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himiko wants to text tenko. or kokichi.
but she vents to them too much. it hasn’t been a weak if she and kokichi haven’t had a conversation about suicide, and tenko is pretty much always on her guard. worried about her.
(worried about her. it’s something to be ashamed of, not validated by. thankfully himiko is pretty sure the part of her brain that processes validation is permanently broken by now.)
she’s always been more impulsive when she’s episodic. something about the endless stream of self deprecation flooding through her head, bouncing around her skull on loop, on repeat, makes her lose her inhibitions a bit. just enough to ask for help. her hands shake when she does it and she usually cries, which is downright degrading, but she feels better afterwards, so it’s okay.
or, she should feel better afterwards, did for a really long time, but as of late there haven’t been very many… real, positive outcomes of venting to people.
(usually she just throws up after. the floor in her bathroom is porcelain. the cracks in it, where each square ends, leave angry red marks on her bare knees. himiko doesn’t notice them until her nose stops running and her eyes stop leaking. and her stomach doesn’t stop churning for hours.)
she types out a message anyway. to both of them.
[hi tenko, are you awake? sorry to bother you, i--]
backspace backspace backspace backspace. no good.
[kich, i know you’re up, im sorry i know i vented to you on monday but--]
no no no. no. not good. she can’t just say that. he’ll snort at her and say something derisive and he’s so helpful in that he’s so honest with her, even when she’s crying, but himiko doesn’t want his purposeful callousness because she knows he’s doing it to make her feel better. kokichi can change face like a television screen, he doesn’t need to be mean or blunt. but it helps her and he does it.
it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
and tenko would hug her, probably. hug her and urge honesty, give space to vent, wrap her in blankets and press kisses to her forehead. tenko would sit by her until she stops crying, hold her hair back when she inevitably vomits after, rubs her back up and down, kiss her forehead. tenko would wait until she feels better, and she would take care of her all the while, and it would be so completely and utterly awful because that’s not her job.
that’s not her job, and that’s all that ever happens when tenko is around, is tenko takes care of her, and that’s not fair, not healthy. himiko is a lot of things but she likes to think that she’s honest with herself too and she knows, she knows that the role she plays in tenko’s life isn’t really a good one. because if she played a good role in tenko’s life she’d be there for tenko. she’d help tenko with her problems.
she doesn’t. not because she doesn’t want to, but because tenko doesn’t ask, and she doesn’t either.
she doesn’t either. she’s had the opportunity to, she’s seen tenko’s sadness, her anxiety, but tenko has brushed it off and himiko has too. she’s let it rest. she’s let it be.
(and it’s awful, so awful. she should be there for tenko too. they’re friends. that’s what friends do, they’re there for each other. forget that tenko doesn’t seem to care at all, forget that tenko seems happy taking care of her, that isn’t what himiko wants. she doesn’t want tenko to be happy with unfairness. she wants to be a good friend.)
so she can’t accept that kindness and she can’t burden kokichi any further, kokichi who deals with enough shit on his own, who knows without having to ask when she’s not okay because he knows her.
himiko exits his contact and presses the palms of her hands into her eyes, trying to stop tears from burning at the corners. this is so stupid. she feels so stupid. her stomach hurts. she wonders if she’s going to throw up.
(her heart is beating heavy in her chest. thump. thump. thump. too much. she can’t really breathe past it. she wishes it would stop.)
she picks up her phone again for no reason. it’s so warm. her hands shake against it. they are so cold. and weak, too, very weak, but they’re always weak when they’re cold. himiko tries to swallow past her heart in her throat.
the contacts scroll, fast, past her eyes as she swipes at the screen, tapping on one at random and not bothering to look at the recipient as she types out a message. she feels blind and impulsive, her stomach is cold and empty, and her head is pounding, but she keeps typing.
[i feel sad and numb and like a horrible person and everyone who ive ever admired would hate me and i really really really want to die]
stupid thought, sending someone a message like that. himiko’s thumb slips and she presses the send button.
she shoots to sit up, her heart suddenly racing, and looks wildly at the contact name. rantaro. fuck. fuck. he gave her his phone number once because they were doing a project together.
(a project himiko couldn’t finish, couldn’t pull her weight on, even though she spent hours trying.)
she doesn’t know him! he doesn’t know anything about her depression, or, or any of this stuff, he’s not like tenko and kokichi who know how to deal with her when she’s like this, and forget all of that, forget it, just throw it away, because it’s the middle of the night and rantaro’s out of town. he’s gone, he took a plane and left, and sure he’ll be back, but he’s probably busy and hours from now when himiko feels real again he’s going to read the message and get worried and--
the message is marked as read. fuck. fuck. shit. himiko scrambles to type something else when rantaro’s reply comes in.
[everything ok?]
no, no, no, he can’t just ask that, himiko-- she tries to regulate her breathing, tries to calm down, but her heart hurts, it hurts, with how hard it’s beating. fuck. shit. no.
[yea, sorry, im fine. dont worry about it. shouldnt have sent that.]
sent. opened. himiko watches the little speech bubble that appears as rantaro types his response.
[don’t worry about it]
another.
