Note: This story is not safe for work!! it contains kink content such as: extreme gore. please do not click further if you're a minor and/or if this content will make you extremely upset. you've been warned.
'Takumi' hasn't been the same since his string of suicides to vanquish Eito Aotsuki once and for all. His friends give him the space he needs, all while Eito, squished under the guise of Takumi, plots to enact his final vengeance.
That is, until he wakes up again in that same blue room, a familiar face haunting him from the grave.
Eito can't seem to let go.
Silence filled his mind.
Silence bled his soul.
Silence, pain, longing, wanting, emptiness, emptiness—!
No. Not that. Anything but the vile assumption that Eito missed the pain, the agony of Takumi’s challenge, his grating voice, his disgusting figure, the terrible terrible stench he polluted the world with, with each word and waste of a thought and—and—!
An ache radiated through him.
One he ignored, time and time again. Eito had too much to focus on now to get tripped up on petty, disgusting details. So he thought.
So he waited.
‘Takumi Sumino’ waited.
As long as it took, really.
As long as Eito Aotsuki waited, too.
As long as Eito Aotsuki bided his time for the perfect opportunity to sabotage the Special Defense Unit. As long as he snuck about, searching for the singular moment the Revive-o-Matic was left alone so that he could drive Takumi’s infuser into his chest, take his sword and plunge it into the accursed machine.
Until that day came, Eito Aotsuki dreamed. Dreamed, and suffered—writhed, bled.
He wanted nothing more than to make Takumi’s so-called hideous friends suffer. Takumi made the foolish decision to bet it all, lose it all, and leave it all for Eito to pick up the pieces. Pick them up—break them, crush them beneath his heel. These monsters would get the ending they deserved for everything they wished for, hoped for, worked for.
Though, honestly—
“You don’t give a damn, do you?”
Eito opened his eyes. Despite Takumi’s mind snapping and falling to silence forever, there, over him stood the mentally dead boy, eyes hollowed into empty black as he loomed close by, fragments and all.
Eito had dreamed this dream ever since the ‘death’ of Takumi Sumino.
Eito should’ve won. He should’ve silenced the fragment of Takumi’s consciousness—no, rather, Takumi should’ve silenced himself through his futile effort to overpower Eito in a game of willpower. Suffering grew with Eito’s heart—how could Takumi hope to match that?
For the first night, after awakening in a monster’s body with not a whisper in his head to bother him, Eito didn’t dream.
Everything changed on the second day. Everything hurt, when he opened his eyes to a familiar place—to Takumi driving a knife into his shoulder. The pain jolted him awake, though as he found out the next night, it hadn’t been a wayward nightmare after all.
Whenever Eito closed his eyes, he awoke in the blue, hazy version of Takumi’s bedroom. Though he no longer lorded over it as he once did—this awful echo of Takumi did.
And the things he did…
Well.
Eito felt no surprise seeing the kinds of thoughts and desires Takumi chased, long after his demise. Of course someone as repulsive as Takumi would do everything in his power to make Eito suffer long after his own demise.
Of course his hate persisted. And it burned, threatened to light Eito’s insides on fire and take them both down forever.
Ha—if only. If only Takumi would just die, but then—
.
The phantom Takumi leaned forward, whispered into Eito’s ear.
“You don’t give a damn—about this planet, or what happens to the people. You only care about destroying everything I love, even after you’ve killed me.
“All because—”
The answer never reached Eito’s ears. Surely Takumi said something, but he struggled to make it out as the other man lunged, bit onto the edge of Eito’s ear, and ripped it off, swallowing it as Eito screamed inside his head.
On the outside? Barely a twitch. Eito’s body, frozen and deprived of the privilege of reactions. ‘Takumi’ grinned, the corners of his mouth stained with blood.
He reached into the hood of his jacket, pulled out a knife and let it catch a gleam of blue light leaking through from somewhere unknown before he brandished it and thrust it down.
Not a moment of rest—it pierced through Eito’s arm, just below the shoulder, breaking through the jacket fabric, shirt, skin and fat and cutting down to muscle. Slowly, methodically, Takumi dragged it down, opening a massive gash before cutting away the dregs of fabric in the way.
