Sometimes he feels he’s drowning. It doesn’t make sense, when the time that’s always on his mind is a time where he was always burning in the sun, but it’s the only way he can describe it. Heat makes you sweat, fire makes you scream — water is a world where no one can hear you, where people are far away, even if they’re seconds away from you at the surface. It’s a world where even if nothing appears wrong he can’t breathe, even though he’s only surrounded by air. It’s where the right words never come out of his mouth, only meaningless bubbles. It’s where all he knows at night is the salt water coming from his eyes.
He hadn’t really thought about this being the world he’d escape to — it didn’t happen that way in superhero movies. When the bad guy went away, it was happily ever after. He always thought getting out of that place, anything would seriously be better, but...
He thought wrong, huh?
“Hibiya-kun!”
“A-ah...” His mind stalls. Stutters. As it seems to now too much. Though he thinks it really ought to be growing, it feels like parts of it are dying, working too slowly, summoning images he doesn’t want to see and feelings he can’t trust. Though at one time his feelings were the only thing he could, the one thing he could count on... he didn’t think he’d ever reach this point, but they’d become something even uglier than before, right?
Even though you got out just fine...
He swallows. His name is called again. “C-coming!” And he swallows again. The daylight is not something he thinks of happily anymore. Rather, this whole world seems like it could turn on him any time. Was that why his mind was never on it? Was that why he was constantly slipping off into sleep? Eleven years and he feels impossibly old, mismatched and unable to control this body of his.
“Hibiya-kun?” The voice this time is softer, having entered the room without him noticing. He flinches. Momo, for of course it is Momo, puts a hand on his shoulder, one which tenses under her touch. “Are you okay...? D’you feel sick?”
He can hear it in her voice, how ready she is to understand everything, to stay home with him, to excuse his weakness as if it’s the most natural thing in the world — perhaps because he is a child, perhaps because she is too generous, as she always has been. He shakes his head, taking a deep, slow breath, only just realising how quickly he’s been breathing until now. “I’m fine,” he says, staring at the wall as his thoughts echo, just go without me. I’ll hold you all back. Something in here is really, seriously wrong now, so...
He swallows that, along with everything, back. “N-no, no... I’m coming.”
