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"How are you Hikigaya?"

"Oh I can't complain."

"I'm sure you could," my psychiatrist dismissed. "How are you really doing? It's important."

"I haven't noticed anything on this olanzapine. My hallucinations are about the same. My paranoid 'delusions' are the same."

"You don't think they're delusions?"

"Naturally," I answered. "I think there are dark and hungry gods here with us. Locked in with me. It's like I'm locked in with a tiger. It's going to rip me apart. No matter what I do or try, it should destroy my mind. Just crush it like a tin can."

"You think the internet can do that?"

"Yeah. I do."

"I want to scan your brain," she confessed.

"Okay," I agreed. "What are you looking for?"

"Not sure. But I figure it couldn't hurt. Then I want to run a genetic test on you. To see which meds will work best for you."

"Sure."

"I'll set you up with an appointment to scan your brain but we can do the genetic test here. Or we can start it."

"What do you need from me?"

She stood up and opened a package. Inside was a plastic cup. She handed it to me. "Just spit in this cup. Up to the line."

I started spitting. It took quite a bit of spit to fill it up to the line. When I was done I put the lid on and handed it to doctor Farrell. She took it from me and put it in a package.

"We'll ship that off and get your results back. Should take about two weeks."

"No problem from me. And this brain scan?"

"An MRI and an electroencephalogram."

"And you think that will help?"

"Well if it is a physical abnormality we should be able to tell."

"Do you think its a physical abnormality?" I asked.

"Not really but its interesting you didn't notice anything on the olanzapine. That's unusual. We usually expect things to get better or worse. But you said things were about the same?"

"I did and they are."

"I want to try one of our atypical antipsychotics," she pressed on.

"Sure," I agreed.

"It's called vraylar and you should notice the effects immediately."

"So not like the olanzapine?"

"The olanzapine is a gradual and subtle thing. This vraylar is more like a sledgehammer."

"Okay," I thought that made sense.

"Its the best we can do until your genetics test comes in."

"Okay," I agreed.

"I want to run through our mood scales with you."

"I don't know what those are," I pointed out.

"Just tell me if you've experienced these things all the days, most of the days, half the days, a couple of the days, or not at all. Over the last two weeks, that is."

"Sure," I said.

"Feeling down, depressed or hopeless?"

"All the days."

"Little interest or pleasure doing things?"

"A couple of the days."

"Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?"

"Half the days."

"Which one?"

"Trouble falling asleep."

"Feeling tired or having little energy?"

"Half the days."

"Poor appetite or overeating?"

"None of the days."

"Feeling bad about yourself, that you are a failure or having let your family down?"

"Half the days."

"Trouble concentrating on things?"

"Half the days."

"Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or the opposite being so fidgety or restless than usual?"

"None of the days. Well, I have some slurred speech after taking clonazepam."

"Really? Well that can happen. It's a pretty strong sedative. Thoughts you would be better off dead?"

"All the days."

"Any plans to take your own life?"

"Not really. I mean, I could come up with a plan if I needed it."

"But no active ideation?"

"I wouldn't say so. I more or less promised not to end my life for another year and my word is good."

"Here I have some samples of vraylar for you to take. Go ahead and take five milligrams and start to escalate to twenty milligrams over the next two weeks before I see you again."

I took the hard pill with no water.

"I'll see you in two weeks. Okay?"

"Yeah alright." I got up and left.

I met up with my mother in the lobby.

"And what did she say?" my mother asked.

"She's changing my antipsychotic, to something called vraylar. We'll have to pick up my new prescription."

"Why is she doing that?"

"I told her I hadn't noticed anything on the olanzapine. She also wants to scan my brain and test my genetics to see which drugs I'll respond well to."

"Is that a big deal?"

"I'm not sure. She thought it was unusual that I didn't respond to the olanzapine."

"I see…" my mother trailed off.

"So I'll be heading back to the hospital."

"What are the brain scans?"

"She said an MRI and an electroencephalogram."

"I understand." My mother nodded along. "Just to see."

"Right. Just to make sure I'm being skullfucked by brain cancer or something."

"Watch your mouth," my mother frowned.

"Sure," I agreed.

