Gluttony / Gula
Extreme, voracious consumption, to the point of overindulgence; whether for wealth or food. Thoughtless wastefulness, misplaced sensuality, uncleanliness, marked by refusal to share. Destruction, especially for sport. Substance abuse or binge drinking. Can be conflated with Greed / Avarizia.
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6 / 13 / 2016
I feel my brain dripping and I hear a baby crying.
Sweltering heat, enough to scorch a man's bones. Difficult to breathe, even more so to see. Body's heavy. Arms won't move, for as much as I tell them to. Pinky fingers won't even twitch. Even if I could push myself up there's something pressing upon me from behind - something large, and steel, and flat like a panel. Can't feel anything below my waist.
A groaning noise cuts through and I see a small, dark shape with a large black head and bright golden eyes. With its tiny arms that shouldn't have as much strength as they do, the cat wrenches me away from wherever I'd been trapped under and I'm lucky that none of my limbs have been pinned down.
What happens next comes in flashes. The cat prying a steel pipe from out of my stomach. The cat pawing at the gushing wound. The cat carrying me away from the debris, as flames and falling steel surround us both. Of all the times to dream, it's now.
A shape, feminine and with brown hair, phasing in and out of existence. She sees things upon a wall, paper things with red text and the picture of a beautiful girl and she's horrified. Though I cannot see her face clearly I can feel the horror plain as day.
I'm in a small room, a tiny little girl in my lap, reading The Little Prince with me. Beaming at the words and the funny little drawings, as her mother sleeps upon a kotatsu with her hair spread about everywhere.
Whatever strength I'd had at the beginning of all this is gone now. Whatever anger I thought would feed me to the end has diminished entirely. Cat drags me through halls filled with the dead and burnt bodies of fly-men and pig-men. Some of them yet live, if only barely so. Some of them flee aimlessly, while on fire or with steel through their bodies. None of them even register us as they scramble to wherever they think they must go to end the pain.
In-and-out I see the girl again, her features faded and utterly unclear; she's on her phone and saying things I don't understand, her voice distorted and frantic but stern and strong all the same. A baby laughing at me, hiding somewhere; I bring her out by leaving her by her lonesome and taking her right up the stairs, her small hand in mine. For a minute the faded girl paces around, wrestling with herself on something she must do before stopping in her tracks and knowing what must be done.
It feels like hours later when the cat is able to drag me out of the building proper and I see that the flying Roomba bank has crashlanded. Smack-dab in the middle of an entirely empty Shibuya, right where the Crossing is in the real world. The cat plops me down on my back and scours my pockets, eventually meeting my eyes. Though it looks upset I can't fathom why, until it shows me my phone.
Broken completely. Its internals melted and fried. Screen cracked open and apart. No way out, unless the cat were to transport me out of here through that bizarro portal technique it uses.
The contradictory thoughts come to an end, when I remember that I haven't killed the one person I need to for all this shit to have actually mattered. So against all odds I try to push myself up off the ground, even as the cat begs me to rest. But I can't stand, my legs might as well not even exist, so the most I can do is pull myself over to a metal panel that's stuck itself on a pile of pig corpses, and sit myself up against it.
"Kazuya...," the cat mutters. "You're drained..."
Sickness has reared its head back up and it's uglier and crueller and more debilitating than ever before. Soon enough a ringing noise pierces through my head, blood dribbling out my eyes and ears and mouth, and my heart slows to unconscionable levels, before all at once I see myself, from up in the sky again -- I am staring down, at myself and the cat, as my body slumps into what might as well be a corpse. The cat cries out to me, its voice hazy, and its paws barely registering even as they claw at my face. My leather robes and garments dissipate in blue flame, and I am left in a pile of bodies wearing shitty black jeans and a creasy white shirt.
Through my eyes Niijima appears now, clearly and unblurred by the rest of the world, putting a hand to her mouth and seeming on the verge of tears, but soon the fear gives way to anger and the anger swallows everything else she could possibly feel, and were I there with her I honestly don't know what I could say
it's all gone.
everything
my bank
my patrons
my men
all
gone...
Through the fire and the flames and the raging scorching heat we see a large dark shape stand in the middle of the inferno. A hulking dark insectoid mass pushing through the opened vault doorway that I and the others had spent hours trying to get in through since the beginning of all this. The gigantic red thousand-eyes that are each as large as an yoga ball glare upon us as he stomps over pig carcasses. His translucent wings twitch harshly as his proboscis flares. Hanging from his neck is a thick purple segmented tube that looks like an intestine; from it his siblings hang by holes in their heads, their skins melting away and their bones below the base of their necks collapsing to the ground.
The sky has been swallowed by flies as numerous as the sand upon a seashore, ensuring that whatever fight shall take place next, it'll happen under a thick shade of undulating darkness.
but this is not the end.
my father and my mother are dead, their bones rotting in the ground.
within my heart alone my siblings live. and there they shall stay, untouched by the horrors of reality.
i have risen beyond everything i had been.
