A/N: When words are in italics like: "Abcd." it means that whoever is speaking is doing so in another language other than Japanese for this chapter (rule will change to languages other than English once we get into camp and a note will be placed at the top of the chapter when that change occurs). This rule only counts for speaking, thoughts are still in italics like always.
Dazai POV
Leaving a conflicted Chuuya behind at the front of the convenience store, I wandered around, finding my way to the hair products aisle near the middle of the store. The last time that I was here, I was fourteen and on my way back to the library before heading down to the broker's office to discuss the passport. Back then I bought the cheapest box of brown dye that I could find that also came with bleach. I'd been a kid trying to save money for the prince of the forged passport.
Now...
That boy, someone that was already so different from the teen that had existed only months before everything fell apart, the boy didn't quite exist either.
Scanning the shelves, I looked for a good box of black dye, one that wouldn't wash out by the end of the week or bleed horribly anytime that the hair gets wet. My eyes land on a decent American brand dye sitting on the top shelf, when I reach for it, I'm mildly surprised to find that I can reach the box easily, something I hadn't been able to do before. Back then, I had to stand on top of the bottom shelf to reach the top, just barely able to grab it even then. Grabbing the box, I swipe the box of brown dye next to it as well for later.
Walking away, I grab one of the shopping baskets sitting at the end of the aisle, throwing the boxes of dye into it as I made my way over to the medical supplies aisle just a few rows down. There were your normal supplies on the shelves, boxes of band aids, antibacterial wipes, and boxes with rolls of bandages in them.
Positioning the basket beneath the middle most shelf, I reached my arm back behind the boxes and harshly jerked them into the basket in one smooth motion. When I turned to the side, there was a brown haired girl staring at me from the end of the aisle, apparently having just watched the little scene. I only shrugged at the teen, brushing past her on my way out of the medical aisle.
The art section wasn't far away from there, the store being as small as it was. The left half of the aisle was art supplies while the right was what was left of the school supplies that hadn't been bought just yet. I lazily grabbed one of the smaller sketch books, one a little shorter, wider, and thicker than the average paperback, holding onto it as I snatched some pens, pencils and erasers from either side of the aisle.
Everything that I'd just picked up was the same as what I'd bought at fourteen just after leaving camp. All of the things that I'd bought then had either been used up or lost to time. The only thing that remained anything close to intact was the over filled sketchbook that I'd gotten before.
With everything piled together, I shoved the bandages aside, tucking the supplies beneath it and burying it to where it couldn't be seen.
Having everything that I needed for the rest of my little summer trip, I went off to find the smaller teen that I'd come all the from Japan with, wandering off towards the clothes section where I thought that he'd be. I made my way to the teen's section, scanning the clothing racks until I caught the glimpse of fiery red hair that I'd been looking for.
The other boy seemed to have already picked out a pair of dark gray jeans, folding them over his arm while he flipped between three or so shirts that he looked like he was trying to decide between. Eventually I saw the teen fold two over his arm with the pants, putting the other back onto the rack with a seemingly satisfied nod of the older boy's head.
Taring my eyes away from the other teen, I realized that I'd probably been staring for a few moments too long. Maybe more than a few. Instead of going to talk to the other teen like a mute part of me seemed to want to, I walked over to the jackets that were close by.
The jacket that the Port Mafia boss had given me after he sought me out on that bridge when I was fourteen was fine for dealing with mafia affairs back in Yokohama, but it wouldn't work out all that well for the upcoming sword combat that I had coming, not when I wasn't used to moving I that way with it. Whenever I practiced with Kouyou, she always had me take off the jacket, worried that either she or I would fall over the thing and fall onto the other's blade. The blue jacket that I had before the mafia had seen better days as well, claw marks ripping through the cotton from a small encounter that I had on my way to the airport before leaving for Japan.
Standing in the clothing section, I mindlessly followed through the racks nearly knocking half of the pieces of clothing off of their hangers as I did. Everything here was things that I'm sure that I would've liked had I continued to live the somewhat normal life of a teenage demigod. Everything was colorful, decorated with lively prints that wouldn't make it a day in the life that I'd chosen to live. We wear dark colors in the mafia to blend into the scenery around us since most of our operations happened in the dead of night.
One thing did manage to catch my eye though.