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The summer was over, but only by the calendar. The final day of summer arrived and the school was starting up the following day. The cicadas that announced the fall were chirping loudly, but it was still hot. It would probably be a little longer before the weather cooled.

The last sunset of August was descending. In the remaining light, I prepared for the start of school the next day. I stuffed the homework that I had finished long ago into my bag.

This vraylar was a waking nightmare. I hated being alive. It gave me sleep paralysis and terrible nightmares. Nightmares where I drowned in insects or was burned alive. I could still feel it upon waking up. My nerves tingled and burned. I wasn't sleeping well. I told doctor Farrell and she set me up an earlier appointment. It was soon but not soon enough. In the meantime I was still on these fucking meds. It made existence unbearable. I hated it. If THC lubed up life this vraylar made it have friction which rubbed me all the wrong ways.

Among my papers was Komachi's independent research project. I had apparently gotten them jumbled together when I had printed everything I needed for submission. I flipped through the report I'd done on flame reactions one last time.

It's the flame reactions that give fireworks their color. If you touch metals or salts to a flame each element will burn a characteristic color. Blue-white flame will also look different depending on which elements it touches.

It's actually kind of like people.; When two people come into contact you'll get soem kind of reaction. And there's a range of color possibilities. Even a single person will display different reactions depending on which person they come in contact with. You create completely different colors each time, just like multicolored fireworks.

For example, when Saki Kawasaki met Yukinoshita, she said she was difficult to approach. Though the two girls were of the same type, and they both kept others at a distance, Kawasaki didn't feel like they could become friends. So perhaps the best form of communication for them was noninterference.

Or when Taishi Kawasaki saw her he described her as beautiful but also scary. If you were to just skim the surface in expressing what she is, you couldn't be more accurate. Seen from afar she may indeed be as a cliff reigning over an icy sea.

And then when Saika Totsuka approached her, he called her a dignified and serious person. And that was true: she was. She is faithful to rules and principles. Though her rules and principles are based on her own internal sense of justice.

When Komachi Hikigaya came into contact with her, though, she felt that the older girl seemed somehow lonely. Both the person leaving home and the ones left behind experience the ache of solitude. Of course, Komachi's judgment was nothing more than sympathy from an outsider. Nobody knows how she really feels, probably herself included.

By contrast, Shizuka Hiratsuka watched over her, believing she was a kind person and also often righteous. Miss Hiratsuka also said the world is neither kind nor right, so it must be a difficult place for her to be. Indeed that was true, nearly everything around her could well become her shackles. Only one thing might save her, the teacher had said: 'friends.' But she has most likely been tormented a dozen times more by those same 'friends'-no hundreds of times.

And Haruno Yukinoshita, who lived with her, had laughed as if to say she was worthless. With a callous smile she commented that her little sister had always been chasing after her and that's why she is always the loser. She is Haruno's pitiful, adorable, unchosen little sister. I don't know who it was that didn't choose her. Maybe it was friends, family, parents, or perhaps even fate. Whichever it is, only a strong person like Haruno Yukinoshita could feel sorry for her. I've never once felt that way.

But then Yui Yuigahama, having been by her side all along, cried out that she liked her. There was nothing flowery about the clumsy tactless frank way she had howled her feelings. But I've never heard a confession so beautiful. Even Yui Yuigahama felt a wall between her and the other girl, but that only made her want to overcome the distance all the more. She longs to help her, so strongly she would even ask for assistance from someone like me.

And as for me?

Had I seen nothing at all?

Sometimes, I could indeed get a vague grasp of her actions and the psychology underlying them. But that didn't mean I understood how she feels. It's just that we were in similar positions in similar environments, so that led me to make analogies. Those analogies are nothing more than offhand approximations.

People only ever see what they want to see.

I think I was honing in on something familiar to me within her. The way she persists in her aloofness, in her own sense of justice and doesn't lament about how misunderstood she is or how she's given up on understanding others. She unquestionably had that perfect superhuman nature I was attempting to master.

The Yukino Yukinoshita I've seen is always beautiful and honest and never lies. Her brusque statements often say more than necessary. She has no one to rely on, yet she continues to stand on her own two feet. The way she stood there, beautiful like a frozen blue flame, so ephemeral, even tragic…

That Yukinoshita…

…was the one I admired.

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-WG