[Fuck this stupid world.]
Hoshimi stared at the ceiling.
The room was dark. The curtains were drawn. The city beyond was quiet, the distant wail of sirens finally faded, the night settling over the harbor district like a shroud.
"Why couldn't I? Why couldn't I have just been killed as well? Why couldn't some other random event just have swooped in and taken my stupid miserable life?"
Kira was curled in a tight ball on the floor beside him, her blanket wrapped around her like a cocoon, her fingers still reaching toward his couch even in sleep. Vert sat in the corner, her gray eyes closed, her chest rising and falling with a rhythm.
The hours had begun to bleed together.
He didn't look at his reflection anymore. He'd stopped brushing his teeth. Stopped changing his clothes. Stopped doing anything except existing in the hollow, mechanical way of a body that had forgotten it was attached to a person. The hotel room had become a tomb.
Neila had found him there one day, curled on the bed with his knees drawn to his chest, still wearing the blood-stained clothes from the warehouse; he'd become rather attached to it.
She'd stood in the doorway for a long moment, her blue eyes sweeping over him with an expression he didn't have the energy to decipher.
Then she'd set a paper bag on the nightstand, food, he realized later, a sandwich and a bottle of water that he never touched and left without saying a word.
She came back that evening. Then the next morning. Each time, the same routine. Stand in the doorway. Look at him. Leave something he wouldn't eat.
A day later, she brought something different. A stack of papers. Legal documents, he assumed, though he didn't look at them. She set them on the nightstand beside the untouched sandwich and the warm bottle of water.
[I want to disappear]
"The Mirlo assets," she said. Her voice was flat. "I've liquidated what I could. Even if we're branded as criminals, the money isn't in my name anymore. It's in a series of shell accounts that Eric helped me set up." A pause. "There's enough to keep us running for a millennia, I didn't realize how much I really had."
Hoshimi didn't respond. His eyes were open, fixed on the water-stained ceiling, but there was no awareness in them, just the blank, unseeing stare.
[I hate it here]
Neila stood there for a long moment, her hands at her sides, her jaw tight. Then she crossed the room, pulled a thick envelope from inside her coat, and set it on the nightstand beside the documents.
"Cash," she said. "In case you need it. In case you decide to..." She didn't finish the sentence.
She left without waiting for a response. Kira was the one who tried to reach him. She came to him six times in those three days, he'd always take his time in the toilet, her knocks soft and hesitant and increasingly desperate.
The smell of the blood stained shirt kept him calm.
The only proof.
–
He hadn't moved in hours.
His body was still. His hands were folded on his chest. His violet eyes were open, fixed on the water-stained ceiling above him, tracing the same patterns of decay.
His shirt smelled of rotten blood.
The hole in his chest was still there.
A void that had opened. It consumed everything. All of it fell into that void and vanished, leaving nothing behind except the hollow, echoing emptiness of a heart that had forgotten how to beat.
He sat up. The motion sent a wave of dizziness through his skull, the walls tilting, the ceiling swimming. His muscles had atrophied from days of stillness. His stomach was a hollow, cramping void. His mouth tasted like copper and salt and something else, something that might have been grief or might have been madness or might have been both.
The envelope was still on the nightstand. He stared at it for a long moment, his violet eyes struggling to focus on the thick manila paper, the neat stack of bills visible through the unsealed flap. His hand moved without his permission. Closed around the envelope.
His body moved before his mind caught up. His feet swung over the side of the couch. The floor was cold against his bare soles, the cheap carpet rough and worn. He stood.
He didn't want to wake Kira up.
He stood. His legs held. The room tilted again, steadied, tilted. He found the wall and pressed his palm against it, the rough texture of the cheap wallpaper grounding him in something physical. His body was shaking.
He walked to the door. Opened it. Stepped into the hallway.
The hotel corridor was empty. Gray morning light filtered through a dusty window at the far end, casting long shadows across the worn carpet.