There was a black jacket hanging from a hanger in the clearance section of the clothing department in the store. When I picked it up I saw that it was a black zip up hoodie, bleached orange from the way that bleach reacts with dark clothing. The bleach made up a skeleton print, showing off the bones that make up the ribs and arms. The jacket was on sale, a leftover from last Halloween. It was strange, not something that the old me would've worn at all, but I liked it.
Maybe I liked it because it was nothing like what I would've worn before.
Being here, back in New York, I felt like I was trying to fit back into a skin that I just couldn't seem to get to fit anymore. Like walking on the ashes of a bridge that I'd Bruner a long time ago and expecting it to still be just as solid as it was before I ever found it.
And I knew that it would only get worse from here.
Soon, I would have to make my way to camp, back to the people that knew the person that I used to be the best out of everyone that I've known. They'll expect that boy to exist as he did before.
But Percy Jackson died in a house fire, the ashes of the soul that used to exist scattered in the summer winds.
On an impulse, I grabbed the jacket, throwing the thing into the basket on top of everything else that I'd gotten before making my way over to self check out.
—-
Chuuya POV
Catching sight of Dazai walking over to the self checkout area, I noticed something that I truly didn't want, he was right. All of the other customers in the shopping center had been attempting to shoot me unnoticeable glances whenever we crossed paths, some of the less covert ones were just outright staring at the pair of us. The feeling of being watched never really seemed to leave me since the moment that we stepped in here.
Though I knew this would happen.
Ever since our first joint mission together, Dazai has always been someone that I've known to be calculative, always a few steps ahead of everyone else. He knew that this would happen, just as I knew the moment that he said it, that he was right.
The other teen's predictions have never been wrong.
Sighing in defeat, I turned back to the problem at hand, leaving the ignmia that I called my partner to be dealt with another day. Back with the Sheep, I wore whatever I could find and easily steal from cheap stores around the city. It was never really a preference of if I liked the clothing, but what piece of clothing is worn out enough that I need a new one. The only thing that we really had that was ours were the blue bands that all of the Sheep wore, though bracelets themselves were stolen as well, the little horn symbols on them were embroidered by one of the girls with us at the time.
Ever since joining the mafia, I had choices on what to wear and when, ones that didn't revolve around stealing and theft since I now had the money to buy the clothes myself whenever I wanted them. But even now, Ane-san tends to help me pick out clothes from the different stores, knowing that I would get lost in whatever fancy retail store that she sent me to if I went on my own. Not that I complained, it was nice having someone that would actually put in the effort to try and make you look good.
In the end, I settled on a plain black shirt, a black flannel that I could wear as a shirt or light jacket, and some type of American band shirt that I'd never really heard of before back home. The choices were random and spontaneous, me grabbing whatever I saw that I thought looked nice and appropriate for a normal teen, but I felt a warm wave of satisfaction roll straight through me at the fact that this choice was mine, no one else had to help me make it.
It felt a little like control.
I followed the younger teen's example and made my way to the self checkout area once everything that I didn't want was back in their spots on the racks. Paying with the cash that Dazai gave me before, I couldn't help but remember the way that the other teen got it from that man. My eyes rolled at the memory, but there was a small smile there too. After all, it wasn't every day that you got to see the infamous Demon Prodigy almost fall, even if it was fake.
Heading to the front of the store, I found the bandaged teen himself sitting near the exit on one of the benches that he'd indicated earlier. When I got there, the other teen had his foreign book opened, reading it as he twirled around a blue ballpoint pen that I'd seen him messing with during the more boring meetings. If it wasn't for all of the bandages he would have looked like just another college freshman despite the fact that he's sixteen.
But he did look sixteen even with all of the bandages. That in a way reminded me of the first time that I'd seen the other boy. The taller teen had been reading a book that day in Suribachi city too. I remember standing there for a moment watching the other boy as he became impossibly more animated by the moment while reading his, but then he'd taken that call. It was like when an artist has the perfect picture and then they add a bold stroke of paint that ruins the whole painting all together.
Sitting down next to the other boy, I lazily looked down at the other teens bags before adding my own to the mix while I waited for him to finish the paragraph. While doing so, I saw what was in one of the bags, more annoyed than surprised by most of its contents, but pleasantly intrigued by what else was in there.
The bag was about half way filled with a seemingly endless amount of bandages, enough to last the other teen a good while if he plays his cards right with how he uses them. The other thing that was in there was a jacket that I'd never seen before, one other than the one that Mori gave him when he joined the mafia.