The cat steps in front of me, its hairs growing long and sharp like its claws. From out of nowhere it pulls out a sword that's twice as large as its own body. But nothing comes and I'm nothing short of ashamed of myself. I could have spent the rest of my life honoring their memory. Done something useful, productive to myself and society as a whole. I chose this instead. Dying in the filth of a vile man's fucked up heart, as my head sings his name.
Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies.
i shall forge a new bank. i shall gather new flies to my side,
and all the pigs shall flock to me from now unto eternity.
within me there is no weakness, no fear, no lingering hatred.
all there is, is a never-ending hunger.
all we are is flesh and bone and meat, that must devour or be devoured.
I want to tell the cat to get us out and back to the real world. I want it to leave me here to die. I see Masako and Kana smiling at me, then I see Kana covering her face with her hands, sobbing in guilt as Masako wails in her crib. I see Masako, laughing and giggling, I see everything she could be and I want nothing more than to protect her, I see a baby getting smashed against walls and made into pieces, I feel something cold in my hands.
I want to yell in Niijima's face for dragging me into this mess in the first place. I want to apologize to her for having ever even known me.
"Johanna!"
A bright blue light dashes right over my head and crashes into Beelzebub with enough force to send him backwards by like five fucking meters and before I know it the fires are swept away all around us and a bright white light gets between us and him-
Like embers her hair flows, gleaming orange in the light of the inferno all around us. Harsh lights from all around us cast shadows upon her that define her, that cause her silhouette to stand tall against the blaze that's swallowed the world. I see, of all fucking people there could have been to arrive right on time.
Makoto Niijima.
How am I seeing this?
Cat exclaims, "Queen! What are you doing here?"
"Saving you both before you get yourselves killed!" Niijima shouts, "Hikawa, get up!"
Get the fuck out of here. What are you even doing here? Leave me here. Leave me to die.
"Hikawa?" She gets down from her fucking bike, unable to hear me screaming at her to run the fuck away, as she caresses my blank, bleeding face, "Oh my God...Hikawa..."
"He's not dead. He just overextended himself. We end this now," the cat growls. "There won't be any second chances from here on out."
"We have to get him out of here!"
"No."
"What do you mean, no!?"
"In case he wakes up, we'll need him. He's still our heaviest hitter."
"Morgana!"
"The Treasure is right there, wrapped around his neck,"The cat smirks. "If we let this chance go he'll just return to his old fucked up self, or maybe even get worse. It ends here or not at all."
Niijima turns and bears witness to the giant fucking horrible fly monster, with strips of flesh hanging from its chitin, and children's skeletons strung along its neck. Its large red nested eyes glare at her and all she can say is, "What...have you done...?"
"He's weaker than he was just a few days ago," says the cat.
"What?"
"If we're careless he'll kill us. But we've undone his delusions of superiority. He's more vulnerable than ever before now, and he's still refusing to face himself, so he doesn't have the power boost a Kingdom would give him. The whole Palace's destabilized. His Treasure's right there, wrapped around his neck. Don't you see!? We have a chance!"
"I'm getting Hikawa out of here and you can't stop-!"
CRASH
He's there. This giant fly beast, standing above them both; so large he could swallow both of them at once and take perhaps a hundred more in the same sitting. Instead he opts to scream and brings down an insectoid claw upon them both, Niijima pulls me out of dodge while the cat leaps and bounds up into the air, just enough to be much higher than Beelzebub-
MRROOWWW
The bus lands upon Beelzebub, slamming him down into more burnt pig corpses and that's about all he can do. Meat and blood fly wildly in the air as Niijima holds me close and tight, patting at her side for a phone that's fallen out her fucking pocket and into a pile of pigs, trying to get the both of us as far fucking away from here as possible but she's not gonna make it. Beelzebub screams again, lifting the fucking catbus up into the air and throwing it down as it would a stone or a baby. The instant the cat reverts back to its bobbleheaded form Beelzebub crushes its skull under his heel, causing bizarre organs to spill all over the place and rendering Niijima helpless again for at least the next five minutes.
What the hell's happening to me?
Why am I staying here? Why can't I move?
Is my body so exhausted that all I can do is scream inside my own head?
It charges then, clawing its way forward and rushing, on all six of its goddamn limbs now, so unbelievably fast that the only way Niijima could possibly stop it from biting down upon her skull right then and there would be if she threw me to the ground and dodged. Instead she does the opposite.
"JOHANNA!"
She summons her fucking bike and does something she'd only seen out of goddamn Hell Biker, pulling Johanna upwards into a wheelie and charging forward with enough force as she possibly could muster, and with a WHAM both she and I and Beelzebub are sent flying away in opposite ends. She lands into piles upon piles of burnt and eviscerated pig corpses, as do I, but we've flown so far away from each other her best recourse would truly be to just open her phone and leave me to die, like she should.
