Work Text:
“Pleeeeeeease Matsuda-kun I haven’t seen this movie yet!” Otonashi flopped dramatically on the couch, draping her arm across her forehead and jostling his shoulder. Hard.
“Oh my fucking god do I have to spell it out for you again?” Matsuda cried, exasperated. He folded the corner of the page, closed his manga and rolled it into a cylinder. “You’ve seen it. With me. Thirteen times.” He slammed the magazine onto the couch to emphasize the last two words.
“But—”
“Who said you could lean on me like that? Get off,” he interrupted Otonashi’s next appeal by shoving her off of him. She tumbled rather ungracefully off of the couch with a yelp and landed flat on her stomach on the hard wood floor. He unrolled the magazine and opened it again to where he left off.
“Please, Matsuda-kun. It’s my favorite!” she whined. She crawled over by his feet and knelt beside him, resting her hands on top of her knee and her chin on top of them. Matsuda felt those big red eyes burning holes into his forehead. He stared even harder at the page. If his brows furrowed any further he was going to give himself an even bigger headache than the one that currently pounded his head.
“It’s not your favorite, you can’t remember a damn thing about the movie,” he replied, squinting harder at the magazine. He kicked his other leg over on top of the one Otonashi leaned on, and she had to duck to avoid his foot.
“Yes I do! Here, I wrote it down,” Otonashi chirped, completely unbothered. She grabbed one of the omnipresent notebooks and started leafing through it. “Uhh, did I?” she muttered. Matsuda snorted. She frantically rifled through the pages while he continued reading his manga, peeking every once in a while at the girl.
“Aha! Here it is!” Otonashi said, grinning triumphantly. She thrust the notebook into Matsuda’s face. “It says here that it’s one of the greatest movies of all time and it’s about two burglars named Harry and Marv who sneak into the McAllister House, and umm . . .” she turned the notebook around to read it “. . . and there’s a really cute little boy named Wacooly—”
“—it’s Macaulay—”
“—Same difference—Culkin-kun and he was so so so cute that it says I wanted to adopt him and—”
“Otonashi, I don’t want to watch it with you. It’s a good movie but I really don’t like it. When are you going to get it through that thick fucking skull of yours? Watch it by yourself.” Matsuda flung the magazine onto his lap.
“But it’s not the same without you! Pleeeeeeeease, Matsuda-kun?” Otonashi whined, pressing her small pointy chin into his knee. “I’ve been a good girl today, haven’t I?”
Matsuda glared at her. Otonashi smiled widely at him, doe eyes sparkling in the lamplight. His resolve shattered like glass. Mentally he cursed all the influence she held over him, even now in this state.
“Fine. We’ll watch it. But this is the last time,” he grumbled. He re-marked the page and set the magazine aside.
“Yay! You’re the best! Thank you thank you thank you!” she cheered. She leapt up from the ground, arms outstretched, aimed right for him—
“Oi! Get off me!” Matsuda yelled, stiffening as she landed in his lap. She wrapped her arms tightly around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck. He wriggled a couple times, but her grip wouldn’t loosen at all. He gave up and sat frozen, thankful that she was too dense to notice his heart hammering louder than usual in his chest.
“Hehe, sorry,” Otonashi giggled, climbing off him and scooching to the other side of the couch. “I promise I’ll be on my best behavior during the whole move. I won’t be a bother at all!” She held up her pinky finger and extended it to Matsuda, who still sat stiff as a board.
“There’s no need for that, especially with how many holes your brain has,” he said. “Still, you better not be a bother, or this will really be the last time we watch it together. No leaning on me, no talking,” He stood up, and walked over to the DVD player, ignoring her response. His limbs felt like wooden boards.
The DVD itself lay on top of the player, where it had been put away last time, gathering a layer of dust. The image of the little boy screaming on the case put a weird sensation in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t want to see that boy. Blood pounded in his ears just thinking about his stupid face and if he clutched the DVD any harder it would crack. He shoved the disc in the player as fast as possible and slammed the case back into its original place. He then did his best to storm quietly back to the couch. Otonashi sat on the opposite end, fiddling with the remote, completely oblivious.
