Cowardice / Ignavia
Extreme lack of bravery and courage, to the point of denying or refusing to fulfill one's individual responsibilities.
Can be conflated with Sloth/Acedia, as an aspect of apathy.
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5 / 18 / 2016
It's hard for me to see, even though I know my eyes are wide open. I can feel nothing below my neck, and the only thing I hear is a droning noise comparable to static. The act of blinking is enough to shoot sparks into my head. The world keeps on spiralling out, fading and solidifying and not knowing what to do with itself. Noises grow louder and then quiet down again. I keep remembering gunfire. Strands of smoke in the air, concrete being kicked up; I hear screaming, but I don't know whose voice it is. I can feel my insides shiver, my bones strain, my heart banging against my ribcage. There's something grabbing my heart and pulling it down, making it sink into a bottomless well of nothing.
The world makes sense just enough for me to find that my skull's throbbing, a buzzing noise passing through my ears. My stomach feels like it's been thwacked by a baseball bat seven times over. As far as I can tell nothing on me's injured that badly, probably just a wound or two here and there. But the pain's enough to keep me awake for likely the next few hours.
I find that I'm seated in the middle of a packed train car. The car rumbles and my body shifts as it moves along the tracks. It's morning. My left hand aches horribly, it won't stop shaking and I think a tooth is loose. Nothing makes sense and everything's fucked. I wiggle my arm around in the cramped space I've been given to try and pull up my phone out my pocket-
-and feeling around there makes me realize that two of my ribs on the left side are gone. Not broken, gone, but I feel no pain whatsoever. As if it'd been healed up.
I pull open my phone, checking the date and time. May 18, 2016, eight o'clock AM. Why is the screen of my phone cracked all a sudden? Do not lose it. Do not look at yourself from somewhere else again. Keep your eyes here and now, you stupid piece of shit.
I nearly break down right then and there because I make myself cycle through the apps on my phone till I can open the Navigator, and when I do I pull up the log and I see three entries.
「 PALACE LOG 」
I. 5 / 17 / 2016 - PR: Sohei Kobayakawa | PL: Shujin Academy | PD: Prison
II. 4 / 11 / 2016 - PR: Suguru Kamoshida | PL: Shujin Academy | PD: Castle
III. 12 / 24 / 2015 - PR: Kana Kohaku | PL: The World | PD: Hell
When did I figure out Kobayakawa's distortion?
I tap the first entry.
ERROR: PALACE has been ERASED.
That can't be right.
I tap it again.
ERROR: PALACE has been ERASED.
Again and again and again.
ERROR: PALACE has been ERASED, PALACE has been ERASED, PALACE has been ERASED.
Once I get off the train and head into school I immediately rush to the restroom. I pull open my shirt in the mirror to find that whenever I breathe in, my skin sinks right where the two ribs should be. There are scars there, quite large and craggly, but healed pretty much completely. The knuckles on my left hand are sore beyond belief; not so painful that I'd be unable to hold a pencil, but painful enough such that whenever my fingers would bend in any fashion agony would screech across my arm.
I make it ten minutes past the start of class and my current teacher, a fat old fossil with graying hair and a gravelly voice, condescends and informs me (delinquent that I am) that I shouldn't be so bold as to be late--but I stop hearing him after like a few seconds because I'm busy wondering where the hell my ribs went, and why I can't remember most of what happened yesterday, why Kobayakawa's Palace is gone alla sudden, why everything around me feels like it's sinking and crumbling and trembling like an earthquake.
I barely manage to keep myself from puking even though I now feel her and see her and she doesn't say a word, I feel her hairs covering my face, snaking around my arms and my legs and keeping me bolted on the spot, she drapes her arms over me and sometimes I see them as pale and white and bleeding and other times I see them skinned open and laid bare, she's humming all the time some bullshit lullaby I'd heard her sing to Masako while the girl was still alive, a third of the time she sounds like her and the other two thirds she sounds like the goddamned Whore in her Palace.
Once the last class reaches its end I march my way through a hallway which only keeps on going on and on and on. People pass me by, fragments of themselves, glass stands that will shatter the moment I touch them. Cold, unfeeling, unmoving. They don't matter. None of them matter. All that matters is that I need to get home. I'm walking; but the hallway I'm in won't ever ever end. Every step I take the end just keeps going a thousand feet away from me. I must keep walking, must never stop running.
Now, the hallway I'm in twists and turns on itself and what once was concrete and stone transforms into something unknowable. Lockers turn into arms. Windows turn into eyes. Wooden floorboards turn into thousands of bodies. I hear screaming noises, women and children of course. And all the things they could have said, should have said, had not said; they sound like they're being boiled alive and they're calling for help, the children, they're asking where Daddy is and why he's not here to save them.
