Chapter Text
June has arrived for one more turn of the globe, and you are twenty-three today. It’s almost a miracle.
Akira has arranged a get-together with the other Thieves for the upcoming weekend, and you had the good sense not to protest when he’d suggested it. Today is a weekday, after all, and everybody is busy with their own work and school lives. So the weekend is a natural suggestion. Akira agreed to keep things as low-key as possible for you. You appreciate that about him.
Today, it’s just you and him. You left work to find him waiting for you inside your apartment, laying across your couch. He’s the only person besides yourself to have a key. Sometimes you wonder why you offered to make him one.
You take off your shoes in the entryway and, upon walking past the bathroom, notice a small object next to the sink. You glance at it and pause, recognizing the cylindrical shape, and then turn to Akira.
“Lipstick?” you ask.
Akira sits up and leans over the back of the couch. He smiles coyly at you, and you can feel the back of your neck beginning to heat up.
“I thought, if I wore some, it would be easier to ensure I kissed every bit of you tonight,” Akira says with a playful wink. “Would you like that?”
Your face flushes, and you let out an exasperated sigh. You set your phone down on the kitchen counter and remove your gloves, then you approach the couch and sit beside Akira, whose cheeky grin hasn’t faded.
“You’re insufferable,” you say.
Akira shrugs. “It’s a point of pride.”
You scoff, but don’t lean away when he puts his arm around you. You feel his nose press against the base of your jaw, and you let him kiss your neck, one, two, three times.
“Happy birthday,” Akira mumbles against you. “How was work?”
“…Average,” you say after a beat. Akira doesn’t lean back, simply continues to nuzzle you, and you exhale slowly as he clings ever-closer. “As if it’s ever anything other than simply average.”
“Well, it’s best to ask anyway, right?” Akira breathes against your skin, and you grow a patch of shivery goosebumps. “For all I know, you could’ve had the craziest day ever. Your office could have exploded.”
You raise an eyebrow. “I would be dead if that had happened.”
“You don’t know that,” Akira says.
You’re pretty sure you do know that, but you suppose you’ve survived worse.
After one more kiss, Akira leans back to look at you. He reaches out to run his fingers through your hair, which you haven’t cut in months, and you bite the side of your tongue.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
You shake your head.
“Are you sure? I can make something. Or we could order in.”
“I’m not hungry,” you say.
Akira’s face falls slightly. You sense that you said the wrong thing, and you turn away, tugging your hair gently from his fingertips.
“…Well, I got you a cake,” Akira says after a moment. “It’s in the refrigerator. We can have it later, once you are hungry.”
“A cake isn’t dinner,” you respond.
“Anything can be dinner if you believe in yourself.” You can almost hear Akira’s cocky little smile. “It’s got wheat, dairy, eggs. It’s basically the whole food pyramid.”
You swallow, and you raise your hand to scratch the side of your face. You don’t look at Akira, not for a good few seconds. There’s a heavy ball in the pit of your stomach. Perhaps that’s why you aren’t hungry.
When you finally turn to Akira again, he’s looking at you already. He gazes at you with so much adoration that you feel like you’re going to shrivel into a ball of dried flesh and die. You can’t take it. You can’t take the way he loves you so perfectly, so unconditionally. It’s so beyond anything you could ever deserve.
“I stopped seeing my therapist,” you say abruptly.
Akira is quiet. Then he inhales, and you brace yourself for the question, the why, the what were you thinking, the—
“I know.”
You didn’t expect that. You blink, clearly taken off guard, and Akira offers you a tiny smile.
“…What do you mean, you know?”
“I’m your emergency contact,” Akira says softly. “When you missed two sessions in a row and stopped picking up your phone, the office called me to make sure you hadn’t killed yourself.”
Oh.
You grit your teeth, and you feel your fists curling tightly. You look away from Akira as quickly as you can, but you can still feel his gaze burning into you, and so you begin to talk again.
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” you say.
“I agree. You don’t.”
“I — You know I hated that therapist,” you continue. “He was insincere and made too many assumptions, and — and he kept trying to pry about things. I couldn’t fucking stand him.”
“I know that,” Akira murmurs. “I’ll help you find—”
“I don’t want to find a new one,” you snap. “And I don’t want your help looking, either. I’m done with therapy. I can’t be fixed.”
You hear Akira breathe slowly inward. “You aren’t broken. That’s not—”
“Oh, but I am,” you hiss, “I’m broken beyond fucking repair and I have been since I was a child, and the only reason anyone sticks around is so they can mold me into what they think I should be.”
“That’s not true,” Akira says patiently.