Reaching for the piece of clothing, I looked at the other boy to see if he was going to stop me or not from doing so, but all the other teen did was slowly snap his book closed. Taking this as a sigh of permission, I snagged onto the piece of clothing, pulling the jacket out from the plastic shopping bag.
The jacket that the other teen had chosen had a bleach design that showed the rib change and the bones that matched up with those found in the arms. Looking down at it, the design wasn't really something that I ever would have expected for Dazai to buy, let alone plan on wearing. It had too much decoration, too much taste for a boy that normally only can be found wearing a plain black suit day in and day out.
And yet in a way, it suited him.
The jacket was all dark colors with the illusion of death, something the other teen so longs for, presiding over it. It made me wonder what the younger teen would have dressed and acted like if he'd never found his way to the mafia or to the streets.
A small part of me, the part of me that always wanted to be angry at the other teen, started to get irritated by the line of thoughts, the ones that almost made the other teen seem human to me. But that senseless anger flaring up now when the teen hadn't even done anything to me for the past few months, that anger that lingered there because he took my home away from me, I knew that I needed to cast it aside, even if only for a week.
Dazai will always be a demon walking around in human skin to me, but if his family is anything like him, I just might need a monster on my side. What happens after this week is up for future me to decide.
"It suits you," I decided, voicing my opinion out loud as I watched the other teen taking up the piece of clothing in question and placing it to the side.
The younger teen only hummus lightly in response, seemingly more concerned with standing up than giving me a proper response. For some reason that hurts. It hurts that the other boy will barely even glance at me, that he all but refuses to argue with me like we always do. It hurts that he called me by name earlier instead of one of those nicknames of his that I despise. It all just hurts, I don't know why but it does, and I can't seem to shake it.
Following the other teen out of the store, I grab my shopping bags and duffle from the ground, tiredness setting in at the knowledge that I'll have to deal with people just like Dazai soon. We stop at another bench in front of the store, setting the bags down on top of it once we're there, Dazai pulling his book bag off while he was at it.
I watch the way that the boy unzips the front pocket of his book bag in one quick jerky motion. The teen reaches for one of his bags, pulling out a pack of pens before ripping them open violently and packing them into the all but empty front pocket. The only other thing in there was the taller teen's forged passport with a fake name on it as well. In no time, Dazai has done the same thing with a pack of erasers and a pack of mechanical pencils, each time more violent than the last.
The teen zipped up the pocket with the same aggression that he opened it before moving to the main compartment of the bag. When he opened up the bag I saw that there wasn't much in there, just some neatly folded clothes and a sketch book of all things. Looking down at the scene, I wasn't sure what surprised me more, that the clothes were neatly folded in the bag, one of the shirts was orange-the brightest color I've ever seen near the other teen-that there was an old sketchbook in there, or that the taller boy added another sketchbook in front of the old one.
The other boy's bag, as it turned out, was just big enough to fit my bags and what was left of the bag that Dazai didn't completely unpack and the one he'd barely touched. The other boy slid the book bag back on once the bag was closed, shifting and fighting with it once it was on. He looked something like a kid on the first day of school not yet used to the new weight on his back after a long time of not having it.
"Where to now?" I asked, looking at the other teen as I swung my duffel bag onto my shoulder as I did.
The bandaged boy didn't even spare me a glance as he before he answered me very montonely, bluntly, "A nearby hotel."
I felt my face fall into a numb expression as shock took over my body. I heard a small noise of surprise fall into the air and realized that it came from me. Fully turning to the other boy I saw the bandage waste walking beginning to walk away further down the street.
Taking off after the boy and falling back into step with the taller teen, the confusion didn't fade. "I thought you were here on family business," I started, understanding what the other teen was saying, but not why he was saying it, "why not just go there?"
Pushing forward so that I could see the other teen's face better, Dazai's expression had turned complicated, not like someone that was confused about the situation itself, but the proper way to explain it to someone else. It was an expression that I often saw in the other boy during meetings and while doing paperwork for mafiosos other than the mafia boss himself. It was the most emotion that I've seen the other boy show since that day in the spare room.
