(Ab)Normal Days | Shion | Mx. Tsuzuki Descends to Hell
And like that, the trial was over, Hyouri was found guilty (on the exact technicality Shion had suspected at that...), and the execution... the thoroughly bizarre game show-esque execution... that the thereminist found herself a participant in (and why? Because she had idiotically fancied herself a potential friend to Hinatea at some point?) commenced.
That Shion was unable to answer the question Kana threw her way did not surprise her. Nor did the fact that Hyouri ended up dead by the end. They all ended up dead by the end, no matter how Shion might have felt about it. And besides, that part of her reminded herself amidst the flood of static that now occupied the bulk of her thoughts, even if there had been a chance of saving him, Kana had placed one-fifth of it in the hands of something like her. Of course she would botch it terribly.
(On top of that, Shion frankly didn't really care if Hyouri died or not. He wasn't hers. No one living here was - to believe otherwise was unbecoming of something like her and likely dangerous for them. Ergo, why bother trying to care? It didn't suit her in the slightest, and it was a waste of her energies on top of that.)
There were other things to worry about after that... terribly grotesque sight, gods, why didn't she look away, of course. There was the fact that Kana had not been dealt with, could (apparently) not be dealt with easily, and was hypothetically out there somewhere doing the sort of things evil spirits got up to. There was also the fact that the execution had closed not with the standard bear babble and a dismissal but with a blackout and... cold silence. Even in her current state, Shion found that more than a bit unsettling. Did the former cause the latter, or... ?
Even so, the thereminist elected not to think about either of those items too hard... as much as she could, with how her mind was at the moment. She had other things to focus on at the moment after all. Matters to debate on with herself. Conclusions to come to.
The conclusion Shion came to was this - she had no business trying anymore, not after all of that. No after she had failed so utterly.
Eleven years of fighting against what she was, trying to ensure that she would have somewhere to stay, fooling herself into believing she could be remotely good enough, and she'd fucked it up utterly and completely beyond repair, to a point where her usual mental patch-jobs wouldn't help. Everyone knew what she was. No one would want her around anymore for as long as she continued to live here (and who knew how long that would be?). She would be completely alone again.
And that was... just fine. That was alright. Shion was okay with that.
Few people wanted a thing to do with vermin, after all. No good and decent people did. This was just the natural order of things. There was no need to mourn the fact. It was how things were meant to be. Her mistake had been going so long believing it would go otherwise.
Such were the sentiments that part of Shion's mind spouted as the thereminist readied herself the day after the trial. She let it carry on. There was no point fighting with that part of herself anymore. It was her, after all. Every loathsome, hateful, venomous bit of it. And it had never really spouted anything but the cold, hard truth, hadn't it?
This meant, of course, that she couldn't be Shion Tsuzuki anymore, and gods, the realization felt horrendously uncomfortable, rather akin to being forced out into the cold without a coat. The persona the thereminist had built up for herself over the years had done so much to keep her safe and comfortable. That persona had been needed in ways she could never be, accepted by people who would have had little use for the actual her, and quite frankly, she didn't know how to be without it.
(Take it away, she had said, and what's left? Very little. Very little that's human, anyway. Very little that anyone would actually want to keep around. And people had already begun to see through to that even with that facade up. As expected. She couldn't have run away forever.)
It wasn't going to do her any favors now, though, that side of Shion reminded herself. What good was a persona that could not longer serve its purpose in the slightest? And why should any part of her believe that she had any reason to keep pretending at this point? She didn't deserve such comforts, did she? And besides, she'd managed without it before, back then, hadn't she? That was eleven years back, but even then...
("Live for yourself". That was what she had been asked to do, but the truth of it was that Shion hardly had a sense of what truly qualified as 'herself' at the end of the day, and on top of that, she was far too weak to be anything but a pathetic, scared creature projecting a shiny false front. Nowhere near strong enough to do such a thing.
If there was any mercy in the world, it was that the person who had asked that of her was in a far better place and ergo had no way of knowing how much of a pathetic failure she'd be on that front.)
There was no reason then, Shion decided as she dressed, to try to draw attention towards herself as she... as the person she had played at being back then once had, and ergo, her choice of outfit - a black suit jacket, gray shirt, black string tie, black dress pants, and black dress shoes - was considerably plainer than her usual affair.
Oh sure, it was still distinctive - when most every single piece of clothing in one's wardrobe hews to the 'nineteenth century British nobleman' aesthetic, one cannot get away from it, and shifting one's wardrobe to something considerably darker was not exactly an original move (hell, it had already been done on these very islands), but Shion couldn't quite bring herself to care. It served its purpose well enough, and that was what was important. It marked her as...
...well, to call herself 'a new Shion' would be disingenuous, the thereminist mused as she stared herself down in her bathroom mirror, half-heartedly combing her hair before she set out. (Vermin or not, she couldn't bear to let her appearance go completely to hell.) This Shion had always existed, she'd just been running away from the fact for all fo those years. A different Shion, then. The one who always had been.
And the one who would remain present until the inevitable end of things, she bitterly reminded herself. That was the way things would have to be from now on. She had no business pretending otherwise, not anymore
