Chapter Text
THIS IS GIYUUS POV SO THE READER WILL BE EXPERIENCING THE WORLD FROM GIYUUS POV
Where am I?
Who am I?
The thought crawls out of the dark before I can stop it. My eyes open to nothing but pale light leaking through the paper screen. My head feels packed with smoke. For a moment, I can’t remember what the air is called, or why my chest hurts so much when I try to breathe it.
My fingers find something rough near my collar. A tag. I drag it closer to my face, and the faint letters stare back at me in the dimness.
Tomioka Giyuu.
Right. That’s me. Or it was.
The name sits wrong in my mouth, like something borrowed. I whisper it again, trying to make it sound true. Tomioka Giyuu. The syllables scrape against my teeth. The sound doesn’t fit right anymore, but it’s all I have.
The moon is hanging outside the window, bright enough to hurt. The room smells like damp straw and the faint sourness of sweat. The futon beneath me has gone cold, soaked through from how long I must’ve been lying there. I push myself up and my ribs scream in protest.
The bandages are too tight again. They dig deep, punishing. Every inhale is a fight. The air wheezes in through clenched teeth, thin and cruel. I can feel my pulse fluttering in my throat like a trapped bird.
It’s quiet except for that pulse. No wind. No insects. Just the sound of me trying not to die under my own hand-wrapped bindings.
Something shifts near the window.
A faint sound. Caw.
My crow.
Except—no, I remember locking it out earlier. It shouldn’t be in here. The latch on the window hasn’t moved. I can see the bar still in place, silver in the moonlight.
Caw. Caw.
I turn my head toward the noise, and the edges of the room smear, just a little, like wet paint.
Another sound joins it—a whisper too close to my ear.
“Don’t move.”
I freeze.
The voice is male, low, almost calm. Familiar? Maybe. My heart kicks hard enough to make the bandages creak.
Then another voice, higher, sharp: “Danger. Don’t open the door.”
A third one overlaps it, mean and fast: “Open it. Let it in. You’re useless if you don’t.”
A fourth, panicked: “STOP—don’t let it open the door, don’t let it open the door!”
They pile over each other until the words lose shape, until it’s all noise. I press my palms against my ears, but it’s like pressing down on boiling water—it just finds new cracks to spill through.
My crow calls again, louder now. I can hear the flutter of wings inside the room even though there’s no shadow on the floor.
“Open it,” someone hisses.
“Don’t.”
“OPEN IT.”
“Danger danger danger—”
My breathing turns uneven, quick. I look at the window again and see movement where there shouldn’t be any—the moonlight flickering like it’s being sliced by wings.
I try to speak, but my voice comes out broken. “Stop.”
No one listens.
The clock on the shelf hasn’t ticked in hours, but I can hear a rhythm behind the voices—something like time, something like footsteps approaching. The floorboards whisper under the weight of invisible things.
I squeeze my eyes shut, counting breaths. One. Two. Three. The pain in my chest climbs with each one. The bandages feel wet, though I know they aren’t. I imagine them dissolving into my skin, stitching me tighter and tighter until I’m nothing but a flat piece of paper with lungs drawn on it.
The voices change tone. Now they’re murmuring, almost kind. “You did this,” one says softly. “You asked for this.”
Another hums a lullaby I don’t recognize. The tune stumbles halfway through, like whoever’s singing forgot how it ends.
My crow calls again. Caw. Then, human words layered under it: “Let me in.”
I look at the window, and for a second I see a shape behind the paper screen—long fingers, black feathers clinging to the skin. Then it’s gone.
“Let me in,” the voice repeats, pleading now.
“Don’t,” another one sobs.
“You’ll kill us all if you do.”
“Open it.”
They’re all right. They’re all wrong.
I dig my nails into my thighs to ground myself, to find something real. Pain. That’s real. It always is. The world wavers, the floor rippling like water. I grab at the nearest solid thing—the frame of the futon—and hang on until the tremor passes.
When I open my eyes again, the room has gone silent.
The moonlight’s dimmer now. The window looks ordinary, paper and wood. My crow isn’t there. Of course it isn’t.
I whisper my name again. “Tomioka Giyuu.”
The sound steadies me a little, like pressing a palm against my own pulse to check that I still exist. I breathe shallowly through my nose, counting seconds, pretending that the act of naming myself can hold the world still.
Then, faintly, from somewhere too close to be real:
“You shouldn’t be here.”
I don’t know which version of me it’s talking to.
The clock ticks once.
Then everything goes quiet again.
I force myself upright, every movement a protest. My chest aches, lungs fighting against the unyielding bandages wrapped around me. The futon digs into my knees as I crawl forward, slow, careful, half-floating in a haze of nausea and panic. The moonlight casts pale stripes across the floorboards, and the shadows stretch like hands reaching for me.
The bathroom door is just ahead. I grip the edge of the wall to steady myself. My fingers are trembling so badly that I feel every pulse in my veins. I slide my hands under my shirt and peel it over my head. The cool air hits the skin beneath the bandages, and for a second it stings almost painfully.
