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“Does that mean you’re also a guy?”
“It’s not like he tries to hide it!”
If only she hadn’t arrived moments before they started talking shit, maybe the girl’s two classmates could’ve kept insulting the pink haired girl just a little bit more. However, fate had decided she had to hear everything. On the other side of the rooftop was Ena, standing in disbelief at what she had just heard. Was it really true? That truly was the secret her friend was keeping inside of her all along? She turned around in a sudden, almost instinctive way, and with the tail of her eye, she made out a tall, slender figure with pink hair she could recognize in a room full of people. The look on the figure said it all — shock, pure and unconstrained... Before she could make out the full picture, a soft and embarrassed laugh came from Mizuki, as if she was trying to believe none of this was happening. Her vision slowly blurring, she took a step back, which alerted Ena that something awful was about to happen. The pinkette took another step back, grabbing the door handle and running down the stairs with tears forming in her eyes. “WAIT… MIZUKI!” the brunette screamed before starting to chase after her friend, running at speeds she didn’t believe were possible. “Mizuki… wait! Please, please wait!” she kept screaming, a glimmer of hope that was just about to fade away.
She was able to catch up to her only by taking a shortcut through the halls, and was able to stop Mizuki from running by stumbling on herself and accidentally hitting her too, the both of them fell onto the floor. Ena threw away all logic and self-control, grabbing all her strength to speak to her friend.
“M-Mizuki, wait, please, just-”
“I’m sorry.” she interrupted the brunette, a low and hopeless ‘sorry’ was all she could say without crying. Without facing her direction, she kept speaking: “I know I should’ve… told you sooner.”
“Mizuki, I…” she couldn’t form a complete sentence before being cut off again, this time by a sob.
“You were surprised. You were surprised, weren’t you?”
“But… B-but it’s-”
“I get it… Just now, Ena was just… surprised… And she couldn’t feel anything else… I get it… I really do…”
“Mizuki…” she tried to speak up, she wanted to say something, anything, but no word could come out of her other than just “Mizuki”.
“But… I just can’t accept it! I…” she paused, struggling to keep herself from sobbing. The silence was deafening, so deafening it kept mining away at all the progress she was making to keep herself from bursting in tears. “You’re… you are really kind, Ena… Tomorrow, you’ll act as if nothing happened, things will go back to normal, and you’ll keep talking to me like today never happened… And, and Kanade and Mafuyu too… they’ll just… it will all just go back to normal…”
Ena wanted to say something, anything just to make her friend feel better. She inhaled, trying to find any word to speak, just to be interrupted again by Mizuki.
“I HATE IT! I REALLY… I hate it… It just won’t feel like it always has felt… It’ll just feel like… like you will all carefully plan your words, like if you were walking around glass shards to avoid breaking them… You’ll choose your words more carefully, you’ll tip-toe around your terms… And I don’t want that… I don’t want it…”
“I’m sorry…” she repeated one last time, with that same low tone she had on the rooftop.
Ena reached for Mizuki’s hand, grabbing it. “Mizuki… Please, Miz—” once again, she couldn’t finish her sentence, Mizuki slapped Ena’s hand, got up and ran away once.
“MIZUKI!” Ena screamed with all the energy she had left. She tried getting up, but as soon as she put her left foot on the floor, a sharp ache hit her ankle, making her stumble upon herself again. She couldn’t find the strength to move anymore, and believing she had lost everything, her last conscious action was to curl up in a ball. She couldn’t keep it in, and cried, repeatedly asking herself just one question: “why?”
Ena was later found asleep by Kanade and Mafuyu. They woke her up and took her home. Not a single word was exchanged between the three of them for the entire walk.
Meanwhile Mizuki just kept running, seeking home but roaming far from it, running towards nothing, but to her any way she went was fine as long as it wasn’t backwards, as long as it wasn’t back to them.
“I’ve reaped what I’ve sown, haven’t I?
Hahahaha… I run, and run, and run, and run.
I was hoping someone would just spit it out for me.
And it happened. So why do I feel this… weight…
Please, make this all just end.”
“I want to disappear.”
