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"Your hands are bleeding."
Tatsuya, who normally never spoke to Katsuya, remarked nonchalantly and disinterestedly to his brother, who served a white plate on the table.
An everyday occurrence, of any day, him always at Tatsuya's disposal whether he wanted to share even if just a little modicum of time with him or not.
"Ah, I just cut myself a little while cutting ingredients...nothing too much."
Katsuya says it with the same nonchalance as Tatsuya, more like it's something common that happens at any time, to anyone, without any special meaning, just something simple and ordinary that usually happens, as mundane as life itself.
On the tablecloth, kept impossibly white by Katsuya, who day after day is responsible for cleaning every imperfection within his sight, who wants to keep every mistake thoroughly scrubbed away as if it were his own, drops of life begin to fall that make it all much harder to hide.
Little red spots that fall like the lightest of rains. So tiny, so insignificant, but still they stain the tablecloth he has tried so hard to keep clean as his being.
"I see."
Tatsuya, despite seeing this, simply still takes it as the mundanity that Katsuya had told him. Something that really wasn't that out of the ordinary, things that happen day in and day out, to anyone, in any situation.
And he simply walks away, without asking how, without asking a why, leaving Katsuya alone with himself, in his dirt and imperfections. Left to eat dinner in solitude, as usual.
There was no need to ask anything, as this was all normal.
And being alone, after waiting agonizing hours for his brother's accompaniment, waiting hour after hour looking for some recipe that would please him and him alone, using the few funds that were reserved for Katsuya’s use to spend them to share with Tatsuya, a moment as a family that would not happen...
That was also normal.
"Your hands are bleeding."
Even though he had always avoided his brother, with that typical obnoxious childish rebellion, the Tatsuya of then still had the slightest concern for him.
A concern that would not return ever again.
"I accidentally cut myself with a piece of paper in class..."
"That's so lame."
"It is, isn't it?"
At least that was enough to satisfy Tatsuya's curiosity.
What was a 7 year old boy like him supposed to understand, how his right to take an exam was invalidated by being late, thanks to trying his hardest to take Tatsuya to a school he didn't want to go to.
How, despite his insistence, he was still denied. Although he begged on his knees, humiliated himself, in his 15 years of life that felt as if they were getting shorter, he still would not be treated with more special treatment than the others.
Much less, with being the son of a criminal.
Not knowing whether to tell his father about what happened or not, a father who places all the expectations of the future on him.
A father who is not even with them to fulfill his expectations as a father, locked in a cage as if it were more for his protection than to condemn him.
The stress of each day, barely feeling his conscience as he wakes early to make breakfast for two, the fussing and whining of Tatsuya who made time run faster for every minute he refused to get up, the realization of having forgotten his own duties to help—or rather do Tatsuya's. Who, if he didn't do something for him, he would fall apart more than him.
That, too, was normal.
All that’s needed is to breathe.
"Your hands are bleeding."
Surprisingly, it's not Tatsuya who speaks it, but a mundane, average co-worker.
Despite having his hands as bandaged as humanly possible, with a white color to drown out any visible imperfections or flaws in it, that red, putrid and imperfect, soaked through. Soaked bandage that if he were able to open his chest and apply it to his heart, he would.
For it was bleeding to death just like his hands.
"Did something happen, Suou?"
What hasn't happened?
He could say, but he's not one to resort to the same words that his brother would use, who always replies the same way when he asks anything of him. Of how he, too, bleeds. After zodiac, after finding him at a hospital that he hadn't even been informed beforehand that he was in there, after school, in their home.
Like the blood he spills drowns his own.
"Huh? Oh, it's just... a stray cat I was trying to help scratched me. Ahaha..."
"Oh Suou, you really need to stop doing that. No matter how cute they are, some cats don't want help..."
His co-worker's voice turned to noise as he continued his mindless chatter.
Because it's better this way.
Let it be known that this blood is shed by buffoonery and nothing else.
And he's the buffoon who insists, no matter what.
The agonizing hours of pointless musings, gossip and chatter, lest they get interrupted by shouts and whines from his superiors that tell him he isn't doing enough is too, the mundanity of every day.
The mundanity of every day eventually reaches its end. Returning to a home of white walls that reflect the superficial purity while hiding the rot of irritating mold and despairing filth accumulated over years of existence that surpass the years he's lived.
The bandages on his hand come off, to be replaced by impeccable, immaculate ones that, hopefully, will keep him as perfect, pure and pristine as the image he has always given.
His overfixed and overwashed suit, overstyled hair and overwhelming smile.
That's the "Katsuya Suou" that is presented to the world.
Polished to perfection without any impurities.
Even if everything he touches is full of blood, with stains that cannot ever come off.
He should know, it's one of the basic principles of forensic science.
No matter how much blood is attempted to be cleaned or scrubbed away, with plethora of chemicals to hide it away, it will always remain.
Even the most minuscule particle of blood always stays.
That is why Katsuya Suou is stained, imperfect, dyed in the rot of old blood that stays as fresh as the first time that it was once spilled.
Even the dregs of his mind are not free.
In the calm and serenity of repose that comes after an exhausting day, his fingernails dig into skin just enough to draw blood, feeling blood flow through the carotid veins that halt halfway due to the pressure applied to such a delicate piece of skin and bone that connects head and body into one, the skin he touches with bloodstained hands glows a purple hue.
And the eyes that look back at him are the same as his own.
Eyes he has known for 18 years.
The blood gushing from his neck is the same as his.
And so is the life clutched between his hands.
Only when the cold hand of another imperfect soul touches his cheek as he cries crimson tears, one that speaks of his name, of a brother, hands that could not be more stained than his own because he would not allow it, dream or reality, does the nightmare end.
The walls of the home are imperfect just as the ones that are raised in his heart.
Cracking and crumbling apart.
The walls absorb his pain, his blood, as they fester and rot.
Sprawling gaps watch him, like countless eyes judging him, peering into his soul.
And they also whisper to him,
"Breathe"
His hands continue to bleed for another day.