Eito’s mind burned, seized, unable to handle the agony flowing through his head down to his arm, the way his nerves screeched and sent uncontrollable, unfulfilled shivers up his spine. All the worsened when Takumi retrieved something.
A new tool—a rusted pair of pliers.
A dirty tool touched by things Eito’s stomach flipped imagining, to which Takumi found another activity to content himself with: grabbing loose flaps of Eito’s skin to peel away at. The fangs dug, bit, pressed and pulled and flattened and—
Seeing the layer of fat under his skin made him want to puke, really. It didn’t help that the monstrosity known as Takumi Sumino performed such a heinous deed without even flinching.
Only Takumi ever managed to match his hatred to such intensity.
Takumi tore off chunk after chunk, stripping Eito’s arm bare as his brain went numb. At some point—at some terrible, horrible point, his brain refused anything that hurt. All the pain points screaming in his body couldn’t get its attention again. If it acknowledged anything more about its situation, it’d choose to die.
Eito imagined himself as a cow skinned for leather. He wondered how they handled this pain, if they had no other choice but.
Maybe they begged and suffered and pleaded for mercy, died for mercy, haunted and hated. Maybe they cursed and lived and brought more pain, having nothing else. Doing nothing else.
Knowing nothing else.
Takumi dropped the pliers.
Patches of Eito’s torn skin laid strewn across the floor. If he had access to his gag reflex, he’d have vomited up everything, stomach included, by the time Takumi cut his arm open.
If only it ended there—please, Eito once begged (he remembered, maybe) during Takumi’s mass string of suicides, the agony of that still fresh in his mind as Takumi dug his fingers into muscle and ripped at it like a frantic, starved animal.
It hurt—it hurt—!
But Eito’s blood poured out of the gaping wound still, sickly sweet, and despite all common sense the feeling of pressure leaving it almost felt relaxing amidst the burning numbness. Takumi dug his fingernails into strands of tight flesh and tore, pricked and played with tendons before pulling up the pliers and snapping each one he found.
Each…one…
Eito screamed, finally, truly broke and screamed. His body refused to move—but his mouth had to. It had to.
Takumi smiled, pulling a strand of tendon so hard Eito begged for it to snap, but Takumi knew the right amount of pressure to apply to keep it attached.
“You’re the only one who needs to feel this,” Takumi said, mouth moving, voice everywhere. “You took everything from me—you’ve earned this.
“Maybe. Maybe…if I break you, I’ll get it all back.”
Takumi smiled, so kindly, so disgusted and hate-filled and—and—and
Human.
Eito snapped awake. Arm intact, ear intact. In the same room he’d always slept in since he’s claimed this body. A dream, nothing but a dream. In any other circumstances, Eito would’ve calmed down.
But unease stuck to him. He laid there until time crawled away from him, and he found he had no choice but to fight against the feeling and get up before anyone decided to check on him, or some awful idea like that.
Eito sat up, and ran a finger down the arm Takumi carved into, picking at his skin until raw patches covered it and he had no excuse to avoid breakfast anymore.
When it came to meals, Eito always made sure to show up fashionably late. Just in time to avoid suspicion by sleeping in too much (even for Takumi) while making sure he ran into as few people as possible.
Everything felt so normal, so perfect—other than the hideous monsters still lingering, and the skin flaps and torn muscle hanging from the ceiling.
Eito blinked.
Blinked, and gagged.
As he entered the cafeteria, the ‘new decor’ smacked him in the face, stretched tendons soaked in blood, globs of fat dripping onto the tables, the seats, the food—flesh and guts and blood and—
“Takumi?”
He almost expected to see Takumi in place of Nozomi, but his newly distorted vision hadn’t gone that far. Eito put a hand over his mouth and took a deep breath before putting on a smile.
“Sorry, Kirifuji,” he said, “Guess I’m not feeling well today either. But I’m hungry—so I’ll grab something before I run back.”
Nozomi twisted into a mockery of concern. “I—I won’t push, but if anything’s wrong, please tell us, okay?”