Identical doors on either side, the same peeling wallpaper and flickering light fixtures.
The air smelled of stale coffee and industrial cleaner and someone else's cigarettes.
The elevator was broken. He took the stairs. Each step sent a jolt of pain through his body.
The lobby was empty. A bored-looking clerk glanced up from the front desk, her eyes sweeping over his blood-stained clothes, his hollow cheeks, the envelope clutched in his trembling hand. She didn't ask any questions.
Just watched him walk out the door and disappear into the gray morning light.
"It's so cold."
The harbor wind cut through his thin jacket, raising goosebumps on his arms. He didn't shiver.
The bombings had scarred everything.
Cratered streets, boarded windows and memorial flowers tied to lampposts, their petals browning at the edges.
The buildings were darker, the streets were emptier, the neon signs that had once blazed with garish, defiant life were dimmed or dead or flickering in their final throes. The bombings had left scars that wouldn't heal for years.
He didn't know where he was going.
He walked for a long time.
The city blurred around him. Streets he knew became streets he didn't.
The docks gave way to warehouses, the warehouses to tenements, the tenements to the glittering, indifferent towers of the business district.
The sun rose somewhere behind the clouds, painting the sky in shades of gray and paler gray. People began to appear.
Early commuters, street vendors, delivery trucks.
He stopped in front of a convenience store.
It was a small, unremarkable thing, wedged between a dry cleaner and a boarded-up restaurant. He stopped.
The neon sign flickered overhead, its pink and blue glow reflecting in the puddles of last night's rain. The windows were grimy, plastered with faded advertisements for energy drinks and instant noodles.
Hoshimi pushed through the door.
A bell chimed overhead. The store was narrow and cramped.
The shelves, lined with rows upon rows of identical, brightly packaged products, felt overwhelmingly vast, a dizzying, suffocating maze of choices.
The air conditioning unit whirred, a monotonous, grating drone that vibrated directly into his brain. The artificial scent of plastic and overly sweet fruit permeated the air.
The refrigerated section hummed against the far wall, its glass doors fogged with condensation. He walked toward it without conscious thought, his feet carrying him past the snack aisle, past the toiletries, past the magazine rack with its glossy covers featuring celebrities he didn't recognize.
[I heard that other witches use alcohol to cope, it must be effective right? I wonder what it would feel like to have the cold run down my throat, to choke me like a chain wrapping around my neck]
The beer was in the back. Rows of cans and bottles, their labels promising refreshment and relaxation and the temporary erasure of whatever ailed you.
He stared at them for a long moment, his reflection a pale ghost in the fogged glass. He reached for a bottle of whiskey. The glass was cold against his palm. He carried it to the counter.
The cashier was young. Maybe twenty. Her hair was dyed an aggressive shade of pink that had faded to coral at the tips, and she wore a bored expression that suggested she'd been working this shift for longer than she'd planned to.
She glanced up as Hoshimi approached, her eyes sweeping over him with the practiced disinterest of someone who had seen too many strange things to be surprised by anything anymore.
Then her gaze dropped to the beer. Then back to his face. Then back to the beer.
"I need to see some ID."
Hoshimi stared at her. "What?"
"ID." She pointed at the bottle of whisky "You need to be twenty to buy alcohol. You look like you're maybe sixteen."
"I'm twenty one, I didn't bring my ID."
"There's a bunch of you little brats doing the same thing thinking it'll work." She leaned her elbow on the counter, her chin resting on her palm.
"Look, I don't get paid enough to care about most things. But if my manager reviews the security footage and sees me selling beer to a minor, I'm fired. And I need this job. So either show me an ID that says you're twenty one, or put the beer back."
Hoshimi stared at her. His hand tightened on the bottle.
"Right," he said quietly. "Sorry."
He turned and walked back toward the refrigerated section.
The cashier watched him go, her expression unchanging, and then returned her attention to the magazine she'd been reading.
He walked out.
The bell chimed again.