#really long..

It’s true.

Each and everyday, the sun rises and sets, and with it the light in the world comes to a quiet lull, the harsh brightness disappearing entirely, replaced with milky moonlight and the hazy glimmer of stars dotted about, way up in the night sky. 

Far better, in the opinions of others, but clearly different. 

It was similar for Airi, but it was different in just one aspect. Only one.

The sunlight wouldn’t come back.

Not surprising. How could it, after all she’d endured so far? She could count the number of dead friends she had made in this hellhole on her fingers. Her own failures. Students who had their lives, their futures, everything they could ever possibly hold dear violently ripped away from them. Each death was punctuated by the disappearance of another, and this time around, an extra.

How Airi was still alive was utterly beyond her. All she knew was the same truth she shared with the others. The same truth they likely believed.

This was all their fault.

Most students believed it was their own in particular. Airi included, of course. Some had been and still were indifferent, or were finally coming around to the nauseating despair the kingdom reeked of. After all, how can you justify being alive when you can’t save a single person from death?

Time and time again, no less. Trying to remember an exact number brought pain to the young girl, so she dared not think about it.

She had tried all she could to avoid this same hopelessness, truly, she did, but it was inevitable. She had managed to escape the enticing lilt of depression and how it called to her each and every time, if just barely, but months had passed, and Airi Kobayashi was at her wit’s end. After seeing Daichi’s corpse, it hit her like a brick.

She was useless.

Completely, utterly useless.

Everyone must have heard it a thousand times by now. How one person wasn’t enough, how they couldn’t try harder, how it was all on them. 

But there was truth to their words, you know. If they weren’t useless, why was anyone dead? Why were they still here? If they weren’t useless, they’d have found a way out by now. They’d have rallied the students together when they could and fought for their freedom, some way or another, but instead, here they are, moping and grieving and hardly able to get out of bed.

These are exact thoughts that go through Airi’s head. They’re a plague, and no matter what she does, they won’t go away.

She could remember the exact moment the despair set in.

It was just a few weeks ago.

She had been naive enough to think that there would be no next victim after the tentative week of sudden silence from the NPCs in the kingdom. 

Nothing short of stupid. Even if things had slowly been getting just a bit better with everyone — the tea time with a sweetly dressed up Shiruku, the arcade game session with an excited, playful Masumi, the bookshop visit with Hibiki, the heart-to-heart with a recovering, supportive Hotaru — it had been important to remember that things would not last forever.

But Airi made the mistake by allowing herself to hope. 

Kaya’s letter had seemed promising, and served as her only saving grace from losing it over the prospect of everyone she loved in danger. Visits with her classmates were therapeutic, and time alone offered moments of both reflection and rest. Things were looking up. They could possibly get out of this alive.

Until the faint beep played from her watch, paralyzing her with anxiety. She was forced to get of bed, heart beginning to race as she stumbled her way down and nearly tripping over herself. Everything had been peaceful, but..

The sight that greeted her was what destroyed every bit of progress so far in an instant.

God. 

It was him.

...

In some weird way, despite the agonizing smell of vomit and blood disgustingly mixed together in the room, and despite the hollowness in her chest, Airi managed a strained, pitiful laugh. Just once. 

Because it was funny. Daichi had wanted to die, wanted the others to vote for him during the trial long ago to take him instead, and now there he was. Dead, just as asked, when just the day before he had been alive and well. When she visited, he had taken care of himself and looked so much better — he truly did — and he had been in a lighter, more pleasant mood than before. Airi had convinced him to cook with her, too, and together the two had filled the kitchen with a mouthwatering aroma as they had tried to make something yummy for the both of them to eat. It had been fun.

The memory and the feelings with it caused her expression to darken, and the glimmer had left her eyes once again, though she found she was unable to cry. For the time being, anyway.

The emptiness in her chest had overtaken everything else, after all, and all she did was give a pathetic, shaky sigh, lowering her head and letting her tousled hair fall over her face. She had always been small, but the disgustingly familiar feeling of shrinking her spot made her chest hurt even now.

She and Daichi had hardly been able to talk, but judging from her own heartache, Airi knew she was going to miss him. Deeply.

.. Maybe it’s time to stop placing so much faith in others, a small voice had said in her head as she blankly stared at the ground, and just accept that you’re never going to make it out alive.

Airi lifted a vacant gaze to the body.

❝ Yeah, ❞ she idly murmured aloud.  ❝ Maybe. ❞

And from then on, the faith set in. Nothing was guaranteed but death, after all. That was just the truth. 

Time passed.

She hadn’t investigated at all. She couldn’t be bothered, instead sleeping the days away and slipping into an unhealthy, depressive episode. What was the point? Other people would do it. She’d just get in the way. She’d be wrong, like she had been with Mikka’s trial, and she’d just be stressed. So she didn’t investigate.

The trial was the first time she had left her room that week, and she had been completely silent the entire time, gripping the podium tightly and trying to ignore the empty spot next to her, hazy gaze set on the ground and the trial itself processing relatively slowly. She didn’t care enough to vote.

