AODKANDNANSHELPMEEEHSJXNNAE.doc
TW for Suicidal ideation, blood and self-harm. Maybe more, please inform the mod if you need to list another trigger.
You may read now if you're prepared.
---------
...
The dorms are shaken. Quickly. Suddenly. A yellow figure screams and shakes and crashes against anything that's close to it. It shakes, like it's shocked. Electricity seems to go through his body as he steps into the place. It cries, agony, pain, shame, regret. All of them go through its body as it snarls like a feral animal.
The only animal there is Bondo. Kojiro Bondo.
Steps get closer to it. One by one. Two. Three. They start to run towards it like it's a villain. It needs to be contained, evil can't leak out of the students. A disease. It needs to be eradicated. He hears a click.
And glue covers the guards. They're all glued to the walls, to the floor, to the ceiling. It's like a masterpiece using white. A lesson in negative space.
It screams. Again. Its strength is something to behold, as it grabs a man's weapon and YANKS it away from the quickly-drying liquid. It puts the gun in its side, just like in the simulation. Just like the game. It seems the beast has a penchant for using what is familiar for it.
The gun shoots a bullet. Bondo doesn't even react. Guns aren't supposed to be eaten, Bondo.
He's possessed by something.
No.
It is like that. It always was.
Beasts like him and Shishida, only get to suffer if they dare to be human...
Glass cracks. A broken window SNAPS. Like eyes, being torn apart by a sharp objects. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul. Then Bondo's soul is empty. Empty like the school in these days. Empty like he became after this hellscape.
One shard. A cute, small, sharp piece of the transparency. It goes, gouging its eye, Bondo tries to crack his skull, like the last two times that happened.
It doesn't go all the way in. Strength is needed to do so. That, and a death wish.
Red drips to the ground. It paints, little droplets of red and white mix together and make pink. Pretty. A lesson of color theory. Maybe its eyes only perceive it because it wants to make sense of what little it has seen. The simulation may not have... punishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunishedpunished-
The simulation may not have punished him physically, but it affected him mentally. Reality fades AWAY.
Bondo SNAPS.
LETMEDIELETMEDIELETMEDIELETMEDIELETMEDIELETMELETLETMEMEMEMEMEMEMEDIEEEEEEEEE...
Pitiful. Only a fool would kill himself after what happened to him. But Bondo doesn't want to die because he wants to go to hell, or heaven, or whatever. He wants to die because he wants it to stop. Maybe hell is on Earth, and he doesn't want to deny that. Maybe hell is the people that command him, that use him, as a puppet, as a toy. That mock his tears and laugh at his pain. That drink wine, and share bets.
The commission is hell. And they wanted to see him DIE.
Well then, maybe HE really will DIE if that's what it takes.
It takes the glass off, and in goes again. It's messing its brain up.
More red, red like roses, red like wine, red like blood.
More white, white like semen, white like milk, white like glue.
In one of those brief moments of sanity, Bondo sees something that fell. It's not sticky, though. Thankfully.
A PHONE. Or rather, his only way out.
[Bondo types, or rather, it smashes its hands on the screen. Garbled messages that barely make sense, but it, no, he, recovers the meaning of what he's trying to say. He wants to tell them that shadows get closer to him. He can't he can't. He can't he can't he can't he can't he can't-]
ALL FOR ONE is here. The beast snarls. It hits its head with walls with intentional tackles and scratches the walls and leaves marks as it goes up.
It follows. And leaves its last few messages.
[Bondo suddenly disconnected. Please wait. Reconnecting...]
It trips over itself as it cries for help. Help it will never receive because he doesn't deserve it. Bondo believes so. The beast, or his mangled remains of sanity, believe that death is the only option. Yet, instincts drive him to the wall, a metaphorical one, as pain starts to eat him up because Bondo can't stand this, this... pain. Bondo hates it. Hates himself. Hates how weak and helpless he is. Hates how the teachers are helpless too. He has seen the marks of tears that left Ms Joke's eyes. She cried, too. Was it because of him... Of the horror, the pain?
Bondo wants to die on his own terms. But he's dragging everyone else down with him. If he gets to the newspapers, if he dares to get into the media, he'll be successful.
That's his wish.
