I am very sorry for the slow update and for disappointing any readers who are looking forward to further chapters. I must admit my muse has flown out of the window. I found these words extremely difficult to write. So, it may be quite awhile to my next update. Current changes in my life are also making things difficult for me. Nevertheless, Merry Christmas everyone (: Appreciate the reviews and thank you all for following my story thus far! Hopefully reviews might get my muse into shape, if not, I would just need alittle time. Thanks for the understanding :D I do hope everyone has a good Christmas and New Year!

One could say that my relationship with Shizuru wasn't one of love. Not purely anyway. It was a twisted relationship of love and hate. It's ironic, to fathom that deep inside a part of me; I hated my girlfriend. And I hated that part of me for it. I hated myself for hating her. But there was nothing to be done of it.

Perhaps I hated it that with an ease so natural, she was the epitome of perfection that I could never be. I know I hated her because I loved her. I hated her because a small part of me trusted her. You could say I was incapable of feeling love without feeling the hate. All my life I grew up thinking and knowing that love was a fucked up story. So the fact that I loved her made me feel like I was the biggest idiot in the world. I, who mocked love, loves someone. I told myself to be smarter, to not fall in love, but the truth was that I had already fallen. Oh how I despised myself that I loved. Because I loved, therefore I hated. Now that I look at it, it must be God's game with me.

I can't help these thoughts that plague my mind. Since that day at the beach, I've been feeling impossibly vulnerable. So much so I feel like avoiding her. To see her would make me feel known. I don't want to be known by anyone. Strangely, the fact that I've been trying subtly to avoid her has shown me how much she takes to spend time with me. Thinking back, it's actually a very recent development. Because it seems that ever since she caught me cutting, she has been going out of her way to spend an inordinate amount of time with me I've only just come to the revelation. Perhaps she thinks her presence soothes me?

I have no idea. After that day we kissed, it was like my world fell down on me. Because it was good. Because it better than good. Because when her lips moulded around mine, and her tongue fought for dominance inside my mouth I could feel the fingers on my face, I could taste her. I could feel her gently sucking on my tongue before she tilted my head, and plunged hers deeper into my mouth, probing. And the worst was that, I could feel the heart that I thought I didn't have. We made love with our mouths. It was intense, it was mind shattering. I think I could barely see the haze of lust and love at that point of time.

Now it feels like a lie. How could someone like her make me feel so incredibly loved? If love was a lie? I wish I could be ignorant of these feelings. I know she will leave one day, they all do. Why did I have to go and fall for her?

Days, they go by. Every day makes me hate myself a little more. Every day makes me feel like I'm making the biggest mistake in my life. But I can't stop myself. I tell myself, I should just pick one. Love or hate. Settle for one and I wouldn't be so conflicted. By the years that have ingrained itself in me won't let me. I don't think it is possible for someone like me to feel love without feeling hate.

Although my heart and my mind feels like this huge tangled mess of thoughts and worries and doubts, it seems that to Shizuru nothing has changed. Well except for her newly acquired habit of incessantly asking me questions.

She has taken me up on my suggestion. So I've been getting a huge influx of questions. Random ones, irrelevant ones, weird ones and stupid ones. The other day, she asked me "Natsuki. Why do you prefer dogs over cats?"

And so I thought that was a stupid question. Anyone with half a brain would know my answer. "Dogs are loyal." I replied shortly.

"Well…Aside from them being loyal, what else do you like about dogs?"

I start to think about a coat of warm white fur and huge paws, but I know that's not the answer Shizuru is looking for. "I think dogs are devoted creatures. They still hang around or stay with their owner even if the owner beats or ill treats them."

"Ara, so Natsuki approves of abusive relationships?"

"NO!" Sheesh how can she get me flustered over one simple sentence. "I just mean, I think it's amazing how dogs can still love though they are mistreated. It's as though they see the best in someone and without wavering, love devotedly."

And so after I gave that answer, Shizuru just replied with a long 'Ahhhhh' as though she gained some enlightenment or great insight into me.

Still some days I get weird questions. Like "Natsuki why do you always close the room door, when I want it open?"

I wonder, why she didn't use to ask these questions. Was she afraid that somehow these mundane questions were a sign of a bigger and deeper inset insecurity that I had? I have no idea. Now I am reduced to answering very sudden and random questions. Of which, have actually made me more acutely aware of certain habits that I never knew I had. Like for example, I never knew that I had an OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive personality disorder) when it came to open doors and running aircons.

