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Takumi’s blood tastes like sunlight.
It is warm and it is light and it overtakes him almost entirely in the moment, despite coming from something that looked and sounded and smelled rotten. It is a burst that threatens to fade, but really, it never does.
That sunlight only mellows out, settling on becoming that tepid, pleasant sort of temperature that the Tokyo Residential Complex always had and never deviated from. Gone is just about anything else in the world, just the trickle of blood in his throat remains, but it is utterly secondary to everything else.
He is sat on a quaint little swingset in a quaint little park. He has never visited it, of course, too busy being kept away from people or being hospitalized or keeping himself away from people. He has visited it more times than he can count, it is his favorite spot to sit down and think and, occasionally, converse. He has not turned his head but he knows there is a girl sitting on the swing next to him. He does not know her. He knows her so well that her visage may as well be painted on the back of his eyelids. The thought comes to mind that she looks a little bit like him, which in the moment he finds somewhat repulsive and yet delightful, overwhelmingly beautiful but horrid. She looks just like Nozomi Kirifuji, he thinks. She is someone whom Eito has never seen , and yet suddenly he is aware that she wears her hair in a simple braid with some haphazard pins stuck in her hair, cute, when the girl next to him does not . The fondness hits him immediately and it is nearly nauseating.
Something tears under Eito’s teeth. He rips it upward as far as it will go and chews and spares no time latching back on again. His teeth pierce unmarred skin, and it is no longer a violent act, even if it had been some distant half a minute ago.
In terms of the individual he finds there is none. Not for some silly reason like he and Takumi becoming one, in soul if not in body, but because Eito finds that there is no longer any distinctiveness in this world. It is no longer ‘those monsters’ and ‘himself, the only good person’, the categories melt under his fingertips and burn him when he tries to grip them again. It is now him, and he lives in parallel to Takumi, who has short red hair and piercing blue eyes and a dopey smile, and who does not look or smell or feel like a rotting corpse.
As he sits on that swing he knows that it is those piercing blue eyes that are looking off into the blank simulacrum of the sky. It’s that dopey smile that tugs at his lips. It’s that head of red hair that does not really turn to look at the girl next to them. It’s not at all due to the fact Eito’s nervous to look at her (he doesn’t even know if that nervousness is his anymore), it is just not how the memory played out. Takumi’s memory. His memory now, too.
Karua— because that’s the name of the girl next to him— kicks up off the ground and manages a slight swing. Incredibly casual. The sort of thing she does when something wants to spring out of her mouth but she hesitates on it. It always manifests as a little bit of movement first. Eito knows this now because Takumi knows this. There’s that trickling again, down his throat and disappearing somewhere into the general warmth in his chest that only seems to grow.
It feels frivolous and too heavy, almost. Happiness is wonderful and dreadful and Eito can feel each of its individual fingers digging into his sternum and pulling apart his rib cage— really, he feels like a blooming flower in that sense, handed in a bouquet only one person would ever see. It isn’t even his happiness, and yet he feels every inch of it. Happiness for things he has never experienced, happiness for things he hasn’t ever had reason to give any thought to. Takumi Sumino led such a boring and uneventful life by his own accord, lived incuriously and complacently and yet so very happily. He doesn’t understand at all, and yet he does. He doesn’t even know if he wants to, but he does.
His teeth hit bone. He knows bone marrow makes for a good meal though he hasn’t tried it himself. He wouldn’t mind shattering the thing between his teeth and he wouldn’t mind if the shards got caught in his tongue or cheeks or even down his throat. The blood would just mix, Takumi’s blood feels like it’s practically his anyway. He keeps going. Keeps eating. It’s good. It feels good.
When Karua’s feet make it to the ground again she opens her mouth to say something. Even that initial little bit, mostly a sigh that only carries a small note of voice in it as she gathers her thoughts, sounds correct. It’s light, airy, self-assured despite that nervousness— it is the voice of someone who feels secure. Protected. Correct.
“Takkun,” she says as he turns to face her, “thank you. For being here.”
He has never heard those words in his life. He knows those words, and knows that their actual shape is that of an “I love you”, beyond simple gratitude. They are both shy and incredibly normal teenagers, so communicating in code is just how they do things.
“No problem,” he says back to her. He says it. They both say it. Takumi’s feelings are his own now, after all. I love you. He means it. There is a little nausea there, a small bit of vomit, but it’s gladly swallowed for the person he cares most about in the whole world, even if it comes back up a thousand times over. It’s odd to have someone to care for, really. It’s odd that Karua, that Nozomi, is not the only person Takumi cares for. It is kind of boundless. The kind of thing Eito never once considered he would ever feel, for anything or anyone.
If he digs through it, he cares for his mother, his classmates, for his mundane life. He cares for people they had both met like Takemaru, like Tsubasa, like Darumi, like Yugamu, like Kako, like—
Like himself. Not really. Yes exactly.
He innately understands the entirety of the emotion but he does not dwell on it. It’s a hatred that keeps digging at him. Hate, hate, hate. It treads too close to a line though, that incredibly thin one that separates it from love that sometimes doesn’t exist. It’s a hatred informed so heavily by affection— spurned affection. Betrayal. The mere thought of it instills a different kind of sickness in him, so it seems like neither of them like the thought. He is on the same page as a human being and he finds he doesn’t mind it. That love in his chest is a heavy thing and he finds really that it’s extinguished every protest he thinks he could ever come up with for the rest of his life.
That hatred that they both felt, so intense and mutual— he can feel that it no longer exists in this world.
EIto snaps out of it. He inhales a lungful of air as though he hasn’t had a breath to himself in the last decade. The sensations stop being faint and become painfully present. The entirety of his mouth and chin are wet and he knows its blood that keeps dripping down in excess. Everything hurts and yet he has never felt better. He could run a hundred miles if he wanted to right that minute, but he feels as though if he moves a single joint it will rust and lock up and never work again.
His body hauls itself up independent of his thoughts. When he sits, he finds himself staring at the body underneath him. A beautiful and clean body, no longer a rotting lump of flesh. Takumi. Takumi, whose healthy red blood that does not stink of anything other than mild iron is now pooling underneath him. Takumi, whose pristine and pale neck has been torn through like a wild animal has gotten to him. Takumi, whose shoulder, ribs, and upper arm look almost unrecognizable with the amount of exposed flesh and bone— but still so much less unpleasant than any human Eito has ever seen.
Takumi, whose face is streaked with half-dry tear tracks and whose eyes are hollow when he looks at them. Unseeing, and taken by death. By himself. Eito. Takumi.
He’s still warm. Eito can feel it faintly right under him and he can feel the rest of him itch to get closer. He lies back down, fits his head right into the junction between Takumi’s neck and his shoulder— the good, smooth, soft side. He finds it fits like a puzzle piece. His arms find their way underneath him, pulling close the only person that Eito has fully understood, and that has fully understood him in return.
He screams. It echoes until the warmth fades.