She was laughing

Yota's heart spasmed and his stomach flipped as if he had missed the last step of a staircase. When he lifted his head, he found Hikari standing over him with an unreadable expression and icy eyes. She almost didn't look like the same person.

“Why – why are you saying that?” he stammered.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “I'm just agreeing with you.”

The dog monster was gone, as was everything else. It was as though the entire building had never been more than a wishful thought. He could only see Hikari, outlined by a faint unearthly white light. Only her anger. Only her disappointment.

“I – I'm sorry.” His hand trembled as he reached for hers. “I – I really am.”

“So what?” She didn't move from where she was but her soul seemed to take a back, away from him. “Do you think saying will bring me back? Will it change what you said to me?”

“I didn't mean it,” he sniffled, lowering his arm. He clutched the pendent swinging from his wrist and felt his pulse working frantically against its rounded edge. “I swear I didn't mean it. If I'd known that would happen to you –”

“What happened to me, Yota?”

His breath hitched. “You know what happened.”

“Tell me,” she insisted, and the thought of looking at her expression was as appealing as pressing a pair of scissors into his eyes.

“No,” he said. The pendant bars dug painfully into the thin skin of his inner wrist and his voice cracked. “Please don't make me say it.”

“Why not?” Her acidic chuckle dissolved his several sections of his heart. “Is it because then you'd have to believe you're to blame for real, instead of just acting like that to get my forgiveness?”

Tears streamed down either side of his face and converged at his chin before dripping into the darkness below him.

“I'm not acting,” he sobbed. “You don't have to forgive me for anything. Just – just don't leave me here. Please.”

“Why shouldn't I?” she asked bitterly. “After the way you treated me, why should I stay anywhere near you?”

“Because I – because you're my family.” He hid his misery behind both hands again, his skin frozen like that of a corpse.

“You're not supposed to turn your back on your family, Yota,” she reminded him. “But you did. You chose to say what you said to me and do what you did. I didn't make you do any of it.”

“I know,” he whispered brokenly. “I know you didn't but –”

“But what?”

It might have been the disbelief in her question or the dismissiveness of her tone. He gathered the fragments of his self-esteem and held them close until they pierced his soul. Until the pain forced him to throw up feelings that had been rotting inside him for the last three months.

“You're the one who left me first.” Like his tears, vitriolic words burst out of him in a uncontrollable flood far more toxic than the tentacled monster's secretions. “I was wrong but I'm not the only one who did something wrong, am I?”

“Oh?” Ruthless laughter clouded her voice and his throat convulsed. “Aren't you?”

Hikari laughed at him as if his pain was a sick joke. As if he had been born solely for the amusement of those who hated him. She was laughing at his helplessness just like the fire monster had. Just like his mum and everyone else had.

“I wouldn't have been thinking about you that day if you'd been there with me,” he said breathlessly, forcing himself to scan her face for guilt. For any trace of the woman he had grown up with. “You were supposed to watch me, just like I watched you back then. But – but you didn't and now I can't see. I can't see anything.”

She stared at him pitilessly and he sank forward as if his spine had melted with an agonised moan. He clawed at his temples, his forehead resting on the dark surface beneath him.

“Are you saying it's my fault that the ball hit you?” asked Hikari tightly. “Are you saying you lost everything because of me?”

“No!” Not even the vehemence of his denial could move his body from its foetal position. He dug his nails into his scalp until they reminded him of the corner of a wooden house. “It's not your fault. I didn't mean that.”

“Yes, you did.” Her voice was quiet.

Now Hikari was also in pain because of him. As if she hadn't already suffered enough on his behalf.

“I'm sorry,” he said, choking on tears and mucus. “I never wanted you to go through the same thing. I never wanted you to know what that was like. I'm so sorry, Hikari.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. “You're not happy I'm gone?”

“No,” he said at once.

“But now no one will compare you to me any more,” she pointed out. He could picture the sweet but anguished smile on her face right now and he couldn't breathe. “No one will wonder why someone as amazing as me is hanging out with someone as useless as you.”

That wasn't something Hikari would say. Even if she was angry at him, even if he had hurt her feelings, she had never made him feel like he was inferior to her. Ever. The observation was a ghostly claw running down the centre of his brain. His chest heaved against his palms and he tried to get his breathing back under control first.

“Are you sure you want me to stay?” she probed. “With me out of the way, people might finally start to see you. Isn't that what you've always wanted?”

“No.” He shook his head fiercely, scrabbling until he caught hold of her trouser leg. “I don't want that.”

“Liar.” She sighed but didn't move as he used her to pull himself upright.

She had clearly grown used to it over the years. He squeezed his eyes shut as shame tried to steal the resolve from his limbs.

“I'm not lying!” he said heatedly, burying his face in the semi-firm folds of her stomach. “I've never wanted that. I just wanted to catch up with you one day. I wanted to us to be able to protect each other for once. That's all.”

She didn't say anything. He gripped the back of her shirt, and the tenderness of his forearms and hands paled in comparison to the deep ache in his chest.

“I wanted to stay with you,” he confessed. “No matter where you went, no matter where else I wanted to go, I didn't care as long as I got to be next to you in the end. But you left me, just – just like everyone else.”

Even if she had had nothing to say, Hikari would have ruffled his hair or patted him on the shoulder. She would have tilted his head back until she could tap his nose, if only to stall her response until she found the best way to express her thoughts fully.

“Hey, Hikari?” Desperation tightened his arms around her body and sent tremors through his. “Do you think I'm supposed to be lonely?”

She finally reacted, laying a hand on his left shoulder. The burnt one. He winced.

“I never get the right kind of attention from anyone,” he continued, forcing the words out between his teeth as her clenched fingers aggravated his already raw skin. “People don't normally like me and, even when they do, it's never as much as anyone likes you. Even when I do everything you taught me to. Even if I'm kind, or if I smile at them, or if I do my best to help people, they never want to do the same for me. And, as soon as I can't do those things any more, they disappear. They've never loved me like they love you.”

He gasped as she tightened her grip, his scorched skin crying out in protest. It was as if she wanted him to stop talking. As if, for the first time, she had no interest in whatever he had to say to her. The idea alone nearly silenced him completely.

“Why? Why is it always like that?” He shuffled closer, his knees throbbing against under his own weight. Her shirt moistened against his eyes. “Why do people always treat me like that? Even you. Is it really all my fault? Is it because I deserve it?”

Hikari would never hurt him on purpose. The person in front of him grabbed a handful of his hair when he tried to resist and dragged him to his feet. The violence of her actions made him stumble and fix his gaze on the abyss below them.

“Hikari,” he said, sniffling as she released him and drew back her hands as if he were filthy. “Are you a monster too?”

The absence of light, of her usual comforting voice, nearly undid him completely in the time between his question and her answer. He flinched as she lifted a hand, his eyes widening as she touched the tip of his nose with her forefinger.

“What do you think, Yota?” She sounded both amused and heartbroken.

Before he could check her face and confirm whether or not either of those emotions were real, she splayed her hand against his heart and pushed him into the elevator shaft. Or where it would have been, if he could still see it. He fell noiselessly through the darkness, way past the third floor. The second. The first. And, right before he hit the ground, he worked out the answer to her final question.

Hikari wasn't the monster.

He was.