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As the day shifts into night, her thoughts become more incoherent as the light fades.
It has been like this… for how long, exactly? Hours or years, she couldn’t tell. She had to find out that vodka makes her sleepy, while whiskey leaves a comfortable burning sensation in her throat. An ambitious mixture of both works best to break out from the night and get to saving daylight quickly.
She doesn’t always fight them. Sometimes, the weakness is stronger.
(Nico would call it strength, maybe bravery. Nico used to be very hung up on being brave and being honest and being soft.)
Maki’s fingers act before her brain can think. At first hesitant – as if that was to undo her rotten intentions -, then quick, she can’t ever go back, she lights up match for match. Lets them fall onto the ground, carefully holds them onto curtains until she sees the chaos in her mind on her fingertips.
She doesn’t leave the room she spent most of her childhood until she’s forcefully dragged out of it. The noise outside finds a way into her head like a parasite, buzzing loudly and pressing violently against the inside of her skull. They’re yelling at her. For what she has done or for who she is, she doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. She only cares a little bit.
As she refuses to make any movement to save herself from the inferno she created, the people around her grab her arms and pull at her like a doll. Apparently, they do not care if she gets a few bruises as long as she gets out alive. She wonders, what’s the point? If they revive her with stitches and she turns out to be a sheer mask of her old self, patched up and heavily made-up in order to hide what she truly is.
Is that better than dying true to yourself?
They get her out of the room that was once, very briefly, home. As they pass the burning photos on melting walls ; photos of her on her birthdays, with her parents, on events and galas ; her ceramic smile becoming more and more fragile ; her lips turn into a snarl. She stills grins as they’re hauling her out of the burning, yet so cold, cold room.
“The doctors said you’re fine”, her father spits. “Why are you acting up again? Don’t you ever think about your parents?”
Maki doesn’t answer. (She thinks her doctors are liars, possibly simple suck-ups, both intimidated and intrigued by her parents’ disgusting wealth. She also thinks her genuine thoughts wouldn’t be appreciated right now. Not that they once were.) Instead of giving in, she takes a bite of the steak the cooks have prepared for their dinner. It tastes bland.
“What happened to you?”, her mother cries out. “You used to be our perfect girl. Now, you’re- you’re-“
“We can’t go anywhere without people mocking us!” Her father now yells; she idly watches the vein on his throat throbbing as his voice becomes louder. “Laughing about us because our insane, fucked in the head daughter-“
Ironically enough, this is the trigger for her to think about Nico. Maybe because Nico had always protected her whenever someone called her that. Cussed at them, using names so obscene and rough it made Maki almost feel sane. They never bothered her again. Not with Nico next to her, anyway.
“But you do know that I am, right?”, Maki once told her. “Fucked in the head, I mean. they’re not wrong.” She had become cold at the phrase, had even started to believe it. Accepted it with a shrug. If everyone was like her, the world would be at a very different place.
Nico just glared at her. “I’ve seen crazy people, Nishikino. You’re certainly not one of them.” Then, a little bit quieter ; Maki to this day isn’t sure she was supposed to hear it, “you just need to be loved genuinely.”
She patiently waits for her parents to suffocate on their words as she chews on her just as dull salad. Eventually, they’re stopping themselves from shouting and there’s just the clock ticking as they silently take their meals. Her mother on the verge of tears, her father emotionless like a statue.
Maki has always felt much more adequate in her parents’ presence when they’re being themselves. She feels like she fits right in.
Of course, they wanted her to talk about her family in the psychiatry. All issues one has with oneself root from one’s parents, they diligently told her, many times, as if they were reading the phrase from a book. Knowing her own parents, Maki can’t say she’s very surprised. She refused to talk about them, though.
Nico always wanted her to.
“Why should I talk?”, Maki complained one time. “It won’t make me feel better.”
“It really won’t”, Nico laughed. Maki scoffed at her.
“You won’t even lie to make me feel better?”
Nico glared at her. “Fuck you think I am? No, I won’t lie to you. Duh.”
Maki defensively put her arms in front of her chest. They hadn’t been roommates for too long at that point ; they still had to work their way around each other, see what makes the other person click. Maki sometimes wondered whether the administration or whoever does dorms in psychiatry stuck the two of them together for laughs. A pathological liar and someone pathologically fixated on brutal honesty.
