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hanibalistic · 1 month

Text

just remembered i forgot the last part of the idea.

#8A1725 | NISHIMURA RIKI.

genre | angsty romance

word count | 2339

warning | mention of domestic abuse, suicide attempt (jumping off building) / blood, injuries, violent acts / scissors

note | niki (riki?) is the only person i can think of who fits this character. / hi, i love choco puffs!

niki's quick and loud footsteps echoed across the quiet blocks, but they were not enough to wake their residents permanently.

racing the wind has always been a thrilling experience. there was nothing like the tender suffocation of cold air filling his nostrils, traveling to his brain and his lungs, while his legs begged to give under pressure. there was no such thrill this time around. he was suffocating, still; he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t. but it didn’t come from the wind; it came from the cryptic text you sent him half an hour ago that wrote, ‘help me.’

he responded with a journey of messages that began with amusement and tease, to increasing worry and annoyance, and finally, only a minute before he ransacked his clean laundry basket for a jacket and the messy drawer for a pair of rusty scissors, fear and desperation. you revealed your home life to him shortly after he pieced the puzzle together. he knew your father’s anguish disposition and the violent ways he enjoys showing it. your call for help and the fact that you didn’t read any of his replies for half an hour made him assume the worst.

the biological inability of humans to safely hold their breaths for more than two minutes was the only thing reminding him to do so. when you opened the door to the bathroom where you locked yourself in, he inhaled deeply once again and held onto it. it wasn’t time to let his guard down. closing the door behind him and locking it aggressively to make sure you heard it, he reached up for your face and began to examine you in quick succession. you let him, your brows furrowing as he pressed his fingers against your scalp and brushed through your hair.

“niki, i'm–“ you paused your sentence to let out a low whine when he pinched both sides of your face and pulled them toward opposite sides–“i’m okay.”

“why didn’t you read my messages?” he demanded.

“dad took my phone,” you replied with a muffled voice. “can you let go of my face now?”

oxygen gained permission to enter his body once he established that you weren’t severely injured. he stared down at you, his eyes barely visible behind his sweaty hair, and then he scoffed and let go of your face. It was a conscious decision to smooth your sore skin over with his thumb, the back of his fingers running down your chin as his hands removed themselves from your face, but niki didn’t know if it was an attempt to savor the touch or an unneeded apology for pinching your cheeks.

you watched as he sat down across from you on the bathroom floor. you’ve only known him for two years; he has always been tall. even with you curling your legs to your chest, there wasn’t enough space to accommodate the length of his legs. you measured them with your naked eyes, then up at his face where he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his palm. he must have run like hell to get to you, all over a text you didn’t think much about. You had no idea he would do that at all.

“move over,” you muttered as you released your knees from your chest.

he listened and scooted closer to the door, an unconscious precaution taken. you crawled over his legs to plop down next to him. you didn’t have to curl yourself into a ball if you were sitting next to him, and he couldn’t have you blocking half the floor space on which he could rest his feet. niki extended his legs more, heaving a relieved sigh, and then he chuckled after peeking at you.

“you're sitting next to the toilet,” he said.

you shrugged, arm brushing against his. “it won’t be my first time.”

“that’s true,” he said, shifting so his arm pressed against yours. “he really didn’t hit you?”

“he did,” you nodded, “but not enough to bleed this time.”

pursing his lips to let the curse die on his tongue, he leaned his head back on the edge of the bathtub. the ceiling light was blinding, almost as if he was staring at the sun, and he couldn’t stare at it without squinting through the pain. marks of illusional symbols began to float behind his lids, and he felt his eyes burn with tears—niki held on; he wondered if this was enough to taste your pain, or perhaps he needed to ask your father to break his nose before he could adequately fit his feet in your shoes. he wondered if his futile protectiveness had developed into an obsession, or perhaps it was normal for a boy to suffer with his lover.

“where is your mom?” he asked curiously, tapping his index finger against his knee. “where is she in all of this?”

“she’s afraid, niki,” you replied. “i don’t blame her.”

“well, i do,” he sneered. “she should divorce him and get you out of here. she should have done that years ago.”

“it’s not that easy,” you mused at his naivety. “besides, she loves him.”

he snorted, rolling his eyes and glancing at the silver doorknob. “what love? this is punishment.”

“when is one not the other?” you muttered offhandedly, not expecting a real answer from him.

it wasn’t that niki couldn’t articulate ideas of that calibre; he was just a very straightforward person. if he liked you, he would show it; if he didn’t, he would let you know. if there’s an issue, fix it. there was no such thing as cutting corners or walking on eggshells around a taboo topic. his answer to your question wouldn’t be nuanced because it shouldn’t have to be—love is never a punishment. if it feels like it, then it couldn’t be love.

besides, he never liked these kinds of questions in general.

“i came here for nothing then,” he said, not bothering to answer you.

you shook your head with an amused smirk. “i wouldn’t say for nothing. you’re keeping me company.”

“that’s not what i want,” he muttered to himself and turned to you. he found it difficult to say you worried him to death, so he didn’t. Instead, he pulled the pair of scissors from his pocket and showed it to you. “i should have been here earlier. i even brought a weapon.”

