Chapter Text
A scream startled Satoru awake.
Before his eyes even snapped themselves open, his mind was scrambling to assess the source of the scream, as well as its cause. Evidently, it was not his father or mother. This distressed voice was much too young to be either of them. Of course, as he now properly took in his surroundings and his brain started working more properly, he recognized two other simple facts compounded this.
First, his parents were dead.
Second, he only ever heard his parents scream at home, mostly aiming those cries of anger at each other over this or that disagreement. His father and mother were always all smiles when out in public. And Satoru was not at home right now. Even a room swallowed in darkness, some light filtering in distantly from the hallway revealed the white walls and floors, wooden cabinets, and small bed of a hospital room. The potent smell of sterile sanitation filled his senses, stirring him even further awake than the initial scream had.
Right, the scream.
It was, of course, no surprise to Satoru that he was in a hospital room right now.
But the young boy was not sick himself.
In the corner of the white room blanketed in darkness, a small girl sat, curled up with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was dressed in a pink hospital gown, her face to the wall as her back trembled. It almost looked like she was trying to hide from the small traces of light spilling in through the door, as if it were going to hurt her, consume her, devour her whole. Yet the darkness engulfing her offered little comfort to her either.
This girl, of course, was the source of that anguished, heartbreaking scream. Well, perhaps ‘scream’ was a little too harsh for the noise she made. It was hardly loud enough to wake any other patients up or alert any of the nurses still up and about. But no matter how loud or soft it was, to the boy, it was the most lamentable sound in the world.
Now, the girl was quietly sobbing as she hugged her knees tighter, trying to curl up and disappear into the shadows in the room’s corner. The sorrow, the loathing, the helplessness; all too overwhelming. She wanted to be strong, wanted to be good, wanted to be normal. Above all else, she just wanted to be okay. But the panic and fear, the thumping in her chest like a hammer against her ribcage, the quivering of her body like she was stuck in a snowstorm despite the awful, feverish heat racking her skin—what she wouldn’t give to melt into the darkness.
As the girl continued to sob, she heard a couple footsteps—slow and patient, so as to not alarm her—before a hand settled gently on her shoulder.
Surprised, the girl turned her head up towards him. Her face was red, and her big, wide eyes were filled with tears. She made a sniffling noise and, as if on instinct, the girl flung herself into his arms. The boy accepted her into his embrace without a second thought, and she squeezed him tight, as if terrified he might disappear into the darkness at any moment.
“I’m scared…” She murmured in-between now-stifled sobs, her voice trembling like her body. “I’m… so scared…”
The boy gently stroked her still-quivering back as the girl held on tight, with every bit of meager strength she could muster, as he whispered into her ear.
“It’s okay.” He said, raising a hand up to run his fingers through her black hair with tender, caring motions. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
His voice was so soft and quiet that it was almost inaudible, though the girl could hear every word clearly.
“Because no matter what happens…” He continued, “I’ll be here to protect you.”
“No…”
The girl shook her head.
“What I’m afraid of is…”
Her lips trembled.
“…Myself.”
“Still…” The boy spoke, undeterred. “I will protect you even so. Forever. You’ll see.” Ever so slightly, his voice took on an encouraging, hopeful tone. “No matter what happens, no matter what life throws at us… what it throws at you… I’ll always be there. For you.”
“That’s impossible.”
The girl’s response was surprisingly clear. Unmarred by hiccuping sobs or shuddering breaths. There was a strange sense of defeated conviction in her tone.
The boy tried to respond. Yet, somehow, he found himself unable to in the face of her sheer resolution.
“There’s no way you could…” She continued undeterred.
‘Come on. What are you talking about? Don’t you believe in your big brother?’
He had the words he wanted to say. Simple, but hopefully effective, words of encouragement. So why couldn’t he get them out? It was like someone’s invisible hands were wrapped around his throat; not tight enough to choke or strangle, but just enough to prevent enough air from flowing to create vocalizations.
“Because I…” This time, a hiccup interrupted her. “Onii-chan… I’ll-”
Suddenly, her small fingers dug roughly into his back. While her embrace had been desperate and clingy before, now it was like she was trying to crush his ribcage.
“I’ll kill you too.”
To most other people, these words would have sparked immediate alarm; a blatant and unmistakable threat on the recipient’s life. However, right now, they sounded like the saddest thing Satoru had ever heard.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a confession. A plea for forgiveness and, more than that, help. Sayaka still couldn’t forgive herself for what she had done to their parents. No matter what the doctors told her, no matter how much she tried to forget about it, it was an undeniable truth. She had killed them. The circumstances didn’t matter, the way her brain was wired didn’t matter; who would have sympathy for such a wretched, murderous child? Even a brother would despise her for taking his mom and dad away from him.