She smiled, putting a hand to her heart as if it meant anything. “We don’t want you to suffer alone. We’ll always be there to support you when you need it—all you need to do is ask. Even if you’re scared or in pain, we won’t think any less of you.”
“I’m not scared,” Eito said.
She smiled.
Smiled, and reached for Eito’s arm. As her tendrils of rotten flesh wrapped around it, they unfurled the skin, ripped down to the muscle, to the bone, and Eito passed out on the spot.
“Sumino…! Sumino!”
Nozomi’s pained shouts, gunfire shots of agony, pierced Eito’s ears as he threw himself out of bed to put a hand over her mouth and shut her up.
No nightmares visited him—though considering what reality turned into, the gore choking out his surroundings, he wondered if the calm dream world was a mercy after all.
Her eyes shot open. Once again reminded he was in Takumi’s body and needed to act like it if he wanted to get anywhere, he lurched back, falling into bed and against his pillow.
“Everything’s not all right, is it?” she said, as a mass of flesh dropped from the bloodied ceiling onto her head. Eito swallowed, and without any other option, nodded. His mind spun as he leaned forward, folding his hands together.
“I’m trying,” Eito said, afflicting Takumi’s usual pathetic despondency whenever things didn’t go exactly the way he wanted them to. “Dying over and over again—I think it…did something to me. Something I need to work through. Nothing’s felt right since. I can still fight—it’s just hard to walk around and act normally.”
Wait, no— “I think—if it’s fine with everyone, I need time to rest. By myself.”
Nozomi frowned. Of course she never would’ve figured out the truth from that, but any extra concern cast upon Takumi meant less time to enact his plan before the end. He cursed his idiocy, but Eito did his best to keep it from showing.
He’s had a lot of practice, after all.
“I don’t mind watching over you,” she said, so worried. “Please, don’t feel like you have to go through this alone.”
Eito forced himself to raise his hand and put it on her shoulder. Keeping it there, watching it mesh with the guts coating her, the boiling fat—keep it there, no matter if it burns. “No, seriously, I don’t wanna put too much on everyone’s shoulders. I’ll get through this. I just need some time to rest, that’s all. Everything’s fine.”
Everything’s fine.
It took some begging. A lot of it, actually, but Nozomi caved after a long conversation and left, dropping a meal tray for ‘Takumi’ off to the side before letting him be.
Eito took one bite.
One bite, which did nothing to satiate the emptiness he felt. A greasy, disgusting mess could never satiate his hunger. Anything touched by these humans became tainted; yes, even more so with this new horrific element to his perception.
Why…
Why did he wait until Takumi had such a grip on him? If Eito could influence the cognition of the body while in that odd mindscape, surely whatever vengeful, hatred-fueled phantom Takumi left behind worsened his cognitive disorder to distract him. Putting obstacles in front of his goal. As if it changed a thing, as if Eito wasn’t used to this sick depravity already.
What an annoyance. A monstrosity. A true demon among demons—those titles suited Takumi quite well.
By all logic, Eito would do well to enact his plan ASAP. To avoid sleeping, to avoid Takumi. Focus on what was in front of him and what he could destroy.
Maybe that’d be what it took to win.
But the mere idea of cheating a challenge…
With Takumi, of all people?
No. He’d rather die now.
Filled with the determination to show Takumi he could never win against Eito, even in death, he pressed his head against the pillow and waited to fall asleep once more.
His head filled with slush and sleepiness, as if Takumi reached out from the innards of Eito’s brain and dragged his consciousness to slumber the moment he let his guard down, fork clattering from his hand to the floor.
Back in the blue room, Eito found his ability to speak hadn’t vanished between dreams. As the phantom Takumi looked over him, he smiled.
“So it’s another game,” Eito said. “I need to regain control of my body before you break me down completely with your torture and visions.”
“It took you long enough to figure it out.” Takumi smiled, resting his hand off to the side; onto a surgeon’s table filled to the brim with tools meant for medicine, for construction, and for inflicting endless amounts of suffering if desired.
A bloodied pair of pliers hung off the edge.
“It can’t end yet,” Takumi said, reaching for another tool. “It can’t end…while you’re still here.”