The glass people transform into ceramic things, like angels; they laugh at me despite not moving at all, they cheer me on, call me a Prince, more fitting to be a Jester; they jitter and crack as they jitter but laugh at me all the while, and their laughs sound like car batteries exploding and fetuses strangling themselves by their umbilical cords in their mothers' wombs.
And I am back in the land of hellfire, back in the world where people are burning because a thousand-foot tall curse is writhing about like a monster, shooting nuclear tides of nightmare from its unsightly seven maws. She's in my arms again she's in my bed she's writhing she's screaming and she's gone again. Her daughter's in my arms she's reading a book she's crying and being dropped and she's dead again. Her mother's smiling at me and she's treating me with some modicum of respect and she's giving me a ticket and she's killing everything in a wash of red again.
The red burns through my eyes, burrowing into myself.
And as I leave Shujin, I stand outside the school gates, hollow and shivering.
I know you hate me. I now what you're making me do, goddammit, leave me the hell alone or I swear to God I'll pry open your grave and burn your corpse you lying bitch--
--but of course you'll never leave me, will you. I can never let you leave me. Not even for a single goddamned second of a single goddamned day.
So if you're gonna stand there and laugh at me the whole goddamn time, will you at least let me remember where I was twenty-four hours ago?
.
.
.
5 / 17 / 2016
After that whole kerfluffle with Niijima in the burger joint, I went back home and tracked the names of every single teacher from Shujin into the Nav. None of them had a Palace nor a Kingdom, save Snorlax.
Principal Sohei Kobayakawa's deliberate negligence over Kamoshida's actions is so utterly obvious it's embarrassing. When I introduced myself to him way back when, he made it perfectly clear he didn't want anything to do with a criminal, so any perceived infractions on my part he'll instantly use against me. Whatever my father's paying him, it won't matter once the evidence crops up and I'll be forced right back into jail.
I've already set myself on a crash collision back to jail. Niijima's definitely gonna present all her evidence to Kobayakawa and I can expect to be outta here sooner rather than later. Kobayakawa will expel me and throw me back into a cell for the shit I obviously did to Kamoshida. Sakamoto and Yoshizawa and Niijima and all the rest o' them will laugh their asses off as I'm carried away in cuffs.
And you know what, maybe I do deserve to go back to prison. If anything I deserve worse than prison. But he doesn't deserve to walk freely among the students he should've protected. He shoved his goddamned head in the sand and let Kamoshida use the whole student body as his cum rag. All I need to do is figure out what the hell his distortion is. Come what may, if I'm going down, I'm taking him down with me.
Or maybe I could just forget he has anything at all.
Get expelled and live out the rest of my life as a hikikomori and die alone in Maruki's basement. Never change another man's heart as long as I live and actually keep my goddamn promises for once.
I see her more now, than ever before. Whenever I run dry of things keeping me busy, whenever I think back to Kamoshida's Palace and the shit that went on there I remember. These days every time I do my left hand trembles again and I start drifting, seeing myself from the skies. Takes me all my concentration to come back to myself. Without fail, whenever I regain myself I find I'm on the verge of punching my arms through every window in sight. She doesn't ever speak to me. Not these days, anyway. Just glaring upon me, demanding that I keep floundering in my meager existence.
Is this how I'm gonna solve all my disagreements? Every single time a wild asshole appears, do I just make them kill themselves? Or do I let myself get cast aside into obscurity again, allow Takamaki and Yoshizawa and Sakamoto's standing in the school to worsen by their mere association with me, let Kobayakawa continue on unpunished?
Or, I could just turn myself in and make a deal with Niijima and Kobayakawa, ensure that the other three remain safe.
Joking, of course. Like I'd give them the satisfaction-
"You alright?" Takamaki asks me, suddenly, arms folded over the back of her chair again.
I only realize now that it's lunchtime. Most of the room has left for either the cafeteria or the courtyard, and those who remain are too far a distance to be able to hear me. "I'm alright."
She smirks, "No, you're not. What's up? Is it Niijima again?"
I could tell her about Kobayakawa, and how utterly fucked I am. I could tell her that I'm busy deliberating on whether or not I should invade another man's Palace and risk his suicide. I could tell her that I've prolly screwed myself with Niijima and how I'm freaking out, how I don't goddamn know what the hell to do next because I still see Kana and she isn't leaving me and I have a feeling if I do this then she and Masako'll never leave me again and I'll never ever be free of seeing them in my dreams in my memories in the walls of the goddamn living room-
But that would mean dragging her and them into the exact same shit I brought them in ages ago.
And it might mean actually talking about Kana.
