"Guilt is the source of sorrows, the avenging fiend that follows us behind with whips and stings." - Nicholas Rowe
Chapter 8 - Shoes of Glass (Part 1.)
What have I done?
Ears mercilessly resonating aloud like the rapidly earsplitting bells of an mechanically out-dated alarm clock, the beansprout carelessly dropped the phone from his slippery grasp upon having to go through the utter misfortune of hearing her undoubtedly grim albeit brief collection of sore words.
Haru... Raku thought to himself as the invariably boisterous cellular device callously clattered against the broad and rough pavement sitting right below him. With the blood slowly draining away from his pale cheeks, his dark-indigo eyes widened with a trivial mix of fear and worry as a single meager trail of cold sweat seamlessly slid through the smooth surface of his well-chiseled neck, much like a snail to a bushy leaf.
"What the hell's going on back there?" Chitoge immediately inquired, brows furrowed out with disturbance and concern as she rigidly grabbed a hold of his steadfast shoulders, only to vigorously shake them like a pair of empty tumblers right afterwards. "Hey, darling!" she desperately called out to him once more, voice cracking up as her supple lips tingled with the heiress' tone growing slightly more impatient by the boundlessly running second. "Darling!"
An overwhelmingly intense rush of sheer guilt immediately invaded the hollow insides of his swiftly palpitating heart as his trembling pair of hands tightly clenched themselves into a duo of sturdy fists.
"I have to go." The beansprout reluctantly stated, taking in a few harsh gulps to the throat as his nervous gaze tethered themselves into his girlfriend's constantly wavering eyes. "I know this may be a bit too sudden for you; but there's something I really needed to fix, and I need to do it now." he vaguely explained, with his frail shaky voice ridden with utmost urgency.
Like a dazed princess to the wake of the freshly devastated ruins of an ancient castle, the young heiress never really knew the true reason behind that abruptly enfeebled reaction of his; and to tell you the undeniably painful truth, that's what actually scared her out of her wits.
As ridiculously paranoid as it really sounds, the meager act of simply saying that Chitoge absolutely hated the idea of her boyfriend aimlessly treading into the open gates of another girl's humble abode alone like the universally dense gnat he is, especially if that very girl still harbors some strong romantic feelings for him actually felt like an colossal understatement to the heiress' highly concentrated infusion of subconsciously and subsequently spiraling emotions.
And to think that the beansprout formerly had a huge crush on the saintly brunette for a really long time, heck, eons before he had recently met her a couple of years ago only fervently kindles the verdant flames of her ever ascending anxiety, thanks to the rather recent remnants of Marika's inconveniently forked tongue acting as its unwanted catalyst, that is. Sure, the heiress may be his girlfriend and all, but still...why can't her stomach stop turning?
"W-Wait." she quickly muttered under the sultriness of her breath, nervously biting the bottom half of her supple lips with the lass' beady sky blue eyes partially opened like a pair of fluttery blinds. "Can't you at least tell me what's actually going on right now?"
Instantaneously regretting every single word which swiftly jutted out of the tip of her tongue, the heiress' heart seemed to relentlessly pound out of the trifling confines of her rapidly rising chest a likened to that of an unstably rogue prisoner raving about amidst a severely cramped prison cell the moment she sincerely peered into the beansprout's steadily wavering and remorseful eyes.
"I-I can't." Raku immediately responded with the brittleness of his voice. "I just...can't."
"Why not?" Chitoge promptly inquired, antsy eyes frantically blinking about like a triad of headlights as the ocular pair gradually widened with a sliver of annoyance hidden within her somewhat jittery tone. "Surely there's absolutely nothing really steamy going on between you and Kosaki-chan, right?"
"Huh? No, of course not! What're you even...eh?"
"..."
Much to the beansprout's utter surprise, a thick and fluffy trail of white steam aimlessly sprung out of the heiress' pilose scalp as the latter's luscious lips tingled once more. "Oi, Chitoge!" he unanticipatedly called out to her with the unstable tone of his voice marginally raised to the verge of shouting. "C-Chitoge?"