The entire group had tried to contact Mizuki for an entire week through any means possible. She had deactivated her Nightcord account, no calls were picked up and no text messages were seen, as if she just threw her phone away. For the past seven days, Mizuki had closed all doors in her apartment, only spending her time trying to forget about what happened and distracting herself by binge watching her favorite magical girls anime — with no effective results. She hadn’t left her bed in days, all the food she had bought for the week had expired, and the letter… Mizuki had been writing a letter the week before. She wanted to confess everything by letter, the whole secret and a lot more she had kept less hidden than her big one. Though that letter was useless now, they knew everything, didn’t they? They were upset towards her for keeping a secret, were they? They hated her, didn’t they? Didn’t she? Mizuki got up from her bed in the same pajamas she used for the last week and grabbed an old lighter she stole from Rui years ago, she opened up the window in her bedroom and without hesitation nor tears in her eyes burned the letter, holding onto it until her fingers started hurting from the flames. She let go of it, watching the ashes fly away in the distance as if she just threw away her own remains. For what she cared, it was over — the feeling only kept on growing the more blood flowed on her arms and to her hands, slowly dripping like a leaky fountain. She had mauled herself real bad, she was even afraid of watching the damage. The only thing that was really keeping her in one piece was basic hygiene, for some reason just the thought of not taking care of herself for one day was enough to at least get her to shower daily and brush her teeth. Maybe it was because she was plotting something? The articles say people are usually happier after a devastating moment in their life.
A few days had passed and the girl received a notice from Kamiyama High School, saying she had to attend mandatory class for the first time in a while due to her lack of time at the school. The thought of going to school horrified her, nearly bringing her to vomit. She checked the date: tomorrow. She was not ready to go back to that hell forsaken high school, and would rather do something completely crazy… “Do something completely crazy…” the thought crossed her mind and kept on reappearing, again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and…
She decided to pick out an outfit, her usual cardigan and her usual skirt: caring about dressing up would take too much energy. She left her house, leaving the keys behind and walking towards Kamiyama, her head looking down at her feet. She entered the building just minutes after walking and started climbing the stairs up to the rooftop, a place she knew all too well. Once she was done, the memories started flooding back in and the sharp pain in her chest got even sharper. She started walking near the edge of the rooftop, looking at the sunset admiring the beauty that nature could create. Just a second after, the entrance door emanated a weird sound, as if someone was opening the door… but who could it be at such a late—
“M…Mizuki…?” She knew that voice, she could guess the color of her hair, her eyes, skin, nails, she could guess she had a few strands of braided hair on the right side of her head, she could guess her exact height, her role, her name. Mizuki’s heart dropped, she could not believe she was here after all this time.
“What are you… why are you here?” Mizuki asked.
“I-I, Mizuki… Mizuki, I’ve been trying uhm… I wanted to talk to you… I’ve been checking for you here daily, since I know this is one of your favorite places… Mizuki, why are you here? Why are you standing on the edge of the rooftop?”
“Ena. Why were you waiting for me? You know everything, that’s what you wanted, right? You wanted to know everything, and now you do.”
“Mizuki, that’s not what I—” “Shut up.” Mizuki interrupted Ena, clearly not interested in hearing what she had to say. “Just, please. Shut up. I’m a… a freak of nature, I don’t belong here Ena. That’s why I came here.” A heavy moment of silence filled the air, Mizuki still looking at the sunset while Ena’s cheeks were coated in tears.
“You know, Ena? I’ve wanted to tell you this since the first time we started talking. You always catched my eye… Whenever I felt sad, no matter how many times I had pissed you off that day, you were always there for me, even when I totally didn’t deserve it. Your kindness gave me a reason to stay, because I love you. It was one of the things I wanted to tell you last week. There, now you truly know it all. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? There’s nothing here to care about anymore, I’m done.”
“Mizuki…” Ena sobbed, the pain she was going through right now was even worse than what she felt last time the two of them met. “Mizuki… I love you too… and nothing was ever going to change that in the first place… there’s really nothing you could do to make me hate you… Please, please step back…”
“No. I… I just keep running away from my problems, all the time… There’s really nothing left for me, I’m… I’m a freak, I’m… selfish for not telling you sooner, I’m really not worth it, not worth going through all of this. Ena, please. Leave. I don’t want you to get hurt, leave and forget about me. Get another person to love, get a new editor, get new friends, a new ‘me’, just… please don’t try to save me.”
The speech left Ena without a word to say, and before she knew it she was on her knees crying. “MIZUKI, PLEASE! PLEASE, JUST LISTEN TO YOURSELF RIGHT NOW! YOU’RE SPEAKING BULLSHIT, PLEASE—”
Before Ena could finish, a last sentence left Mizuki’s mouth.”
“Ena, I love you. Please take care of yourself.”
Her body lunged forward, eyes closed.
Ena screamed, crying Mizuki’s name in vain, watching her body fall from the edge of the building where it was standing just a second ago.