Here's another chapter! Things keep spiralling out of control...and sometimes things get heavy, so read at your own risk.
Many, many thanks to kokodoru for beta-reading! :D
Enjoy!
She felt uneasy: it had been a long time since she'd followed someone who didn't know she was there. That wasn't exactly what she minded, really. She'd done that often, before. But back then, she didn't tell someone else what she'd found out. There was a guarantee that whatever knowledge gained, no matter how private, would remain with her. This time, the man who had demanded she'd follow some other man knew who she was following, and she had given him a lot of information about him. For ten thousand scarab.
She was more wealthy than she'd ever been. She eyed her savings with surprise and a slight hint of self-disgust.
What bothered her the most was that the poor man she'd followed had done his very best to make sure he couldn't be followed. Unfortunately, she knew the city by heart. She knew where he was going.
Her email had another message; this time, it was an invitation.
Luka couldn't return to the house for a full week. Something had hit her where it hurt, but she couldn't describe what it was or why it affected her so. All of a sudden she felt unsure of her skills and was once again afraid of being spotted or found. The idea of merely lifting the grate to sneak into the basement made her shake. She wasn't quiet enough; she wasn't scary enough; she wasn't patient enough. She felt like Miku's persistence would outlast her, she felt like the girl would wear her down. Right then, she felt as vulnerable as Miku must have felt.
She felt watched, weak.
But she needed to go back. She needed to. No matter how much she hated the idea, no matter how much it made her shake, she had to go back and scare the girl. Maybe she wasn't far off, she told herself. Maybe she was close to winning.
So, she returned. At first, she was a true nightmare; the knocking, groaning and moving never stopped. But Miku bore it all, and Luka grew tired. She grew so tired.
One night, as she was sneaking into the basement, she spotted a pile of presents and was reminded of Christmas. She realized that she would have to celebrate with her parents. Instead of staying to haunt the girl, she made a U-turn and returned directly home. An hour later she had packed and was on her way to the airport. She was home before her mother could send her the invitation to the Christmas party.
She needed a break. After all, there was no deadline. After the holidays, she'd return stronger, better.
Her parents asked her numerous questions about her new job. Luka lied, saying that she was employed to check the tickets of passengers on buses and trains. She knew enough of the city to tell them of the monuments the public transport traveled to, and her parents ate it all up. And for a second, as she spoke her lies, she listened to herself and felt happy. For a split second she was happy in this fake reality in which she was allowed to travel around and see things. In her lie, she was free.
"See? You don't need to be a pop star to be happy!" Her mother had exclaimed at a given point.
No matter how hard she tried to say something, Luka had stayed silent.
Upon her return to her own home, Luka felt empty. She felt like her break hadn't lasted long enough, as if she should have taken more than two weeks of rest. Yet a part of her remembered the envelopes, the family and the girl she needed to haunt. She had to return.
She didn't waste a day, no matter how much she shook. She was back in the home that wasn't hers at five in the morning and listened as the father woke up, ate, showered and left. The moment he stepped out of the door, Luka managed to seize some of the confidence she'd gathered over time and climbed up the stairs.
It was still dark out since they were still in the middle of winter. Luckily for her, the two weeks away from practice hadn't made her skills wither, and she was still quiet, quick, and could almost perfectly distinguish shapes in the dark. Over Christmas and the New Year, very little had changed in the house. She saw a few new objects, such as a new lamp for the father's desk and a new painting in the living room on the second floor.
She was desperately holding on to her confidence, but the more steps she climbed, the closer she got to the girl, the more it fell apart and the more she realized that whatever had happened weeks prior was something jarring indeed. It shook her to the core.
Despite that, Luka managed to enter the girl's room in total silence, if not somewhat slower than before. Luka knew that Miku's sleep was deepest in the early morning, so she felt little fear in that regard.
The first thing Luka noticed was the new rug. It was blue, and it added a wonderful dash of color to the room. There were also curtains on the windows, which were drawn shut. She wondered what else the girl could have possibly gotten for Christmas when she already possessed so much and wanted so little. Maybe she'd wished for some rest. Unfortunately, peace wasn't given wrapped in a box, the intruder thought bitterly.
Luka crept closer to the sleeping figure, realizing that the feeling she felt was getting stronger as she approached. Only when she could see that Miku was still sleeping with a pillow, that she hugged on to so tightly, did she realize that she had a bitter taste in her mouth and a sharp knot in her gut.