"I'm fine!" she exclaimed, letting out a high-pitched squeak, formerly pasty cheeks now deeply flustered with embarrassment as she buried her face into the broad surface of his chest. "I'm fine, darling, honestly! It's just that-"
"No, you're clearly not." Raku directly retorted, abruptly interrupting the heiress' unreasonably hectic and unfinished assortment of words with his arms lightly wrapping around the delicately smooth rims of her tiny waist like the comfortably snug trappings of a warm blanket. "Well, at least I think you aren't. Look, your face clearly says it all, kinda like a canvas crudely dipped in green paint, actually."
"You can say that again...Picasso. Seriously, that absolutely sounded corny and I'm not lying." whimpered Chitoge. "Of course there's something wrong with me! It's just that I couldn't properly pinpoint it all out, so..."
"So?" The beansprout inquired. "Hmm. Ah, I get it. Surely it has something to do with what I've just told you a few minutes back, isn't that right?"
"Err, um...no?" The blonde winced, as if she's unsure of what she's saying. "Well...probably?"
"W-What kind of answers are those?"
"A pair of rhetorical questions, obviously! Look, I'm trying my very best to act natural here."
"Well, I'd hate to break it to you, but...you're failing at it miserably."
"Ugh, I know! Damn, you don't need to spell it all out for me, idiot. It's not like I desperately needed it or anything."
What in blazes is she even babbling about? Of course, he needed to. In fact, those were among the hundreds and thousands of words in which the heiress desperately yearned to hear from his moving lips, albeit subconsciously—words that actually showed he cared. After all, the very thought of the beansprout meticulously noticing even the slightest tidbits of change simmering deep within her soul despite of his incredibly dense nature actually felt rather comforting than aggravating, to say the least.
"Yup, you definitely needed it as much as your precious bananas, Ms. Gorilla." stated Raku, with a subtle smile finally etched across his face.
"Eh? Am I really that much of a dead giveaway?"
"Well, isn't that last sentence of yours some sort of overly used trope often found in a good number of comic books and anime? Though I wouldn't recommend using it whenever you're trying to hide something away from me, catching you red-handed would be a piece of cake."
"Hmph, now look who's talking big..." mumbled Chitoge. "Mr. Hypocrite."
"What the- What else can I say?" The beansprout inquired, thumbs softly grazing against the bottom of his hairless chin in a way which made him look like he's actually thinking hard. "Hmm, what was it called again...Suspiciously Specific Denial?"
"Wait, you're implying something strange, aren't you?"
"No, not at all...well, not really. To be completely honest with you, there's actually something I've been meaning to ask you about."
"And what would that be? Spit it out already, will you? Geez, I don't really know why, but the suspense you're giving out is making me delirious..."
"Perhaps you're just too scared of what I'm about to say."
"Yeah, maybe I am..." the lass said, breathing into the freshly cold air surrounding them as she fervently looked into his eyes with a sudden jolt of bravery washing over her. "...or maybe I'm not."
"Go on..."
"You see...ah, fuck. How the hell am I going to put this?"
"Um, since you're having a pretty hard time explaining things by cussing in between words, do you want me to go first?"
"Nope. Gosh, that was a bit too rushed, isn't it? I guess I've gotten a pretty good idea of what I'm actually feeling right know, so you don't have to go out of your way to make some strange assumptions based on your extensive research on various media or some shit like that, plus, it's common courtesy for the ladies to dive first into the fray no matter what happens, so..."
"You know, you shouldn't be afraid to speak your mind, even if it sounds stupid. Heck, the woman I'm in love with used to do that frequently. You know who in the world that is more than anyone else, right?"
"...Right." nodded Chitoge with that faint and peaceful smile of hers gradually curling up upon her pinkish lips.
"You see, I think I'm jealous, Raku."
"Sometimes I'm terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts." - Edgar Allan Poe
About 30 minutes ago...
The tight and shallow insides of her empty stomach growled aloud like a ravenous tiger, yet the brunette just couldn't afford to bring herself to take even a single minuscule bite to eat.