“You’re a sore loser, Takumi.”
“And you should’ve never been born. Something as disgusting and offensive as you are to the rest of humanity should’ve been beaten and killed as a baby. I mean…you’ve already killed a baby, once.”
But it wasn’t him.
But it was—wasn’t, a phantom imposed over an already vulnerable Eito, gouged out and drained, only for his corpse to be picked up by the waves of time and subjected to the same events, the same cycle.
“I’d like to—” Eito began, only for agony to take its course as Takumi rushed to continue where they left off. As fast, no, too fast for the fastest, he grabbed a nail off the table and lined it against Eito’s knee, before snatching a hammer and slamming the rusted end in. Long, thin and sturdy, the nail smashed its way through, and with a few more good hits, it kept Eito stuck to the bed as he screamed.
The scream lasted a good minute before Eito bit his lip to put a stop to it. He wouldn’t let Takumi bathe in the satisfaction of his wails anymore—he’d rather die first.
Though Takumi seemed all too eager to test that limit.
“I get the appeal now,” Takumi muttered. “The way those museums displayed all those weird creatures hung up like that. It’s satisfying.”
He pulled another nail out, lined it near the other knee, and waited. Waited until Eito’s patience ran dry, until time blurred and something in Eito slipped—Takumi stole this moment, hammering the sharp implant in as Eito drew blood trying to keep his screams at bay. He laid Eito’s arms out and nailed them down in a similar fashion, preparing Eito like meat before procuring scissors and cutting away jacket and shirt alike.
Somehow, this room reeked of chills and sterility.
Like a hospital, almost.
Ugh.
Each dream, Eito reset—he appeared like the first day he awoke there, meaning Takumi had a new fresh body to torment, free of scars and lingering injuries.
“You’d like to what? Get rid of me? ‘I won, what gives?’” Takumi snorted, running a hand over Eito’s torso, down his leg, before going for his feet, tearing off socks and shoes alike, exposing them, tapping each toe. “It’d never be that easy. You wanted to fight over this body—I thought you’d like the challenge.”
You’re so vile, Eito thought, and Takumi laughed.
“And you never stopped being a child.”
Takumi retrieved a device from the table, and clamped it over Eito’s big toe. He caught a glimpse before Takumi slammed on the trigger—the toenail tore from the nail-bed, and Eito wailed all over again.
Blood gushed down the open wound as Takumi went to work tearing off each nail. He paused, sometimes, dragging out the moment until he knew Eito let his guard down before ripping it off and moving on with such methodical precision.
They existed in the same mind, after all. Yet nothing stopped this Takumi—how fair was that?
He grabbed a tiny, dirty pin, and with finesse Eito almost felt impressed by, nailed down the upper joint of each toe in a way which bent his leg at an uncomfortable angle. Eito wanted to shudder, wanted to rip his legs away, but he had no freedom, no will to escape as Takumi went to work tearing off nails from his other foot.
He sealed his mouth shut—blood leaked from the gaping wound on his lips in his attempts to keep his screams away. How had Eito managed not to rip a chunk of skin out? The tips of his toes bristled as if burned, as Takumi poured lava on his nerves and scraped at the limits of his pain tolerance.
Stripped away flesh again, hollowed him inside and out.
Though, Eito became hollow long ago without—
He shook his head, just as Takumi ripped off one of his fingernails. The drawn out agony and anticipation continued until he mauled Eito’s hands, then nailed in each first joint. So uncomfortable, vulnerable. Takumi opened Eito up to his prying eyes, and Eito could do nothing but meet Takumi’s eyes and try to will his fingers and toes to twitch again.
Like a butterfly, he spread his wings to Takumi. Like a trophy, beautifully and lovingly displayed for the rest of his days, with no freedom to fly away from the anger eating at his soul.
“You’re…” Takumi breathed, fell silent. Eito was…what?
Well. Eito figured out what Takumi left unsaid rather quickly.
Takumi’s empty stare swallowed Eito whole, holding a knife in his hands as he regarded the open, naked man. Bringing the knife to the area below Eito’s throat, he dragged it down
opened him up,
like some exhibit or subject,
revealed all Eito was—pulsing heart, rumbling organs wet and sticky and so so sweet, insides so sugary Eito drowned and died in them,
loved and displayed; such a perfect specimen.