Instead she gets up and starts turning every which way, calling out my name, "Hikawa!"
eyes on that which tries to kill you, girl.
Beelzebub faces her, one of his bulbous red eyes crushed to the point where its pieces have begun falling out its head, and with its massive insectoid arms it punches down below itself, into heaps and heaps of burnt and fried pigs, its arms carrying the strength of a hydraulic press with the speed of a cannon ball.
The mere act of raising both its arms from the piles showers the world in blood and black meat, raining upon Niijima and she closes her fucking eyes because of course you would but reopens them in a second and that is one second too goddamn many because it's already grabbed her, its massive fucking hand clutching itself right around her fucking waist, clasping her arms tight against her sides, and its proboscis snakes over her neck trying to stuff itself in her fucking mouth-
"GET OFF ME!"
She rips her right arm up and out of his grip and in her hand is the pistol she'd bought from Untouchable and she doesn't even need to aim because she's got a big target staring at her right in the face. BANG and suddenly Beelzebub lets her drop down into pig viscera because his other eye's been shot and he's so fucking sensitive now that something Baal Zebul took like a champ is enough to get him to scream and cry. A crater in his right eye and fucking mulch for his left, he thrashes around more pig corpses as Niijima crawls over to the cat's open head-
"Nice job," it says, a quarter of its face putting itself back together.
Niijima shoots a glare at the cat that's more hateful than anything she or I could have said to each other these past few weeks alone. "What're his weaknesses?"
"No weaknesses, but it's lost its resistance to nuclear spells! It's lost its resistances to everything! Whatever we do'll hit it ten times harder than it would normally! If we whittle it down we can subdue him! Maybe even kill him!"
"Or we can just grab his Treasure from his neck, and get out of here," she says, eyes fixed on the titanic bug.
"Oh yeah, that too! Let's just steal it!" Cat says, suddenly euphoric.
"Can you fight?"
"Got enough in me for just a little longer. Can we expect backup?"
"I called Takamaki and Maruki. Voicemail on both. Cover me!" she shouts, as she dashes forward on her bike, and the cat lets loose a murderous smile.
"HAHAHAHAHA Treasure's gon' be fuckin' MIIIINE ya fat bastard! MERCURIUS!"
Johanna rushes forward, essentially a large white light rushing through burnt corpses just trying to fucking get to this fly bastard and rip away the Treasure from his neck, and she gets close, so close I'm afraid Beelzebub will just smack her aside, as he had multiple times prior but even as he swoops a massive claw down upon her she's this time able to dodge, a ninety-degree turn so sudden and rough she might as well have broken several laws of physics right before my eyes.
She does three-fourths of a circle around his legs and suddenly pivots herself right at one of his ankles, and much like the horse-fly before him he crumples, collapsing facedown again-
bastards, bastards, rip out your fucking hearts
feast on your bones, eat your parents your friends your children
eating everything you've ever known-
Has an almost apologetic tone as she shouts, "Johanna!"
A nuclear blast rips open his abdomen and spills his innards out right on the spot. Intestines, stomachs, and livers that are each thrice as large as they should be, each having six of themselves and Niijima's horrified at what she's had to do to subdue this fucker but it worked-
And he vomits, clouds of mist and thick white liquid spilling down from his proboscis like a hose, spreading across the goddamn world and causing steel to corrode, flesh to melt and rot and decay, and it's only due to him being blind as all hell that the acid raining out his mouth hasn't hit Niijima the cat or myself. The pig corpses begin to smell as their flesh gets eaten away by acidic puke and Niijima cries, "MORGANA GET IT NOW!"
Mercurius dashes ahead, spouts of acid hitting him but never fatally so, and he reaches out to grab the fucking gut-necklace with bones on it but Beelzebub recovers just fast enough to whack the cat's Persona so hard it shatters into pieces and the cat's debilitated.
And he rises again, despite a broken ankle, and turns back to Niijima. Whipping his massive head around in a jolt, and you'd wonder just how quickly this creature can move despite being so huge, and then you remember he's a fly.
eating life--
shitting skulls.
It blasts vomit outward at her again and she's dashing under his fucking legs on her bike, shooting upwards at his body all the while and he's so fucking huge that she can pass through his legs and his literal spilled guts and make it out on the other side only covered in blood and muck and it revolts her more than anything but she keeps herself stable and she sees me-
She stops her bike in her tracks because if she goes any further she risks the fucker getting to me again and killing me before she can do anything about it, but the beast's head's turning around again, carrying its insides with it like a woman dragging a fetus around by its umbilical cord, vomiting miasma right in her general direction and she doesn't know what to do other than-
"Sukukaja."