Luka swallowed past the lump in her throat, unable to identify the new pain. She sat next to the bed, on the floor, so that her eyes were level with the sleeping girl's. She was frowning again. She was tense again.
The pain worsened. She couldn't believe she hadn't properly seen the girl evolve into this taught being. Her visits to her room were so sporadic, and usually only when Miku was elsewhere, awake. Nighttime visits were impersonal, as she visited in order to move something so that it might startle her upon waking up. She wouldn't look at the girl during those visits.
But then she had made the mistake of looking at her. And she had seen someone different from the girl she had first witnessed. There was an evolution she'd missed. She had been so focused, too driven, so goal-oriented, that she hadn't seen the real result of her havoc.
Of course, there were the behavioral clues, her growing nomadic tendencies even when she was 'alone' at home, her no longer getting warm milk when she couldn't sleep. But she saw those from behind a wall, or through the crack in the door. Even the moment of realization during Miku's birthday was short-lived. Looking at a girl's face and seeing her frown made her see exactly what she was: human.
She was so fragile. She was so delicate and innocent. She hadn't done a thing in all of her life. Yet Luka had tortured her without pause for months on end. She had operated like a machine. Meticulously careless, impersonal, she had dehumanized her victim and had acted without thought. Her life was entirely focused on making that girl on the other side of the wall talk to her dad about leaving. She didn't, or couldn't, realize that it was harming Miku.
She must have known to some extent, Luka told herself. I need to break her. I need to make her yell. I need to make her talk. I need to make her cry. But those were mere mission directives. Seeing her frown from so up close…
Regret. Guilt. So strong that Luka hadn't managed to recognize them together. The flavor was overpowering; the pain was crippling. It was unlike any consequence she had ever had to face before. It was a consequence so heavy for actions so cruel she hardly believed she had actually managed to behave in such a way for a such a long time.
She remembered how the girl had relaxed the last time Luka had been so close to her. Would she dare try to mend her actions by chasing the worries? Would she dare touch the girl again? She feared that she would wake up the moment she placed a finger on her head. Would—would the risk be worth it?
With a shaking hand, Luka again placed her thumb between the girl's eyebrows. Her fingers rested in her teal hair. She didn't dare apply any pressure at all. She didn't dare breathe.
And for some reason, Miku relaxed. Her grip softened, her expression evened out, and she let all the energy out with a sigh.
The next minute, Miku was slumbering peacefully. Luka didn't dare test it any further and pulled her hand back. She was sorry she couldn't do more. She was sorry that she'd already done too much. Most of all, she was sorry because she had to continue. The mere thought chilled her to the bone, paralyzing her.
Luka sighed as well, watching the girl sleep. She was so oblivious. The intruder shivered at her own actions; even as she tried to mend the wounds she'd caused, she was sinning. Spying on a harmless girl's slumber…
She stood, rubbing her arms as if she could rub away her self-disgust. She thought of the envelopes, she thought of the mission, and she thought of Miku's relaxed sleep.
But she had to go on. She had to continue.
Her heart broke. She considered the wine collection briefly.
—
No, no, focus, focus.
She wished it would have stayed easy. She almost wished she'd never looked at Miku's sleeping figure, wished she'd never realized that she had been acting inhumanely. The consciousness of it was so heavy to wear. She drove her thoughts towards the mission only to realize that again she was growing a stone heart. No, she didn't dare forget how cruel she had been, was, and was supposed to be. If she was to make an innocent girl suffer, then how dare she not suffer alongside her.
That marked the start of a strange ritual of sorts. The first few days, Luka would continue to haunt the girl, and from the victim's perspective, nothing in the ghost's behavior had changed. It had simply let her be for the holidays and returned. Nothing more, nothing less. But after the sun would set and the father would go to bed, and Miku would finally, finally fall asleep, Luka would visit her and sit with her.
She never faced the girl, but she heard her breathe and she heard her toss and turn and whimper in her nightmares, and that was enough to remind her that she was a monster. She wouldn't touch her. She wouldn't bring comfort only to steal it when the sun rises. But she would listen to her cry, and she could feel her own heart break.
Somehow, this made continuing her daily actions a slight bit easier. She carried on with her mission with a cold efficiency, getting more and more cruel with the passing hour. She found comfort in the fact that she wasn't forgetting her own humanity, but most of all, she found strength in that fact that if there was no hell for her to rot in when she died, well, at least she did her best to rot while she was still alive. It wasn't for redemption, but it was to pay. She faced the consequences as best as she could, and she suffered them. It was the very best she could do.
