Nothings been the same since. Not for Shiro.
She’s curled up alone in her dark room. It’s raining outside.
Her door slides open. “Shiro”.
Steps come closer with confidence. A hand whips off the bed covers. “Get up, we have company coming over and this time- I’m not gonna beg.”
Rosalina turns around and touches a pad. Light comes on.
Shiro groans and scrunches her face. “You can’t keep doing this to me. You got to try, okay?”
Shiro’s eyes peel open. There’s only bright light in view, no features. Hurts. She turns over, looks at Rosalina’s blurry figure.
Rosalina shakes her head. “No buts.”
“… I don’t wanna wake up.”
A few tears run down her face.
Instantly, her mama sits at her bedside and pulls her girl into her lap. School years are always the hardest years no matter what centuary.
Rosalina strokes Shiro’s hair, and wipes away her tears. She leans over. “We’re gonna keep trying to make it through.. okay? Please baby, for me?”
Shiro squints her eyes shut and nods with a tight frown. She heaves in and sputters, turning her head into her mom’s lap.
“I don’t want to see him anymore.. stop making me.”
Rosalina shakes her head slowly. She puts her hand away. “Baby. You’re alone here without me. I love you, but you need to understand, that is still Jeremy in there. And unlike you… nobody knows what’s happening to him. He’s alone, just like you. You have me but.. “ she touches her daughter’s head again. Her dark eyes looks up to Rosalina, finally seeing her.
“…I don’t think that boy has ever had anyone besides you.”
Shiro scowls. “That’s not a ‘boy’, it’s a thing.”
Her momma scowls back. “That what those other kids are telling you, eh? That you should hate him?” She leans in. “That he’s a monster? Those same kids that tell you— that you’re not real either?”
Shiro is silent. Her eyes shut and teary again. “Mija.. people’s words have unusual powers to them.. but only we can make them bind us, or set us free.”
She strokes Shiro’s long white silken hair. “We get to choose. Not them. Got it?”
“Good. Because it’ll take everything to move forward. That’s what we’re gonna do tonight, all of us.”
“— how can you move forward when people wish that your dead..?”
Rosalina grips her shoulders and looks her straight in the eyes.
“By daring to live anyways. Com’on, let’s get dressed.”
She helps her baby girl up and reminds her to use her legs. There’s plenty of rain outside, and that’s enough in here.
Dog’s mind is counting the seconds leading up to this thing. He never agreed to it. He never does. He just shows up.
Hoping that maybe this time, would be different. Yet each time, there’s cold silence. Shiro doesn’t sit across from him, Rosalina does. Shiro doesn’t look at him, but Rosalina does.
Rosalina tries to talk to him, but Shiro stays quiet.
Rosalina obviously cares, but Shiro…
He clenches his fist and his face feels unusual. Something immediately spills out from it, he can’t tell what it is. Clear and bits of black. Black bits recoil back to his feet from the slime and crawl up his body.
He wipes away slime from his eyes, slinging it onto the ground. Disgusting.
His mind flashes back to a crystal clear memory of Jeremy’s. The way he looked at her that day.. when he finally went to school.
He saw exactly each thought she was thinking, and all the thoughts others had too.
She didn’t know him all the sudden. Everything she said, every word, years worth of words— meant nothing.
Absolutely voided. Obsolete. To that look on her face.
He felt something strong this time wrench up in his throat.
Quickly as he could, he stomps to the island sink, and opens his mouth.
A ball of something falls out. More clear liquid. He swallows and it’s seemingly back to normal. Stars of that angry feeling still spark around it though.
His ghost still feels angry about it. How is it suppose to be different this time when he’s no longer the same person. More so— he’s not even sure that this is about how he’s changed.
He wonders, if this is what’s always been inside of Shiro. Shame.
Ashamed, of him in the eyes of others. They never could’ve—
— he eradicates all thoughts and lines of thought sequences have been immediately perished.
His mind is on reboot. He steps ahead, unchanged, unphased, and tries to analyze the most appropriate outfit for the occasion out of a wardrobe of bland clothing.
Shiro looks in the mirror but avoids her eyes, looking to the dress her mother put her in with a shawl over top. It’s old fashiony and a reminder of how things were in Treas. She sees home in it, and it’s comfortable. But she’s not with her body.
Puberty has been strange. She’s taller, lankier, but feels off. She doesn’t look like a pretty girl to herself. She looks like a mishmash of two things put together. She can’t discern her face just right. Even though she recalls memories of dozens like it. Each have a bit of variantion in the mix, but are ultimately of the same brew.
She pulls her hair up, then let’s it flop down. Shiro doesn’t want to be seen.
