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They didn’t understand.
Magatsu had torn through every page in the godforsaken legal pad with a pen, handwriting scrawling and messy, every thought laid bare on the page. They didn’t understand. They didn’t understand what it was like to be him, to be one of them.
And, as much as he hated to admit it, Dojima was his confidante at this point. That idiot Lindel just wanted to get rid of him and the rest, and Tohru was eating it up like a dope. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair to him. Everyone talked to him like he was Tohru. They used his name like they were humoring him. And hell, even Dojima didn’t really understand, not really. He tried, he did his best. But it wasn’t enough. Because overall, Magatsu still felt…
He wanted to scream but he knew it wouldn’t get him anywhere. Again his thoughts turned to the broken bodies of the two women he’d shoved into the television, and again he felt a perverse thrill climb up his spine, in his mind’s eye seeing their broken bodies out in the open, behind Tohru’s eyes as he vomited—
You’re spiraling.
He clenched his teeth, feeling the abrupt clack of them hitting one another in his mouth, glaring intently at the wall because there wasn’t a face to glare at.
“Shut the hell up,” he said under his breath.
Stop thinking. You’re going to end up doing something you regret, and you know it. Shimai’s normally gentle tone always was stone-cold with him. Even with the rest of them, he was an outcast. An outsider. The person who ruined their lives. But they didn’t get it, did they? Without him, they’d all be shut away in some dim mental closet like they had been for the past ten years, screaming on the inside to be let out. Or maybe that was his own special hell.
That was why he hated him. He hated him for the years of darkness, of deprivation, that when he finally got a taste of the outside world again all he could do was lay there and try not to be overwhelmed with everything. Tohru had kept all of this from them, from him. There wasn’t a single cell in his body that cared if Tohru hated him; the feeling was mutual, as far as he was concerned.
Magatsu sighed. He knew that Dojima was coming today. The damn stubborn bastard wouldn’t give it up, no matter how much verbal abuse Magatsu threw at him. He only took exception to Nanako. It wasn’t like he liked her. He just didn’t think a kid should have to put up with someone bad-mouthing their parent. He took the legal pad, now used up, and tossed it in the growing stack with the others. As alters kept waking up, the legal pads were fuller faster, and he suspected the medical staff was beginning to resent the group for their gratuitous use of paper product. They probably needed them for something. Magatsu snorted—served them right for locking him up in a nuthouse. Using their precious legal pad resources was the greatest revenge he could think of at the moment.
He watched the clock tick the minutes by until the door swung open, the bareness of the room being cast into full form, the white linoleum reflecting the artificial and green light of the hallway. Dojima was in the doorway, casting a shadow across the dark room. He flipped the light switch, and Magatsu winced and groaned. “I like it dark, jackass,” he said, irritated.
Dojima shut the door behind him and took a seat in his usual spot. The hospital’s chairs were all the same, utterly indestructible and covered in rubber and a worn pastel pink that suggested they hadn’t been replaced since at least 1999. It was one of the only spots of color in the room, and Magatsu detested it.
“So it’s you again today, huh?” Dojima said, trying not to sound disappointed. Magatsu felt a surge of resentment for the tone, and curled the corner of his mouth into a sneer.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” he said sarcastically. Dojima sighed, setting a coffee he had brought with him in the windowsill, and leaned back in his chair. “What, no clever comeback? No ‘fuck off, Tohru-wannabe?’” Magatsu said.
“Nope.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds. “You’re not…you’re not trying to be buddy-buddy with me all the sudden, are you?” He smirked. “If that’s your play, I’m not interested.”
“Mhm,” Dojima said after taking a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, I’m not really interested in making friends. You’re a criminal, after all.”
“So what is it?” Magatsu said, irritated.
“You just seem like you have something you want to get off your chest.”
Magatsu almost physically recoiled, but hid it behind a bored expression. He didn’t like it when people could read him. And he especially didn’t like it when people wanted to talk about his feelings. Just thinking about it made his eyes roll involuntarily, but he also felt a creeping sense of being cornered. A kid being cornered by an adult. That was what he was, a 17-year-old being talked to by a concerned police officer.
He wanted to sock the guy in the jaw.
Dojima just looked at him with this expression—it wasn’t kind, it wasn’t welcoming, but it was something Magatsu could not identify. “Well,” he said, grabbing his coffee. “If you don’t want to talk, there’s some business I should get done back at the station—“
“Wait!” Magatsu said, sitting up and reaching out. He quickly realized what it looked like, and he shoved his hand back to his side and tucked it underneath him, quietly cursing the fact that he looked so goddamn needy. “There’s. There are some things I want to get off my chest. But it’s not like you’re going to understand, so just sit there and be a good little counselor and listen, got it?”
Dojima had a ghost of a smirk on his face as he sat back down in the pastel pink chair, leaning back as if at ease, as if he wasn’t in the same room as a murderer. It irritated Magatsu to no end. He glared at the man and began.
“The doctors here. They all—they all want us to integrate. They all treat me and the rest of us like…like...” he struggled for words. “Like we’re not real.”
“Yeah, okay. I can sort of understand that,” Dojima said. “But from what I read…or what I could read, anyway, it says that you’re all basically the same person underneath, so why does it bother you so much?”
Magatsu clenched his fist and let out a growl. “See? That’s what I mean! All these experts, they think they have the answers. But it’s not true. I’m not Tohru or Shimai or Hana or Aka or anyone else! And even if I wanted to talk with people, be in normal society for a change, everyone is still going to treat me like some kind of freak. I’m never going to be normal. To anyone. And not because of what’s…what’s wrong with me—“
“You admit there’s something wrong with what you did?”
Magatsu paused. Sometimes, he had these moments of clarity between the rush of power he felt when he thought of how he ended the lives of two people. And he knew that what he had done was wrong, desperately wrong, and that there was something off with him and that maybe he needed to be in this place after all.
Like hell if he was going to admit that to Dojima.
“Not the point!” Magatsu growled. “The point is, you don’t get it. None of these fucking doctors get it. None of them want to understand just how fucking lonely I feel. How…how we feel.”
Dojima was quiet for a moment, looking noncommittally into his coffee. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t understand. I think that was your point. That I can’t really understand all of this. All I have is what you say and what the doctors say.”
Magatsu stared at the wall.
“But I think I get one thing,” Dojima said, fixing Magatsu with an understanding stare. “You’re not Tohru. And I’ve been treating you like Tohru this whole time, or like Tohru in a different mood. Like I was just waiting for him to go back to normal. And that’s not who you are. So here’s what I’m going to do,” he said, standing up and walking over to the bed where Magatsu sat. It was closer than he had ever been to the man before. “I’m going to try to get to know you, and whoever the hell else I meet. I don’t know if I’ll even be decent at it, because let’s face it, I’m pretty new to all of this stuff. But I’m going to stop treating you all like Tohru from now on.”
Magatsu fought to repress a smile. “I thought I told you I wasn’t going to be buddy-buddy with you, jackass,” he said, not quite sure if he really meant it.