No, don't get her wrong, the food itself was indeed delicious...well, it looked and smelled like it really was; A thick and healthy-looking mound of vegetable curry gently poured on top of a freshly steaming mountainous pile of white rice with some of those crispy-looking store-bought breaded pork cutlets conveniently sitting at the bluntly circular edges of the heavily decorated ceramic plate—what's not to like?
"Dig in!" beamed Haru, snappily untying the laces of her frilly apron as she enthusiastically placed it on top of the broad wooden table before her with a single light clatter, much like a overly hyped waitress in a maid cafe. "Don't tell me you're going to skip this one too?"
"No! Of course, not!" The brunette instantaneously replied with those undoubtedly puffy chocolate-brown eyes of hers lightening up like a pair of blinkers, forcing up a tight fabricated smile which slowly peeled up against her marbled teeth. "I could clearly see the amount of effort you've put into it, so I can't just put it to waste, can I?"
"Well, you can tell that to those freezing batch of rice balls sitting in the fridge," The mini brunette desperately let out a comical snicker in an attempt to lighten up the mood, and it felt really awful for her to do so, judging by the situation at hand. "I bet those sticky little things would even make Ichijou-senpai fall to his knees. Such a scene would look absolutely magical."
"Though I doubt that eating a bunch of poorly made rice balls could actually hurt him..." stated Kosaki, eyes darting towards her little sister with a look of concern etched on the smooth and pasty surface of her face. "And I honestly wouldn't want to see him gag for mercy. That would be too hard for me to watch."
"C'mon, it wouldn't look that bad. After all, little bit of food poisoning wouldn't really pack that much of a punch by the end of the day, right?"
"It's called 'food poisoning' for a reason, Haru-chan. Jeez, it's like you're the tiny devil that sits on my shoulder or something like that."
"You and your pesky moral compass..." Haru grumpily mumbled with her arms deeply folded into bent knots. "Pfft, yeah, right. As if I'm going to let myself get overly worked up over something that could be easily fixed after some time."
"Fix?"
"Yeah, you've heard that right, Onee-chan. Though it won't be super easy to pull off within a single try."
"I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but your vagueness is off the charts. Does it have anything to do with the rice balls? Or..."
"Um, no. Look, I know this may sound really crazy, but I'm definitely going to find a way to smoothen things out between you and Senpai. And I'm not taking 'no' as an answer."
"Eeehhh?"
"What? Isn't that what you've desperately wanted?"
"Of course, it is! I would literally give anything in the world for that to happen, for us to happen, but...I wouldn't want you to resort to a lot of things that could cause a truckload of trouble for the rest of us. Promise me that. "
"Oh?" The mini brunette looked at her sister with amazement, mouth fashionably gaping as a rush of selfless determination completely washed over her. "I know who you mean't by that, and I'm not going to be the only one doing all of the dirty work for you, Missy."
"Didn't you hear what I've just said?" scolded Kosaki. "I've told you not to-"
"Don't sweat it. Well, sure, he may be crushing on somebody else, but the game's not over if that pompously degenerate chauvinistic pig doesn't have a girlfriend yet." stated Haru with a smile. "In other words, you can definitely change his mind while the clock's still ticking, though you need to act fast, and I mean, really fast."
"And what do you have to do with all this?" The brokenhearted brunette inquired with the brittleness of her own gentle voice, stumpy pearl-shaped tears seamlessly trailing down the smooth surface of her searingly supple cheeks like the unstably rocky edge of an endlessly flowing waterfall. "Heck, why are you even trying to make things even more complicated between Ichijou-kun and I?"
"That's because I love you both, Onee-chan!" exclaimed Haru, lips now pursed as she deliberately held back her seemingly imminent tears. "And I don't want to selfishly think that I still have a fighting chance to finally hook up with him!"
"W-What do you mean by that?"
"Hey, do you know the true reason to why I've knocked on your door a few minutes ago?"
"I wasn't really paying attention during that time, so...no, I don't."
