Yoshiya Kiryu was proud. His spirit was indominable. He refused to admit defeat and he would fight tooth, nail, and vending machine to get what he wanted and survive. He was unbreakable, incorrigible, and a pain in the ass.
And yet...
He was beginning to feel slightly tired of this mortal life. It was becoming painful just to put air in his lungs. Had he not been Composer, he would have embraced the sweet release a long time ago. He had to scoff at his own thought. If he wasn't Composer, he wouldn't be on the Couch of Death right now anyway.
As his body grew weaker, the tantalizing concept kept entering his head. Just to embrace erasure and rid himself oif this...this helplessness...this powerlessness. He hated being powerless, but what was the point of having power when your body refused to move?
Then there was the matter of pain. It was constant. He tossed and he turned and he even tried biting his arm as he'd done when his father whooped him for regurgitating the pills he forced down his throat. He bit so hard it bled, making his teeth red and copper taste intrude into his mouth...but the agony persisted. He relived torments time and time again, their ferocity burning and breaking and tearing and rending him to shreds every time he closed his eyes or began to relax.
Neku he knew was taking some of that pain into himself, and the Composer shuddered in actual pity for his Proxy. Should he just bite the bullet and block his Pact bond when an episode hit, so as to spare the redhead from the torment that was his alone to relive?
Maybe.
Or maybe he should spare both of them and sink into the depths of static that kept reaching out with clawed hands to drag him into the pools of black and white, never to open his mouth to giggle or smirk, or flip his hair ever again. At least then the joint torture would stop and his Proxy wou;d be free of the horrible stghts and terrifying helplessness of being trapped in one of his memories.
Yes.
If he were to let himself die again, Neku would be free. Free of everything he wanted so desperately to be distanced from...including one Composer who already overstepped his bounds by toying with him for three weeks in purgatory. Best give the boy relief from everything he represented...everything he was reminded of when he looked at the figure hacking his spleen out onto the clean floor.
He could just keel over right now. End everything. Stop breathing and let the injuries take him to the great Beyond Ground. But his spirit protested loudly. It smacked him upside his ash-blond cranium, grabbed him by his smug little face and shook him like a dog. Live you fool! Live! You go, Shibuya goes with you!
Not true. He'd found a replacement. Shibuya would mourn him, sure. But she wouldn't destroy herself as long as someone wrote her songs and repaired her Soul after he faded from existence. The district would survive.
Pain shot through his thoughts, but no images haunted his vision this time. He clenched his jaw so hard it nearly cracked his molars, he twisted and writhed, begging internally that this would be the last time his body would throw itself off the couch. He was starting to bruise and it didn't feel great to land on the same spot twice. Neku was yelling at him, but a rushing static noise was in his ears.
The realm was calling him.
He was four days away from answering...if he was lucky. He actually hoped that he wouldn't be lucky this time. He'd been ready when he was alive, to embrace death with open arms. As another seizure hit, wrenching control from him yet again and making the only two people besides Raimu who actually cared about him panic, Yoshiya Kiryu finally decided that this time wouldn't be any different. He was ready to stop fighting. He wanted release.
He always got what he wanted.