One day, after Luka had turned on a faucet in order to lure the girl downstairs, Miku fell out of her pattern. The intruder watched from behind the basement door as the tealette just stared. She simply stared, nothing more, nothing less, as the water ran. She didn't shake, she didn't act, and Luka couldn't help but realize that something had gone horribly wrong somewhere. Miku always acted. Neutral, after a brief pause at most. But this...? Luka frowned, not liking what she saw in the slightest. Fear returned, along with the bitter and biting guilt, hours before it was due.
Then, —almost aggressively— Miku stopped the flow of water. Silence returned to the household. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the girl started opening all of the cupboards. She threw most everything she found to the floor, felt the back of the cabinets.
Shit.
Miku ran into the living room, out of Luka's sight. The intruder could hear her search. She could hear her toss the table aside and open the closet.
Shit.
Luka dashed down the basement. Miku wasn't allowed to know that a person was behind all this. She wasn't allowed to know that she existed. She was supposed to be scared of an unknown threat, not a creep. She wasn't allowed to put a face, an appearance, even a species on the nature of her threat. It had to be alien. Supernatural. Godlike. Otherwise, she'd lose her edge.
She'd fail.
As the intruder pushed the window up she heard the basement door slam open. Oh, she felt the girl's line of sight graze her heels! As Miku devoured the stairs with loud steps and as Luka's heart drummed in her ears and throat, she jumped outside, frantically lifted the grate and jumped into the garden, letting the window slide shut behind her with an audible rattle.
Luka waited one minute behind the bushes. She almost forgot the gardens, but couldn't turn around and see if anybody was there even if she tried. She didn't dare check if Miku had looked to see if the grate was still there, she didn't even know if the girl knew there usually was one there. She waited two minutes. She didn't dare look inside the household to see if Miku had moved on upstairs. She waited three minutes. Only then did she dare quietly put the grate back over the hole in the garden. She patted down the soil so that it didn't look upset, and continued waiting.
She sat behind the roses for half an hour. Miku hadn't gone outside, probably because she hadn't seen reason to; the garden was quite empty and one could see all that was there from the windows—except when the intruder is hiding directly under them. Things might have calmed down. The few slamming doors she'd heard over the course of time had stopped. But Luka's heart never calmed down. She was so sorry.
So, so sorry.
Luka couldn't waste her time, though. Still shaking, with tears in her eyes and a weight in her gut, she crawled back inside.
No dirt, no tracks, never a clue that anybody was there.
On the stairs, she listened for a long time. There was no sound in the whole building. After opening the door and checking the first floor, she found that everything had been moved.
Miku had left absolutely no stone unturned. Cabinets had been pushed from the walls, rugs had been pulled, chairs tipped, tables dragged, bookcases emptied.
Luka wanted to return to her sanctuary, only to find that the girl had managed to pry open the cabinet somewhat. The door hadn't opened completely, but it wasn't completely flat against the wall. Even with the silicone spray, Luka had used her trusted knife, by then blunt, to ease it open every single time. It was very easy to open the door with a tool, and she imaged it could even be done with long enough nails. But the girl had tried and failed, probably judging, ultimately, that nobody would go there in the first place.
Luka wanted to weep.
Instead of simply crawling back into the dark and sleeping the memory away, she went upstairs. Miku wasn't there, but she had been there. The living room looked practically sacked. Her desk lost all of the organization it once had. She moved up another flight, and found that the father's desk had been pulled from the wall, but not much more. Luka checked in the parent's bedroom for the first time and saw that the bed had been undone and the closet doors were wide open.
Luka moved up to the fourth floor. A peek sufficed.
Miku was crying on her bed.
Her room was in shambles.
Luka wanted to die.
Instead, after allowing the image to be burned in her memory, she quietly went downstairs. When she reached the living room and Miku's desk she paused. After a moment, she turned towards the furniture. She set it straight. She put the paintings back and pulled the rug to where it was supposed to be. Decorations were placed on their respective surfaces, creases were smoothed out. It helped Miku clean up, and it was supernatural enough. Win-win, Luka thought grimly.
Luka then turned towards the girl's desk. She had no idea what kind of system Miku used to organize her things, so she merely gathered all of the random papers into a single, neat stack so that Miku could easily sort it all out afterward. Books were then placed in the bookcase, while the lamp, with the broken light bulb, was unplugged but put back on the desk.
Then she moved to the ground floor and proceeded identically there. Cupboards were shut, couches pushed against the wall, objects replaced in closets.