"It's nothing," I yawn. "Just a little...tired."
She immediately smells bullshit, "What, from work at the flower shop?"
"Been looking for other jobs recently. Found one in Yongen-Jaya. A coffee shop. Guy has me doing custodial work all night."
She doesn't fully buy it, but decides to let it be for now. "Alright, then. Just tell me if there's anything I can do."
Too many people who are too nice for their own good have a habit of getting involved in the shit I pull. "Sure."
No more.
.
.
.
Kana and I are outside, talking at the front gates of the school. I am shrugging her off and getting in the car. Then we're on the rooftop, where I deduce she has a child keeping her from doing well from her studies. Then I'm with Masako, playing with her, reading The Little Prince as Kana sleeps on the kotatsu.
Then she and I are playing Gun About. She and I are on the train. I'm telling her I like her and she's inviting me to Destiny Land. I'm happy. Singing in the rain. A red eye is in my phone now. Then the red happens. Red. All of it red. His skull burst open on the concrete. My first victim.
Trial. Her until the end, terrified of me. She is lying on the ground and her baby is on the ground and her mother and it's a massacre it's a massacre of unimaginable horror. She's dying and her baby's in pain but we have to get out.
I'm watching over Masako's little body being torn to shreds. I remember after Kana had been cremated, I had her and her daughter's ashes mixed and spread out over Tokyo Bay. Kana had expressed a desire to go to the beach once, while we studied and while I entertained thoughts of her being my girlfriend, thoughts that at the time I believed had no chance of coming true.
I never wanted to be a good person, I never cared. Not before her. She'd just rouse that in you. And I was so desperate, so desperate to keep that and so desperate to save her that in the end, I ended up destroying everything.
I said I'd never enter another Palace again, and the second I ran into an irredeemable asshole I decided, to hell with it. At the end of the day, people like Kamoshida and Kobayakawa are as far removed from somebody like Kana as anything could ever be. And the assholes in that school aren't much better. The liars, the pretenders all putting on their faces and acting as if nothing was wrong. Then the controversy struck and the news hit and the tabloids stormed the premises, and all the students all said shit about how they didn't even know, how nobody knew, and how those who knew were all so scared—but all all they did was cower and cover their faces until the King got guillotined.
None of this is about being a good person. None of this is about being a good anything. This is because nothing's changed at all. There's still monsters abusing their power and ignorant masses just letting it all happen. Kana would want me to throw my phone down and run away from all of this and never look back.
But Kana's dead. Even though her corpse is looking at me right now. She's not in Heaven, watching over me in horror, because there is no Heaven and there is no Hell—there's just this shit and goddammit if you're not dealing with this shit you don't have the right to tell me anything about right or wrong.
When you said you were a curse, I brushed it off as quickly as it came. But when I saw it in all its gargantuan blasphemy, I was brought to my knees. Did I try saving you because I loved you? Or did I try saving you, because I couldn't bear to see you sad? Did I try saving you because I cared about you? Was it because I couldn't stand the pain I felt, upon seeing you so destroyed?
Or was it because I resented you for seeing me for what I truly was?
I'm in a different alleyway, back end of the school.
It's good for me that Niijima decided not to follow me around today. She's probably discussing everything with Kobayakawa, as I stand here. Meaning that whatever happens, happens now.
Whatever happens, happens now.
Who am I kidding, I've gotta get home, gotta get outta here, gotta stop thinking about Palaces all the goddamn time and live my life, you stupid piece of shit stop don't you dare--
"Castle."
No Candidates Found
Okay. That's your try for the day. "Home."
No Candidates Found
Kazuya you dense motherfucker I said "Church."
No Candidates Found
Goddammit fine, for now, "Shelter."
No Candidates Found
Guy didn't want me to disrupt anything when I first arrived here. Gotta think outside the box. "City?"
No Candidates Found
"Paradise?"
No Candidates Found
Come on. "Office?"
No Candidates Found
Tell me already so I can go home. "Playground? Dungeon? Hell?"
No Candidates Found, No Candidates Found, No Candidates Found
Think, goddammit, think. Guy's chosen not to out Kamoshida to keep up the school's reputation, so the school must be important to him in some way. But he doesn't give a damn about the welfare of the students in the slightest. Palaces are a manifestation of their Rulers' suppressed feelings and emotions and desires. If someone like Kamoshida could repress so much of his guilt that he formed a Palace out of it, Kobayakawa's definitely got some negative feelings of his own.
Maybe I'm going about it all wrong. Maybe the school's important to him, but for all the wrong reasons.
"...prison."
Palace Confirmed
Okay, you've had yours for the day. Now stuff your goddamn phone in your pocket or throw it away and never go back into Palaces again.