It seemed an automated reflex to close doors especially when they were open. More so if the air conditioner was running. In my opinion it's just a pure waste of cold air which in turn would make the air conditioner run harder. I realized it was an OCPD, when Shizuru left it open, and told me not to close it. And for the subsequent five minutes of which the door remained open, I couldn't pay attention to my work.

And when Shizuru came back and found me stuck at the page of my lecture notes, I very calmly told her that somehow the fact that the door remained opened was the cause of it.

She promptly closed it and proceeded to do her own work whilst occasionally giving me the 'hawk-eye' when I drifted off into my own world.

Shizuru studies with me mostly to make sure I concentrate on my work, the side benefit lies in that she is usually able to answer queries I have that I don't understand in my work. I study life sciences in University and Shizuru's a medicine student. Because these two specializations of majors are to a certain extent similar, Shizuru has a generalized understanding of my course syllabus. Not to mention Shizuru somehow has this ability to know everything. I have no idea where she picks up her knowledge from. Well in fact, I have a pretty good guess. They lie in the thick textbooks that I sometimes see in her room. They change weekly as a matter of fact. And unlike me, who borrows them from the library and return them barely touched, I bet Shizuru actually reads them.

That was a week before school started.

The reality is that now a new semester has started along with classes. And, my 'pretend it does not exist' approach to the changes in our relationship has finally set in. Needless to say, it is and has been distracting me. I have been on a 'no-show' for my lectures and have thus accumulated video recordings of multiple lectures, which I should have attended in person, to watch. Yet I lack the energy to even stone in front of my computer to watch them. Studying or attending classes has become this tasteless ash to me. I am about as inspired or motivated as a lizard basking under the morning sun.

The fact that I've holed up in my room has not escaped Shizuru. But she is too busy to fish me out of the room with her eight to five schedule and the influx of 'check-in' duties she has to take care of as the room administrator for the hostel.

I admit to being a good for nothing piece of trash in my current state. My thoughts and emotions have been in such a swirl denying or putting up a façade the week before has done nothing to ameliorate them.

They say love is supposed to make things better, or make you feel on top of the world. Whoever said that must have been lying. What happened that day at beach has jarred me into reality. A reality of the love that I am capable of. No, not a love that I am capable of but a love that I have. I cannot reconcile myself to it. How can I possibly? To love her is to hate myself. To hate her is to hate myself. Regardless of what I do, I hate myself for it.

It seems cowardly and foolish but I have gone back to cutting. It seems the only way I can sort my thoughts out or at least gain a few moments of reprieve from all the emotions within me. With that reprieve too comes a slight motivation and conscience to actually accomplish my work.

I tug at my tee shirt, rolling up the sleeves. With a deft and sure movement, I bring the penknife to rest again the bare flesh of my shoulder. I push it in and pull. I watch the metal cut into flesh, gently parting it. I watch the welling of red liquid gather and form a line and then a droplet that pulled by gravity rolls down. I pat at it with tissue, decide, that it would be better to take off my shirt in case I stain it. I pull it over my head and toss it onto the bed. I am seated at my table in just my bra and jeans.

Another line…

I drag the blade one more time along pearly white flesh. I exhale a breath gently as the parallel lines on my shoulder continue to glisten with blood. I watch the travel of the droplets of blood down the creamy lines of my shoulder blade before catching it with a tissue. It renews itself from the source yet again, I repeat this until the blood clots and there is no more flowing droplets of blood just a crusty layer of dried blood on my shoulder.

I run my fingers over it. It doesn't hurt. Sometimes I feel a soft biting pain when I cut, more often than not, I feel nothing. I've read online that people cut to feel pain. I don't. I don't feel pain. I cut to see the blood. I am fascinated by this liquid that can be said to be the life force of a person. I cut to know, that even though I may not feel pain, I am alive. I don't need to feel pain to be alive. My blood tells me I'm alive.

It does nothing. It doesn't take away the fact that I hate/love Shizuru. It doesn't take away the fact I hate myself. It takes away nothing. It just gives me rest. In this moment now, I feel as though nothing in the world matters just this heady feeling that spins in my head that prevents any coherent thought from coming through.

I've heard some people say that they long for death because it would mean feeling nothing. Then this is death for a living person.

I feel nothing now. Not even numbness. That is the thing about cutting. Sometimes I cut because I want to feel nothing. Sometimes, I feel so numb, I cut to feel something. But this feeling has to be one of the best in the world because it is neither. It is an emptiness that does not leave you hollow. And although I know it changes nothing, it is probably the best illusion anyone can have.

And I, Kuga Natsuki, feel safe and blanketed in this illusion of mine.

A/N Do let me know your thoughts on this chapter, as the abandonment of my muse has left me with writers block. Appreciate reviews, feedback or suggestions too (: