Archive of Our Own ^beta

Muu was happy. What else should she be? Her life was wonderful. It wasn’t long after lunch, where she’d been eating some of the most delicious food. Not that she’d actually ate much of it. Her friends were always jealous of her lunches, so she always let them take some. It made her happier. She loved to see people enjoying what was hers. 

Right now she was stuck in the middle of a maths class that felt as though it had been going on forever. The teacher, Professor Nakamura, was an old stout man with a somewhat nervous disposition. This, as a result, made his words very quiet, and very very rushed. Muu could barely even comprehend what he was saying most of the time, let alone understand any of it, and she didn’t get maths at the best of times.

Unfortunately, even people as fortunate as her have to participate in school. It’s unfair. At least she had the lunches and breaks and all the time after school with her friends to look forward to. Despite her average teenage complaints, her life was bliss. Just as it should be. It was what she deserved, after all.

Muu was almost spaced out completely when she felt a tap on her left shoulder. It immediately shook her to consciousness again. She presumed it was from Yuuki as she sat to the left of her. They exchanged notes in this class frequently, usually about trivial things. It helped them both suffer through the drudgery that was maths. Muu heard the slight rustle of paper as the hand was passed onto her table. She didn’t look down, despite the fact it would make no difference either way. Although the teacher would not tell off or punish either of them for their note passing, — especially not Muu, as it was an unspoken rule that she was above the rules and allowed to do all she wanted — their feigned secrecy made it more fun. 

When Professor Nakamura slowly twisted his balding head around towards the chalkboard to, most likely, slowly write down an equation in his small, terrible, practically impossible to read handwriting, Muu looked down at the note sent to her. It was on a bright purple post-it. 

So boringggg. How are you faring?

Yuuki’s handwriting was quite weird and scratchy, Muu thought. Very unappealing. No wonder she always failed English. 

Muu responded in her self-admittedly (and actually everyone-else-admittedly, considering how frequently she got complimented on it) significantly nicer handwriting.

tired (о´∀`о) i just want it to end… (＞人＜;) 

Muu drew another emoticon to finish it off. She liked drawing emoticons. She dotted her i’s with circles before passing the note back to Yuuki. Professor Nakamura was still hunched over the chalkboard, writing something. The sound was quiet but annoying, niggling in the back of Muu’s mind. 

A few people were watching the exchange. Muu wondered why. People loved to watch Muu. Perhaps they were envious. It would make sense, after all. What is there not to be envious about?

The conversation carried on throughout the rest of the lesson, mainly consisting of complaints and doodles and a naughts and crosses game Muu won with ease. Muu was good at winning. Her friends always playfully teased her for it.

Yuuki: Do you wanna do something tomorrow? My date cancelled on me :(

Yuuki had planned some sort of dinner date with a boy from a nearby school the next day. One of those at a somewhat underwhelming diner teenagers take far more seriously than should be warranted. She liked doing that. Muu didn’t quite get it. She’d received love letters countless times, in little heart envelopes signed off with kisses in blotchy ink pens, but it never really made her feel anything. She really ought to, Muu thought, her age now — sixteen — was around her age her parents met and she desired a relationship as fruitful as theirs, but something always felt missing every time she was in a romantic situation. She just didn’t find any of the boys very attractive. 

Muu, also, didn’t understand how Yuuki managed to get so many people willing to go on dates with her. Muu wasn’t one to note appearances too often, but she didn’t find Yuuki that appealing. She was sort of just average. Muu didn’t want to settle for average. 

Everybody has a different viewpoint, Muu guessed. She didn’t really get it.

M: of course (*≧∀≦*) shall we ask the gc?（＾Ｏ＾）

Y: After lesson. I don’t wanna be seen on my phone…

M: nakamura wont care, just do it （＾ω＾）

Y: I’m not you :( I can’t get away with it. I don’t want another detention. You do it. And everybody actually responds to you

M: ooooookay! (＞人＜;) where do you wanna go?

Y: Uhhm ... The new sushi place in town looks so good. Maybe there?

M: nice (*≧∀≦*) ... but i think we should go to the new fair instead !! it looks super fun !!!

Y: Not everybody has the money you do…

M: I can pay for you （＾Ｏ＾）

Y: Thanks!

Muu began to rummage through her bag to look for her phone. During her and Yuuki’s conversation, Professor K had turned to and fro the board so many times Muu lost track, but just at that moment he swung his head around again. His eyes interlocked with Muu’s for a moment. He could see what she was doing. He didn’t comment on it, instead simply continuing to teach.

Muu sent the message. She probably could have waited until after the lesson, but then she might have forgotten. There was a near immediate response. A ping rang out but nobody bar a few students acknowledged it, and Muu thought those kids were staring at her already anyways. Muu didn’t immediately check the response, but she presumed it was from Emiko. She was always on her phone in class. She was shockingly good at getting away with it, unlike Muu, who didn’t even have to try.

—

The next day at school began with an announcement. It was during homeroom, a lesson run by Miss Hitomi. Unlike Professor Nakamura, her words were comprehensible. She was short but had a large presence. Muu liked her. She was kind.

Miss Hitomi introduced them to a new student. The new girl was very pretty. She had dark brown hair ever-so-slightly shorter than Muu’s, her fringe swept to the left of her face. Her eyes were a greenish hazel and very wide. It emphasised her nervousness at being in front of a crowd of peering students. She wasn’t quite used to being the centre of attention, it seemed. She also didn’t fit in the spotlight. Most people didn’t. Muu didn’t know whether she should feel bad for those people or not. The girl's cheeks, pale in complexion, were ever so slightly flushed red. Muu wondered if it was due to her nerves or natural or possibly makeup. Muu doubted the latter. It didn’t look like she was wearing any.

Miss Hitomi continued to speak, but Muu wasn’t really paying attention. She stared at the girl a little longer. She wanted to make her her friend. The girl would be grateful for that, Muu thought. She wanted to be the girl’s saviour, her beacon of light after being thrown into a foreign environment.

After a few minutes, Miss Hitomi stopped and gently patted the girl on the shoulder (an action she had to stretch upwards to do, which Muu silently giggled to herself about), who was standing there with a somewhat plain, lost expression residing upon her face. 

“Well, enough of me talking,” Miss Hitomi giggled slightly to herself before she continued, “Why don’t you introduce yourself to the class?”

There was a few seconds of silence before the girl started speaking. 

“My name is Kuraki Rei. I am a foreign exchange student.” Rei’s tone was rather flat and uninteresting. She looked like she wanted to get this over with as soon as possible. She paused for a second before adding “I am looking forward to getting to know all of you.” It didn't sound at all genuine. 

Rei. Muu thought the name was fitting. She liked it a lot. It was very pretty.

Muu pitied Rei a little, in the same way somebody pities a lost, malnourished puppy on the street.

Before Rei had a chance to scurry to her seat and sit down, Muu got up and stopped Rei in her tracks. Rei looked unimpressed. Muu didn’t know why. She stretched out her right hand and smiled, squinting her eyes in the way everybody always called ‘so adorable~’. Rei still looked unimpressed. Perhaps she thought Muu was mocking her? Muu wasn’t sure why she’d think so, but she wanted to change that perception.

“Hello~ Muu thinks it’s nice to meet you!”

Rei’s expression barely shifted. In fact, she was beginning to look somewhat uncomfortable, her wide eyes narrowing. Muu bobbed her head slightly before gesturing her outstretched hand towards Rei, just in case the girl didn’t see it before. 

“Mhm… Yeah…” Rei barely uttered a response before continuing to walk on. Her shoulder brushed by Muu’s as she passed her. She didn’t even acknowledge the touch, let alone apologise.

