Hi^^ The eleventh chap is out!
And thanks for all your reviews! It seems like the readers are still quite content with this story and I´m so very glad about it^^
And yes, I have a beta now :) Thousand thanks for your great work, bloody-miss-alice :)
BTW: This chap is completely written out of Hotsuma´s Point of View.
Disclaimer: I don´t own Uragiri wa boku no namae wo shitteiru or any lyrics by 12 Stones.
The sun has almost disappeared behind the horizon already, when the brunet is finished talking. And everything he has told him has sounded like a damn, horrible, ridiculous script of a damn, horrible, ridiculous fantasy movie. The smaller boy waits for an answer, he can tell. And he hits the log with his fist and almost laughs as he says "Well. Shit happens"
...
He hits the wall once. It hurts.
He hits it twice and his skin gets bruised.
He hits the wall until his knuckles bleed and the crimson warmth drips down onto the dark ground, colouring it dark-red. The wall is already covered with visible spots where he has hit the rough surface. But he doesn't stop.
...
He watches him from the corners of his eyes, his face still turned to the tree in front of him. The amber eyes of Shusei gaze at him, emotionless as always. Yet, something in his expression shifts like a shadow passing over his pale skin.
"You don't believe me, do you?" he mutters with his voice barely a whisper and hiding what he's thinking. But the sound feels more distant than ever before. A smirk forms on his lips, but he finds it harder and harder to breath, to let the air flow in and out of his lungs since there's now this damn intense and almost unbearable wish to scream and yell and scream.
"Is it that obvious?" he replies nevertheless, his voice full of poignant sarcasm.
The pickpocket is back.
Well, has he ever gone away?
...
He wants to break something.
He wants to see thousands and thousands of shards cover the ground.
He wants to destroy something, anything, it doesn't matter what it is. His surroundings have become black and white. He doesn't recognize them anymore. After many, many seconds, minutes, hours, he can't tell, his body moves on its own, fulfilling this desperate wish inside of him. His bloody hand clenches into a fist and hurts and the next thing he knows are so many, many shards falling down on him, sparkling like pretty little diamonds, but cutting small small wounds into his skin in a funny looking way and it burns and burns and burns.
...
"You really don't believe me" the smaller guy sighs. He grimaces and turns around to him.
"Oh, c'mon, have ya heard yourself even talking? Demons? Reincarnation? Battles? Hell? Have ya gone insane?" he snaps, not even really sure why he's so upset about it.
But something feels so very terrible wrong to him, he just doesn't know what exactly it is.
...
He wants to erase his memories of the boy so badly, but every time he shuts his eyes and digs his nails into his own skin, he sees his image again and again and again, and not only his, also the images of his family, his mother, his father, his brother, his friends. All the images of those he has left behind.
Those who have left him behind.
He grits his teeth so hard his jaw hurts. The images look strange, so old and abused in his mind. Images being seen from a perspective of an outsider, seeing a life he has never lived.
...
"So… does it mean I'm only a replacement?"
Those words slip out of his mouth before he can stop them. The brunet, who has just been about to say something, stiffens in motion and his eyes get colder. So cold. So far away. Moving so far away from him.
"So I'm right? You're… you're seeing your old friend in me?" he continues and he knows that he hurts his opposite, but he doesn't stop. His own pain outweighs it.
"…"
The-answer-that-is-no-answer-but-yet-is-an-answer feels like a wave of icy water drowning his fire inside, until nothing is left anymore except the gray ashes of what he has believed in before. Firmly held onto. And now everything is gone.
Again.
"Fuck you" he hisses and turns around, wanting to get as far away as he can. The park is almost empty now. But he has only made a few steps when a warm hand suddenly grips his elbow, stopping him.
"Let go" he says in a very low voice, but his whole body shudders with rage already.
"Listen, you're not a replacement to me" Shusei replies and amber eyes are boring into his.
Don't look at me when you're not seeing me…
"Let go!"
"Not until you'll listen to me!"
"I said let go!"
