Disclaimer: I don't own Katekyo Hitman Reborn

Chodenji

Posted July 25th, 2009

The sign on the door reads out of service, and he sighs, adjusting his glasses. The lenses are smeared and disorienting, his eyes unfocusing in an attempt to make things clear. The hallway is crowded, a sea, jostling him despite the fact that he is one of Mukuro's, but he doesn't push back. Doesn't like to… sweat. Chikusa can see dirt under his fingernails, dirt and blood and flecks of rotting skin, and if he were Ken he would bite them clean; until the edges were ragged and short. Instead, he moves, the throbbing of music faint around his neck.

When he reaches the second bathroom, across the school and around the corner, there is no soap - just a filmy residue, pink staining the ceramic of the basin and dirtying the drain. His pockets are empty. So with hot water and the edge of his shirt he scrubs the polycarbonate and sighs, worrying at scratches and blinking in the light. Jacket unbuttoned and collar undone. The world is a myriad of colours, and all edges are soft, and he recognizes not by shape but by sound and touch and taste, and Mukuro tells him there is [more than one way to change reality].

xxx

His headphones have broken. Wires snapped and naked, bruised, like splinters of bone from an open wound, an amputation of protective flesh, [of once-life]. It could be salvageable, he thinks. Broken pieces could be mended, whole - unless, this is all in his mind. He traces its outline with a finger, following the damage, testing - but it's no use. He can't compete with illusions. Can't compete with, Mukuro. Chikusa picks up the shards and feels their edges digging into the pads of his fingers, the palm of his hand.

It could have been Ken. Careless, careless. He imagines the fractured, crushing weight of fingers wrapped around his neck; suffocating, immobilizing - so easily, so easily. [And then, death] like a film, the scenes slip before him, fifteen frames per second and misaligned. Calmly, he slides his glasses up his nose and tugs at the collar of his shirt. The weight of the bandalore in his pocket tells him that, if nothing else, this is something he could...

Chikusa almost decides to ask that girl, just as a confirmation, and then thinks better of it. She's useless. Like a transmitter - or neuron, slicked with fat. [They've taught her, her place, as in] ghosts shouldn't talk, should never talk. Because once, there were things discarnate. In the air, in the world, in one's thoughts, like an aura the whole country possessed. With princesses and tsars and little magic boxes given by a god, painted in the golden hue of Italia, with a single wish inside. His wish is for the world to end.

Nagi, and she is Nagi, and she is Nagi, lays on the couch. Staring at the ceiling. Unmoving. It's unnatural, how she can spend the day looking for nothing save patterns in the sky, the ceiling. If she is talking with Mukuro, creating a world for herself with illusions and petty thoughts and dreams, he does not know [how she can smile].

No one wants her here, but she is a necessity. An appliance. And for that, he will leave her alone.