Muu wasn’t quite sure how to react. It took her a moment, her hand still outstretched like a gormless fool, to properly process what had just happened. That new girl — Rei, as she called herself — had just ignored her. 

Muu felt the most embarrassed she could ever remember feeling. Her cheeks began to burn up. She hoped it wasn’t too noticeable. Her lip slightly quivered. She felt like a child who had just faced rejection for the very first time. 

Eventually she forced her arm down. She breathed in and walked back to her seat, head slightly upturned, lips pursed. Her footsteps sounded louder than usual.

A part of her was really, really pissed off.

—

Later that afternoon Muu and her friends went out, as they’d planned yesterday. There were four of them. There were always four of them. Muu had an abundance of friends — or, at the very least, she’d like to believe she did, but she had no reason to think otherwise because who wouldn’t like her? — but there were three she was closest to: Yuuki, Emiko and Kaori. They did practically everything together. They sat together in the same place at lunch everyday, (they pretty much owned the rooftop at this point, it was common knowledge that nobody but them were allowed up there during lunch unless they were specifically invited by one of them, usually Muu), they went out together after school at least twice a week if they could, they studied together, they slept round each other’s all the time. All four of them were “attached at the hip”, as people liked to say. They even had matching profile pictures — a selfie of all four of them together from a year or so ago when they decided to go to the local park for a couple hours after school. It was taken on Muu’s phone. Her camera’s the best, after all.

They went to the local fair for a few hours. Most of the rides were tailored towards people far younger than any of them, but there were a couple of actually scary ones. A rollercoaster and another machine Muu wasn’t quite sure of the name of, but it kept swinging them up and down and up and down and up and down. It kind of made Muu’s stomach churn, but she didn’t tell anybody that.

Emiko was especially bad with the rollercoaster. She got even paler than usual after it, her cheeks puffed as though she was about to vomit. She rushed to the toilet cubicles immediately, all while swearing that it wasn’t that bad, she wasn’t scared and she just needed the toilet. The other three laughed at her blatant lies. She spent some time in the toilets, but swore afterwards that she didn’t actually throw up. Muu wasn’t so sure.

Eventually, once they had been on every ride, Muu bought them all churros and they sat at an unoccupied bench eating them. The conversation started normally, with Yuuki lamenting her missing date and Kaori cheering her up, talking about how “a girl's date is far better than any boy could be, anyways!”

And then, at one point, they started talking about Rei.

“Can you believe how she was with Muu?” Yuuki began, a strong bitterness peppering her tone. She emphasised the word “she” as if it were poison, spitting at as though it hurt her to say. Emiko and Kaori pushed their heads in closer towards Yuuki as though they were trying to avoid being overheard, despite the fact nobody who would actually care less was around. Perhaps it was simply the idea of secrecy that enticed them. Muu could understand that. They muttered together, too quiet for Muu to properly hear, for a moment before addressing Muu directly.

“Muu, I’m shocked you reacted so well to her!” Kaori said.

“Hmm?” Muu turned her head ever so slightly to the side, feigning ignorance. Of course she knew they were talking about Rei, in fact, the short  interaction (if it could even be referred to as that) they’d had together hadn’t left her mind all day, but she didn’t want it to come off as though it were affecting her. Somebody such as her does not get so offended by the rejection of some irrelevant underling, after all.

“Ha. You’re always a little oblivious, aren’t you Muu?” Emiko laughed and the other two joined in. So did Muu, albeit a little delayed.

“That’s our Muu!” Kaori added.

“We’re talking about the new girl. What was her name again?” Yuuki‘s bitterness reawakened whenever she mentioned Rei’s name, even indirectly. Secretly, Muu was happy her anger was shared. She wasn’t going to tell anybody that though.

“Rei,” Muu responded immediately and finitely.

“So you do remember! Rei. Tch. Stupid name.”

Muu had thought it quite a pretty name. The others agreed with Emiko, though, so Muu added a little “Yeah,” to the conversation.

“She had a lot of nerve, reacting to your kindness like that!” 

“I woulda hit her!”

“Yeah, but our Muu isn’t like that, is she?” Kaori dipped the final churro in chocolate before promptly popping it in her mouth. “Mm… these are good… Muu, could you get some more?”

“Of course!” Muu got up and smiled, a bounce in her movements. She liked buying things for her friends. She was the most fortunate of them; who would she be to not get them gifts every so often?

“Thanks! Love ya!” 

—

Over the next few weeks, Muu found herself strangely fascinated by Rei. There was something alluringly disgusting about her attitude, her disregard, everything about her. This wasn’t the way things should be. People like Rei shouldn’t exist. 

Muu found herself, in particular, fixated on the idea of catching Rei’s attention. Like the prettiest of butterflies, Muu wanted to pin Rei up onto a wall and display her in her own private collection. She wanted to watch Rei stop writhing and simply submit, as she should, alongside everybody else.

Annoyingly, though, butterflies are a lot prettier when they can flap their wings. Muu knew that once she inevitably captured Rei and order was restored to how it should be, Rei would simply blend into the background like most other people did to her. Rei would become boring. Frustratingly boring.

Muu’s parents liked to shower her with gifts. It was one of the main things she looked forward to whenever they came back from their longer trips, besides from seeing them, of course. 

Her mama had taken some of the makeup from her last modelling gig, all very expensive products. Muu’s favourite was the lipgloss she’d brought back. 

Makeup was a common gift of Muu’s mother. She was a model, after all. Usually, when putting it on for the first time in front of her vanity mirror, painted in that pale pink colour she loved so so much, Muu’s first thought would be how it made her look. How it emphasised the blues or greens of her eyes, or her eyelashes, or made her cheeks redder and complexion fairer. For some reason, though, while putting on her fancy new lipgloss the morning before school, her primary — in fact, only — thought was if it would make Rei finally notice her. 

She really hated that thought.

Still, it persisted.

Rei sat two in front of her and one to her left in English classes, which were first on Monday mornings. Usually Muu listened in English, the teacher was quite good and the subject at least a little interesting, but she was far too distracted by Rei to do so at the moment. She dug her eyes into the back of Rei’s head. A few people were looking at Muu, as they always did. Muu hoped they didn’t realise who she was looking at. 

People had started to look at Rei, too, over the last few weeks. Not in the same way they did Muu, with envious adoration, but with something else. Sneers and narrowed eyes. Muu wasn’t quite sure why. Perhaps Rei confused the other students as much as she did Muu. Perhaps they also found Rei alluring in the worst kind of way.

At the end of the lesson, Rei was the first to leave the room. To Muu’s dismay (for some reason), Rei took no notice of her new lipgloss. Muu didn’t even think Rei acknowledged her presence the entire day, let alone take the  time to look at her face and acknowledge the slightly different tone of her lips.

On Rei’s first few days at the school, despite her seemingly natural introversion, she still appeared somewhat casual, but her posture had morphed into one far more closed off. She clung onto her bag like a lifeline, like loosening her grip even a little would cause it to fall apart completely. It did look rather old, in all fairness. Muu didn’t know why she didn’t just buy a new one.

There was a little black and white fish patch sewn onto the upper middle of Rei’s bag. It was cute. Rei must like fish, then. Muu liked fish. Or, at the very least, decided she did while looking at the patch.

That afternoon, while walking around the mall with her friends, Muu noticed a cute, tiny keychain with a few colourful tropical fish on it. She decided to buy it and display it on her bag. She wasn’t sure how much money it was. Muu didn’t tend to look at prices.

—

Muu was at the gate with her closest friends when she realised she’d forgotten her bag. She wasn’t sure how she’d managed it: it was quite heavy, after all. She told her friends she’d only be a minute or so before running (or, at the very least, speed walking) through the hallway until she found her locker. 