Would You Like to Enter?
Y/N
I swear to God that if you hit Y right now I will--
Beginning Navigation.
I careen my skull into the brick wall to my left and the pain is such that I let out a scream that ought to be heard even throughout all the inner halls of the school.
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.
.
There is a dream I have, from time to time. And in the dream, I don't stop.
I see them all. Each and every one of them, poisoning the world, killing it faster each day.
Dancing around each other, drowning in blood. They're against each other, against the walls, screaming out blasphemies and lies. There are people screaming in this gathering. People, innocent people. Men, women, children. They're all being dragged by the hairs and they're crying, they're crying as the monsters have their way with them as they see fit. I hear sounds I never thought could emerge out of any human being.
And when I realize I have a knife in my hand, I decide I won't stop.
The school is painted a dark dull grey color, stained with dried blood and wastrel all over the walls. The windows are barred with rusted steel, the doors to the classrooms made of lead. Within each room, teachers and students alike bear faces without eyes, mouths, noses, hair or ears. When they speak they do so in a language I can't even fathom. Each of them have their left leg shackled to a black ball, all of them wearing black-and-white striped uniforms.
Shadows wearing cop outfits stand at attention outside the doors and when they see me they transform into their beastly selves but Satanael makes quick work of them. Even as their guts paint the windows and the halls, none of the people inside the classrooms even react to the massacres happening outside their doorstep.
By the end of it all the halls are filled with guts and gore. So much so that the only reason it takes me thirty minutes to make it to the principal's office is because it's surprisingly time-consuming to wade your way through a hallway coated body parts, especially while wearing a longcoat that goes all the way down to your shins.
Of course the principal's office is another cell. When I blast the door down I see my overweight principal rearing back in horror at the sight of me. He isn't a warden, he doesn't have a fancy suit like the villain from Shawshank, he's got on him a striped uniform of his own as well as another ball-and-chain clamped around his left leg. Of all the people in his little mental world, he's the one with a face.
"Wh-what...!? What're you—!? Who are you!?"
I don't answer him as I look at everything in his cell. Despite him being a prisoner in his own school, his hole still looks like an office. Bookshelves on the left and right. Fancy curtains at his back. Books and folders, numerous and stacked right on top of each other, piled up into paper towers surrounding his desk.
Maybe he isn't a criminal. Maybe he's just a horribly negligent piece of shit who likes good publicity, so much so he was willing to cover up Kamoshida's abuses. But is that the case? Is that really all there is to it? Why would he go so far to cover it up? Hell, if anything the reputation of Shujin might go up in some circles if it came out the principal outed Kamoshida himself. Shows integrity on part of the staff.
Maybe he's just fat and stupid and lazy. But I've to see if there's anything more.
I have to know.
I start pulling down all the books from his shelves, "Stop it, you can't just barge in here! H-how did you get past my guards!?"
I don't answer him as I start kicking down the paper towers and start plying my way through the books and folders, looking for evidence of some sort. Kamoshida had a Bible made about him, Kobayakawa's bound to have something.
The first book I pull up has the name Takao written in gold-plate on the front, a picture of a young girl with long brown hair on the cover.
I expect to find within another tale of horrible sexual abuse written within, and the thought of this fat piece of shit getting it on with one of his own students is enough to make me sick. But what I do end up finding is something else entirely.
"Wait, wait! Stop, please...!"
It takes a considerable amount of effort to pry it open, but I do.
Inside lies a little white bag, kept in a rectangle hollow that had been carved into the book's own pages.
I rip open the bag. White powder pours down.
"You can't do this, you can't just--!"
All it takes is a glare and he shuts the hell up.
I pry open every single goddamn book I can find in this place and all of them have white bag upon white bag of drugs. All the while Kobayakawa sits there like a bitch, watching as I completely unravel everything. By the end of it the floor's scattered in dozens of white bags and hollowed out books of various sizes. Each goddamn book I pull out has a name and a face attached. All of them are children my own age. But eight of them are from Shujin, judging from the uniforms the students within the photos on the front wear.
Three of them are empty. The ones with the names Sakamoto, Takamaki, and Yoshizawa.
I glare at Kobayakawa's Shadow. The terror in his golden eyes fades but never disappears, as he gets up out his seat and tries to act intimidating. "You don't understand. Whatever you think it is I'm responsible for, I've done only what I've had to to keep this school afloat. I won't allow you to undo my efforts, the sacrifices I've made to keep this prison intact. Don't you see? Everything I've done here is in the name of--"
I summon Satanael and have him point the gun to his face. "Who told you were in a position to allow anything?"
.
.
.
Kobayakawa's Shadow tells me everything.