Eito ripped his lower lip out in a desperate attempt to keep his mouth shut. His left hand twitched as Takumi frowned, and pressed a finger to Eito’s lips.
“Shut up,” he growled, and dropped Eito into the academy once more, eyes torn open as if nailed and forced to be so.
Eito wanted nothing more than to rise to the challenge. To meet Takumi’s hatred with equal vitriol, to relish in it and find that one, beautiful moment where they tried so hard to destroy each other, that they became something else entirely.
Yet to say they were on equal footing, this time—he’d be lying to himself.
A few days of rest later (confined to his bed in just the way he hated), another attack drove him to the battlefield to wade off everyone’s concerns, yet even with those battle pets after his head, he spent more time puking than fighting.
Everyone looked so ugly, inside and out. Nails pinned back layers of skin and exposed everyone’s rotten insides, seared the smell of muck and mold into his nostrils, burned the sight of their organs into his eyelids so he’d never forget the sight.
A glance killed him. The gore haunted him worse than ever before.
Even the pets showed off their insides (Hiruko might not mind this, Eito thought, dryly), making him wonder if any living creature would ever provide him peace.
Regarded with sickening concern by his ‘teammates’, Eito escaped the moment he had a chance and barricaded himself inside Takumi’s room. For a few minutes it was peaceful.
But. Well.
With friends like these, as they said, trouble came no matter how hard you tried to keep it out.
Two voices shouted outside his door, making him jolt at how they scraped against his eardrums, unpleasant screeches upgraded to disturbing, agonized wails.
“Sumino?” Shouma said. “Please—you have to tell us if something’s wrong. I know I’m so disturbing to witness it’s enough to incapacitate anyone not prepared—”
“Ginzaki, it’s not you! Stop it!” Nozomi shouted (who was incorrect, by the way). “…Sorry, I mean, you’re not the cause of this. Sumino, please, we’re begging you, say something! Tell us what’s going on!”
“…Nothing’s wrong,” Eito—Takumi croaked, voice raw. “Just—go away, please. I’m begging you.”
“We can’t,” she said, the most painful words of all, and Eito knew she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. Nozomi was too, too nice for that.
A nice girl. A truly selfish, sacrificial menace.
He had a choice: give up the act and do whatever it took to get rid of them, even if it meant attracting Sirei’s concern and exposing the truth, or…
Or suffer more. Suffer again. Living and waking and dreaming, all suffering, all so goddamn painful make it stop please please just stop he wanted it to stop hurting he wanted them to stop hurting him stop stop STOP!
How was this fair? Why did he earn this fate? By being born? By being made into this—cage of a life, by some unseen hand? No, he didn’t believe a god existed, he didn’t believe in any meaning. People were bags of meat to reek and disgust and to be ripped apart, and Eito happened to be the only one worth slicing. The only one worth displaying. Might as well rip his brain apart and find whatever’s wanted before throwing him away. Nozomi, is that what you want?
To dig for Takumi’s remains amidst the pieces Eito left behind?
…
Eito’s hands shook as he opened the door. Maybe if he saw the concern they bore, he would’ve changed his mind regarding everything on the spot.
“I’m…sorry,” he spat, just apologetic-sounding enough to be genuine. The two exposed monstrosities smiled. Nozomi—elongated, veiny, with those tendrils everywhere, her innards exposed and rotten beyond repair, wires sewn into her heart and forcing it to pump as an IV-like device dangled off her lungs, pressing oxygen in. Not how it worked—but nightmares had a way of figuring out the worst uses for medical tools.
Shahhhhh, her lungs hissed and wriggled.
Shouma—a cocoon of rotten flesh opened to reveal the hideous metamorphosis underneath. Large wings of stretched flesh and exposed tendons, linked to a body of bones, punctured with thousands of tiny holes from which worms writhed and squirmed. Some of them jumped out, got onto Eito and squirmed under his clothes, ate through flesh and made residence within his flesh.