It was right then that Luka heard Miku's door shut and the stairs that led up to her room creak. Luka froze, ready to dash for the basement again. But she had to finish her clean up before Miku came down; unfinished work meant that a person had to be interrupted. Had the job been flawless it would have looked impressive enough to fear, as if was the doing of a supernatural force. Unfinished meant flaw. Flaw meant human.
Of course, she hadn't cleaned up the third floor, but Luka didn't care and maybe hoped that Miku would believe that the ghost just didn't want to be heard.
But Miku actually started cleaning up there, on that third floor. The moment Luka realized that she was going to be busy with her parent's room and her father's desk for at least ten minutes, she hurried to finish her clean up. The basement door was shut, objects picked up, details perfected.
The moment it was done, Luka pried open the small door to the hollow wall and dove right in. She pulled on the hook to close the door from the inside but hesitated. She thought, deliberated with herself, and then pulled it shut, but didn't pull it flush against the wall.
She didn't hear Miku come down the stairs from the third floor to the second floor but she heard her agitation grow, and heard her race down the final flight.
She was surprised to find everything back in its place. She looked everywhere, and Luka listened from under the stairs, right next to the little door, wondering if she really had to close it or not.
Miku went quiet, and Luka couldn't hear her anymore. No visual, no sound, Luka was left in the physical and mental dark with no clue as to where her hunter could be. Finally, she was the vulnerable one in the house, the one who anxiously awaited the next assault.
She was the prey.
Suddenly, the cabinet door was shut with a kick. Luka jumped, almost bumping her head against the stairs. Then she heard the girl stomp back up, probably going back to her room.
Luka sighed deeply. She realized she was shaking. Slowly, lethargically, she crawled towards her sleeping bag. She eyed the Tupperware with food that she had brought with her but felt no hunger.
She gave up on the day and fell asleep. A taste of blood rested on her tongue.
Later, that night, the intruder went upstairs as per usual. But the girl's room was still destroyed. Unlike with the other rooms, instead of simply setting aside or, in the worst case, flipping something on its side, it looked as if Miku had positively tossed her chairs and other objects across the space. Luka saw that a leg of her favorite chair had been broken, and she doubted that was the only case of real damage.
Did she dare clean up Miku's living space as she slept? Was she brave enough?
Luka decided that the fear and multiplied risk of getting caught was suitable punishment, if not enough. Calmly and soundlessly she put objects back in their place. She noted where pages had been torn or plastic cracked or parts broken. Damaged books were set in a small pile in front of the bookcase. The chair was set on its side, in its usual location. An audio dock for a certain phone brand had a snapped cable, so she unplugged it and set it aside, close enough to the rest of the similar equipment. But dismay filled Luka when she saw that the brand-new rug was stained by ink. She found the pen it had belonged to and saw with shy glee that the ink could be removed with a bit of effort. She took one of her spare shirts from downstairs, added soap and water, and rubbed at the stain until it disappeared. She didn't care about the shirt. If Luka had to break a person, at least she could make sure she didn't damage other things around her, and keep her surroundings otherwise...nice.
The cleanup had taken a fair bit of time, but Luka had all night. By the time she was done, dirty shirt in hand, it was only quarter past four.
Miku might wake up, Luka realized.
But she didn't. She had taken too long to fall asleep and would continue to slumber until late morning. Luka sat with her in the room, but for the first time in two weeks, she looked at the girl.
So tense, so distraught.
Luka couldn't and wouldn't touch her, she wouldn't try to give her a moment's peace just to rob it after sunrise. She left, crawled into her little hidden corner, and cried. She didn't even allow herself the peace alcohol could have given her.
The following day, Luka woke up late in the afternoon. She hadn't eaten in over a day, but there was no hunger, only nausea. She didn't want to move, she didn't want to act. So instead, she watched. All she could do was watch.
Briefly, she was reminded of how it was when Luka was fully invested in the job and could roam the house with Miku, and they'd never cross paths. It was similar, except that right then, she only watched, and it hurt.
She watched Miku read, she watched her walk around and make food and try to fix the things she broke. She watched her especially in her boredom; the girl had plenty of that.
Because Luka spent most of her time sneaking around, she hardly got to notice exactly how bored the girl usually was most of the day. She began to wonder if Miku had already read all of her books and if she was simply trying to entertain herself by reading everything again. She wondered if she only browsed the internet every so often because she envied this free world around her.
