*Stretches fingers and sighs* Unrequited love has inspired this chapter. Hope you all enjoy and drop me some delicious feedback ;)
Warning - this chapter includes swearing.
IPOV:
I don't remember one moment I tried to forget
I lost myself yet I'm better not sad
Now I'm closer to the edge
It was a thousand to one and a million to two
Time to go down in flames and I'm taking you
Closer to the edge
No I'm not saying I'm sorry
One day, maybe we'll meet again
No I'm not saying I'm sorry
One day, maybe we'll meet again
No, no, no, no
Closer to the Edge, 30 Seconds to Mars
Dreams are a curious existence. They are the essence of our subconscious, the realm of pure imagination. Some say that, essentially, dreams are the time that our mind wanders freely, showing us glimpses of what we truly think about. Others say that it's our intuition, delving into our own emotions. Humanity has even gone as far to call sleep 'The Cousin of Death', since our spirit wanders as free as it would in dreams as it would in death.
But for myself, dreams were always simple. I never needed to ponder such things. I had 'The Sight'. Dreams told me the future and the past, showing me the things that would assist me later. This was the knowledge that I had discovered from a book in my family's library - The Tsukiyomi Diary.
At first I thought the title was way too feminine. I mean, why not call it something more serious, like a Journal? But soon after I opened its yellowed pages and skimmed over its knowledge I forgot all about my childish prejudice against the feminine title and was stunned. Inside that book, were all the secrets that my family had to hide, and the truth about my night terrors.
My night terrors were far from nightmares and were actually an form of an ability that my bloodline had, called 'The Sight'. My great grandfather was able to see what you wanted the most in the world. My grandmother had the ability to see your soul mate. My father was able to see your death upon contact. I was able to see the past and future.
Never in my life had anything made more sense in that moment when I realised that I wasn't some kind of once-in-a-lifetime freak with dreams that came true. The visions that haunted my resting soul were not a fluke. It wasn't an abnormality at all, and it was painfully real.
It was genetic.
And it wasn't going away.
x.x.x.x.x
I could feel the hate bubbling in my veins. I could feel it streaming the hatred into my mind, burning rational thought to a pathetic smouldering crisp of nothingness. I hated hating things, and I hated hate in general. I hated the fact that I had become a human that hated everything, when there was so much to live for. But that wasn't what I was hating in this exact moment of time. My fists clenched together, knuckles cracking. I may hate life, but life wasn't as bad as this.
You know what I hated the most?
I hated my mini fridge.
Every time I opened it, all of its contents decide to lurch forward, scattering onto the floor like projectile vomit, refrigerator style. And that was exactly what I had just done. I had opened the chamber of organised expensive edible objects and had been rewarded with an inedible mass of broken fail. I wasn't even hungry – there was just something about checking the contents of a fridge, even if you knew for a fact that the contents hadn't changed in the slightest. It was a massive pile of food, the drinks creating a revolting moat around it. Castle Fail, Ikuto style. Castle Fail was two month's worth of food, gone. Gone.
Just like her.
"Chill dude, it's just food. Nothing that we can't sneak out and get tomorrow. There's still chips in the cupboard. You'll survive." Kukai rationalized, smashing the buttons on his remote. He was trying to play Mortal Combat upside down and so far, he was succeeding. I faintly heard a female let out a bloodcurdling scream, while a manly voice shouted "Fatality!" followed by Kukai whooping in delight.
"I'll survive, but you won't." I muttered, a malicious grin creeping over my face. "The chocolate milk is a part of this pile of Castle Fail."
"Castle Fail?" He laughed, before my words processed through his mind and the consequences caught up to him. He dropped the remote and whipped his head around to survey the mess. He fell to his knees, at the base of the moat in defeat. "My life is over." he whispered in horror.
"Fatality." I mocked, before walking away sadly into the darkness of my room. I collapsed into my bed, before mentally berating myself for making Kukai miserable. The anger in my body slowly subsided, hatred replacing itself with bitter and lonely misery.
Tenshi was gone. She never existed.