Bondo stumbles... And falls to the ground. And stays silent. It's his room. His alone. He never had one of those. A room of his own. Privacy. Moments that belonged to him. He never got to experience that part of life, as he sleeps away the sorrow. Just like an alcoholic will do. Drown their sorrows, yet they learned how to swim.
Bondo feels bugged. Like a glitch in a video game. He weeps. Inside. Where no one can hear him.
Outside, in reality, the beast stumbles and finds itself cornered. It looks to the door. It can hear the footsteps, the realization that he hasn't killed himself and Momo and the villain are chasing him down. Down to the ground. Under six feet of ground.
It forces out the piece of glass, and drives it up its wounded eye. ONCE MORE.
It falls to the ground with a thud. Red stains near the body.
Bondo sees red. And white.
[Bondo is online. Update is completed. Bondo is online. Update is completed.
Bondo is-]
@ua-vladking
He's tired.
Sleep is costly to him, these days. The game took too much, and left him bare.
Sekijiro couldn't remember the last time he cried before that Sunday.
To go home feels like an offense. He could have the comfort of his home, his belongings, his dog - while those kids could not rest easy with the memories they acquired.
He settles onto his armchair, forcing his eyes closed. He needs to sleep. Needs to recover -
But his phone buzzes him back to reality.
He's holding the object before he can register.
His eyes skim over the messages quickly - and he curses loudly enough to startle Elizaveta. Sekijiro rises from the armchair with a startle.
No time to get dressed properly. Sweatpants and an old tee, like he was dressed at home, will have to do.
He slips his feet into sneakers, socks be damned, and grabs his keys.
He runs. Grabs the first cab he sees, and, in a breathless command, demands to go to UA.
He's racing against time.
Recalling, he does not remember anything from the trip. He does remember the gate, the robots, all glued to the ground, drowning in it.
Finding the student was second nature. There were places they all considered home.
He curses loudly when he finds the dorms trashed, and even louder when he finds Bondo.
With a quick flick of his wrist, he stops his bleeding, forcing his wounds to obey with his quirk. Then, as he keeps watch of that, he calls an ambulance.
When the student is properly secured in the ambulance, he climbs in, sitting to the side. He exhales heavily. Guilt creeps up his spine and settles in his shoulders in the form of tension.
"Kid....what did you do...."
Bondo stops bleeding. The ambulance is cold. The bed is cold. It's like a freezer inside the car. It bumps into every hole that it finds. It swerves in every curve. Smells of alcohol and sanitizer. Too clean. Too sane... Too much.
His eye hurts. The blood dried before. Now, he mostly sees from his other side of the face. Bondo wonders how much will this cost to everyone around him. To his friends, the pain he caused them. To his parents, to the worry accumulated over years about their missing son and the surprise of hearing about his suicide attempt. The debts, that fall and fall and fall. It never stops falling.
They must be drowning his parents. He doesn't want to talk.
He has to. Let the pain out. But the pain won't go. It's a poison ivy, eating away any kind of roots he has and then hurting anyone who gets too close. It's painful and a failure to try to remove the ivy. Parasitic. Like him. Eats away the resources. Just like him. The checklist grows and grows and Bondo can't stop comparing himself to plants because God Shiozaki is still sleeping and he just had a breakdown and there's nothing else he can do and he just ruined this summer for his whole family and they must hate him because they always screamed when they thought he wasn't around and he hates it he hates himself he hates how he can't stand up and do the right thing and the right thing is unknown to him and there's nothing there's nothing because the pain is too great for him to handle and—
What has he done?
"I'm sorry..." It's all he says. Voice low. A whisper. Lost to the time. There's not a lot he wants to say. Because "I'm sorry Sensei for breaking the dorms and my remaining sanity for years to come" is not precisely his best answer for what he has done.
"I... I wanted it all to end. I don't feel good... I've never felt good."
He doesn't cry, but he's close to do so. There's a breaking point and Bondo crossed the line too far for an acceptable reaction. He waits for the screams.
And in his mind, Bondo wonders now, if the pain he's feeling is because of bottling up his emotions, or if the situation hangs heavy on his head and he wants to die, really.
Maybe there's never a good answer for that and he just hates himself.