By the time I realize what the hell I'm doing, I'm already stomping my way through the halls of the school in the real world.
But when I get to where I need to go I hear more than one voice inside.
"How are things going in regard to that matter we spoke of earlier?"
"I...have nothing to report yet."
"Nothing? Absolutely nothing at all? How many students are there who could provoke a teacher?"
"I've already narrowed it down. I just can't seem to find any solid evidence."
Wait. Wait a fucking minute. Do not barge in just yet. See what he says to that.
I hear Kobayakawa groan and Niijima says, "You knew, didn't you? About Mr. Kamoshida sexually harassing students?"
Kobayakawa says nothing.
"Sir!"
"What will come of you asking that?"
"This investigation is for a just cause, correct!?"
"I believe I understand how flustered this must be making you. I'm sure it was truly shocking for you as student council president to see a peer attempt suicide, as well as Mr. Kamoshida himself, all so suddenly..."
"Yes..."
"We must provide a school environment where all students can feel at ease. That is the most pressing issue we have at the moment. That is where I stand. I suggest you devote your energy to the task at hand, not unnecessary questions."
"A school environment where the students can feel at ease. Is that really your only reason for investigating Mr. Kamoshida's suicide attempt?"
I kick open the door to Kobayakawa's office and he's of course surprised by my sudden intrusion, but not enough to conceal his contempt. Niijima's stunned, but like always she's fucking oblivious.
"Hikawa-san," Kobayakawa growls, "I'd like to advise you not to barge into this office without--"
I shut the door behind me and immediately make my way to the shelf on my left. Unlike the one in his Palace, the shelf has its books locked away by glass panes, requiring a key to open them.
KKRACK
Niijima immediately gets out of her seat, "H-Hikawa-san!?"
"Wait, what are you doing--!?" Kobayakawa realizes too late that he's screwed.
It's hard to punch through glass panes, especially when you're skinny as all hell. But either the glass or the bones will give way.
Niijima grabs me by the shoulders, desperately calling out to me as my knuckles pour red "Stop! Wait, please! Don't--!"
SMASH SMASH SMASH
"Stop it!" Kobayakawa shouts, getting up out his seat.
He pushes me against the wall, gripping me by collar and hoisting me up, eyes furious and bulging right out his head.
Couldn't even break through the glass in time. Hand's a little mangled, knuckles broken open and bleeding - agony blasts out across the carpal muscles. I see Niijima over Kobayakawa's shoulder and she's staring at me as she would a rabid tiger.
"Took you long enough to get off your ass."
"Shut your mouth. You haven't any right to—to come here and destroy my property, acting like you own this school when—"
"You don't even own this school, you think it's your prison."
He bristles in horror and anger and absolute anguish, "None of you could possibly understand what it means to be a man in my position. I do what I must in order to keep the future of this school as well as its students safe and secure."
"Right, because having your own students commit crimes for you was super necessary to keep Shujin alive, wasn't it?"
He drops me harshly to the ground, "You will refer to me as Principal Kobayakawa, young man—"
"I will refer to you as shut the fuck up, you little pissant," I cough and hack and laugh and laugh and laugh.
"I hold your future in my hands, boy. If you think...if you think you can intimidate me, then you've—"
"What, did you get your rocks off by havin' the kids who called you Dumpling get carted off into drug dens? What the hell were you thinking, throwing your lot in with yakuza?"
His hands are trembling and he's sweating profusely now, his face stretching into a malicious scowl that doesn't conceal his terror in the slightest. "Shut your mouth, you little shit, or I swear to God I'll inform your father about—"
"I don't care about what the hell my dad has to say," I rise up and glare at him, "but I bet you care about what Makoto Niijima and her sister'll have to say about you using your students to—"
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!!"
Niijima stammers out, "P-Principal Kobayakawa...?"
"That's why you let Kamoshida go as long as you did. Reason you wanted Niijima to investigate me is because you needed somebody to drive media attention away from your own failures."
Unhinged and unmoored, Kobayakawa whirls back around to face me and grips my collar, "Now you listen to me. You haven't a single clue how much I've sacrificed to get this far! How much I've had to bend my back over to keep this school safe!"
"Stop pretending like you give a shit about the school," I snarl back. "It's over, you fat fuck. Password to your laptop back home is 12345. You'd think you'd make more of an effort to encrypt your shit. Cops are gonna procure all your shit and there'll be nowhere you can hide."
"I will destroy you. I have friends, friends in high places, high enough such that your father won't ever be able to touch them OR me! You think you can barge in here and judge me after everything you've done!? I'll ruin your life, I'll ruin your friends' lives, not a single one of them will be spared—!"
"Do you think you're in the position to be making threats?" I glare at him.