Yet, despite all that, Satoru just squeezed her tighter.
Sayaka hiccuped, her eyes widening in surprise.
Satoru wouldn’t pretend to understand everything going on in Sayaka’s mind. He had listened to the explanations from doctors several times, and he was certainly a boy most would have called intelligent, but even still, it was difficult for him to conceive of a person with the issues and illnesses they described to him. But such a person did exist: his beloved sister. Even in his ignorance, he couldn’t allow himself to think of her as a bad person. No amount of spilled blood or tears could erase all the smiles she had given him, all of the wonderful memories they had formed together.
It was a horrible thought, one that sent the same pangs of self-loathing that Sayaka felt every day of her waking life stabbing into Satoru’s heart, but if he had to trade every moment he had spent with Sayaka for the lives of his parents… he would choose Sayaka every time.
Even if Sayaka did suddenly attack him, try to take his life, he would forgive her. No matter what happened, Sayaka was still the same sister that he loved.
With more and more tears welling up in her eyes, Sayaka began sobbing again. This time, though, they were tinged with hints of bittersweet joy. Even without speaking a word, she understood her brother’s love, his understanding. Hearing so many cruel assessments over all these years—whether spoken directly to her and heard in low, murmuring whispers around the corner of the hospital hallway’s end—had only weathered any positive feelings she had towards herself. Hearing that she wasn’t normal, that she’d never function in society, that she was dangerous and a threat to everyone she met, that sometimes—most of the time—she wasn’t even her. She was accused of crimes, sins, and misdeeds she knew she had never committed, because how could she have done something she didn’t even remember? Yet as many as a dozen people would say that no, she wrong, obviously she had attacked the nurse like they all said. And hearing them refer to her as all sorts of weird names, Baby, Empty, Darkness, especially when they were talking about all those memories she couldn’t recall… What a disgusting thing she was, what an awful girl, a complete and utter blight upon this world.
And yet, despite everything here was her brother, loving her all the same.
Somehow, only now did she recognize just how much he cared for her.
She never wanted to let go of him. Letting go might mean having to talk to those doctors again, or hearing what people said behind her back. She couldn’t stand it. Just staying in her brother’s arms for the rest of her life… that would be so much better. Safe, comfortable, happy, embraced by the one person who wouldn’t judge, chastise, berate, or lie to her.
Satoru moved his arms, looking Sayaka in her watery eyes while beginning to stroke her hair again, with his other hand moving to her shoulder. He wanted to say something again. Something to soothe her fears and anxieties more.
But when he tried to open his mouth, he couldn’t find his voice.
It wasn’t as though there was something wrong with his voicebox, or that his voice was hoarse, or anything like that. The words simply refused to take shape. He wasn’t even particularly sure of what he wanted to say, but whatever it was was trapped in his head.
Something was weighing down his mind. Not in a figurative sense, but an uncomfortable, almost aching pressure, pushing and squeezing. An alien force pressing down on his brain, no, the abstract concept of his very headspace.
And then, a stray thought wriggled its way through his gray matter:
End it.
Huh?
The thought was unwelcome, and yet, Satoru couldn’t tell why he wanted to reject it so much. It was an empty statement, devoid of meaning or context? End what? Sayaka’s sadness?
As if to dispel that innocent rumination, the force—the voice—pushed in once more.
No. It said. End her.
End her life.
Satoru’s blood ran cold. Sayaka let out a little whimper of surprise, feeling the way his body tensed up.
“Onii-chan…?” She asked meekly.
But Satoru couldn’t look her in the eyes. Not after such an awful thing had wormed its way into his brain.
Is he even listening? The invisible, soundless voice complained, as if it wasn’t even speaking to him. Maybe I’ll say it again:
Kill her.
Bile rose in the back of Satoru’s throat. Sickened by his own thoughts—if they even were his own—he suddenly felt that it was wrong to be holding his sister. It was… dangerous.
Of course, holding her when such despicable thoughts were invading his mind was far too dangerous. Dangerous to her. He had to let go.
Kill her.
The words were like an icepick to the neck. Even then, at least the blood trickling down his skin would have felt warm. This voice brought no such warmth, only the biting cold of intrusion and coercion.
Dangerous… to her?
What was he thinking?
He was the one in danger.
Not from the voice. No, of course not. The voice presented no danger whatsoever. Just some immaterial force guiding his thoughts in a certain direction.
Sayaka—no, this girl, this thing, this murderer—was the danger.
