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The sky was gray with voluminous dark clouds covering every inch of the horizon. The sun was barely peeking out from a small crack within them, a line of bright orange illuminating the otherwise dull and dark space around it.
A cold breeze was blowing despite it being during the middle of summer leaving a noticeable chill, the type that causes goosebumps to rise in your skin. Waves crashed against the rocks, a rhythmic and deafening back and forth coming from the ocean and muting every other sound from the environment.
Two teenagers sat against the rocks of the small cliff allowing them full view of the whole expanse of the beach around them. Shoulder to shoulder, knees brushing against each other and neither of them seemed keen on pulling away.
Perhaps the contact was unusual for two girls around their age. Young teens past the age of playfighting and the once common and prolonged hugs that caused the adults around them to coo and take pictures that would forever be immortalized on their childhood pictures albums. The only place where these examples of physical intimacy and affection could belong without being displayed as examples of impurity by the community around them
But there was no one around to cast their gaze. No scrutinizing presences were in the vicinity to spew their poisonous words about what was the sacred way of being, one that neither girl fit.
“Yoshiki there is somethin’ I wanna ask ya” Hikaru spoke, her voice barely loud enough to be made out amidst the sloshing around of the water below them. One arm resting over the knee tucked close to her chest, her thigh brushing against Yoshiki’s while the other was sprawled out in the rocky ground around them.
Hikaru loved analysing the way Yoshiki’s body and soul reacted whenever something happened around them. The way the black haired girl’s eyes would subtly widen, how the crease of her eyebrows would become more prominent and how she would start fidgeting with her long bangs, pulling at the soft and smooth streaks of silky black hair. Yoshiki’s body, her container, was interesting but her soul was simply beautiful in a way no human mind could ever comprehend.
The way it would flare up in interest whenever Hikaru spoke her name, the way it would shine like a star whenever the girl laughed, the way it would never dim its warmth even when the rest of Yoshiki was crumbling from the inside out. Hikaru loved watching that soul that was always so bright, just like a firework.
Maybe that was the reason she enjoyed that day at her house so much, she got to see the closest thing possible to a group of Yoshikis dancing across the skyline and bringing an all encompassing feeling of warmth to the world around her.
Hikaru may not now or ever understand the human distinctions of love, whether something is platonic or romantic, but she knew that what she felt every time the divine flame of Yoshiki’s soul licked at her skin was more powerful than the human limitations around the concept.
“What is it? Is it somethin’ about the exam ya failed the other day?” Yoshiki spoke, her voice was soft and laced with a layer of warmth that was not what people would typically associate with the tall gloomy girl that drew impurities like moths to a flame. A flame Hikaru was also mesmerized by. “I told ya to take my notes to study instead of yers, they were barely legible”
“Nah, it's nothin’ ‘bout that” Hikaru snuck a glance at Yoshiki, whose piercing gaze was directed straight at the white haired girl. There was something exhilarating about being at the receiving end of the complete attention of someone who would barely spare a glance at most people their age. “It’s ‘bout the original Hikaru”
Just like that Yoshiki’s expression twisted, the subtle hint of curiosity flickering in the black haired girl’s eyes had turned into grief. She looked like she had bit straight into a lemon.
“What do ya wanna know? Don’t ya have most of her memories anyways?” Her voice carried an air of sorrow that Hikaru knew would take hours to disappear before the black haired girl’s tone would return to the usual softness she had learned to address Hikaru with.
“I do, but I wanna know if ya knew about, ya know..” Hikaru awkwardly gestured with her hands, even though she was still pretty new to human mannerisms and etiquette she knew that what she was about to ask would most likely cross the unspoken line set between her and Yoshiki. She sighed “I just have some questions about human behaviour, my memories are confusin’” she attempted to smile at her friend, but it came out wobbly and unsure.
