The Unholy Communion

The silence was a physical weight, thick and suffocating, pressing against the car’s windows. Kousuke gripped the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the road, but he didn't know how to reach across the seat. Beside him, Yuuto had curled into a tight, prickly ball. He was like a hedgehog with its quills raised, a wall of sharp, silent defiance that Kousuke’s gentle platitudes couldn't penetrate.

When they reached the house, Yuuto went straight to his room. There was no goodnight kiss, no nighttime prayer, no lingering look. The 'Normal' Kousuke facade had cracked in the pews, and now he could only helplessly watch the boy walk away.

That night, the ghosts didn't stay in the corners of the room. They came for Yuuto in his sleep.

He didn't dream of abstract shadows. He dreamed of the heat, of the vivid memory of the hallway. The gunsmoke was thick enough to taste, a dry burn at the back of his throat. He heard the screaming—a chorus of voices he knew, cut short one by one. He felt the weight of the bodies piling up, the metallic, iron-rich scent of blood that wasn't his. It was hot, viscous, and everywhere.

In the dream, he could smell his mother's perfume mixing with the chemical burn of gunpowder. He could feel the weight of her hand on his head, pushing him down, her voice a desperate whisper: "Stay small, stay quiet, stay alive." He was back beneath the desk, pulling his knees to his chest, trying to make himself smaller than a heartbeat.

Yuuto woke up with a jagged scream trapped behind his clenched teeth.

He kicked the blankets off as if they were hands trying to drag him back down. He didn't turn on the light. He ran out of the room, his bare feet slapping against the cold floorboards, driven by a primal need for sanctuary. He burst into Kousuke’s bedroom, but the bed was empty, the sheets perfectly smooth.

Yuuto scrambled down the stairs, his breathing shallow and frantic.

Kousuke was in the living room, the blue light of his laptop illuminating his face like a mask of glass. He was working late, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Yuuto tried to speak, but his voice was a broken thing, a series of incoherent whimpers. Kousuke stood up abruptly. His face froze—a look of pure panic. He reached out, his hand hovering in the air like a bird afraid to land, his voice deliberate and shaky.

“You’re okay now, Yuuto. It’s... it was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

Yuuto snapped his head up. In the dim light, his eyes were wide, glittering with a terrifying mixture of disappointment and betrayal. He stepped back, his face crumbling. The dam he had built—the one that allowed him to be the 'good boy'—finally gave way.

“I want to be normal, but I can’t,” Yuuto sobbed, the sound raspy and raw. “I want to stop pretending. I’m so tired, Kou-san.”

“Then don't.”

The voice didn't come from the man standing by the laptop.

Yuuto flinched. Through the haze of his tears, he sensed the shift before he saw it. It wasn't dramatic—no flickering lights or sudden movements. It was subtle, like the moment when a shadow changes direction as the sun moves across the sky.

The man hadn't moved, yet everything about him was different. His breathing had changed, slower and more deliberate. His shoulders had shifted from the protective hunch of the social worker to something looser, more predatory. Even the way the light hit his face seemed different, casting shadows in places that had been soft moments before.

The laptop was closed now, though Yuuto hadn't seen him close it.

Kousuke sat back down on the couch. His legs were crossed wide, his chin resting on his hand in a posture of bored, dark amusement. The 'Normal' Kousuke had vanished into the shadows of the room.

“Don’t pretend to be normal, Yuuto,” the other Kousuke said, his voice a low, soothing purr. “Because you are broken. This is who you are. This is who we are now.”

Yuuto continued to sob, his palms pressed so hard against his eyes that he saw stars. The tears leaked between his fingers anyway, hot and salty and somehow shameful. His nose was running now, and his breathing came in ugly, hitching gasps that made his whole body shake. “No... it’s not...”

“Then why are you still coming back to me?” The man smiled. It wasn't sadistic; it was worse. It was a declaration of truth. “It’s because you know there’s nothing on the other side for you. The 'Normal' world has no place for a kitten that’s tasted blood.”

Yuuto’s sobs turned into a quiet, rhythmic whimper. He wiped his face with his sleeve, looking up at the monster on the couch with a terrifying sense of recognition.

“Look at you,” Kousuke murmured, taking a slow, deliberate sip of his whiskey. “This is the first time I’ve really seen you. The real you.”

Yuuto looked up at him. In the dim light, Kousuke's eyes were different—darker, more focused. Like a scientist studying something fascinating under a microscope.

"The others see a victim," Kousuke continued, "The teachers, the counselors, even the other me. They see something broken that needs fixing."

"And you?"

"I see something that was already perfect. Just not for their world."

Yuuto hated the weakness. He hated the vulnerability that made him feel small and pitiful. But beneath the hate was a surge of relief so powerful it made his knees weak. He was finally being seen.

“Come here,” Kousuke said and opened his arm wide.

The tone was casual, a mockery of fatherly warmth. Yet Yuuto was drawn to it. He ran across the room, his bare feet silent on the floorboards. The air smelled different—cigarettes and whiskey and something darker. When he threw himself into Kousuke's lap, the man's shirt was soft cotton, worn and warm, but his hands were cold when they settled on Yuuto's back.

It was an embrace that felt less like a hug and more like a trap—the suffocating, deadly coil of a python around its chosen prey. Yuuto didn't care. He craved the pressure. He let the darkness consume him, finding love in the very thing that should have terrified him.

“I know one thing that can soothe the pain,” Kousuke whispered into the boy’s hair, his voice almost sing-song. “Though only temporarily.”

Yuuto didn't look up. He nestled deeper into the man’s chest, holding on as if he were dangling over an abyss.

“It’s holy water,” Kousuke said, letting out a hollow, dry laugh. “Wanna try?”

He took another sip of the whiskey, then looked down at the child in his arms. Yuuto finally pulled back, looking at the man with a gaze that was far too old for his face. 

The bottle drew his eyes—the amber liquid glowed in the dim light like liquid fire, like stained glass in church when sunlight struck it just right.

“Think of it like the blood of Christ you had in church,” Kousuke murmured, his eyes dark and knowing. “Same difference.”

His mother had never let him taste alcohol. "Not until you're grown up," she'd said once, laughing, when he'd asked about the wine at communion. "These things are for adults who've learned how to carry heavy things."

But what did it mean to be grown up? Was it about age, or about the weight of what you'd seen?

He was eleven. He'd watched people die. He'd hidden under a desk while the world ended around him. Did that count?

It didn't matter anymore. She was dead anyway.

The glass was warm when Kousuke pressed it into his palm. The whiskey burned going down, but not in a bad way. Like swallowing starlight—bright and strange and somehow comforting. Like a lie that worked.

"There," Kousuke murmured, watching him with those predatory eyes. "Now you taste like me."