Until I found you || Renga

8|| Fiery eyes

TW: Mentions of emotional and verbal abuse

3rd Person Pov:

"O-okay I'll try." Reki clears his throat and pulls out of their embrace.

He sets his hands shakily on his lap and Langa places one of his hands on top of Reki's knee. 

"I want to know, b-but if it's causing you so much pain, you don't have to Reki." he defends.

"No, I have to tell you. It's just going to take me a second.." he explains. 

"Okay." Langa mumbles, "take your time.."

Reki nods and scoots back a bit to take a long stalled breath before exhaling through his nose and letting the oxygen flow throughout his body and ease his anxiety.

He's finally going to tell somebody else. The only others who knew were Kojiro, Kaoru, Hiromi, and Miya, but that was only because Leiko was friends with all of them as well at one point.

Langa is the first person he tells what happened. 

His story...

"Um, there was this girl named Leiko that I met last school year. I noticed that she always followed me around and we always showed up at the same places, but I never really talked to her until she came up to me after school one day..."

He takes a break from speaking and adjusts his sitting position uncomfortably so he's sitting with his legs criss crossed on top of each other.

"She lied to me about being my soulmate, and I was gullible enough to believe everything she said. She even said I had blue hair and now I can tell it's not even close to that..." he shakes his head in disappointment. 

"...But anyways, we got together and stayed like that for over a year until I broke up with her because she was... very toxic..."

Langa furrows his eyebrows at the thought of anyone treating Reki like that. How could someone hurt someone so delicate, someone so perfect? Why would they even want to? 

"... She always talked about how she could see colors and how I couldn't. She made me f-feel like there was something w-wrong with me..."

"I went to so many doctors appointments trying to figure out what was wrong with me, but they never could figure out what it was. And afterwards, she'd always tell me that she knew something had to be wrong with me and I must be the only person with this "rare condition"."

"She manipulated me into thinking t-that I was n-nothing and that she was the one who made me who I was— that I wasn't anyone without her— that she's the only one who wouldn't judge me for being "broken"..." 

"I ended up getting really depressed and only left my house when I skated because I felt like everyone hated me, including my own family." he wipes his teary eyes,

"S-she brought out the worst in me and I absolutely hated it. Kojiro, and Kaoru were the first to notice because Leiko would come skate with us, and they caught her gaslighting me a couple times and always asked me about it."

"But they were the ones who helped me get out of the relationship. Since they were a couple, it helped me realize how relationships are supposed to work, and the things you should and shouldn't say to your partner."

"Leiko must've started realizing that I was figuring her out because she began gaslighting and guilting me more often, which is when Kojiro and Kaoru finally stepped in."

"We were all at this skate party or whatever, one of Hiromi's friends was hosting it, and I brought Leiko with me because I accidentally told her about it and she wouldn't let me go by myself."