In the basement, there was a room that used to be a huge supply closet. That was where I thought Tenshi was. That was where Kukai, Nagi and I had sprinted off to, excited that we would finally be able to meet Tenshi. That was where we were faced with a roadblock of astronomic proportions. That was where there really was an inch of dust coating every surface, and a massive puddle of paint.
The paint was reeking of toxic fumes, it was almost chloroform worthy.
I had most likely knocked the can over in my daze.
I had been high.
High on Tenshi.
Tenshi wasn't real – I had hallucinated. I had hallucinated about her being alive, I had hallucinated about her being in Seiyo, I had hallucinated about her existence in this world. I had lied to my own existence, trading the truth for a more favourable future. A future that didn't exist. And what was I doing about my mistake? I was being bitter, harming the people I cared about.
But the thing that got me was the mere fact that I didn't care that I was upsetting them. They would get over it. They would move on – Kukai would buy more chocolate milk and Nagihiko would find another mystery to unravel. They wouldn't think of her the way that I do and they wouldn't spend their time being regretful. But I would be the same, eyes blinded by the shooting star that was Tenshi.
I held an arm around my stomach, to keep myself together. There was this feeling of emptiness inside me. It was like the fires that Tenshi had stirred up had incinerated my insides, leaving me cold and empty without her. I would happily die than feel the icy cold emptiness take my soul over, splintering warm hope into a thousand irreparable pieces.
But then I wouldn't know what had happened, and I just couldn't deal with that. I needed to know where she was, who she was and more importantly, what she was. Death could wait, I had found a higher priority than eternal peace.
A flicker of light appeared out of the corner of my eye. I heard the scrunching of paper and a frustrated sigh. I got off my ass and opened my closet to reveal Nagihiko. He was crouching on all of my once hung-up and perfectly ironed clothes, while staring at the white wall. I wanted to say something about how I didn't appreciate him destroying all of Utau's work since she had spent hours organising and categorizing my clothes, but oddly enough I liked the change. There was something about the emptiness in the closet, the calm chaos. I sat next to him, feeling the clothing flatten under my weight.
"I was wondering where you slunk off to." I mused aloud, looking sideways at Nagihiko. He had a puzzled expression on his face, masking all other emotions.
"Well, I guess you found out, huh." he muttered before quickly drawing something in thin air with his finger for a few rapid seconds. Then he stopped, finger frozen in mid air. He flopped onto his back, blowing air out of his mouth noisily. "It doesn't make sense."
"Nothing in this world does." I replied, throwing a nearby shirt at the wall. "And for all I know, it never will."
"Don't be stupid. It's just..." he waved his hands around in frustration. He gritted his teeth, before dropping his hands to his sides. "This."
"My friend, we are both on the same page." I replied, running a hand loosely through my azure hair.
"No, I don't think we are. You are mentally defeated, accepting that Tenshi probably doesn't exist. Everything has an answer: math, science, algebra... So why not this? But the thing is that what we saw tonight didn't make a lick of sense."
"Lick of sense? Really Nagi? That sounds disgusting." I mocked, trying to evade the subject. I didn't want to hear about Tenshi, I didn't want to know the truth about her. Because there was a huge chance that it won't be the one that I'm looking for and I think something like that would kill me.
Nagihiko snorted, before tying his hair up with a wristband. "Ha, ha. Very funny. But think about it: there was paint spilt on the floor, correct? And it was spilt from under the bed. The room looked like it hadn't been touched in at least a thousand years, but there was clearly fresh paint on the floor."
"Someone had been there recently, if it wasn't me." I muttered. "But you could be wrong. Tenshi might not exist."
"That's just a risk we are going to have to take." Nagihiko replied, with a coy grin. Immediately he was content with his theory. I could see the Nagihiko-style cogs working in his brain, linking one possibility to the next. "We should go back down there, as soon as possible."
"I don't think that's a good idea." I don't want to go. I don't think I want to risk knowing that she doesn't exist. I don't think I want to find out that she's not real. I don't think I want to find out that she's just a figment of my imagination. I don't want to have my life turned upside down again, for nothing.
Nagi grinned before batting his eyelashes like a girl. "Man up fucktard." he sang in a ridiculously feminine tone and waving his long purple hair around in a mock-seductive way. I would have laughed. He then winked playfully before getting up off his ass. "I'm going to see how Kukai's going. I think I heard him crying before." his voice went back to normal, and with that he walked out of the closet. But before he left, he paused in the closets doorway.
