Chapter XVI - If You Tell Anyone, I’ll Kill You (VI)

I couldn't answer Minazuki-san—not honestly, and absolutely not without exposing the raw, vulnerable core that lay at the heart of my being.

The part of me that was so damaged, so broken, that it sought oblivion as a means of escape.

"Sometimes I think about it. A lot of the time, actually. But mostly I just... come up here to listen. For you," I admitted shamelessly.

"That's not an answer."

"I know."

"And it's not normal."

"I know that too."

"You're so damn exhausting," she sighed.

"I've been told that. By you, specifically."

"...At least you listen sometimes. Shit, I need a smoke."

Reflexively, she tried to pull out a smuggled pack of... cigarettes from her back pocket, but her mouth quivered upon seeing that there were no cigarettes in her pack. She had run out.

I grit my teeth at that.

A girl with a voice as beautiful as hers, ruining her vocal cords over a cancer stick. Just like that man.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, leaving us in the blue-gray twilight of early evening, I decided to switch topics before I potentially said anything I would regret.

"Um, Minazuki-san, may I ask you something?" I asked tentatively.

She shot me a look that was equal parts weariness and exasperation, but eventually nodded.

"Why do you sing in Italian?"

"...You recognized the language?"

"I... tried to look up the lyrics," I admitted sheepishly. "I didn't understand any of it, obviously, but... well, I wanted to know more."

"Are you really that obsessed with me?"

I felt my cheeks flush red hot, but not before she...

No.

This couldn't be happening.

Minazuki Serena giggled.

She was smiling at me, amusement dancing in her eyes and on her lips, which were curled upwards in a way that made my heart skip a beat. It was a rare sight, a glimpse of her humanity that she rarely allowed others to see. And for a fleeting moment, I was captivated by it.

Then it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared, leaving me feeling strangely bereft.

"Your obsession is kind of pathetic, but it's harmless enough, I guess," she eventually said before sitting on the railings and looking at the darkening sky. "I sing in Italian because no one can or will care to understand it. It's a good language to sing in, too, I guess."

"...I see."

A pause as we both stood there, bathed in the fading light of day, the silence stretching out between us like an endless sea.

"Then what do the words mean? The song you were singing just now."

For a moment, I thought she wouldn't answer. Then she said, so quietly I had to strain to hear:

"It's about being lost... searching for something that might not exist, calling out to someone who can't hear you, or who's forgotten how to listen."

And it was almost like she stared into my soul, seeing the darkness and despair that lurked within. Seeing the void that threatened to swallow me whole.

"Feelings that will never reach." We said in unison.

Her gaze held mine for a heartbeat, two, and then she looked away.

"It's not profound," she added quickly, as if regretting the admission. "It's just a stupid song made by a stupid person."

I moved towards the railings she was leaning on and leaned on them too. My eyes listlessly stared out towards the seemingly endless sea.

"It's beautiful."

She didn't reply immediately; instead, she took a slow, steady breath, as if bracing herself against some invisible onslaught.

"Your voice. I mean."

"...I know what you meant, Kagami. I'm just surprised you didn't take the coward's way out and say you were talking about the view."

I couldn't help but laugh at that, albeit a little bitterly.

"Why do you hate yourself so much?"

She stared intently at me, those piercing blue eyes boring into my own.

"I don't—"

"Don't waste my time with lies. I've seen enough of you to know."

"I guess... I just never learned how not to," I replied, averting my gaze to the ground as I shakily held on to the railings. "It's not easy, you know? Being me. Everyone expects things from you, wants things from you, and if you can't give it to them... well, then what good are you?"

"That's not an excuse to kill yourself."

"It's the only one I have."

The wind picked up, tugging at loose strands of her scarlet hair. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. Below us, the school grounds had emptied, the last after-school workers long gone.

We existed in a pocket of time separate from the world—just the two of us, the wind, and the darkening horizon.

"You know what I think?" she began. "I think you're too afraid to live, but you're also too scared to die. So you exist in this... limbo. This half-life. It's killing you."

I wanted to argue, to refute her claims, but the words died in my throat. Because she wasn't wrong. Not entirely. There was truth in her assessment of me—a brutal, unflinching truth that cut through the lies I told myself like a razor-sharp blade.

But it didn't make it hurt any less.

"Is that really what you see when you look at me?"

"Yes. Someone who's given up without trying and someone who smiles to hide the pain he's in. It's exhausting to watch."

"I'm sorry to be such a burden on your sight," I muttered, stung despite myself.

"That's not what I meant." She turned to face me fully. "What I meant is that you're wasting whatever potential you might have. You're so busy trying to be what everyone else wants that you've forgotten who you are."

"And who is that?"

"How should I know? But, the problem is that you don't either. And until you figure it out, you're going to keep being miserable."

Minazuki Serena was a girl who didn't operate in the sphere of platitudes and hidden meanings common among us in Japan, I would say. She came from a country where her sense of self was molded by the bluntness of the Italian language.

So, when she spoke, there was no subtext to her words.

She simply said what she meant.

And what she said now was that I was living a lie—that I was so desperate for validation from others that I had lost sight of my own identity. And maybe she was right. Maybe I had become so adept at playing the role of the dutiful son, the perfect student, the reliable friend, that I had forgotten how to be myself.

"Will you sing again on the roof?" I asked, desperate to change the subject before the weight of her perception crushed me entirely.

She shrugged, a graceful rise and fall of one shoulder.

"Maybe."

"And if I happen to be here too...?"

"Don't push it, Kagami."

"Right. Sorry."

Another pause, and then:

"I'm leaving. It's getting cold."

The scarlet bombshell gathered her things and slung her bag over her shoulder. The movement wafted her scent toward me—something expensive and foreign, the familiar crushed flowers and spice.

"Wait!"

She paused, looking at me over her shoulder with a mix of curiosity and impatience.

"What is it?"

"That song you were singing before, what was it called?"

She paused at the doorway, gorgeously silhouetted against the stairwell light. For a moment, I thought she might ignore the question entirely.

"Echi Perduti."

"It's beautiful."

"Yes. My mother… made it."

"Your mother? Ah! That's right, Violetta Minazuki, right?"

She stiffened at the mention of her name.

"Goodnight, Kagami," the scarlet bombshell said, and then she was gone, the heavy metal door swinging shut behind her.

And then she was gone, leaving me alone on the rooftop with the wind and the stars and the faint echo of her voice still hanging in the air. It was something something real. It was something I could hold onto.

For the first time in five years, I felt something stir inside me. Something that had been dormant for so long, I had almost forgotten its existence.

I stayed on the roof for a long time, watching as the city lights blurred through tears I hadn't realized I was shedding. When I finally left, I didn't look back at the railing, at the drop, at the concrete below.

I didn't need to.

I would come back tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that.

Not to end anything.

But to begin.