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In the end, it was always the small things that got to you. Something like bumping into someone, tripping on thin air, or even the small insecurities that only bugged you in the dead of night. You wondered, some nights, why you had to be such a screw-up and maybe if you just take yourself out of the equation things would be better. It’d make it easier for everyone else. After all, in a school system that puts you against the world in terms of grades, skills, and quirks, wouldn’t it be better to be rid of a little bit of competition no matter how small or insignificant?
That was why, at the end of the day when the anxiety hit reminding you of all your little screw-ups and all the little conversations that meant nothing to anyone else but you, that you wound up here. All the words were compiled into a nasty creature, a creature that wasn’t you anymore. That was why you were on that bridge. For the sole purpose of killing that monstrosity.
You hadn’t been thinking then, blinded by the screams begging you to end this and, more muted ones, pleading you to come to your senses. You knew it wasn’t right, that there were better ways, that you could speak to someone. And you screamed, from the depths of your darkest desires, you screamed to get help. And maybe that was saying something, that your darkest desires weren’t demands of money or fame, weren’t wants of food or sex, they were cries for a savior. For someone to see how much everything hurt and to save you from it. And that part of you screamed to call out into the world and beg. Beg for someone to help. But nothing came out. You knew that no one would see the problems, they’d only see the child pretending. A child who just wanted attention. So you held back, you kept your voice silenced and your fears of suffocating from all the screams trapped in your mouth behind the hastily built brick walls of ‘I’m fine’.
You guess the answer should have been obvious, when asked if there were people out there that loved you. People that would miss you. Because there were, but they had long passed and were fading quickly and this was all you could think of that was left. The last option. And, as your left foot took a step off the bridge, shaking with what you think may be fear (but you can’t feel that you can only feel the sad, numb, desperate feeling of ending this), you don’t notice him approaching. Don’t notice him running towards you, screaming your name, begging, crying, for you to stop.
But you can only hear the hopeless need to make this all go away. So, when arms wrap around your waist, hugging your arms to your chest, and pulling, tugging you back to the safe side, you scream. Not the screams of dark desires, not of needing help, but of rage. Of seeing the last thing you could think of become a failure. Of seeing your last resort crumble before you.
You cry and you sob. ‘Please no, no that was your last chance. You can’t. Please, this needs to end, please.’ You don’t even realize your cries are coming aloud, hoarse voice fresh with tears, begging for him to let you go.
But he doesn’t.
“(Y/n)! Fuck, (Y/n), stop!” You can barely hear his words. Words you know to be screams but can only hear as whispers in your muddled brain.
You wonder, for a moment, who this guy is. Who would care enough about you to know your name, to save you from yourself at your worst. Through the empty haze of your consciousness and blurred eyesight fresh with tears, you can make out his hair. It’s purple, a shade you had come to love looking at and spending class questioning with a childish amount of tenacity recently, when a certain boy moved into your class from a neighboring school. Shinsou didn’t talk much, but you had become fascinated with his hair. It was put up in a gravity-defying do, you wondered if it was gelled or if it just did that all on its own. You asked him once, but it came out more of a stuttered attempt that never got past a stifled sound of choking on your breath. You vowed never to speak to him again. (He didn’t seem to even notice that you approached him, you like to think it is better that way.) But now, the guy who you had very embarrassingly fumbled in front of was here, was holding you, flailing limbs and all, on the bridge where you had been previously trying to end your life.
Your arms stopped moving entirely, your shoulders falling from their tensed position to a hunkered shaking form and your screams ended, turning into small sobs as reality hit you. And it hit hard. You could feel your eyes leaking, tears streaming down and soaking into Shinsou’s shirt. Numbly, you thought that you shouldn’t do that, he’d get disgusted and his shirt would be ruined, but you couldn’t find it in you to move away. His hold loosened, not by much, seeing as he had just pulled you off the edge of a bridge. He was probably afraid you’d go right back if it seemed like he didn’t have a good hold on you. You tried not to think that he was right.
His breathing came in huffs, hard breathing from the exertion of holding you back. He turned you around so that you could see his face, emotions swirling from furious to confused to scared, rinse and repeat. “Fuck, (Y/n), you scared the shit out of me! What the hell were you doing?!” You had never seen him so angry before, sound so angry before, had never even heard him speak above a dull uninterested mumble. You tried to speak, tried to respond with something that would make him go away, something that would remove that scared look from his eyes. But all that came out was sobbing. Deep heart wrenching sobs that shook through your entire body when you met his eyes once more.
