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I was there when Yukinoshita called her first meeting to order.

I was there to take the meeting notes.

"Order order," she murmured quietly with all her authority. Everyone became silent. The secretary of the treasury, some Ao-san girl, took her seat. "I want to do something special for the end of the year. What does our budget look like?"

Ao-san told her and Yukinoshita winced. "We may have to fund raise," Yukinoshita decided.

"How about a bake sale?" Yui pressed.

Yukinoshita told her "that could work."

"Or a raffle of some kind," Ao-san cut in.

I made notes of all of that but held my tongue. I had nothing to contribute.

"Let's plan on both," Yukinoshita decided. "I'd like to move forward with both ideas unless anyone has any objections."

There were none.

"Very good. Any new business?" Yukinoshita demanded. Nobody said anything. "Any old business?" Nobody said anything. "Very well. Meeting adjourned."

That was Yukinoshita. Straight to the point and brutal. I saved the meeting notes on my laptop and stood up.

"That went well, I think." Yukinoshita decided. "It could be much worse. Meguri-senpai left us something."

"I thought you did great, Yukinon!" Yui exclaimed. She threw her arms around Yukinoshita and Yukinoshita flinched at her touch and her mouth dropped open. I wondered briefly if I looked that stupid when Yui touched me. I decided I'd be lucky if I looked that stupid when Yui touched me. I probably looked like a fucking idiot.

Yui kissed Yukinoshita's cheek and withdrew. Yukinoshita rubbed her cheek where she was kissed gently. It was adorable. I decided that that right there was adorable.

"W-well yes. This sort of thing comes naturally to me."

"Yukinon is such a good leader."

"Naturally," I cut in. "I'll have your meeting minutes sent to you."

"Thank you, Hikigaya-kun." She looked like she had her head on a bit straighter after Yui's show of affection.

"No problem," I dismissed and indeed it was not.

I turned to leave.

"Hikigaya-kun…" Yukinoshita started behind me but she didn't finish what she wanted to say.

"Yes?" I wondered. I had no clue what she wanted. She inhaled deeply. Yui watched with bated breath.

"I was wondering about your delusions." She finished. It was just the three of us left in the room.

"I'm not really supposed to talk or think about them. Not to anyone who isn't my therapist or psychiatrist," I responded.

"What's your diagnosis?" Yukinoshita asked.

"Schizoaffective disorder."

"What's that?" Yui asked.

"It's like schizophrenia but schizoaffective people don't have psychosis independent of their mood disorder. They are tied together. But the diagnosis is difficult."

"What do you mean?" Yukinoshita wondered.

"Well I was on drugs for one thing. A real diagnosis can't be achieved until I've been clean for a year. Second, I still have hallucinations and delusions even when my mood isn't elevated or depressed which is outside the bounds of schizoaffective disorder. I should only experience symptoms when in an elevated or depressed mood."

"But that's not happening to you?" Yukinoshita confirmed.

"No, my pain is constant and sharp," I confirmed back.

"Well keep with it. You can do this!" Yui encouraged me. I smiled at her as warmly as I could.

"Thanks Yui. It's just a little frustrating since I don't meet all the diagnostic criteria. And then I get an elevated mood at times. It's at those times when my psychosis is at its worst. You've never seen the energy, neither of you. But it can happen to me."

"What's it like?" Yui wondered up at me.

"It's like I was laughing for an hour or just smoked a bowl of weed. It's a funny burning pleasant sensation across the roof of my skull. Except it feels wrong. Nobody should feel that good for no reason. It's not right."

"Does it have to be this bad scary thing?" Yui asked.

"It just is a bad scary thing. Not much I can do about that. It doesn't feel right even if it feels good. It's a sign that something is wrong under the surface. And I have no clue what sets that off. Usually a dose of my meds helps put the beast down and to bed and I can sleep. Usually. I can literally feel one of my meds turning certain parts of my brain off. And then it wakes up others in their place."

"What med is that?" Yukinoshita asked.

"Saphris or asenapine if you don't like the generic name. It's a good med. I like it a lot."

"Was that the med that made you cut yourself?" Yukinoshita demanded.

"It doesn't really work like that. I chose to cut. As much as I'm capable of choosing. Saphris is a pleasant drug. It can make painful sensations pleasant."

"Scary…" Yui trailed off.

"Why?" I had to ask.

She shrugged her hair out of her face before answering. "Well pain is important. It gives context."

I stared at her for a moment. I stared hard. That was a smart thought. It was so smart I wasn't sure Yui came up with it alone.

"That's true enough I suppose. But I am in pain just existing."

"Well, 'pain'." Yukinoshita quoted.

"Yes. Pain. I hallucinate pain."

"Even on all your drugs?" Yui wondered.

"Yes. It all hurts. I feel bugs crawling around my skin and in my eyes and ears." I also felt them across my genitals but I wasn't about to get into that with these two.