“Um, the red button, right?” she mumbled, sticking out her tongue as she pressed it. The TV roared to life as soaring violins and chirping flutes filled the room. She grinned and clapped her hands, squealing excitedly.
“What are you, four?” Matsuda said loudly, settling back into his spot on the couch. Otonashi ignored him.
“You’re gonna watch it, right, Matsuda-kun?” she said, tilting her head to the side. “The whole thing?”
“Yes, I’m gonna watch the whole thing,” he hissed. “Just shut the fuck up and start the damn movie already.” He really hated how much Otonashi Ryoko reminded him of her sometimes. She only hummed along with the music and pressed the big center button in the remote. The screen darkened, Otonashi leaned forward, and Matsuda Yasuke prepared for another long, torturous hour and a half.
Matsuda surprised himself this time. He maintained his composure the whole time through the opening scene, even when the boy and his mother exchanged terse words outside his bedroom. At least, until the boy stormed upstairs in a fit of rage. He inhaled sharply
“Help! Get me out of here! I’m being held hostage! Somebody, anybody!” a high pitched voice, raw with fear, screamed in the back of his mind.
“Shut up,” Matsuda growled. Shit, that was out loud.
Otonashi’s head whipped away from the screen to stare at him. She started furiously scribbling something in her notebook.
“If you’re not gonna watch the movie then I’m turning it off,” he said.
Otonashi’s eyes widened. “No, no, don’t turn it off! I wanna remember—”
“It’s not important. You wanted to watch the movie, so watch the fucking movie. You’ve already got notes on it.” Matsuda snapped back. Otonashi nodded solemnly, set the notebook aside, and turned back to face the screen. The boy stared straight into the camera, looking right at Matsuda. His fists balled in his lap.
A shit-eating grin plastered across the boy’s face and he wiggled his eyebrows with the realization that his family had left him behind. Otonashi giggled. Matsuda clenched his jaw.
Being forgotten wasn’t a celebration. It wasn’t jumping around on your parents’ bed, sledding down the stairs, watching violent movies and eating junk food. It wasn’t comically incompetent cat burglars and a Rube Goldberg of traps set up to stop them. Being forgotten wasn’t freedom. Being forgotten was whole new set of responsibilities being shoved onto you. Being forgotten was just having learned basic arithmetic, then staring at a mind-boggling set of numbers and equations and wondering whether there would be enough to pay for food, power, hospital bills. It was pushing a shopping cart when your head barely clears the top of it and watching adults stare down condescendingly, pityingly at you while you struggled to pull out bills from the wallet. It was watching someone who was supposed to love you and protect you stare right through you and wither away in front of your own eyes. It was sleeping in your mother’s bed because you were starting to forget what she smelled like and you promised yourself you wouldn’t forget like she did, clutching a scalpel because the world was big and loud and out to get you and you were made of glass and trying your damn best not to shatter but failing anyways.
Matsuda’s ears burned. Everyone involved with this movie was either stupid, a liar, or insanely ignorant. Probably all three.
The woman looked straight into the camera, right at him. She cried out her son’s name. Matsuda’s eyes stung.
“Who the fuck are you,” the high pitched voice in the back of his mind snarled.
“Mo—Matsuda-san, please, I need to take you to the bathroom. It’s been four hours since you last went,” another voice, high from youth and not femininity. It shook, utterly failing to suppress a trembling lower lip replied, coming from him.
That was the worst lie right there. Being forgotten wasn’t being remembered again. Ever.
Every time the woman appeared on screen Matsuda clutched the fabric of his pants tighter, knuckles growing white. His headache pounded harder and harder. Otonashi kept peeking at him out of the corner of her eye. Her hands twitched, itching to grab the notebook and record his reaction.
