pourir:
❝ Do you forget, Muuchan? I’m a ghoul. ❞
It’s still foreign. For her human son to know about the fact that her teeth rip through pieces of flesh when he’s lying in bed at night. She loved him dearly, since his childhood, she’d built a house in her ribcage where he could reside. He wasn’t considered an anomaly in any way under her roof, inside her house.
Shuu caresses his face, cupping up his cheeks & planting a kiss on his forehead, before examining the rest of his face, & finally allowing herself to smell him.
AND HE SMELLS FUCKING DELICIOUS.
There’s softness in her touch, the way she very slowly moves her fingers, to make sure that this was her son, that a part of him wasn’t taken away with the surgery. He still feels foreign in her hands, like fake cashmere dragging along her palms.
EAT HIM.
She parts his kaguan open, making sure that it’s in fact something real, not a joke that he was playing on her. It’s odd to see him with such a monstrous amount of power at his disposal now. He was always such a kind young man.
❝ Nothing scares me, Tooru.❞
Touch.
He thinks it’s funny how such a small word can tap into such a large well of fear and discomfort within him. Isn’t it everything he’d always wanted? Everything he always craved? Isn’t is something he never had enough of? Something he had too much of? T o u c h. Like the thin moonlight spilling through the gap in his bedroom curtain and crawling across the floor, her hands move gently across his face.
“Ah...” It’s half sigh, half admission of guilt. “I haven’t forgotten. I can’t.”
She’s touching his face and he’s tilting into it, eyes fluttered closed until she coaxes them open again. There is a slow process to it; she’s examining him as if she’s looking for something but he can’t guess what. He can’t help. Isn’t that typical? But with just a small kiss and a few reassuring words, he’ll stand still like a show horse, let her search for what she’s afraid he’s missing. He hates this about himself --what would he do for her approval? For her affection?
How can he be so vulnerable? So willing to please? For a-- for a ghou--
"I can be afraid for the both of us,” He’s laughing, but he’s not sure at what. Steering her fingers away from his eyes, he places her palms back on his cheeks and keeps his own hands there as well. The skin is warm and damp from tears and it only makes his self-loathing grow. Of course he would cry like this. “They said that I can still eat human food. Th--that I’m mostly the same.”
There’s something in his gut, and it’s eating him. And he thinks it quite ironic.
“I don’t feel the same.”
His hands are trembling.
“I--I can still eat apples, Maman. And I got out of the academy early by doing this. And--”
A noise grows loud in his head, buzzing and buzzing until he’s sure it must be something in his surroundings. He feels unreal, a doll stuffed with cotton and falling apart. What have I done? what have I done? What have I--
“What have I done?”
There’s a term for who he is: Dead man walking.
