‘Why, Shin?’
"Exactly." This word repeated in my mind multiple times after hearing it from Akane.
As that melancholic music kept playing, the steam from the Lapsang Souchong tea curled between us, a dark, smoky ribbon that seemed to be the only thing binding me to the physical world.
I stared into the dark amber depths of the mug after Akane stood up from the sofa to pour some other tea into it. My reflection was a distorted, pale blur that seemed to shimmer and dissolve with every tremor of my hands.
I felt like a ghost haunting my own body—my limbs were heavy, as if my veins had been filled with cold mercury, and my thoughts were muffled by a thick, suffocating layer of static.
The warmth of the tea against my palms felt as if it came from a vast, unreachable distance, a faint signal from a world I no longer belonged to.
The pain I experienced from seeing my childhood friend being taken away seemed to be in a sort of stand-by. It wasn't there, for the moment.
Akane sat again at the other end of the grey sofa, her legs tucked beneath her.
As I took a better look at her, she didn't look like the cold girl I saw in the hallways of our school.
Without the oversized black hoodie, in the dim, amber-lit sanctuary of her apartment, she looked like a shadow that had finally decided to take human form.
The light from a single floor lamp behind her cast long, jagged shadows across the room, catching the silver glint of the rings in her ears and the sharp, defiant angle of her jaw.
"Why, Shin?"
Her voice was low, a velvety rasp that cut through the humming silence of the room like a serrated blade. It wasn't an accusation; it wasn't even a condemnation. It was a clinical, almost curious question, the kind a scientist might ask a specimen that had survived a fatal dose of radiation.
I didn't look up. My eyes remained fixed on the tea leaves settling at the bottom of the cup.
"Why... what?" I said, still staring at the bottom of the mug.
"Why her? For seven years." She leaned forward, the movement bringing the scent of sandalwood and something sharper—ink and old leather—closer to me. "I watched you. I watched you for two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days. Everyone in that hellhole of a school watched you. You weren't a boyfriend, or even a friend, Shin. You were a servant. A priest at the altar of a goddess who didn't even bother to learn the liturgy of your soul. Why did you let yourself be hollowed out for a promise made in a sandbox by two children who didn't even know how to tie their own shoes?"
Her word caught me off guard. I remember my friend Daiki telling me that 'everyone in the school knew we were a married couple.' Guess that I was wrong.
"It wasn't just a promise," I whispered. My voice sounded foreign to my own ears, thin and reedy, like wind whistling through a hollow bone. "It was... it was the foundation. We were together every day. I knew the exact temperature she liked her cocoa. I knew which side of the street she preferred to walk on so the sun wouldn't hit her eyes. I knew her fear of spiders and her love for old French films. I thought that if I stayed, if I was loyal enough, the world would eventually align. I thought loyalty was the highest virtue a man could possess."
"Loyalty to a parasite isn't a virtue, Shin. It's a slow-motion suicide. Did she ever do something for you?"
My body twitched, her words piercing like glass.
Akane set her mug down on the coffee table with a soft clink that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room and then slid across the cushions, moving with the fluid, predatory grace of a creature that lived in the dark, until she was inches away.
She didn't touch me yet, but I could feel the heat radiating from her body—a fierce, living warmth that mocked the icy void in my chest.
"You think you knew her," Akane continued, her tone softening into something dangerously sweet, like poison dipped in nectar. She tilted her head, watching the way I flinched at the mention of Kurone. "You think you were her confidant, her secret keeper. But do you want to know what she said about you when you weren't around? When the 'angel' mask slipped, and it was just her and me sitting in the back of a café or walking through the mall?"
I closed my eyes, the static in my brain growing louder, a white-noise scream. "I don't... I don't want to know, Akane. Please."
"Too bad. You need to wake up, ghost boy. You need to see the blood on the floor before you can start cleaning it up." She reached out, her fingers—cool, firm, and smelling faintly of nicotine and expensive soap—tracing the line of my jaw.
She didn't just touch me; she gripped me, forcing my head up until I had no choice but to look into those golden, predatory eyes.
"She never talked about your feelings, Shin. Not once in seven years. When your name came up, it was never about your kindness or your talent. It was a utility report. 'Shin did my chemistry project.' 'Shin bought me those shoes I wanted.' 'Shin waited three hours in the rain for me.' To her, you weren't a person. You were a recurring feature in her environment. Like a comfortable chair she could kick when she was frustrated, or a loyal dog she could ignore until she was hungry for attention."
A sharp pang of denial flickered in my gut, a dying ember of the boy I used to be. "She... she called me her best friend. She said I was the only one who truly understood her."
"Of course she did!" Akane laughed, a short, sharp sound that had no humor in it. "She said that to keep the leash tight. She used to laugh at how easy you were to manage. She told me once—right after you'd spent your entire allowance on a birthday gift for her—that she didn't have to worry about finding 'the one' because she knew you'd always be there as a safety net. You were her insurance policy against loneliness, Shin. You weren't her choice. You were her backup plan for when the world stopped looking at her."