Yoshiki’s eyebrow raised in intrigue “It’s not really common to see ya so nervous when asking somethin’ about humans” she once again stared ahead, gray eyes scanning over the surface of the ocean below them “Just spit it out”
Hikaru decided to just bite the bullet and deal with whatever unpredictable negative reaction Yoshiki might have after asking her question. Best case scenario she gets her answers, worst case scenario Yoshiki becomes closed off and gloomy for the next few hours “I’m just confused ‘bout why the original Hikaru would talk about helpin’ ya get a boyfriend and then argue with every guy wantin’ to ask ya out and things like that”
“What on earth are ya talking about?” Yoshiki’s neck snapped back into her original position of staring at the white haired girl so fast that Hikaru worried that if it was Yoshiki who had gotten her head sliced off by Tanaka instead it would have fallen off like in one of those cheap horror movies she had recently gained the stomach to watch.
“I mean she would always tease ya about getting a boyfriend easily and all, but then there was that one time she went through yer locker and threw away some love letter a guy in another class left for ya” Hikaru witnessed with morbid fascination how Yoshiki’s expression went from shocked and confused to a mix of mortified and horrified.
“The hell are ya on about? Neither me or her ever caught the interest of any guys in here” Yoshiki spat, her eyes coated in a thin veil of fury as she roughly started pulling at the heh of her skirt, attempting to get the old piece of itchy fabric to cover her legs beyond her knees.
It was another one of the small things Hikaru had always noticed. How the black haired girl was the exact opposite from most girls at their school, instead of rolling her skirt to expose her lower body she would constantly pull at it in an attempt to hide her figure despite being tall enough that she didn’t even need to roll it in order to emphasize her long smooth legs. Hikaru remembered that the original white haired girl would only roll her skirt whenever she walked back home with Yoshiki.
“Didn’t Hikaru have crushes on some guys? I remember talking to ya ‘bout somethin’ like that. I don’t really feel the same way as she did though”
Yoshiki looked down, her long bangs obscuring most of her face. It didn’t matter how much the elders in town complained about how it darkened the town, because Hikaru wouldn’t mind crawling into that dark cove and never coming out.
The black haired girl huffed out a laugh, not out of happiness but instead bitterness “She did have a crush on a guy from class-B ‘cause he looked like a character from Master+Master” The screams of the cicadas resting in the tree trunks of the forest surrounding them became an almost ear piercing shrill “But she never managed to get with any guy because the dumbass always expected them to make the first move and they always ended up datin’ different girls”
“Huh… I guess I do remember some of that” Hikaru absentmindedly scratched at the scar surrounding her neck like a small crimson choker. It didn’t hurt anymore, at least not physically, but it always served as a bitter reminder of the time she almost ended up consuming Yoshiki’s soul. How that burning ember almost got snuffed out by the cold, wet mass that formed her insides. “But that doesn’t really explain why she didn’t want ya gettin’ a boyfriend”
Hikaru observed how Yoshiki’s short bitten nails dug into the skin of her forearms, not hard enough to bleed but there was enough pressure to start leaving those red noticeable indents that she frequently found in the girl’s body before she worked up the courage to confront her about her imitation.
“Do you want me to get a boyfriend?”
The white haired girl thought about it, finger almost comically tapping against her chin as her expression turned into a goofy grin. “Not really. Ya havin’ a boyfriend would stop us from hanging out so much. Don't ya think so?” her voice carried a playful lilt. One attempting to hide the uncomfortable churning on her insides at the idea of Yoshiki spending most of her time with someone else despite having promised to not be consumed in jealousy by that thought anymore.
“I wouldn’t have liked it if she got a boyfriend either” Yoshiki finally brushed her bangs out of her face. Her eyes carried hints of sorrow, grief and something else Hikaru couldn’t really place. A tear was barely hanging on to the corner of her eyes, fighting with everything in its power to not fall down the girl’s cheek, Hikaru wanted to lick it off “Is that selfish of me? Am I a monster for not wanting my friend to get the happiness she desperately desired?”
“I think she didn’t want ya to get one too” Hikaru replied. She knew it wasn’t the answer Yoshiki wanted to hear, it wasn’t even a straight answer to the question she had asked, but maybe that was what she needed to hear.
