Chapter Eleven: Atrophy

Every living thing as far as the eye can see were either already dead or suffering through their last agonizing moments alive. Blood ran freely along the length of the marble floor, engorging everyone who fell to the ground.

Men in tuxedos stormed about like merciless soldiers, issuing death to any poor soul who managed to capture their attention. The acrid smell of blood and sweat filled the atmosphere, intense enough to render someone unconscious. Wives held their husbands, mothers held their daughters, sons held their parents.

The terrifying miasma of mass homicide startled my senses, which in turn, caused the entrance of adrenaline into my system again.

I was somehow overcome by a new found bravery that managed to put aside my fear of being shot to help my injured brother. I flung to his aid, trapping him in my embrace and uttering the command to stand.

I was not afraid of Krad now; he could not harm me as his animation had been suspended from the pain.

"D-dammit..." he breathed, clutching my shoulders, "S-so stupid...that boy is..."

"What happened?"

"I k-killed a few of those blackguards, but alas, I...failed to protect my tamer...upon seeing you were going to be shot...his will to save you overpowered me.."

"Comon, Krad, we have to go!" I grunted, trying to hoist him up into his feet.

"Have you holes for eyes? Cannot you not see that I am injured? Leave me be, senseless girl child!" Krad let out a guttural growl, averting his eyes to his wound. "That stupid boy. Now I will have to go back into the abyss.."

"Be quiet! Stand!" I cried. He nudged me away as a final form of protest, but after a few seconds he submitted to me. Involuntarily, he collapsed on my shoulder. The last words he uttered were whispered in my ear:

"He will not live."

Krad melted back into Souta's form. Souta slipped from my shoulder, grunting when he hit the ground.

I screamed out in the midst of disorder and death. I couldn't hear myself think. I couldn't hear my own voice or the beating of my heart. All my mind knew were images and the immediate interpretation of them. I had no time or will to contemplate anything.

Souta spluttered blood, squeezing his fists tight as he started coughing.

"Souta! Souta! We have to get out of here!"

I propped him on my bosom. He grasped his wound, forcing himself to stand, therefore aiding us in our escape. With the combined power of our legs, we sprinted into a random corridor, dodging an occasional bullet and hoping to get help as soon as possible.

A man shouted. For whatever reason, that shout was distinct among the others; I knew, doubtlessly, that I was being addressed. For a brief moment, I turned around while still running, having made it clear that Souta would keep watch for any dead bodies or other objects that we could trip over.

One of the tuxedo men had a gun pointed almost precisely at my head. Before I could veer to the side and escape my death, an elderly man sprung into the bullet range and sacrificed his life. Whether or not he did it intentionally, I will never know. The only thing that conflicted that conclusion was that an elderly woman was waiting for him on the other end of the room. She had her arms outstretched, calling him.

I didn't look long enough to see her die.

The room we entered was vacant and lifeless, granted there were a few blood ridden corpses on the floor, but they were not considered as occupants in my mind. At the end of the room, there was a door with a red exit sign above it. Souta and I let out a gasp simultaneously and darted to the door. I felt like I was flying. Beyond that door awaited our salvation.

I grasped the railing and slowly made the way to the staircase. I glimpsed behind me. A dark trail of bloody footprints trailed our path. I cried out and squinted my eyes closed, trying to banish the sight from my mind.

"He will not live."

Souta gasped. "R-Rio..!"

I opened my eyes.

"Oh god, Souta!" Ken cried.

He stood at the end of the staircase with Sayuri and a guard.

Sayuri ran up the steps and tore Souta from my arms, "Are you hurt?" She yelled.

"No," I said breathlessly.

"Then get in the car!" Ken screamed in the midst of a chorus of gunshots.

We rushed out of the building just as fast paced footsteps were advancing to the exit. I assumed several gang members had seen us escaping and were in pursuit of us, but we did not stay long enough to confirm it.

Another possibility could have been that survivors were heading to the door, but proved to be as unlucky as the majority of the innocent men and women caught in between all the turbulence.

The limousine was parked in the posterior of the museum, far from the entrance. But sirens and a multitude of chaotic noises intertwined with the heart pounding ring of gunshots and blood curdling screams that could be heard within close range of us.

Police cars flew into the streets. Several people were arrested, for whatever reason. Frantic, blood splattered survivors unleashed mayhem on the streets, startling civilians, worsening traffic, and crying out for God and assistance.

