Ouma's POV:

When I was a child, I didn't really know what disabilities were. I remember a neighbor once didn't have an arm, but I didn't question it. I thought it was cool, like an anime character. My mother used to tell me how I wasn't allowed to stare, at anyone who might seem strange to me. Didn't stop me from messing with Kiibo though, but Aunt Mayumi was always quick to make me stop. They weren't present back then though, just a curious thing to the eyes of a six-year-old.

And then I met Chiasa.

While we were friends for a good two years before she went deaf, it's hard to admit I barely remember what her voice used to sound like anymore. I've forgotten more of those older memories, despite how hard I tried to hold them in, but I do remember what happened as her hearing continued to degrade. How sometimes she couldn't hear a joke I said, or how she couldn't answer questions in class because she couldn't even hear her name being called, how people stared at her, and some of the other classes used to play cruel jokes on her by taking advantage of how she couldn't hear them coming.

I didn't understand at first, why it was such a big deal to everyone if someone couldn't walk like everyone else, or if someone couldn't talk, or someone couldn't hear things. It just didn't matter to me, so when Chiasa went deaf, I just learned sign language with her. It wasn't something big until I missed some things. Her voice, or how some of my jokes were lost in translation. But it didn't change things as much as everyone built them up to be.

Chiasa was still Chi. She was still that positive person, my partner in crime, and mischievous soul with the worst cooking in history. Maybe I was naive to how things were in her eyes.

When I woke up, I realized how drastic it probably was for some. Chiasa got a warning, but for others, life didn't offer those warnings. When I thought about blindness as a child I imagined a sea of neverending darkness, a pitch-black curtain blocking the world from view.

But in reality...when I finally woke up...I didn't even know if I had opened my eyes.

There was nothing, absolutely nothing, I remember how strange it was those months where I could barely register the voices around me as people, where all my dreams were filled with screams and scarlet only to wake up to the blank void again.

But...slowly there was a way to navigate the void. Even in the void, where nothing could be seen, there were shadows and light, they became my new guide. It was a new way to see the world, down to the barest necessity.

By the second year, I just laughed bitterly every night at how painfully ironic it was. I must've begged God would answer those prayers that day to let me die faster, so I wouldn't have to see the world without DICE.

They granted my wish halfway.

Facial expressions, a way to tell if someone is genuine or not, became impossible for me. Now I needed to hear them speak, needed at least a single word to tell the difference between lies and truth. Soon I resorted to picking out the tiny ways of how their position changed with the shadows, it felt more like guessing work.  People say lying is down to the facial expressions and the eyes, but really even a confident voice...it can give way to the truth.

At least for me. 

Eventually, it became a new normal...the initial fear died.

I didn't long for the sight I didn't deserve...until...he came.

A face I would never see, hair I would never know the color of, a soft voice only to identify him at first. If I could see him just once..just once instead of my last sighted memory being of dead vows and promises, and instead his face...I would accept losing my hearing, my touch, my smell if I could just savor that one glimpse and hold it close.

My mind ran numb as the days went on, the sounds of the upstairs and the screams and pleading I had made for my grandmother to come and let me out, promises of good behavior if only she let me never say that one sentence, I would give her anything. 

I could be Keisuke Osaka, I could speak and I would sing, I would be the perfect son my mother never had and forget everything that had led up to that day. I would silence my own screams every night, I would do anything to blend into the reality she wanted if only I could feel the sun again. 

Eventually, I became a coward, I did say that despicable lie, whispering it to the air every night, yet I doubt she heard me. I said that lie till all I could do was bite my lip, and clawed my arms as my only source of retaliation for my betrayal. How despite my high and mighty talk that led me here I was unable to hold to my promise to Momota. A promise he didn't even know I made.

Maybe he wouldn't have even cared. Finally, my mind began to hope Momota was dead, so he could never know how I had betrayed him like this, so he at least was free of the awful pain that being alive brought.

Instead, the smell became numb. The smell of that dry-aired basement. The light I had come to depend on didn't exist, the shadows reigned supreme in the unfamiliar terrain as I traced my fingers over long dried scabs resting my head against the creaking wooden floorboard, the pain my arm had taken in the landing was dulled instead my stomach felt as if it was on fire.

A fire that threatened to devour me as time passed, hours or days, day and night, I couldn't tell. My voice was dry and raspy, my throat felt like sandpaper as the copper taste from my screaming had long faded.

The soft sound from upstairs, jazz. Jazz from overseas, I realize I never heard much music then. I tried to think of songs, songs to distract me from my mind's prison, no labyrinth as memories I had wished stayed dead had decided now was the time to resurface. My mind offered nothing, it wanted nothing. It didn't care if I wanted to escape the pain, it craved more.

More I didn't think I could have given if I tried. I blinked my eyes as I tried to fall asleep again for a brief moment of clarity, if I was lucky maybe my dreams would be of stars again. But if I did ever sleep, it always seemed short and brief, I could barely move my fingers anymore, my whole body was ice.

A cold force, strong and threatening as a blizzard. Ice that refused to change, quick to submerge those who tried to break its bonds, ice that chilled to the core and set the body into a pain only comparable to firey agony. Ice, a cruel tormenter.

But never unbreakable.

The stimuli from upstairs though...it slowly faded away as well as my thoughts and words became lost, I couldn't remember what I had done just hours previous.

A minute previous, all I could register or process was the way the cold cement used to travel from the floor to my body.

It was nothing now.

A soft crash reached my ears as I tuned into the sounds. As whispers slipped down the stairs, words I didn't hear as I didn't bother trying to decipher them.

The music stopped.

The whispers stopped.

True silence filled the void, yet the stone remained unchanged, unchanged as its environment did.

Until the soft creaking began.

Fear, fear always wanted to be center stage, as it raced up like a quickfire as the steps approached, my breathing, breathing something I hadn't realized I still had been doing hitched as I tried to shield myself but my arms refused to move.

IDontWannaDiePleaseDontLetMeDieHereIJustWantToGoHome-

Warmth.

It was a gentle warmth, soft things, hands? placed on my back stabilizing me, slowly drawing away from the sense of cold, and the emptiness finally dissipated.

Cold, cold tears from my eyes, coursed hands brushed them, and whispered words filled the air, words that came out as unconnected sounds I couldn't understand no matter how hard I tried. I wanted to ask what was happening, wanted to tell whatever was here I didn't hear them...

Weightless, finally my body seemed to leave the cement, and this time the warmth had filled my entire body, hands tracing my back in soothing patterns lulling me back to sleep as the light finally returned.

"Wh..." I tried to ask, but a soft shushing quieted me...and sounds of walking resumed and the opening of a new door as fresh air blasted my face like a wave.

The whispers...I tuned in fighting off sleep...a lullaby...but...

My mind reached its clarity right as sleep finally overtook me. I know this voice, these hands, this person wasn't my savior.

He was my demon.

My demon had come to take me to hell at last.

In my dreams, I'm sure I smiled.