“... That doesn’t even make sense” her voice cracked, it was like Yoshiki was trying to choke out the words that had been clogging the back of her throat for months or even years “Why would she even talk so much about somethin’ like that if she didn’t even want me to do it? She knew how much I hated talking about it. What even was the point?!”
“I don’t know” Hikaru started toying with the end of her ponytail, the white as snow split ends of her hair roughly twisting around her index finger as her brain desperately looked for the correct words to comfort the flame sadly trying to hide itself within Yoshiki’s body.
It was times like these where Hikaru had cursed her lack of humanity. No matter how much she studied every article she found online, carefully observed her classmates’ behaviour and bombarded Yoshiki with the questions she couldn’t just simply answer by looking into the encyclopedia of humanity that were the original Hikaru’s memories, she would never be able to grasp that fleeting identity. Not when she wasn’t born with it.
“It is just so unfair. I was so… so scared that at some point she would find someone and would just leave me behind” Yoshiki roughly rubbed her teary eyes with one hand as the other painfully dug into her scalp “Everytime she talked to someone else, to some guy I had never seen before I was terrified. It was so fucking terrifying for me, and it was so.. so awful” snot was running down her nose, voice cracking to the point it was almost unintelligible.
“She was scared too, I am scared too. She hated it when ya talked about leavin’ for Tokyo, she couldn’t follow ya there because of well... Ya know... Me” Hikaru had never thought about how her presence had caused such a big impact within Yoshiki’s and the original Hikaru’s lives without even wanting to from the start.
Maybe if there hadn’t been a monster in the mountain to keep at bay Hikaru could have simply followed Yoshiki wherever she decided to settle for college. Maybe they could have shared a little apartment with a single bedroom. Maybe they could have been able to lay together in the same bed, legs entangled with one another and fingers tightly laced together. Maybe they could have been able to gaze into each other's eyes, unravel all the deeply buried thoughts and feelings that had gripped at their hearts for so long that the agony became a simple hum in the background. Too common to even notice.
Maybe in Tokyo Yoshiki could grow in the absence of prying eyes pinning her like a butterfly to a board.
“I just feel like shit… Everytime she brought up the boyfriend thing I just felt confused and wrong because it just reminded me of how… How normal she was compared to me” Yoshiki’s scarred arm, the one with red, brown and black lines running all across its surface, skin tinted an unnatural pale color making it look sickly, was now tangled in the long strands of grass covering every inch of the small cliff they had settled in. She was gripping the ground so brutally that Hikaru was scared she would pry her fingernails off “It just made me feel like so much of a monster. I felt like a fucking predator for the disgusting feelings I held for someone who would never reciprocate them”
Hikaru’s hand inched across the humid ground, fingers barely brushing against Yoshiki’s, causing the black haired girl to flinch. Her shoulders became stiff waiting with a bated breath to see if the girl would slap her hand away like she did so many months ago off or snap at her for overstepping one of their many blurry boundaries.
But it never happened.
“I felt like I was takin’ advantage of the trust she gave me. I felt like the villain in an old horror movie every time my eyes drifted too low or too high” Another bitter laugh escaped her bitten and now slightly bloody lips, tears still rolling down her face. Hikaru wished to do nothing more than brush those tears away with her fingertips and wipe that blood with her own lips and tongue, not for the first time feeling a human and foreign desire aching to take control of her behavior. “I felt guilty for even imagining touching her, feeling her, having a life with her. I know I am disgustin’ pervert, a monster”
Hikaru gently took Yoshiki’s hand in hers, thumb caressing the hardened and patchy skin painting her hand that poisonous tint of red and black. She leaned her head against the black haired girl’s shoulder, she felt her flinch, back arched straight and stiff before relaxing once more.
“Well… that makes two of us” she spoke, voice delicate like it had never been before. As she would do anything to soothe that flickering flame dancing in Yoshiki’s chest. But as Hikaru closed her eyes she realized that maybe there had been more than two monsters in the history of this town, maybe there were three all along.