“It is! Maybe not for you, but you’re — you’re — you’re fucking insane for giving a shit about me. You always have been.” You shoot him a sharp look, but can’t bring yourself to make eye contact, so the glare lands on his torso. “You know your life would be so much better if I’d died.”
“Don’t say that.” Akira’s voice tenses. “That isn’t fair.”
“I don’t care if it’s fair. You know it’s true.”
“Goro, that’s not—”
“Don’t call me that!”
Akira stops talking. You feel your breaths coming in ragged, shaky inhales. You aren’t sure where that came from, but you know that if he uses your given name again, you’re going to scream, or cry, or jump out of the window. The dull pain in your chest has become sharp-edged and cutting. Your heart is splitting open, bleeding all over your insides. You are a rotten fucking creature. You wish that you had died as a teenager. You wish that you had never been born at all.
For what feels like several minutes, neither of you say a word. Then, slowly, Akira’s hand creeps toward your face, and he lays his fingers below your chin to tilt your head upward. You keep your eyes on the middle distance as long as you possibly can, but eventually, they have to meet his own. He looks at you for a moment, then leans in, and you automatically close your eyes when he gently kisses your lips.
“…I love you,” he whispers. “Always. No matter what. Nothing is ever going to change that.”
You feel a lump starting in your throat. You swallow it down, and the feeling fades.
“Go,” you mumble hoarsely. “I need to be alone.”
Akira doesn’t argue. He kisses your forehead, then gets to his feet and quietly walks to the entryway. He looks over his shoulder, giving you one last chance to ask him to stay, but you don’t take it. So, with that, he slips on his shoes and opens the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and then he’s gone.
You stare at the door for what feels like forever. You’re torn between chasing after Akira and beating your head against the floor until you have a concussion. In the end, you do neither of those things. Rather, you slowly get to your feet, walk to the kitchen, and open the refrigerator.
It’s a strawberry cake, adorned with white frosting and cut-up strawberries. It’s beautiful. You close the refrigerator.
For a while, you pace your apartment in silence. Calling Akira feels like an admission of defeat, and besides, you weren’t lying — you desperately need to be alone. You double check the date on your phone. It really is your birthday. Somehow, you made it this far, and you’ve never hated yourself more.
On what must be the fortieth round of pacing you’ve done, you pass by the bathroom again and spot an incongruent shape on the counter by the sink. You pause and look up at it, and you’re suddenly reminded of the lipstick. Right. Akira didn’t take it when he left. He must have forgotten about it.
You stare at the little black tube for several minutes without moving. The shape is familiar — you’re reminded of the time you spent with Yoshizawa last year. But you know it beyond that, too. You know this lipstick. You’ve held it in your hands before.
Your feet take you slowly and lightly across the floor in a tiptoe, as if you’re afraid to wake somebody in the next room. Soon, you’re standing in front of the bathroom mirror with the black cylinder before you. A cold, gloveless hand reaches out, and you hesitate for a split second before picking up the lipstick. You roll it around between your fingers, then uncap it and twist it upward. Deep red. Cherry-like. The smell is faint and evocative.
Right. How could you forget? This was the shade your mother used to wear.
The apartment is silent. You are completely and utterly alone. Still, you check over your shoulder. The bathroom door is still open, and you quickly close it behind you before turning back to the mirror.
Your hands are shaking despite your best efforts to still them. You lean in toward the mirror and raise the tube to your mouth.
The first stroke along your lower lip is slow and uncertain, but you manage to keep the makeup from smearing across your chin. You then turn your attention to your upper lip, thin with a meager Cupid’s bow, and you trace it with the pointy tip of the lipstick. You press your lips together, then part them once more. You twist the lipstick back into its tube and replace the cap, and then you put it down and look at yourself in the mirror.
You see echoes of your mother. Your eyes briefly flicker into hers; your hair, which is the longest it’s ever been, carries her weight. Your cheekbones are sculpted from her own. Your nose has the same gentle slope that hers did.
The ghost, however, fades as quickly as it arrived. What remains in the mirror is somebody different.
You stare at the girl there, and you recognize her. She is no longer a stranger, warped by the skin of an apple. You know her. You’ve known her all your life. You’ve seen her shoulders crushed by the weight of expectation. You’ve felt her grow rougher and sharper to try and bear that weight for a little longer. You’ve withheld food from her, buried her bones deep below the eyes of those around you. You’ve tried, desperately, to will her out of existence.
Your vision begins to blur, and you notice her eyes welling with tears. One drops from her eyelash, and you feel a splash on the corner of your crimson-painted mouth.
The heavens bear down upon your spinal cord.
You turn on the sink.