Merce

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

It’s a cliche translated into words, but at the time I felt it not as words but as that knot of air inside me. Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust.

Until that time, I had understood death as something entirely separate from and independent of life. The hand of death is bound to take us, I had felt, but until the day it reaches out for us, it leaves us alone. This had seemed to me the simple, logical truth. Life is here, death is over there. I am here, not over there.

The night Kizuki died, however, I lost the ability to see death (and life) in such simple terms. Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that. When it took the 17-year-old Kizuki that night in May, death took me as well.

I lived through the following spring, at 18, with that knot of air in my chest, but I struggled all the while against becoming serious. Becoming serious was not the same thing as approaching the truth, I sensed, however vaguely. But death was a fact, a serious fact, no matter how you looked at it. Stuck inside this suffocating contradiction, I went on endlessly spinning in circles. Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.”

You really look at people, you know? Your glances linger awhile when someone makes you think. The wonder in your eyes... it’s enchanting, and I hope it stays that way.

You stand there in front of that piece of glass and tell me you don’t like what you see, and I realise now that you’ve never really met yourself before. You’ve never seen how you look in one of those moments that can only be described as... Human. Honest. Raw.

You’ve never seen the waterfall of emotion pouring out of your eyes when you’re vulnerable and melancholy and... you. You’ve never seen the little flail you do when you laugh and you’re happy and you’re... you. You’ve never seen the way you look at the fish at the aquarium or at that massive watermelon at the store that cracked you up so much that day. You’ve never even realised the way you gasp when you see something related to your favourite character. You’ve never seen yourself subtly make yourself known to everyone, making them fall for you, if only for a moment.

Basically “spookytime” (hereby referred to as green) and I were the only two sane people in a game, or so it seemed. Everyone else was going berserk over nothing and accusing people left and right when lime literally SAW red kill someone, but no one was listening to lime. I said “green and I seem to be the only remotely attentive people here” after everyone voted lime off for telling the truth, and some absolute douche brown just wasn’t listening to anyone.

Anyway, green and I played another game and we nailed it, found both impostors (despite brown’s best efforts to ruin the game for everyone), and met back in the lobby, expressing our appreciation for each other.

Then, I became the impostor. I killed someone in front of green by mistake, and instantly reported the body and said “green did it” just as green said “cyan and I saw the body, cyan was with me they’re safe” (I’m cyan).

That’s when I was like......... oh.......

And then green went “HUH?” and I was like “HUHHH” and then green said they saw me kill the other person but was going to back me up and defend me anyway. “Just know that, cyan.” were green’s last words before getting ejected.

It broke my heart and as red called another meeting, they said “I guess we all know why we’re here” and I was like “yeah vote me out I need to talk to green on the ghost chat anyway” and after some bs teasing by the other colours I got voted out as I expected.

After this, in the ghost chat, this happened! And now I don’t know where they are because someone kicked green and I out in the next game :)

What’s your Myers-Briggs personality type?