"I see. Since I've already brought out the topic altogether, let me tell you something you never even knew...not until now."
"...H-Huh?"
"I'm also in love with Ichijou-senpai."
"The world is not a wish granting factory." - John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
She nervously stood there, right in front of the broad bathroom mirror, breathing heavily through her tiny nostrils with a severely distressed look on her face. Her rich sunset-orange eyes widened with utter disturbance as she immediately noticed the short sticky trail of blood which slowly dripped at the left side of her soft pursed lips.
The metallic taste of her own blood immediately filled her constantly wet tongue, which swiftly caused her to relentlessly gag and spit upon the cold ceramic sink sitting half a meter below her. It slightly hurts; that rough and jagged sensation that abruptly filled up the insides of her hollow dried-out throat as she forcefully let out a rather good number of unrefined coughs. Her thin shoulders ached as her sweaty palms pressed themselves against the cold walls beside her.
Great, now she's fairly exhausted and completely drenched in cold sweat. And to think that she had already gobbled up those horrendous amounts of colorful pills her family doctor prescribed a few hours back...no, that's certainly not it. This was possibly something completely different from her typical condition. And of course, this immensely scares her to no end, to the point that she would completely lose her composure.
"It's not working..." Marika quietly mumbled to herself as a large pool of salty bitter tears began to leak out of the sickly ginger's sullen eyes.
Her skinny pair of supple hands trembled like shaking leaves as they completely masked away the smooth pasty surface of her beautiful face. "It's...It's not working!" she hysterically exclaimed as her feeble knees suddenly hit the polished floor with her voice now tensed out like a pile of dried cement. "Why?..."
The ginger-haired lass couldn't help but mutter out that incredibly brief question into the blank, dimly lit void that is her ceiling with her long nails mildly scratching her sweaty temples, with the gaps between her fingers making it look like a brittle cage. "I don't want to..." Marika weakly declared as she stubbornly shook her head in denial. She probably had no idea how vulnerable and powerless she looks at that particular moment, and if she did, she wouldn't just blindly accept that truth. "I don't want to die all over again..."
A/N
Hey, guys. Looks like I'm finally back from the seemingly endless underworld that is a 2 month hiatus, I guess. I know this may sound really confounded to hear, but during these past few weeks, I've been very busy with cram school. Well, that may sound like the oldest excuse in the book, but it clearly isn't. Oh, and by the way, that isn't the only thing that slows me down when it comes to making a weekly update or something.
Heck, if my homework and various tasks and chores never existed in the first place, I would've been on a constant roll every single day, and that I wouldn't have to go through the trouble of searching how to cure writer's burnout on google search.
You see, I've split this measly chapter into 2 separate parts, each jam packed with 3000 plus words in total. And yes, whether you liked it or not, this isn't the typically long 6000 word chapter, and to be completely honest with you, I felt absolutely terrible for doing this. I know I've probably said this over a million times, but you guys deserve only the best content, and I really hope that this chapter would be competent enough to satisfy your reading needs as I proceed to the next part of this chapter.
With that detail aside, I'll have to get real with you guys right now: I'm actually scared.
Anxious? Unconfident, or Insecure even? I don't really know how to describe this sort of feeling, or feelings, but I actually fear for the consistency and quality of my work. Heck, every time I'm in the middle of writing this draft, I would always find myself thinking that this whole wall of text isn't good enough and that it isn't even worth the wait for those who have been faithfully following the story. I know, I think my perfectionism when it comes to writing definitely has crossed the line. But for some reason, I still need it.
I am sincerely grateful for all of the support you guys are giving me with this story of mine, and to be completely frank with all of you, the amount of hits it gets within a few weeks is massive. Once again, (Like in every author's note I've ever given so far,) thank you all for the 44 faves and 68 follows! I know I may not be the best writer, but I'll try my very best and give it my all when it comes to enhancing your literary entertainment.
Well, looks like I've said what I've wanted to say after being rather silent for an allotted amount of time. So I guess I'll have to end this author's note. Looks like I'm signing out for now. And once again, I'll be seeing you guys in the next chapter.