How could he have ever thought otherwise? No amount of happy memories shared with his sister, or the countless attempts to understand how her brain worked, would change the facts. She had murdered their parents. She had repeated violent outbursts which continued to hurt both herself and others, even at the hospital. Half the time she didn’t even seem like Sayaka, like a bunch of strangers were using her body as an apartment to crash in and vent their twisted urges.
All these years, and she still hadn’t gotten better.
Would she ever be normal?
If all these ceaseless hours of therapy and counseling couldn’t save her, then what could? Would she just continue to hurt herself and others for the rest of her life? Was this the only fate destined for Yukidoh Sayaka? Satoru nearly started tearing up at the thought alone.
But, obviously, there was one sure way to rescue her. Save her from that pitiful, wretched life of mutually assured suffering between herself and the rest of society.
All he had to do was listen to the voice.
He moved his hand towards her thin neck, gently brushing it with his fingers. He could feel the skin quiver, the vibrations of the sobs and hiccups rising up through her throat. Such lamentable sadness, such awful sounds.
Then, he moved his other hand to rest on the other side of her neck. Goosebumps flashed across her skin.
“O- …Onii-chan?” She repeated, her voice weak and quiet, as though Satoru’s hands were blocking her voice. Why wouldn’t he respond to her?
“Sayaka…” His voice was hollow, empty, barely any more discernable than a feeble, raspy whisper. Her big, tear-stained eyes pierced his soul, despite the lack of any coldness or cruelty in them. How could such an innocent-looking girl be capable of the things she had done? How could he let that innocence defile itself any longer? He had to preserve it. He had to make that sweet, innocent, adorable face last forever.
“I’m sorry.”
With those words, his hands tightened into a proper grip, clamping down on the girl’s delicate throat.
A shrill, strangled gasp leapt from lips, and her eyes bulged wide, before her pupils shrunk to half their size.
Her docile body came alive as if hot coals had just been thrown under her feet. Her arms flailed, her legs kicked, she twisted her head from side to side, trying to wrench his hands off of her neck. Wheezes and unearthly noises that sounded like screams for a moment but were stifled too quickly to end up as anything more than wild, half-formed vocalizations spilled from her constricted throat. No matter how much she struggled, her position, the element of surprise, and her condition made it practically impossible to overpower her brother.
Was this even her brother?
No. There was no way. Despite her self-loathing, despite all the times she had overheard herself called a monster and a murderer, despite how even her own parents had treated her… Satoru would never do this. When no one else in the world cared for her, Satoru alone loved her unconditionally. She wondered, for a brief moment, if this was just a twisted hallucination. Yet another nightmare haunting her restless nights as she squirmed and writhed in that cold hospital bed.
A nightmare that felt so terribly real.
She had been choked in nightmares before. Sometimes, it’d be some clone of herself straddling her, strangling her with a cold, dead look in her eyes. Other times she’d be choking herself, arms forcefully bent up and hands clamping down on her slender throat for a reason she couldn’t imagine. Other times, she was strangled by both her parents at once. That only started happening after she killed them. The eyes of her mother, which she tried so desperately to remember the kindness of, were now only filled with despair. The eyes of her father, which she tried so desperately to remember the courage of, were now filled with hatred. Together their hands grabbed her throat, a mass of fingers both slender and callous, squeezing the life out of her like they were getting rid of some feral animal.
She recalled a single time where it was Satoru choking her. The details were still clear in her mind. They were in Sayaka’s old bedroom, and Satoru was reading her a bedtime story like Mom used to. Something about a crane and a turtle playing together. He had that calm, tranquil-looking smile of his that always filled her heart with warmth. But just as she was moving her head and adjusting herself under the covers a little, one hand fell away from the storybook to touch her neck. Then another. And then, they were squeezing. She didn’t really know what choking felt like—she’d been through all sorts of pain, but that one she had yet avoided—so it mostly felt like the half-second of a hiccup stretched out into a minute. Strangely, all her nightmares involving choking had been much more painful. But perhaps that was because, throughout her struggle, Satoru just kept smiling the whole time, until the world went black and she woke up in a pool of her own sweat while her ears started to ring.
But if this was a nightmare… Why was it even more vivid?
The tightness around her neck. The impossible struggle to breathe. The feeling of being unable to even give up and lay limp, because the lack of air and blood flow made her head pound like an avalanche was pouring over her, and her chest tighten and twist like it was being crushed by iron chains.
And the look on her brother’s face.
Not a smile. Not a bittersweet expression of warmth.
Rather, his face was contorted in pain, looking plagued by both physical anguish and a despair deep in his heart. Tears beaded up in his eyes, and he grit his teeth so hard he could grind them to dust, choking back the wails he wanted so desperately to let out.