It was quite noticeable, even from a distance, covered in cute stickers and post-its. Muu had gotten quite a few love confessions stuck on there before. She usually just tore them off, somewhat curious but not enough to truly care about the mysterious senders. There were a lot of people it could have been. Such was the life of popularity.

Muu thought the halls were empty as she took her bag out and continued walking until she heard something. A shuffle, it sounded like. It made Muu jump a little, a move which made her bag slam into the locker behind her. Muu looked down to see Rei, struggling to get up like the wretched little insect she was. Her hair was wet. Muu wondered why. 

It was something she wasn’t going to question.

Instinctively, she reached her hand out — as she had on the very first day Rei transferred, despite all the embarrassment that moment gave Muu — for Rei to hold and help rebalance herself.

Rei, like last time, didn’t grab it, opting instead to force her own self up. She struggled, clinging onto the locker doors to balance herself. The silence was palpable. 

Muu was made to look stupid yet again, her attempts to be courteous shattered. It still pissed her off. 

She didn’t understand it at all.

She didn’t understand Rei at all.

After a few moments of awkward half-acknowledgement, Muu began to walk away. 

“You dropped this,” Rei’s unenthused voice cut through the silence. Muu thought she had a nice voice. It made her want to hear Rei speak more.

Muu turned around to see Rei gesturing towards her tropical fish keychain, left abandoned on the ground near Rei. It must have fallen off Muu’s bag when she hit the locker with it. 

Muu waited for Rei to give it to her. She didn’t. Muu grew a little annoyed. Rei stared at her blankly, still not moving.

“Can you not even bend over and pick it up? Scared to get your hands dirty?”

Muu wasn’t sure how to conceptualise Rei’s response. It was unlike anything she’d heard before. It confused her. It somehow managed to anger her further. It also intrigued her to no end.

Eventually Muu went over and picked up the keychain from the ground in one quick, swift motion. When she looked up, Rei was still there, but she wasn’t looking at Muu. She was instead examining the keychain with strong fascination.

“...Nice keychain… It’s very cute. I like fish.”

Muu didn’t know how to respond. She was only ever used to compliments about herself directly. She wasn’t certain as to how to navigate this.

The conversation didn’t continue.

—

Everybody around Muu had begun to share her loathing for Rei. It wasn’t anything Muu had done that led to it, but the entire rest of the school had mutually grown to understand that Rei is not to be liked. Rei is not to be treated as an equal. Muu is ‘good’ and Rei is ‘bad’. It was a sentiment even the teachers seemed to share, albeit expressed in ways far less apparent than the students.

It made sense to Muu. Even without her guidance, everybody else had arrived at the same conclusion as her. After all, Muu was right. It wasn’t her fault Rei was hated, it was Rei’s own. Those who go against Muu must fall. It was an indisputable fact of the world. Rei should have known better than to try and go against it.

Muu noticed Rei’s discomfort in any social situation, how she stopped looking anybody in the eye, how she left rooms as quickly as possible, never waiting around. Muu also noticed how she never seemed to break completely. She wasn’t sure if Rei simply didn’t actually care too much about her status or if she was just particularly good at faking it. If it was the latter, Muu was impressed. She’d never be able to do the same thing.

Rei had become the scapegoat of any situation: the one to blame for people’s own shortcomings, the one that can be attacked at any point with no consequences, the girl who didn’t belong and wasn’t even here since the start anyways. Even the first years, who had only just turned up, understood they shouldn’t try to intervene with Rei’s suffering.

It was a cycle; it was a cycle that needed to continue on going or the ecosystem would collapse.

Muu didn’t want to think about what would happen if it did.

—

The classroom was full of students. They were in a circle, near cult-like in formation. Kaori, Yuuki and Emiko stood near the front. As Muu walked in they beckoned her over, tone sing-songy.

The students ever so slightly broke formation to let Muu through seamlessly.

What was in the middle of the circle was Rei, drenched in water, writhing like a fish out of water. She looked so pathetic it was actually a little cute. Her hair was a mess but still perfectly framed her face. Her cheeks blushed more than usual, and her expression was one Muu couldn’t quite read. She struggled to understand Rei even more than she usually did, a feat she didn’t even think possible before. Rei was looking downwards at the floorboards, not up at any of the countless tormentors surrounding her and blocking any chance of her escape. They were the predator and she was the prey, and she wasn’t going to even acknowledge them as they ate her alive. Muu was still somewhat impressed by Rei’s will.

Those around Rei and Muu were cheering Muu on as though waiting for something to happen. Muu couldn’t understand what they wanted from her. She’d already proven her status, after all. What else did they need?

Muu wasn’t going to hurt her. That would be far too cruel. She’d never hurt Rei.

What lesson was such needless violence going to teach?

Muu crouched down. She wasn’t quite sure what she was doing or how she was planning to carry on. After a few moments — mere seconds or full minutes, Muu couldn’t tell, she was far too entranced — Muu just smiled. It was the exact same smile she’d given on that first day trying to introduce herself to Rei. It wasn’t one laced with malice or sinister intentions, it was simply a smile. The very same smile that made most fall for her angelic whims, all but Rei. Muu cupped her face as she did so, her posture — as well as her expression — soft and unbefitting of the situation at hand.

Rei finally looked up.

Muu revelled in the acknowledgement.

Rei grit her teeth like a rabid animal about to lash out. Muu pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes, her cheeks uncontrollably flushing red. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for.

Rei began to crawl forward, her breathing heavy, before grabbing onto the chair leg in front of her with pent-up ferocity.

Then the hourglass flipped.

It suddenly hurt. It hurt so, so bad. Muu wasn’t sure what was happening, but there was a loud thud — one she could feel reverberate through the inside of her skull — and the chair Rei was just clinging onto tumbled to the floor, alongside Muu’s body. Rei was yelling, screaming, baring her fangs. Everybody surrounding them was watching in fascination, not moving a single muscle. Muu couldn’t comprehend any of it.

Muu’s body stayed limp on the ground. She couldn’t find the energy to move. Her limited vision was fading in and out, dark and blurred spots overtaking any possibility of understanding her surroundings.

Then her body was yanked upwards. Rei’s whitened knuckles were clasped around Muu’s collar, so much so it was restricting her ability to breathe. Rei began to punch her, again and again and again, the aggression in her movements seemingly neverending. Rei was crying. Muu couldn’t feel her own face, but thought she probably was too.

It felt like forever when Rei finally let go of Muu. Muu didn’t even try to protect herself from the floorboards as she hit the ground. Rei was panting, her entire body shaking and her balled-together fists stained with both Muu’s blood and her own.

Then, abruptly, the panting stopped. Rei sighed and turned away, ever so slightly loosening her posture. It was as if the weight had been lifted off her shoulders. She looked cathartic.

And then she was gone.

Nobody left spoke. There was a silence overcast unbefitting for how many people populated the classroom. Muu waited. Surely, eventually, somebody was going to come to her rescue, right? Muu waited for longer. Despite being unable to properly lift her head, she could see Yuuki, Kaori and Emiko’s shoes in her peripherals. None of them looked as though they were about to move. Muu didn’t get it. Somebody had to save her. Somebody always saved her.

Muu could see — albeit barely — a pool of crimson red forming around where her head was still laying. Her blood. She was bleeding. She was bleeding and bleeding and bleeding and-

It made her feel sick. Something was crawling up her throat: an itching, aching feeling filling her insides with something foreign, crawling around inside of her like an insect.

Her body lurched forwards as she began to throw up. Gross, disgusting vomit — completely unsuitable for somebody as angelic as her — spilled out of her. It didn’t seem to end. Every so often, she’d have a few seconds where she’d think it was finally over, but it always seemed to come back. She put her hand over her face to block it, but it was a fruitless endeavour. Her entire body was painted with her vomit, coloured in with her unpretty insides.