The words were like needles, precisely placed into the nerve endings of my memory.
I felt the last of my defenses—those pathetic, sun-drenched excuses I'd made for her over the years—crumble into ash.
The image of Kurone—the radiant, innocent girl of the sunset, the one who'd promised to marry me—shattered into a thousand jagged pieces of glass that cut me from the inside out.
"I gave her seven years of my life that nobody is gonna give me back," I choked out.
The first tear of the evening escaped, hot and stinging, tracing a path through the dust of my soul.
"I gave her everything I was. I didn't even look at the other girls. I didn't have a life that didn't revolve around her happiness."
"And she threw it away for a guy who has the depth of a sidewalk puddle because he has a flashy smile and a letterman jacket," Akane said. Her voice dropped to a whisper, a dark promise.
She moved her hand from my jaw, her palm resting flat against my chest, right over my thumping, broken heart.
I could feel her heartbeat through her hand, or maybe it was mine, finally reacting to the proximity of something real.
"She forfeited her right to you. The moment she took those roses from Kenji, she broke the contract. And in doing so, she handed you over to the only person who actually saw the masterpiece beneath the doormat."
She had already said those words, but only now have I really listened.
Her touch was possessive, clearly different from the chaste, accidental brushes I'd shared with Kurone over the years.
This was clearly a claim. Akane looked like a snake, coiling around me, offering a warmth that felt like it could either save me from the freezing rain or consume me entirely.
And in my state—passive, broken, and utterly drained of will—I found I didn't care which it was.
"You're trembling," she murmured, her thumb tracing the hollow of my throat. "You still smell like her. That cheap, bad perfume she douses herself in to hide the fact that she's hollow. It's disgusting. It's a mark of ownership that doesn't exist anymore."
She stood up abruptly, her grip on my hand tightening as she pulled me up from the sofa.
I followed her like an automaton, my legs moving with a heavy, rhythmic clumsiness as she led me down the narrow hallway of her apartment, past the stacks of amplifiers and the dark shapes of her guitars, until we reached the bathroom.
"Bathroom," she commanded, pointing toward the door. "The water is hot. There's a bottle of soap in there—peppermint and cedar. It's strong. Scrub until your skin is raw, Shin. Scrub until every trace of her, every memory of that courtyard, every molecule of her influence is washed down the drain. I won't have her ghost haunting the air in my house."
"Akane, I don't have any clothes... I can't just—"
"Go," she said, her eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp intensity that brooked no argument. "I've laid out a change of clothes for you on the counter. Forget the uniform. It's a costume for a canceled play. It's trash now." She added, pointing the pile of clothes.
"Okay... I'll... go." That's the only thing I said.
"Don't take too much time." She replied.
Without asking any further questions, I grabbed the clothes on the counter and then walked into the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind me with a finality that made my breath hitch.
The room was small, lit by a cool white light that felt clinical and smelled of Akane's life—sharp, clean, and uncompromising.
I stripped off the navy blazer and Akane's hoodie and dropped them onto the floor. The shirt followed. Then, the tie.
I stood naked before the mirror for a long moment, looking at the boy I had become.
I looked pale, my ribs showing slightly, my eyes rimmed with red. I looked like a casualty of a war I hadn't even realized I was fighting.
I stepped into the shower and turned the handle to the limit.
The water was scalding. It stung my skin, a physical pain that I welcomed because it was simpler, more manageable than the mental agony of the day.
After a few minutes, I grabbed the peppermint soap and the loofah, scrubbing my arms, chest, and neck.
I wanted to peel off the top layer of my skin. I wanted to be new.
I stayed there until the mirror was entirely fogged over and my lungs felt heavy with steam, until my skin was a deep, angry red.
When I finally stepped out, the world felt slightly more solid.
I dried myself with a thick, charcoal-grey towel that smelled like sandalwood.
On the vanity, there was a pile of clothes: a pair of oversized black joggers and a faded black t-shirt with a white moth printed on the chest.
I dressed slowly. The clothes were large on me, the fabric soft and worn in.
Moreover, they carried Akane's scent—a mixture of smoke, cedar, and something uniquely her. I felt like I was wearing a disguise, or perhaps, for the first time in my life, I was finally wearing the truth.
I pushed open the bathroom door and stepped back into the main room.
The apartment had changed in the thirty minutes I'd been gone.
The main lights were off, replaced by a series of low-voltage lamps that cast a warm, orange glow over everything.
A record was spinning on the turntable—a low, atmospheric track with a deep, pulsing bass and a distorted trumpet that sounded like a lonely heart in a crowded city, and the scent of incense was thicker now, a heavy veil of sandalwood that seemed to push the rest of the world away.