She also found herself observing little habits the girl had; when she read a book, she had to lie down. She usually, if not always, had a mp3 player on her but only listened to music half of the time. She brushed her hair a lot with anything she could reach, and she had absolutely no sweet tooth and preferred strong, salty and spicy foods.
When the day passed, Luka found herself more lost than ever. There was the task at hand, the mission she had to fulfill, and on the other hand, there was this person, this human, who was starting to seem so dear.
She had seen too much and didn't sit with Miku's tense sleep that night. She remembered why she never wanted to talk to the girl through the walls, why she wouldn't make a voice and call her a witch or something. Communication. It led to dialogue, to sharing, to emotions, to sentimental attachment. Somehow—somehow she had achieved that without the conversation. And it was completely one-sided, for the girl wasn't even certain that she existed.
She resumed the next day, no matter how bitter a taste it left on her tongue, or the sick weight it set in her stomach. At least, she planned to. While Miku was eating breakfast, she tried to knock once on the wall for a start. It was the most basic thing Luka had done, so much so that sometimes the girl hardly even reacted to it by then. So it was a great surprise when that time, a shrill cry echoed throughout the entire home, begging for it to stop. Please stop, she yelled. And then, Luka heard her collapse to the floor and cry.
Alone in the dark, behind a wall, Luka could only listen, powerless.
She wanted nothing more than to be able to stop. She wanted nothing more than the freedom to choose to stop. I will stop, she said. Rather, she moved her lips, without making a sound. Just tell your dad, and it'll all stop. Everything will end. This hell will become nothing more than a bad dream. I'll go home, and you'll go away, and we'll never hear of each other again. She wanted to be able to communicate all that to her but was unable to. She pressed her forehead against the rugged planks, hoping for the first time that Miku could feel that she was finally not alone.
Of course, she couldn't stop. She continued and every single time she acted, she felt like chopping her hand off. Luckily for her, the girl made it easy for her by remaining silent. She no longer reacted at all. Once again, she simply put things back and ignored the noises, as if in a state of severe denial. While there were no more reactions which tortured Luka so, the thinking almost hurt more. What was going on in Miku's head? Did she think that she was going insane despite the multitude of physical manifestations? Was she on the edge of breaking? Would she tell her dad the next day? Did she hate her? Did Miku hate her…? That thought hurt so much, because Luka wanted the girl to hate her, but never knew if she got the resentment she so deserved.
The lack of reaction allowed Luka to sit with her once again. It hurt to see the girl's troubled sleep, but it was a pain she felt that she fully deserved. That, along with the never-ending hunger. Along with the lips and cheeks, she had bitten 'til they bled, 'til all she could taste was her own blood. She forced herself to gaze upon the tortured being she had created and she let herself cry silent tears, begging silently for the girl to give in. Just give in, she whispered. Please. Free us both.
But despite every tortured night, and despite every ragged day, Miku never talked. Luka was forced to continue her haunting. She only hoped to suffer as much as her victim. She never hoped that she hadn't gone too far for redemption, for she knew that she'd crossed the line long ago.
Those nights had a severe downside that Luka wished she could have foreseen: she feared that there was a countdown, suddenly. Yes, a clock was ticking, time was running out. A threat that didn't seem to exist at first formed itself in Luka's mind, and suddenly it all had to end soon. Too soon. She felt that she had to return to Miku and give her the worst of everything, except she had already done all she could think of. But she had to give...she had to give, because if Miku wouldn't, then Luka would.
One evening, she was home for barely an hour, but was already preparing her return to her hellish den, planning her nightmares to finally end it all. She was stopped, though, when she noticed that she had a message on her phone. It was Lily, who planned to come over to celebrate her birthday.
To celebrate her twenty-second birthday...Luka almost felt like that kind of activity was for another life, another existence altogether. What kind of regular schmuck didn't celebrate their birthday...and what kind of monster did? After all, monsters were timeless, ageless atrocities who thirsted after the innocent, and she felt so detached from time and life itself, she hardly felt alive. She had forgotten about her own birthday and had never had so little desire to celebrate anything ever. A birthday party? Such silly, superfluous nonsense. She didn't have time for that. Most importantly, she shouldn't have lived her past year. Better yet, she hadn't lived her past year.
