worn out.

A For Apathy

It's cold out.

He doesn't really know why he decided to walk to school today. It makes his head flicker a little, turn in and out. Maybe it's because the sky is pretty―even if he's never liked orange very much. Atsu doesn't mind.

The leaves crunch under his frayed shoes - he blinks, some odd impulse to kick them up, like a child. It's early now. Atsu hasn't really slept much, it scratches his hindbrain wrong, he doesn't care much for sleep, even if Nacchan would say it's bad for him to stay up the way he does.

The gates are closer than he thought―silver and sleek, like the bullets his father keeps in a container. The special ones.

It's cold out; the wind brushes his hair over his eyes, and he's stuck for moment, staring at inky strands. His hands are freezing, limp at his hips. Atsu decided to wear a jacket over his uniform. The white is fadded against his paling skin. Hair tickled his neck with the collar of his uniform.

His wristwatch is still broken from when he found it. Three hours and twenty-seven minutes behind. It's seven-twenty-one-AM and his ears are ringing. Atsu blinks. Once, twice― his hands have gone numb by the time he makes it to the trail up to 3-E. If he was more like Nacchan, he would have started to tear up―in annoyance or frustration, he isn't sure. He doesn't cry though, he hates crying, and his father told him that real men don't weep. Even if he's seen his father break.

Maybe one day, he'll break like that, too.

Atsu blinks again―once twice three― the way up the mountain is slow and boring, it's like wading through mollases. He wonders if he'll decompose in a place like this, or if they'll bury him in the ocean instead of burning him to ash.

Once, twice.

The wind picks up, rings through his ears louder than anything―he shuts down a shiver. He isn't supposed to be weak, he's the heir―

He's fallen from his grace, but he's still the heir; under his skin and rotten bone and face so malleable he doesn't remember what it looked like when rough hands weren't shaping the edges. Atsu wishes the school would fall from grace, too. So that maybe Asano-kun would keep chasing after something he'll never have and leave Atsu to his lonesome.

It won't― it's in the top three for a reason. The system is almost flawless. People strive for attention, and those who don't care enough slios into nothing.

(If he could remember how, would he be smiling?)

The air is frozen in his mouth, once, twice. His backpack slios along the slop of his shoulder. There's a prickle in his legs by the tune he can see the beginnings of the class building. Winter, ever persistent, gnaws at his hands and toes.

(Is this what frostbite feels like? It's so.. weird. It's almost nice, really. Like the clouds―sand between his toes.)

It's cold, the sun chirps, blinding him in frosty yellow. Nacchan says that the golden light looks nice on his black eyes, she says it adds life. He does not point out how he's barely alive, and that her medication is sketchy at best, tampered with at worst.

It doesn't work very well―her medication is sloppy, but it's all he has and pops is the only one willing to sell him anything at such a cheap price. Atsu can't afford to let this offer up or he'll―

Live, he'll live, and Nacchan won't. She's going to die anyway, though, so is he, and so are his parents. Once, twice, blink. He's at the top of the summit.

The door is wooden and he can feel the cold, even inside. It's warm than it is out here―where his shoes are falling apart despite his parents having so much money―on this white-clouded morning. It reminds him of the ocean sand, dripping past his ankles, past his arms when he runs.

He doesn't, not for real. It's in his head, Nacchan says a lot of things are in his head, she's smart, even if she's only ever been to elementary school. Nacchan reads him absurdly well.

Maybe he's thinking too much into this, it doesn't help much, and he's got pressing issues to worry about, his throat is dry. The hallway inside the building is old and about as rickety as splinteted wood and popped out joints and―

Atsu isn't a complicated person, not really, but sometimes he wants something and every time it slios through the edges of his skull; slios past his teeth before his tongue can taste it. Hrs not and idiot he knows he's missing something. But, well, Atsu doesn't really care enough to find it, and he shuts down the blare. Shuts down everything just learn to be quiet and still―

(Just learn how to shut up and shut down already―)

― he aches, maybe. He closes that off, too. He's had worse, way worse. Worse like blood-tinted bile and mooten skin falling apart. He wonders, wonders a little.

Once, twice, thrice.

The doorknob to the teaches lounge looks broken, looks feeble. Atsu thinks it might break if he touches it too harshly, so he barely presses it, grips it loosely. Like a cotton swab and seafoam; twists it under his fingers until it pricks like a thorn and he nudges the door open.

(Darling boy of blue-stoned hands and unsheathed teeth he'd written on his english lesson until the paper tore and he had to rewrite the whole thing over.)

A man in black (black hair black eyes black suit black tie it's like looking at his own reflection, if he'd had his fathers hair instead of his mother's―) turns from where he's looking at a computer.

"You must be Hino Atsu?" He says, and he sounds tired.

"Yes," Atsu rasps. "you're Karasuma?"

He knows he sounds like he doesn't speak much but he's thirsty―

Atsu doesn't ask for a glass of water no matter how much he wants to. He'll bide his time―Karasuma is something new to him. They met once, maybe. Atsu only remembers it vaguely.

"Yeah. C'mon in." Karasuma grumbles. "I'll brief you for class."

A is for apathy;

Emotional bondage has left me

The cold found it's way in

Into the coffin

I'm at a funeral my dear, despite my young age

I'm at a funeral my dear, because I've lost my sweet rage

I lost it a while ago, along with my calm

And I then lost all my friends, or the one that I had qualmed;

But I didn't care, for I could not get mad

I could not be angry or snarky or sad

For I am deviod of someone who used to be there

I'm devoid of those wonderous feelings of rage and fear

And I'd miss them, somewhat, if I only could remember

For now I am cold as the frigid December

A/n:
Tarsus: ankle bone