Now, in her new position, Muu could see the expressions of those around her. For once, though, she was looking up at them, practically grovelling at their feet, as opposed to vice versa.

Their faces were etched with a foreign expression. Muu was being stared at in a way she never had been before. There was no envy, no adoration… There was not even an ounce of pity for her situation.

Instead there was a collective sense of recognition.

It had finally been revealed, to the rest of the world as well as Muu, that Muu was no angel.

She was simply a human. A disgusting, wretched, imperfect human just like all of them.

Muu was unable to stop herself from wailing loud, ugly tears that would never reach anybody.

—

For the next few days of school, Muu was completely ignored. Her friends ignored her. Every classmate of hers ignored her. Whenever she’d try to go up to one of them, they’d look at her as if she was little more than a speck of dirt left on their shoe. 

Muu couldn’t function properly throughout those days. She’d find her mind wandering in lessons, thinking about why does everybody suddenly hate Muu? What has Muu done to deserve such treatment?

Not to mention the back of her head still ached, as well as the rest of her body. She was lucky none of the bruises she got were on her face. Then they’d be harder to hide. Nobody had noticed her injuries just yet. She’d later discovered somebody in the classroom during Muu’s attack had afterwards told the teacher that Muu had knocked over the chair by accident and, as a result of the injury, began to vomit. 

Muu was unsure as to why the story was believed due to the state the room was left in but, more than anything, she was unsure as to why nobody ever amended the story.

There were countless people in that room- there were countless of her friends in that room who watched it all unfold. Why did none of them tell the truth?

It was all so, so, so horrible. Muu didn’t deserve such horrible treatment. Muu was better than this.

Muu had become hopeful when Emiko had come up to her and actually initiated a conversation with her. Perhaps Muu was overthinking it all. The head injury had caused her to worry far too much and in truth nothing was different, everyone was just really busy lately. Everything would go back to normal soon. Even Rei-

“Can I borrow some of your makeup tomorrow?” Emiko’s tone was blank, her chin lifted upwards slightly. She was already a little bit taller than Muu, so this made the proximity between them feel even larger.

Muu was hoping she’d get an “are you okay?” or something tantamount at the very least.

It was fine. They didn’t want to mention what happened in case it was too traumatic for her. They didn’t want to acknowledge it because it made them uncomfortable and scared, too. They just wanted to forget anything happened and carry on as usual.

“O-of course!” Muu’s voice inhibited a nervousness she had never felt before. It caused it to waver a little. She really, really despised it. 

That was the last proper (if it can even be called that) conversation Muu ever had with one of her ‘friends.’

The next day, Muu gave Emiko the makeup. She didn’t even get a thank you.

Muu never got it back.

When Muu went to message her about it she noticed Emiko, alongside Yuuki and Kaori, had changed their profile pictures. They no longer matched with Muu. The selfie on their profiles was one they had taken very recently, without Muu in it. Muu noticed they were wearing some of her makeup.

Muu hoped they just forgot to mention it to her.

—

A week or so after Muu had given Emiko the makeup, she was still being ignored by everybody. Maths class was strangely empty without Yuuki passing Muu notes. The minutes ticked by significantly slower; Professor Nakamura’s words were even more snail-like than usual.

Ever since the incident, Yuuki had stopped even giving her notes in the classes they shared. Every so often Muu glanced sideways at her, but she’d never get any acknowledgement back. Yuuki’s eyes were always transfixed at the front as though she was actively trying to force them not to wander. It was weird and out of character. Yuuki would never normally focus in class. 

One day, though, halfway through the lesson, while Muu was half-spaced out trying to survive through the drudgery, the oh-so-loud sound of Professor Nakamura furiously writing on the chalkboard digging at the forefront of her mind, she heard the familiar, near-quiet rustle of paper being passed onto her table. Muu’s heart jumped far too intensely for the miniscule action at hand. Muu turned to her left quickly to try and meet Yuuki’s eyes before she could turn away. Yuuki simply retracted, looking away from Muu and back at the teacher, defaulting again to not acknowledging her at all. 

It took Muu a while to find the courage to open the note, which had been — rather strangely — folded perfectly into a small neon green square. Usually it was obvious what was written on it at a single glance, but like this-

After a couple of minutes or so of simply staring at the little square of paper Muu carefully opened it, being careful not to rip any of it.

On it were two words and a heart, written in Yuuki’s usual scratchy handwriting, but somehow with far more aggression than usual.

Puke girl~ ♡

Huh?

Muu felt her cheeks burning red in embarrassment. Was this referring to what had happened when Rei attacked her with the chair? Nobody had mentioned it before now… and when they did… was Yuuki mocking Muu? 

Muu thought back to that day a couple of weeks ago. She thought back to the agony, the bruise it left on her back that still wasn’t showing any signs of leaving. She thought back to the thud of the chair as it hit her and the thud of her body hitting the floorboards and the thud of Rei’s fist hitting her over and over and over again.

Muu could feel the vomit rising in her throat again. She put her hand up to her face and leant forward as though she was about to be sick. She looked down at her desk, her vision as blurry as it was during that day and her skin becoming paler and paler. 

She didn’t throw up.

When the feeling had gone enough for her to be able to raise her head up again, she noticed that everybody was staring at her again, even Yuuki.

They looked like they were finding it funny.

—

After class, Muu chased after Yuuki as she left the room. She had to ask her what was going on. It was far too confusing for Muu to comprehend alone. None of it even felt real. None of what was happening was meant to happen. The word wasn’t supposed to function like this. The distortion that affected Rei had now spread to everyone else like a poison.

Muu grabbed onto her arm in the middle of the hallway amidst countless other students heading to their next destinations. Yuuki tried to shake her off, but Muu only gripped harder. 

“W-What did it mean?!” The stutter from when Muu was talking to Emiko the other day returned. 

“Get off me.”

“Why are you ignoring Muu? Has Muu done something?! What did the note mean?!”

“What note?” Yuuki’s tone teetered between genuine innocence and mocking. Muu couldn’t recognise either of them. She wasn’t sure what Yuuki meant. She had watched Yuuki pass her the note earlier, why was she pretending she hadn’t? 

“The one where you called me…” Muu’s voice trailed off. She didn’t want to repeat it.

“Called you what?” Yuuki waited.

“...Puke… Girl…”

Yuuki let out a stifled chuckle, her dark brown eyes narrowing. “Well, It’s a rather accurate description, wouldn’t you say?”

“I-”

“Muu,” Yuuki’s tone suddenly became more serious, “you seriously can never read the room, can you? Nobody likes you.”

Huh?

Muu’s grip loosened in her shock. Yuuki took the opportunity to walk away, not even turning back once.

Nobody likes you.

That wasn’t true. That couldn’t be true. Everybody loved Muu. Everybody loves Muu. That was, and always will be, how the world works.

—

There was a letter inside of Muu’s locker. By the looks of its positioning, it had been slipped in through the slight gap in the edges. Muu approached the letter with shaking hands. It was similar looking to the letters she had received from secret admirers in the past. Despite her never quite liking any of that, she never felt fear opening any of them, and instead just let them feed her ego. There was a change in her recently, though. A seedling of doubt was planting itself inside of her, growing larger and larger but slow enough to the point she barely realised. Yuuki’s comment had nurtured it further. It was going into dangerous territory already. 

Muu, you seriously can never read the room, can you? Nobody likes you.

A note, a few days of being ignored and a single comment had ruined everything. Her perception of reality was shattered completely, and she seriously doubted — even if things were to morph back to normalcy now — she would ever be able to return fully to normal.