A great big cloud of smoke grew in the midst of the chaos, being fed by a mass of grey haze emanating from the windows of the museum. The smell of gasoline stung my nose before we were ushered into the car; in a few moments, a tempest of flames flew up the walls, eating away at the bricks, melting artwork and marring sculptures from within the building. All the while the searchlights waved in the sky to and fro.

And still I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to banish imagery that would never leave.

The smell of his blood filled the air; a relentless scent that would remain with me for the rest of my life.

The dark limousine drove around Azumano, turning corners, swerving to the left, swerving to the right; but either way, we were both drawing into an inevitable path with profound consequences.

Though the mansion was only a few minutes from the museum, that day the time seemed to stretch out farther; longer to me, perhaps, but still the same to everyone else. The longest ride. And as my brother lay at my shoulder wearing away, I knew tomorrow I would be reliving this.

Our dismayed parents swiped us both out of the car, running into the forest that bordered the Hikari mansion without a moment's hesitation, with us firmly in their grasp.

The trees were like fleeting, green giants as we were rushed to the house, with guards sprinting close behind us.

Upon our advent, guards gasped; maids cried out in shock and horror.

Ken placed Souta on the couch, the one he usually sat in when he read the newspaper, gently positioning him in such a way as give him freedom of movement. Sayuri stood rigid by the side of the couch for a while, looking as if her mind were running in circles. She wore the same expression she had when she saw Setsuko lying in the street, complaining that everything hurt.

Souta's cognition was fragile, shifting from sudden awareness to the situation at hand, to a vague understanding that, depending on what he was thinking about at the time, collapsed into brief intervals of delirium.

He claimed that everything he had dreamt was being realized right before his eyes.

"God, the lights..." he would cry, "They keep coming...I still see them..."

That was later to be revealed by Souta as the museum searchlights.

Among his other delirious proclamations were that the house was going to burn down somehow; that soon, 'everything would sink into hell'.

But we were not sinking into hell. We were already there.

Ken lifted up Souta's white shirt and examined the wound. An orifice about the size of a grape spewed small amounts of blood and stained the couch he was placed on. When Souta's leg twitched from the pain, a sudden torrent gushed out of the wound, some of it sprinkling on Ken's cheeks. Ken's eyes widened and his lower lip quivered at the sight. Without another moment of hesitation, he tore one of the lapels of his suit off and wrapped it tightly around Souta's abdomen. He grunted and let out a whimper.

A couple of maids burst into tears, weeping loudly. Several fled the room simply because they could not bear it. A few guards kindly offered other servants an embrace. Everyone seemed to know something deep in their hearts that I, at the time, was not willing to accept.

Sayuri rushed into the kitchen and poured a glass of water; as to who it was intended for, I did not know. If it was for Souta, I imagined the cause would be redundant. He had not the strength for anything aside of denouncing the home and all who lived in it with his ominous prophecies.

She dropped three ice cubes and opened one of the drawers for something. Finding what she was looking for, she popped it into the cup. The small clank of something against the glass startled me for some unknown reason. I turned my attention to Souta again, suddenly disinterested in anything that was not my brother.

Next thing I knew, she was at his side along with Ken, softly ordering him not to "fidget about". Ken agreed, offering him the frightening notion that he should cease his movements, lest he start bleeding uncontrollably. He immediately became still. Souta's reaction to Ken's words left me the impression that he was ignorant of the fact that he was still bleeding, and the flow was ceaseless the moment it was inflicted on him.

He heeded their words in an instant. It was only his gaze that would travel from place to place.

Souta's unfocused, hazy eyes bore that dreaded grey. He did not spare me them. He peered at my quivering frame every now and again, reminding me every time that my fear was greatly misplaced. I would scold him for lying, then he would smile at me wordlessly. That smile always haunted me the moment it left; I hated and loved it, anxiously waiting for it to come back.

As he lay on the couch in a lethargic blur, he murmured to himself the most insidious nonsense. Sentences like, "No, I can't be...I can't be...", or "No, that's not true, be quiet".

I could only assume that Krad's mouth must have tortured him, even as he lay dying...

Sayuri studied him for a long while, imbibing his pity inducing state; then, suddenly, she came to a decision.

"Rio." She said sharply.

I sprang to the call. "Yes?!"

"I called an ambulance prior to the evacuation of the wounded...I told them I would bring him here. They should be coming...but before then, I want you to drink some water.." She lifted up the glass she held in her hand. Her eyes never left Souta.