"Ikuto, I'm going down there tonight. With or without you."
I didn't give him eye contact as he left, shutting the door behind him. Darkness engulfed the closet space, suddenly making me feel childishly afraid. I wondered briefly if that was how Tenshi would have felt if she had awoken in the basement, all alone and injured. Would Rima Mashiro assist her and treat her well, if Rima Mashiro was even there in the first place? Would Tenshi even accept the assistance of Rima Mashiro, a complete stranger who has a strangely evil aura which is somehow trustworthy at the same time?
I groaned, before punching the wall with my fist. I could make up scenarios starring Tenshi all day, but all I was succeeding in was stalling. Nagihiko hadn't given me a decision; he had told me what he was doing. And I already knew my answer, and he knew my answer before I had decided upon it. He had made me curious, enticing me back to the depths of the school to perform amateur detective work – the exact kind of thing that Nagihiko enjoyed.
I felt a chill, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. As much as I wanted to see her again, I didn't know for certain that I would come out as unscathed next time. This time, I just became depressed, briefly considering suicide.
If I found out she didn't exist, what would happen then?
x.x.x.x.x
"Curiosity killed the cat," Kukai mused aloud, haphazardly taking pictures on his iPhone with one hand, not caring what he took photos of. "But what brought it back?"
"What are you trying to say?" I growled, sending my best glare at Kukai who didn't notice a thing.
"Kukai, that was almost poetic. Maybe Philosophy classes have impacted on your state of mind after all." Nagi chuckled, picking up a strip of plastic with the words Do Not Enter printed all over it in yellow and black. He quickly wrapped it up and shoved it in his pocket. That was the plastic that I had taken down less than twenty four hours ago, but apart from us three, no one else in the world knew that Ikuto Tsukiyomi had breached Seiyo Academy rules, and had make an utter fool of himself in the process.
"Then the internet has been impacted, not me." Kukai retorted, snapping a picture of Nagihiko's raised eyebrows and unamused expression. Kukai stopped taking pictures and stared at him with a grin. "Get it? The internet has been impacted, because I got it from the internet? I wasn't impacted? Do you get it now?"
"Explaining a joke that wasn't funny in the first place does not make it funnier." Nagihiko stated while smirking, patting Kukai on the shoulder before entering the lift. I followed and Kukai trailed after me, silently fuming with a predatory grin.
The badly recorded elevator music began to play. Once I had found that music relieving, almost unrealistically appropriate. Now I found the opera music eerie, and I itched to be able to turn it off somehow, but as it was not an option, I just ignored it and pressed the button that would take us down to the basement. It felt like eternity before the doors opened again, revealing darkness.
Almost in synchronisation, we all pulled out large black flashlights out of our blazers and turned them all on at the same time. The light shone like beams, vanquishing the darkness in the icy abyss in front of us. I felt my lips twist themselves into a smirk; it was hard to be serious when something awesome like that happens in a fluke. I quickly wiped the smirk off my face, feeling misery pour down on my shoulders. Tenshi could have been here, I couldn't be screwing around if I had a chance of finding out more. Full concentration was needed, and I was more than ready to give her my full attention.
"When did our school ever need a cardboard cut-out of Optimus Prime?" Kukai asked slowly, shining his torch at a far away corner. Surely enough, Optimus Prime was there, standing in his robotic cardboard glory in a battle stance, next to a giant martini glass full of fish.
"Megatron's out there Kukai, you might want to watch your words..." I replied, feeling a smirk creep onto my face. That smirk almost twitched itself into a smile before I bit the inside of my cheek, drawing blood. I don't like to smile, especially when Tenshi may or may not exist in this world. This was no time for joy, it was the most serious moment of my life. She was what I wanted to find, and her existence was the only thing I needed.
We weaved our way towards the back room, through the piles of props. To some the piles looked like junk, others treasure. It was almost like a Garage Sale, but unattended by humans and to the extreme. When we finally arrived at the door, I reached over and quickly opened it. Nagihiko raised an eyebrow at me, almost as if he was asking me if I was okay to continue. Me, want to stop? I'm fucking Ikuto Tsukiyomi; nothing's going to stop me – let alone a fucking door.
