I’m sick to my stomach.

We didn’t walk to lecture together this morning, but considering the heavy atmosphere between us through maths that’s probably a good thing. The tension is so palpable it’s hard to breathe.

Well, for me at least. I’m unsure as to whether she’s hiding it well or if she genuinely doesn’t feel the same crushing anticipation I do, but her expression is back to its usual unreadable flatness.

Thanking the lord above that I’m not popular enough to be hounded with “what happened?” questions about by forehead, I manage to get through the lesson and even actually understand some of the integrals we were tasked to solve, but the whole time my mind wanders to what Hanji said yesterday.

‘We’re eating lunch together tomorrow. Don’t invite anyone else.’

After my ridiculous confession yesterday (which I’d like to blame on my head trauma) I assumed she wouldn’t even want to look in my direction. And yet, somehow, her wanting to spend time with me privately is the more terrifying option.

As the lesson ends and I start to pack my mag, Hanji grabs my hand and practically drags me all the way to the roof. Not running at twice my speed, but gripping tight enough that the circulation in my hand feels restricted. She lets go of my hand and picks the lock faster than I’ve ever seen her do, then drags me out onto the roof and closes the door behind us.

“Sit.”

Impatient doesn’t begin to describe how she’s acting. Her face is still as flat as ever, but her tone tells me that she wants to get started with… whatever it is she called me for here as soon as possible. I take a seat in the place we normally sit, right by the giant fence surrounding the roof, and wait to hear what she has to say.

Despite her impatience up to this point, she dillydallies for a bit before she sits down next to me.

“I… need to tell you about something.” She twitches a little as she speaks. Whatever it is that she’s planning to talk about, it must be causing her a great deal of distress.

“I’m all ears. Tell me whatever you need to.” Voicing my support seems to make her relax a little more, but she’s still on edge. Up to this point, I’ve pretty much only seen her either calm and collected or in an indescribable rage. This new attitude catches me off guard. She seems… nervous, I think?

After a minute or so of posturing and fidgeting, she eventually breaks the silence and speaks.

“This is fucking stupid. I shouldn’t be so anxious. Look, I dragged you here cos I wanna tell you about my past, okay?”

That… is not what I was expecting. I thought she might be about to tell me that we can’t hang out anymore because my confession made her uncomfortable, or that she never wants me to say “I love you” to her again or something. She’s opening up to me?

“Okay… can I ask what brought this on?”

“I just… since I’m rejecting you because of my own ‘problems,’ I figured you at least deserve to know why I have those problems in the first place.”

Ah. I’ve heard about this before. While psychopaths are born the way they are, sociopaths normally become sociopaths because of something during their childhood. She wants to tell me about what it was that made her this way.

“You don’t owe me anything, y’know. If you don’t wanna talk about this, you have no obligation to.”
“No, I’m doing this. I can’t think of any other way to get rid of this shitty feeling I have.”
“O-Okay. Well, I’m listening.”

Shitty feeling? I knew she was pissed off yesterday, but I thought her anger had subsided. And this doesn’t look like anger. It’s hard to tell what it is, but it’s not anger. Just what is bringing Hanji down so much?

She sighs pretty heavily, seemingly genuine and not theatrical this time.

“Alright, here goes. I think everything started when I was seven or eight, when my dad died. I don’t exactly remember when that happened, that whole era of my life is a little blurry. Anyway, before that, me and my family lived a pretty good life. My mum and dad were a model couple, I was happy at school, and my older sister was pretty much the star of our family.”

She’s never mentioned an older sister before. It could just be that it’s never come up before now, but the tinge of pain in her voice tells me there’s a deeper reason.

“When dad’s diagnosis came in, the cracks had already started to show. Late stage brain cancer. Completely inoperable. Mum was distraught, to no one’s surprise. In the month or so before he passed, she was cold. Uncaring. Some days barely being willing to feed us. So when he finally died, she cracked. Instead of uncaring, she actively hated me. Instead of neglect, she was outright abusive. It was bad when Akina, my sister, was still at home, but once she left for university, it just kept getting worse and worse.”

Her thousand yard stare just gets more and more distant as she talks. She doesn’t look like she’s despairing or angry. Just… completely empty.

“Anyway, that’s when her abusive behaviour became too much to handle. Before that it was just neglect and verbal abuse, but after Akina left she went ballistic. That’s when the screaming started. And the beating. And the… touching. Every bit of pain she was feeling at the loss of her husband, she projected onto me. I wasn’t her daughter. I was her stress ball. And she knew just how much she could squeeze me without my body breaking. She was surgical, inflicting pain on me in every way she could think of that wouldn’t leave permanent damage. Well, physical damage.”

I try to prevent myself from grimacing, but I doubt she even notices. She may be looking in my direction, but there’s nothing in her eyes. Now that her anxiety has seemingly settled, she seems completely hollow.

It’s hard to even listen to. She survived a living hell, worse than anything I could imagine. The pang of guilt I always feel when I make judgements about her based on her ASPD is stronger than ever before.

Of course she struggles to see people as people. The person who was supposed to be her guiding light in the world subjected her to misery that no child should ever have to go through.

I almost feel sick.

“It must have been seven or eight years that I endured it, but there was one event that made the situation hit it’s breaking point. The trigger, I guess.” She pauses, and her face tells me this is harder to talk about than anything until now.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I can tell this is hurting you.”
“No, I said I was gonna do it, so I’m gonna do it.”

Her face twitches a little, but after a few deep breaths to compose herself, she continued.

“It was the day my mother died. The day I murdered her.”