But what if the world wasn't as bad as you thought?
But. What if that wasn't fair?
(Contains spoilers for route 0 and Eito's Bond Episodes).
There was a lot of misconceptions around blood. That, or Eito’s distorted senses made the experience of blood so much kinder.
Others told Eito not to trust his senses, so so many times.
Not that he let those words hold him back. Not even as a child.
No, all Eito wanted to do was scream, but those dying, desperate noises leaving his throat reminded him too much of the whines and wails these disgusting creatures released when Eito killed them, so the most that escaped came out as a squeak.
A pop.
Eito’s parents died not with a scream, but with a pop. A premeditated impulse brought it out. His disgust reached a fever pitch—his father tried to assuage Eito’s normal, natural fear by dragging him and his mother out on a walk in the woods. Some fresh air to clean the impenetrable, inescapable stench out from the boy’s clothes. As if it ever worked.
Eito had the idea of pushing his father down a cliff on the drive there—the desire to enact it as soon as the car screeched to a halt and they got off at the precipice of nature. Convincing Mr. Aotsuki to pose for a picture, so Eito may try again and see if with the right filters he may glimpse his father’s face (as if he hasn’t seen it every day, as if the reality he perceived was somehow inferior to the corrupt distorted senses of all these humans) for once.
One push. A snap, a crack, and his father’s rotten, stretched body popped as it hit the ground, splattering organs and flesh every which way, ripped to rubber and bright, red juicy blood which stuck and slicked itself against the beautiful wildlife.
He reached to shove his mother, too, but she fought back.
A slap—
Punch, push, a twist—
A blur a stench a burning a pain—pain—pain!
“You—monster!”
She screamed, grabbed Eito’s arm and threw him into a bush. Her tendrils whipped and pushed him down, dug spikes into his flesh. The boy screamed and reached for a rock nearby, bashing her head in, banging and scratching and breaking and—
Popping.
She exploded, guts and blood streaking down Eito’s vest as she went still, the occasional twitches running through her veiny, incoherent mass.
What noisy ways to die.
Eito vomited onto the thorny bushes around him, hacking up stomach acid as the sticky smell of blood ground down his stomach.
Everything disgusted him so.
But these creatures smelled so sweetly still when they died.
The mess of bush twisted and trapped Eito in a cage, streaks of red sugar blood dripping from thorns and vines. They held Eito close, reminded him that even if the people opposed his actions, the world thanked him.
The breeze believed in him.
The blossoming flowers loved him.
With renewed hope, Eito slipped out of the gilded cage, abandoned the monsters who imprisoned him. He wandered out further, freer, happier.
Eito’s first time seeing the world, without needing to make space for those disgusting things stuck by his side. The wildflower clung to his socks and left scratches on the tiny sliver of exposed skin between socks and pants. Seeds grabbed on to the cloth of his outfit, or squeezed in between shoelaces.
The rich, muddy smell of a breeze carrying lake water led him forward. Patches of ground revealed imprints of too many shoes—too many humans walking, too much paving and trampling and taking whatever they want.
But Eito walked with careful, delicate steps. He’d only disturb as needed.
After a few minutes, with eyes closed, he imagined the world as it should’ve been. So many books he read exposed the fatal flaw of these horrendous monsters—their self-centered nature. They ruined so much of the world, then told its story as if they had to exist among it.
Humans never thought to see the damage they inflicted, never strove to remove themselves. Was it that hard? To self reflect?
What kind of deranged world was this?
The calls of the birds; the buzz of insects, the smattering of wildflowers all in dazzling different shades…
Each inch of it held value. Far more than those humans ever realized.
Eito made it to the lake. A clear, still body of water, surrounded by a trapping of trees opening up to reveal the artificial sky.
He learned, later, that when the officials arrived, they found him floating in the lake unconscious. They recovered Eito’s body and revived him (how lucky). Just as quickly, they ruled the deaths of his parents a murder-suicide committed by his father.
Their marriage wasn’t very good, some heard.