Shinsou seemed to flinch at that, “Sh-Shit, sorry, I’m not mad. I’m just… really scared right now. Are you— of course you’re not okay, never mind. Just… um, s-sit down. Let’s sit down.” He stumbled over his words, seemingly confused and overwhelmed by the situation he had unexpectedly found himself in. You followed him to the ground, legs buckling beneath you as you went down but he caught you before you face planted the ground. Your tears slipped free rapidly, and you tried pulling your hands away from him to wipe them away, but Shinsou was holding them tightly between you two. You didn’t try to force them away, couldn’t find the strength nor the power to think of trying at the moment.
“I know you aren’t okay, and that asking would be.. kinda dumb.” You were slightly relieved that you didn’t have the energy to giggle at how awkward this guy was. It was hilariously bad. “So, I’m just gonna… say what I can.” He very painfully didn’t know what he was doing. Like he was remembering a story he read only once in passing and was trying to retell it but could only remember certain parts and all the middle stuff was lost. But, it kinda made you feel better. To hear someone else’s voice while you tried coming back to your senses. Like a lighthouse in a thick fog.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking, right now. Don’t know what led you to this point or how life could get so bad that this is your only option, but I know the feeling.” His eyes met yours briefly before he glanced away, his palms sweaty where they grasped yours tightly between you.
“Th-The feeling of everything crashing down on you and nothing going right… the feeling of things being better without you there to somehow ruin it… I…I’ve been through that, and… and while I’ve never gotten to this point, I know that it gets… it gets better.” With this he squeezed your hands impossibly tighter his thumb rubbing comfortably on the back of your hand, a small smile gracing his otherwise expressionless face. His eye met yours, the pretty violet burning with a passion that screamed of truth.
He began gesturing around you-
(At yourself and the bridge below, at all the little things that brought you here. The things so small that they shouldn’t matter, but they did. All the unspoken grief that brought you here that he had no clue of. That he didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand. But he wanted to, you could see it in his eyes and it terrified you. That someone wanted to see what you see. Know what you know. You tried to push it away.)
“That this, all of this, is temporary and there is so, so much goddamn more waiting for you, if you just push through. There are people, so many people, waiting for you to just… just realize that- that they are there. W-Waiting for you to fall so they can pick you up.” His voice shook and cracked, coming in and out of emotion with each word. He tried to swallow it down many times, failing by the middle of each sentence.
But he believed his words. He thought them true, and he was giving them to you. Was giving the words he seemed to hold so close to his heart to you seemingly hoping it would do for you what it did for him. You couldn’t understand what you did to deserve them, couldn’t grasp what it meant for him to give you something so important to himself. A key that fit only his lock and he was here, handing it to you and trusting you not to rob him. You felt the pressure burn in your hands, felt the way the key sat in your grasp with trust not earned and all you wanted was to return it. To give him what he has given you. But you didn’t have that key, didn’t have a key to something so important that he could twist a lock and walk in. No, you had walls, brick walls built hastily but thoroughly to withstand the heaviest of hell fires. To keep you safe. And maybe you didn’t have a key, but you could feel those walls, thick and strong, crumble under his violet eyes each time he looked into yours and smiled.
And you cried, more and more, you cried. Begged to go home, begged to get off the damn bridge, begged him to stay with you because right now he was all you had and you didn’t want to lose that. He understood, assuring you he wasn’t going to leave you alone in the first place. His hands grasped tightly onto yours once more and while it seemed like he was trying to hold back, his grasp was just a little too tight and a little too shaky. You didn’t say anything though, because he didn’t say anything about your tears and if you could repay anything of what he’s done for you this could be your start. It was small, compared to his actions, but it was all you could do.
And, when he took you into his apartment, apologizing because he didn’t know where you lived and you weren’t in the right mind to give the information, he laid you down in his bed. (Awkwardly so, but he didn’t want you to sleep on a trashy old couch after all that you’d just been through.) He pulled up the covers around you, sat on a chair beside the bed, and held your hand. He wiped your eyes with a tenderness unknown to you, caressed your tear stained cheeks with thoughtful eyes, and whispered softly. “It’ll get better, given time. I promise, someday, this will just be a bad dream.”
And you believed him the way he believed himself. Without a doubt and immediate trust, you didn’t analyze the words or look for double meanings. There were none, none you wanted to find and none that you would find. You saw his words for what they were, truth, and you clung to them. And, when the exhaustion of everything crept up on you, you fell asleep, dreaming of how his hands felt and the way his words clung to your skin.
The next day, there was a sense of knowing. Knowing that someday, you would be okay. And, sure, you weren’t right now. Some days were still harder than others, some days made you want to go crawling back to that bridge, some days all you wanted was to drown out everything with some good ice cream while watching old horror movies that genuinely shouldn’t exist with how bad they are. And that was okay. That was good, that was valid. You were valid, everything you felt was real and Hitoshi was helping you realize that. Was helping you get through the tough days, was helping you see the sunshine a little clearer. And maybe, one day, you’d see the sun and you’d say to him, “I’m okay now,” and it would stay that way.