#torimeka

♡

They feel like a tragedy.

Tragedy, between someone who moves too fast and someone that likes to take her time.

"Let's go, we have all the time in the world!" and "If you're not careful, you'll end up dead."

-

Teruya trying to move forward.

Jogging up to her in the echoing halls, trying to catch her before she ducks into her room to hide away. He took off as soon as he noticed she left, and somehow, she was still so far away.

"Why're ya bein' so rude to everybody back there? The last thing we need is makin' enemies, y'know!"

She raises an arm to her chest, at first; it seems to be a force of habit when he talks about these things.

"I don't need anyone else but myself, thank you. Now run along and stop wasting your breath."

But he only stops and whistles.

"All 'm tryna say is that havin' some maybe-could-be-future friends in here wouldn' hurt!"

Over.

-

He's out of breath this time, having to practically run after her surprisingly brisk walk. His head buzzing like a hundred flies all crammed in one after the other, and the only thing they can buzz is blazing red. Blazing red, and buzzing screams, and lifeless eyes and:

"H- Hey, why aren't you helpin' us? You're smart! Yer really, really smart, and--- w- we can't do this on our own! We need you!"

She only kept pace with the own dazed thrum of that damned thing thudding in her chest. She's read about this before. This feeling, this situation. She's read how to handle this. All of it.

She's read. She's read. She's read.

"Then figure out how to. It's not my responsibility to help you."

He stopped so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet.

"You won' even try!?"

And over.

-

Desperate, shaking hands card through gelled hair. His nerves are fried. Everything is fried. It wasn't meant to be real. It should have stopped.

They should've been saved by now.

It should've ended when everyone promised---

It should have, it should have, it should---

Words fell off his tongue just as fast as they whirled through his mind. They whirled orange, and they whirled blue, and they whirled only one name.

"Please, I need somebody! Everyone else is leaving me!"

Her ears are ringing. From his whining yells or from the own pounding in her head, she can't tell anymore. It blurred long ago. She doesn't care.

She doesn't want to care.

"Who said I have to be here for you?"

He threw his arms and his body itself in an attempt to physically shake the emotions tearing through him, and he nearly slams his body into a wall in the process.

"I- No one, but---

Please, god, don't let me be alone!"

And over again.

-

He's crying. He hasn't cried like this since he was a child. Maybe he still is one, rubbing his eyes and coming crying to someone he knew wouldn't listen. Heaving sobs get caught in his throat. It takes hiccups and wheezing breaths just to speak.

"You're the only one who'll look at me."

She froze. Her hands steeled into fists. He couldn't know they were shaking mere moments before. Words she once spoke only to reflections in her youth flooded out of her mouth.

No one else can know. No one else does. No one else will.

"Then you should look at yourself! You shouldn't need someone else to help you. You're only as weak as you are now because all you do is cry wolf to someone that actually matters."

He was almost stunned by how... cold she can be.

"But I want them to help me, so I don't have to do it by myself!

I want you to help me!"

-

Even in the end.

Even after there's nothing left.

He keeps trying.

He still looks around: wildly, madly, for anything, anything that still burns bright, vivid orange, or bright, vivid white now, or anything that might look like her.

"Why can't I find you? Where did you go?"

Her response, in another world outside of the one his mind is kept, is a hitch in her breath. Her gaze bored into the monitor screen. He should have been right after her. He should have woken up by now. He still hasn't moved. Why hasn't he moved? Didn't he know?

"... This isn't right. What did you do?"

In that other world, he looked to himself with horror. With disgust. Flames and ashes played beyond his eyes on loop. Terror trailed its way through his mind as he realized just what he had let happen.

He realized he ran out of time.

"What did I do?"

What went wrong? What went wrong? What went wrong?

But she doesn't move. She stays frozen. She stares and watches.

She doesn't move until it finally started to set in that she was years, and years too late.

Until the dull whirr of blue-green lights and meaningless numbers ticked down and down and stopped entirely.

Until they sealed his fate.

Until she realized she ran out of time, too.

-

Only this time...

It tore her heart to guilt-filled shreds.