[can i call you?]
himiko wonders if there’s a way to keysmash mentally.
[NO no its ok i swear im fine]
she can’t-- really breathe.
[it’s fine, really, im ok, i just]
[that was so stupid please dont call]
the message is read, he’s opened it, but he’s not saying anything. himiko’s hands shake but she turns off the ringer, presses the power button and throws the phone across the room. for some reason her eyes burn with tears but she forces them back, tries to suck in real breaths and coughs on her exhalations. nothing feels real. she, specifically, doesn’t feel real. but her peaceful disassociation has been interrupted with something else, something red hot and panicky, and she hates it.
she hates red, hates the colour of blood and the colour of her hair and the colour of her eyes too. hates autumn leaves and stop signs and rubies and lipstick. she hates long fingernails, hates the sound they make when they drum against a table, hates mahogany and mixes of red too. pink is an awful colour, too bright, too painful. red hurts her head, her heart, makes her feel awful and sticky. when she washes her hair it comes off in clumps, bloody looking red clumps, and she has to sink down to the (porcelain) floor and rock herself back and forth until it fades away.
she likes the red in other people, in maki and gonta’s eyes, in kiyo’s lips, on kaito’s shirt. but she hates it brownish and she hates it vivid too, hates how it looks in decoration.
himiko likes green. and purple. (like sickly bruises. but also like the people who she loves.)
she tries to concentrate on that, colours, herself, the people she loves. tries to remember the exact grass-green shade of tenko’s eyes. the way kokichi’s squint when he laughs for real, no nishishi but a genuine, snorting laugh. she rubs her hands up and down her arms, paying no mind to her fingernails leaving red streaks on the pale skin, and curls up into a ball atop her blankets.
before she can start crying, or calm down even a little bit, sleep claims her, and she succumbs to it gratefully.
(her alarm goes off at some point, telling her that it’s time for school. himiko listens to it playing every five minutes for half an hour, and then drifts back to sleep when it stops.)
the bell for her room makes such a plain, unnoticeable chiming noise. himiko listens to it when she wakes up. two tones. whoever is standing outside her door must press down lightly with her thumb and then release, for it to only ring once like that. what an odd method of ringing the bell. himiko ponders this and begins to doze off again.
whoever is standing outside her--
she springs up and then crashes off her bed, pushing herself up from the carpet but wincing. her elbow stings and she doesn’t dare look at it. if it’s bleeding, well, she’s already in a sorry state anyway. doesn’t matter. they only rang once. it can’t be kokichi; he doesn’t ring in the first place, just picks the lock and walks right in. she’d’ve woken up to him in the bed with her, or else sitting by her side. maybe making paper dolls again. it was cute when he did it that one time.
tenko rings it twice, and then twice again if she doesn’t get a response. it’s not her. and himiko doubts it’s someone like kaito, asking if she didn’t come to class, because kaito rams on that thing like crazy, by now any one of her classmates would have pressed on it again. perhaps she imagined it? perhaps they turned around and left?
himiko shuffles over to her phone and lifts it up, unlocking it. four percent. go figure. it’s past five in the afternoon. she has two text messages, from rantaro. they came in half an hour ago.
[do you like ice cream?]
[ah, nevermind, i’m good]
himiko frowns down at the messages, tosses her phone back on her bed, and walks over to the door. it unlocks with a (loud) click and she pulls it open. everything feels way too abrupt. she’s still dizzy with sleep.
“hey!” it’s rantaro, who else would it be? he’s smiling at her, but he seems relieved, like he wasn’t expecting her to answer. himiko gazes at him. he’s holding a plastic bag in his hand, and he smells sweet, like the outside. his cheeks are still flushed, like he’s only just gotten here. “sorry, i know it’s been-- uh, fourteen hours or so, i was in london.”
she isn’t sure what to say. (something is rising in her throat.)
“i, uh,” he shuffles the bag over into his other hand and opens it, pulling out a large pint of ice cream. “you didn’t answer my text-- which is fine, i said you didn’t have to-- but i remembered that on tsumugi’s birthday last year you ate a good amount of ice cream, so… you don’t like mint, right? i got cookie dough and vanilla, figured those were pretty good flavours, and ouma said you like cookie dough… not that i was necessarily going with his word on this, because he has a lying habit, but--”
“amami,” himiko interrupts quietly. “did you-- did you just come back from london?”
“ahaha, yeah.” he smiles, though, he’s still smiling. “kind of a long flight. don’t worry about it, i got plenty of sleep. it was kind of weird sleeping on the flight since it was like, four in the afternoon when you texted me, but i-- hey,” he pauses, his smile fading all of a sudden and all at once. “you okay?”
it’s such a stupid question, himiko can’t even bring herself to verbalise an answer. she shakes her head though and covers her face with her hands, trying to hide the fact that she’s crying. not that it’ll do much of anything, of course, since he’s already seen the stupid tears falling, but she has to at least pretend to have some dignity. himiko opens her mouth to try to say something, a joke maybe, but all that comes out is a strangled sounding sob.