She could only frown at hearing her best friend's voice as she planned her 'newest bestest day of your life.' No matter what celebration she threw for her latest success in not dying for 365 consecutive days, she could only think of every occasion at which she almost died, could have died, should have died. She should have been caught on day one and shot with a gun right in her face. After all, because that hadn't happened, she was allowed to continue her job all throughout spring, summer, fall and—
It was only then that Luka realized that it was going to be almost a year since she first broke into the Hatsune residence, and the thought struck her so hard it was dizzying. She sat down on her bed, absorbing the fact that she had spent almost a year torturing someone, and that someone had managed to withstand her all that time.
A full year! Twelve months, each with thirty days...her head spun and she felt sick. And most of that time she had been so heartlessly ruthless, and too much of that time she had worked with a broken heart.
And Miku? Oh, poor Miku. The poor soul. What word would properly fit her situation? Trauma? Paranoia? Mental degradation, destruction? Nothing about the entire situation was healthy in the slightest, and it had been going on for almost a year. With how stubborn the girl was being, Luka feared that there was no end in sight.
But she had to finish it soon. She had to make it all end soon. She had to make it so that Miku would end it all soon. She had to break her into a thousand little bits and make her collapse in front of her own father. It would be the best for all of them. It truly would.
Luka sat on her bed for an hour and a half, simply thinking. She allowed tears to run down her cheeks and fall onto her knees. She allowed her back to ache and her lip to bleed. She allowed her heart to break and her soul to crumble. She didn't answer Lily's call.
She returned to the Hatsune residence with a steel heart and a fixed goal in mind, only to go home mere hours later, weaker than ever before. Miku was too strong and too neutral and too tense in her sleep. Luka had watched her and scared her and had broken down again and again in the dark, alone.
Miku was so stoic. But how well she truly was faring was a question that never left the intruder's mind. To have a year of solitude among eighteen others spent harassed and assaulted and haunted...how was that? No matter how unimaginably unbearable it was, it was all Luka's own doing.
She wondered if it would be her undoing, and hardly doubted that it would be.
She wanted to call Lily back and tell her to stay away. Stay away from the monster. But of course, she said that the blonde was welcome and that she looked forward to seeing her again.
Luka wondered how her best friend would react if she found out what she'd been doing all day, every day, for almost a year. She imagined how her friend's face would contort, how she would be hit, how she would be shunned. Knowing Lily, she would let everyone in the world know about her crimes, and she would get the same treatment from everyone she knew, and everyone she didn't. She'd see Miku's face finally recognize who had violated her so, and see it crumble into tears.
She couldn't take it.
That weekend, Luka expected a cozy dinner with Lily to celebrate the worst event of the year. Except Lily didn't come alone; her parents joined the blonde, as well as her other friends, some of which she hadn't seen since the end of high school. For a second, and only a second, Luka was bathed in some sort of bittersweet surprise and nostalgia at seeing so many familiar faces smile at her. That second ended with a swift and cruel reminder that she didn't deserve a single second of joy, not a single smile, and Luka's entire face turned into a stone mask. The mask was layers thick and had the brightest smile and the most shimmering eyes painted on it. Nobody could see through it, and under the mask, Luka's heart broke again.
With faux smile armed and light laughter at the ready, they celebrated. The whole group, twenty strong, went to a nice restaurant. They joked and laughed and ate cake. The cake made Luka want to gag. It looked so beautiful and sweet and delicious that she wanted to tear it apart with her bare hands. The conversation wasn't better; Luka was reminded of numerous fun anecdotes they'd all experienced together but couldn't bring up a single one herself. She was told numerous jokes and laughed plenty, but couldn't get a giggle from anyone. She blamed the surprise and the sudden joy at seeing everyone again. She blamed her job and how wonderfully tiring it was. They bought it all.
She felt sick to the stomach.
After dinner, they all went to her little home, and Luka was just happy she'd put everything away. Her mother and father were so proud of how well she managed on her own, complimenting her room, small as it was. Luka took the compliments easily if only to subdue her horror. It was clean because she was never around to allow her presence destroy it.
Another cake was summoned. It was smaller and more personal. A little pink octopus decorated each corner, and twenty-two candles covered the top. It had layers of vanilla and lemon, they said. It was her favorite. Luka could only imagine how delicious it would be and how much effort she would have to make to keep herself from spitting it all back up.
They sat her at her own table and lit all of the little blue candles. In each flame, she saw her reflection and in each drop of wax, she saw Miku's tears. She knew that, even as she sat there at home with her family and friends, she consumed the girl's life.
Make a wish, they said.
They sang for her and cheered for her and all she wanted to do was run.
Make a wish, they said.
I wish that Miku could be happy again.