Nagisa.
I don't think that I could ever properly describe the looks on our faces as we stood over that makeshift hole. I knew that I could hear Monaka crying. I knew that I felt sick with guilt and horror, like there was a pit in my stomach, and much like the pit in front of us, something within it was dead. Beyond revival.
Masaru stabbed the shovel into the damp pile of earth beside him and looked around at us breathlessly, one-by-one. When his gaze finally settled upon me, he looked expectant, searching me for something to say or do. It must have taken me at least a full minute to register anything. I leaned over the pile of dirt and took some of it in a closed palm, excavating it without any fear of the worms that could have been writhing amongst it for once. I felt it stick to my skin, crawl in between my fingers, and drive itself under my nails. Kotoko seemed to understand why I did this, and picked up a handful in suit. Monaka next, and then Jataro. Masaru stared at us, as if trying to figure out our actions.
"Just do it." I said to him, resulting in a short transition from confusion to anger, and then to submission. He crouched and grabbed the dirt. Starting with me, we each threw dirt into the hole. Masaru began filling it up using the shovel. As it filled, we became emptier and emptier, until the soil was finally level, and we knew that the day was over.
None of us really brought it up again after that, and I don't think we really wanted to. From that point on, we weren't ever really the same. Some kind of weight had fallen upon us at the realisation of what we'd actually done. At the time we'd only been twelve, but even as the years went on, and we fell under the proclaimed leadership of Monaka, the memory lingered. Death became normal, the world was falling to pieces, and we were helping it happen. We thought we were just doing what was best. We thought that we could make up for what we'd done to one person, by sacrificing thousands of others. Monaka had changed the most… her heart was stone-cold, and her obsession with atoning for that day with despair lead her to cast us, who had been her friends away and damage us. It was only thanks to her doing so that we managed to escape punishment by law when the world was mid-recovery. Our stories as victims gave us a free pass, and soon, even the adults who'd detested our movement learned to forgive us. We hadn't personally reunited with Monaka, but her trial day came and she was forced into a rehabilitation facility, in order to reverse the damage that was done to her, and thus, to the society she'd torn apart. It seemed so simple in theory, but the people loathed her, shunned her. They were scared to trust her, and so were we.
We went through high school pretending everything was normal, and just like that, we grew up. Kotoko was the first to leave, mid-way through high school. She was determined to work on her acting career more than anything, and moved across the country for a role. That was the first time I was forced to think about what would happen to us as a group once we were finished with school.
The anxiety grew worse when Masaru left. He'd gotten some sort of sports scholarship on the other side of Japan, and it left Jataro and I alone to finish school. The house seemed so empty, and there was silence that grew between us as we lost common interests. We had nothing to talk about. I should have expected him to be the next to leave, but I'd been trying so hard not to think about it. I never realised how scared I was to be alone until I was pleading with him to stay. I didn't care about the opportunities he had, I just wanted to be selfish for once. I wanted to cling on to what I had.
He left after staying for me on at least three different occasions. I kept telling him to wait until I at least got into a university. But he couldn't keep saying yes to me, and he left in the middle of the night. I knew why he did it. I don't think he ever knew how to say no to me. Jataro had a deeply imbedded sense of inferiority. He hated himself, and he hated people who didn't hate him, and himself for hating them. Except for me. We were best friends.
But even he had to grow up. Even he had to survive. He'd spent years in court-appointed therapy building up to a future, and staying with a desperate me was just an anchor, keeping him down.
When he left I was angry, but I was a far distance from a sane mind. All of the applications I'd sent out, with grades licking the pinnacle of literal perfection were denied due to my record. Even if the charges were dropped, the mark we'd made on history was still there. Unlike the others, where a little rebellion was the breeding ground of creative talent and a crowd-grabber, mass murder wasn't easily looked on by professional establishments. I was branded as a troublemaker, which I detested. But it was inevitable, no matter how much I didn't want it to be so, my future was stolen by my past, and I was stuck in that big, empty house.
Alone.