"It's almost one in the morning, Chuuya," the taller boy berates, reminding me of the customs of normal people that wouldn't take too kindly to being woken up at such an hour for a late night visit by a pair of teens. "Besides, even if it wasn't, the security around the place is... strange to say the least," the teen decides, seemingly purposefully choosing vague wording that wouldn't give away the true nature of the situation. "So," the teen started, his voice stern as if he was talking to a miss behaving child, "if you don't want to die tonight, I suggest that we wait till morning."
Security is strange... dying... just where the fuck are we going tomorrow?
I glanced at the other teen, wondering at the secrets that the other was hiding. Wondering just what secrets he has that are stone enough to potentially kill someone with an ability like mine.
What do they have that is strong enough to fight against gravity?
But in all of the things that the other teen said and in all those thoughts of mine that followed, one thing stuck out to even more than the idea of someone defying the laws of gravity:
He's talking like someone that plans to live to the next day.
A small rush filled my body at the idea that the person that I've called my partner for months now might just want to live, even if only for a little while.
"So you don't want to die tonight?" I asked, feeling a small rush of deja vu.
It felt like when we were fighting Randou together in the shipping yard and Dazai had said that he wanted to give living a try. When he promised that he would try.
But the other teen just sighs at my tactless question.
"This isn't like when we were fifteen," the boy said, immediately shooting down the idea that he seemed to know had formed in my mind. The other teen wasn't one to give out false hope to others or to accept it from others. "I'm not striving for a reason to live," the boy explained, walking lazily alongside me as if he wasn't talking about giving up on life altogether.
A part of me, the foolish part of me that had grown attached to the bandaged boy that could read the way that I fought as well as I could read his schemes. The part of me that could look past the way that I got here, even if only a little bit, to continue this dangerous duet of ours. That was the part of me that crumpled slightly at the other's words, at my partner's words.
Back then, during our first all out fight together, the teen had looked like a little kid as he stared gleefully at all the death around him, at the idea of studying it up close. When I saw him again after a month there had only been a portion of that boy left, a portion that faded with each day into the ghost before me spewing such viscous nonsense as if he was talking about what we should do for breakfast.
What happened? What went wrong between the time that we met and our reunion? What's been going wrong sense?
Those were the questions that I should've asked him when I first noticed the change but never did.
"I'll live through this trip," the teen seemed to decide, or maybe he'd already decided but was just now choosing to voice his opinion out loud, "and get you home safely, that's a promise that I'll make you. And then, when the boss's back is turned, I'll die," the teen proclaimed calmly, almost hopefully. "Hades," the boy said, a small surge of energy suddenly filling the younger teen's voice, "if I do it fast enough I won't even have to do the extra work that I promised the bastard that I'd do."
The boy has a slight jump in his step as he talks at the end, as if he couldn't wait for this to be over with so he could finally have the one thing that he'd been denied for so long now. He was speaking like someone happy to have finally given up, even if there was only the slightest hint of joy in the other's tone.
Maybe a part of me didn't want to know what's been happening to make the younger teen this way.
—-
Dazai POV
There is a somewhat rundown hotel that you pass on your way going to Central Park, but never really seem to notice despite its strange shabby exterior that should make it stand out even more than some of the other city sights. The building is small, only about two or three floors, but more narrow than the buildings around it as if it's trying to squeeze into space that it's not supposed to be occupied. It's always a little hazy when you look at it, a fog seeming to permanently cling to the building itself. Its a hotel hard for mortals to look at when passing by it, even harder for them to remember that it ever existed at all even an hour later as the mist worked at their memories.
This was the place that I dragged Chuuya to.
Taking the handle gingerly, I pulled the door open letting the pair of us despite the look of displeasure filling the other teen's face. Chibi seemed to have grown used to living nicely these past few months, and didn't seem to understand why people with our kind of money would voluntarily stay in a place like this when we could afford a nicer room. I didn't mind the look, the other teen wasn't meant to understand just yet.
When we walked inside, the smell of the city seemed to fade as the smell of nature began to spread through the air. The desk clerk, a tall man with the tanned skin of a farmer, stared at us with a strange look in the man's eyes. The clerk seemed to be slightly impressed that we had made it past the mist, most likely mistaking us for mortals born with the sight instead of the strange beings that we truly were.
The man sighed heavily, a tired look talking over his face before he seemed to be able to stop it. "We don't cater to those under the age of eighteen without a parent present," the clerk proclaimed in English, making a shooing motion with one hand while writing with the other.