"Akane?" I called out. My voice was slightly more stable, though the apathy still sat heavy in my gut.
"By the window."
She was standing with her back to me, looking out at the city. The rain had intensified, turning the window into a shimmering wall of water that reflected the neon lights of the district below—streaks of electric blue, poison green, and blood red.
I froze at the threshold of the room.
Akane had changed. Or rather, she had stripped. She was standing there in nothing but a simple, black lace bra and her shorts.
In the school hallway, hidden under oversized hoodies, heavy boots, and her "don't touch me" attitude, Akane always looked like a jagged, rebellious tomboy.
But here, stripped of her armor, she was a revelation.
Her body was toned and athletic, the lean, hard muscles of someone who spent their spare time boxing or climbing rather than chasing popular boys.
Her skin was pale, almost luminous in the twilight of the room, and adorned with a map of small, intentional tattoos I had never seen.
There was a geometric moth on her left collarbone, its wings spread wide, and a snake coiled around her ribs on the right side, its head resting near her heart. And also a series of ancient-looking runes ran down the inside of her left forearm.
The most striking thing was her posture. She didn't try to hide herself, and she didn't look shy or embarrassed that I was seeing her this way.
She stood there with a terrifying, absolute confidence, her back arched slightly as she watched the rain, her silhouette a masterpiece of defiance.
I felt a sudden, violent jolt in my chest—a spark of something that wasn't grief, wasn't apathy, and certainly wasn't the romantic pining I had felt for Kurone.
It was something raw. Primal.
For the first time in my life, I wasn't looking at a "girl" to be protected or a "friend" to be helped. I was looking at a woman who was entirely, unapologetically herself, and who held all the power in the room.
She turned slowly, her golden eyes raking over me. They moved from my damp hair, down the oversized t-shirt, to my bare feet on the hardwood.
"Finally," she said, her voice a low, vibrating purr. "You don't smell like a victim anymore. You smell like my house."
I couldn't move. My vocal cords felt like they had been fused together. I just stood there, my eyes tracing the curve of her shoulder, the way the silver rings in her ears caught the orange lamp-light, the sheer, unadulterated strength she radiated.
"What's the matter, Shin?" she asked. A slow, knowing smirk spread across her lips—the smile of a predator that had finally cornered its prey and found it to be exactly what she wanted.
She stepped away from the window, walking toward me until she was so close I could see the individual drops of water still clinging to the tips of her dark hair. "Never seen a girl before? Or just never seen one who wasn't pretending to be a porcelain doll for the masses?"
"You're... you're beautiful," the words escaped my lips before I could process them. They felt heavy, honest in a way I hadn't been since I was ten years old.
Akane's smirk didn't falter, but her eyes darkened, the gold turning to a deep, molten amber.
She reached out, her hand sliding up the back of my neck, her fingers tangling in my damp hair with a firm, possessive grip. She pulled me down slightly, forcing me to meet her gaze, to see the hunger and the triumph swirling there.
"I told you," she whispered, her breath warm against my lips, smelling of the bitter tea. "She threw away a masterpiece because she was too shallow to appreciate anything that wasn't shiny and new. But I don't plan on letting it go to waste. You're in my sanctuary now, Shin. The world outside no longer exists. Kenji doesn't exist. That sandbox doesn't exist. And Kurone... she's just a ghost you used to know."
She leaned in, her forehead resting against mine. I was still in a daze, still drifting in that dissociative fog, but for the first time, the fog felt warm.
It felt like a choice.
I didn't reach out to touch her—not yet, my hands were still learning how to be mine again—but I let myself lean into her. I let her take the weight of my broken existence, just for a moment.
"I'm going to fix you," she promised, a dark, velvet vow that resonated in my very bones. "I'm going to make you forget you ever wanted to be anything but mine. I'm going to fill every empty space she left in you with something much harder, much truer."
As the atmospheric jazz hummed in the background and the city lights blurred into a kaleidoscope behind her, I realized Akane was right.
There was no escape, and as I looked at her—fierce, beautiful, and completely dominant—I realized I probably didn't want to escape.
In that moment, I wanted to disappear into the sandalwood and the static. I wanted to let the old, pathetic Shin die in the rain so that whatever she wanted to build could take his place.
The boy who loved Kurone had been murdered in a courtyard. In his place was a hollow vessel, and Akane was already beginning to pour herself into me.
"Good," she whispered, sensing my surrender. "Now, sit. I have a guitar that needs playing, and a boy who needs to learn how to listen to the truth."
I sat on the sofa, the fabric of her joggers soft against my legs, watching her as she picked up her matte black electric guitar.
She sat on the floor at my feet, her bare back resting against the cushions between my knees.
As she struck the first chord—a low, distorted growl that vibrated through the floorboards and into my soul—I realized that for the first time in seven years, I wasn't waiting for someone else's life to start. I was finally, terrifyingly, in the middle of my own.