Kukai flicked the light switch and a light bulb flickered to life, throwing artificial light over the room. Immediately the smell of paint fumes hit us like a brick, causing us to stumble back a few steps. Nagihiko quickly passed around gas masks. "These will not remove the smell, but the fumes won't affect us, so it's our best chance at checking this room out." he explained, before pulling his own on and nodding to himself. He then strode confidently back into the room, Kukai by his side chatting enthusiastic about his next soccer match against a rival school.
I stood outside the threshold, heart pounding. This was where I had last seen her, where I had lied to myself about her existence. I could see Nagihiko and Kukai staring critically at the hospital bed, eyeing the ridiculous amount of dust that lingered on its surface. It didn't take a genius to know that they were doubting that she had been there. But she had, I could feel it in my bones, the firm grasp of confidence. I took a deep breath – Do it for Tenshi, do it for Tenshi – and stepped into the room, pretending that all was right in the world and that I wasn't falling apart at the seams.
"Ikuto, come here." Nagihiko called, waving me over to the dust coated hospital bed. I strode over, shoving my hands in my blazer pockets. He was peering under the hospital bed, rolling his sleeves up. "Where was Tenshi in this room?"
"On the bed, asleep." And bleeding profusely under the bandage that was wrapped around her torso, while sweating and being in pain, but you don't need to know that, do you?
"There's no dint in the mattress where she could have been sleeping," Kukai pointed out, before turning around and looking at various other objects in the room.
Nagihiko quickly checked the mattress before looking under the bed again. "That's true, but look at the mattress. It's as hard as a brick – there wouldn't be a dint even if she didn't move for a year. The original bucket is under the bed, it must have been masked by the shadows the first time we were here."
There was silence as they searched through the room, the occasional snap from Kukai's iPhone. I just stood there, uselessly staring at the bed upon which she laid.
It hurt to be in there. The loss was almost suffocating, and the regret was tying my stomach in knots. I could have reached forward with my hand, lightly shook her shoulder and woken her... but then what? Confess that I had been watching her sleep for about twenty minutes, while stashing pink pom poms in my blazer? Inform her that she had starred in my dream? Inquire about why her stomach was bleeding like a river, and why she – probably – wasn't wearing anything but a blood soaked bandage?
No, I wouldn't have done any of those. I was at an impasse, and I didn't know which way to go. Either road was unsettling, but they were the only roads available.
I heard a small rustling from under the bed. Bending over, I looked under the bed to see Nagihiko dip an ear bud swab in the paint and place it in a small container. "Nagi, that paint is illegal. I strongly suggest that you don't plant that stuff anywhere." I cautioned, feeling like an ass. Usually I would never warn someone about that kind of stuff. Nagihiko could do whatever he wanted with the paint, and would probably turn it into a prank of some sort, but for some reason I didn't want anyone else hallucinating – no matter how funny it may become. If someone else hallucinated about something so life changing, just to find out it wasn't so, I would be pissed. No one deserved that.
"I'm just sampling – a friend of mine can help us track down where this stuff came from and possibly who this paint belongs to." Nagihiko explained, while carefully placing the small container in his pocket while chuckling to himself and scooping up a larger portion and spooning the paint into a separate container. "Besides, he'll probably want a bit of it as payment."
"That'd be right. The kid's always trying to prove that brain always beats brawn...or something like that." Kukai laughed, while picking up an inflatable donut, covered in dust. He closely inspected it, before taking a picture and carelessly tossing it behind him.
I figured that I may as well do something to move the search along instead of standing in the middle of the room like a goose. There was a pillow in the corner that I had seen Rima Mashiro around when I had seen Tenshi last. I could have sworn Rima was on a separate bed in the corner, but a pillow was all that remained now. I reached out to touch the pillow, but before I touched it a few chunks of dust suddenly flew off the surface and clung to the metal crosses on my sleeve. I tried to brush it off, but the dust didn't seem to budge. After close inspection I saw that the dust wasn't dust at all, but the tell-tale silvery granules told me that it was in fact magnetised metal shavings.