“no way,” you chuckled. “what were you going to do with it? stab my dad?”

niki played with the sharp object in his hand, his silence a sign of contemplation. his thoughts couldn’t replay themselves far enough for him to remember exactly why he grabbed the scissors in the first place, but he knew that during his frantic sprint to your apartment estate, he made up his mind. he saw blood frothing at his mouth as a potential aftermath of the decision, and he made up his mind that an act of violence and an act of love were two indistinguishable things.

lowering the weapon to his thigh, he turned to you. you two sat close, the origin of the proximity an unknown, subconscious story, and his eyes were as soft as his voice.

“i was ready to kill him for you.”

in that moment, as your neck soured as if you pulled a nerve, you wished your father had killed you.

“don’t be ridiculous,” you said as you tore your eyes away from his. “you’ll get–“ the words got caught in your throat for a second–“you’ll get in trouble.”

but he already knew that.

he may be hot-headed and immature, but you wouldn’t put it past him to understand the full scope of a murder’s consequences. you didn’t want to verbalize it for your sake, handing yourself the notion that he knew what would happen and still chose that path to keep you safe. neither were the lines printed between his actions and decisions lost on you; the fact that he belonged to you in ways no person should ever belong to another, all on his volition.

niki was the first boy who’s ever confessed an undone murder to you. he was the first boy who’s ever confessed his love for you.

he kept his eyes on you. you have your father’s features; every time you look into the mirror, you see a mixture of him and yourself, and you are reminded the very man you resemble doesn’t love you.

an act of violence and an act of love were two indistinguishable things. you wished he confessed to you differently, in the language you understood, the language of the damned. he also knew that, so the second time he confessed to you, it was through a split-second decision made in a hapless situation.

falling off a building has the same feeling as racing against the wind, except the end goal was death rather than suffocation, and he has no control over his legs. he wasn’t thinking about that, though. when he found himself hopping off the school roof after you, his fingers clutching the hem of your uniform to shelter you against his chest, he wasn’t thinking about how clear the air in mid-air was or how fast a human body could actually fall to the ground. he was thinking about something else, something morbid.

he thought about dying. perhaps with you in his arms, or the fall would break you out of his embrace. either way, he was content. amid the thought of a splattered brain and leaked blood, he was content.

niki was already awake and sitting by the infirmary bed when you opened your eyes. your head hammered the same as when you hit the ground, but you found it in yourself to take a peek at him. he looked exhausted, and his hair messier than ever. he caught your eyes and subtly sat straighter, his phone sliding off his knees to the floor.

“the tree growing in the backyard cushioned the fall,” he clarified as he leaned down to pick his phone up. “if you’re wondering how we didn’t die.”

“you jumped after me." it was all you could muster. your curiosity about his thought process was overwhelming.

he pursed his lips, his movement slowing a fraction when you reminded him of what he did. “yeah.”

trailing your eyes down, you saw that his arms were both bandaged, and his knuckles were red with afterimages of dry blood stains. if the tree—you suspected it was the one close to growing inside the school building—really tanked the fall, then the rough branches must have caught his skin a few heavy wounds. as for his knuckles—you looked down at your hands to recall what happened—it could have been him shielding the side of your head from hitting the floor, but you couldn’t be sure.

slowly sitting up to lean against the pillow, you eyed him with dissatisfaction. “was it worth it?”

“what was?” he questioned, mildly upset at your expression.

"trying to save me,” you said before gesturing toward his injuries to make a point.

“i wasn’t trying to save you,” he said after a pause, raising his brows as if you should have known that all along.

between the uncertainty of life and death, where he couldn’t be sure if you could live through this tragedy, niki figured it was better if he, too, ceased to exist. he wasn’t willing to bet his life on a miracle, nor was he willing to live in a world with untraceable leads of you hidden in every corner.

or, perhaps he wanted to die because you also wanted to die, like your brains were linked and you were two halves of one being. you could be the sword that kills the both of you—you have to be the sword that kills the both of you. once you plunge into him, he’d be glad that he got to feel your blood in his half of the body because that would finally render him whole.

“i was trying to die with you.”

the flicker in your eyes mimicked the thundering of an epiphany, and he knew that his confession was received well this time. you turned away to look out the window. the tree that saved you wasn't there, but it wasn't as if you planned to express gratitude anyway. you only looked away to avoid seeing the boy you've fundamentally changed from the first time you opened the door of your bathroom to his knocks, revealing to him a black eye and a bleeding nose.

"you really like me that much, niki," you said, but the sentence could be considered a question. any affection thrown towards you could be regarded with confusion.

"i do," he muttered.

you turned your head back to meet his eyes. "would you give me your heart?"

he never liked these kinds of questions.

"i'll feed it to you," he said, and he would.

he would chew his own heart into small pieces, carefully gather them on a spoon, and feed them to you.

you laughed lowly. "that's going to hurt a lot."

it would, as did his arms when the tree branches caught his falling weight, his back when he hit the ground with you close to his chest, and his legs when he ran across blocks to your home. everything about loving you would hurt him; his devotion to you would mirror your father's hands without him realizing it.

"it will," he joked while pulling the chair closer to the bed. "i bet my heart tastes like shit, but you're gonna have to eat it."

you laughed with him, and he suddenly remembered, when he was laying on the ground, his knuckles bloodied from shielding your head, your question about love and punishment, about how to decipher when one becomes the other.

when does love become a punishment?—

you trailed a finger across his bandage, your bottom lip jutting out without a promise that it wouldn't happen again.

—when it's real.

#i can probably figure out something around it #.post fic talk #koe.txt

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