So, throughout those months, was that how Rei-

Rei hurt Muu. Rei attacked her until she was bloody and bruised. Rei’s situation was different. Muu never hurt Rei, so Rei hurting Muu was completely unprompted. It didn’t matter how Rei felt. Muu didn’t deserve anything bad like this.

The letter simply had ‘MUU’ written in block capitals on the front. Muu opened it up, accidentally tearing the envelope as she did so.

WHY DON’T YOU JUST KILL YOURSELF ALREADY?

The words were in large red ink and written down so harshly they were smudged and hard to read, but Muu knew what it said immediately. After a few seconds of staring, eyes widened like a bug, she crumpled the paper up, balling her hand into a fist so tight her nails — painted in an already chipping coat of pink — dug into her palm. She was uncertain as to who wrote them; she usually took quite an interest in other people’s handwriting, but in block capitals she couldn’t decipher it.

Then she stood there, completely still, as though waiting for something to happen. For anything to happen. A pinch, a shove. Her waking up from a terrible, terrible dream. 

There was nothing of the sort.

The world kept spinning, and Muu stood there in dejected silence.

After a while — a minute or ten, Muu couldn’t tell — she unballed her fist, the crumpled ball of paper falling limply to the ground. 

Her eyesight followed its descent not long after it fell. The paper hadn’t disappeared in the few seconds she’d lost track of it, unfortunately. It stared up at her, mocking her silently.

She must have misread it, right? If she were to open the note up again, she’s certain it would say something different. A love confession, or an invitation, or even simply a compliment.

She began to reach down to pick the letter up off the ground. It was the second time she could recall being the one to pick her own items up in school. Usually it would be one of her friends or classmates who would pick things up for her in a way somewhat instinctive. They’d revel in her soft, sugar-sweet “Thank you” as they passed whatever it was back to her, giddy and flustered as though embarrassed. Now there was nobody to do anything of the sort. The first time was with Rei, of course, when she’d picked up that tropical fish keyring.

“...Nice keychain… It’s very cute. I like fish.”

Muu felt a twinge of regret as she recalled walking away from Rei after that comment. Perhaps if she’d continued the conversation things could have been different.

Since the incident, Muu had barely seen Rei at all. Much like everybody else now, Rei was ignoring her completely. Her demeanor had barely changed from before it all happened.

As Muu was halfway through leaning down, she felt an aggressive shove from behind her. It lunged her headfirst into the locker in front of her, leading to her collapsing onto the ground. She could hear the sound of laughs. At first it was just one girl, but then there were more and more and more and more voices. Countless students were laughing at her decrepit state. Muu just wanted them to stop. Inside her head she was begging and begging them to stop, but nobody was ever going to listen to her silent cries.

The laughing continued.

And continued.

And continued.

Muu couldn’t take it anymore. In her desperation she yelled “S-SHUT UP!” 

It was crude for somebody of her nature. 

For a second she thought it worked. The hallway was overcome with a blanket of silence. Muu began to lift her head up. It struggled, inflicted with a heaviness she couldn’t shake off.

As soon as she did so and her eyes met the crowds of students lurking above her — positioned in a way that made her position inescapable — the laughing continued even more condescending than it was previous. 

Even if Muu were to express her thoughts, her desperation, verbally they would never be heard. She was simply screaming into the void.

The laughing didn’t subside until the bell rang for the next class.

Muu stayed completely frozen until everybody had filled away. She didn’t even lock eyes with those who looked down at her, pure mockery overcoming all their usually plain features. Muu couldn’t recognise a single one of them. 

By the time Muu finally made it to class, she was ten minutes late. The teacher chastised her. It wasn’t the first time she had been late, but it was the first time she had ever been told off for it.

Muu wasn’t special to even the teachers anymore. They didn’t like her. Nobody liked her.

Muu thought back to the crumpled letter on the floor beside her locker and the horrible, horrible message it contained. She had forgotten to pick it up. It was laying there as forgotten and broken as she was.

Muu found another note written in the same red ink stuck to the back of her blazer while walking home that afternoon. This time it simply read ‘DIE.’

She tore it into miniscule pieces and let it scatter onto the pavement below her.

Was that why people were giggling at her whenever she walked past them? How long had it been there for? Nobody mentioned it to her. Nobody cared enough to mention it to her. Nobody cared.

Her parents were home that day. Her papa opened the door. She greeted him with a smile and began to tell him how brilliant of a day she’d had. She wasn’t sure if he was paying attention. He showered her with affections, nonetheless, complimenting and praising her at every point possible. Was he being genuine? Was anything he was saying true?

Muu didn’t know anymore. Her head hurt. She decided to pretend it was simply because of her injury and nothing more.

—

In PE class, Muu was becoming more and more accustomed to dodging flying dodgeballs. In the past she’d always won at dodgeball because nobody had ever hit her, but recently she was becoming target number one. Even her own team would aim for her, and with an aggression and intensity she’d never seen them inhibit before. It hurt. They tended to try and aim for her head, but they’d sometimes aim for her back when she was turned away, too. 

In the past the target had always been Rei.

Even when Muu was sitting on the sidelines she’d still be attacked. A couple of times the throws had been so intense they’d knocked her over and she’d had to go to the nurses office. The nurse got more and more annoyed the more she showed up, and basically told her to “suck it up,” in terms slightly more befitting of a staff member.

Muu had tried, she had really, really tried, but sometimes it was too much.

Even worse than the PE lessons themselves was the aftermath. She found herself having to sprint to the locker rooms, praying nobody had stolen her school uniform. It was becoming a more and more frequent problem. Muu didn’t even think she could count the amount of times it had happened on her two hands any longer. 

The first time her uniform had been stolen was during the last period of Wednesday. At first Muu thought it an accident and asked the other girls in the locker room but they, as had become usual by now, wanted nothing to do with her. In fact, they appeared to find her struggling endearing in the same way they used to find her success. 

Muu looked everywhere but still couldn’t find her school uniform. It was perhaps then that she realised it had been deliberately taken, as opposed simply misplaced, but she was trying to ignore that possibility enough to continue hoping otherwise.

By the time the bell had rung and everybody had left the changing rooms, Muu’s searching was still to no avail. Still, she continued on, hoping to find it stuffed in some easy-to-miss hidden crevice of the room.

“I don’t know why you’re still looking.” 

Muu didn’t realise she wasn’t alone. 

The voice was undoubtedly Rei’s, Muu could tell immediately. Muu usually thought Rei’s voice sounded nice, but today it arose an aching, overtaking fear in her. In Muu’s head, Rei’s neutral tone was more reminiscent of how she yelled and screamed and growled on that day, pouncing at Muu and hitting her again and again until Muu was left drowning in her own blood.

Muu instinctively shuddered, beads of sweat forming on her forehead. Her whole body felt tense and boiling hot.

Rei continued, presumably not noticing — or, at the very least, not acknowledging — Muu’s discomfort. “I saw a couple of those girls you used to always hang out with take them.”

Muu knew she must be referring to Yuuki, Emiko and Kaori. The use of “used to” hurt Muu. She was suddenly confronted with the fact she’d likely never be able to spend time with the three of like she used to again. It hurt. She loved them.

“Its most likely you won’t get your uniform back until tomorrow. It's probably in one of their lockers or something. Unless you know how to pick locks, which I seriously doubt, that is.”

Rei was right. Muu didn’t know how to pick locks. She never thought she’d have to. Only people who have a need to take things that aren’t theirs need to break into things. Muu had always had everything she ever needed.

Despite the fear Muu felt being around Rei, she still felt inclined to reply to her. She began to say a meek, choked “thank you” before realising Rei had already turned away to leave.

“WAIT-” Rei didn’t turn back. 