“If you can’t control yourself then sit on your hands,” he snapped. Otonashi gulped, nodded, and promptly shifted so her hands were under her thighs.
“Don’t you think for yourself? It should be illegal for someone as ugly as you to be that fucking dumb too,” he grumbled.
“You said you were gonna watch the movie,” Otonashi pouted.
“Of all the things you had to remember, it was that,” Matsuda groaned, pressing the heels of his hands back into his eyes hard enough that static filled his vision. He leaned back onto the couch. “I’m watching. Don’t worry about it. Brat.”
“Sorry, Matsuda-kun,” Otonashi replied, hanging her head. “If something’s bothering you we can talk about it.”
Matsuda bit back the urge to snap at her for convincing him to watch this stupid movie.
He sighed. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry for snapping. Let’s please just finish the movie.”
“O-okay,” she stuttered. She stared up at Matsuda with those red doe eyes again that never failed to make his chest do funny things. He settled back into his spot and turned his gaze back to the TV. The burglars were staked out in front of the house while the boy staged a fake party. Matsuda took some deep breaths. He could do this. He could keep his composure for the rest of the movie.
And he almost did make it through. Right until the mother broke down in the airport.
“You’re telling me it’s hopeless?” the voice in the back of his mind echoed the woman on screen. Matsuda gasped.
“Please, my son is barely seven years old! I’m the only one he has! There has to be something you can do to stop the disease, even just slow it!” The voice grew hysterical. A pair of red almond-shaped eyes, framed by long dark lashes, appeared before him and flitted back and forth between him and the bottom part of a lab coat, khaki dress pants, and shiny oxford shoes.
“I am sorry,” a deeper voice replied. “I’ve never seen something this advanced, especially in someone so young. Your disease is terminal.” A pair of thin white hands with long fingers clapped over the eyes and shoulders shook.
“I’m going to step outside and talk to your son separately about the news,” the low voice continued. A large, somewhat wrinkled hand extended towards Matsuda, and in his memory he stood up and walked outside the examination room. The hand closed the door behind him and a faceless doctor leaned down to talk to him (oh no he was starting to forget he promised he wouldn’t forget—)
“I’m sorry, son, your mother has a really bad brain disease. It means her brain is shutting down and she won’t remember things or be able to do mom things as well as she used to. It’s at stage four right now. I’ve never seen so much brain damage in someone so young—”
“But you can cure it, right?” Matsuda interrupted.
“Hm?” The faceless doctor adjusted his glasses.
“You can cure her, right? Mom told me that doctors can fix anything, right?” Matsuda replied. His voice grew thicker with each word and pressure built up behind his eyes.
“Son, it is a terminal disease. It means she’s going to die within the year.”
Matsuda’s entire body stalled.
“I know it’s tough news, especially at such a young age, but—”
“Some piece of shit doctor you are,” Matsuda snarled. He kicked the man swiftly in the shin and sprinted down the hospital corridor, ignoring the man’s calls and the nurses (faceless pairs of legs and uniform bottoms and belts and nothing else but whispers through static) turning to watch him speed into the public bathroom and slam the door behind him.
He went into the far back stall and curled up on the floor (what did the tile look like fuck). He decided right then and there that all doctors were lazy asses. Here this man was, talking down to him and making excuses for the fact that he wouldn’t even try to make his mom better. He felt the overwhelming urge to break down and cry right there, but he wouldn’t give that doctor the satisfaction of comforting him should he follow him into the bathroom.
If those doctors weren’t going to make his mom better, then he’d do it himself.
“Matsuda-kun?” a high pitched-voice said. He looked up from his curled position. A different voice, not one from his current reverie. “Matsuda-kun?” it said again. His shoulder shook, and suddenly he snapped back into reality. Otonashi’s face appeared an inch away from his own. “Hellooo? Earth to Matsuda-kun?” she yelled.
