SaiOuma Stories

In The Aftermath

(Little Blood warning. It's just an extreme version of a very severe night terror. Inspired by a story I wrote a while ago, about Kokichi perspective having a night terror. I figured why not make one in Shuichi's pov, watching it happen before his eyes)

People say that going through tough experiences make you stronger. Like a sword being shoved in a furnace, to be brought to a unimaginable degree, just so you can bring it out and hammer it down into shape. After, it's shoved in chilling waters. Then, after the hard, painful process. You have a beautiful sword.

At least. That's what many say, yet sometimes it isn't necessarily true.

Coming out of the killing game was hard. Not to mention going through it. If that bad experience did anything to him, then he came out as a rusty bent up dagger.

Here's what people don't realize. Some experiences are made to craft you into a better person, and others, are there to damage your once beautiful state and make it look broken to the point where it itself feels broken.

What the damaging experiences bring are opportunities to break and bend yourself to be a new person because your old self clearly couldn't handle it. That's where the beautiful sword comes into play. It's in the aftermath the damage that makes you amazing, not just going through it.

Such a shame no one ever emphasized how painful the aftermath was. Or else Shuichi would have mentally and physically prepared himself better.

The air in the room was still. Like the calm before the storm. It's midnight on a weekend, and it's normally filled with gentle laughs and warm smiles.

In the day time. He means. Never the night.

Nightmares walk the face of the unseen world and prowl on fragile minds that want nothing more than to rest. Crawling up into your mind and nesting in your head so it can feast on what peace they have.

However, night terrors, seem to come off a lot worst. Because unlike a nightmare, your body is wide awake while your mind is stuck in its prison. It's daunting because nightmares will sneak up on you, while night terrors come down full force. Beat your mind to a bloody pulp and watch you cry out in agony as you suffocate on air.

Two different, but very similar things that people often mistake between who experienced what. Shuichi knows who gets terrors. He himself can't admit to having them, and he's lucky. He'll take every nightmare over them, any night.

But if he had to choose over who gets them, it would be himself every time. Because watching someone he grew to love so much go through them weekly was a hard pill to swallow.

So was watching the blood drip from the press. Sliding down the metal and collecting at the bottoms where the bloody puddle had splattered itself across the floor. Imagining the flesh rotting off such a small body was sickening. By the time he looked up again, he sees him. Except when he does he's skinless, his broken and cracked ribs jut out of his muscle.

"Would you be mad..." the dead boy before him began, his skeleton hand covered in blood lifting to grab Shuichi's.

"If I told you this was a lie too?"

A breathless gasps takes control of his throat and bolts up right before the scream has time to filter through. Sweating and shaking, he puts a hand over his rapidly beating heart. Breathe. He repeated to himself, leaning forward slightly. Just breathe.

With awful experiences came the trauma. The nightly doses of reminded horror that haunt your every waking moment. Just to keep stained in your head that it'll never leave you, it's apart of your new beautiful self. It's the very flame that licks up the side of your blade and burns it to a hot whiteness.