“But”, Nico looked at her with a stern look that sent a shiver down Maki’s spine, “sometimes you have to hurt to heal. Burning everything to ashes and then rising from it. You know?”
Her heart still speeds up at the thought of literally burning down her own walls, making her both anxious and relieved. Oh, if Nico could’ve seen all the hurting she’d done today.
She sits in front of a blank piece of paper. It used to a notebook, but that was far too ambitious. Small steps, Maki tells herself, even though she doesn’t put much trust in her own capabilities in forming words.
Clicking the ballpoint pen rapidly she struggles to get her thoughts on paper.
She tries, I’m sorry. Crosses that, then decides it was a good starter to begin with - it’s simple and it’s honest and Nico would appreciate that - and writes it down again.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry
I’m s
I
I’m so
S
Maki’s hand shakes so much she has to put down her pen. Fuck.
She takes her phone. Its old, probably doesn’t even have access to the internet (a desperate yet unfortunately successful attempt by her parents to cut her off from the world), but it suffices for an apology.
“Hi”, she speaks into her phone, “this is Maki. Um, I don’t know how this works, really. I’ve never done this.”
But you deserve this so much.
“So… I’m sorry. For hurting you, and for lying. Knowing you, you probably care about the lie more than your feelings-“
I care about you more than anything else.
“But, um… I’m sorry. Really sorry.” She takes a deep breath. “Bye, Nico.”
Long after the phone has stopped recording, she mumbles three words. They may be the most honest thing she’s ever said.
Therapy sucked. It was never spoken out-loud, but everyone knew she was the girl her parents sent to the psychiatry to fix her up. To make her shut up, to twist her into something she truly, genuinely is not. A doll, a puppet, with a never-ending smile and a dead heart.
Even in fucking psychiatry she was an outsider.
The other girls didn’t like her, either. Even though Nico and she shared a room, there had been dorm activities, group therapy, and the game Sundays. They liked to talk about her in a volume Maki could overhear just well, bumped into her when they crossed paths. Threw her clothes into a ditch. Called her brat, spoiled. Again, fucked in the head. (This one became a favorite as soon as they noticed it shook her up the most.)
Nico got mad whenever she notices someone going against Maki. Maki didn’t need the protection, not really, she didn’t care if she got hurt. Not until Nico cared. Nico took care of her in such a soft way Maki started to look after herself, too.
It was horrifying to wake up and to suddenly care whether you survive the day or not.
Maybe – just maybe – she pushed Nico away in order to preserve herself, the only version she had ever known.
Maybe – and this one is far more likely, if she’s being honest – she’s afraid of change out of all things?
The day she eventually put the puzzle pieces together was the day her thoughts became irreversibly tangled, much more than before. Drowning in white noise, suffocated by her own heavy thoughts, she made the decision to finally take Nico’s advice.
She was so sure she would get sent back to the psychiatry and get to see her again, now that her parents had an actual reason to. Setting her house on fire, almost killing herself in the process, for fuck’s sake, would surely get her to see Nico again, right?
She waits and waits and gets more and more anxious, because – the longer she waits, the higher the chance Nico has been discharged. She feels slightly selfish for wanting Nico to stay there; but she wouldn’t know where else to find her.
Maki still has an apology to make.
She still has to undo her worst mistake.
Sometimes, the nightmares seem to overwhelm her. It’s always the same one (as if her own mind wanted to mock her terribly, and, knowing herself, that is probably the main reason). Maki always ends up waking up, face grotesquely distorted in an empty scream, a helpless attempt in trying to save herself from the fire that seems so real. It’s always eating her alive, leaving the rest of the room untouched.
When she’s awake, the fire can’t hurt her; all the pain in the world couldn’t compare to what happens behind her eye sockets when she thinks about turning her life around.
Her situation is unfortunate (it sucks so fucking much), but it’s a constant. Its steadily painful. Who knows where she would end up if she dared to leave?
Nico had wanted her to run away. The both of them to run away, actually. She had started to state these plans around the same time they began to be closer. Maki enjoyed Nico’s touches, her warm lips on her hands, her neck, her collarbones.
Maki isn’t dumb. Neither is she emotionally unintelligent. She noticed the way Nico’s eyes lit up when she entered a room. She could tell by the way Nico became more gently towards her and hold her hand until she fell asleep.
But Maki isn’t kind, either.