“can i hug you?”
himiko nods her head, mechanically, and then she hears plastic crinkling, like rantaro has dropped his bag of ice cream, before she is enveloped in warmth, arms tucking around her and her forehead being pressed against rantaro’s chest. she lets her hands fall from her face and clutches at his shirt instead, thinking that it would be far too embarrassing if she sobbed aloud.
the door to her room closes, clicking softly, and one of rantaro’s hands cards through her hair, and himiko’s knees give out under her. he follows her down and himiko feels herself being cradled, held gently, and she hears his heartbeat, beating steady in his chest. she hiccups a bit.
“i’m sorry,” she finds herself breathing out. rantaro hums, low and resonant, and hushes her. “n-no, i-- this is so stupid, i should have-- you didn’t have to come back just because i--”
“mm. i don’t know. doesn’t feel like the kind of thing that should be endured in solitude, yumeno.” rantaro whispers. “there’s probably a lot more than what you mentioned in that text message. and--” he adds, hastily. “you don’t have to tell me anything, i know we’re not extremely close,” a wry smile sneaks its way into his voice and through her tears, since her face is hidden anyway, himiko’s lips curl up too. “but you can if you want to.”
“i hate venting,” says himiko, roughly. she chokes on one of her sobs and takes a moment to compose herself before speaking again. “it makes me feel gross. and heavy. like i’m weighing other people down. and i do it so much, for so many reasons, i feel so weak and selfish, it’s awful. it’s the worst, it’s such a pain, and i hate it.”
“yeah. i know the feeling.” rantaro murmurs, so quietly himiko isn’t sure whether she’s heard him at all.
he doesn’t say anything else, which is odd. feels incomplete. it’s the kind of incompleteness that makes himiko really anxious, which she doesn’t get a lot. usually she just gets really really sad. she doesn’t have the energy to be anxious most times. but things that hang in midair stress her out. make her heart all shivery. “i’m getting your shirt all wet.”
“eh, it was raining in london. i’m not gonna lose any sleep over it.” another smile seems to have appeared on his face. “there are worse ways that this shirt could come into water, y’feel me?”
himiko closes her eyes against rantaro’s chest and recalls something that happened the third week of school. he opened the door, and a bucket of water that kokichi had rigged that morning dumped right on his head. she can’t stop herself from laughing a bit.
“that’s rude,” rantaro huffs. “my hair was on fleek that day.”
“don’t use that word,” himiko says between giggles, “you normie.”
“oi! who told you to call me that?” a moment of silence. “i don’t really have to ask, do i?”
“no,” himiko uncurls her fists and removes them from rantaro’s shirt. they fall to rest in her lap, and she considers pulling away, but he’s messing with her hair by now, braiding it perhaps, and it feels nice, so she stays there. lets him. opens her eyes though, tilts her head up a bit to see what face he’s making. despite his apparent indignation, rantaro’s expression is warm. gentle. she’s seen him make that face before at kokichi while his back was turned.
it makes another lump form in her throat, which is dumb because she only just stopped crying, and she doesn’t really want to do that anymore. she wipes at her eyes and then does sit up, feeling a bit of loss when rantaro’s hands fall from her hair, but… it’s alright, it’s fine. she can ask him to braid it some more later, probably. if she even wants it that much.
“i think the ice cream is melting,” she whispers.
a look of alarm crosses over rantaro’s face. “oh! you’re right, crap,” he makes a grab for the bag and yanks it over, opening it. “uhh, better hurry up and eat them. hey,” he pauses, giving himiko a sideways look. “don’t tell toujo that we’re eating ice cream for dinner, alright? she’ll flay me.”
to stop herself from laughing too loud, himiko covers her mouth with a hand. “okay.” he beams at her, and then takes out both of the containers. they’re awfully large. she stares at them with wide eyes.
“i know,” he sighs. “i might have overestimated. spoon?” he offers a couple, and so himiko takes one, and watching him put down the rest, save for one, which he tucks into his own palm.
“i don’t think you underestimated at all,” she clears her throat. “i haven’t eaten all day, and i… really like ice cream.”
“aha,” rantaro gives her a slightly nervous look. “toujo really is going to be out for my blood.”
“hmmm.” himiko glances off to the side. “that sounds like a you problem.”
“well put,” rantaro says, removing the lid from one of the containers and pushing it over to himiko. “first scoop is yours, m’lady.”
the ice cream is sweet, and it’s a bit melted but it’s still cold and on the whole it’s solid too. there is a ball of cookie dough resting on her tongue, and she chews it as she listens to rantaro talk, something about being mistaken for a tour guide at an archaeological sight one time and having to lie his way out of it.
(she’s not sure if it’s a true story, but it sounds like one. rantaro is an awfully animated storyteller regardless, so himiko finds that she doesn’t care very much if it is or not.)
when he pauses to take a breath, and also a bite of ice cream, himiko murmurs, “amami?” when he raises his eyebrows at her, she says, “thank you.”
his smile is tender. “of course. text me whenever, yeah? i’ve got plenty of time. i mean that,” he adds at the skeptical look she throws her way. “for important things, i have all the time in the world.”
(for important things. himiko pretends that that statement doesn’t feel as amazing to hear as it does, but she thinks rantaro can tell, anyway.)