Neither could scream. It was like this small hospital room was stuck in outer space. A lonely little tragedy where no one could intervene.
“I’m sorry, Sayaka… But I have to do this.” Satoru choked out, punctuated by clenched teeth as he stared down at her with teary eyes.
‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I’m sorry.’
What funny words. What laughably disgusting words.
How many people had said those hollow words to her?
At first, she lamented that people wouldn’t apologize to her. That her dad and mom would apologize to each other, but not her, whenever they screamed and shouted about any old thing. That the doctors didn’t apologize for locking her in this cage. Once the apologies did begin, though, the words ‘I’m sorry’ only began feeling more and more empty. If they were sorry, why did they keep her trapped? If they were sorry, why did they treat her like a monster?
Not that she entirely disagreed with them. She was a monster. Still, even a monster didn’t much appreciate everyone talking behind its back. Kind smiles one moment, and cold, clinical analysis and objectification the next.
And even a monster didn’t want to hear a strained, anguished apology while getting the life strangled out of it from its own brother.
Small, almost inaudible wheezes passed through her trembling lips, eventually forming into one singular word.
“Why…?”
‘Why?’ Of course, an obvious question. It would be one thing if Satoru had suddenly lost his mind and devolved into some sort of instinctual, murderous rage. But he recognized himself that he had a logical reason for killing Sayaka.
That terrified him most of all.
But, scrambling to figure out a way to string together his reasoning into a coherent, respectable line of logic, he found no such possibility.
So he said nothing. No words. Just moans and sobs of despair, all the while his fingers squeezed tighter and tighter, like metal chains pulled tight to bind a monster.
Sayaka had no words, either. Without even a reason for this horrible act, she threw her eyes shut, gritting her teeth hard enough to grind stone as she tried to bear the torment. Her head throbbed. Her lungs ached and her chest tightened excruciatingly. Her struggle to breathe caused even the tiniest of half-formed inhales and exhales to turn into fits of sputtering, spit flinging from her gums and down her chin. The tears fell quicker, both pain and desolation urging them on. Darkness crowded the edges of her vision, closing in and swallowing up the world.
So this is how she dies. Well, it’s only right, she thinks. After all, with the sin she had committed—one of many, rather—this could only be called justice. Just as her parents had lost their lives to their daughter, that wretched daughter would now lose her pitiful life to her beloved brother, his merciful snuffing out of her loathsome existence. Her body continued to struggle, her limbs whirling and bucking, but the mind and spirit had already surrendered to her inevitable fate.
As her consciousness faded away, she only wished Satoru would stop his apologies to tell her he loved her yet again.
Eventually, Sayaka’s flailing ceased. Every few seconds, there would be another jolt or jitter from her body, but these brief flashes of life lasted only a moment before she went limp once more.
Satoru’s hands stayed wrapped around her unmoving neck. He couldn’t bring himself to release her. It was as though ceasing the act of strangling her would reveal the undeniable truth, the reality of her demise. He kept hoping to feel some renewed struggle—a shuddering breath, a sharp turn of the neck—but of course, no such sign of life ever came.
Eventually, his hands slowly relinquished her neck. It was less an act of acceptance and more one of resigned despair. Her head slumped back, knocking against the wall.
Her face reminded Satoru more of a beautiful doll, perhaps one on puppet strings, who had been laid to rest and her angelic eyes painted shut. However, her body looked more like she was once a delicate bird, whose thin, hollow bones had been snapped by a human’s cold, merciless fingers enveloping her and her wings. Her swollen, discolored lips parted slightly in one last eternal cry for help, one that should have been able to call upon her brother, but one that was ignored and discarded, forcing her into that anguished expression forever.
Those lips would never smile again.
Those limp arms would never wrap themselves around his waist again.
That sweet voice would never grace his ears again.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to sob. He wanted to throw anything he could get his hands on at the wall, and claw his own eyes out. He expected the whole world to fall out from under him; surely committing such an act would cause his whole world to end. Yet, even as he waited for everything to suddenly go black, the world still continued to spin. His sister was lying dead before him—dead by his own hands—and the earth remained uncaring.
All the feelings trying to explode through his throat instead coalesced into a lightning that crackled through his body. In the next moment, he rushed out into the hallway, and was bathed in the light that had previously been filtering through into the patient room. He was running. The walls and lights and other rooms and hospital staff were a blur as he ran as fast as he possibly could. Hands tried to grab at him, shouts filled his ears, but it all sounded like gibberish to him. There wasn’t any point for something like him to listen to human language; a monster like him had no use for the words of mankind.