Time has slowed to a trickle. He pours out his fucking rain of terror and acid, but none of it's fast enough to hit her, the spills have stopped mid-air and she has more than enough time to dodge past, which she does. But not before saying, "Johanna."
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM
Several bright blue nuclear blasts scramble forward and cause Beelzebub's massive body to be stripped of its chitin, leaving it a hunk of red smoking mass - a fly with the exposed inner musculature you'd see on a human anatomy, veins and muscle and all. At this point there is nothing left for it to do but collapse again, for a final time. His necklace blasts apart in all the chaos, and the skulls of his siblings clatter across the ground, sliding towards Niijima's feet.
And she turns to our savior. Maruki stumbles forward, clutching at his scepter as if it's the only thing keeping him standing upright, and he's groaning because he's got the biggest fucking hangover on the planet, and isn't entirely sober just yet. If he hadn't arrived right at this very moment and performed exactly that spell, Beelzebub would have dissolved Niijima down to the bone.
"You alright, Niijima!?" he cries out.
"Y-yes! Yes I am! G-get to Hikawa!"
The mention of my name makes Maruki dart his eyes everywhere but he sees me soon enough, and rushes towards my body, "K-Kazuya-!"
"Do you realize what it is you've done?" Kaneshiro lies upon the ground, whole and in his base form. Too weak to fight back. Too weak to even look up at Niijima or any of us. "What monsters you've allowed yourselves to become?"
Niijima just lets Johanna disperse, marches over to him, and shoves her heel into his face. Gun pointed towards him she just growls, "Morgana."
"Yup?"
"Is the change of heart permanent?"
"Yes. As long as the Treasure disappears, every shred of that desire, and all its bizarre fucked up permutations in his psyche, will disappear entirely. And speakin' of Treasure," it lifts up its two paws holding the skulls of two children. "Got 'em."
"Those are the Treasure...!?" cries Maruki.
"It's a long story-"
"You will go somewhere in the mountains. Alone," Niijima tells Kaneshiro. "Isolated from the rest of the world. You will never see civilization again. You'll never see people again. If you want to atone, seclude yourself and be forgotten."
"What...?"
"You're in league with the SIU. You can't confess your crimes or else someone will have you murdered, and your body dressed up into looking like a suicide. So you will take the barest minimum of your belongings with you to the middle of God knows where, and you will stay there until the day you die."
"You're not going to kill me...?"
"Not yet. But. If ever I catch wind of you, I will find you. And when I've found you, I will make you march yourself right into the SIU, loudly confessing to anyone who has ears what you've done. Then, you will lose everything. I am giving you your only possible chance of survival."
"You look at me like I'm scum, when the people who run this fucking country have more blood on their hands than I ever could-"
"Don't you worry." She sounds like someone who's smiling, yet maintains the face of a natural-born killer. "I'm going after those people, too. Starting with Hideyoshi Tsukioka, the current head of the SIU."
That's why that name sounded familiar.
"They have their own little band of killers, you know," he laughs warmly. "You ain't the only ones using the Vortex World as your little playground."
"What...?"
"They rummage around here every now and again. Three of 'em. All of 'em wearing black masks. Killing whoever they need to. Using the blood of bad men to fill their pockets. I don't know their names. Nobody does; we just call 'em Shijima. But even at my strongest they could have killed me. Be careful, little girl. They'll eat you alive."
She pulls her heel off his face, breathing heavily, fearfully.
"I've lived most of my life, with nothing," he says sadly. "I miss my sister. I miss my brother. My hunger is theirs. For them, I told myself, I must make the world my own."
"No. For yourself, you decided to rape the world and kill whoever stood in your way. It was for no one else but yourself."
"You're right. I'm a monster." Begins to glow blue like some fucking lantern and, like Kamoshida before him, he dissipates into light particles that fade into the air entirely.
And the world trembles. Maruki pulls open his phone as the cat and Niijima dash towards him, my practically lifeless body in Maruki's arms as all at once we're taken by a large blinding distorted portal.
I return to myself.
And again, I feel my brain dripping.
Sweltering heat, as though the whole room is on fire. Difficult to breathe, even more so to see.
Again the world goes in flashes, and everything on me hurts. Hours that feel like minutes and seconds that feel like days, vertigo and dizziness disrupt my sense of time and all I see are shades and shapes, dark shapes looming over me, someone crying out; I can vaguely make out a little of what they're saying. Help? I hear someone call out my name over the droning noise, it's a woman's voice. My vision begins to clear soon enough.
Her hair is brown, and her eyes look red in the light of the sunset. A platinum blonde young lady with blue eyes, and a tall man with glasses stand behind her, looking similarly distressed yet relieved. The room is white and sterile, a hospital? A sanitarium?
I feel like my whole body is being swallowed into a pit. My senses all but barrage me into staying in bed and I realize I'm in a bed. My neck is on fire, my chest hammers away, my lungs release sparks whenever I so much as take a quarter-breath.