I quickly called Nagihiko over and told him about my discovery. He nodded to himself, before possibly grinning inside his gasmask. "So the dust is fake. I wonder how they managed to spread it all over the place, it looked so real..." he mused, before setting off to look under the bed again. I nodded, before deciding to see what Kukai was up to since I had no interest in hanging out under a hospital bed for the rest of the day.
I turned around to find Kukai standing on a bookshelf, shining his torch down a central heating duct. "Ikuto, I need some assistance."
I quickly clambered up the unit, feeling the ground rush away from me as I padded up the shelves at lightning speed. Within seconds I was sitting next to Kukai, examining the duct with my own torch. I smirked, I hadn't broken a sweat. I briefly wondered if Tenshi would swoon at something like that, but pushed that thought aside. "What's wrong with it?" I muttered, trying to look inside the metal chamber.
"It smells like burnt plastic, and a bit of smoke was coming out of it a few minutes ago. Suspicious, eh?" Kukai grinned, while handing me his torch to hold at the metal grill. "It's also really weird how the dust only coats the top of everything, not the entirety of every object in the room. And it comes of really easy too - I peeled dust from a silver tomato. That kind of stuff just isn't natural."
"There's magnetised metal shavings in the almost-dust." I said halfway through a yawn. I needed to sleep, but I honestly couldn't rest peacefully before figuring out what had happened in this room.
"That's weird." Kukai snorted, before using a hubcap to wedge the grill off the wall. Dust puffed outwards, and we both waited for it to settle before staring in disbelief.
"No, that's weird." I murmured, before calling over my shoulder. "Nagi, get over here."
Inside the chamber was an exploded garbage bag and the remnants of a lighter. The same paint that was spilt under the bed was pooled around the mess and was clearly sticking the grill to the chamber like glue. A miniature fan was behind the mess, still silently rattling on in an attempt to keep on spreading the false dust out of the grill.
Nagihiko crouched next to us on the bookshelf. The shelf wobbled a bit but stayed vertical and stable. "I sense fowl play," he said, before digging around in his pocket. "Check this out."
A small white plastic clip was in his hand, still humming softly. A small red light was flashing on it, almost acting as a beacon for us to find it.
"Hey, those are monitoring clips." Kukai said, frowning through his mask. "When I went to the hospital to see Kaidou after a liver transplant, he had one on his index finger and it looked exactly like that. Do you think since she was asleep, that something could have been wrong with her? The bandages – it makes sense."
I looked across the room, and quickly spotted a smashed heartbeat monitor. "There's the monitor." I said, pointing towards it.
Nagihiko stood up, glaring down at the rest of the room. Kukai sat on the edge, eyes searching for any other evidence that we could have missed. And I just gazed at the bed, where I now knew for certain that she existed. The bookshelf threatened to fall from our weight on one side, but stabilized itself quickly.
"She was here." I whispered softly, almost uncertain that I had actually said it at all.
"She was." Nagihiko verified, smiling softly to himself. "Ikuto, you were right. She does exist, and she was here."
"She can't be that far from here," Kukai chuckled. "It's pretty hard to get away from Seiyo once you get in, 'specially in her condition too."
And in that exact moment, all of my dreams were picked off the floor and bandaged. The once irreparable hopes of seeing her were quickly mended, brand new once more. A fire lit itself inside of me, spreading like wildfire. The world looked so unique, so different from the one that I had seen less than an hour ago. Despair fleeted from my blood and a thirst for mystery was born.
I smirked to myself, the corners of my lips threatening to smile. I had found a new definition for a dream. A dream is what you want to achieve, what you want the most in your future.
And since it was impossible for her to be in my past, she was my future. And just that little bit of reliable knowledge made life that little bit brighter.
Alright, time to fess up. I caught Writers Block, and it hit hard. Saving the Joker, my other story, is still being difficult. I dont think any new chapters will come out from that story anytime soon - The Block is still strong there. I made this chapter as long as possible, so please drop a review to encourage me to keep on writing or I'll most likely slack again. Sorry guys, but its been a hard time and those times are still ahead.
Reviews are loved. If you enjoy this story, leave a review, or it may be neglected.
