:: Attempt 08 | What Hurts the Most ::

  "I can take a few tears now and then and just let them out.

I'm not afraid to cry every once in a while;

Even though going on with you gone still upsets me.

There are days every now and again I pretend I'm okay,

But that's not what gets me.

"What hurts the most,

Was being so close;

And having so much to say,

And watching you walk away."

- "What Hurts the Most" by Rascal Flatts

x + x

Sometimes there are moments when I slip into a trance-like state, numb to everything and everyone around me. Just like a dream, I humorlessly think.

Unfortunately, I can never remember what I dreamed of.

"Aoi, are you alright?" Tsubaki's concerned voice greets me as I snap out of my reverie, and I force a smile in return. I clasp my hands together in my lap, aware of the fact that they seem to tremble. She doesn't look convinced, but nevertheless she heaves a sigh.

"I'm sorry I invited you out without prior notice.." She finally says sheepishly, scratching at her cheek. I shake my head, tucking a lock of my hair behind an ear.

"It's fine, Tsubaki. It's nothing to worry about." I remark, slowing down my pace to match hers. We are nearing the house faster than expected; I hadn't even noticed when we left the station and started to walk towards the street where the house was located.

A lingering pause follows after my weak attempt at a lie, and she abruptly turns on her heel.

"I don't believe you." She says adamantly, steel entering her tone and filling her voice with a sense of authority I never even thought she possessed. I look back at her in surprise, in the middle of opening the door. It swings open and I let myself in, closely followed by a strangely stern Tsubaki.

"What do you mean?" I reply, taking off my shoes and placing them carefully inside the shoe rack as I adjust my grip upon my purchases. She remains silent, eyeing me with an unreadable glint in her eyes.

I feel a trickle of cold sweat tickling the nape of my neck. She knows. She knows that something happened between me and Gakushu. Of course she does - she's 'Octo', the assistant interrogator of the Sibyl.

She of all people will know if there is something out of place, and resolve to pry the truth at whatever cost.

I bite the inside of my cheek, refusing to utter a muffled curse. Had I been so sloppy, left my guard down and thus exposed the inner workings of my mind? Had I grown soft, thinking that I had finally found companionship in this familiar yet alien land I had already forsaken when I left?

I am an idiot, I internally berate myself. I shouldn't have relied on someone else once again. Look where it gets me.

"I've known you for at least a few weeks, Aoi-sama, and yet I can notice when there is something wrong." She utters, crossing her arms beneath her chest. In the light of dusk, her eyes look almost completely black - intimidating yet concerned, cold yet filled with an almost warm light. A paradoxical look to her normally placid gaze. "Why won't you tell me? I'm not just your personal assistant; I'm your friend. You can tell me anything."

A dry smile quirks my lips. "A friend, huh." I look into her eyes, at the concern in her gray irises, and something inside me snaps.

Should I still trust someone else when I've already been hurt by the one person I trusted most? Should I still reveal my feelings to someone who claims to care?

Should-- no, can I still be something remotely human even after everything I've done?

"It's all just a lie, Tsubaki. How am I supposed to be fine after everything he's told me turns out to be a lie?" I demand of her, my breath catching in my throat as I feel the onslaught of tears pricking at my eyes. I force them back, determined not to cause a scene. I can get away from all this soon enough.

I'm weak, vulnerable, fractured, shattered to pieces - broken. I gave away my trust like a prized knife, believing that it won't be used against me.

I can't always live with that knife to my throat and be expected that I can fight back when I know the battle's already over and done with. I can't just close my eyes and just force my chin to still be up in the usual haughty manner I have when I feel the blade against my skin and know who's holding it, who's on the other end.

I can handle physical pain, when I know the wounds can heal with time and medication. But what hurts the most is when I look up, open my eyes and see him standing there, holding that dagger against my jugular and poised to injure me once again.

I'm not invulnerable. As much as try to be the flawless weapon that I'm expected to become, I'm not. I try to climb that steep slope without any reason other than the will to never see my father disappointed in me again.

I'm standing on the edge, teetering over the abyss. I've been standing here for so long, gazing down into the darkness that it's starting to swallow me whole, staring into my eyes and telling me that yes, I'm one of the fallen, that I should just jump and let it be over with, that I--

"What do you mean?" She queries, taking a step toward me. I hold up a hand, swiping at a traitorous tear that has escaped from my control. "Tell me," she adds, her face sincere.

I look away.

"I don't even know anymore."

She looks puzzled, to say the least. "Then what are you crying here for?"

I say no more, brushing past her as I head towards my room. There is no one who can ever understand, after all.

x + x

Sometimes there were moments when a seemingly unknown emotion takes hold of his mental faculties, dragging him beneath the veil of melancholy. He isn't quite sure why; is his long-forgotten conscience rising to the surface once again? That irrational notion which steers him astray from the path he should be on, the apparition which haunts the very seams of his consciousness - had it lingered in the very back of his mind all this time?

