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I love you…
I love you, Zera…
The heaviness of that words sliced me open.
His voices creeping inside my bones, rotting, burning there. Grafted themselves into me. Echoed until silence itself becomes unbearable, until every breath I take is a reminder that I never answered, that I never deserved to.
I couldn’t move. My own body betrayed me, frozen where I catching up my breath as if the air itself had thickened into chains around my limbs.
Jaibo… my Jaibo. My only Jaibo.
The only one who ever looked at me as if I were worth anything, more than flesh, more than filth. He saw a God where there was only a boy with blood on his hands. Raised me higher than heaven. He would have destroyed everything if only I demanded it. And yet, when he needed me, I was silent.
And now he is breaking.
I watched as Litchi’s fists landed on him.
I was lying there, helpless, watching the only boy who loves me more than anything crushed into something inhuman.
Blood pooled like a dark mirror of my own failure, splashing across the cold concrete, staining it with what should have been his warmth. His skin… his eyes… all the beauty I once claimed as mine—all shattered into pieces I couldn’t put back together.
I could have saved him.
if I were the god I dreamed of being, I would have saved him.
If I were as strong and brave as I want to be... but I'm not.
For one breathless second, I imagined him still alive.
Every time I close my eyes, I see that same grin of his. It's carefree, foolish, unshaken by the cruelty of the world. As if dying meant nothing, as if his love could sanctify even my cowardice.
His voice haunts the silence. His laugh gnaws at the walls of my skull until I am sick with it. I want it to stop. I want it to last forever. I want him back, and I want him gone.
I am suffocating…
The truth is that I killed him long before anything ever touched him.
I killed him in glances withheld, in silences heavy as stone. I killed him in every moment I let my gaze pass over him, when I should have hold onto him as if he were the only thing that tethered me to this world. I killed him in my pride, when I chose the illusion of power over the truth of his love.
He gave me his worship freely. He laid his devotion at my feet as though I were holy, as though I were more than the sum of my hungers and lies.
I let him kneel before a god that never existed. A god stitched together from horror, from vanity, from fear. An emperor built of rot wearing a crown of glass.
The ugliest part of me is already crumbling.
When I look at Jaibo now, I hear voices. My voices. Screaming, crying, tearing through him until he chokes on it. The boy I buried deep inside, Tsunekawa Hiroyuki, claws his way out of the grave I dug for him, ragged hands reaching for the pieces of everything I’ve stolen from him. Jaibo’s laughter, his love, his trust.
He collects what I never gave him.
And I see him bend over Jaibo’s broken body, the flesh and blood I allowed to bleed and fracture. He presses him into arms that should have been mine, praying, mourning, grieving. Every heartbeat Jaibo has left is cradled in a reverence I failed to offer.
And still, the revenant refuses to let him go. He gathers Jaibo like he was always meant to be. And I am left with the unbearable weight of knowing I failed him.
I failed him in life.
I failed him in death.
I failed him in everything.
“Litchi!!”
The sound of her breathing.
A girl we kidnapped. Perfectly fine. Innocent, laughing, alive. I watched her run to Litchi, her arms open as if waiting for salvation, and the world continued as if nothing had happened. She breathed, she smiled, she moved, untouched by the ruin I caused.
But my Jaibo did not.
Every breath she takes is a blade twisting deeper into my chest.
He is gone. He will never run into me again. Never call me Zera with that stupid smile I squandered. Never press his hands into mine, never let me cradle him like I should have.
So I laughed.
So hard my ribs could have break.
I started cursing, calling Jaibo stupid. Calling him pathetic. Leaving everything I’ve never meant to spilled out of my mouth.
I said he was just a toy despite his own feelings.
When I was just a fool despite mine.
But if Jaibo could have seen this. He would know, he always knew.
That I was hurting.
That my heart was breaking.
That I would have crawled to him, dragged myself bleeding across the floor just to fall into his arms again in a second.
The first words out of my mouth would not have been curses, not even laughter or cruelty.
But I’m sorry.
I’m so sorry, Jaibo.
If I could only get one more chance. I’d choose wisely.
I’d kneel in front of him before he even laid his eyes on me. I’d take his hand in mine more gently this time. I’d say I love him before either of us even knew what love was.
I’d build my sanctuary for him.
And maybe, in that sanctuary, he wouldn’t have died.