He saw something squirm under his skin, and truly, deeply, wanted to die.
Yet the monsters didn’t stay away.
After a quiet countdown from Nozomi, the two lunged and swallowed Eito in a mass of innards—a hug.
He held his breath. Held it in, kept the disgust back behind locked floodgates as it pooled in his stomach. It’d feel so good to let it out—to stop hiding, to empty his stomach and then some until his insides felt clean.
Strip the flesh off again, kill himself and gamble on the Revive-o-Matic keeping him inside Takumi’s body.
Anything—please, anything.
Anything but—!
“You never let me get this close.”
Takumi.
Takumi spoke. Eito opened his eyes he hadn’t realized he shut, seeing Takumi leaning out of Nozomi’s body, tucked between guts until he found it time to reveal himself.
He reached out, snuck a finger behind one of Eito’s eyeballs, and yanked. It popped out, and he ate it whole, like a piece of takoyaki he should’ve known better than to gamble on, in case the heat made him spit it out.
Spit—out—
Eito snapped his eye shut, tearing his lips into a smile.
Takumi crossed a line.
Messing with Eito in the dreams was one thing. Eito regained movement of his mouth, and his limbs. His victory was close at hand, but Takumi, that Takumi—! If anyone was the sore loser, he won that title by a landslide. Coming back from the dead, nested in Eito’s subconscious, he wreaked havoc on the dream and living world.
No longer could Eito draw boundaries. He wasn’t safe anywhere in this nightmarish world, with all its places to hide. Even inside the guts of his ignorant peers.
Eito needed control. He craved it, but it seemed this phantom ruled now whether he liked it or not.
He paced across the schoolyard, to the dark corners no one else traversed. Everyone else stayed inside, reassured through a convincing speech from Eito that everything was as fine as they wanted it to be. Wretched persistent Nozomi, disgusting Shouma, even they knew when to give up.
What tortuous creatures. They deserved to die helpless, without that machine to save them when they needed it most.
…Right.
He’d wanted to destroy the Revive-o-Matic, right?
Eito stopped. He stared at the ground, slicked with sugary red, and thought.
Dreamed, one might say.
If he wanted to destroy the machine, he had had more than enough opportunities. He could’ve set someone up to cause a disturbance, using that as a chance to run in and unleash his strength upon the device. Sneaking his infuser out would be child’s play—most of the others paid little attention to anyone but themselves.
But.
But.
It’d be too easy.
Well—no, what? Why wouldn’t he wait until he destroyed Takumi completely? The true satisfaction of this revenge came when Eito forced that broken, helpless monster to watch as he orchestrated the demise of everyone Takumi held dear.
Right. He couldn’t end it all until he ended Takumi. He had to keep going. He had to see Takumi again.
He had to…
Eito’s heart shook, and he coughed to keep it under control. Heart palpitations—they’ve been no stranger to him, but they’ve gotten worse. Uncontrollable. Fear and nausea brimmed at the edges of his skin, and he kept it together only by a hair’s width of willpower.
For the sake of his mission. For a world he honestly, truly, didn’t give a damn about.
Eito jolted, and he tripped over himself to avoid a hole. Since Takumi ‘ripped’ out one of his eyes, he’d been afraid to open it.
Afraid for what he might see. He kept an eyepatch in place to destroy the temptation—only when no one else was there to see him.
Tonight, he’d find what laid within this ugly, twisted Takumi’s empty eyes.
As he awoke in the blue bedroom, Eito realized, dimly, Takumi watched over him from the other side of the bed, his torture tools nowhere to be seen. An unwelcome, unpredictable change of pace. The tools set a baseline, but what could Takumi achieve without them…?
Eito tried to push himself up. Though his arms and legs cooperated now, Eito lacked control over his back muscles; every attempt to sit up failed. Miserably. Embarrassedly.
Takumi laughed, and Eito flushed, despite it all.
“Be quiet,” he snapped. “Your laughter is so, so disgusting.”
“C’mon,” Takumi said, despondent, “I just wanna talk tonight. Let’s put the game on hold.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“All right, then, I’ll talk,” he said. “…You know I’m only here because of you, right?”
