My Personal Hatred

I walked down the empty streets—or maybe they weren’t empty at all. I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t really paying attention to anything these days. Some people would call that sad; I’d call it honest. Why bother looking when everything is soulless and fake in the end?

The streetlights blurred as I walked, their glow fading into nothing if I looked too long. Fitting. Everything in my life felt like that—fuzzy around the edges, like the world was half-there. Or maybe I was.

Seeing clearly didn’t matter anyway. The more you see, the more you realize how ugly things are.

I just kept walking, aimless. I had no idea where I even was at this point.

Somewhere along the way, the lights disappeared from my vision. My body felt strangely heavy, like I had to drag myself, one step at a time.

I didn’t notice the slope until it was too late. The ground tilted beneath me, and suddenly, I was falling. Gravel scraped against me as I tumbled, the world spinning in broken flashes of light and shadow. By the time I reached the bottom, everything had gone still. I felt the leaves beneath me. The wet ground seeped through my clothes, chilling me. I think I might have fallen quite a bit, actually.

One half of my face felt warm. It was a familiar warmth I’d met recently. Blood? Probably. I was just tired.

I sat up, pressing a hand to my cheek. My fingers came away wet and sticky, but I couldn’t make out what I’d touched. The air felt thick, clinging to my skin.

I stood up to go home. The blood didn’t matter. The pain didn’t matter. None of it did. They were just lies people told themselves, trying to make sense of things they’d never understand. Lies I’d stopped believing a long time ago.

I took one step after another, trying to get wherever. The street swayed beneath me like it couldn’t decide which way was up. My vision tunnelled, narrowing to a pinprick of light. Strange. I didn’t feel anything. So why did my legs stop working?

The last thing I saw was a figure above me, blurry and shadowed. They were saying something, but the words dissolved into static. Then, nothing. Just black.

“You’re awake,” a familiar voice greeted me. My vision blurred before settling on Hiura-sensei’s unimpressed scowl. “Congratulations. You’ve officially added ‘incompetent walker’ to your resume.”

“Where…?” My voice cracked. The rest of the question got lost somewhere in my throat.

“You’re in the hospital, genius,” she snapped, but her tone didn’t match the words. “They had to stitch you up and bandage your face. You’re lucky you didn’t lose more than your eye.”

I reached up to touch my right eye, but all I could feel was the bandage beneath my fingers. I sighed deeply. “So what are you doing here?”

“Excuse me?” she said, her tone suddenly sharp. I winced.

“I meant… thanks for being here,” I said quickly. Her expression softened—just a little.

I leaned back against the pillows beneath my head after I saw her settle down.

“So who was the lucky pedestrian who had to care for me?” I asked, more out of boredom than anything else.

Hiura-sensei hesitated, which wasn’t like her. Then she smirked. “Haniuda.”

That name stung a bit. “Right. As if.”

“Yeah,” she continued, leaning back in her chair. “I guess she doesn’t hate you that much after all. She ran for help when she saw you lying there. Carried you partway, too, before the paramedics stepped in.”

There weren’t many things that made me speechless, and it had been a while since my brain worked this hard to connect dots. Before I could finish piecing things together, Hiura-sensei’s voice cut through my spinning thoughts.

“You should thank her,” Hiura-sensei added, her smirk widening. “Maybe take her out. It’d make for a cute story.”

A date? Right. Like that would happen. Still, the image of her small frame dragging me to safety wouldn’t leave my head. Why would she care? I didn’t get it. I didn’t get her. My old image of her was cracking. Maybe that’s what bothered me the most.

“Actually, I’ll be busy recovering,” I said, using my injury as a deflection.

Hiura-sensei scowled. “When I said ‘maybe take her out,’ I meant you will.”

I sighed, too tired to argue. Before I could say anything else, she leaned over and pulled me into a quick, awkward hug. “I’m glad you’re okay,” she muttered, barely above a whisper.

And then, just as quickly, she pulled away, straightening her chair like nothing had happened.

After she left, some nurses came to check on me. A doctor stopped by to deliver the grave news: I’d never see out of my right eye again. Tch. Like I cared. It only annoyed me that they thought it mattered.

When they left, I was alone in the dark. The monitors beeped steadily, the occasional gust of wind rattling the window. I stared blankly at the ceiling, my thoughts as empty as the silence around me.

But then she crept in—Ai Haniuda. That annoying, stuck-up, aggressive girl I couldn’t seem to forget. I wonder why she helped? Was it guilt that made her follow me? Or something else? I wonder why I care…

I didn’t know I could still feel this way. Wounded. Vulnerable. It was disgusting —proof that no matter how much I tried to kill it, some part of me still cared. Some part of me still felt.

I remembered our first meeting. I know I was cruel. I thought I had to be. I still remember the way her face fell when I said those words, the brightness in her eyes dimming like someone had snuffed out a flame.

I made others suffer…for my own personal hatred. I really am disgusting, aren’t I?

I tried to shake it off, but the thoughts clung to me like the dark. All I could do now was stare at the ceiling, knowing that no matter how much I hated the world, I hated myself more.

Because, in the end, I was just as fake as everything else.