Koji narrowed his stare and tapped a finger on his jaw, his nostrils flaring with the acrid stench of his brother's lies. The change had been so sudden, out of the blue and without any discernable cause, as if some force beyond both their comprehension had simply clicked a new filter over Koichi's experiences and had yet to come back to remove it. Obviously he'd been quiet before, but not to this extreme. All the sharp wit and abrasive outbursts he'd come to expect from his twin these last few years were completely gone. Swallowed by this new silence and aura of suffering. He'd stopped caring about the consequences of ignoring his schoolwork and stood blankly when those consequences rained down on him, like he didn't understand what was happening or why. He'd become vague and distant and had to be constantly nagged about basic maintenance like bathing and brushing his teeth. Koji was sure he'd neglect himself entirely if the two didn't live together. He'd forgotten how to take joy from anything and as the meals he still insisted on preparing on those days their mother worked overnight became blander and blander Koji knew with the utmost certainty that his twin was not fine.
What he didn't know was what to do about it. What he didn't know was what might happen if he did the wrong thing. What he didn't know was… was if Koichi even wanted help.
The dark twin hadn't been like this since the Digital World- since he'd been dead. And in those months keeping his secret was the only control he had. For all the suffering he'd endured it had been a tether, a torment and a comfort. In some ways Koji understood Koichi more purely than he understood himself, but in others it was like he was some abstract living art that might shatter if he looked at it funny. The desire to help and the fear of making it worse, the two pulled at each other and knotted him in a sort of stagnation. Koji wanted to believe that Koichi knew they could talk about anything, that he was never alone because he had a brother who might be a little brutish but could learn. But he didn't like the way the dark twin had paused just now, the way he'd lifted the chopping knife at the wrong angle and held it there, trembling.
"Do you want me to take over," Koji made an offering to the silence, leaning back and dropping his arms in an attempt to look nonthreatening.
"Take over," Koichi repeated, frowning at the knife in his hand.
"Dinner," he clarified, taking the response as an invitation to approach. "You seem distracted. Let me take over and we can talk about it."
Koji placed one hand on his brother's stiff shoulder and the other on the wooden handle just above Koichi's clenched fist. Fingers tightened, knuckles went white, and for a moment the younger twin thought for sure he was going to have to take the knife by force. Then Koichi yielded, letting a strangled sigh out through his nose and stepping back. Absently he palmed hair from his face, allowing his hand to rest over his ear even as he spoke.
"It's nothing."
"Then let's talk about nothing. Come on, you can tell me," Koji insisted, focusing on the radish and not noticing Koichi flinch away from the loud chopping noises. "Can't be more dull than one of Ms. Hanamura's lectures."
"I suppose you're right," Koichi said with what he hoped translated as a chuckle, his palm still lingering over his ear. "It's just that talk I went to. It was so weird, like the author knew me personally, like he… I don't know. I can't stop thinking about it."
"You make me wish I'd gone too. Sounds like you found it really interesting, but you won't tell me any of the details. I'm not that unsophisticated, you know."
"Of course I know, I just don't think you would've liked it is all. He was very… he spoke a lot and yet I couldn't tell you what he said. It was more of an experience, a feeling…"
"Oh good: feelings. My favorite."
He'd meant it as a playful jab, but Koji's words clashed against something in his head like metal clanging on metal. Koichi dropped his hand to his side and lashed out.
"That's why I didn't want to talk to you about it! You don't understand!"
"Don't be so sensitive, I didn't mean anything by it," Koji chided before he could stop himself, flushing with shame and keeping his face hidden as a result. "I know I'm no philosopher, but my dislike of the subject isn't there to upset you. Honestly, you can be so touchy sometimes."
You can be so touchy sometimes.
You can be annoying.
You are annoying.
You are a pain.
You cause me pain.
You hurt me when you're around.
You hurt me by existing.
I wish you'd stop hurting me.
I wish you didn't exist.
The pressure was back, or perhaps it had never left. Perhaps it had been the pressure that had squeezed him through time, that had stolen his memories from then until now. Perhaps the memories had never been recorded in the first place. Not by him, not in his mind, but by the darkness in his flesh, cold and viscous and oozing under his skin. Pressing against it, against his windpipe, against his skull. Blood pounded in his ears, pain stabbed in his chest. He was choking and throbbing between the confines of his own form and this unrelenting strain. Words came out of his mouth, but he couldn't hear them over the ticking of the wall clock. Koji turned towards him, but he couldn't see his face through the streetlight and the blinking clocks on the appliances and the glinting blade in his hand like a lighthouse to draw him to safety. Koichi blinked hard, trying to clear things up, to reinstate the sensory filters that allow us to function in a world bursting with inputs but he couldn't. He couldn't control what he was saying, didn't even understand what was happening. He didn't even know that he was experiencing panic. Just that he couldn't be there anymore.
