10 - Bladepats

“Whatever may have taken place during that incident, it is vital that you have at least managed to confirm the identity and the general location of the target.”

“...”

“We will take any precautions necessary. After your description of the target’s ability, I believe its primary danger lies within its unexplored potential. It needs to be taken care of.”

“...”

“Sakuto...”

“What...?”

“Why have you refused to follow my instructions?”

“What? Which ones?”

“You needed to follow Fedor and receive the soul crystal treatment.” Kaito said, sounding rather upset. “Your survival may have just been a miracle.”

“I don’t need any therapy-”

“This is not a recommendation.” Kaito said in a stern voice that commanded order. “This is an order. Visit him as soon as possible, or your inaction will be considered an act of treason against the coalition.”

“And who are you gonna send to carry out the punishment?” Sakuto asked. Kaito didn’t respond, he simply sighed.

“You have heard me.” Kaito said, hanging up the call.

Sakuto leaned back in his chair. It was night again, but there wasn’t any rain outside. Just the night silence, occasionally interrupted by the distinct and even loud sounds of cicadas and traffic. A very gentle wind was blowing against the windows, but instead of sounding comforting it appeared irritating and even harmful.

“Visit Fedor? Eh, I’ll do it in a few days.”

“I can’t go anywhere like this.”

He leaned forward a little.

“There’s no point in me saying anything or doing anything anymore.”

“I wonder...”

“That feeling, when I was stuck in the acclamation. It felt so nice and warm, it was like for the first time in my life my mind was fully relaxed. I didn’t have to think about anything, nor did I want to.”

“Something snapped me out of it.”

“Doubt that’ll happen again, though.” He said to himself. “Ah, I feel like I should tell Oskar about all of this. I tell him pretty much everything that happens in my life, and so does he. But if I tell him this, it’ll just make him feel worse.”

“I’ve already annoyed him with all my ramblings and all my venting...”

“He probably hates me.”

“Of course he does. Cause it’s all you are, Sakuto. You’re a burden.” Sakuto said. “And all the people around you die because of you.”

“Ryan and Stella died because I was asleep. Jacob died because he got sucked into my business. Kouta died because I died. Hayk died because I wasn’t there to help him. Jackal died because I killed him.”

“Nothing I do or say matters anymore. There’s no desire for me to do or try doing anything in the first place.”

He was silent. He slowly glanced at the ceiling, imagining a rope. He also imagined his own hanging body. And he tried to imagine how his last remaining friend would react to it, but his brain was too numbed to think about it.

So he just stuck to imagining that very image.

“That’s it.” Sakuto sighed to himself. “I’ve had enough.”

“I should be trying to convince myself that there are other ways out of this, but...how? I...after all that happened, I can’t convince myself that I deserve to live.”

“I have nothing.”

“I have no one.”

“Well, maybe that’s not true, but it sure as hell feels like I have no one.”

“And I’m acting like I have no one. I’m selfish enough to the point where I’m willing to do something like this without even keeping that one person I have left in consideration.”

He checked his phone. His inbox was empty.

“At this point, everything just feels..."

“Hopeless.”

“...”

“And if someone like Aki saw me in this state, they’d just call me a clown.”

“Hah, they wouldn’t. They dropped me anyway.”

“Yeah. There’s nothing left.”

Sakuto pondered.

“So how should I do it? Hanging feels a bit inconvenient. Electrocution in a bathtub...sounds fancy, but I don’t feel like preparing a bath. Overdosing just sounds painful. Jumping out of a window is scary. And a gun...I don’t know if a bullet is enough to put me down, even in my weakened state.”

“You’re planning to do it?” Kouta asked. “Really? Hah, that’s what he would’ve said. Actually, no. Actually, eh, I don’t know. I don’t know how he’d react to this.”

“Dude, what the fuck? Calm down. What’s going on?!” Oskar asked. “Yeah, sounds like him. Well, what else would he say? I think he wouldn’t even say much, I don’t need him to speak. I just need him to ask. So I can tell him about everything. But that won’t happen. He probably hates me because all I do is nag in his ears for no reason. He’s got his own life too, right?”

“And Ichika...”

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“...”

Sakuto glanced at the box cutter on his desk.

“There it is...”

He slowly picked it up.

“The itch I’ve been feeling...doing this felt so sudden the first time, but I’ve been thinking about this all the time. Ichika, this is what you did, right?”

Only the part of his forearm that had scars on it was bandaged, the rest was free game for him to use however he wanted. But he undid the bandages anyway. He saw his old scars, they were still a dark red. They were surprisingly deep too, surrounded in dried up blood.

He slowly neared the box cutter below his wrist and made a horizontal cut.

“Ouch...this is how they do it, right?”

“This really does hurt. I mean, no shit. I am cutting myself. Hah...I’m cutting myself.”

“I wonder if a Sakuto from ten years ago would’ve ever guessed I’d be in this state. I wonder if he’d heroically jump at me and grab the blade from my hands. Actually, nah. Someone like Ichika should’ve been doing that.”

“Just imagine...her breaking into the room, like, right now, and rushing at me and grabbing the box cutter. And then saying some stuff like, ‘’hey, Sakuto, it’s okay!’ and ‘I’m sorry, let’s be together!’ and stuff...hah...”