Chuuya glanced between me and the man, only seeming to understand some of what the clerk had said to us, but seeming to understand and correctly interpret the unwelcome tone that the man had used. I let the other teen's confusion and irritation stay, not trying to placate it as I stepped up to the desk, my hands still resting in my pockets.
"Will this change your mind?" I asked, lazily leaning on the clerk's desk as I pulled a hand out of my pocket in a regal way that made it seem like that was the only natural thing to do.
The clerk's eyes went wide at my sudden change to Ancient Greek, a language that he obviously didn't suspect that I spoke. They grew wider still when he finally looked at the object that I had pulled out of my pocket before, watching with me as the golden coin rolled gently across my fingers. A smile soon crept across the clerk's face, a soft one of pleasant glee so unlike the smiles of the mafia that it didn't seem real for a moment.
"Yes," the man seems to decide, switching to Ancient Greek just as I had moments before, "yes that does."
I smiled at the desk clerk in a purposefully non threatening manner, sliding the coin across the counter to the man when he motioned for it. The golden Drachma was soon in the other man's hand as he brought it up to his face, seemingly inspecting its authenticity.
"How many rooms?" The hotel clerk asked, switching back to English while putting the coin into the cash register next to him.
I watched the way that the clerk glanced behind me, surely looking at the short and confused red headed boy behind me that I was sure was staring at the pair of us like we'd sprouted two heads.
"Just the one," I inform the clerk, wanting to preserve the small number of the golden coins that I have left for as long as possible.
The older teen in the room might not be overly thrilled about staying in the same room as me, but there should be two beds so he should be fine. When we get to camp, there'll be multiple bunk beds between us to pacify the shorter teen.
The man nods, understanding as well as he could without knowing too much about our situation. I watch as the clerk reaches behind him, pulling a key off of one of the many hooks holding them. He started to hold his hand out to me, but stopped halfway there.
"Where's your third?" He asks, glancing around the small lobby as if he was expecting for another person to appear out of the air somewhere and complete the puzzle going on in his mind.
I laugh in a way that would seem good natured to anyone that didn't know me, but would sound unmistakably fake to those that did, hoping to distract the clerk from reading too much into the situation. Into the two boys still dressed too nicely for how demigods normally do, into one teen that didn't seem to understand more than a few words that were being passed between the clerk and I. To keep the demigod that is obviously strong enough to survive to adulthood from thinking too hard on the situation at hand. While I knew that it was a fight that we could win, killing a demigod on our first night in the states was not the ideal way to start the week.
"We're not on a quest," I correct the man easily as if it was the most natural thing in the world for it to be just the pair of us, "just from out of town. We're on our way to camp," I lie shamelessly to the man before me. "We had some summer plans before this," I falsely explained, the fake smile plastered on my face never slipping as I did.
The man makes a small noise of undes before nodding his head and holding out the room key to me the rest of the way, actually letting me grab it this time. The clerk pointed us down the hall to the nearest set of stairs to our room from the lobby. Probably the only set of stairs if the man were to be honest.
Chuuya truly is looking at me like I've grown another head when I turn to face him, shooting me a dangerous glare when I quirk my lips mockingly at the other's expression. I led him down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor of the hotel, glancing from side to side for the room that shared a number with that on our key.
A quietness ruled over the hall as we walked down it, the only sound filling our ears was the sifting tapping of our shoes on the cheap hotel carpet giving the illusion that we were the only ones here. We walked inside our room for the night, closing the door tightly behind us once inside. No sooner than the door had closed did the other teen turn to look at me, an expression between anger and confusion shaping his features.
I wave my hand lazily, encouraging the other teen to speak like he so clearly wanted to.
"What," the other teen started, stopping himself after the first word as if to gather the exact words that he wanted to say but coming up empty in the end. "What the fuck just happened?"
I knew that Chuuya could tell that the desk clerk and I had switched between languages during the conversation. I was also sure that the older teen knew that the U.S. didn't use golden coins like the one that he had seen, certainly not ones worth enough to pay for a hotel room.
"I got us a hotel room," I deadpanned to the other boy.
I watched the way that Chuuya's face scrunched up in frustration, looking moments from punching me or locking me out of the room. As if deciding that he wouldn't get anything else out of me, a fair assumption on his part, the ginger threw his hands up and turned dramatically towards the room in a fashion more suited for me to exhibit than for the shorter teen too.