As of now, Asano Gakushu can only guess.

Nevertheless, he finds himself staring at the accessory within his hands, seemingly absentmindedly tracing the worn fibers weaved together by a childish hand years ago. He remembers the day she had given it to him with remarkable clarity.

At the same time, the memory is bittersweet; there is no doubt that he himself is the tormentor of his own making. By exposing himself to the memories he has always tried - oh, tried so badly - to forget, he is giving his conscience an incentive to make itself known to the world once more.

And to be honest, he isn't quite certain if he even wants it to.

Yet he is sure that the words he spoke a few hours before were not for her benefit. No, they were more for himself. What has happened to his swearing he will never turn out to be like his father? That he will be different from the man he longs to recognize his own prowess when he defeats him?

Nonsense, that is what it came to be. He, Asano Gakushu, is exactly the same as his father; a man feeding upon power - upon dominance - never hesitating to crush his enemies under his foot by mere words or deeds, whatever the situation may call for. He is known to be the epitome of perfection in the entire campus of the Kunugigaoka Junior High School.

He promised to never be like him; he vowed to never leave her side.

What have his promises amounted to?

Nothing. Nothing at all.

The loss of his mother, a woman he scarcely remembered, has led him in search for a light to brighten up his dark, bleak world. When he found her, what did he do? He pushed her away, insulted her and degraded her attempts to make him happy, even once in his life. He betrayed her trust, screaming insults upon her tear-streaked form upon discovery of the blood staining her hands.

The ephemeral bliss of his childhood shattered to mere pieces as soon as the first of her teardrops fell upon the tiles beneath their feet that same night.

Monster.

Murderer.

Cold-blooded killer.

But in the end, he knows she is right to despise him as soon as they met again; to look at him with absolute abhorrence in her eyes. She is right to be undeniably cold in the way she treats him, even as he longs to pursue her and win back her good graces, as impossible as it may seem.

He had hurt her, had wounded her deeply. Yet still he wants her - and only her - to be by his side once again, just like the time when it was she who went near him, when it was she who pushed him out of his comfort zone.

Because deep inside the apathetic facade she now put up, he knows that she is still the same girl who saw right through his petulant tantrums. She is still his naive, clumsy, childhood friend.

But there are times that even Gakushu isn't quite certain that that side of her still exists anymore.

He had kissed her, had spent even a brief amount of time holding her in his arms as though she is more than fragile - which, ironically, is true in a sense. She is a person of contradicting sides - she is delicate as glass, as impenetrable as stone; she is gentle, she is reckless; she is dear to him, as she had been his only friend back in the days of his early childhood, yet now she seemed to be as distant as a near-stranger.

She is his polar opposite. But somehow, they too are the same. Two sides of the same tragic coin, flipped over and over by the playful hands of fate.

With an exhausted sigh, he leans his head against his palm, dropping the worn bracelet upon the wooden surface of his desk. In this twilight hour, the emptiness of his home makes itself known more than ever.

He closes his eyes, tracing the furrows in his brow as an image flickers to life beneath his eyelids.

"Shu! Come on, I have something to show you." She is smiling at him just as she always does - the same carefree smile that irritated him to no end. She holds his hand, gripping it tight as she drags him along the cracked pavement. He digs in his heels in the dry ground, attempting to pull away.

"What is it, Aoi?" He questions, inquisitiveness mixed with slight frustration creeping into his voice.

She merely smiles even wider - and he remembers thinking something along the lines of, 'is it even possible to smile as much she does?' "It's a secret!"

"Then what did you even bring me here for?"

Aoi looks back at him after his scorn-filled comment, her lips set into a pout as they skid to an abrupt halt beneath the tree they usually went to. It is a sakura, and Gakushu has long since ignored the urge to take note of its unusual characteristics in favor of spending time with his childhood friend - a fact that, if questioned, is undeniably something that he will immediately deny.

"Here, look at this," she presses a coil of what looked like woven crimson thread into his hands. He glances down, taking note of a specific bead laced into the thread.

"Where did you get this?" Gakushu asks, eyeing the tiny, silver bead shaped like a miniature teardrop set in the middle of the expanse of scarlet. It glints in the fiery orange hue of the sunset, sparkling as he holds it up to his scrutiny.

She is laughing, a slight blush to her cheeks. "I made it myself. Did you like it?"

"Why is it a teardrop?"

At the question, a serious glint enters her azure eyes despite her cheery grin. "That remains a secret for you to find out, Shu."