“You’re not a real man,” a voice spits.
“Look at you, wearing those… pretending you’re something you’re not.”
“Pathetic,” another sneers.
“Why even bother? No one would want you like this.”
The words gnaw into me. They’re sharp and persistent, scraping at the hollow in my chest. My stomach twists violently, bile rising before I can stop it. I stumble toward the sink, gripping the edge for balance, and retch, my body shaking with the effort. The taste of it lingers, bitter and metallic. My hands press against the porcelain, and I splash water into my mouth, trying to wash it down, trying to remind myself that some things are real.
The voices don’t give me a second to breathe.
“Forget the water,” one hisses.
“Go! You’re late!” another screams.
“Move faster! Hurry! You’re falling behind!”
“STOP! You’re wasting time!”
I can’t. I can’t. My stomach still twists and my head spins. I gulp air, trying to steady the nausea, trembling as I rinse my mouth over and over. Each swallow feels jagged, like broken glass moving down my throat. My reflection in the small mirror stares back at me, pale and hollow‑eyed.
“Move! Get ready! Hurry!” the voices shout in overlapping chaos.
“You’re late!”
“No, too early!”
“TOO LATE! TOO EARLY!”
I throw a trembling hand at my uniform, yanking it on blindly. Buttons scrape against my fingers, sleeves twisting. The voices scream at me over and over, flipping between urgency and blame, until I can’t think past them. My chest tightens beneath the bandages as if they are alive, as if they are mocking me for trying to move at all.
I step toward the door, each step heavier than the last. The morning sun has just started to break through the paper screens, pale light brushing the floor. It’s barely dawn, yet the voices explode in contradiction:
“TOO LATE! TOO EARLY! TOO LATE! TOO EARLY!”
The repetition drills into my skull. Every nerve is on fire. Every sound is magnified. My hands slam over my ears, trying to shut the world out, but it isn’t enough. The noise isn’t just around me; it’s inside me, rattling through my chest, my throat, my skull.
I stumble to my knees in the hallway, clutching at the floorboards as if they can hold me together. My stomach twists and my chest pounds, the bandages pressing mercilessly. My breathing is shallow, ragged, my body shaking uncontrollably. I scream, voice breaking, a raw sound that tears from my throat and fills the silent room.
“STOP! STOP! STOP!” I yell, over and over, muffled behind my hands, each scream a futile attempt to silence the voices. They do not stop. They cannot stop.
The crow flaps somewhere near the window, startled by my collapse. Its wings beat rapidly, and in a flash of black it scatters into the morning air, leaving only a faint echo of its cries behind. I hear it go, but I do not care. The world is just noise, pain, pressure, and voices now. It will not return.
I collapse fully, forehead pressed against the floor, arms wrapped around my knees. The uniform feels wrong. The morning feels wrong. Everything feels wrong. My heart pounds in sync with the screaming inside me. I cannot breathe, cannot think, cannot stop the tide of sound that is no one but myself, yet not mine alone.
I scream again, longer this time, until my throat aches, until my chest burns under the weight of fabric and ribs and invisible hands. My body trembles violently, limbs shaking with the effort to hold itself together. The sun creeps higher, gentle and indifferent, brushing the edge of the hallway with light that cannot reach the darkness inside me.
I am here. I am awake. I am collapsing.
The voices swirl on and on, outside logic, outside mercy. The crow is gone. The world continues, indifferent, while I remain, shaking, screaming, pinned under the weight of my own skin. I force my legs under me, trembling, and try to stand. Every step toward the main room feels like walking through thick water. The world sways sideways, and I grip the walls, the floorboards, anything solid to anchor myself. My chest aches under the tight bandages, lungs rattling. The sunlight slits through the screens, soft and pale, but even this gentle warmth doesn’t soothe me.
I make it to the living area. My hands shake, and my head pounds in rhythm with the lingering voices, still screaming, still accusing. I drop myself onto the low bench near the table, willing the room to stop moving, willing my body to stop trembling.
I notice the news letter lying on the table, a small comfort in this disordered morning. I reach for it, curling my fingers around the paper. I try to read, to focus, to find something solid in the words. My eyes dart across the lines, but the letters begin to blur and fade. They melt like wax, disappear into the page, leaving nothing but the pale paper beneath.
Then a voice—smooth, low, familiar in its timbre—catches me off guard. I glance up. The man on the cover stares at me. His eyes, impossibly real, follow my every movement. His mouth moves as if it knows what I’m thinking before I do.
“You… you shouldn’t be here alone,” he says.
My pulse spikes. My hand freezes on the page. I blink. The words have returned, but the cover man is still there, voice and all. I swallow, uncertain. “I… I’m fine,” I whisper, though my voice wobbles.
“Are you?” he asks, tilting his head slightly. The expression is too calm, too knowing. My mind twists it into something intimate, almost conspiratorial. I nod because I can’t not. “I’m fine,” I repeat, quieter this time.