Brushing past the other boy, I walked over to the bed, setting my book bag down on it. Pulling the ginger's things out from within the bag, I towed them lightly on the bed before swinging the bag back over my shoulder and looking back at the other teen.
When I looked back at the older boy his expression was twisted in a way that I could only describe as disgust in its purest and most raw form. I look around the room, finding nothing out of the ordinary in it. There's a bed, two nightstands, a small closet, and a door leading to an American style bathroom. There was nothing here that should incite such a response from the other teen. In the end I chose to wait the other out.
"There's only one bed," the ginger boy says, spitting the words out like they were nothing more than acid in his mouth.
Oh.
Oh.
Something twisted violently at the disgust in the other boy's voice, something that I'd been fighting off for days now but still seemed to stubbornly remain. I imagined killing that thing, that monstrous little thing in me that seemed to believe that I could still love someone like a human could, that I could still be loved by someone. I shot that piece of me in the head and left it to rot on the ground.
I looked the other boy in the eyes, seeing the older teen flinch slightly at the cold look coming from mine.
Good.
"Take it," I told him icily. "My sleep schedule is shit and I have something I need to do anyways," I explained in as little detail as I could.
With that I walked away from the other teen, leaving him without so much as a sneaked glance in the other's direction as I walked into the bathroom, my bag still on my shoulder. Closing the door, I felt a form of grim satisfaction at the noise that it made when it snapped shut, locking tightly behind me.
—-
Chuuya POV
I watched as the door closed calmly, effectively cutting Dazai off from me and me from him, putting the pair of us each into our own little worlds where we couldn't cross into the others even if we wanted to.
The look on his face...
There were no emotions there when he looked at me. The other boy looked like he did while we were on missions when he shut himself and thought that I didn't know what he was doing. He looked like a demon in human skin. I'd seen that look more than a hundred times before, but it had never truly been directed at me, not like this anyways.
Heart heavy in a way that it hadn't been for a while now, I slid my bags of clothes onto the floor weakly, not caring where they landed. I felt my body crumple onto the bed, sliding beneath the sheets of the strange American style bed. Curling up into a ball like a small child, I felt my body shaking and blamed it on the cold. Any thoughts that I might've had, any regrets, were drowned out by the sound of the shower going sometime much later that night.
—-
Dazai POV
I ran my hands through my hair, moving it around and feeling for any dry spots until I was sure that all of it had been covered by the slippery black dye that I'd gotten earlier, but never looking in the mirror. All of my clothes were strewn across the closed toilet as I did this, leaving me in nothing but pajama shorts and all of my bandages from the neck down.
Scrubbing the dye off from my hands, I watched as the one clear water running over them blackened at my touch, running down the sink to the drain. I tried to think of anything but the image that I would see if I were to look in the mirror right now, the pair of sea green eyes with red from an infection clouding one, the sopping wet black hair, the scars poking out from beneath the bandages. I tried not to imagine it almost as much as I tried not to think about the bloodstains decorating the once clean counter.
This hotel was one of the few ones in the world that was run by demigods and surged as a safe place for demigods to come and clean up during quests. The mist hangs around the building to keep mortals away from the hotel and to make demigods just interested enough to wander in on their own. I'd found it doing just that no more than a week before leaving for Japan, but never stayed here, not trusting anyone inside to not report back to camp about where I was once they realized just who I was.
Setting a timer for an hour on the flip phone that the doctor had given me a little bit after he took me in at fourteen, I finally allowed myself to crumple to the floor, letting my legs give out from under me as they stopped being able to hold my weight a long time ago.
The look on Chuuya's face before, the dye beneath my fingernails, the reality of everything was begging to set in, crashing in on me like a tidal wave that I saw coming but ignored thinking that I still had time before it would reach me. Thinking that it would be smaller once it finally found me in the sea of my thoughts.
It was small right now, just barely enough to make it a little hard to breathe, to make the bandages decorating my skin feel just a little tighter than normal. I could tell that the true wave was still coming, but I'd just been too focused on the smaller one to see it.
I repeated the name that I'd given myself well over a year ago, over and over in my mind, hoping to find some sort of shelter in it, find some way to stop the inevitable wave from reaching me and drowning me in it.
But every time I said it, it only sounded more and more like a lie rather than the truth that I'd wanted it to become.