I was too frantic at the time to inquire why he was brought to the house and not ushered into the ambulance. With my ignorance and my young age, I just assumed that they knew how to handle these situations; in truth, they were just as confused and helpless as I was. They just knew how to hide it better.

"I'm not--"

Before I could utter further protest, she raised her other hand to silence me. "You're dehydrated. You need something to drink, or else you'll faint. I can tell by your color. You're covered in the blood of innocent people, your hair is a mess, and you have a crazed look in your eye. Trust me, you need it."

My fingers twitched involuntarily for a second. I was in no mood or state of mind for further disobedience. I was too preoccupied with my brother's dwindling life.

I snatched it from her hands and drank hungrily, much to my surprise, and carelessly let the half-full glass slip from my fingers, shattering into thousands of tiny fragments.

She issued Ken a brief nod, to which he quickly swiped my poor brother's unresponsive body and practically glided up the stairs, Sayuri hot on his trail.

I thought it odd that they would be bringing him up to my room when he is in such a dire position; the ground floor is obviously closer to the entrance, thus allowing the paramedics faster access to his wounds.

What on earth were they doing?

My frenzied mind would not allow me to contemplate their actions or my own. I was stuck in a world where every second counted. I was stuck in a world where nothing else existed except what was happening right this moment. And right now my world was ending.

Ken laid Souta on the bed and dabbed his perspiring forehead with the handkerchief with which he used to stanch his own bloody forehead hours before the museum massacre. Souta cleared his throat, issuing that same smile to him. Ken whispered something to Souta in his ear, which sounded like "I love you," but it was not to be validated.

Ken glimpsed at Sayuri, then averted his attention to me.

"Stay with Souta while we wait for the ambulance downstairs."

Me, not being endowed with the intelligence of how situations like these were supposed to be carried out, stupidly crawled onto the bed and joined Souta by his side, my faith completely resting in the hands of these fast approaching saviors and the mercy of a God I never believed in until this moment.

Ken and Sayuri dismissed themselves from the room in a heartbeat.

"My Rio.." Souta whispered, while one of those weak, heartbreaking smiles came to life on his pale face yet again. I felt the most painful and incomprehensible feeling; one that I did not and will never have the ability to put into words.

He reached out to me and pulled a small curl out from behind my ear and slid his fingers down its length, letting it spring back up when he released it. All throughout his life he found an odd comfort in my hair, which I could never bring myself to fathom. But if it consoled his tortured mind, who was I to deprive him of it?

"Souta...I can't believe this is happening..." I cried, crushing his hand in my fists.

"Your pendant is broken, Rio," he pointed out, averting his eyes to my bloodstained gown. Sure enough, when I summed up the will to leave his grey eyes, I saw that one wing was chipped off.

"H-how...did that happen? I must have fell on it.." I said, though at the time, I could truly care less.

"No. A bullet grazed it. It hit me..." he took his other hand off of his stomach to present his bandaged, but still bleeding wound, "Instead.."

My eyes widened. "Souta! You..took the bullet for me??"

"Of course I did," He began, a tear sliding from his eye. "I would never let anything happen to you.."

"Oh, Souta!" I cried out in shock and dismay. "You didn't! You didn't! You didn't!!"

My body shook with uncontrollable grief; I weeped loudly while I held his trembling hand.

"Please don't cry...p-please don't.." he stuttered, his voice breaking, "I didn't do it to make you sad..."

"You didn't...you didn't..." I whispered, almost inaudibly, clenching my teeth in utter despair. "No.."

"I'm sorry."

"Why did you...you're so stupid! Why??"

"I'm..s-sorry.."

What I felt cannot be written in words. Dear God, it was unbearable. It was unthinkable. It was unreal.

"Help is coming. Help is coming. I promise. It's coming." I reiterated. Powerless sentences that were uttered out of necessity. Said simply because they needed to be.

Those foolish hopes were the only thing standing between me and insanity.

He gave me that same smile. The one he did when I would scold him for lying. He knew something deep in his heart that I could not bring myself to accept.

This was the end.

"I don't want help. I just want you to stay here with me."

"You want to die!" I screamed, incredulous. "You want to leave me! You want to leave me!"

"No...I want nothing more...than to be...with you...in my arms..." he breathed, laying his head in my bloodstained bosom, "My love...my life.."

"You want to leave me!"

"My Rio.."

"Stop it! Stop it!"

"Please don't yell at me." He said in a whisper. "This isn't how I want to go."