He turns around to him, jerking his arm violently free and faster than a normal eye could see, he hits the brunet with his fist, right on the cheekbone where the skin is thin and where it does hurt.
Both of them.
"Ya know what? Until now, my life has been nothing but a horrible damn joke! And this – you – was the most laughable of all!"
Shusei's face is still turned to the side, but the red bruise is already evident on his pale skin. And without another word, he runs away. And this time, the elder boy doesn't follow him.
...
For three whole years he has never allowed himself to feel so much again that it would take control over him. But tonight he crossed the border he's always watched from close, from afar, his emotions inside him locked away in a common grave. The sky above him is black and empty as if even the stars and the moon have turned away from him.
'It starts with pain, followed by hate'
He's beaten up two times. It's his fault, because he initiates them and provokes them. A few of the guys who beat the hell out of him even know him. For a very short second he sees something like the last bit of human concern in their eyes. But then it vanishes. Here, the only thing you can do for a person in order to comfort him, is to beat him up, to cause him pain. Since on the street, there's nothing else left but this ancient feeling you're still able to feel, this oldest emotion of all emotions that makes you sure you're still alive.
But it's not enough.
Not nearly.
His back leans against the wall of an old apartment building. A few apartments are still inhabited, but most are empty, with broken windows and garbage piling up in the rooms no one has cared to clean up in years. The blood on his hands starts to dry, but his face is bruised and his ribs hurt. He bites onto his lower lip and there's the familiar salty and metallic taste. The fire inside him burns up again, hotter than anything you could imagine, and darker than the sky above.
He wants to hate him so badly. He wants to hurt him. Hurt him like he has hurt him.
Tell me, why…`?
For one moment he has dared to believe that he has done something right. For one moment he has been about to open up again. For one moment he has tried to feel again. But he has shattered it again. Everything.
Let me forget…just once… just now.
His eyes move slowly to his left arm. He grits his teeth. He remembers the cool fingers moving over his skin. He remembers his touch. He remembers his warmth that is neither warm nor cold.
Never warm or cold.
'A last fleeting summer breeze at the end of September'
His right hand clenches around the shard he has taken with him. The blood flows down his arm in red rivers, dripping onto his clothes. He slides down the wall and he feels dizzy due to the loss of blood. But he doesn't stop. His arm is covered in wounds, he doesn't mind reopening old ones or cutting through those who have just started to heal. He can't stop, even as his hand is too slippery and too tired to hold the crimson blade.
Not enough… I want to forget…
And he sees only his face, not with a smile, without any emotion there could have been and his chest hurts so much. So much… His heart feels like its crying.
But he has no tears left.
…only a replacement…
Instead he holds the shard higher. It sparkles in the light of a close streetlamp, like the pathetic attempt to copy the character of a star without ever having seen one. Without ever having felt one.
…let me forget…
He pierces the rough blade right into his upper arm, there where weeks ago the hands, his hands, have touched him. His body starts to shake. His exhausted hand lets the bloody shard fall to the ground.
He bites into his right wrist and a long, desperate scream fights its way out of his throat. He screams like he has only screamed once before in his life, and his voice remembers the pain, the heat and the fear. Even though the sound is drowned by his wrist, it's loud and the wind carries the feelings away.
But no one wants to listen.
No one wants to know.
No one cares.
…the night… three years ago… has never ended…
And somewhere, a house starts to burn.
...
I've lost all my will
This has been haunting me way to long
And I can't rewind
I'm the suffering kind
I've been abusing way to long
I'm breaking
Suffocating
I'll close my eyes and I'll drift away
I'll make it through my darkest day
And I'll sing this song at the top of my lungs
Until this dark day is done
Now I'm trapped in the wake
Of all my mistakes
I've been under for way to long
I sit and I shake
My heart starts to race
The poison lingers in my veins
I'm fading
Suffocating
To be continued...
Well, what else can I say? This chap had to come up sooner or later and I wanted to write it this way from the very beginning.
BTW: The lyrics at the end are from the song 'This Dark Day' by 12 Stones.
Please review^^