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He closes the door by leaning against it with his back, and as he lets out a long breath the gates open.
The flood of thoughts, reprimands and self-deprecation burst out and fill up his head. It's overwhelming, as if a switch has been flipped as soon as he closed the door.
The more his head fills, the more he can feel the pressure behind his eyes and he knows all that water needs a way out of his skull. It's natural. If a space gets filled up to the top it needs a way out. It overflows. Or bursts.
And bursting he does. The tears come slowly at first, his breathing starts to come out irregularly and he's so so glad that his sister is still at school and practicing with her band. He's so goddamn glad that his parents are still at work.
Because Tsukasa knows what he's about to do.
At this moment it barely matters that he has been clean for over a year. It doesn't matter that he has friends and that he has been happy. In this moment what matters is how he feels and that he doesn't know how to deal with it.
For him the scars on his arms, legs and stomach don't stand for strength and they don't symbolise how he managed to overcome a sinkhole in his path.
They make him feel ashamed instead. Weak. Attention seeking.
And it doesn't make sense, because he knows his friends would be there for him. He knows that they would listen, distract him, make him feel better. But he also knows that they have other things to worry about. More important things. Like exams and homework and their families.
Tsukasa hates himself just for wording it like that. It sounds sarcastic, disgusting. As if he thinks he's more important than the worries his friends have. He's so selfish.
And always so loud and talkative. Why can't he shut up for once in his life? Just sit quietly and listen instead of having to share his opinion all of the time. Every day he waits for the moment that one of them just interrupts him and yells at him to please shut his mouth.
God, Tsukasa hates himself.
Distantly he notices how his body moves up the stairs. One leg in front of the other, carrying the mass of flesh up and towards his door automatically. It's as if nothing changed when his arm pulls open the drawer and searches around, pushing away notebooks that cover one particular small box at the bottom.
It feels heavier than it is in his hand. Like a block of steel. The tears have long since dried out, leaving behind a deserted land of wreckaged trees and wildlife. Carcasses strewn about where once was a land of nature and life.
Tomorrow it will all be gone and there will be nothing but sand and dried out ground. He's gonna feel tired and exhausted and numb-
A sting on his hip pulls him out of his thoughts. He can't help this disgusting sort of giddiness rising in his gut and he barely catches the smile that threatens to cross his lips while he watches the red blood pearl out of the wound.
His thoughts pounce on it like predators on prey, taunting him and laughing at him as they shake his limp body between their teeth.
Is this what you want? A reason to get attention? Is that why you're smiling?
In the back of his head he knows that this isn't true. He's ashamed, he feels disgusting and the fact that he did this makes him want to vomit. All this despite being aware of the biological background on why he feels ‘happy’ doing this.
Some of the blood has pooled together on the untorn skin and he watches in fascination as it, very slowly, runs down his hip and thigh.
His skin feels too tight, blood buzzing in his veins and there's static in his ear, he feels like his brain is melting and it hurts.
And then it all stops again.
A cold shiver runs down his back.
He closes his eyes.
Opens them again.
The metal of the box knife in his hands glints a little in the light as he turns it over.
Then his eyes focus back on the red and another shiver wrecks through his body.
The stinging in his hip and thigh continue while the realization completely sets in.
I hate myself is the first thing Tsukasa thinks after a while.
Then he moves the knife across his hip again. And then across his thigh, and another across his hip. It hurts as one wound after another is cut into the skin, some deeper than others.
But they all bleed. And that's enough.
Slowly and carefully he limps over to his closet to pull out a roll of toilet paper he had hid there a year ago and never got to dispose of. He rips off a few pieces and presses them onto the red skin.
The paper comes back more red than white.
Almost robotically he repeats the process a few times, fingers stained red as well from the wet paper and a metallic smell filling his nose. When he thinks that the bleeding has stopped he stops, carefully putting the blade back in its box and the toilet paper into the drawer.
Notebooks filled with scripts cover it all up and he carefully walks to his trash can to dispose of the used tissues.
No emotion passes his face, no shift in expression except the slightest tug at the corner of his lips as he internally laughs at himself.
His own foolishness for believing that he would ever get away from this.
Himself in general, because he failed and he's aware that he never wanted to succeed, because he needs a reason to feel worthy of his emotions. Of his problems.
As he carefully covers up the bloodied tissues with discarded papers, a sliver of a thought enters his mind, coiling tightly around his stomach, a familiar sensation.
A thrill, a forbidden fantasy.
An attempt at gaining validation and comfort for his problems he so desperately wants, even going so far to risk his life for it and actively ignoring how repetitive he's being, crying out for attention in a way that will drive his friends and family away, fed up with his theatrics because at the end of the day he's surely exaggerating.
He carefully covers his wounds up by pulling on a pair of sweatpants and goes into the bathroom to clean his hands of his own blood, his own issues.
To continue ignoring everything and fall asleep and wake up the next day to ignore the wounds as he changes clothes and ignore the pain when the material brushes over them as he walks to school with a smile.