Matsuda screamed. He jolted about an inch off the couch. Otonashi reared back, holding her arms out in a placating gesture. “Ah! Sorry,” she blubbered. “You were spaced out and muttering really weird things I didn’t understand but it really scared me and I didn’t know what to do so—”
“Shut up, please. I’m fine. I don’t need a stupid, lowly girl wasting her last braincell over me while I’m trying to enjoy a movie.” He massaged his temples and glanced at the TV. The boy was talking to some old man. When did the old man show up?
“I-I may be stupid and lowly, and I can’t remember a lot of things, but I really care about you, Matsuda-kun. Otherwise I wouldn’t remember you. You can tell me if something’s bothering you. I promise I won’t laugh. I probably won’t even remember what you tell me,” Otonashi said.
Damn her. Damn him. Damn them both.
“Do you mean it?” he asked, voice just above a whisper. She nodded earnestly.
Matsuda’s arm shot out and pulled Otonashi up against his side. She squeaked at the sudden closeness, but suddenly a toothy grin tore across her face.
“Hehehehehehehehe, I must have been a really good girl today,” she giggled.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Matsuda replied, a slight edge in his voice. Otonashi sighed and laid her head on his shoulder, settling in. Matsuda’s breath hitched as some of her hair brushed past his arm.
The burglars pulled up to the brightly lit home, and the boy grabbed his BB gun, resolute, determined. They approached the door, taunting, jeering. The boy shot one in the crotch and the other in the face. Matsuda cringed at the impacts. The burglars stormed angrily around the house and tried each door, breaking their backs and burning their hands and hair. The boy cackled gleefully as the burglars managed to find each and every trap.
“Damn, this kid’s a sadist,” Matsuda said, eyes wide with horror.
Otonashi snickered. “I think it’s funny. Harry and Marv’s reactions are funny.” Something dark and ugly stirred in the recesses of Matsuda’s stomach.
“It’s only funny because you think he’s cute. If he were doing this how he looks now you’d hate it,” he replied. Otonashi curled closer to him and her cheeks grew furiously red.
“I get the weirdest sense of déja vu when I see him, but you’re probably right. You’re right about a lot of things,” she mused. She glanced up at him for a split second. Matsuda huffed and frowned. There was nothing similar between a boy with a BB gun sitting on top of the steps smirking at petty thieves and a boy packing a scalpel in his backpack because his best friend’s sandcastle got ruined and he needed to find out who did it because if she couldn’t be strong then he was going to be strong for her. The boy constantly ran, tricked, hid, outsmarted, evaded. The other boy’s shoulders ached under all the responsibility he’d taken.
“Hey Matsuda-kun, I have a question,” Otonashi said, tugging his sleeve. “Where did the big fluffy spider come from?”
He squinted at the TV screen. “Huh?” A hand holding a tarantula descended slowly towards the screen. He gulped. “Um. That’s his. He bought it. At the store with the rest of his stuff.”
“Thank you! I forgot,” she chirped, and settled contentedly back into his chest. The burglars screamed in terror and she gazed, utterly transfixed and euphoric, at the TV screen. She’d just gotten treatment today, so her fascination with the boy’s homemade torture maze irked Matsuda. Yet something about her warm presence up against him soothed him, made him forget about the boy whose shoulders hurt, the boy curled on the floor of the hospital bathroom. The burglars bickered over chasing the boy out the window, and a chuckle slipped past Matsuda’s lips, despite the hell he’d put them through. Otonashi hummed, and though he couldn’t see her face she could tell she was smirking.
He thought about chastising her for teasing him. But this good mood he felt was not going to last long. He absently rubbed Otonashi’s arm and rested his cheek on the top of her head. He felt her stiffen, then start to vibrate, excitement building up as the music crescendoed and the boy waded through knee deep water and dashed upstairs.
