Fun Fact#1: the kanji for Ame(あめ) means rain

Fun Fact#2: the kanji for Kanashi (悲しい) means sad

Fun Fact#3: the kanji for Atsu (あつ) means hot

Også!

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I'm looking at you all with confused eyes.
Tf? I seriously can't believe this book got so popular. Like, seriously, thank you all so much.

✽♡ ilysm♡＊

There's a crushing feeling in his chest when he bumps into his dealer; a man in his late seventies with greying hair and more wrinkles than skin, a man who's far to poor to retire. He felt bad, stealing and selling and making drugs- oh he felt really bad in the beginning. But, like Atsu, he grew numb to it all, to the voice in his head; to his conscious telling him he was ruining lives, now he was selfish, now he's scraping by and his conscious is nothing but a weight. The man- he goes by Pops the last time Atsu checked- hands his youngest buyer what will probably be the last dose of medication he'll ever receive and asks what's wrong. The boy croaks out a response- the bleakness is so forced he almost cringes-

He needs to get ahold of himself.

"My sisters in the hospital."

"Tell her to get well fer me? Yahh?" Pops is cheery as ever, clutching the bills Atsu gave him in his nimble fingers.

All Atsu can do it hope now- because if he can't wish her a get well, she's dead. Atsu isn't sure if he can handle another heartbreak- he'll give into the urge to numb himself forever because dammit another person left him all alone. Though he'll never blame them- it's all his fault, anyway.

He couldn't save Ame and he didn't realize how bad Kanashi's symptoms were getting- he thought they'd live to the same point.

It doesn't matter. He's used to it.

He doesn't care.

_

There's something strangling about hospitals. It's not always in a bad way but not even the lady at the front desk can deny the noose of dread that hangs overhead. It's suffocating and terrible, but Atsu has always liked the smell of disinfectant and bleach- it makes him feel clean.

He takes in a breath of air; it smells of lavender and lemons.

The boy with dull eyes blinks for a second too long- a silent prayer ringing from the deepest hell of his mind.

It makes him feel safe- but it also scares him. It scares him because she never made it to the hospital. She got lost at sea and Atsu feels so bad because it could have been him, not her- she was just a child- two years older than Kanashi; she was four and it wasn't fair.

But as is life, as is society, as is death.

None of it is consensual- he didn't ask to be born into a family doomed to crime and murder, he didn't ask to be weak- he did not ask for fear and pain and dread to overcome him when he got to Kanashi's room because it's all to familiar and he doesn't like it.

Familiar is never good, he'd learnt.

Familiar is the ocean, familiar is screaming and crying, familiar is blood and pink bandages, familiar is pain.

Atsu wants something new to happen.

It never comes, only familiar things repeat. He's only met with fake crying and an interminable, deafening ringing. His eyes hurt and get doesn't know why, salt burns his loose and he's crying.

And he's lost all hope now, because she was his will to live, and now she's gone.

He takes in another deep breath- but the comforting smell of lavender and lemons is gone- it smells like dust and grime and death, and Atsu really can't stand it. There's a ringing in his ears and suddenly his throat is stuck together and he can't see or hear or breathe or think.

His eyes snap shut- thank God he was already at a hospital.

_

The sun is glaring at him; he can almost feel his skin sizzling in the heat. Atsu almost glares back- but refrains from doing so, that'd be stupid; the sun won't disappear, even if he did glare. The only thing Atsu would accomplish is dotting his vision with a warped black splotch where it stained his eyes.

Chirping and the ruffling of leaves fill his ears- then he hears a stream of water and he pauses, he takes a deep breath in through his nose and it stinks of rain and something akin to citrus.

Korosensei stops, chortling. He hughfhughfhughf's in his normal, cackling way. "Boys and girls, feast your eyes on this."

There's a pause.

"Welcome to your very own swimming hole!"

A lake encompassed by mossy stone and shiny backscatters of sunlight on water. The smell of dirt and plants and bugs fill his nose and he can feel the salt on his skin- he can taste copper on his lips and Atsu realizes just how much he hates the taste of pennies.

Everyone shouts in glee, stripping to their gym uniforms. (Which were conveniently waterproof.)

Atsu just stares, his eyes are blank andー

ーhe's by the beach.
His hair is wet and full of sand and he's smiling- his eyes are empty; he doesn't feel all that strongly, but there's happiness buryed deep in his blank eyes and forced smile. Because he really does love them. If only this moment could last forever.ー

"Hey Atsu, why don't you go in."

Queue the redhead devil breaking him from his thoughts. Karma is behind him, Atsu can't see the sour look on his face, he just stares off into an abyss- hoping to maybe find solace.

"Aquaphobia," He says back, immediately. "Why don't you go in, Karma?"

He hums in thought- thinking, thinking. "Don't feel like it."

"And you can't be all that scared, it's just a pool,"

Atsu ignores him and Karma hates that- he's changed that feeling into something sadistic- into a playfully deranged haze.