And she’s already picturing what’ll happen next. She’ll be forced to sit across from it. And it’s large silhouette will be hard to ignore. She’ll look to her plate and table, probably to the floor. There’s no way she can make eye contact with it.
She hides in her hair, and her shawl acts as a security blanket. She wants to be invisible when he arrives.
Rosalina knocks at the door. “You look beautiful sweety.”
Shiro is hunching over, looking between her hair at her mom. “You’re making it sound weird. Like you’re setting me up for something.”
She walks over and kisses Shiro’s head. “No. That’d be wrong. I just want you two to give each other a second chance. Get to know him again, make a friend with his.. new self.”
She glares off into space. “Make friends with the thing that killed my best friend?” She looks up to her.
Rosalina draws a sigh and hugs her girl. “You know it’s not like that. When are you going to accept that it’s Jeremy, love?”
Shiro looks down. “He doesn’t even go by that name anymore…”
“We don’t know what it’s like. It’s a process.. and it takes time.” She backs up and looks her in the eyes. “Please, do it for me?”
Shiro sighs and shrugs. “Okay.”
There’s a ring from the door front, Rosalina turns away. “Okay! Prepare yourself!”
When her mama walks away, she felt herself scream in her throat and nearly want to piss herself. She is terrified of that thing at the door.
Quickly she runs to the bathroom before she messes up anything. Taking her time there, deeeeep breaths while she relieves and prepares herself.
Dog stands in an apartment complex’s hallway. One that has a train that goes through the building. It’s neat.
He doesn’t remember when he left, when he put on clothes.. if these aren’t made of Nanons.. and when he arrived. He’s barely lucid for this moment.
But snaps out of it when he sees Rosalina’s face smiling at him. “There you are! Come in, come in.” She guides the man in and leads him to the living room couch. His eyes do a quick scan, plants. Always plants. Antiques for dishwear. Everything else is boxy and minimalistic, like his place. Dull.
He sits down before a black screen flushed against the wall, leaning back. Rosalina offers him some tea, he takes it. His sense of taste has returned but texture isn’t the same. He welcomes the warmth.
“I’m still setting up the dinner table, just wait here.”
He nods with a blank face. Looking back ahead as she leaves him. Seeing once again, the man in the black mirror.
He’ll never get used to it.
Shiro is sitting besides the tub and is trying her best to stop stammering with her breathing. She’s trying to control it. This is the ritual she performs every time he visits. But this time… she knows there’s going to be a conversation. This is gonna be, the worst one.
She wishes she could die than attend this.
There’s a knocking at the door. “Shiro honey, you ready?”
Shiro swallows. This feels like a death sentence.
She gets up and pats her eyes with cold water. Then the door slides open. Her mama takes her hand and leads her to the table. Her eyes stay glued to the floor. She sees in the corner of her eye, his shadow. Sitting there, the back of his head.
She keeps her head down. She sits.
Rosalina goes to the black blur ahead of her. “Jeremy, follow me.”
Shiro feels her breath snapping off. Keeping calm and steady. She sees the blurs coming before her, a large dark one, sits right across from her. It says nothing.
She keeps her eyes down to the plate, to the table.. to the floor. She can’t move.
Rosalina already set the table and serves them both. Dog looks to his food and wonders if he can enjoy it this time around. Then there’s the white blur.. right across from him. His body feels empty on the inside, but he can’t bring himself to look at her. There’s a special kind of pain in being numb.
Rosalina sits besides Shiro. She strokes her daughter’s arm. “Thank you for coming.. I know this is difficult for the both of you. I hope that maybe.. we can start over?”
Something switches in Dog. There’s an automatic answer in a way of compulsion that feels alien to him: “Does she want that, or you?”
Rosalina is frozen in a smile. It hit her cold.
Shiro grips her fingers. “I want my friend back.”
Dog finally looks to her. He sees her puffy eyes and her face hidden in her hair. He sees her scowl and there’s another buzzing of electrical impulses pulsating through his head from the left to the right. He feels his head cock slightly. His voice sounded more vicious this time. “What?”
Shiro swallows. She’s unable to look at him and her chest is tight. She barely breathes.
But she’s gotta be brave.
Her cold fingers take her fork and presses apart some meat, drizzled with glaze.
She takes a bite, making her breath. She closes her eyes as she swallows. “I want Jeremy back.”
There’s something that within Dog crunches down to a final compression, a final crack. Instead of unleashing it here— his mind is switched to his other body.
Reving on, it roars out in anger and thrashes at the forest and the jungle around it. Trees that make this body feel almost like a normal person. It rakes at them, pulls off bark, and roars some more.
Thankfully it’s far enough away to only be a faint echo by the time it reaches the city.
