Fluffy Trinity

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Part III. After

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I woke up in Kei’s arms and for a tiniest of seconds it seemed like a fairytale come true to me, as if I lived in one of those sappy movies for middle-aged housewives. For just a second I felt absolutely content and warm. For that precise second that it took me to realize that when I look at the thick curtains covering the window, and when I see the thin stripe of sun on the wall, I am suffocating with fear.

I pushed my whole body towards the wall, instinctively moving away from the light even if it couldn’t hurt me at that distance. Kei stirred, opened his eyes and grinned at me, and I once again felt like strangling him.

“What have you done to me?” I hissed at him – I always loved sun, I remembered that much… it was natural for me to walk the sun-lit streets, to gain energy from just being out there under all those golden rays, which resembled Kei’s hair so much.

And now, I only recognized hatred for both. It was like suddenly hating your favourite ice-cream, something so weird and unnatural you could never imagine until you experience it. I was scared of things I used to love and that hatred scared me even more and it was so blindingly confusing I couldn’t help but tremble.

“Are you alright?” he asked with a yawn and I hated him so completely I couldn’t even bear to touch him, so I moved out of the bed, careful not to touch the stray sunray on the floor, and growled at him from the corner.

“Alright? I am damn not alright! I am a monster!”

“It’s not so bad when you look at it from the brightest side.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Was he really the same guy who cried while admitting that he hated his own existence?

“Oh yes. It’s great, I am dead and walking.”

“You’re not dead. You have time to live, which is far more than any human could ever achieve.”

He looked at me with is eyes full of something. That something was bloodthirsty and mourning, mourning me, and it made me shiver with fear and anticipation at the same time. It almost made me believe in his words... but then, I remembered.

I remembered how it felt before I died, how I didn’t mind ending my life just the way I did. How I didn’t have any purpose in my previous life and I didn’t have one now; how I felt numb, as if my soul and my body weren’t entirely connected, as if my body was a very slow computer not really corresponding with my moves and thoughts, as if it weren’t really my body.

“But you said... you said you were a monster,” I pleaded, my voice rough with tears I just couldn’t shed. I was sorry for myself, sorry for Kei I thought I knew and for all the things that I wanted to connect us. And they just didn’t... we just didn’t seem to connect at all.

Kei’s refined hands went through his messy hair and hid his face – maybe it was a good thing. I don’t think I could bear to see his expression when he broke.

“You are right. I am sorry, Shou. I... I couldn’t watch you die. Not you. Not there... and then. You seemed too young for that, even if you look older than me already... sorry, Shou-chan... I didn’t really think back then. I just desperately clung to your life... I didn’t want to let you leave me behind. Shou-chan... forgive me... I won’t hold you back anymore. Do what you must...”

The tears gathered up in my eyes finally spilled when he called me that little stupid name from back then when he was more of a father to me than anyone else, when he would hold me in his arms to protect me while we slept on a street, not having enough money and luck to have a shelter for the night. That nickname that I didn’t hear since he left me alone in the world I wasn’t able to cope with. And hearing it now, when I was just thrown out into the storm by the very person I thought was my lighthouse, now it made those bloody tears spill and my eyes burn, just as they burned all those years back then, when I had understood he’s not coming back.

Meanwhile, Kei seemed to have come up with some sort of resolution, to have made a decision that wasn’t entirely his own but was a hard one nonetheless. When he looked up, his eyes were serious and strayed to the lost sunray spilled on the floor from behind the curtain.

I followed his look and understood what he meant. Him giving me that liberty was more than I could wish for and I felt how hard it was for him to accept that possibility, but still, I felt excited. Thrilled. Recklessly fighting and not caring if I died was one thing... and killing myself just by pulling one curtain back the other. It was freedom and it was pure horror, sweet and sour at the same time, and still, I couldn’t help but want to do it.

And I couldn’t move enough to do so.

“Kei... what comes after the Death?” I asked quietly, staring at my Death represented by golden stripe perfectly dividing the room to two parts, two worlds. Mine and Kei’s, near each other and still never quite reaching the other one.

His look hurt almost physically, when he smiled.

“For me, it is this. There’s no other after. As of you, I don’t know. You’ll have to find out by yourself.”

Those words made me feel terribly lonely even with him in the room, and in the spur of moment, not wanting to die completely alone and God knows how, I tried asking him:

“Won’t you...?”