I still can't hear her, I can't hear any of them whatsoever; I can't even talk. I try to say something, but no words come out. I try to make even the tiniest noise, but air just passes through my mouth.
I turn to look at the ceiling, and I try to remember what happened. I try to make myself recall what had put me here. And when the pieces come together, they come slowly. But they come, as they always do. The pain gets to the point where I feel like I have to close my eyes; just to have that little sensation that I'm holding at least some of it back.
How many crimes have I committed in the past few years alone?
.
.
.
"G'morning, sleepyhead."
When I open my eyes I find out I'm in a bed. My bed, the bed Kana broke down in. But the air smells of coffee, and the crows make their noises as they always do. I can hear wooden boards from all over the room creak into themselves and I hear the sheets shuffle. Though, I'm not the one moving around.
When another rustling noise hits me, I see her. And somehow, I don't know how, she's become even more beautiful since the last I saw her.
"Kana...?"
Her green eyes are wide and alive, and she's smiling at me, the edges of her mouth perking up over the red scarf she still has around her neck. She's wearing an overcoat and some dark blue jeans and she's over me, hovering; when she leans, her lips meet my forehead and they feel real. All of this feels obscenely real. My fingers over her cheek. The frays in her scarf brushing against the side of my hand. Her hand clasping mine, over her face. Her finger on my lower lip.
The curls of her long hair waft over my fingers and the green of her eyes is filled with life, such that I've not seen out of them in ages. And it hits me. In the months I've been without her, I've forgotten her voice. I've forgotten how she sounded. How beautiful she sounded, and that laugh of hers.
This isn't right. As much as I want it to be.
"You wanna rest a couple more hours? We have a busy night ahead of us."
"What's...going on here?" I ask her. I don't want to be brusque. But I should be, I should be wondering what any of this is.
I can't be foolish. I can't be stupid. But God help me, I think I want to be.
I pull her into my arms, and she exclaims, "Whoa...!" while chuckling in her amusement.
I'm embracing her as tightly as I can, and I'm afraid that the moment I let go she'll disappear for real. I can feel her heartbeat. I can feel her arms wrapping around mine. She's stroking my hair and I can feel the vibrations in her throat when she hums. Like she's either relaxing or singing me a lullaby.
"Isn't it a little too early in the morning for this kinda stuff?" she laughs. I don't reply after a long time, but I keep her close to me. She doesn't push me away; when she feels me shudder, she asks, "Kazuya...?"
"Are you really here?" No. Stupid question, no. It's obvious, she's not here. This is all a dream. The nightmare she and I were in all those months ago, it was real. It had to have been. I don't care that I can feel her, that I can hear her breathe and feel her weight in my arms. Even though all the tastes and sounds and smells all feel real, I can't be so naive as to just let myself fall for it.
The monster with her topaz eyes is bound to come at me, sooner or later. I can't let my guard down.
So why do I keep on asking stupid questions? "Please," I say then, "how long will it be before...?"
She pulls herself away from me then, looking concerned. She places a hand over my forehead, "Are you feeling okay...?"
I want to pull the hand off of me, but I see her face and I'm afraid that for a moment this might just be the real thing. I tell myself again that can't be, and so when I pull her fingers from my forehead I force myself to do so. But even then, I do so gently.
"Will you...," I whisper, and she somehow hears it.
"Will I what?"
I shake my head at her. I look around the room. I get myself off of bed and I stand up. I'm wearing pajamas and so when my bare feet touch the wooden floorboards I curl up my toes to make sure the crevices and the frays of the wood feel real.
It's when my eyes reach the door that I see someone else. She's standing there, she's small, and she's looking at me and looking at Kana. She has her big brown eyes with that same wise yet childlike gaze she always had before, and she's holding on to a little plushie that looks like a hat. She's not wearing a onesie, she's wearing a small frilly dress fit for children her age, polka dots and the like. When she sees me she runs to me, and tugs on my pant leg.
That almost breaks me, makes me crumble right then and there.
I kneel down, and smile at her, deciding to indulge in all this for just a little bit. "Okay...what's that you've got there?"
She lends me the plushie that looks like a hat and I find out that it's not a hat after all, judging from the little dot at the far end of one of the edges of the supposed hat. I see a zipper on the underside, and when I unzip it I find there's a smaller stuffed elephant inside. It's the most adorable thing in the world.
And when she pulls it back from me with that bashful expression of hers, I almost start to cry.
Kana puts a finger to the edge of my eye, and I pull myself back up to face her. I look at Masako, I look at Kana, and I just want this dream to end. It's too cruel. "When are you going to leave again?" I ask absentmindedly.
"I'm not gonna leave," she assures me with a smile. "What made you think that?"
"None of this is real," I say to her, whispering now. Deciding to just let it all out. "It can't be real."