Dog picks up a spoon, trying some of the sweet potatoes. “…didn’t you say he died? He’s not coming back.”
Suddenly something drops from Dog’s face and ruins the plate of food. It’s that slime again. It turns the food into liquid on touch.
Rosalina gets up immediately, “Oh my gosh, hold on-“ she gets a napkin, she almost does it for him, but he takes it instead. “T-“ it comes out wrong- “THaNz-“ he covers his mouth. He swallows it back down and wipes his face.
Dog nods and he slides the plate away.
He wipes his eyes and knows that originally he’d feel guilt, sorrow, but nothing right now. It feels like it’s going all somewhere else. Transferred to his other body. Where he can unapologetically be a monster.
Shiro couldn’t really eat. Not after.. that. He hasn’t done that before. “Are you.. okay?” She slipped.
She can see the hazy red looking at her. She jumps.
“-NHnH-“ he coughs up a bit and catches it in the napkin.
Slowly her eyes start seeing pale hands with black nails. There’s a line of black grain that runs up his opaque skin. She looks up more to his body. It’s not his scrawniness, he’s three times her size. Concealed in black and intimidating. There’s a plain white shirt underneath that black jacket.. but it doesn’t look like it fits right, like he hasn’t figured out clothes yet, still.
Last, his face. A pale ghostly face, with red eyes that seep through the eyelids past them. His lips are pale. His eye brows are similar to Jeremy’s, thick. His face is.. like his but not. It’s grown up. It’s not bad looking to her but not someone she recognizes. It’s like a thing trying to appear human but she knows it just isn’t.
The hideous thing about him are the plugs in the dark patch of his face, where it was once white, which is the rest of him now.
She sees something red underneath.. she sees a bit closer.. she sees teeth.
Shiro screeches and backs up in her seat. Staring at it in more clarity, she can see some of what he really is now underneath.. and it is frightening.
Dog covers his face. More of that slime leaks out between his fingers. It’s the first time Shiro seen a grown man cry. She feels uncomfortable.. this is unnatural.
She breathes fast, then it evens out. Taking it all in.
Dog gets up and heavy steps goes to the bathroom.
Rosalina watches from the island, too frozen in place at where she stands. Holding the water. She looks to Shiro.
He sits to the back wall of the open shower and heaves, heaves, and his sight in dissonance.
Going between two beings and a flurry of processes and errors. Most machines crash and stall. But for a thing like him— it’s a complete break down.
Damage in the forest is extensive but weak compared to what it’s capable of. Revving echoing in the winds and it starts to scramble over massive foliage with no control. All of this rage he tries to push all this breakage into his larger form.
In the midsts of dysphoria, numbness and complete storm of all emotions, one sticks out most— fear.
That fear and his predictability analysis calculating the fatality rate of Shiro and Rosalina: HIGH.
Dog shuts down, making his body limp and pupils dilate.
His consciousness is completely within his monster frame and with no fear, goes furthest away from civilzation and unleashes whatever is left inside him during a complete melt down. Pain, disgust, anger, stress— overwhelming panic and inklings of denial but eclipsed by remorse.
The systems inside of Dog’s mainframe compenstate for the overload. There’s new formations, attachments, and energy out puts redirected. There’s a large amount of exhaust released from slats opening across its body and it falls to its knees. Nanon processes extend parts out to the surrounding area, converting materials and establishing a form of repairs to better compensate.
A voice echoes in the distance.
There’s a slight, hard, pat to his cheek and she quickly backs up.
His pupils constricted and he stares at her. He isn’t ready for this. Neither is she.
Shiro is still. She holds her breath. Slowly, she reaches her hand out to him. To the uncanny being sitting there in the shower.
His eyes don’t move. The red in them hurts her eyes from their blinding stare. Slowly, his hand touches her. His skin is cool. When he takes it, it feels a bit warmer.
There’s still warmth inside.
Dog lifts himself up as Shiro slowly walks backwards to give him some room.
They both stand toes apart from one another. Holding their hand.
Shiro asks- “..are you still.. Jeremy?”
Dog’s face softens. “.. I am and.. I’m not.. I don’t know.”
“Can I.. still call you Jeremy?”
He closes his eyes. Slowly, he hugs Shiro— leaning down as his size eclipses hers, and tries to be mindful to do so lightly.
“..to you and Rosalina.. I’ll always be Jeremy.”
He feels warm tears run into his shoulders, a wet spot in his soft jacket.
“…but to everyone else? I’m Dog.”
There’s a croak from her. “Why?”
He squeezes his eyes, and there’s fire in his throat, crawling out:
“Because… I am, and I am not, me.”
