Yes, this is from the other topic. Please do not be offended.
Chapter one.
All he wanted was to have a hot bath.
Well, that wasn't entirely correct. All he wanted was: to finally pass the Tokyo U enterance exams, to meet with his promised girl from fifteen years ago, and to have a hot bath. But out of those three, the hot bath was the only one currently attainable.
And so, he'd made his way to the springs.
He'd noticed that there was no wall to divide the men's and women's sections, but had shrugged it off, easily ignoring the Klaxons and sirens in the fogged up portion of his mind that still paid attention to those sorts of things.
And so, through no direct fault of his own, Keitaro Urashima was forever labelled a pervert, a degenerate, a libertine wannabe playboy.
And as he tried to run away and fell onto people and into clothes and
Who were all these people who were showing up all of a sudden? Why do they only pay attention to me now? Didn't they hear me when I was tromping around in grandma's room and calling her name? he screamed he thought as walls blurred past him on both sides, suddenly giving way to blue sky and
(DEAD END)
Following the deranged portion of his mind that screamed desperately that somehow, someway, this problem could be solved rationally, Keitaro turned around, his back against the railing with nowhere to go, and explained, begging for his life, that he'd just come to visit his grandma, and that he hadn't meant for such horrible things to happen, and that
(sharp teeth what sharp teeth)
She punched him in the face, of course.
He was never able to clearly remember the next moments. There had been pain, and pain, and someone was screaming that this was a "leased apartment to women" but that didn't really matter because he couldn't hear her very well over the pain, and he opened his mouth to try to say that he'd honestly thought this was still an inn but the pain choked at his throat and he could only stammer out an interjection or two that were easily spoken over by the girls who were surrounding him.
"What's with the noise?"
The voice cut through his ears, through the pain, through his subjectivity and self-awareness and all those other bits of his consciousness, coming to a screeching halt in the part of his long-term memory Keitaro's brain had labelled IMPORTANT DO NOT BEND FOLD SPINDLE OR MUTILATE. A match was found in the storehouse in his mind in which the voices of the important people in his life were kept.
He recognized the voice instantly.
Crying tears of relief, Keitaro climbed quickly and unsteadily to his feet, not caring about the girls ready to tear a hole in his stomach lining, not caring about the towel around his pelvis that could slip off at any second, not caring about anything at all because he knew the person who this voice belonged to, he knew and loved her, and he wouldn't have been any more excited had Jesus Christ himself walked up the stairs instead.
And suddenly, he was sad, unbearably sad it should have been impossible to stand, but he was still moving, his body on autopilot and sanctuary, sanctuary, he screamed, or maybe only thought as he took step after step, finally coming close enough to catch the disgusting tobacco scent of her cigarette, but it was okay because he could reach up and grab her shoulders like a drowning man could hang tightly to a piece of floating wood in storm-tossed seas.
And he screamed happily, through sobs that overwhelmed him:
"Aunt Haruka! So good to see you!"
She smiled, and his face was suddenly unexpressive.
---
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!"
Keitaro bit his bottom lip, looking down at the cloth rug that protected the hardwood floor from the couch he sat in, slumped forwards, red-faced.
He stammered senseless things that had been already spoken , things that passed directly from his unconscious mind to his mouth, things that didn't make a difference anyway because nobody was listening. "But...my grandmother owns it..."
The girl's face turned a darker shade of red and her voice took on a strangled tone.
"This is a GIRLS DORM! We can't let a SICKO like you stay another minute! You saw us naked, grabbed our breasts..."
He tuned her out.
It really didn't matter, anyway. First impressions were what really counted, and her first impression of him was...obvious.
Not that she would listen to reason or anything, anyway.
It figured, really, that he would come to visit when she was on her period or something.
A stray fragment of her impossibly loud accusations swept through his mind like sand through a strainer, and Keitaro choked down the violent rage that threatened to make itself known. The effort left his face unbearably hot (not that anyone noticed, as red as it already was), and, as with all the other times he had suppressed his anger, Keitaro was left with nothing but a vague feeling of acceptance.
That passed, too, and Keitaro was again left with tears threatening to spill out of his eyes.
To pass the Toyko U entrance exams, Keitaro Urashima had resigned himself to logicality, the logicality that ruled over all facets of his studying, from the equations of sinusoidal waves to an object's resistance to an electrical current.
But then
But then, after everything had become so clear, so understandable, he had looked to his goals, and there, as he had sat at his desk in his room, a textbook in front of him, a portion of him had died.
Because suddenly he could see it
It was there, watching him around the corner of every building, that thing that couldn't exist, shouldn't exist, waiting for him to take his guard down to forget to four times tap tap tap tap against the doorframe of any building and he knew he was fighting a losing battle because the fact was
He couldn't very well go on forever, could he?
No, he would mess up, sooner or later, and then it would be there and it would eat him up, devour him and then reach out an arm as thick as a tree to grab anyone who was with him and then it would devour them too and then it would laugh and laugh and laugh and la
He isolated himself.
Even if he was doomed, he'd be damned if he was going to end up with the blood of anyone else's on his hands,
(dead hands torn at the wrists)
and he'd be damned if he didn't do something to prevent the horrible sounds of the gnashing of teeth and the screams of friends that dominated his dreams.
So sorry promise girl ran through his head for the millionth time as the stared at the fingers he knew held doom back.