I couldn’t bring myself to complete that question... I didn’t really know how to put it. Won’t you be the one to kill me? Won’t you go find the answer to the after with me? Nothing seemed appropriate.

And he got it, anyway.

But the sad lines around his mouth, still slightly smiling, said it all before he could.

“I won’t. I am too big of a coward for that... I’m scared of watching people die, because that reminds me that I can still die, too. And I am scared of your after, Shou.”

With that, he rose from the bed and his tense shoulders told me he didn’t really want to say goodbye but didn’t want to say stay either. So he said something different, something that didn’t really count as either.

“I wish you more courage to do what you need to do, Shou-chan.”

And as he closed the door behind him, I was once again that young reckless fool thrown out to the streets to live as I could, to live without his support and guidance, to decide for myself.

The fabric of the curtain was thick and wine-red and it shone like blood with all that sun behind it. A weird mixed feeling of morbid anticipation and incoherent fear stirred in me, like I’d pull it away and see myself in a coffin and people I buried would be standing around looking at me.

I stood there for a long time, the sun became less radiant or I just got used to feeling the filtered warmth on my skin. I stood there, thinking about many things and behind every single memory, every single smile and look that popped up in my head, there was an ever-present thought that I will never need those anymore, no memories, no nightmares, no unfulfilled hopes. And underneath the underneath, there was regret for all that, for all the years that were going to be blown away just by a mere look at the sun, the years that I’ve thrown away when I went to that rundown building with just a few shotguns and Kei at my back.

My throat was squeezed tight by the invisible hand and it felt like I was suffocating myself, like I was going against the nature when I touched that curtain and brought my hand, against my instincts, to pull it away.

Or at least I wanted to, I managed to only pull it a little and when the light hit the floor, unspeakable fear overcame me and I screamed, a deafening, mind-numbing scream I let out from my very insides, a scream that spoke of ashes and nothingness I was about to become a second ago, of sun that burned my eyes even as a mere reflection on the floor, of the sun that seemed to turn my blood to smoke even if it didn’t touch me directly. I screamed like mad, and I was mad at the moment, mad with the terror of being nearly dead and it felt as if I jumped from the fiftieth floor of a building and the ground was coming closer too quickly, with me being unable to stop it. I felt that I was falling, that my death was near and there was nothing after that, nothing, no reincarnation, no Heaven or Hell, just vanishing, not existing anymore and that felt a thousand times worse than any sort of after I could imagine. That there was no after, I couldn’t bear, and I clung to my immortality as the last hope, as I understood that this was my last chance, that I won’t get another life to live, another mind, no more memories, no more touches, hugs, smiles, looks...

Finally, I understood what Kei meant by being a coward, a monster, by being scared of watching someone die. To watch a person die meant to watch their beliefs, their hopes and thoughts of afterlife, whatever they were, vanish into nothingness with that person’s last breath. I stopped screaming when my throat couldn’t take it anymore and started sobbing instead, when I understood that Kei’s affection for me was what didn’t let him watch me vanish, or at least I wanted to think so, wanted him to love me to that extent, and still hated him for making me this schizophrenic bastard, someone who knows people are going to die because of him, but still kills, still makes other people vanish in order to save himself from that very destiny. Someone who clings to a stupid dream that can never come true, someone who goes against himself in order to save what little he has left. Someone without any hope at all... someone, who got the answers to the ancient questions of living and dead and now, knows far more than he would like.

I wished I could go back to knowing nothing about all this, but there was no option like that for me and when Kei came back and silently knelt beside me, crouched on the floor, and put his arms around me, I cried loudly into his shirt, clung to him like he could make it all better and shared that mourning with him, the mourning of us, two lost little ships in a sea storm, without any lighthouse to be seen.

“I knew you couldn’t,” he whispered and I just sobbed, becoming a bit hysterical by now, but he let me loose, let me cry until exhaustion, never stopping me.

“I screamed just like that when I discovered I couldn’t pull the curtains either... I hoped you’d be different... that you’ll show me the way out of this... but we are the same, Shou-chan...” his hand caressed my tear-streaked face and I pulled him away from the way of that much-hated sunray, pulled him closer and cried myself to exhaustion, hoping it would just all go away.

And knowing it wouldn’t.