Once he reached the end of the hallway, he rocketed down several flights of stairs, leaping over four or so steps at once and nearly twisting his ankle or breaking a toe each time. At the bottom, he was once again racing down a hallway, and before long, he threw himself through the front hospital doors.
The darkness of nighttime swallowed him up yet again. While the hospital and the distant city lights provided some respite from the shadows, it was the pale illumination from the last-quarter moon in the sky that provided the most guidance in the midnight umbra. However, the darkness combined with the faint, eerie light filtering down from the hollow radiance of the seemingly cut-in-half moon made Satoru feel as though he were back in the hospital room.
And so, he kept running. Already he was out of breath, but his legs pushed him further. His thighs burned, his feet stung, his ribs felt like they were going to snap in half, and his waist felt like it was being crushed by two steel weights. Still, he ran. He rushed across roads with noisily-honking cars slamming on their breaks just before colliding with him. He ran through alleyways that stunk of muck and sweat and blood. He ran through long stretches of open space, in abandoned parkspaces and quiet neighborhoods, like he was the last poor soul in a world that had gone inert, the cruel laughter and jeers of the wind his only twisted company.
As the hours passed by, his legs screamed at him, and it didn’t take the rest of his body long to join the fray of the cacophony. Every tendon ached, every bone felt ready to crumble to pieces, every cell felt like it was a dying star about to burst into a supernova. The only thing keeping him going was the very act of running itself. If he stopped for even a moment, the brief moment of relief would be all it took to keep him from ever taking another step again. However, this he could not allow. After what he did, there could be no respite. The anguish had to continue. It must be made ceaseless.
Still, even this drive could not keep a human body in motion perpetually, especially not a hungry, thirsty, young, and inexperienced one such as this. With a faint blue light illuminating the trees around him, and a reverse-gloaming of orange and purple on the horizon betraying the impending daybreak, Satoru’s legs began to falter. However many hours it had been, however far he had run from that hospital, it was finally time for him to give up.
After stumbling over dry foliage for some time, all the while heaving out deathly, wheezing breaths, he finally fell to his knees, limply reaching his hands forward to brace himself as his torso followed suit and fell forward.
As his fingers dug into the grass, gripping so tight he felt as though he could rip this entire forest up from its roots, he glanced forward. Through the matted hair covering his face, he realized a river flowed before him.
Shuffling his knees forward, he peered into the waters. The light of the distantly arriving sunrise revealed a reflection in the surface that shook him to his core. He smoothed back his sweaty hair as best he could, yet still, the mirror image looking back at him didn’t make any sense. There was logically nothing dissonant from the appearance of himself that he knew. His hair was messier, sure, but all the facial features were in their expected places. Even still, was there any possibility the boy looking back at him was him?
‘***** ** ****?’
Three words suddenly flashed through his head, but he couldn’t make them out. It was as though something had beamed radio static straight into his brain. It felt eerily familiar.
After a moment, the dissonance finally registered.
The hair still half-obscuring his eyes was certainly his. The same black color it had always been.
So why did the hair in the water look—?
Without warning, he suddenly plunged his head into the waters.
While the act had even surprised him, he recognized this as a natural course of action. With a new day soon dawning, and the moon now vanished from the sky, he had finally found a place that didn’t remind him of the hospital room. While he didn’t have a right to die with his sister, right here was a perfectly suitable spot for his grave.
Water flooded his nose and seared his sinuses, and without so much as a meek attempt to hold his breath, the same water rushed down his throat and began filling his lungs.
Even as he began to drown, he reached an arm forward and plunged it into the water, grabbing hold onto something in the river and pulling to force himself deeper. His other arm followed suit, dragging him deeper into the cold waters. After a couple more pulls, he was completely submerged in the river. He couldn't speak, he couldn't breathe, all he could see or feel or hear or taste was water. It enveloped him fully and swallowed him whole, as if returning him to his dead mother's womb as a fetus.
He did not grieve his own death. He had willingly and happily brought it on himself. It was a most fitting death, after what he had done. Here, he, too, was cut off from air, the winds of life, and the very ability to scream or cry for help was robbed from him as well, just as he had robbed that of his sister. All agency would be cut off, every method of escape smothered. After all the running, even the pain hardly bothered him anymore. All there was now was to wait until everything went black and he was devoured by the shallow abyss.
Sayaka,
I’m sorry.
I… couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do what you asked.
Even in the end, I couldn’t make you happy.
I couldn’t make you right.
Even still, you’ll always be my sister.
I love you.
.
.
.
In another time, two children—born once before, now floating in a claustrophobic womb filled with shadowy waters—suddenly cried out in fear and despair.