Their son brought a lot of trouble, others said.
Things were just so bad. It made sense Mr. Aotsuki snapped.
It made so much sense, too, when Eito’s grandmother passed in her sleep the night government services dropped Eito off to live with her.
The first came as the last.
Though Eito arranged to ‘leave’ his hospital stay in quite frankly, the most dramatic yet deserving way imaginable, the last murder he recalled committing before being trapped inside Last Defense Academy reminded him too much of the unfortunate deaths of the Aotsuki family—his almost first murders.
It started when Eito said he hated hospitals.
He hated the one his parents put him in, and when he made it clear to them, those disturbing amalgamations of so-called ‘understanding’ and ‘empathy’ made it seem as though they’d never put him back there.
Eito made sure their chance never came, just in case.
Yet when he yelled it after passing out in class, after the school nurse had her fingers hovering over the keys on her cell phone demanding Eito leave some way or another if he wanted to feign sickness again, the girl who accompanied Eito to the nurse’s office brought her hand up as a student might, declaring her intent to become a nurse.
Why?
“So I can do a better job than you,” she said as she spat chunks of flesh into Eito’s face, and earned a visit to the teacher’s lounge for her trouble. After emptying his stomach for the fifth time, Eito earned a stay in the cot until classes ended, he gathered his notes, and fled for the school gates.
He ran into the brusque creature there, too. Same as in the nurse’s office, she towered over him, large unhinged jaw hitting the floor as her bulging eyes trapped him, long strands of hair coming alive and wrapping around Eito’s arms.
“Wanna walk home together?” it gargled, jaw snapping and falling shut with the rattle of an old elevator. The flesh which smacked Eito in the face earlier grew in clusters around her mouth before being ejected between syllables.
If he said no…
Eito wiped away the layer of sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief. “I wouldn’t mind at all. Do you live in this direction, too?”
“Yeah! Let’s go!”
At least it had the sense not to get close. Otherwise he might’ve considered shoving the abomination into traffic then and there.
He spent the next few days armed with a mask to keep the bits of her cancerous tumors out of his mouth while blotting out her splitting voice with question after question after question. He thought asking about her period cycle would’ve been enough, really, but she kept coming back.
“May I meet your parents? What about siblings? Why don’t we all get together?” he recited, repeated, leaning closer and clinging to her arm even when his stomach flipped and lurched.
“I’d be down! I think they’d all like you.”
“I’d love to see where you live, also. Your room, maybe? Your taste in decor? Or what kind of things you like to do in your free time. Homework? Sports? Art?”
“Sports, actually! I get up early for softball practice. Maybe you could sleep over and swing by! My parents’re cool with guys staying overnight as long ‘s you don’t mind sleeping in the guest room.”
He’d rather die. “I’ll consider it. But first…are you busy, today?”
Eito felt nostalgic. It was the same feeling which drove him to lead the friendly girl to the same forest he’d killed his parents at, to the same cliff.
She looked out at the view, as Eito stood behind her. “You know,” she said, “I’m glad we became friends.
“You always seemed so—lonely! It’s not—”
Pop. Her jaw unhinged, broke, and flew into the air, her putrid sack body exploding into a million little blobs of tumors and gunk. Sickly sweet blood brushed by Eito as he watched her writhe and beg before falling still.
The forest hadn’t changed.
As a child he found it beautiful—he regretted staining it with the disgusting corpses of these humans. But now, he saw through it all, each little plant picked and designed to be as this horrid species desired. Limited flora, no fauna, suffocated in a cage, only the scant leaves catching sunlight held beauty.
Even the smell of lake water, his salvation, burned of chlorine.
From hatred, to love. Back to hatred. Back to love. Never quite the same, yet such a circular path of emotions.
Back before humans ruined it all, there used to be parasites which ate through the brain the moment someone touched these quiet, but deadly bodies of water.
He knew this as a child, too.
And despite knowing it’d never change—despite knowing how the cycle turned, creaked, sputtered along, he stood above the unmoving waters and threw himself in once more.