Inai Ni Yami ((Within Darkness)) {{FINISHED}}

Chapter 38 ((Rio))

Chapter 38

The white world is fading. 

I don’t really like that, since being inside here I’ve learned a few things. For one, there is no time here. In fact, a just a few “minutes” earlier, I was watching my old self walk through countless stairs, trying to find a way out. That was pretty funny, considering the fact that from my view point I can clearly see an exit that I’d never seen before, and that the me there hasn’t acknowledged. So funny…

Then there’s me again! Fighting with the other Rio. Maybe I should give him the upper hand, just to make the transition to current time more easily. Or maybe not. I don’t know anymore, since nothing really makes sense here. It’s not supposed to, as Rikka explained to me what felt like “days” ago, but could’ve really been “hours” or “minutes” ago. Whatever it is.  

Then I see it again. The slight fade in the structure of the world around us, rolling in waves that act like pulsations as the white quality of the world faded into a grey, only to return. I turn to Rikka, close to asking her if she knows what’s going on, but her eyes are closed, her body resting in a state too tense to be comfortable. Must mean she’s communicating with someone outside the white world. She always gets like that when she tries to communicate with Takeyama or Daisuke.

Even so, lately, no one’s been responding. We’re alone here. Me, because my mind just loves to randomly come in and shut itself off in the real world, and Rikka because she knows she can’t leave me alone. I don’t even know why I shut down at Daisuke’s funeral. It was too sudden for me, but when I came to, Rikka was here and I didn’t feel so bad. 

I do feel guilty though. 

Rikka could’ve gone back with the guys, alerted them of what happened to me so at least that way they could know and not have to worry as much, but she dragged herself down with me. I know ShiroTech has us, too. I’ve woken up about two or three times to find myself in this weird empty room with a bunch of wires plugged into me. Rikka was there too, but she’d been “asleep.” So I’d fallen back to sleep with her, though I do regret that now. 

I’m kind of regretting a lot of things, actually. Having ever followed Eve and Sora. Letting them take me into their world and the sanctuary. What good have I done for them? Other than screw over a good few plans, I bet. Like the funeral plan. I don’t quite know what the point of it was, but I’m sure it got messed up thanks to mine and Rikka’s disappearance.

There’s also the other Rio. Had I not left the house and stayed with “dad,” the other Rio would probably still be in ShiroTech, slaving away with the rest of the Kagami’s that hadn’t left during Eve and Takeyama’s group’s little escape. But no, I left, he became “Rio Shiroi” and started the stupid hunt for us. And the sanctuary. God, this is all so crazy. 

The war, the selfish Kurai’s, the weak Dorei’s and the Kagami’s, all in between it. Life in the Upper World must be much better, seeing as there is only “Human” and nothing else. And, really, how must it feel to be human? No powers to drain your life; no eternal life to sentence you into slavery; no mechanical face to play a man’s fool. It must be real nice…

Something crashes from behind me, shaking the foundations of the white world. I gasp, falling back on my ass, and some more crashes follow the first. All around us, what looks to the a ceiling on the white world is falling, cracking into bits and cascading on us. I turn my eyes to the other me’s off to the distance but they’re gone, they’re “time” still safe from the collapsing of the world. What more, my hands fading, just as the “ceiling walls” had been doing earlier. All around, my body is pulsating, fading in some areas, then in others. 

Rikka too, but she’s so deep in concentration she doesn’t even notice it. I should wake her up. I need to wake her up. I’m trapped here, and she should be able to wake me up if she wakes up on the other side of the white world, in Reality, right? Yes. But wait, if I wake her up, she’ll wake up in the white world. So I’m trapped. I’m forever trapped… 

“Rikka?!” She’s gone. Her body is completely gone, but the structures around me are still breaking. The white world is continuing to die, all around me. And I’m all alone. 

“And so here we lie, 

On the floor and ready to die,” I sing the words slowly, the soft notes barely registered because of the falling scenery all around me. And that’s the weird thing. The white world… It’s not white anymore. It looks, strangely enough, like the castle. The Dorei castle. 

Not all is lost, but for us it had all turned to rust. 

I hope to see that one day, 

We’ll be what we never could say.

And that when these scarlet eyes of mine reopen, 

I hope that all your sin’s have been forgiven,

For my own life and lies, 

Have been laid out before my own eyes.

And what I see,

Does not p–please me.” I choke, realizing how true the words are. I’m such a wuss. I have nothing. I am nothing. Really, what was Daisuke Shiroi’s intention when he recreated the real Rio Shiroi and made two of him? Really, what was going on in that oh–so–brilliant mind of his?!

“Goodbye, farewell.

It is in our hopes, that the afterlife treats you well. 

We live in an Abyss, where the ground just below us can be hell.

But up above, we hope to see,

That you will join those who have left before me.”

That’s it. The Upper World. That’s where I want to be. That’s where we should all be. With the humans, where all is good. Where all is peace. 

“Rio, open your eyes.”