I felt so helpless. I was trapped in a living nightmare that I couldn't free myself from. All the while, I tried to convince myself that it wasn't happening. Knowing that his demise was only a short time away, denying that his demise was a short time away...

It all surmounted to something greater than pain.

I thought of what we were.

Brother and sister.

"You're always getting us into trouble!"

Then...

"I love you, Rio."

The next night, I kept my back close to him to monitor his breathing. It was almost unpredictable to tell when he would start panicking, because the light would come afterward. I was baffled. I did everything I could to console him: keep the light on, lull him to sleep, sing to him, hug him, kiss his cheeks and tell him funny stories. But the end result was him always waking up a frenzied mess, crying that he was going to die.

Allies torn apart from the veins of our condemned bloodline.

"As if I need a brother who acts like a stranger, avoids me all the time, and never talks to me as the cherry on top of my fucking fantastic life!"

"I was...I was only trying to...God, you're just like Sayuri!"

But then the truth really revealed itself. I knew what we were. And I knew what we were destined to be.

We were both just unfortunate pawns on the vicious chessboard of a heartless being.

"He said 'You see? They don't care about you...they want you dead...but soon none of that will matter'..."

He bore into my gaze, his eyes looking like circular depths of grey. "He said to me..'One day...you won't feel pain any more'..."

More than my life, I dreaded the dawn.

I truly, deeply dreaded it.

I simply watched him crumble to pieces. It was only within my power to dream that this was not happening. Only within my power to dream that his life was not coming to an end.

And so I dreamed.

"If I sing you a lullaby, will you calm down?"

He gripped my pendant with quivering hands. His fingers...they were so small then...

"M-maybe...please sing to me.."

I grasped his hands and brought them to the curly mess he so loved. He smiled weakly.

I cleared my throat and sang softly: "Come to me...we never be apart...the soul you seek is me...no more pain, no memories remain...now you can play with me..."

"So love me now...you are the one...I give you all the stars I see...the rain is gone...no pain is here...my heart...I beg you all your love..."

Souta and I then began to sing in unison at the second verse:

"Come to me...we never be apart...the sound you seek is me...no more pain...no memories remain...now you can play all the games with me..."

Author's POV

Souta grabbed onto Rio's unmoving hand tight, savoring the feel of it. He wished she were awake. But then he didn't. He couldn't put her through this. He would never forgive himself.

The feeling in his heart told him it was time to go, though he couldn't bring himself to.

Memories blurred his mind. From when she was a young child. Those frizzy curls he fell so deeply in love with. Those reprimanding eyes that always told him not to cry. That sweet embrace. The liberation from his nightmare...this life...was her touch. Seeing her eyes so marred by tears broke his heart in more ways than one.

"Rio..."

There was not much breath left.

"I...love..."

The first rays of vermilion lit the sky, startling him from the need to cry. He remembered he would often wake at this time to stare at Rio as she slept. He would later blame his relentless gaze on low blood pressure, which in truth, he never had. He just stood in an emotionless haze for half an hour every morning because he knew that new hours of suffering had dawned on him. But this was his last dawn.

"You..."

In the light of the waking sun, his grey eyes had dilated. There, so firmly entwined in his sibling's hand, his blood ran cold.

Rio, age 14

2 years later

A week after to all the commotion, Sayuri finally informed me that it was indeed the Yakuza who were responsible for the museum massacre. Mr. Tanaka had dealt with them to rid himself of his adulterous wife, who he caught in bed with another man a month before the mass slayings occurred.

It seemed he was so caught up in his fury and desire for revenge that he did not think things through. He found out that he did not have enough money to pay back the Yakuza, and so they took matters into their own hands and killed him, immediately claiming a multitude of lives and priceless artwork in the process. When police got to the scene, some of the artwork, including my brother's, had been stolen.

One of the men had started a fire in a corridor, eventually setting the entire building into a fiery frenzy. Thousands of paintings and sculptures were destroyed; doubtlessly, some of Souta's work was among them. Injured men and women who were rendered immobile on account of their wounds were consumed by the ensuing blaze.

There were some who managed to escape the chaos and ventured outside aimlessly searching for help. Unfortunately, a multitude of them were killed by speeding cars and trampled over by other frantic survivors.

"It was simply mayhem," she said, with a blank expression. "No one...no one...was left untouched."

It was true.

The world took the death of another Hikari as a "shock".