"What about this isn't real?" she asks, laughing yet at the same time letting the worry out in her eyes.
"I saw Masako die," I say bluntly, demanding now for the dream to end without outright saying it. "I saw you die. I saw all of it."
The curse. The creature that shambled through a burning world, releasing nuclear wave after nuclear wave. A nightmare to end everything. Everyone around me, melting and suffering and burning and dying. Except me. Except the guy who destroyed everything.
I don't deserve to see her, even in a dream.
But she pulls me in and kisses me. Her hands are cupping my face, and it all feels too real to ignore. Everything is happening right here, and right now, in the real world. None of it is illusory or fake, it's all something I can feel and taste and embrace with everything I am and everything I have. When she pulls away I lean forward a little because I want it again, I want to do so much more. It's maddening, it's insane, it's horrifying but I know that even if this has to be a dream I don't want to let it end.
She gave everything to me. "All I did was..."
"Hey, it was just a bad dream, that's all. I'm right here, Masako's right here. You have nothing to be afraid of," she says. Then she sees the worry in my eyes, takes my hands and reassures me, "We're alive."
No. No you're not.
They surge out my eyes, bursting furiously down my face. For as much as I wipe my eyes I can't stop them, I hiss angrily as I just press my hands against my face in some vain stupid attempt to hide away. The more I try to keep my mouth shut the faster the tears rush through, and the more they pour downward the more I tell myself this cannot be real in any capacity.
She asks then, "Can you stay with me?" and then pleads, holding my hands, "Please don't leave me."
I almost say yes. I want to hold her then, until the end of everything. And I know exactly why I say, "I can't."
"Why not?"
"You gave everything to me, and all I did was destroy your life. I wish I could have killed all of them from the moment they were born."
"And now you want to destroy your own?"
"Kana. I have to find them. This is the only way we can be free."
"We?" She takes Masako into her arms, turning away from me. "Kazuya, you and I both know...that I have nothing to do with this."
.
.
.
6 / 19 / 2016
"Y-you're awake..."
I turn to my left.
Makoto Niijima. Wearing a blue overcoat.
Bed's cozy. Room's white.
Hospital.
"How long has it been since...?" My voice is husky and I have a splitting headache. "Did we win...?"
Niijima purses her lips, "A week. He's since disappeared off the map. He rescinded our dues and none of us have landed in trouble with the yakuza since. Not even a threatening letter. The students he's victimized have also been let go, as far as Shujin's student population is concerned. He had all their debts cancelled and no one's heard from him since."
Can't just tell her my dissociation went to a whole 'nother level back in the fight, "So he's in jail now...?"
"No," she sighs. "I compelled his Shadow to just...make himself disappear somewhere nobody could find him."
"...you'd rather that, than kill him," I chuckle a little. "I think you and I are destined to argue about morality forever."
"Are you upset that I didn't kill him?"
"I suppose not," I shrug, in bed. "Looking back...I actually might've been more upset if you had."
"What?"
"Is Maruki here...?"
"Y-yes, he's, he's out buying food-" she stops, interrupted by another light bit of laughter from me, "What's so funny?"
"I nearly killed you...and you've been watching over me for almost a whole week. It's ridiculous. Why didn't you just leave me to die?"
"Why would you push yourself to do something like that, in the first place?"
"Why do I do anything."
"What?"
I push myself up, leaning over the railing on the bed with one arm while holding my stomach with the other. "I'm a vindictive borderline-psychotic, remember?"
"Wait, what're you doing? Where are you going?"
"Away from here, I dunno."
I feel a hand grabbing my upper arm from behind, "No. Hikawa-"
"Get your hands off me-"
"No! You need to stay here, rest!"
I chuckle, "Why, so you can lull me with a false sense of security before sending out that recording to the cops?"
"Would you just stop it!?"
I can't even turn back to face her. "You should have left me there."
"Hikawa."
Get away from me, Niijima. "I made a monster right before your eyes and the first thing you wanted to do was save me from it."
"Hikawa!"
Get as far away from me as you possibly can. "Why didn't you just leave me there? Nobody would have blamed you."
She whirls me around, grabs me firmly by my shoulders, and glares into my eyes, "I told you that I didn't intend to let a single one of us die in Kaneshiro's Palace, including you! And I don't intend to let you wander off somewhere and collapse in some gutter on the way home!"
I will kill you if you stay. "Don't be so fucking stupid-"
WHAP
I recall the moment that Yoshizawa slapped me, when I argued for the torture of Suguru Kamoshida. It didn't hurt that much at all; honestly then, seeing her enraged face on the verge of tears actually stung far more. But now, I feel like the skin across my face ripple outward like a shockwave, and for just a second I almost fall unconscious right then and there.
Niijima's not crying at all, not even all that angry (though she is). She has this strong, stoic, wonderful expression that I don't want to see changed anytime soon, sweat beading down her face as her messy hair glows in the light of the early morning sun.