Muu wasn’t sure why it made her feel so empty when Rei left. It was like she wanted the conversation to continue. Despite what Rei had done to her, Muu really, really wanted to have a normal conversation with her. It was confusing. Rei was always confusing, but the way she’d barely changed after everything that had happened and everything that began to happen afterwards made her even more confusing.

Muu wanted to rip Rei apart and see how she functioned. She wasn’t even convinced Rei’s heart was real. Unlike Muu’s, Muu doubted Rei’s was beating this uncontrollably right now, at the very least.

Muu had to walk home in her PE kit that day. Her uniform was short, so the cold nipped at her body. It made her cheeks numb. 

When she got home, she was luckily on her own. She didn’t know how she would have explained the absence of her entire school uniform to her parents.

—

Throughout the months, everything only got worse and worse. 

Muu’s entire core had been shattered when Rei had attacked her, but over time the remnants remaining had been smashed over and over again into smaller and smaller fragments, until eventually they were ground down into nothing but dust.

Muu had become uncertain of her own humanity. 

She was terrified of even walking through the school gates.

There was no solace to her suffering as soon as she was in its confines. Even on the rare occasions where Miss Hitomi would let her sit in her office at lunch she wasn’t safe. Muu thought she must  know what was happening by now, but she never cared enough to save Muu. All the other teachers shared the same sentiment, alongside the students. Everybody could see Muu drowning, but nobody was willing to stop it before it killed her.

It made Muu hate everybody with a boiling passion. No more than she could hate herself, though. The hatred charred her both inside and out. The burns were there, in their ugliness, for everybody to bear witness to and thaw at until the gaping wounds grew big enough to swallow her whole.

Muu couldn’t recall the last day she’d had without a bottle of water being poured over her head or her body being slammed into a locker or the contents of her bag being spilt and then stepped on repeatedly until her books were in tatters and her stationary missing and her lunchbox broken. She’d gotten so many detentions for not being able to hand in her work due to it being strewn and unreadable on the floor, smothered in dirty footprints and water stains. 

When Miss Hitomi’s office was unavailable, Muu had begun to sit in the bathroom stalls to try and avoid everybody during lunch. Half the time she wasn’t even able to eat, her lunch having been stolen or forcibly given to somebody else in the morning. 

Eventually the other students found her hiding place. No matter how small she made herself — even if she lessened her breathing and curled up into a ball and ceased to speak — they always found her. They would swarm in circles around the bathroom stall she was in, banging on the door in near monotonous fashion, yelling their crude words and insults until they infiltrated Muu’s every thought. Useless, disgusting, crybaby, pathetic. Such terms had become panchreston by now; their frequency made them feel like they weren’t even real words any longer. Muu always tried to cover her ears but they were far too loud to ignore. And, even if she muffled them, they still echoed in her head. It was a sickening melody. She just wanted to turn it off. Was that too much to ask?

When she’d finally leave the bathroom stall, there’d always be a group of girls ready to push her back in there and shove her head in the toilet bowl.

—

Muu’s memory was becoming fragmented the longer the bullying went on. When it got too painful to face directly, she would completely zone out. It made everything around her unbelievably hazy, like a thin layer of film was permanently smothering her mind.

It was the only way she could survive it all, though. It was the closest she could get to ‘forgetting’. 

It caught up to her in her dreams sometimes. Muu would wake up in a sweat, fearful and nervous and tense, her body waiting for something to happen, unable to remember what horrible nightmare had just awoken her. Her head would throb, her surroundings would bour. A lot of times, she had to run to her bathroom and throw up. That feeling once foreign to her, of grotesque vomit spilling out of her guts, was one which had become relatively frequent. It made her feel degraded every time; disgusting, as though she needed to be fixed.

At dinner times she’d spend minutes dragging her food across the plate, her brain not quite processing where she was or if she was safe. Her body functioned like she was never safe, like at any moment she could receive a shove or a kick or a demeaning letter or worse. Her hands shook when she finally began to properly eat, unable to stay still. Nobody seemed to notice. Muu wasn’t sure if she wanted them to or not. It was all so horribly embarrassing.

All this must be happening for a reason, Muu thought. Muu was a princess, — as her papa liked to say — an angel, she was different to everybody else because she was better. So why did they all attack her? Was Muu the problem? Muu was becoming more and more unsure.

One night, after Muu had finally gone through the painstaking process of finishing her dinner, her mama stopped her.

She grazed her hand over Muu’s back gently, hovering over a bruise Muu received earlier that day when a girl she couldn’t remember the true identity of but thought may be Kaori stomped on her back after shoving her to the ground.

“Awwe baby…” Her mama said slowly, her tone inhibiting its usual sweetness. Muu’s mama had always referred to her as “baby.” There was a time, Muu thinks, that she used to love the nickname, but she had grown to hate it. It just made her think of school, how she’d be mocked for the way she wailed whenever she was attacked. They’d call her a crybaby, mimicking the soft, sweet tone a mother should inhibit.

“Are you alright? Does it hurt?”

“Muu fell over at school. Muu’s fine,” Muu tried to force a sense of neutrality in her voice. She thought it didn’t work, but her tone wasn’t commented on.

Muu couldn’t tell anybody. Even if people knew exactly what she was going through — which she was certain some did — they would never stop it. It would simply get worse.

Muu’s mama ran her hand through Muu’s hair for a second. Muu couldn’t find any touch comforting any longer. She was completely still as the movement happened, only hoping her mother wouldn’t use enough force on her hair for more clumps of it to fall out. Her hair was thinned enough. Now even putting slightly more than the lightest possible amount of pressure on her hairbrush in the morning was enough for it to fall out. It didn’t even feel like anything when it did, Muu would just find it on her hairbrush when she’d finished bruising. It matched with the rest of her appearance, overcome with a sickly paleness even concealer couldn’t fix any longer.

Perhaps she’d always been like this.

“Ahh…” her mama sighed, “you should tell me when things like that happen, baby.”

Muu wasn’t going to.

“Do you want me to help you cover it up?”

Muu nodded with as much feigned enthusiasm as she could muster. The violence committed against her was so, so ugly. But what was uglier was the injuries it gave her. What was uglier was Muu herself.

Muu wanted to cover her entire self up. For preservation's sake or destruction’s, she wasn’t quite sure, she just wanted to be completely invisible. Somewhere she couldn’t be looked at or perceived by anyone at all.

Her ideal world was one where nobody else had the eyes to see.

Unfortunately such a world was as unobtainable as the idea of herself being saved.

—

Muu was early to class for a change. Since hiding out until later barely worked, she thought it could be easier to try the inverse. It was to no avail, she eventually came to realise. As she walked into the classroom she thought everything was normal. It was strangely empty, there were no unstoppable fits of laughter and cruel mocking. The usual sounds were replaced with a comforting silence Muu had long since become unfamiliar with.

That was until she caught sight of the chalkboard. It took her a moment to notice due to how much she had begun to hate taking note of her surroundings, usually opting to force herself to look downwards instead. It made her bang into things — and people — rather frequently. But, even without directly looking, she could see a small picture scribbled onto the board, alongside countless scratchy, sharp words forming in the corner of her eye.

The picture was a couple of stickmen, both blatantly meant to represent herself, brutally killing themselves in different ways: hanging, stabbing, jumping off the rooftop…

What will it be? The message underneath it said. There were plenty of other words — insults — plastered on the rest of the board, but they had become no better than background noise to her at this point. Always there, just no longer shocking.

The picture was different. Somebody had spent time making sure Muu knew it was meant to be her.