News reporters mentioned that it was odd that the elder Hikaris had been suddenly murdered by the very people whom they trusted with guarding their most prized possessions. Then, two years later, the youngest Hikari died in a car accident. And now, the eldest sibling was fatally shot in the lower abdomen, resulting in him dying of excessive blood loss.

Rumors began to circulate that the Hikaris were being "offed" one by one by some unknown means. Some blamed it on the work of a Shinigami, a Japanese god of death. Others presumed that the Hikari dynasty was just a strangely unfortunate family with a powerful gift. The public dubbed us as "cursed" and "unfortunate beings".

Among the other unvalidated gossip regarding our family was that Souta was suffering from schizophrenia or some other mental disorder. These conclusions were made on the testimonies of the students who "knew" him, the general public, and former maids, butlers, and guards who had been fired by Sayuri.

In the midst of the uproar of hearsay, people began to assume that Souta's undiagnosed illness was brought on by years of abuse. The original claim of child abuse was publicized by Mrs. Misaki, our former math teacher at elementary school.

The remaining rumors were of a comical nature to me. They included that Sayuri had killed me and was hiding my body underneath the house (I had not been seen in public since the massacre), Ken had witnessed and or took part in our abuse (which was actually true), and that Sayuri was a witch that had the power to mentally control the servants and force them into silence.

In truth, she had increased their income to keep them quiet. Since she was suffering, she wanted to tantalize the world with obscure and inconclusive details surrounding our lives. It worked.

I could go on endlessly about what the public accused us of hiding, but I'd rather take the time to address a poor, forgotten soul who was also affected personally by Souta's passing: Haruko Harada, his former girlfriend.

According to news reports, Haruko had a mental breakdown in class upon hearing the news of his death and senselessly attacked another student who supposedly said something vulgar about him. She was dragged out of the school by police.

The next day, she dropped out and disappeared into her home. She hasn't been seen since. Her friends speculated she had either run away or committed suicide. They were free to think what they wanted; Rika Harada, her sister, took on a vow of silence and refused to talk to anyone regarding her depressed sibling.

This was all we heard before Sayuri flung the radio into the wall, smashing it into thousands of pieces. She claimed any further information about the current situation only serves the purpose of poison in our veins.

Before speaking of my own suffering, which I could ponder boundlessly, I will start with the impact Souta's death had on Sayuri. Simply because I think, as a mother, she believed in him more than I did.

After the coroner removed his body from the house, she entered another one of her psychotic fits and tried to murder Ken with the sharpened edge of a table leg. She had been sharpening it into a fine point while Ken drove us to the museum. Apparently, her plan was: if Souta came back alive and well, she would spare her husband's life. If Souta was brought back dead or dying, Ken would pay for the transgression with his life as well.

Why the sharpened edge of a table leg? Why not a knife? Well, Ken had hidden the kitchen knives, so she no longer had access to them.

Much to my astonishment, he had already conceived a counter attack. He instantly fled from her and ran up the steps, grabbing the axe of the knight that stood outside my door. After Sayuri followed him up the stairs, he swiped at her weapon, splitting it in two. He successfully instilled the notion in her head that her many attempts to murder him made him want to kill her just to even the score.

He acted as if he had lost his sanity, screaming threats to kill her among his mad gibberish. After trying unsuccessfully to find another weapon, she put her hands up and tried to reason with him. He said he would kill her if she did not go downstairs and sit down on a chair. The request was indeed odd, but Sayuri and I were under the misconception that he was serious about murdering her.

When she did as she was told, he dropped the axe and pulled out some rope from under the couch and restrained her.

"I knew you would do something like this. I just knew you would snap. You can't blame this on me, Sayuri. You know damn well this isn't my fault." He said, wiping off his bottom lip of blood.

"You fucking bastard...you fucking bastard...I knew...I knew! Why didn't you listen to me??" She would scream over and over. She was to scream obscenities like this for the remainder of the night, so Ken had her ropes tightened every hour until her senses came to retrieve her.

I could not sleep that night, even if I wanted to. Not because of her constant screaming; that, I could drone out. It was because my brother's face...his eyes...layed behind mine. If I closed my eyes, they would be there waiting for me.

To my gratitude, Ken sat on the couch, sipping on his cigar all night. He stayed awake with me as I cradled myself back and forth nervously on the floor, trying to stop impending thoughts of Souta.