“And then she’d hug me...”

He lowered the box cutter a bit and made another cut. The blade slowly slid across his pale-ish skin, and it was rather painful. It felt like it burned, and the feeling afterwards wasn’t pretty either. It started smelling like iron.

“Aaaahhh...this shit does in fact hurt. But the last time I did it, it didn’t hurt as much.”

“I think if I do it with fast cutting movements instead of slow cuts it’ll be better. And it’ll feel like I’m stabbing myself.”

“Deserved, honestly.”

“For being a waste of life like myself, it’s more than deserved.”

He raised the box cutter a little and made another cut. This time, the movement was sharp, and he might’ve accidentally went in a little too deep. This wound was a bit more profound and blood started slowly leaking from it, now in slightly bigger drops.

“There, this feels better...I wanna do it again.”

He made another cut. He took a sharp few breaths after doing so, trying to intake the unpleasant sensation. The physical one, that is.

“This is surprisingly addictive...I wanna do it...again...”

“This is what you deserve, Sakuto. You piece of shit.”

He made another cut, and this one looked to be a little more shallow. Still, the pain was there. Sakuto was smiling a little. His expression looked unsalvageable and his face appeared as if it was submerged in the deepest points of the abyss, but he smiled. His eye teared up a little, and he smiled.

“This is for not making dad happy when he was alive.”

He cut himself again. The other wounds started leaking drops of blood, and they fell on the desk and painted it with a dark red shade.

“More.”

“This is for being a burden.”

He made another cut. His arm felt like it was on fire.

“This is for letting them down...”

He cut himself again. The box cutter was now also covered in hints of dark red - especially the sharp tip. It hurt, Sakuto had to prepare himself a little before every strike. A tear fell down on the desk, mixing with the blood. He laughed a little.

“And this...”

“I’ll never find love. I’ll never amount to anything. And I’ll never be happy.”

“This is because I hate you. And I don’t know what to do.”

The feeling of the embrace of darkness haunted him again, but it felt like a blessing. He repeatedly cut beneath the wrist, making relatively deep cuts. Each motion wasn’t just full of hopelessness - they were full of anger, more specifically, hatred.

“To the waste of life known as Sakuto Hitori.”

With one last motion, he made a much deeper cut. And this one struck at his wrist. Blood started escaping the wound much faster and in much greater volumes.

“Ahh...I’ve really done it now...”

“I don’t think I’ll miss this at all.”

He felt a rush of something strange. Something happened to him, making him feel a little dizzy and tired. Extremely tired. The scenery in front of his eyes began to contort and slowly fizzle away.

“Am I...dying?”

“No...this isn’t like death. I haven’t lost enough blood to kill me off. Then what’s happening to me?”

He tried to stand up and stumbled on his way up. Trying to regain balance, he fell down on the floor.

“Please...”

He laughed a little as a few more tears escaped his eye. The blood pouring out of his wound formed a little puddle on the floor. His eye dimmed more.

“Just let me die.”

But something stopped him. Just as he felt that he was plunged into the deepest, darkest and most desolate layer of the abyss, he didn’t feel cold - he felt warm. But he felt something hold his hand.

Something strange, something unexplainable. The same type of essence that stabbed him in his heart. His soul was almost completely extinguished, but it was something special residing within it that effectively saved Sakuto - for the second time.

Sakuto slowly closed his teary eye and fell asleep. The hopeless ambience of the abyssal depths acted as a comforting lullaby, rocking him back and forth at death’s gate.

...

He woke up the next morning.

He was in the same place. He slowly raised his head, noticing the chair that had fallen over next to him, and the desk not too far away. He looked at the floor, parts of it were decorated in blood, with a much larger puddle beneath his left arm.

‘Huh...?“

He got his phone out of his pocket. There were no new notifications, but Oskar did send him a meme overnight.

Sakuto put his phone away and looked at his scarred arm. Even though he was the one who butchered it, the sight of it almost horrified him.

“Fuck...”

“I...I really almost did it...”

The more he looked at his scars, the more terrific they appeared.

“I haven’t been happy for so long. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy.”

“I’m a miserable, socially dysfunctional, regretful, hateful and now even physically pathetic creature that is better off dead.”

“There’s nothing stopping me from just offing myself, right?”

But then again, his inbox wasn’t empty. And perhaps it was his body’s self-preservation instinct, or something he saw just now, but after the unexpected and strange sleep, he didn’t seem to have that same urge within him to actively harm himself.

At that moment, he got another message. He opened it, and aside from yet another meme from Oskar, there was a message from Kaito. It was something about his responsibilities and future plans of action. But Oskar’s message, even if unchecked, stuck with him more.

It wasn’t even a message of heartfelt appreciation or a reminder that he wasn’t alone, they sent each other memes all the time.

“All of them...”

“I’d disappoint them if I went out when I still have at least one option left.”

Sakuto slowly got up. He saw the box cutter that he used to cut himself. He picked it up, carefully inspected it and even smelled its blade - it smelled more like iron. He tried to raise it, but he couldn’t. He slowly put it back down.

“You’d want me to keep on living.”

“And the least I can do for you before giving up is to try the last option.”

He took a deep breath.

“If Kaito Kamiki personally wants me to undergo it, he probably knows it’ll work.”

“The soul crystal treatment.”