Servamp: Betrayal and Forgiveness

Chapter 21

Mahiru could feel the demons inside of him prickling under his skin and waiting to be released, those voices that everyone had from time to time, those thoughts that reminded him how bloodily-stained his hands were and no matter how he washed them, they can never be removed.

He can barely breathe through it as there was so much input and the world was both so noisy yet so quiet, being reduced to mere static in his ears but it overwhelmed his senses at the same time.

He continued to run from that building as if his life depended on it and he didn't care to check if Sleepy Ash was behind him; if he was, then he would have noticed (but he would have panicked even more).

Mahiru hasn't hit the numbness part yet; the moment where he starts to float above the ocean (or sink, really) and his senses become separated from his body, but he's damn sure that he'll reach that stage soon.

Anxiety had already managed to trip and pull him down further that hole, faster than ever before and faster than his senses, thoughts, mind and body can comprehend, and he's still falling.

There was heaviness inside of him; A heaviness so immense that anyone else might fold and give in to the trajectorial decay.

But he was determined to fight his way out of this and he quickened his running pace towards the C3; he won't let anxiety consume him into the shadows just yet in front of everybody.

For once, Shirota Mahiru is determined. He doesn't really know why. Maybe it's some type of twisted curiosity. So far, he's survived every bad day of his life. Maybe he's just hoping and searching for the one that he doesn't.

Sometime in the distant past, a comet called Shoemaker-Levy 9 flew too close to Jupiter during its orbit around the sun. For years, the gravitational pull of the planet forced the comet into a drawn-out game of cat and mouse. Orbit after orbit brought Shoemaker-Levy 9 tumbling ever closer to its fate.

An inescapable spiral with an inevitable ending.

In 1994, Shoemaker-Levy 9 slammed into Jupiter with a series of explosions that lit up telescopes across the globe.

Shirota Mahiru was a comet, and his orbit was failing. He was in a corkscrew. He'd dance away from destruction just long enough to fear it and then he'd collapse right back in, a never ending cycle.

His Jupiter had always been waiting.

Now, don't mistake him for a science genius or anything, but he was sure that Izuna had mentioned about Shoemaker-Levy 9 once when she was in her 'science-freak' mode and he felt pretty interested on that day to listen to her so that was why he knew about Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Huh. He should listen to her nonsensical talks more from now on because he might actually learn interesting things and conversation-starters, though he doubted people would want to listen to a guy talking about meteors while in a coffee shop.

He bumps into the side of a pole and hisses at the pain it gives, but in return, he manages to ground himself a little with the pain and the sensation of the pole.

He huffed and continued to sprint towards the secret exit, purely running on adrenaline and his mind was in a state of blank so he trusted his feet and muscle memory to not get him lost.

Mahiru looked back on the scene that just happened five minutes ago and for some reason, guilt bubbled up from deep within him.

Wasn't he too rejecting towards Sleepy Ash? Shouldn't he had let him say a few more words, apart from 'I'm sorry' (and even that two words broke his heart into a million pieces) ?