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Atsushi sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the roof, kicking his feet softly on occasion. He had climbed up the dormitory complex, the dorm itself feeling suffocating with the summer heat. A faint breeze tugged gently at his shirt as he gazed out, watching the sky changing colors as the sun set. Kyouka-chan had been spending the nights with Yosano-sensei lately; her nightmares had flared up again, out of the blue, and she said she felt safer with the older woman. Atsushi didn’t even have it in himself to feel hurt by her words; he was scared of himself right now, too. He was pretty sure he was still in shock, but admitting that would mean admitting that he was being affected by—
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Atsushi said aloud. The wind picked up, bringing a chill with it as it ruffled his hair, bangs narrowly missing his eye. “I thought that was the whole point of this. So that you didn’t have to be here.” No response. Not that Atsushi had expected a response, really; he knew these… things, couldn’t talk. Or maybe they could, who knows. They had never spoken to him before, though.
Atsushi sighed heavily through his nose, eyes flicking over his shoulder briefly. “I just stopped seeing him, too,” he said, resignedly. “He had still been alive when I saw him, though. Maybe you’ve just been haunting me, all of us, this whole time; is that it? Or maybe you never existed in the first place, and this is all just a nightmare.”
No response, still. Atsushi was glad the streets were empty around this time of day, he probably looked insane; then again, maybe he was. Maybe he always had been.
“What was it you said that day?” Atsushi mused. “‘Don’t people usually cry when their father dies.’ You always spoke like you, yourself, weren’t also a person. ‘You are what you eat,’ and you ate nothing. I guess that makes me more human than anyone, then.” He felt a pressure behind his eyes, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as a chill ran down his spine. “Do you have anything to say, or can I go inside? It’s cold up here, Dazai-san.”
Atsushi saw a ripple just slightly out of the corner of his eye, as if the thing was sympathizing with him.
“You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
Still no response. Atsushi was starting to think that he wouldn’t ever get one.
His head hurt.