His hands tremble again and the rage is swallowed by everything he tried to keep down. "Wh-what...? Do you even know what I've done to come this far!?"
"I know you're a coward whose bark exceeds his bite. This isn't a prison. Isn't even a damn school. It's Hiroshima, 1945. And I'm Little Boy."
It's at this point he realizes exactly what I'm about to do to him. "No, NO WAIT PLEASE, THEY'LL KILL ME— !"
I knee him in his balls and rush the hell out of the room, before Niijima can even get her hands on me. Once I make my way to the end of the hall and pull up round the corner, I open my phone.
Beginning Navigation.
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5 / 27 / 2016
Word broke out on the news on the night of the 19th.
"Sohei Kobayakawa, principal of the Tokyo-based private school Shujin Academy, was the victim of a hit-and-run. Witnesses claim that he was approaching a police station that day, only for a truck to fatally swerve into him. There are conflicting eyewitness reports on whether or not he stood still in the middle of the road and allowed the truck to hit him, or if the vehicle had moved too quickly for him to register. The prevailing view is that Kobayakawa stopped himself in the middle of the road, facing the truck as it closed in..."
This time police officers are brought in to Shujin itself. Guy approaching a police station, only to suddenly get hit by a car on the road is enough to cause even more suspicion, especially coming hot off the heels of Kamoshida's abuse case. The cops are called in to investigate the shit that'd been going on from behind closed doors. And they find it.
Vice-principal Kinsuke Sawamura, now taking over where Kobayakawa had left off, decides to let the cops investigate, and cancels classes for the week. It takes about that much time for them to procure all the drugs Kobayakawa had kept in stock, under lock-and-key, on school grounds. School's faced even more media and cops up its ass than ever before.
Apparently Kobayakawa had books kept in stock, not just in the shelf I'd broken, but also in the library. He was able to keep them secret because each shelf held enough space for three rows of books.
He kept the books with drugs packed in them smack-dab in the middle, having removed the spine on each of them. Thus when someone would remove a book from one side or another, all they'd see on the other end were another row of books. No one was the wiser.
Today was the day we students return to school. Amidst all the controversy and the shock and the gossip goin' round about how our principal was a drug trafficker before his untimely death.
I'm in the courtyard, on a bench, once classes end.
Kana has been watching me over the past ten days. Without fail. She watches me when I try to sleep. She watches me when I try to study. She watches me and Maruki as we cook. She watches me when I try to watch TV, or go on my laptop, or read, or do anything.
She watches me from all sides, her green eyes piercing through me like a thousand spears, her eyes are now voided of anything and everything, I see Masako on the walls in the ceiling in the floorboards and the carpet, her head caved open and her body scattered and left to the ants and I see her looking at me while missing the lower half of her jaw-I'm taken all the way back to that goddamn night where I bashed Shido's head in and her face then, her face now, the face she has on right now as she glares at me-
"What the fuck are you trying to do to me, huh?"
Trynna make me feel guilty over this shit. He and Kamoshida were sick assholes, if anything I oughta have done worse to them than I did. Should I have just let 'em saunter the fuck on, without doing a single goddamn thing? Like everyone who knew and didn't do shit? This isn't like what happened with you, not even a little. You deserved to live, both of you did. Neither of them deserved to even be goddamn born.
I got all this blood on your hands.
No, I did. I did, why can't you accept that? Even after all this time, you still keep blaming yourself?
The whole time...as you beat him down, into the pavement. You were smiling.
How the hell else should I have felt? What, you think I'd be sad to drive these pieces of shit to suicide? Do you think I'd be so stupid?
I saw what you were doing, what you looked like. I thought that you'd...changed.
I did change. Of course I changed, you changed too. Or perhaps you never changed at all. Perhaps that's what you always were, deep down, and I was so goddamn blind and stupid I either couldn't or didn't wanna see any of it.
Then again, maybe I never changed, either. Maybe this is who I've always been, since the day I was born.
I'm so sorry for what I've done.
Stop it, stop talking. You should never have even met me. The day you approached me in that hallway I should've said something horrible to you and driven you away. I'm a monster.
I'd hate for you to think that what happened to me is somehow your fault.
I wanted you to be free. I wanted us to be free. But I think more than anything else, I wanted to be free of the pain I had felt, seeing you tearing yourself apart and not able to do anything to stop it. The reason you died wasn't just because you were depressed, or traumatized, or a victim of horrible violence.
It was because I was willing to take away your freedom for my own.
