How it started

Prologue

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To crave validation can become a form of self harm.

You start to need it like you need the air that fills your lungs. It's a constant need for people to tell you you are valid enough to even breathe the same air as them.

The minute they stop validating you is the minute your air supply stops, you start to spiral into this big black never ending hole that sucks every ounce of will you have to live until you are nothing but the exoskeleton of your own self.

⏤

KAMARI

6 YEARS AGO

I stare up at the sky, a star filled night sky with speckles of dust exclaiming it's presents. The moon in a shape of a crescent as I so stupidly try and reach for it, closing my palm around it and then opening my palm to find nothing in it.

I sigh as I stand up patting my clothes down, for any dirt or dust to fall, for lying on the rooftop of a neglected house.

I walk towards the edge of the rooftop climbing onto the edge right after, I stand upon it sticking my arms out to feel the wind in my hair to use up my 5 senses. So that I realize that even though I feel nothing but numbness,aside from the painful bruises my body possesses, that I'm still alive.

To engrossed with everything going on around me, I fail to notice the familiar black haired two different colored eyed boy.

"K-kam," he stutters "g-get down f-from there."

I turn to face him just in time to notice him take slow steps to reach for me.

"Nio, what are you doing here?" I question while using the nickname I gave him as a kid.

"What are you doing here?" He ask, avoiding answering my question by asking the same one.

"Standing on the edge of a rooftop what else?"

"Get down from there, you could fall at any moment and this house is way too tall to survive the fall," shakiness evident in his tone.

He starts to walk closer to me as I start to put one foot infront of the other, balancing myself over the edge making it look even more riskier just for the fucks of it.

I start to get lost in the details of the landscape in front of me, trying to make a pattern or shape out of all the trees and mountains that my eyes are able to detect.

Too consumed into my thoughts I don't even notice when noir lifts me off the edge gently placing me onto a safer part of the roof, "I wasn't finished yet." I say trying to move around him to continue to mentally draw the images of shapes with the view infront of me.

"I don't care, get back here." He says putting an arm infront of me blocking me from taking another step.

"What was your goal by doing all of that kamari?" His tone turning from shakiness to seriousness in a split second.

"Why should my actions have a specific goal to them?"

"You can't just fucking stand onto the edge of a building and have your arms out like you have no fucks to spare about what happens to yourself with no goal in mind." He spits out letting the seriousness fade to anger and aggravation.

"Says who? I didn't intend to do anything other then stand on the edge and let the air run it's hands through my hair noir."

"Says who?" He lets out a humorless chuckle and shakes his head, "Says who!? Logic Kamari, thats who. You can't do that shit and not expect death." His face and body stiling towards the end.

"Unless-"

"I fear of nothing noir, not even death." My face blank of any emotion as I stare up into his right aquatic blue eye and then turning to focus onto the hazel greenish colored left eye.

"You're fucking 12 kam, you're too young to have a mindset like that."

" I've always had this mindset you out of all people should know this by now noir." I say staring blankly up at him.

" You expect me to accept the fact that a 12 year old who has their entire life ahead of them have the mindset of death being normalized in such way?" He says confusion and anger well detected in his facial expressions.

" You're a few months older noir stop acting like we have a 20 year difference between us, and yes it should be normalized because death itself is normalized noir." I say rolling my eyes and then walking farther away from him, avoiding another headache I don't have the energy to deal with.

"You don't get to do that Kamari, you don't get to just leave after your actions." He says shouting from where we were both standing just a second ago.

"Watch me Aurelio." I say feeling exhausted and just searching for a place where I can isolate for a while in.

"No, not when it's night time Kam you're going home with me." He says walking down the stairs with me.

"Just fuck off please noir." I say yearning for peace and quiet instead of fighting and discomfort.

"No I'm not leaving you." He says throwing me over his shoulder.

"That was completely unnecessary noir." I say pounding my fist onto his back.

"When it comes to you Kamari, this is far from unnecessary if anything I should handcuff us together so I don't loose you. You always wander far beyond my reach which is very rude by the way." His tone back to playful.

"Oh shut the fuck up the blood rushing to my head isn't helping my headache and your annoying voice is only making me wish I had jumped off that rooftop." I say as my hands sway from side to side limply.

He slaps my thigh as a warning that my joke wasn't funny but not for it to actually hurt, "The fuck was that for."

"Your joke was not funny and lucky for you the car is about to arrive so if you pinky promise to stay next to me and not try to be smart and run off I'll put you back on the ground."

"I pinky promise." I grit out as he finally puts me on the ground once more, he grabs a hold of my waist as my ass almost makes contact with the ground.

When I'm back on my feet I look at the position we're in, chest to chest, his hands placed upon my waist, and his eyes looking down at me seeming lost in thought as I stare up at him.

I clear my throat looking to the side to avoid making eye contact with him and stepping back forcing his hands to fall from my waist.

"You never pinky promised kam."

I sigh rolling my eyes in the process, "I pinky promise " I say extending out my pinky for him to extend his and wrap it around mine.

"I pinky promise." He says smiling down at our conjoined pinkies and then looking up at me, his eyes sparkling in the process.

I didn't break the pinky promise, I didn't wander off, I didn't leave him.

The one who broke the pinky promise was him, he left.

And because of that I will forever hate you Noir Aurelio.