She found the chalkboard rubber on the teacher’s desk and began to scrub everything off. When she got to the illustration she did so with such harshness her palm grew red. She didn’t stop even after all that was left was a smudged bit of white, slamming the rubber onto the board repeatedly. At some point she’d just begun hitting it and screaming with an intensity she didn’t think was in her. Her throat was in pain. Her legs gave in and she let herself collapse, the rubber still in her hand. She eventually threw it down below her. It bounced slightly.

After a few moments the door opened and Muu crawled back, protectively placing both arms in front of her face. Through the only part of her vision not obscured by her arms, though, she could see it was just the teacher walking in. She couldn’t read his expression. He began to say something, but Muu ran off before he could.

She didn’t go to class that day.

Instead she stayed in the janitor’s closet, — a place she knew she wasn’t supposed to be in but was, at this point, the only room in the school she could find where she was truly alone —  as silent as a mouse. She didn’t even do anything. She didn’t even think. She sat in the corner of the room, arms wrapped around her torso in a useless attempt at self soothing, rocking herself back and forth.

The lights were off, so the only lightsource she had was the one coming from the crack of the door.

Muu didn’t know how long she’d stayed there. She’d been beginning to lose track of time a lot more frequently recently. She didn’t know anything anymore. Perhaps, in truth, she never truly did. She heard rushed footsteps so presumed it must have been longer than one class period at the very least.

At one point, when all was silent outside, the door creaked open. Muu didn’t know what to do. To move could get her detected, but if she didn’t move getting caught could result in worse. It's harder to escape from a small, cramped janitor’s closet.

Muu didn’t have time to do anything.

“Ah.” 

The girl who had just entered was Rei, who shut the door behind herself immediately after entering, slowly as though she, like Muu, was trying to avoid detection. She sat down.

Rei looked Muu straight in the eyes. It took Muu a few seconds to garner the courage to look back. Despite Rei sitting in the complete opposite corner to Muu they were both still close since the janitor’s closet was far from spacious.

Muu still felt strangely about Rei. The feeling had bloomed into something far more complex than simply just the confusion she felt before Rei had attacked her or the immense terror she felt in the immediate aftermath, though. Both feelings still remained, but something else was simmering alongside them.

Muu desperately wanted to learn more about Rei. She desperately wanted to burrow into her and dissect all her thoughts. She wanted to know all there was to know about Rei, more than even Rei knew of herself.

“I used to hide in here, too.”

Rei’s position right beside the door meant the light escaping through the bottom of the door illuminated her figure. Muu had always thought her features sharp, but in the slight light there was a softness to them Muu had never noticed before. She was unbelievably beautiful. Muu could feel her cheeks going red just by looking at her. It was frustrating. Rei didn’t deserve to have such beauty.

“Then… why are you back?”

Muu couldn’t help but be interested in talking to Rei. The reason why still confused her. The last time they had been alone together was when Muu had first had her uniform stolen and, when Rei left, Muu so desperately wanted to converse further. She wasn’t going to let the chance she had now slip from her fingertips.

“The other kids couldn’t find you at lunch, sooo… they got bored.”

Lunch? Muu had been in here all morning? She hadn’t realised. It felt so much shorter than most days.

“A…Ah…” Muu had no clue how to respond —  in full honestly, she had forgotten how to properly interact with anybody her own age over the last few months — but was determined to continue the conversation.

“I won’t tell them you’re here, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Rei seemed to sense some level of discomfort from Muu.

“Thank you,” Muu responded, meek in her tone. Rei’s expression looked as though it softened slightly, and Muu clung onto that fact as if it meant something.

Rei didn’t respond, but Muu continued.

“H-help me!” Muu stuttered, not quite knowing why she’d suddenly began begging.

“Huh?!” Rei sounded genuinely startled by Muu’s sudden shift in demeanor. Muu hoped Rei’s sudden exclamation was meant to indicate pity.

“Help me- save me- please!”

Rei sighed. “Why do you think you deserve to be saved?”

Muu hated that she couldn’t give her an answer. Rei’s expression was blank, her posture unmoving. Muu couldn’t tell what she was thinking — she never would. Rei didn’t care. Like everybody else, she thought of Muu as nothing. She didn’t even acknowledge her just to humiliate her like them. In that way, Rei was even worse than everybody else was.

Rei was something different, new, but even she wasn’t going to stop Muu from drowning.

Muu hated her more than she hated anybody.

She leaned into Rei. Rei still didn’t react. Muu wasn’t sure what she wanted to happen. Muu wasn’t even sure what she was doing. 

Then she slapped Rei across the face, breaking the silence.

It was only a fraction of the pain Rei had given Muu, so Muu didn’t feel bad at all. The one who hurts the other first is the bad one, after all. Rei hurt Muu in that classroom on that day, made her bleed and vomit and gave her bruises that remained for ages afterwards. Muu could destroy Rei completely and it would be justified.

The slap wasn’t aggressive by any means; Rei’s cheek wasn’t even reddened by the action. 

It took Muu a moment to realise why she did it. 

She wanted to see Rei react to something — anything. She wanted Rei to acknowledge her, properly, in a way devoid of apathy. The only time Rei had done that before was when she had attacked Muu in a sporadic, brief, moment of aggression.

Muu didn’t get the acknowledgement she craved. Rei didn’t even flinch at the touch or the sound.

Muu debated hitting her again. 

She didn’t.

—

Muu began keeping a box cutter in her pocket; her bag would probably be a better hiding place, but her bag got stolen so frequently she was scared of the box cutter being discovered when its contents were spilt on top of her. She’d stopped going to PE so her clothes were no longer stolen, so it was the safer option. 

The box cutter was one she had found in the janitor’s closet one lunchtime when she was hiding in there. She’d begun using the janitor’s closet as a hiding place more commonly. A part of her wanted Rei — the girl she despised more than anything else in the world — to walk in too and talk to Muu again. It never happened, though.

Muu thought about simply using the box cutter on herself in there and ending it all, but such a quiet death would be unbefitting, she thought. 

Her own fantasies about her death were becoming more and more frequent, but every time they had an audience. The girls who had spent all this time tormenting her would watch as she brutalised herself, finally giving her the pity she craved. They would understand this is their fault, and live with the guilt of it forever. They’d try to wash their hands of her blood every night — scrubbing and scrubbing until their hands were raw and red — but their attempts would be fruitless. They’d never find peace. They’d never be alone without Muu. She’d haunt them forever.

Even Rei would suffer. She’d sob and cry and show all those ugly emotions Muu thought would be beautiful on her; a misery devoid of the anger she’d shown while attacking Muu. She’d suffer how Muu was suffering. She’d finally understand what she could have had, if only she had saved Muu when Muu requested it.

Whenever Muu was on the rooftop, shoved into the railing over and over again while groups of students watched and laughed, she’d think about jumping off in front of them. Whenever she walked into classrooms only to be met with cruel, crude words about her on the whiteboard she imagined getting the boxcutter out of her pocket and slitting her wrists in front of everybody sitting in their seats. 

She was never strong enough to go through with it. Every time she thought of making her own self bleed her body filled with dread. Muu didn’t like pain. Muu wanted to avoid pain. Despite her desire for the relief of death, the pain of getting there in the first place was far too scary for her.

So she had to carry on. She didn’t even have the guts to kill herself, as the other students loved to remind her. One of them even gifted her a noose to “make it easier”. It stayed under Muu’s bed for weeks as she wondered what to do with it. She even got a chair out after one especially hard day, but couldn’t go though with it. Eventually she threw the noose away, making sure to do so in a bin outside her house so none of her family noticed. As she walked back, she thought about drowning herself in the river.

—

Muu heard the bell ring minutes ago. She didn’t care. She didn’t move. She had just suffered through a particularly horrible day. It had started with the horrible words on the chalkboard. She’d ran off and skipped class in the janitor's closet. Somebody found her, though. It didn’t take long for everybody to find out where her ‘secret’ hiding place was. Now she had nowhere she could be invisible.