I didn't care about any of Kamoshida or Kobayakawa's victims. I never did. More than anything else they were fuel for my own selfish goddamn desire. Even when I held Shiho Suzui's arms in my own, all I could think of was Kana. Even when I knew Kobayakawa planned to have Sakamoto, Takamaki, and Yoshizawa become fodder for drug lords, all I could think of was how I failed someone else once before, and how I couldn't afford to do it again.
Brutalizing Shido. Torturing Kamoshida. Attacking Kobayakawa. I didn't do all that because I cared about their victims. I did all that because I hated them and what they were doing, what they planned to do, what they had done and were going to do to people that I knew.
Excuses and hate, those are all I'm good for.
I haven't changed at all.
All this time I've been ending up in the same place over and over again.
Everything I done, I've done for myself.
"Ryuji, wait—!"
"What the hell did you do."
I lift my head to see Sakamoto standing over me, Takamaki behind him with a worried expression. Yoshizawa stands by his other side, face utterly neutral.
"Nothing."
"Bullshit!" he grabs me by the collar of my shirt. "Don't you condescend to me now, you egotistical selfish sick piece of shit, I oughta beat your head in 'til you eat out of a goddamn straw for the rest of your life!"
"Ryuji, stop, just stop—"
"What the hell's the matter with you!? Once ya got a taste of Kamoshida, you just couldn't help but throw yourself to another one, huh? You expect me to believe you had nothing to do with Kobayakawa!?"
Takamaki stops trying to pull him away, and turns to me looking all concerned. Yoshizawa's eyes have grown firmer, stronger, harsher than I'd ever seen them before. And for all his anger, all his fury, Sakamoto's hands tremble even as he tries keeping them tight around my collar.
I say to them, "He used to be yakuza."
"What...?" mutters Sakamoto.
"In his younger years he would pick and choose students to target. Every time, he'd pick a student who was doing poorly, either financially or grades-wise. He and his dealer buddies would offer them a job and out of desperation they'd accept."
"Oh my God...," Takamaki clasps a hand around her mouth.
"He made connections with some high ranking assholes in the government, and once he did he had his past erased and started up a whole goddamn school. Decided to live an honest life beginning in the nineties, started up Shujin to help with that, but there's no retirement in the yakuza. You're in it for life. So over the decade he's worked as a principal he's had various students of his own school pass drugs around for him. He'd stuff crack, crystal meth, and marijuana into hollowed out books. Have them running around Shibuya trading them to his people. He only picked out a few at a time, and nobody would give a shit because they were bottom-rung delinquent kids who weren't showing up to school anyway, so no one would notice if they one day just up and vanished entirely. Which they all ended up doing. Some, sooner than others."
"Is this for real...?" asks Sakamoto. "You can't be..."
"He's curbed it better these days because Makoto Niijima's sister is a prosecutor. So if Niijima smelt too much bullshit in the air he couldn't just get away with it. After we made Kamoshida confess, that garnered more attention from the press and the cops than ever before. H tried to have Niijima investigate me, so that when the time came he'd pin everything on the man on me. Bring up my criminal record. Since my dad's the head of a massive corporation it would cause an even bigger shitstorm, but he knew the media would care more about big business scandals than some school in the middle of Tokyo. Create a sob story that'd take all the heat offa Shujin, about the delinquent who drove a teacher to attempt suicide."
"W-wait, wait, but what if Niijima ended up catching wind of the operation while he had her investigating you?"
"He knew she would be a skeptic but only up to a point. She's a kiss-ass, so as long as he doesn't let on anything particularly big, she's no danger to him. Bosses have been reaming him in calls, telling him if he doesn't get the media offa Shujin's back they'll kill his children and stuff their bodies in oil drums full of acid. He's in a shitty situation, he's bound to take stupid risks and leaps in logic. And to be fair to him it almost worked."
"Why didn't you tell us anything...?" Takamaki asks. "We could've helped you."
"I didn't want you to," I chuckle. "I dragged you into so much shit already. But hell. I guess it's also because I didn't want any of you to stop me."
"You asshole," Sakamoto unhands me. "You couldn't try to leave him alive!? You just—you just had to make him—"
"I didn't have to do anything at all. I just did it. I wanted to do it."
"Why!? Goddammit, why!?"
"Why not?" I glare at him. "Honestly. Why not? Because it's wrong?"
"YES, YOU DENSE—"
"And who decides that, huh? The gym teacher who used his reputation and clout to cover up his abuses of the people under his watch. The principal who made kids drug-runners and crushed their futures, protecting a rapist to save his fat ass. The courts who threw me into jail for bashing open the skull of some bald fuck who deserved it. And you have the audacity to tell me what's right from wrong."