"Oh, c'mon, all it takes is a little-"

He thrusts his arms foreword, tearing the emotional into something new, and Atsu tumbles in, falling headfirst into the pool.

"-push."

The golden eyed boy waited for his ravenette companion to bob his head up from underwater. The only thing that reaches the surface is bubbles.

Then Karma suddenly recalls that he just pushed him into the deep end.

•

Atsu, in retrospect, was never a good swimmer. He had abandoned the idea of playing in water when Ame drowned, telling his parents when they signed him up for swimming lessons that he saw his dead sister in the water, her head lolled to the side, her eyes blank and glossy with soullessness; they didn't allow him near pools or the ocean again.

He'd long since forget how to navigate in any form of liquid- Kanashi had needed to help him from drowning in the bathtub multitude times.

There's something strange- they say life flashes before your eyes when you die- but the only thing he can do is feel. His fingertips are numb and wrinkled, but they're not sore. He almost wishes they were, because that meansーthat means he'd bandaged Kanashi and that means she's still alive; and as his eyes dull he realized that her life was the only thing that mattered to him.

A voice in his head tells him to stop his flailing- to drown in the amaranthine abyss. He let's out what was- in his mind- a final breath.

Bubbles flit to the mouth of the pool, disappearing from his line of sight. Then he can only breath water and he knows that; he takes a deep breath in anyway. His head is ringing and there's something around his arm, but the only thing he can put his focus on is the black on the ends of his vision and the sunlight that, ever so delicately, streams through the water. Tidbits of dust and plack and algae swarmーand suddenly, he feels so tired. As if the exhaust has finally caught up with him.

Crash and burn.

Crash and drown.

Well whatever it was, he was going to die soon; and maybe- just maybe- he'd excepted that fact a little too early for him to live a childhood.

_

Atsu had always liked the winter months. Something about hot chocolate and cuddling under a fuzzy blanket on the couch while watching some absurd movie that was made more for children than adults made his face twinkle with something a little brighter.

Even as a child he wasn't the best at showing his emotions, it's not as though he represented them, it's just that- he never cried out of frustration or pain- only whimpering.

He never pouted of scrambled to win- he was too passive for a child of his age- to mature and adaptable. His mother, Akari, was the first to become concerned, his father didn't necessarily see anything wrong with it.

She brought him to a doctor- the neighborhood one, they couldn't afford the best of the best back then, he was diagnosed with alexithymai: the inability to express or understand emotions.

_

The Infirmary is better than any hospital Atsu had ever been to, despite the fact it smells like dirt and sweat and must- almost as if nobody bothers cleaning it, as if it did not have any use. It felt warm, like- he couldn't really describe it, it just made his shoulders slump and his face lax. He likes the feeling, Atsu notes. He likes that even though it smells like dust, he can breathe.

Is this what it's like to be happy? He muses to himself, eyes downcast and blurry. A twitch of his lips and the curve of his black eyes, his hands are shaking. He gulps at this, his throat feels oddly enough like sandpaper and he doesn't know why.

His hands haven't been unsteady since he was ten- when he had to watch Kanashi cry her eyes out and he had to bandage her- sloppily; but Kanashi is dead now. He shouldn't care.

It doesn't matter anymore, after all she's dead- she's gone. And there's nothing he can do anymore. He looks at his calloused hands and pale wrists- at his boney knees and sickly skin.

He sighs in exhaust and closes his tired eyes- there is a monster in him. One hidden behind shiny, dull orbs and brittle skin, trapped inside a glass bottle, he thinks to himself, that it's finally free. That Kanashi's death was the last straw and that he should break his medication as he should give up.

He's finally been driven off the edge- he's let go of the last thread of humanity he had hope for. He's going to kill them-

Noー he knows there's a better way to do this. He'll ruin their pride- he'll get them arrested. He doesn't have to go to the police or anything- his teacher is a government agent.

Mr. Karasuma is right by the door anyway- there's no need to procrastinate. So he spits it out, as though there's something sticky caught in jus throat- and if resentment were more than an emotion, Atsu is sure that this is what it would be like.

"My parents are abusive."

And Karasuma nodded to himself, withholding the gasp of surprise that found it's way into his mouth, because he always had the feeling something was off, in that boys head, and now he knows why. He knows why his student looks more tired than a fifteen year old should- why he doesn't flinch at pain; but at praise- why he always looks so, so disassociative.

It's because that's the only way he can salvage any rememberance of a happy childhood and a clear sanity.

Y is for Yonderly;

I've always thought of you fondly

Despite what your death had put me through

Despite the fact I'm a mess

Without you

Despite the fact that you are both gone

I love you both

I hope to greet you at dawn

And on your gravestones, I'll place an awn

Because though you're not here

Before my eyes

We will meet again, when the time flies

When I am at last greeted by my demise