“If you say anything about this,” Matsuda murmured, low and serious, “I am going to move.” Otonashi stilled and relaxed into him, and he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. All the tension seeped slowly from his body. He felt . . . loose? His jaw unclenched and he stretched his legs out more. It was an odd sensation, something he didn’t ever remember feeling. Not at least since the diagnosis. It was bliss. Matsuda always wanted to turn back time, but for the first time he longed to freeze this moment with just him, Otonashi, and the TV screen, to preserve it in a notebook and look back on it on hard days, when the administration breathed down his neck harder than usual and his promise to her weighed him back like a ball and chain.
It didn’t last. It never did.
The movie cut from the boy, sitting in a decked out green and red room staring pensively at the fireplace to a truck speeding down the expressway in the early dawn, and the woman muttering about her failure as a mother.
“Yasuke, sweetie, I’m going to go to the store. I need to pick up some more soba and brown rice vinegar,” his mother’s voice said, as loud and clear as the voices coming from the TV. “Be a good boy and hold down the fort for me?” His cheek stung, as if it were being pinched.
His younger self sighed. “Mom, I already told you. You just came back. I can show you the soba and brown rice vinegar if you need a reminder.”
She gasped. “Did I? I’m so sorry. I’m a bad mom.” Her teeth worried her lower lip.
“No! You’re a good mom, it’s okay that you’re forgetful!” he cried. “I forget things all the time! Like today I forgot to brush my teeth!”
The woman’s mouth curved into a soft smile, and the point of her chin softened. “You’re such a kind boy, Yasuke. I hope you never change.” Her hand reached out and ruffled his hair. He giggled. Matsuda blinked and suddenly he was teleported back, the woman sitting at a table, fists balling into her unusually messy topknot. Papers fanned out haphazardly around her
“Aggggh! I can’t figure out these damn bills. Three plus four, three plus four, shit,” she groaned. “Can’t find the god damn numbers.”
He approached the table tentatively. “Can I help, mom?”
Those red eyes settled dully on the floor (linoleum? wood?) behind him. “What are you doing in my apartment? Where are your parents, little boy?”
Matsuda’s heart dropped into his stomach and ice flooded his veins.
“M-mom, it’s me, your son. Don’t you remember?” he said. His lower lip threatened to stick out.
“I don’t have a son. I never wanted a son. Who the hell are you? Get out or I’m calling the police,” she replied, voice rising with each word. She gripped the edges of the table, rising slowly from her seat.
“Mom please, it’s me, your son Yasuke,” he stammered out. “I was born on July 22, 1993, and you’ve been raising me on your own, and just yesterday you bought me ice cream because you forgot to pick me up from school but your card got declined when you went to buy it and an—”
“—I would know if I had a son! None of this ever happened. What are you trying to do to me? Rob me? Are you helping someone kidnap me? You have ten seconds to get out of here then I’m calling—”
Matsuda burst into tears.
He tried to say something, anything logical to convince her, but the sobs choked up his words and reduced him to a blubbering mess. The tears ran hot and thick down his cheeks, but nothing burned more than his shame, the fact that he couldn’t do anything to make her recognize him. His mother’s face fell slack.
“Oh,” she said, voice suddenly quiet. “You’re my son?” Matsuda nodded fervently. “Oh. Sweetie. I’m so sorry, I just forgot. It’s no big deal, right?” She flopped back down into the chair. “Won’t you come give your mommy a hug?” She extended her limp arms towards him, still refusing to make eye contact.
Matsuda stood there, frozen to the spot. “I think we should see a doctor about your forgetting,” he responded, voice barely audible. His mother rested her elbows on the table and pressed her hands into her face. Her chest heaved with a sigh, and silence settled oppressively between them, only punctured by intermittent sniffles.
She looked up, and Matsuda noticed the dark circles under her eyes. “Yasuke, what’s wrong? Who made you cry?” His fists clenched, and suddenly he was shaking. His entire body burned, his mouth opened, and he spat out the words “Well if you weren’t such a shitty mother and a forgetful bitch you’d know.”
He stormed off into his room after that so he didn’t have to see her reaction for long. And yet the look on her face after he had said that still haunted him to this day.