A day later, she became withdrawn, standing at the window of the study room and staring outside. Days after, she only did the same thing. It seemed she did not require subsistence any longer; she had ample strength to just stand there already on account of her previous experience. If you recall, she would stand above Setsuko's grave for hours on end, looking like an erect corpse.

Every time I saw her, I thought she was waiting for something.

Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into a month. A month of just standing at the window and staring. It became her endless hobby.

As always, my young and immature mind assumed that Ken was an omniscient being who knew everything there was to know about the mystery that was his wife, so I asked him why she did that.

"She looks like she's waiting," I mumbled, staring from afar.

Ken replied, "She always had a strange way of coping with grief. Sometimes she would go into a fit, sometimes she would disappear, sometimes she would never say a word...like she's doing now. This time...I think she's waiting, too."

"For what?" I looked up at him, perturbed at the haunting grey. It would only take a weak smile to drive me over the edge.

"She's waiting to waste away...to deteriorate into nothing. Like everything around us."

As for Ken, his coping was slightly different from Sayuri's. It seemed to bear an very subtle overtone of hope. He became silent for a time, standing over Souta's fresh grave. But he didn't look down at it. He gazed at the sky.

Whilst watching him do this, I finally realized the difference between him and Sayuri. She was despondent; she never harbored any faith in anything. This life was only pain to her.

He dreamed of a new tomorrow, in a way. The way he was looking up at sky told me so.

"Where ever he is, I hope he's doing better than us. There's only atrophy here." He said, his hands so still and buried in his pockets, just as Souta once had them.

Thus, I coined him as slightly religious out of necessity.

Our mutual suffering was controlled by a crucial element: something that we needed to do to console ourselves. The things we did were similar, in a way, to how the obsessive compulsive carry out their senseless rituals because they believe it must be done.

Sayuri counteracted pain with violent fits and silence. Ken counteracted pain with faint hope and contemplation. I was soon to find out what I needed to do to as well.

The years subsequent to Souta's death had left me tired and weak. I cannot fathom how many nights I had eaten on the empty side of the dinner table, slept in a lonely bed, and woke up to a meaningless dawn.

Every morning, I found myself standing by the balcony, haunted by his face. Haunted by the face of a marred child who was torn away from everything he knew...because of me. Because I neglected him. Because I shunned him. My brother. My life. My Souta.

I suffered from emotions that brought on a pain I never knew existed. Sometimes I wondered if there were ever a terror greater than this, and if a human being had ever suffered it.

Sayuri simply called it 'loss'.

I was offended at first; 'loss' was a short word for such a terrible, consuming thing, a thing that ate away at every moment I breathed. I tried to believe that such a small word generalized the terror I felt. But I could not.

The thing I felt could not even be given a name. It was just a nameless terror.

And just as what I felt could not be diagnosed, nor could it be cured. As time wore on and ebbed away at me, it only worsened.

I still saw him. And heard him.

He never really acknowledged me. He would just walk about the room, pick up something that I remember picking up, and study it. If I ever heard his name, he appeared. If I ever thought of a letter in his name, he appeared. If I saw something that previously belonged to him, he would appear.

He was there out of necessity. He was there because I was not meant for a world where he did not exist.

Wallowing in my grief, I was reminded of what Sayuri told us as the pieces of the radio collided with the ground. She took it upon herself to inform me of why our family was subject to such misfortune:

"This is the punishment for attempting to play God. Four hundred years ago, a man of this family dared to create a "living masterpiece" using the Dark Arts. Four hundred years later, our entire bloodline is still forsaken.

"His insidious desires have plunged himself and generations of Hikari's proceeding him into the very depths of hell."

(You don't need to read the Author's Notes. I know they are annoying.)

Whew! It took me a long while to finish this chapter.

This chapter was originally a lot longer, but after a few rounds of reading it over, I found that some parts were excessive and should be omitted. I owe the strength to take out all the paragraphs I spent hours trying to come up with to the author Truman Capote, who once said: "I believe in the scissors more than the pencil."

It was really difficult to kill off the character I cherished more than any other in this story, so I decided I needed a lot of time to stage his death to my ultimate satisfaction. I think it came out alright. After all, it will never be written exactly how my mind envisioned it.

In the first half of the chapter, I included the lyrics to possibly the saddest song I have ever heard in my life.

It is called "Secret Game" by the Japanese composer Yuki Kajiura.

You can download the song for free on a site called Gendou, you just need an account first.

The song is also sung in Japanese. It is called "Himitsu." They are both under the anime "Noir".

Thanks for reading.