"I know it's impossible," she said, "but I think I love you."
He looked to her and said nothing. He looked at her, but more than anything, he looked through her. She hated the beauty of his eyes—how they trumped hers, how they tricked her and made her love him more, how they always, without fail, won.
She was desperate.
-
One day when the desperation had been building up inside of her for some time, when it streamed out of her ears wherever she went, whistling her deaf, when it made her bite her fist bloody, she threw herself at him in reckless abandon and tackled him to a wall.
"You," she screamed, "you did it on purpose, didn't you?"
Her fingers squeezed and clenched madly but could not touch him. He stared at her with his red eyes, the soft contemptible glance.
"I hate you!" she screeched and tried to claw out his eyes. He caught her hands and crushed her wrists together in one swift movement. She screamed and screamed like a wildcat, kicked and hissed as the tears streamed down her face, not out of pain but out of something much uglier. He watched the water pouring out of her eyes like a sheet of waterfall for some time.
And after a while, when she was reduced to a heap of sniffling and feeble runny nose, he made her look into his eyes and said, very softly, but firmly, "Stop."
She stopped moving and collapsed to the ground.
She awoke the next morning and thought nothing of it.
-
"I know you think of me as nothing but a foolish, useless girl," she said, "and maybe I am. In fact, I know I am. But simply because I am foolish, and simply because I am useless, does not mean that I can be stopped."
-
One night, he watched her sleep because he could not. He watched her in the shadow of the door and would not let the moonlight touch him, because he knew it would seal his weakness.
He watched her breathe for hours. He watched her breathe for an eternity, and after that eternity, he was surprised to find himself counting her breaths.
He watched her roll and twist and turn, writhe and kick viciously at stagnant ghosts by her bedside. He heard her call out feverish names; one or two familiar and the rest alien and irrelevant. There was one that stuck in his mind that night.
He watched her cry into the pillow and nearly suffocate herself; but somehow she managed to wake up alive the next morning.
He learned the meaning of life from her that night.
-
"I know you must hate me for who I am," she said, "and I don't blame you. I hate myself, too."
She smiled.
"But," she continued, "I also love myself. You love yourself, too."
-
She could remember nothing except the cold stone bench. She could not remember anything, but she could feel the loss scraping away at her insides. And the grief.
She did not understand the cause of these feelings, but she cried, still. She cried out to herself a name she could not understand. The syllables were dead and the soul with it, and she said it only because her lips were so used to it.
She heard a voice, and it told her "Thank you," over and over again. "Thank you, please come again," she thought.
"Sasuke," she said to the man in the moon.
-
"I made a mistake; I made plenty. But I won't make it again. I won't ask you to love me. I won't. I know what I feel, but I don't know you. You don't know me, either. We are strangers, and strangely, I still love you. I should kill myself for it," she said, smiling bravely.
-
He remembered everything but why he was doing what he was doing. He remembered each face as it hollowed out with death, how each face was a parent and how he was killing his own childhood.
Each body that fell was a sheep dead in his dreams. He once had 100; now he had one.
He watched it jump over a picket fence by itself, over and over and over. Hopelessly looped, while the moon in the sky was red.
He wondered to himself if he should put it out of its misery, but decided not to.
-
"I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you all of this. Probably because I'm stupid, and I'm probably making a mistake just by doing this. But you know what? I don't care anymore. I'm not perfect and I'm not going to try to be, anymore."
Her gaze was steady but weary.
"I'm tired," she said.
-
She couldn't remember when he had appeared beside her, she was so dizzy. He was just there.
"Hm," he said. "You don't look to well. You shouldn't push yourself so hard. That's what boys are supposed to do."
She smiled faintly and looked down at her hands. They were burned.
"When do you reach perfection, Kakashi?" she asked, quietly. "When? When are you enough?"
He looked at her and his face was grave.
"Never," he said. "Never."
-
"And even though you may hate me and I may hate myself, I'm going to forgive you and forgive myself," she said. "I don't understand why, but I will."
-
"I'm sorry," she told the boy. He looked sad, and she felt sad because of it.
"Please don't look sad," she said. "I never…I never meant to hurt you."
He nodded and looked wise and sagely with his great dark eyes and thundering brows. "I know," he said.
He managed a smile, and it was a brighter one than she could ever manage. His smile was a miracle, she decided.
"I forgive you," he said.
-
"I—" she started, then stopped. "I don't know what to say, really. This whole affair is pointless and a waste of time."
She closed her eyes to think.
"It's just that I—" she began again, "that I have to say it. Have to say it or it'll end up killing me."
She opened her eyes.
"I hope you understand."
-
There was a bird that laid eggs in the courtyard. It had a beautiful red breast and bright eyes. In the spring, he watched it collect the twigs for its nest.
It ate worms and berries, whatever it could find. Sometimes when he had free time he would collect a little pile of bird food and set it near the nest. The next day the pile of food would be gone, and he would be happy.
The bird laid eggs in May, and they were speckled blue. The eggs hatched in the middle of June and the chicks were wonderfully fluffy.
One day he found the mother and the chicks gone. He found a snake in the corner of the yard and it looked at him, fat and odious. It had just had a meal, he guessed.
He wandered back to his father and told him, "The bird isn't there anymore. Her chicks are gone, too."
His father said disinterestedly, "The snake must have gotten it. The bird was foolish to have settled there in the first place."
Later, he went to look for the snake to kill it, but it wasn't there.
-
"I wish you would say something," she said.
He said nothing. He walked slowly over to her, and kissed her.
-
Wow, haven't written Itasaku in forever. It's almost impossible now. There ya go.