He yanked himself back to the present moment, panting. “Matsuda-kun? Are you really alright?” Otonashi said, hand reaching up to cup his face.
“Don’t touch me,” he snarled, slapping her hand down. Otonashi looked at him and his throat closed. He wrenched his stare away from those red eyes towards the TV for any sort of distraction. The boy sat on his parent’s bed, staring pensively at a photograph. Then the door clicked open and the woman stepped inside the house, The boy dashed downstairs, and suddenly they looked right at each other.
“Oh Kevin,” the woman on TV sighed regretfully. “I’m so sorry.”
And a hospital room appeared before him, where a woman, more skin and bone than a person, sank into the mattress. He was looking everywhere but at the pitiful figure but those red eyes bored straight into him “Oh Yasuke,” his mother echoed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Matsuda-san—”
“Yasuke please,” she pleaded, her quiet voice straining to keep composure. “I’m your mother.” Her eyes stared out of hollow pits and her long red hair hung loose and limp over her shoulders.
“But the doctors said—”
“Fuck the doctors, Yasuke. You’re my son. I love you, even though this shitty disease won’t let me tell you.” Her lips twitched towards what was supposed to be a smile but it looked more like a grimace. She held out her arms limply again. “Don’t you love me? I’ve been good today, haven’t I?”
Matsuda shattered. He rushed towards her and crashed into her, wrapping his arms around her. She breathed sharply as he landed in her lap and pressed into her skeletal chest, but she squeezed back just as tight. He buried himself in her fragrance (sweet pea? spider lily? either way the smell of hospital overpowered it) to memorize it and save it for the times he needed comfort and couldn’t have it. Water leaked out of the corner of his one eye, but he was the strong one right now. He had to be. And strong people didn’t cry.
He didn’t remember how long they held each other, only that his mother’s grip slackened suddenly. “H-help!” he heard her shout. “I-I’m being attacked!” She shoved him roughly away and he landed sprawled back on her bed.
“M-mom?” he said. His eyes widened and another stray water drop trickled down his cheek. His mother slapped him across his face. His head whipped to the side and his face stung from the pain and the sudden reversal.
“Huh? I don’t remember?” she muttered hysterically, and her eyes bored into the wall (cinderblock? plaster? a curtain?) behind him. She raised her fist as if to punch him, but Matsuda caught it before she could land another blow. “You need to let me go. I never wanted a son. I have to go to the izakaya. Get off me. My boss is gonna kill me if I’m late.” Words tumbled thoughtlessly out of her mouth, pounding into Matsuda as he sat there, helpless against the verbal abuse. She reached around feebly for the call button, but a nurse stormed in.
“Do I have to tell you again? Get off the patient, or you won’t be able to visit her anymore,” she exclaimed crossly. Her mouth twisted into a tight pucker and she crossed her arms (where were her legs and her eyes?) over her starched white uniform coat. Matsuda shifted off of her but she sat straight up, grabbed his face in a vice-like grip, and pulled it right up to hers.
“What have you done to me?” his mother rasped, staring him dead in the eyes.
Panic. His heart slammed against his ribcage and he started hyperventilating. Matsuda grabbed at her hands, pulling as hard as he could to pry them off but his hands shook so terribly he couldn’t make purchase on them. His fingertips dragged harshly against the bones and tendons in her hands. Suddenly he felt them snatched away as he was lifted out of the bed and placed on the ground. His legs gave way beneath him as his feet made contact with the ground and he sank to his knees.
“Go back to the waiting room, I’ll take care of this and someone will come find you when she’s more stable,” the nurse said, walking purposefully to the IV and blocking his view of her. He peeked around her and his mother had sunk back into the bed.
“Nakamura-kacho, what are you doing here? Thank you for coming to pick me up again, this is really embarrassing.” she was saying.
“Ah, I’m not Nakamura-kacho. We haven’t seen each other in a while. It’s nurse Watanabe,” the nurse replied, plastering a sweet smile over her pucker of a mouth. He didn’t remember the rest of the conversation. His legs found themselves again, and he ran, away from that room, away from the memory care wing, away from the hospital, away from that hellish woman and that hellish brain of hers.