The man leans forward in the glossy paper, his mouth moving as if he could step out from the page. “Demons are everywhere,” he says softly, almost conspiratorial. “Work is no place for those who hide themselves. You know it, don’t you?”
I nod again, because yes—I know. I have always known. I try to steady my breath. My fingers twitch, the paper crumpling slightly under them. “Yes,” I whisper. “I… I know.”
He smiles then, slow, deliberate, and I feel something tighten in my chest. Relief? No, fear. It’s hard to tell the difference. “And yet…” he murmurs, leaning closer, his eyes locked on mine. The words slow, dragging through the silence. “You will never be a real man.”
My chest contracts painfully. My hands shake. My mouth goes dry. I can’t move. The paper is just paper, yet his gaze burrows into me, consuming any rational thought. Then—suddenly—it changes. His face snaps back to the smiling, static man of the printed cover. The glossy cheerfulness returns, and my stomach twists violently. The world is real again, or as real as it will allow, and I realize—the hallucination had slipped into me.
The words on the page settle back into their normal font. I exhale shakily, my hands gripping the edge of the table like a lifeline. Fear still pricks at the edges of my mind, like tiny needles. My chest is tight, lungs burning, every nerve screaming in residual panic.
I push myself off the bench and stagger toward the bathroom, seeking some fragment of normality, some ritual to ground me. The cabinet rattles under my trembling hands as I search for my medication. Each pill I touch feels slippery, alien, and I hesitate, swallowing hard. My hands hover over the tiny bottle, hovering just long enough to convince myself this is safe.
Then the voices explode.
“They’re rigged!” one screams.
“Poison!” another shrieks.
“Do you want to die?!” a third screams over the others.
“You can’t trust them!”
I drop the pills immediately. They spill across the floor, bouncing against tiles with harsh clatters. My stomach twists violently again, bile rising at the taste of panic. I retreat backward, crawling, body pressed against the wall, my palms pressed over my ears. I can’t escape it. I can’t escape them. The world is just a room now, and they are everywhere, in the walls, in the shadows, in the pulse of my own heart.
My eyes dart wildly, scanning the tiles, the sink, the cabinets. Every reflection, every edge, seems alive, watching, judging. I clutch my knees to my chest, rocking slightly, trying to drown the cacophony with motion. My breathing comes in shallow bursts, uneven, rattling. My chest feels like it’s on fire beneath the bandages, my stomach twisting in sick anxiety, and my hands tremble against my face.
The sun has climbed higher, brushing across the floor in thin, pale streaks. It does nothing to calm me. Everything is chaos. Every sound a scream. Every shadow a threat. My legs feel like lead; my chest feels like it’s trapped under a collapsing weight. My head spins, vision narrowing in and out like a flickering lamp.
I try to speak. I want to say the voices are not real. I want to tell myself it’s just a hallucination. But my voice is lost in the roar, swallowed before it reaches my lips. My throat aches from the effort to shout, to call out for silence, for anything that might cut the noise.
I close my eyes and try to breathe through the panic. The sounds fade and flare, stretching time into unbearable loops. I feel dizzy, nauseous, utterly drained. The tiles press cold into my cheek as I slump further, curling into myself.
My crow flutters somewhere outside the window, gone now for good. Its absence leaves an echo, a sharp emptiness that mirrors my own disorientation. I imagine it searching, circling the house, seeking help, but it will not return today. The thought twists, cold, and a faint shiver runs down my spine.
The room tilts, tilts, tilts. I clutch at the floorboards to hold myself down. My pulse hammers, blood pounding in my ears. Sweat beads along my hairline, dampening the back of my neck. Every nerve screams. My vision blurs and I rock slightly, the rocking making no difference, no safety, only motion.
I finally lie down fully against the tiles. Limbs splayed, trembling, face pressed into the cold hard floor. The voices continue in overlapping chaos, but they are dimming, dissolving in the haze of my exhaustion. My chest tightens, then slowly relaxes as my heartbeat begins to slow. My breaths come shallower, shaky, but more regular.
I drift in and out, trembling, barely awake, barely aware. The last echoes of the cover man fade, the news words stabilize, the voices reduce to muffled background hums. The bandages still cling tightly, reminding me I exist, reminding me I am still here. My body feels sick, unwell, but it is still mine, still breathing.
The edges of sleep creep in, fragile and uneven. My eyelids grow heavy, the room’s slant softening, the floorboards no longer sharp beneath my fingers. The sounds of the world, the voices, and even my pulse seem to blend into one low vibration. My breathing steadies, slow, uneven, but steady enough to let the edges of consciousness slip away.
I do not notice the morning light shifting further across the floor. I do not notice the quiet that has finally settled over the house. Only the surrender of my body, the final loosening of tension, the descent into a fragile, trembling slumber.
And there, pressed against the wall, arms still hugging myself, I fade.