Mirrored

Chapter 3 - Ryosuke

New Chapter!!! 🌷🌷🌷

Warning: suicide and suicidal methods are explored within this chapter. Please take care of yourselves and read what is most comfortable for you.

First chapter with male lead!!!! Who's excited? (Me😜😩)

Anyways, enjoy your reading time!!!🫶🏻🩷🫶🏻

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"Sadness is caused by intelligence. The more you understand certain things, the more you wish you didn't understand them."

- Charles Bukowski

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Humans are generally speaking, a disappointment.

There are only few people in my life I don't mind being surrounded by. Kaito, my right-hand man, my sister Minori, my mother and for the most part, my father.

And Kaya, for reasons even after two decades of trying to analyse and understand I still didn't understand why.

She was different from anyone else I have ever met. Whether that was when I had first met her when we were three years old, or when she changed into someone else completely nine years ago or now.

If I could, I would grab the three-year-old Kaya back and somehow take out her persona and insert it into the current Kaya. Three-year-old Kaya may have been annoying with her constant chatter and asking useless questions every chance she got, but she wasn't fake. She didn't have blank eyes. She never looked like she was in constant pain that can't be eased with pain killers.

She looked like Minori when she came out of that disgusting place. Except, unlike Minori who used her bitter cold exterior as a defence mechanism which made her stronger, more resilient, Kaya developed none.

None that was healthy anyway.

When she begins to disappear, her eyes empty, her ears hear nothing from the exterior world and only hear the voices in her head, she stays in that exact same spot, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for hours.

She was at a constant battle with herself all the time. And it only worsened as the years went by. Every year without Kenji, her younger brother was a reminder of a life with so much potential lost.

And I was barely there to witness it.

Kaya and Kenji were only a year apart and even to me, he was like a younger brother figure. To her, Kenji was her pillar, her confident, her best friend.

It wasn't her fault that he died, but when the person you should be able to place the blame on, aka the driver dies as well, she became the figure to blame on.

Because she was a liability that Kenji felt the need to protect. If she weren't there, Kenji would have protected himself or tried to manoeuvre himself away from the oncoming car. And all the like with the excuses you'll never know for sure. It was pathetic as it was ridiculous.

What they don't know or refuse to acknowledge was that Kenji didn't protect her out of expectation or obligation. He just did because he loved his sister. He just did because it was pure instinct to protect her instead of himself.

I would have done the exact same thing if that were the case with me and Minori. No questions asked.

However, Kenji was a male. An heir. The better option to survive. Not Kaya. A female. With no real use in our world besides marriage of convenience and as a tool to do business.

And with her father being a traitor, nothing was working in her way.

Her mother didn't understand or know how to appreciate her efforts because she couldn't forgive her for the loss of her son. Her sister Hikari, despised her for what she does.

No one, appreciated her.

No one, liked her.

No one, wanted her.

And she knew that. She was well aware of that.

That was why from nine years ago, she attempted to end her life over, and over again. Whether that was by drowning, overdosing, slitting her wrist, or mixing drugs with alcohol, she tried.

And every time I found her.

I don't know what it is with her or me, but I can sense it when something is fading.

When she was fading.

I shouldn't care. Why should I stop someone who wants to die, from dying?

And yet, I was always there when it was happening. I always found myself resuscitating her, keeping her alive. I hear myself praying that she survive. I find myself hoping for her to live. Pleading for her to survive. That I'll do anything for her to live.

There was something wrong with her existence and there was something concerningly wrong with my conscious.

Even as I walk away from the now cleaned up scene, I hear her scream 'Stop!' and that does something within me. My hands clench and chaos ensues my mind.

She was still suffering, losing a piece of herself day by day. But she stopped trying to die two years ago. Two years ago when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. When her sister was deemed to be of great talent academically.

But that didn't mean she stopped thinking about dying and how to die. You can see it in the way she looks at certain things. When she stares too hard at oceans, lakes, ropes, medications, sharps, chemicals, drugs, guns, weaponry.

Her current circumstance was preventing her from acting out on her urge for now, but that only ever lasts so long. Her mother was dying. She may not know it, but her mother transitioned from stage 3 to stage 4, meaning her cancer was no longer curable. Only treatable. Her sister was to graduate soon and was receiving offers from university and college everywhere. Many with scholarships.

Once her mother dies and her sister graduates, the reason she is here would be gone and the urge to end it all will flow through her with more intensity than ever before.

Five weeks. I had five weeks until her sister graduates. Perhaps a few months until her mother dies.

I told her I'll watch her disappear but that was only when worse comes to worse. I wasn't going to let her die alone. But I have no real intention of witnessing it happen.

I don't know what it is with her, or what the hell is wrong with my own mind, but I will prevent it from happening. I will stop the course of her actions that appears to have already been laid out in front of her.

Something was tied to the both us and like the legend goes, once there is a loose end, all will unravel and fall.

If she goes. I go.

If she dies, so will I.