Sakamoto rears back as I march forward and Takamaki and Yoshizawa look horrified at what they see—
"You, the guy who said he didn't care about what happened to Kamoshida and then pissed himself when he jumped off the top o' that roof? All your crying and bitching about how I threw him off— when all you did was ride off my coattails and whine about how much of an asshole I was the whole way through. Forget right and wrong. The whole reason you even wanted to get rid o' Kamoshida was because he ruined your life, and a sick asshole like him couldn't get away with it. So fuck off."
"So it's okay if you do worse to them than they ever did to anyone else, is that your logic?" asks Yoshizawa, pushing herself between us both. "You think you can just do whatever you want, so long as you drag people like them down along with you?"
"They had it coming for all their lives."
"What happens when someone decides you have it coming, too?"
"Then they'd better not pussy out halfway through."
"Do you want that...?" she growls, the horror in her eyes giving way to sadness.
I give a small, nigh imperceptible smile, even though all I really want is to break down and scream. "Yoshizawa. All I want...is for the whole world to forget that I ever existed."
The red burns through my eyes, into my lungs, burrowing into myself. She ought to dance on my grave, and if I have to burn in fire if that means she'll reach Heaven then fine. Fine. Fine. Let it happen, let me burn forever and ever.
Just give them back.
I brush past them, once I've said my piece, the seams keeping my brain intact becoming more and more undone. The droning noise that's popped in my head periodically these past few weeks is back with a vengeance, keeping me locked up inside my own head.
Meaning I'm unable to notice Makoto Niijima leaning against a nearby wall, her phone having recorded the whole conversation.
.
.
.
5 / 17 / 2016
There is a dream I have, from time to time. And in the dream, I don't stop.
In the dream, I see them all. The murderers. The rapists. The psychos. The thieves.
Each and every one of them, poisoning the world, killing it faster each day. I see them all laughing, drowning in their hedonism and malaria. Everyone's laughing, everyone's crying. They're all in this orgiastic mass, naked. Dancing around each other, drowning in blood. They're against each other, against the walls, screaming out blasphemies and lies. There are people screaming in this gathering. People, innocent people. Men, women, children. None of them take up arms. None of them raise blades or guns or knives; they cower and cringe and weep as they're taken, them and their families.
They're all being dragged by the hairs and they're crying, they're crying as the monsters have their way with them as they see fit. I hear sounds I never thought could emerge out of any human being.
And when I realize I have a knife in my hand, I decide I won't stop.
Fountains spill from their bodies. Red, spraying out like a pipe had burst open. The revelry stops. And they see. And they run. But I catch them. I catch them all. I grind their bones into the palms of my hands. Blood everywhere, organs flying out their stomachs like birds fleeing their cages. The knife reaches everyone. Nothing matters. Nothing matters at all. My hand never stops holding the knife, and the knife just keeps getting redder and redder.
All over the walls, all over the world. The monsters, once enjoying themselves in their depravity, now screaming and running and pleading for the God they had once blasphemed against to save them. And when it's all over, I see the victims glowering at me, enraged and horrified all at once. They see me, and they are abhorred at the horns that've grown on my head, at the claws that've sprouted from my nails, at the meat dripping down my teeth and the dark coat of fur spread over my whole body. When I see them, I speak.
I tell them that I am the monster they birthed when they kept their mouths shut, eyes closed, ears covered. I am the beast born of their cowardice, their terror, their refusal to take up arms and fight for their own freedom. I tell them that because of their fear, they allowed their fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters, sons and daughters, to be butchered alongside them. I tell them that they too are monsters, and as I march over the corpses of their families, as they rear back and weep and mourn and plead for forgiveness, as I laugh and laugh and laugh until tears of blood start pooling out my eyes--
--I do unto them what they had always deserved.
So I blow open the heads off the Shadows inside Kobayakawa's Palace. I fill the hallways with the blood from the monsters inside his own mind.
I make a charge directly for him and by the time I've gotten back to his office I've killed every single monster inside his head.
It's finally here and now where the Shadow transforms into its truest and most terrible form, an obese purple horned demon with massive eyes and sharp teeth, disease ravaging his arms and legs. In his fury he tries for one final stand. He smacks me hard in the face, tears out a good portion of my side. But it's all utterly fruitless.
"I-I'm afraid...!" he cries, missing more than half his face while trying to raise up his only remaining arm. "I've always just been afraid! Please don't kill me!!!"
I stretch my hand out towards the Treasure, a trophy from 2007.
Reverting back to his pale sweaty original self he begs and he pleads, clutching my leg, "PLEASE DON'T TAKE MY TREASURE AWAY!!! I'M BEGGING YOU!!!"
But what Kobayakawa's Shadow doesn't know is that he isn't talking to me. I'm not even listening to him.
I'm looking down at the both of us. Watching all of this happen.