Eito said nothing.
“It’s hard to explain. But I wanted to win more than anything. I wanted to destroy you, down to your core—you felt the same, right?”
A breathless laugh escaped Takumi, so familiar yet so unlike him. A noise filtered through from a difference source.
“I think…I understand you now, kinda. I hate you so much I want you to die, and I wanna see you suffer along the way. I really hate roping the others into it, but I know you won’t touch them. It’ll ruin everything you’ve worked for.”
Takumi grinned. A mockery of one, much like Aotsuki’s. “Right?”
Eito said nothing.
“You know, I keep thinking. You use your perception as a reason to shut out everything kind people try to do for you. You’re disgusted the second you see them. I get it now—whenever I see you, it makes me want to…
“Well, you know.”
Takumi coughed, kicking his legs as he looked towards the door, bolted shut forever. “It’s something important to you, either way. You’ve gotten used to it.”
“…No thanks to all of you,” Eito hissed. “I have no choice but to share my space with you putrid creatures. You’ll never leave me alone, even if I beg you to. You’ll never understand…!”
Eito gasped, and reached for Takumi’s throat, only to come up short with his limited movement, falling back and winching. “I hate all you disgusting, disgusting, disgusting things! You’ll never realize your own repulsiveness! You’ll never give me peace until I kill you all—!”
“Yeah, that anger’s important, right?” Takumi said, leaning back well out of Eito’s reach. “Without it, what do you have?”
Eito froze.
“Huh…?”
What else, indeed. As he paused to think, Eito’s shut eye itched, if only to remind him of its existence.
Eito kept his other eye closed even in the dream—Takumi sneered at this pathetic display and lunged, curling his fingers around Eito’s remaining good eye, sending a pulse of fear through him.
“Without it,” Takumi repeated, pulling, pinching, “What do you have?”
He smiled. How could he smile? Disgusting, disgusting, how disgusting! “Please,” Eito whimpered, an action which filled him with more disgust than ever before. “Don’t take it. Please.”
It was scary.
It was scary!
Too scary to imagine, too scary to let happen, having nothing, being no one, empty, a worthless life.
If Takumi took away his eyes, his only way of seeing the world, and replaced it with something else…
Just what would Eito become? What horrible things did Takumi want him to see? To suffer by? To break from?
Ah.
The thought made Eito shudder, violently, sensation returning to the rest of his muscles as Takumi ripped out the other man’s last eye. Eito squeezed his eyelids shut, the warm sensation of blood coating his face and leaking into his mouth.
“Come on—” Takumi whispered, as he forced Eito’s eyelids open regardless. Eito pushed himself to wake up right before he saw
“Good morning, Aotsuki. You’re up late.”
Takumi’s voice greeted Eito in the cafeteria. Then another, another, all in different ways, different, normal, wrenching ways.
He ignored them all.
Eito lumbered to a random seat, picked at his food before tossing it on the floor, planting a foot against the plate and smearing the remains. Takumi approached him from the side, concerned.
“Are you sick again?” he whined, brushing his normal hand against Eito’s arm as it butterflied his flesh upon contact. He winced and nodded, reassured, acted, acted, please let it work, please!
Takumi, a plain man with bright red hair, an odd black streak down the center—paired alongside an obnoxious cowlick which drooped and pointed towards his hollow pits for eyes. Each time he touched Eito it brought excruciating pain.
Was this what Takumi had left of himself? His monstrous self?
How…disturbing.
Eito might’ve been reassured by this sight under different circumstances, but after everything, the sight of this phantom of hate surrounding him filled him with indescribable pulses of fear.
His head pounded. Eito reached forward, dug his fingers into Takumi’s collarbone as his skin burned against Eito’s, and pulled him close.
“Hey—!” Takumi wriggled under his grip as the other Takumis gasped and jumped out of their seats. As the Takumi Eito held punched him on the shoulder, he felt something snap inside and lost his grip on the man as Takumi scampered away.
“What was that about?” Takumi snapped.
“You’re not acting like yourself,” another Takumi said. “Do I need to nail you down so you don’t cause trouble?”