"That sounds nasty…" Yui trailed off once more.

"It is nasty." Yukinoshita coupled.

"It is yes. But I was never promised an easy life. A better life cannot mean another life."

"Who said that?" Yui asked.

"Albert Camus. A French Algerian thinker who came up with absurdism out of existentialism."

"I didn't have you pegged as an absurdist." Yukinoshita noted.

"I am a little. There is but one critical philosophical question, that being the question of suicide. I understand a little. I try to comprehend. I do not know if it is impossible to know, but I do know it is impossible for me to know right now. And so I struggle. Should I have a cup of coffee or kill myself? Always, in the end, instead of killing myself, I brush my teeth."

"Do you battle with it every day? Truly?" Yukinoshita had to wonder.

"I do. It's a hard problem. It's a one way ticket to the far side of forever."

"It definitely sounds scary when you say it like that!" Yui protested.

"But it is. Whether I kill myself or not it's still a one way ticket," I defended myself.

"These delusions that you can't share with us, I'm not asking the details on them, but what are they like?" Yukinoshita asked. She made her point clearly.

"Thinking about them can send me into a spiral which is why I'm not really supposed to talk about them," I began. "But they have to do with dark and hungry gods locked in here with us. They have to do with whether I'm supposed to kill myself."

"Why would you be supposed to kill yourself?" Yukinoshita demanded.

"Well I promised I would for one thing," I started. "For another it's a little like a trust fall into the arms of god and you have to count on him to catch you. For a final point I really want all this to stop. I want to stop existing. I don't want there to be an afterlife of any kind, even if I were heaven bound which I am most assuredly not."

"But you aren't a bad person!" Yui cut in. "Why would you go to hell?"

"Because I bet a fiddle of gold against my soul that I could beat the devil in a logic contest." I answered. "I literally ate of the fruit and sold my soul to the devil. That's some pretty sinful stuff."

"Ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge," Yukinoshita confirmed.

"That's right. Thought experiments involving archangels and demons and how they would blackmail me. So I don't know if it was an angel or demon, but whatever it was it puppetted me so thoroughly I had no other thought in my head."

"That's why you believe in that sort of thing?" Yui wondered.

"That's right. I mean it could have been alien of some kind but I doubt it. We invent our own devils you understand."

"Not really…" Yui whined.

"Really? You've never had something going on where you made a bigger deal out of it than it was or had a bad social interaction you worried about but everything turned out fine?" I asked.

"Oh of course," Yui agreed.

"That's sort of what I mean. Our thoughts devour themselves."

"These things eat at you?" Yukinoshita asked.

"Every day they take a little more from me. An inch or a mile. I can only lose ground and never regain it," I answered.

"But you'll let us know before you decide anything. When this school year ends you'll keep us in the loop, won't you?" Yukinoshita half begged. But Yukinoshita didn't know how to beg so her reaction startled me. I blinked at her for a moment.

"You want my last call?" I asked.

"Don't say that. Don't describe it like that. Please?" Yui pleaded.

"Sure," I agreed. "The question still stands."

"Yes. I want it." Yukinoshita answered.

"It's yours. Or at least it's one of yours'." I decided. I could do that much. "Look, things are better for me now than they've ever been in my life. Who knows where I'll be by the time the school year ends."

"You don't believe that," Yukinoshita accused.

"I half do." I disagreed. "I'm content even if I'm not happy. And a lot of that is thanks to you both. And a lot of that is thanks to you," I repeated myself for emphasis.

"We'll see Hikigaya. We'll see how much we help you." Yukinoshita vowed.

"You've already done more for me than I had any right to ask of you," I dismissed.

"We've done so little…" Yui stammered off.

"Do you really believe that?" I wondered.

It wasn't like they hadn't done anything. They were both looking after me in their own ways. It wasn't refined or well structured. But it was something.

"A little…" Yui whined again adorably.

"What else could you do?" I demanded. "You both are sweet and looking out for me in your own ways."

"We could well and truly be there for you. When you need us. When you're close to relapsing on drugs or self harm." Yukinoshita pronounced.

"You are. You have been. You want too much from yourselves. I'm broken and unfixable."

"You're not unfixable Hikki. You're just mixed up," Yui dismissed. "You're confused and hurting because of it. There's nothing more human than that."

"I often wonder if I'm human," I confessed. "A part of one of my delusions. I wonder if I'm a machine at times. Just a giant neural network."

"You're human. Or you're as much a human as I am," Yukinoshita informed me.

"There's no rigorous mathematical definition for humanity," I dismissed. "So I'm really not sure I could recognize a human if I saw one. There's better definitions for deep learning networks. Which better fits the data? Human? Or a learning network? There are some tasks I'm just not up to. Just like a learning machine."

"You hurt and you love and you reason," Yui protested. "What's more human than that?"

I stopped to think. There was nothing more human than that.

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-WG