Work Text:
It was a cold Friday night, Kari was laying down endlessly scrolling on his phone. When he suddenly received a notification. He was confused, despite the amount of notifications he got they were always from stupid offline games, never was it a notification saying someone followed him on Instagram. He quickly clicked on it, wondering if it was maybe someone he met at school. But it wasn’t. As he looked at the person's profile it was pretty bare, no stories or posts, a few followers but strangely, all of them were people Kari knew. All he was wondering was who this possibly could be, was this a stalker? Or was it just an alt account his friend made? He decided to follow them back anyway, simply because they had a cool profile picture.
A couple days had passed by, he already forgot about the strange follow but the person hadn't said anything anyway. Another cold night followed and he got another notification from the mysterious account, it was a story simply saying
“Hello…” He thought nothing of it, but he finally decided to ask his friends if they knew who it was but he got no replies. The next morning followed and still no answer, he decided to ignore it, figuring his friends just happened to be sleeping or busy. This account started to worry him, why was it so quiet, mysterious, and why was it following a bunch of the same people he followed? Kari decided to try and ignore it, hoping it was just a strange coincidence.
Two weeks have gone by since he first followed that weird account, and today was the day it would finally say something, but.. It was a bit off.
“Hello” the message from the strange account read. His eyes widened as he read the message, it was so dry and ominous, he frantically texted his friend Naya, luckily she was online for once so she could help him out, maybe. No matter how much he asked who this strange account was, she wouldn’t reply, instead replying to off-topic messages he had sent earlier. Once he realized she was ignoring his worries he gave up, deciding to text the account himself. He simply replied with an image, being too scared to bother typing.
“Kura”, said the weird account.
He was so confused, were they speaking a different language? Or were they strangely introducing themself?
Kari finally decided to swallow his fears, knowing that this person couldn’t do anything, considering it was only a person online, hopefully. He replied asking,
“Is that your name? My name is Kari.” Kura replied quickly
“Yeah, cool name. Do you wanna play roblox? I want to get to know you more, if you want I can pick the game” His worries quickly melted as he gave Kura his roblox username.
Glad he was making a new friend. They both played a tycoon for a while, until Kari had to go eat dinner. As he ate dinner he thought about his experience playing roblox with Kura, he thought he was really cool but didn’t think their friendship would last long, online friendships don’t usually last long anyway.
He ate quickly, wanting to keep talking to Kura. They messaged back and forth for a while but Kari got too tired and went to sleep, despite how early it was. When he woke up he realized there were no new messages from Kura, maybe he had gone to sleep too; this was odd to him. Why was Kura so similar to him? Kari continued with his daily life, thinking about Kura but being too scared to talk to him often. Luckily, Kura was pretty talkative, so he could just reply instead of thinking about what to say.
A few months passed by, Kari and Kura grew closer and today was the day Kari decided he would confess how he truly felt.
Texting him with a pounding heart.
“Can we talk? It’s important.” he texted.
He prayed that the other would reply soon; he didn’t want to spend more time thinking about this and backing out.
Kura replied almost instantly, his worries showing through his words.
“Yeah !! are you ok? What's wrong?” he texted.
With his heart beating behind his eyes
Kari replied back, “i’m okay i just wanted to let you know that i like you, i love you. And it's fine if you don't like me back because I expect it anyway.”
He thought about their shared memories as he pressed send, he felt like his stomach would pop out from his mouth like a camel, it was gross.
Kari had grown a weird obsession with him over the months, he was everything he had ever wanted, he wanted to be like Kura so much that it wasn’t love anymore, it was obsession, fixation, addiction and honestly at this point it might’ve been a fetish too.
His heart was burning for Kura, he was like a fire in the winter, Kari craved for him, and ached for more. They were like 2 pieces of the same puzzle Kura was his missing piece, having him around completed the puzzle. Kura was often quiet and honestly seemed pretty depressed, but it was just what Kari wanted, he wanted to restore the spark of his soul.
Only a few minutes passed and Kura replied,
“What? Seriously? Don’t you think it would be really weird?” Kari’s heart dropped, realizing the saying
“the worst they can say is no” was complete bullshit, was this seriously what he said to a confession? He knew Kura could be mean, but this mean? He swallowed his feelings down, and messaged back
“??? Why on earth would it be weird?” it was immediately seen, and he soon got a message back.
“Did you forget? I’m you.” His heart stopped, everything did. Reality was bleeding out. Kari had been texting himself, he had made an alt account to express his feelings to feel more connected, and to stop running away from his problems but this decision made it so much worse. Kura was all of Kari’s negative emotions as one ‘person’ which explains why he was so depressed, but at this moment nothing felt real.
How had he let himself get this bad? This didn’t even compare to his past depressive episode, it was so much worse. He couldn’t even process this, all these months believing everything was amazing, imagining that he was free from any mental problems he had, and now the way he figures it out is because his own delusional mind betrayed him. Was it even possible for delusions to tell him the truth? Kari turned off his phone, not wanting to stare at the messages that no longer carried the love they once did. He was entirely still, even the ringing he got in his ear when lying in a specific position wasn’t there. After what felt like decades of silence,
“[───], Dinners ready!” pierced Kari’s ears. He didn’t even know if he could eat, but needing a distraction he replied back to his dad,
“Okay!” and went down to eat. Dinner was silent, which was pretty normal but tonight it felt heavy. He ate quickly, wanting to spend his time thinking alone in his room in case he cried, he finished his food within minutes and then ran back up to his room.
His whole body felt heavy he wanted to throw up, he felt as if he caught every sickness all at once. Despite feeling so gross he went back on his phone, messaging his other friend, cause he knew they would reply almost immediately.
All he could send was some stupid image, he knew the words he wanted to say wouldn’t come out, they never did. All this thinking made him feel insane.
He had spent so long just staring at the pool of these emotions and now he was pushed into them by his brain and he didn’t have the power to stop it. He knew it would take centuries for the words to leave his mouth, despite how close they were to falling, the words were held on by a rope strong enough to hold his heart and soul.
As he looked around for a lifeguard he saw none. Having no one to save him he began to drown in the pool. This was just another trick his mind was playing, there were tons of people around this pool to save him he just drowned too quietly for them to notice. Kari shortly fell asleep before he had the chance to talk to his friend more. Despite how he wasn’t tired he needed this sleep. His body hadn’t moved at all, but his mind was running a marathon.