Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ This is Not My Life ❯ Just something I like to think about at night ( Chapter 6 )

“Just something I like to think about at night….”


-OMI-



I've gotta stop staring at the clock like this. My eyes have been riveted to it for the past hour and a half. And each round the second hand makes seems to go slower than the trip before.

I try reading the newspaper. I flip through my physics book. I even re-arrange the inside of the fridge.
Nothing I do is able to distract me from the slow ticking that echoes through the room.

For the first half hour I'm almost able to convince myself that they're just out on a regular errand. But really, I think that deep down I knew from the second I woke up that they weren't coming back. When life throws as much crap at you as mine has, you get a good sense for feeling when something bad's about to happen. I get the feeling a lot. It's usually right.

Don't think I'm complaining or anything. I've gotten pretty used to it. Really. Getting injured on a weekly basis? No sweat. Missing so much school that it's a miracle they still let me come? Whatever. Knowing that my education is essentially pointless because I'll almost certainly die before I can graduate? I stopped caring about that years ago.

I've learned to roll with the punches. That's me; the adaptable Omi.

So why am I on the verge of flipping out now? This shouldn't faze me any more than the next bad thing, right? Well, it seems the more numb I get to regular pain, the worse it hurts when that pain is related to losing people. It's my worst fear. And the one that most often fulfills itself. You'd think by the sheer quantity of people I've lost, I'd start getting used to it? I mean, bullet wounds have become so old hat, I don't even flinch anymore. Why does this have to be different? It is though. It gets worse with each one. I guess its cause the less people I have in my life, the more attached I get to those who're left.

And it was down to three.

Only three people to care about.

Out of a planet with six billion people on it.

Just three.

And now that numbers down by two.

It's the beginning of the end.

It's probably just a matter of days now before I'm completely alone.
I'm not going to try to fool myself into believing that Ken will stick around. It's no secret that he wants out of Weiß. He already tried to leave. He had a plane ticket. He was packed for chrissakes!
What got him to stay?
Yohji!
He stayed for frickin' Yohji!!
Did he even think of me for a second during that whole ordeal? Ha. Fat chance.
I wonder if he thought of Aya?
Well, Aya's gone. Yohji's gone.
I can as good as write Ken off as gone too.
I wonder if he'll take off immediately, or linger a few days out of guilt?

God, this sucks.

I wonder if they'll keep sending me out on missions all by myself?
A very small part of me hopes they do. It's not very likely I'd last long without backup.
It's a wonder I don't outright want to kill myself.

Strangely enough, I actually don't.

If I hadn't been pounded through so much shit in my life, I suspect I would have turned out like one of those sickeningly optimistic people. I seem to have a lot of innate hope built into my character. Most of it's been carved away over the years, but there's still a little left. Just enough to let me believe that if I live long enough to leave Kritiker, I might just be able to do something really good; start balancing the karma scale a little. I don't want to die having done nothing but hurt people. Sure, I know I'm too far gone to really amend everything I've done…but to die without even trying? That's the most selfish act I can think of.

So yeah, suicide's never really been an option to me. Of course, that doesn't mean I haven't thought about it. I've thought about it plenty. It's really not possible to live like this and never think of it at all. I don't doubt for a second the probability that it's occurred to the others. I think the suicide rate inside Kritiker is something like thirty or forty percent. Some depressingly high number like that. It's not surprising. This sort of work really wears on your conscience. To get through it you have to be either really strong…or just plain evil. Kritiker's got its share of both.

One thing I always wonder about though, is the utter lack of creativity in the suicidal ones. They almost all do it the same way. Slit wrists. Gunshot through the mouth. A few of the braver ones choose seppuku. But that's it. No greater variety. They seem to think that the bloodier their death, the better. As if they weren't drenched in enough blood in life. Don't they ever consider the people who'll have to find them? Who wants to walk into a bathroom and find their friend/coworker's brains splattered across the wall? Or their corpse floating in a crimson stained bathtub? I know a kid at school, who's dad killed himself. He went to his secret girlfriend's apartment, and shot himself in her bedroom. Now she has to move because she has a nervous breakdown every time she goes into her own home. Do those people ever even think about this? Like I said. The very essence of suicide is just plain selfishness.
The least people could do is go out without making a mess.

