HAZUKASHII
Alone in the silence, Heiji was screaming–screaming and pounding imaginary walls with imaginary fists, screaming and wishing that all of this would come to an end. When you couldn’t run away, when you didn’t know where you were trapped, when you couldn’t sleep and had no means of knowing if it was day or night, nor how much time had passed, when you weren’t even sure of being truly dead or alive… what could you do to prevent madness from taking you away? How long was this doomed to last? He was beginning to think that this was what he really deserved. He was… beginning to think again. To think too much. Thoughts, again and again, all that was left to ponder. This, and looking at himself, at what he had done, at what he had become in the end, before going back to Cyrus. Looking at the blood on his hands, and at those dark marks on his soul, and at the hatred and shame that were to become his only companions now.
He had already erased so many insurance scans, without ever blinking, without looking back. Lost in his own anger and despair, lost to the point of not even realizing what he had been doing, he had committed many crimes, many bad deeds that ought to have make him stare in horror. That was it–he had erased people’s lives, just as these unknown men had erased Deannah’s. These last four years… how came that he couldn’t even realize the kind of cold monster he had become? Refusing to see the truth wasn’t making him better than them; actually, it had only contributed to enforce the growing, disturbing feeling that he had behaved in an even worse manner. Breaking lives… breaking existences all along his downfall… The fact that he could not have her back shouldn’t have been a reason to break them like he had done. He was so ashamed… and so angry against himself, for not having realized, for having refused to look at the bare, terrible truth.
What have I done?
What have I… become?!…
… I want all of this to end.
Please… don’t force me… don’t force me to look at myself again…
I can’t… I can’t stand being here…
I can’t stand myself anymore!…
Alone in the silence of his soul, Arisugawa Heiji began to shiver, again and again, suddenly aware of the years that had flowed, the years with Deannah, and the years without her. He didn’t know how to live without her anymore. He didn’t know, and this had turned him into… something he didn’t want to see. Something that was better dead than alive, in any case. Something - he couldn’t call himself a being anymore after this - that should never have existed. Turning people into mere streams of data, then erasing them as he would have done of a fumbled nano-program or useless piece of information. He hadn’t even liked it; simply killing, again, and again, and again, as if nothing was important, as if it wasn’t even worth a second thought, as if it wasn’t meaning more to him than breaking a glass or treading on dead leaves.
Doko ni… doko ni ima boku wa desu ka?…
Where am I now?
WHERE AM I??…
… God…
Kami-sama… Kami-sama, kotaeru o kudasai…
What have I done…
But there was no echo in there, no echo to his silent screams, no one to answer his anguished mutters. Nobody to help him getting rid of the terror and the shame.
Tsurai da… Totemo tsurai…!
Demo… demo… Doushite?…
Screaming, again and again and again, because it was the only sound he could hear, and it at least gave him the illusion that he was still sort of alive… Screaming, because in doing so he could at least pretend not to be aware of the deafening silence. He couldn’t be dead - could he? Because if he was… how did it come that he could still think?
Maybe death was like this for everybody. Maybe death was just… being left alone.
Where am I. Why am I. Why am I here. Here and there. Then and now.
Ima… Ima, soko ni iru boku…
Someone. Someone, tell me, please. Tell me! Tell me! TELL ME!!…
… Boku… Boku wa kirai…
Now that he was completely alone, Heiji realized he hated loneliness. More than he’d have ever sought. More than he’d have ever thought.
And he hated himself so much. Yes, so much.