When Nico eventually confessed her feelings to her – in just the way Nico is, fuck, Maki’s heart still clenches whenever she thinks about it – in just a simple sentence, “I think I fell in love with you”… well, she surely didn’t expect Maki to laugh in her face.
“That would be funny, wouldn’t it? The failure and her lover. God, I can already see my parents’ faces.”
Nico’s face turns into a grimace. “You don’t have to be a failure, Maki. You know that.”
“We don’t have a choice!”, Maki suddenly snaps, angry all of a sudden, she doesn’t know why ; the thought of Nico liking her out of all people, Nico choosing a miserable ending makes her so endlessly mad, “We can’t just leave!”
“Why not?”, Nico yells back, now standing up. She doesn’t reach Maki’s eye level, but the burning frustration seems to make her taller. “Why not, Maki?”
“Do you really think any of us could make it?”, Maki spits, “Leave this behind us?”
Nico stares at her in disbelief as if she never saw her before. The sight leaves Maki devastated, but she can’t stop.
“That’s it, then?”, Nico calmly says, eyes cold but hands shaking so slightly Maki doesn’t catch it.
“Its never been something to begin with”, Maki hears herself sneer.
Liar.
Look at what you’ve done to yourself.
She doesn’t know how Nico managed to do it, but she was paired up with another girl the following day. It was the same room, but it felt a lot less like home without Nico greeting her when she came from sessions, Nico making her hot chocolate when she couldn’t sleep, Nico crawling under her sheets when Maki was shaking from nightmares.
At some point, her parents decided to discharge her. She remembers eavesdropping a conversation her therapist had with her parents, heatedly trying to tell them that Maki was nowhere near being healthy. Unsurprisingly, her parents didn’t want to hear that. An important event was coming up and they needed their only daughter as an accessory.
She was back at her house, but it felt like she had left home.
And then, eventually – the cleansing. The fire.
The determination to see Nico again, paired with fear that ate her alive.
The nightmares.
One day – could it be any different? Feels like destiny spit in her face -, she sees Nico. She rubs her eyes, tells herself it’s a hallucination, because, Nico can’t just be walking down the street.
But there she is. Her hair in those pigtails Maki likes so much (she would never admit that to her), a black eye embellishing her face (whomever did that to her, Maki wants to fight), staring at her phone. She must have gotten lost; in fact, its so weird seeing her Nico in the stuck-up, snobby neighborhood full of empty mansions, Maki can’t help but stare at her until her heart gets teary from the exposure.
Maki runs from her room, escapes the stairs and finally reaches the doorknob. Her heartbeat beats in her fingertips and she runs and runs and runs and –
She stops when Nico turns around.
“Nishikino”, Nico says, with a loop-sided smile, and Maki needed to hear her voice so badly she can actually feel her knees getting weak. “You left, huh?”
“My parents took me back”, Maki answers, a bit out of breath. She realizes she said the wrong thing when Nico snorts.
“Figured”, Nico lifts her hand in a casual wave, “bye, then.”
“Wait!”
Nico stops in her motions and raises one eyebrow, the one above her black eye. Maki scolds herself for not taking her phone with her ; then again, Nico would think of her as a coward if she just played the record instead of just saying it.
“I’m sorry”, she eventually says. Poison through her veins. There’s a flash of hurt in Nico’s eyes.
“Here I thought you couldn’t get any worse, now you want to make fun of me, too?”, Nico quietly asks, anger shaking in her voice. Usually, when one of them gets angry, it sparks a fire in the other one, too ; they always used to burn each other up ; but now, all Maki feels is numbness.
“I’m sorry”, Maki says through gritted teeth. Wants it to keep repeating like a broken record, wants it to beat into Nico’s head to make her realize she needs the guilt to be gone.
“That doesn’t make it better”, Nico tells her, almost regretfully.
Maki has too many thoughts she wants to get out, out, out, but as hard as she tries, she can’t.
Don’t leave, she desperately needs to say. Don’t leave me alone with my thoughts, don’t go-
Instead, she stays silent with the demons in her head.
“You won”, Nico plainly says. Maki’s guts turn themselves inside out at the sight of the empty grin Nico gives her. “You lost it, but you won, right?”
Did she really win?
Patched up heart on her sleeve and crocodile tears on her cheeks, burning more than ever.
At last, we cannot escape from who we really are.