In the isolation of the Janitor’s closet, her torment was far worse. People are far less predictable in the near-darkness. Muu couldn’t even defend herself from any hitting. By the time she had been finished with she had another couple of bruises she’d have to waste even more time in the mornings trying to conceal. As everything happened, the usual insults were being hurled at her. She tried not to listen, but a few comments slipped through the fogginess of her mind.

The world would have been so much better if you were never in it. Could you hurry up and off yourself already before somebody else has to?

Nobody could love somebody like you, anyways.

They reinforced the pointlessness of Muu’s existence. These girls, who once cherished Muu as though she were something far superior than human — practically a god — reminded Muu over and over of her uselessness. 

Muu had later on gotten a detention for missing so many classes that day, but she wasn’t going to be able to attend it. She was already missing it, and her body showed no signs of nor desire to move any time soon. She was soaking, her water bottle alongside some of the other girls’ own water bottles having been poured over her, a pool of water forming under her limp body. The items from her bag had been spilt over her too, and after the fact her protractor had been forced into her arm to the point small droplets of blood were appearing in a linear pattern. The box cutter had fallen out of her pocket when she’d been shoved onto the ground and the other girls had noticed it. One of them picked it up. Kaori. She held it up to Muu, beckoning her to push it in further.

“What’s that for? Do you cut yourself or something, freak?”

“Nah, I doubt it — she’s too much of a pussy to even do that!”

“She probably wants us to feel bad. Little princess wants us to think she has the guts to kill herself in front of us!”

With shaking hands, Muu went to grip the blade. She wasn’t sure why. Perhaps they were all right, Muu wanted them to truly believe she could kill herself. Kaori retracted the blade before anything could be done, a look of pure and utter disgust forming on her face.

“Fucking hell — weirdo!”

“God, did you see how dead her eyes looked when she did that?”

“She’s a proper little psycho isn’t she?”

Muu’s eyes began to swell up with tears. She hated how she still couldn’t stop them, not even after all this time.

“Awwwe and now she’s gonna go cry about it~”

“Mummy and daddy can’t save you anymore, baby.”

“Not that they’d want to if they could see what you were really like.”

Eventually they left her alone, tossing the box cutter beside her, very nearly at her, before leaving.

Muu spent a few minutes, unable to bring herself to do anything else, looking through old pictures. Her phone was cracked but the picture behind the screen was still decipherable.

Her, Yuuki, Emiko and Kaori at the park. The photo they had matched on socials with for so long. 

It was so normal. Muu looked happy in a way she hadn’t felt for so, so long. Her smile was genuine, and their smiles looked genuine too. There was no malice, no sick, cruel enjoyment. They didn’t look as predatory as they did now. They just looked like friends. 

Muu wanted to cry again. She was going to, before she began to hear footsteps gradually getting louder.

Somebody was coming. Either a student to torment her more, — though it sounded like a single person, and the other pupils were very seldom alone — or a teacher to tell her off for ‘skiving’ detention. Muu forced her eyes shut. She even stopped breathing.

The footsteps stopped. There was no kick or punch or sudden shouting or screaming or mocking, only breathing. Normal breathing.

Muu opened her eyes to see Rei standing there.

Rei.

Muu’s eyes, for a brief second, flickered back to the abandoned box cutter. 

Rei stared at Muu as apathetically as ever. 

Muu wanted to cut the expression off her face.

Rei was the only person Muu had met who had never given Muu love. Even though everybody at school hated Muu now and hurt her all the time, they had once showered her with affection. Rei was void of such feelings. An abnormality. Even now, her coldness as opposed to outward aggression, made her more and more abnormal. She was the only person whose ‘love’ was completely foreign to Muu. She wanted it more than she wanted anybody else's.

Rei shifted her eyes to the sound before turning and walking away.

Muu looked at the box cutter again.

She suddenly felt a surge of energy. She had control over her body again. Her eyes dilated and widened, her skin burnt, beadlings of sweat formed on her forehead. Adrenaline had suddenly hit. She shot up and began to run after Rei.

As she did so, she picked up the box cutter.

Muu didn’t immediately know what her intentions were. She didn’t want to use it. It was a last resort. She was going to give Rei a chance.

Her plan, the ever-so-slightly rational part of her brain tried to convince Muu, was simply to threaten to kill herself in front of Rei and see if she showed any response. Muu had no clue how she would react if Rei met her with the same indifference she always possessed. Muu didn’t think she could handle it.

Muu ran out of the classroom after Rei with such intensity she nearly tripped over multiple times. At one point, when she had very nearly caught up to Rei, her shoe fell off. She didn’t even notice, despite how uneven it made her balance.

Muu grabbed onto Rei’s hand.

There was a slight halt on Rei’s movement, an indication of some level of acknowledgement, but she simply carried on walking, shaking Muu’s hand off with surprising ease.

Muu made sure to hold onto Rei’s hand even tighter when she grabbed a hold of it again. Rei stopped in her tracks this time, unable to get rid of Muu as easily. She turned around. Muu pulled the box cutter from out of her pocket and held it up to herself. 

“D-do you want to watch Muu die?!” 

Rei’s eyes ever so slightly narrowed as she stared at Muu. Muu felt as though she was being mocked; she was used to being mocked, but this evoked in her a feeling far more painful. What did Rei think? Muu thought, for the first time, that she truly knew the answer.

Rei thought she was incapable.

Rei thought she was guilt-tripping. Rei thought Muu would never go through with it. Rei didn’t think Muu had a reason to go through with it.

Rei was still staring down at Muu, her expression still blank with a slight sense of scepticism.

Rei didn’t understand a fraction of Muu’s pain.

“H-Hey- Why don’t you listen to me- I’m telling you- I will- Hey… HEY! I’M TALKING TO YOU!” Muu’s voice wavered uncontrollably, the blade in her hand shaking so much she was shocked she hadn’t dropped it yet.

Muu turned the box cutter around so it was facing Rei. Rei still didn’t react.

Rei was finally going to have a taste of Muu’s pain.

Muu plunged the blade into Rei’s stomach, leaning into her as she did so. Muu could see Rei’s eyes as the life in them drained out, she could feel the warmth of Rei’s uneven breaths on her face, she could hear Rei’s heartbeat as it grew fainter and fainter.

She could see Rei finally acknowledge her. 

Rei’s eyes widened in shock and pain, her mouth ever so slightly agape. 

Muu made sure she’d be the last thing Rei ever saw. Rei would carry Muu’s image past her grave and into whatever afterlife she ended up in.

The first stab killed Rei. After the moment of serenity — the near-embrace of Muu’s stabbing, the most intimate moment of Muu’s life — Rei collapsed to the ground, body limp.

Muu didn’t stop. She stabbed Rei again and again despite her being lifeless. Each stab felt like another weight lifted off Muu’s shoulder; her catharsis was invigorating. She hoped dead bodies could still feel pain, because this was still nowhere near the amount of pain Muu had been feeling for all this time. 

Muu lost count of how many times she’d stabbed Rei by the time she stopped. The sky had grown darker. Small cuts smothered Muu’s palms but she couldn’t feel any of them. Her vision was blurred, slightly obscured by her fringe, stuck to her head by the sweat on her face. Rei was completely disfigured, barely looking like a human being any longer. Muu doubted she ever was.

The blood was so unbelievably ugly. When everybody saw this — the fruits of Muu’s labour — they’d finally understand that Muu wasn’t the disgusting one. Order would be restored to how it used to be, to how it should be.

The world would be normal yet again. Muu would be the queen, and those such as Rei would be crushed.

Muu felt as though she was going to vomit.