To this day, he hasn't figured out the reason of her ambiguous answer.

x + x

'Azrael sighs, a breath passing through his parted lips as he rests his fingertips against the angelica. He traces his fingers along the sigil etched into the large block of crystal - a faint, pale blue light emitting everywhere he touched.

'"Princess," he murmurs, so softly as he barely hears her sobs through the door standing between them. He yearns - oh, so he longs to hold her close, to reassure her that it was and had never been her fault. It had never been at her expense that her brother fell - had fallen from grace and into the disguised hell that was on earth. "Please, Lilith, open the door."

'A faint whisper echoes from within, and he strains to hear her voice. Azrael presses himself closer to the barricade obstructing his path, tucking his wings close to his spine.

'He opens his mouth, as though to placate her once again, when a piercing scream reverberates through the angelica and into his ringing ears.

'"Leave!" Lilith screams, and he immediately steps away. A ghostly purple light seeps through the cracks in the crystal, and Azrael instinctively moves even farther away, clutching onto the silver railing of the many stairs he'd climbed to get to the top of the White Tower.

'"I no longer need you, Azrael! Leave me alone!"'

A dull, throbbing ache pounds within my head, resonating as I dig my fingernails into the bright yellow surface of my pencil. It is not easy to forget, after all; what more to forgive?

Why do people say that it is when it isn't? Why claim the opposite of the truth? Telling these white lies in order to 'protect' someone else, when all along it was only for themselves and no one else.

To find someone to blame other than ourselves for the mistakes we create - isn't that just being hypocritical? We say that we did so in order to protect someone else, but in truth we are only afraid - afraid of admitting our wrongdoing, afraid of being judged. And so we claim the opposite of what we truly mean; we lie - to ourselves and to those around us.

And when you lie for too long, when you repeat that same false belief for too many times, we start to believe in it. We believe the fallacy we have created, for not doing so may break us apart.

And a sardonic smile adorns my lips at the thought. I have done the very same thing I have mentioned.

No wonder it was remarkably difficult to piece myself back together.

"You killed her, didn't you?" It is frightening how calm he sounds, how utterly suave. He stares into my eyes, evident anger and disgust in his own. He scowls, refraining from jabbing an accusing finger at me.

Almost belatedly do I realize that even in his impressive hatred, still he retained a frightening sense of composure. Although, looking at him then, it was easy to see that his facade was merely a few minutes away from breaking.

And at that moment I realized that he has always been beyond my reach; no matter how much I reach out, he will always hide, always drift farther away from me than ever.

I remain silent, unable to speak. How will a murderer confess of his wrongdoing? How can a sinner confess his sins?

It was asking for the impossible, for someone like me to be able to tell the truth to someone like him. He, like everyone else, won't accept what I've done.

I'm no longer the childhood friend he remembers, after all. I'm an assassin, a murderess trained to kill and exterminate those the Sibyl has been paid to eliminate.

Caring isn't an advantage, nor is it something I can use as a weapon in combat. It is a liability, and may very well be the probable cause of my demise.

"Answer me!"

I let out a garbled laugh, its rough, grating sound bubbling up from my clogged throat and trickling from between my lips. A cold sensation takes hold of my skin, despite the evident warmth of my room, and I start to tremble. I can feel the stinging pain ruthlessly stabbing at my mind as I lose myself to the memories.

"Why? Why would you kill someone who gave birth to you?"

"How will I be able to know?" I remark absentmindedly, reaching up to rest my head against my palm. The pain is welcoming, to say the least; its consistent throbbing reminds me that I am still awake, still living in this hellhole, still alive and unable to wash away the sensation of the countless splatters of blood which have once adorned my hands. "Have I ever been given a choice in the matter?"

"All you have to do is pull the trigger. It is all fun and games until then." His eyes stare right through me, an unforgiving shade of cobalt. "Surely you know this well enough. Falkenrath has taught you more than what I told her to."

"Maybe I should have just died in the first place." I murmur under my breath, completely aware of the tears streaming down my cheeks. And for once, I don't reach up to wipe them away, as I usually do. "Perhaps then, I wouldn't have to become the emotionless tool my father wants me to be."

I let go of my facade for just one moment, and I break down, my tears splattering against the manuscript I have been painstakingly laboring over. The pencil marks become just the tiniest bit faded as the teardrops fall upon its surface.

A burn begins somewhere inside of me, the blood roaring in my ears as I struggle to breathe. Still I continue to cry, to let it all out in the silence of the dusk.

Trembling, shaking so badly I can barely hold the pencil, I write the words I've been longing to say.

'I can only be weak when no one can see;
I can only be tough when it's all I should be.
I can only cry when I've been alone all along;
I can only fight, when it's for you I can be strong.'

- To be continued.

[Word Count: 3,140 (Notes excluded). Originally written: February 13th, 2016. Edited: September 9th-10th, 2016. Dedication is to Loki-Roki ]