“No, we can just cut the tendons at his ankles,” Takumi chimed in. “He won’t be able to run away anymore. If we make him helpless, he’ll be stuck in a living hell.”
“Sure, we can go with that.” Takumi said. “There’s also that machine in the infirmary. All it needs is some adjustments, and we can turn it into an electric chair and fry him to death.”
Eito backed away. The Takumis swarmed him, surrounded him. Gave no quarter with their torturous concern. Once his mind returned to the present, Eito squeezed his eyes shut and ran for the door.
At least he knew where to find it.
He had one destination in mind. His horrendous sleep made it difficult to keep himself oriented, but he made it to the rooftop before anyone caught him. Eito stormed into his, his own, no one else’s room, slammed the door shut, locked it, barricaded it to ensure no other Takumi dared to interfere.
“Is this supposed to be amusing?” Eito shouted. At the mirror. At the walls. At anything—the only person who listened to him, anymore. “Turning my tricks against me? You’re not original. This is—annoying, at best. You’re annoying. No matter what I do, you haunt me. No matter how close I get to winning, you act like you have some kind of secret advantage.”
It’d never been fair. Not when either were in control.
“I’ve lived like this—my entire life! You broke down after a couple days of being me! I’d be fine seeing nothing but Takumi until the end of my life! I’d die happily feeling only disgust for others if it meant you’d die with me! Takumi!? Do you hear me!?”
Eito leaned against the mirror.
Takumi stared at him, with his eyes.
“Takumi?” Eito repeated, and something slick—Takumi’s hand—slipped under Eito’s chin.
“You always have my name on your lips,” Takumi whispered.
Eito’s chest burned, and he stumbled back as the Takumi in the mirror disappeared. Though he clutched at the pain point, it only increased and boiled over, until Eito collapsed, immobile.
Takumi crawled out from Eito’s chest, which ripped apart and opened all for him. “You can’t move on.”
Takumi opened Eito’s door, suddenly unblocked. Open. No, Eito never wanted to keep Takumi out at all. He wrapped his arms around Eito from behind. “You can’t let go of this hatred.”
“We shared this hatred,” Takumi said, said, said, said said, “when I died.”
Takumi—one of them, all of them, clung to Eito’s limbs and stilled him. Takumi sat within Eito’s organs and pulled out a tool from behind Eito’s lower intestine.
A drill.
“I know—” Takumi said, “how I can be a part of your broken brain forever.”
He brought the tip to a spot near the top of Eito’s skull and turned it on. It drilled through Eito’s skull, tore past skin with ease and threw pieces of hair and scalp against the wall as Eito tasted bone dust on the tip of his tongue. With a methodical hand, Takumi carved several deep holes, the scream of the tool being the only noise to cut through the ritual.
Eito’s throat burned.
He no longer had the will to cry out. To curse, maybe, but not to cry.
Takumi snaked his fingers into the holes, touched Eito’s brain, slimy with fluids. Ran his fingers against it, familiarized himself with each inch. Each wrinkle, each shudder, each…
Drip.
Drip.
Takumi’s hand melted into Eito’s skull. Fat, skin, muscle turned into a thick, syrupy liquid, the bones squeezed into hard plops of mush squirming about. He expected burning—more pain, but a feeling of contentment and calm washed over Eito.
A pleasant sensation—about the only time he ever felt this way towards a human.
How odd. He struggled to describe much of anything anymore, but it was as though someone he cherished held him in their arms, whispered into his ear that he didn’t need to fight anymore before combing their fingers through his hair. A comforting presence he’d never had.
“Please…” Eito whispered. “I need you. You can’t—I need you, so I can…”
Hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate,
hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
…
Takumi smiled. “Our hate will last forever now. You know, from the bottom of my heart…
“I knew you’d never let me go.”
The red-haired monster, the only one allowed to be called such, dripped into Eito’s skull, coated his brain in syrup, invaded and groped its way around the organ, until sugary sweet enveloped all Eito was.
The ‘world’, a collection of perspectives and nothing more, melted into a violent, beautiful dream.
Red dyed plains of violent weeds and simple greenery. With a road paved white, leading nowhere.