It had snowed quite considerably during his time in the hospital with his mother, and fat flakes fell around him as he dashed outside, screwing his face up to keep the tears from spilling further in front of all the pairs of legs surrounding him. His ears picked up a few concerned whispers, but they sounded as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton. He kept running, mechanically, not thinking of where he was going. He’d memorized this path long ago, over countless days after school and weekends, grasping at the last remaining fragments of his childhood. He kept moving, trying to block the horrible thoughts surfacing from the depths, until he slammed the apartment door shut behind him and collapsed on the entryway rug, gasping and crying so hard he could only lie on the floor and let the sobs wrack his body.
Matsuda had looked behind himself only once. He hadn’t seen any of his footprints in the fresh snow.
His sobs echoed throughout the too-empty apartment. The harsh smell of bleach and lemon-scented cleaner assaulted him further and only served to worsen the tears. He hated it. He hated how he could only lie on the ground and let the sobs wrack his body. He hated how small he felt. He hated that even after all this time, even though his mother had shriveled away into a husk of a woman, even though kindly neighbors and a sympathetic doctor brought him meals and checked in on him he still couldn’t bring himself to look away from her while she still lived, to perform the necessary severing and walk away from the burden. The entire world and all its offerings lay before him, ready for the taking, and what he really needed right now was a mother. Matsuda was weak. Stupid. He would never let this happen again.
His mother’s face, all protruding bones, sunken eyes, and accusing glare burned in the back of his mind. “What have you done to me?” her voice repeated, again and again like a gavel, tremulous and low with sickness but harsh and full of rage. The face started morphing, filling out and growing more colorful and healthy. The voice rose in pitch and changed from a death rattle to clear and high. Slowly vision of his mother became a girl with long, bright red hair and scarlet doe eyes.
“What have you done to me, Matsuda-kun?” Otonashi murmured, hurt, eyes flashing in anger, staring straight into his core and flooding his veins with ice.
Both Matsudas screamed.
He felt pressure he’d forgotten about lift from his side. “Matsuda-kun?” Otonashi, the one not in the back of his mind, cried out. He found himself wrenched back into the present, movie credits rolling down the TV screen and orchestra blaring. He turned his head sharply towards her. Otonashi huddled at the opposite end of the couch, reaching her hand towards him tentatively.
“Matsuda-kun, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” she said, voice starting to tremble. Matsuda raised shaking fingers to his cheeks and they came back wet. A sob slipped past his defenses and sent a shudder all throughout him. Otonashi stared intently at him, eyes starting to grow wet in empathy. He craved nothing more at that moment than to crash into her arms and breathe her in and cry out everything that had built up over the past ten years.
His promises weighed heavy on my shoulders.
“Get out,” he growled. “Now.” His voice cracked and stumbled over the syllables. Salty tears and shame streamed hot down his face. She’d never live it down once she figured it out.
Otonashi’s eyes couldn’t become any wider than they already were. “Huh? Why? You can talk to me about it. I won—”
“GET OUT!” Matsuda grabbed her arm and dragged her to the front door. He shoved her unceremoniously into the hallway and threw her notebook out behind her. He slammed the door shut and collapsed back onto the entry mat, whimpering and crying his eyes out while violins echoed in the background. It was supposed to feel good. All his stress and sadness was supposed to dissipate as his tears dried. And yet he felt like pure, utter shit curled there on the ground.
Ten years. It had been ten years since he’d first broken down on the rug, since his mother had died, since he’d grasped freedom. Why was she such a ball and chain around his life? Suddenly he was too small again, prey for a world armed to the teeth and out to hurt him. At the end of the day, he was still weak, pathetic. A kid.
“Matsuda-kun?” Otonashi asked, chipper as always and blissfully unaware. “What’s going on in there? Who made you cry?”