oni-san, but I felt as if it wouldn't really be such a good idea. Probably best to let him cool down, from whatever had happened. I was done making lunch (sandwiches) and yelled for Oni-san to come down. No reply. Strange. Usually, he would intuitively come down himself, saying something about how it was part of his skill set to know whenever the food was ready. Stupid Oni-san, I thought while shaking my head and upstairs to check on him and find out what had happened. Oni-san was on the ground. I attributed it to him being lazy, as usual. I called out to him, but he wasn't responding. I felt like he was purposely ignoring me. I got close to him and realized he was unconscious. Vomit hung loosely out of his mouth. Bile suddenly developed and constricted my throat.
"No. No. Ni-san" Komachi let out, in panic. "Come on Oni-san, this isn't funny anymore. Please wake up" she tried in vain, hoping to get him up. "This can't be happening. No. I need to do something.".
Tears had begun to mar Komachi's youthful persona. She called 120* and explained the situation to the person on the line, as best as she could, her voice cracking throughout. The official on the line tried to calm her down, and assured her that help was on the way and that her brother would be all right, but how could he have possibly calmed her down. For Komachi, it was as if her brother was dying right in front of her. She was not even willing to qualify the circumstance in which her Oni-san could have been dead already, and she felt as if she was completely unable to do anything to help him, even with the emergency services official guiding her through the steps she should take to ensure her brother's survival.
Every second felt like a prolonged death sentence to Komachi. The clock's ticking, was never as glaringly blatant, as It was right now. She was still on the line with the operator, and after what felt like a living hell to Komachi, help was finally here. The operator told her, that the paramedics were outside and she hadn't needed to be told twice.
The paramedics loaded Hikigaya on the stretcher and rushed him away. One of them stayed back with Komachi. She had already seen, what no little sister should ever have to see. Their father was informed after the paramedic was able to coax the information out of the dazed Komachi. Their father was away on a business trip and the nearest flight back was a day away. The other emergency contact they had listed was their mother, but no one really picked up…
"Where am I?" I said out loud, to no one in particular. I can't see anything at all. It's just so dark. This doesn't feel like hell, and this sure as hell doesn't look like heaven either. Is this how it all ends? They throw you in a dark room and leave you to rot in solitary confinement? Can I at least have some Max Coffee? Guess not.
"Hello Hachiman" A voice resonated, seemingly appearing out of nowhere.
"Who is this? Where Am I ?" I asked, looking around trying to find the source.
"I'm you Hachiman." The voice responded, and right before my eyes, was a near carbon copy of myself, staring straight into my eyes. Though, he didn't seem to possess the dead fish eyes I had.
"You must be wondering why I don't have the same eyes as you. Well to answer your question, I'm you, just the version of you, you wished you could be." He answered, while not displaying much emotion, except the small smile adorning my face. I mean his face.
"And where am I", I asked, slightly perturbed by talking to myself.
"We're in your head Me-kun" He replied, taking on a cheery tune. "And no before you ask, you're not dead" he answered my question before I even asked. Either he's really good at guessing, or I'm assuming that we sharing the same mind. He smiled in response to my thoughts.
"How things move along from this point, I can't really say Me-kun" he continued.
Meanwhile, they rushed through the hospital corridors. A plethora of medical staff looming over the unconscious body of the slowly dying boy, trying to figure out what had happened. His vitals were weak but had begun to rapidly fall. They were forced to resort to an Intracardiac injection*.
Suddenly, the darkness began to rapidly fade away. I felt as if I was hit by a car while trying to save a stupid dog named sable.
"Oh God! Make It Stop!" I cried out in pain.
My originally blurred vision was coming back, and I realized I was surrounded by a group of people. As I slowly grasped at my bearings, I realized that I was surrounded by doctors. It wasn't supposed to work like this. It was supposed to end. Even the darkness was better than this unbearable pain. My vision was blurring, but I was unable to lose consciousness. I felt like I was in a daze, the pain slowly numbing, but not truly going away. I felt like I was about to lose consciousness again. I could almost feel the tension in the room.
"We're losing him again" yelled someone in blue scrubs, presumably the surgeon.
"No" It suddenly hit me. The gravity of what I had done had just hit me. "Komachi" I tried to say. I can't leave Komachi alone like this. I can't believe I almost did to her, what mom did to us. I mustered up my courage. The urge to give up right now and let it truly end was inexplicably unbearable, but I couldn't leave Komachi alone. It was becoming harder and harder to hold on…
"Hey mister, will Oni-san be alright? Heis gonna be alright? right? This is just a big joke right?" Komachi let out. The effects of the emotional duress visible. The paramedic assigned to Komachi was at an impasse. Right now the situation could go either way, but he couldn't really tell her that.
"It'll all work out. You just gotta believe in your Oni-chan to pull through." Said the paramedic, hoping beyond hope that what he said wasn't just an empty promise.
*120 = 911 in Japan.
* Intracardiac injection = Think of it as a jump starter for humans.
AN: I received an overwhelming response on the first chapter. I would like to thank all of you for reading and reviewing and hope you guys stick around for the ride.
Shout out to Awesomenes11!
Now to address some questions:
Q1. Will you finish this story or not?
Ans. As long as there's still one person out there who reads this, I won't drop this under any circumstance.
Q2. Update Schedule.
ans. I can dish out 5-6k chapters, if I work on a weekly basis (plus minus two days, owing to unforeseen circumstances), or I can maintain the length I have for relatively faster updates. Let me know what you guys think I should go for (they're both convenient to me in their own way)