I want to say a million fucked-up things that'd make her too pissed off to want to even speak to me again.
But I don't.
I just slump down, back into bed, unable to make myself move in any capacity. The exhaustion creeps upon Niijima then, and soon enough she's letting herself breathe as heavily as I, sitting herself back down at my bedside.
"What. Happened." Considering her distant stare and cold tone I'm surprised that what catches me off guard is the way she looks so sad as she speaks. "Explain yourself, in detail."
Only for a second. "I found a Will Seed inside of him, when he swallowed me. A pocketful of his memories. I knew he had to be stopped and I figured there was only one way I could."
She looks like a ball's formed in her guts but regardless she keeps asking, "What exactly did you see?"
"When he was a child his parents had him and his siblings participate in child pornography because they needed a revenue stream and didn't have the slightest clue how to maintain a lasting career. He killed his parents and fled his home, leaving his brother and sister behind. When he returned years later his sister was a drugged up pornstar and his brother had died driving under the influence. His guilt consumed him and left him terrified of being destitute and powerless, so he developed an unhealthy desire to fill the void with as much money and power as he could."
"And that picture, of that girl?"
"Stage name was Airi Minakata. Real name was Kyouko Kaneshiro."
She exhales. "You used her to...re-traumatize him."
"I knew it was the only way I could have even come close to stopping him."
She's long past disappointed. "And how well did that work out for you? What would you have done, if nobody had arrived to get you out of there?"
"I most likely would have died. Probably wouldn't have even taken him down with me."
She pauses. "Did you want that?"
I shrug again, "Maybe I did."
"And that's why you didn't tell anyone what you did? Why you didn't tell Takamaki, or Maruki, or me?"
"It was easy to justify it. Maruki was drowning his sorrows. Takamaki didn't want anything to do with it at all. Yoshizawa was bedridden. You already felt terrible about yourself. While all of you were stuck horrified and traumatized I knew I could do whatever I felt I had to or wanted to do."
"So you did it just because you could?"
"Partly because I wanted to. Partly because I felt I didn't have a choice but to. Partly because I didn't want any of you to get in as much danger as I was putting myself in."
"What if Kaneshiro had developed a Kingdom?"
"I knew he wouldn't. Or at least I had a suspicion he wouldn't. Being confronted with his shameful past, out in the open like that, he'd be more prone to bottling up himself even more rather than lose face in front of his own people."
"But what if you were wrong?"
Suddenly I feel horrible, in ways I never would have felt before, "Then everything he would have done to us eventually, he'd have just done sooner."
"And you didn't think anything that you did next had to involve us?"
"I didn't want it to involve you. After Yoshizawa had gotten her leg bitten off I wanted you as far away from it as possible. I wanted you as far away from me as possible. I couldn't have you help me. None of you would have agreed to my plan in any capacity. Not even Takamaki, most likely."
"Of course we wouldn't," she growls, more worried and exasperated than actually pissed off, though she's all that and more. "You put it all upon yourself and nearly got killed for it."
"That was the only way I knew to stop him. I nearly got myself killed. I nearly got you killed. I was wrong about you."
"What?"
"You were one bad day away from being me. That's what I told myself, and that's what I thought I knew, especially after you summoned your Persona for the first time. I couldn't have been more wrong."
She just scoffs, more annoyed than anything else, "Don't get sentimental with me now, Hikawa."
And I laugh, couching up more than half my lungs as I do so. When I stop I end up staring right ahead, right into nothing, and I say, "I'm sorry."
She's surprised to hear such words come from me, and I find nothing in myself that bears the strength to look back at her.
"For what?"
"For nearly killing you. For being an asshole towards you for weeks. For bitching at you constantly. I'm sorry."
For a long time she doesn't say anything at all. When she does she says something she's said multiple times now, "If anything, I should apologize to you. If I'd known about any of this, I'd never have even..."
"And what does that mean? Would you have just let him go? Off on his own?"
She just exhales, "I forced you to do this because I couldn't stand the idea of him hurting innocent people and getting away with it. Or it might be just because I was sick of doing nothing while the people around me suffered because of my inaction." Her hands ball up in her lap and she's glaring at them like they've offended her. "Maybe both, maybe even neither. For all I know I might very well have just blocked it from my mind and turned away again. Like I always do."
I look at her, this profoundly desperate girl drowning in self-loathing.
Fuck it.
"For as much as I blamed you for dragging me into this mess, I'm equally as responsible for it as you. Everything I said and did. Stealing Kobayakawa's heart, saying all that shit about your father. Perhaps you wouldn't have done any of this at all if I weren't trying so hard to drive you away. If anything... whether or not you blackmailed me, I'd have probably done this sort of thing again and again."