Chapter one.
All he wanted was to have a hot bath.
Well, that wasn't entirely correct. All he wanted was: to finally pass the Tokyo U enterance exams, to meet with his promised girl from fifteen years ago, and to have a hot bath. But out of those three, the hot bath was the only one currently attainable.
And so, he'd made his way to the springs.
He'd noticed that there was no wall to divide the men's and women's sections, but had shrugged it off, easily ignoring the Klaxons and sirens in the fogged up portion of his mind that still paid attention to those sorts of things.
And so, through no direct fault of his own, Keitaro Urashima was forever labelled a pervert, a degenerate, a libertine wannabe playboy.
And as he tried to run away and fell onto people and into clothes and
Who were all these people who were showing up all of a sudden? Why do they only pay attention to me now? Didn't they hear me when I was tromping around in grandma's room and calling her name? he screamed he thought as walls blurred past him on both sides, suddenly giving way to blue sky and
(DEAD END)
Following the deranged portion of his mind that screamed desperately that somehow, someway, this problem could be solved rationally, Keitaro turned around, his back against the railing with nowhere to go, and explained, begging for his life, that he'd just come to visit his grandma, and that he hadn't meant for such horrible things to happen, and that
(sharp teeth what sharp teeth)
She punched him in the face, of course.
He was never able to clearly remember the next moments. There had been pain, and pain, and someone was screaming that this was a "leased apartment to women" but that didn't really matter because he couldn't hear her very well over the pain, and he opened his mouth to try to say that he'd honestly thought this was still an inn but the pain choked at his throat and he could only stammer out an interjection or two that were easily spoken over by the girls who were surrounding him.
"What's with the noise?"
The voice cut through his ears, through the pain, through his subjectivity and self-awareness and all those other bits of his consciousness, coming to a screeching halt in the part of his long-term memory Keitaro's brain had labelled IMPORTANT DO NOT BEND FOLD SPINDLE OR MUTILATE. A match was found in the storehouse in his mind in which the voices of the important people in his life were kept.
He recognized the voice instantly.
Crying tears of relief, Keitaro climbed quickly and unsteadily to his feet, not caring about the girls ready to tear a hole in his stomach lining, not caring about the towel around his pelvis that could slip off at any second, not caring about anything at all because he knew the person who this voice belonged to, he knew and loved her, and he wouldn't have been any more excited had Jesus Christ himself walked up the stairs instead.
And suddenly, he was sad, unbearably sad it should have been impossible to stand, but he was still moving, his body on autopilot and sanctuary, sanctuary, he screamed, or maybe only thought as he took step after step, finally coming close enough to catch the disgusting tobacco scent of her cigarette, but it was okay because he could reach up and grab her shoulders like a drowning man could hang tightly to a piece of floating wood in storm-tossed seas.
And he screamed happily, through sobs that overwhelmed him:
"Aunt Haruka! So good to see you!"
She smiled, and his face was suddenly unexpressive.
---
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!"
Keitaro bit his bottom lip, looking down at the cloth rug that protected the hardwood floor from the couch he sat in, slumped forwards, red-faced.
He stammered senseless things that had been already spoken , things that passed directly from his unconscious mind to his mouth, things that didn't make a difference anyway because nobody was listening. "But...my grandmother owns it..."
The girl's face turned a darker shade of red and her voice took on a strangled tone.
"This is a GIRLS DORM! We can't let a SICKO like you stay another minute! You saw us naked, grabbed our breasts..."
He tuned her out.
It really didn't matter, anyway. First impressions were what really counted, and her first impression of him was...obvious.
Not that she would listen to reason or anything, anyway.
It figured, really, that he would come to visit when she was on her period or something.
A stray fragment of her impossibly loud accusations swept through his mind like sand through a strainer, and Keitaro choked down the violent rage that threatened to make itself known. The effort left his face unbearably hot (not that anyone noticed, as red as it already was), and, as with all the other times he had suppressed his anger, Keitaro was left with nothing but a vague feeling of acceptance.
That passed, too, and Keitaro was again left with tears threatening to spill out of his eyes.
To pass the Toyko U entrance exams, Keitaro Urashima had resigned himself to logicality, the logicality that ruled over all facets of his studying, from the equations of sinusoidal waves to an object's resistance to an electrical current.
But then
But then, after everything had become so clear, so understandable, he had looked to his goals, and there, as he had sat at his desk in his room, a textbook in front of him, a portion of him had died.
Because suddenly he could see it
It was there, watching him around the corner of every building, that thing that couldn't exist, shouldn't exist, waiting for him to take his guard down to forget to four times tap tap tap tap against the doorframe of any building and he knew he was fighting a losing battle because the fact was
He couldn't very well go on forever, could he?
No, he would mess up, sooner or later, and then it would be there and it would eat him up, devour him and then reach out an arm as thick as a tree to grab anyone who was with him and then it would devour them too and then it would laugh and laugh and laugh and la
He isolated himself.
Even if he was doomed, he'd be damned if he was going to end up with the blood of anyone else's on his hands,
(dead hands torn at the wrists)
and he'd be damned if he didn't do something to prevent the horrible sounds of the gnashing of teeth and the screams of friends that dominated his dreams.
So sorry promise girl ran through his head for the millionth time as the stared at the fingers he knew held doom back.