It chipped away at the walls that I'd been building since I joined the mafia, since I left camp, since I lived with Gabe, it chipped away at it and let some of the water in, tearing the me that been created in the past two years apart piece by piece, slowly revealing the monster that's always been there. Revealing it just enough to know of its existence, but not enough to truly see it.
The tide chipped away at the lie that I'd told myself in the market earlier, about the boy that I used to be dying in the fire. He didn't die then, just boiled into water vapor that rained down and mixed with the being that had taken its place inside the vessel that it used to call home. He laid there in wait, slowly revealing himself as the monster's heart began to thaw, making himself more and more known as time slowly crept on and the monster took him back home.
I didn't call out the boy's name, scared that if I did, any walls that I'd managed to build would turn to dust.
I ignored the incoming wave, hoping that if I ignored it like all of the other times it threatened to drown me before that the distance would somehow grow again. Pulling out the old sketchbook from my bag, I cracked it open, gingerly flipping through the pages like I had so many times before, taking in the grounding effect that it had on me.
At some point during my time with the mafia, between the doctor's experiments during that first year and everything that I'd endured before that, the mafia boss knew that nothing that he could do to me would ever be enough to hurt me, truly hurt me to where I could physically feel it, without coming too close to killing me for the boss's liking, something that he knew I saw as more of a prize than a punishment.
So he took things instead.
One of the first in a long list of things that he took was my sketchbook. I don't even remember what I did or said to set the underground doctor off that day, or if I even did anything at all other than still exist when I shouldn't have, but I haven't done it since. It wasn't long before he came to my shipping container that day and found the bag of things that had been brought to the mafia with me.
That's when he found the sketchbook, hidden away in one of my drawers.
The demon took the book, countless hours of work rested in the man's nimble hands as he walked up to me and fished the cigarette lighter out of my pocket. We watched together in a screaming silence as the flames ate away at one of the few things from the past that I had left.
Eventually he left, letting me put the flames out, but the damage had already been done by then. There wasn't a page in the thick book that the flames had been kind enough to leave untouched.
I flipped through the early pages, each of them filled with a diff ent sanction of the New York skyline or drawings of camp from memory. Pictures of Grover as I remembered him from school and him running around the fields at camp, Annabeth in the picture that she sent me in seventh grade and during the chariot race, pictures of capture the flag, and our better memories from camp. Though it wasn't long before those turned into that of the Yokohama skyline, sketches of the city from the boss's office in the mafia building.
Of Chuuya.
The alarm sounded softly as I snapped the book closed and placed it lightly on the counter near me. I turn it off quickly and place myself in front of the sink, making sure not to look up too far. Pulling lightly at the bandages, I let them fall silently to the ground, not needing to hear them hit the ground to know that they're there.
I didn't have to look in the mirror to know what I would find there if I did. I didn't need to see the damage that I've done and has been done to me over the years. I knew that there was no part of my body that existed without scars, none of them pretty. But I knew as well as anyone that they told the story of my life, no matter how ugly they were.
The shower water was warm as it ran across my skin, tainted by the extra dye bleeding from my hair. I wash at it, rinsing out my hair until the water finally begins to run clean again. I ignored the way that my skin seems to sing beneath the water, wishing to knit itself back together as it used to. I forced it not to, the same way that I forced my body to let the water soak my skin instead of staying dry beneath it.
I wasn't quite ready for the newest bout of damage to become memories just yet.
When I finally turned the water off and step out of the shower, I let my gaze fall to the mirror, sure that it would be fogged up from the steam by now.
But it wasn't.
When I looked into the mirror I felt a sick feeling rush through me, shaking me to my core as it threatened to knock me over with it.
I felt like I was looking into the eyes of a demon.
I couldn't stand the face staring back at me from the other side of the mirror. It was my face. The dye was in, the contacts long forgotten by anyone in the room. Looking into the mirror, I was Percy Jackson, son of the sea god, once more.
A living corpse of a boy that I'd somehow had convinced myself that I'd buried long ago.
Sea green eyes stared into what little was left of my soul, seeming to find my heart as unimpressive as I did.
Dripping black hair stained the picture, reminding me of just how fake the face that I now wore was. Looking at the boy mirroring all of my movements as I did them, the reality of the situation finally set in, the barrier cracking more than it ever had.
When the wave finally reached me, pulling me into its violent embrace, the voices came with the sea. There was nothing I could do to stop them this time.