"Leave me alone! Just go away," he screamed, but he didn't know who he was screaming at or when he'd started screaming. Just the voice, coming through the headphones and surrounding him as his senses overloaded.
Seek the darkness, a place with no thought and no light, and let your blood be your comfort. The sensation of it pulsing through you, the sound of it rushing and cycling and building up heat. Find a place where you can discover that it's not moving at all; only in stillness will you notice the absence. The blockage, the need for release. Restart the flow.
"I can't," whispered Koichi, pressing his back into the bathroom tile and allowing his wide eyes to stare into the near total blackness around him. "They'll see. They'll know what I've done."
Do you have that luxury anymore? Come now, Koichi, you can't deny what you feel, what's closing in around you. It's death and it's already inside. Cut the chords that bind you, release what's pent up beneath the subcutaneous fat and vasculature of your limbs. Be discreet if you must; remember the goal here is pain and damage, not necessarily blood. This need not become a spectacle. It's your inner darkness that must release, here and now, by your own hand lest it find another way out.
"I don't have anything," he insisted, sliding down the wall into a huddle. "Please stop. I can't do anything, so please just stop."
I am only here to help you, not to further your suffering. You mustn't feign ignorance, it's not productive and it will not make anything stop. You know what you have to do, and you know that even a dull blade can cut if you have enough resolve. It is your nature to destroy, a nature which cannot be denied or altered, but you may choose the target of these impulses. Will you destroy yourself? Or will you destroy that which you love? Are you not already doing just that? If you do nothing you will continue to hurt the people close to you, to secrete a miasma, to be the necrotic burden you have always despised.
"Please… please stop… I don't want this-I don't want to be like this."
His sobs were quiet, breathy, and something cold and wet was dripping down his face and off his chin
Act on your impulses now, grant yourself the relief and redemption you claim to desire. That's the only option left to you, the only way you have to make it stop. Your brother is back in the world; he's waiting for you, worried about you. The longer you delay the more anguish you cause him. It's such a small thing and once you do it you'll be able to face him as Koichi again, calm and rational, not like you are now. Do it because you deserve it, do it because you need it, do it because you cannot leave these shadows until it is done. The darkness will rupture you, burst from you, destroy you, unless you give it a way out yourself.
Koichi sucked in air, a sharp tug on the chord of life as it strained, wild, to be free of his grasp. Then, holding the breath like a piece of driftwood in a storm, he rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled to the crack of light that was the door. The voice, the sensation of cold wetness coming from his eyes and ears, it was right. He wasn't part of the world, not right now, not with the swarm of thorns in his mind. Something had happened, surely something of his own making, that had snapped his brittle connection to things like happiness and interest and left him in this desolate void of the human experience. His inner darkness, but without the warmth and gentleness he come to know from his Spirits. Perhaps all that was good about darkness came from them, the Spirits, and he was what remained. Trapped but for a single, desperate escape. More black pulsed from his ears where the headphones had encased him, reminding him that he knew what he had to do. Koichi knew how to make it stop, how to return to the world if only for a moment.
Even as he grasped the doorknob he was manufacturing lies, tales to explain the marks. In case anyone asked. One of the stray cats that lived around the apartment. A freak slip in the kitchen. The unfortunate and irregular slip of a razor blade in the bathroom. Carelessness, clumsiness, bad luck and poor depth perception. No one cared so everyone would believe him, assuming he didn't make a fuss. Assuming he stopped making a fuss and went back to the Koichi they knew, they would accept any lie. And assuming he could be that person again, assuming he could escape this aching nothingness and function, Koichi didn't mind the lie either. It wouldn't be his first time.
He slid through the door and used the wall to get to his feet, pressing his body into it and away from the filtered streetlight, bright as searchlights to his dripping black eyes. It ran, cold, down his cheeks and neck as he slipped through night, guilty as a thief, and out into the main atrium. Quietly around the dining table, steadying himself against the chairs and panting, and into the kitchen. His hands were shaking when he reached for the wooden handle, his body shuddered at the metallic noise the blade made as it scraped free of the drying rack. So loud, so heavy and so comforting in his grip. Just holding it made the fist around his heart ease its grip and quieted the anxiety in his dammed up blood. Perhaps, he thought with a glimmer of hope, this would be enough, just holding the blade and knowing he could do it if he had to. Then the choking terror came back, a metal ball reaching the zenith of its arc in his ribcage and cracking against his spine, and that thought was abandoned. Clutching his prize to his chest, he set his sights on the dark bathroom at the end of the hall, allowed the shadows of safety to devour his stare, and stumbled back. Urgency made him careless.