And then it had happened.

The group mistrialed. Akemi was wrongly taken away and Nyakuma left with the last laugh. Literally, to be quite honest, and it was the first time Airi had looked up, shock registering in her features and setting her back even more than she was now. She.. hadn’t expected it.

..Akemi.

(❝ This world is cruel, little girl. People lie, cheat and steal that which is most precious to you. And if safety is what you value most, you’re not doing a good job of hiding that, are you? Your heart.. it’s right there. Anyone could crush it right in front of your eyes. ❞ )

Long scarlet hair— mesmerizing crimson eyes— poison, venom in her voice—

 (❝ And it’d be so easy! ❞ )

.. She was bad. 

Different from what Airi was used to, by all means, and yet she had felt her heart thump. She was pretty. And acted nice enough to her, listened to her stories, and had, by all technical terms, warned Airi in advance for the coming storm.

That was enough in itself. 

Yet Akemi had.. gone quiet, as time passed, and now suddenly she was gone. Nyakuma exploited something of hers alongside Kaede, something about forgetting, but Akemi was gone, and so was Nyakuma. It wasn’t worth prying into.

The last thing she needed, really. She was entirely ready to ignore the others and retreat to her room, maintaining her cycle until some miracle would put her out of her misery, because why else would she be sought out for?

But the world wasn’t kind enough to grant her this.

Not for long, anyway. For a time, she was successful in her period of isolation, allowing her thoughts to roam freely. Her pillows were long since tear stained and the light switch remained off for days on end, the girl rising only to use the restroom when she absolutely needed to, ignoring food, drink, and any poor soul who dared go up to her door and knock.

There were none, as far as she knew, and if there were she most certainly ignored them. Not even Masumi was worth the effort of getting up.

Airi still loved them all, but she had always been weak. If she had to go through one more death, the girl would not last. 

She just couldn’t. 

Dark circles were under her eyes thanks to countless nights of tossing and turning, to her sleeping the day away. Her notebook that she had bought long ago resulted in balled up pieces of paper strewn about the room from frustration in writing her feelings out as a desperate way to cope. The girl’s skin was ghostly white and she looked as though if she fell she might shatter into a thousand pieces, and of course, the twinkle in her eyes that she had once managed to maintain throughout time was still gone.

She was hardly Airi at all, and perhaps the only last link to her past self was what began to happen just days later.

The song.

At first, she ignored it, half-asleep and curled up into a small ball under the blankets of her bed. But it grew louder and louder as the days went by, resulting in the small girl angrily clapping her hands over her ears, expression contorted into one of pure rage and disgust. Even when it happens.

Initially, it’s just some hideous, annoying song that won’t shut up, that eats away at what little sanity there is left in her, and in another moment it’s.. the sound of glass shattering, startling her so violently that all the remaining color drains from her face and makes her badly tense, red-rimmed eyes widening into shock.

And then.. she was back.

Standing in front of a burning car, breathing in smoke and the sound of cars whizzing by all around her, and amidst it all.. crying.

..This is the scar accident, but..

[[ #tw parental death, mentions from here on ]]

Airi can’t breathe. She’s hugging herself so tightly her knuckles are dusted an equally sickly shade of white, and fresh, hot tears begin to stream down her face as she feels herself collapse onto her knees. 

It’s some disgusting blend of everything she hated.

She remembered her solace, when she was a child, was that she could not recall seeing her father’s corpse from the car accident. There was just him at the wheel and the world violently turning upside down, glass shattering— it gets louder every time she thinks about it dear god please make it stop please please—

But now it’s all in front of her, just as she had subconsciously pictured time and time again, and it’s worse than she remembered.

Everything is so vivid. Her perception has been so awry lately that she’s perfectly convinced it’s true, that it’s actually happening. And it’s horrible. Her head is throbbing with pain and anxiety is coursing through her. It’s impossible to tell what is real and what isn’t; all she can register is pain, pain— there is so, so much pain, and she wants it to stop. She wants it to stop. Make it stop. Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP—

[[ #tw nail gore (?) ]]

Her gaze is unfocused and her small frame is twitching, bending over and tears rapidly trailing down her features. She’s desperately grasping at her face, at her ears, digging into her skin as sweat messily mixes with tears. She’s trying to do something, anything, to ignore it all— her father a few feet away lying all too still, the fumes, the cars that are so close by one of them is surely going to cause another accident, the faint sound of glass shattering over and over and over and over AUGH MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP— 

But nothing is working. It keeps happening and she’s shivering, trembling, mouth hanging open, and with each negative thought and sound it sends another twitch throughout her body until she’s clawing at the ground so badly there is blood. 

And it’s all she can do. She can’t move, can barely breathe, bloody hands haphazardly snapping to her ears and her eyes, trying to speak or scream for help but failing even at this. 

It’s pathetic. And it’s heartache at it’s finest.

But there’s nothing she can do.

Airi’s useless, after all.