disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to c. e. abyss, who is quite lovely and asked very nicely for an update.
notes: I really gotta stop writing my papers sorta drunk. that shit can't be healthy.
notes2: basically this a present and now I'm going to quietly die over my history paper. jsyk.
chapter title: you won't know
summary: I wanna wrap my hands around that pretty neck and squeeze. — Exwires.
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Shiemi kills gently.
She kills in the old way; poison and paper and lies. She kills to a violin soundtrack of loveliness, to sleep, to ease the suffering of a heart torn to (literal) shreds. She kills with kindness and pollen from plants that have no business existing.
She kills because if she doesn't, someone else will.
And Shiemi knows that as long as there are other people, there will be killing. She is not naïve; she knows that the world is an ugly, ugly place where death is reduced to numbers and faceless flesh-coloured blurs.
It's out of her control. Always has been, always will be.
And so she smooths her hands over the fabric of her skirts, and tries to do what others cannot.
She kills only when there is no hope for the victim.
She kills to stop pain.
Shiemi is the only one among them to have ever killed a human being.
(No one else wanted to do it. It is a good thing Nii-chan understands—it is a good thing that they all understand, and Rin slips an arm around her shoulders after it is done and she is shaking and shaking and something inside her chest has shrivelled because there is no air and she can't breathe. Tamer or not, a part of her died the first time she killed a person, and nothing can ever take that away.)
Sometimes it makes her sick with herself, and there is nothing left to do but roll over to her side and vomit herself into exhaustion. When all the killing finally builds up at the back of her throat, and the tears slosh around inside of her, Shiemi knows that the only thing to do is purge it all out.
It hurts.
It always hurts.
But then she holds a girl as she quakes around the hole in her stomach, and Shiemi whispers "Let her sleep, Nii-chan."
The poison takes effect. The girl's chest caves in.
She holds a dead girl and cries.
Shiemi kills gently.
tbc.