I know exactly how I'd do it.

Yeah, that's right. Despite the fact that I wholeheartedly disapprove of suicide, I've planned out every last detail of what I'd do in my own rhetorical death.

Go ahead. Ask me.

Ask me how I'd kill myself.

I bet you'd never guess.
There's so many ways to do it that get overlooked.
Did you know that you can die from eating dirt?
Yep! That's right! You can kill yourself with dirt.
This was my plan number one.

There's plenty of dirt in the Koneko no Sumu Ie.
I thought it would be fantastically ironic to survive every assassination mission, only to die by means of the flower shop.

I've got a weird sense of humor, though.

I've changed my mind, however. You have to eat an awful lot of it for that to work. And it's a very slow painful way to go. I think it ruptures your stomach and you internally bleed to death or something. Not pleasant. And there's always the risk that someone'd get me to a hospital before I could kick the bucket.

So I changed my plan.

Kept it flower shop related of course. I liked that idea too much to drop. But changed the ingested substance to a botanical one. I settled on yew. It's a nice substitute for arsenic, I've heard. Plus it's one of the most popular landscaping plants out there. I wouldn't have to walk for more than five minutes before I found some.

Why do people choose to edge their lawns with a deadly plant? Beats me. It's kinda pretty, I guess.

Well, anyway…it's not like I'll ever actually do any of that. It's just something I like to think about. I don't sleep too well at night. It's something to keep my mind occupied.


I check the clock again.

It's been almost two hours now. It's stupid to bother waiting any longer. I might as well check for some sort of sign to confirm my theory. I doubt Aya would have been careless enough to leave any clues, but Yohji might have.

I need but to open the door to his room for all the proof I need.

It's spotless.

The curtains are up. There's not a single article of clothing on the floor---or anything else for that matter. The bed is made…shit, he even turned the sheets down into hospital corners. This is not a room intended for habitation anytime soon.

With a sick feeling in my stomach, I open the top left drawer of his dresser.

No Asuka.

Shit.

Now I can't even pretend they might come back.
Yohji isn't exactly in the habit of toting that picture around.
In fact, it's never left the drawer for as long as I've known about it. Which has been a pretty long time.
Not that I was ever supposed to know about it. I expect Yohji would be fairly disturbed if he ever found out that I knew. Not that that's a threat anymore.

I'm not exactly proud of the way I found out.
But then, there's a lot of stuff I'm not especially proud of.

I mentioned that I don't sleep too well.

It's partly because I have a lot of nightmares; partly because I think too much.
I lay in bed at night and remember those kidnapped children I promised I'd save; that I was too late to save; that died.
I think about how Ouka might still be alive if I'd pushed her away.
I wonder if I would have turned out as horrible as my family if I were never kidnapped….
I think about how I turned out horrible anyway.
….Just in a different way.

I really hate thinking sometimes.

I discovered that alcohol is an excellent cure for thinking.

So I developed a real fondness for drinking the voices out of my head on particularly bad nights.

There was just one problem.

I'm underage.

Now this doesn't seem a problem for most people. Supposedly it's really easy to get alcohol anyway. Most clerks don't even bother to do ID checks.
Well, they bother with me.
Every time without fail.

I even made myself a fake ID. I had the equipment to make it very professionally, too. But did it work? No.
Every single one of them insisted I simply looked too young for them to believe it was real. One jerk even accused me of being twelve. Did that ever piss me off.

So there's the sad truth.

What was I doing in Yohji's room? I was raiding it for booze.
I mean, Yohji sure seems like the kinda guy who'd keep the stuff around, doesn't he?
At least that's what I thought.
I have since learned to put less faith in appearance.
Yohji did not have a single drop of alcohol stashed anywhere.

What did I find?

That picture of Asuka, and a stack of Louis L'Amour books and romance novels. Oh yeah, I think there was a grungy plastic dinosaur under his bed too. Yohji's even weirder than he seems.

Oh well. I suppose I ought to go find Ken and give him the news. He'll probably want to take off before Kritiker finds out about Yohji and Aya. It'll certainly be easier for him that way.

Hell, it's what I'd do if faced with the proposition of having no one left for company but me.