The Hamada Brothers

I'll Be Here

I wrote this at 3 a.m. Fight me.

I stared at my ceiling. I pulled my blanket up to my nose, hoping to drive away the cold that I felt creeping up on me. It was a cold night; the heater was broken and it was still raining from this afternoon.

I really wish we didn't have to stand in the rain

I dove deeper under my covers and switched on my phone. I opened my comic app to hopefully find something boring enough to drive me to sleep. I scrolled through the 'Browse' page to look for a terrible title to read.

Soon enough I found one titled 'A Lonely Girl in a Big World'.

Seemed boring enough.

I loaded the first chapter. It started out pretty generically: parents dead, she sets off on a journey of self-discovery. The drawing wasn't too shabby so I kept reading.

Pretty sure there's gonna be a love interest in this one.

I swiped through the pages to read more. The dialogue became progressively more pathetic than the heroine actually was. It came to a point where I couldn't hold in my laughter anymore.

Maybe I should show this Tadashi.

Wait.

It completely slipped my mind that the funeral was just this afternoon.

I sighed and took a look at the time. 11.53 p.m. At least I still had time to sleep. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the sudden emptiness of what used to be our bedroom.

I woke up on the floor of a pitch dark room. Definitely a dream.

I stood up to walk around, arms extended in front of me. I wandered around aimlessly for what seemed like a few minutes when I tripped on something. There was a force that kept me from getting up.

I rolled onto my back and use all my might to prop up my back as much as I could. I could hear sudden screams and flickers of orange.

I blinked my eyes and tried to adjust them to the image before me. I heard a familiar voice cry out.

It was my own.

"Tadashi NO!" I heard my dream-self say.

"Someone's gotta help him," Tadashi said firmly before running in.

I saw my dream-self run towards the burning building, only to be blown back.

I didn't need to see this unfold again. The pain was too new to bear.

"You could've saved him," I heard another familiar voice say. I sharply turned my head to the back, to the source of the voice. There was nobody there.

"If only you'd done more, he wouldn't be dead," he said again.

Why were there so many me's in this dream?

"You're useless," he - or I? - snarled. "You couldn't even stop your brother. He would be alive if it weren't for you."

"No..." I replied to myself. "Don't say that..."

"You know it was entirely your fault. You're useless. And now your brother is dead because of you."

"Shut up!" I yelled at him, tears threatening to spill from my eyes.

"Hiro?" a soft voice broke the tension.

I turned my head to the source of the nostalgic voice. "Ta-Tadashi?"