She turns to face me, obviously finding no comfort in anything I'd just said. So I speak with her plainly, honestly, with no bile in my tone: "For as pissed as I felt towards you... in the end, you only did what you felt you had to. I understand entirely."
"Do you, now?"
"I do," I chuckle, my heart dropping and my guts freezing. "I do."
"Why would you do this to yourself?" She isn't scolding me with her tone. She hasn't the heart to chastise me for the stupid shit I've done. "Why didn't you call any of us to help you?"
"Because...," I wrack my brain for an answer I don't have, until I let myself unshackle the hole in my chest and let everything pour open. "Because I didn't want any of you to go down with me."
I want to go to a land, far far away from here, and be buried alive.
I hope Makoto Niijima, Takuto Maruki, Ryuji Sakamoto, Kasumi Yoshizawa, and Ann Takamaki all live long and happy lives, as far away from me as possible.
I've never been free at all.
"Her name was Kana."
It takes me everything I have to fight the shame. To fight the self-hatred, to rail against every single wall trying to build itself in front of my throat. Even as I speak I never get the courage to face her.
"Hikawa? What?"
My left hand is trembling horribly, like never before, and I keep it steady and I grit my teeth and force myself to pour out everything I've kept inside, because if I don't then I will kill myself the second I'm able to move my fucking legs.
"When she and I meet first she asks me to help tutor her because she wants to get a scholarship and go to Tokyo U and become a doctor," and I chuckle, my chest and brain wracking over upon themselves as my breath hitches. "She knows I have good grades so she asks me to help her and she asks me to help her because she has—she has people at home that she spent most of her waking hours taking care of."
Niijima frowns then. She doesn't do it out of anger, but more out of a sincere desire to know.
"Kana isn't good at studying. She isn't good at a lot of things. But she's diligent. She works hard. She knows what she wants and she's willing to push herself to get it and that's all I see, that's all I see out of her, and I don't let myself see anything else until it's too late. She's much stronger than she gives herself credit for, but she's been faced with so much that she doesn't even believe me when I tell her she isn't a burden. I would sit there, in the middle of her room, reading history books with her and she would, she—she'd have her…she'd…"
And I remember, I remember taking Masako's small hand in mine and sitting her upon my lap and that wide-eyed wonder on her face seizes me such that I feel trapped, I feel like a rock's manifested in my throat, from the look in her eyes Niijima's about to tell me to stop— "H-Hikawa-san, you should-"
"On Christmas I tell Kana that I think I like her and she's hesitant and afraid and she doesn't know what to say until her mother lends her tickets to Destiny Land and I'm, I'm just, I'm a clown, running round the streets with a goddamn smile on my face, laughing like a dumbass. And then the day comes and I turn around the corner and I ruin my life in a matter of minutes. Because a drunk motherfucker is harassing her and her mother and all—all at once, all at once I'm just, I really fucking go for it and I—I see myself, from somewhere else, watching myself do terrible things to a man I'd never even met before."
Niijima is unable to find the words to say, in any capacity whatsoever.
She doesn't cry, she doesn't say a word. She just breathes. Niijima's clasps my hand with both of hers and her eyes, her mouth, her face says too much. Her touch is warm, and gentle, and the concern is something I don't deserve.
"She doesn't visit me once in prison, not even for a little bit. I think of Kana every day. Every minute. By the time they let me out she messages me and I call her and I go to her house for the first time in a year and I—I see them. I see them, the both of them. I see her. She's got messy fucking hair but she's more than I could have ever deserved. Masako's sleeping in her bed and she looks so much bigger than I last recall and I'm so fucking happy to see them again. And-and Kana, she's crying. She, she said I nearly killed a man for her, and I didn't even know her. She—she blamed herself, for me going to prison. And I would have asked her what she would've done if our roles were reversed. If that didn't work, I would've told her she had done everything she could at the trial. And if none of that worked at all, I would've just told her that I loved her. That she didn't need to blame herself for anything at all."
I finally face her, the horror and sadness keeping her silent the same way it had kept me all those months ago. I suck in a deep and shaky breath and close my eyes, exhausted beyond measure both in mind and body and I want to fucking shoot myself, I'm so ashamed-
"The world was her Palace, Niijima. More than anything else I wanted her to live. I did everything I could. I poured everything I had into keeping her and her Shadow alive. Before long I'm seeing her in my bathtub, looking up at the ceiling with eyes so empty you'd think they'd have never had life at all. Her wrists were open, Niijima. Some nights all I can see is an bottomless ocean of red water."
Niijima's face twists in agony as she clutches my trembling left hand. Everything tells me to shake her away but the second I meet her eyes I realize I never want her to let go. Through the door a tall man with glasses approaches with a plastic bag in his hand as Niijima sees me and blanches, she calls out my name as I stop hearing and seeing her altogether and she's never looked as beautiful before as she does now, even with tears running down her own eyes.