Asphyxiation

Her Future Determined by the Metal Mold - 7

The world felt more vivid, more grounded, when Noboru woke up the next morning. The music in his ears were soft, hypnotic strings as he waited for his train at the station. He even felt calm when he noticed the swell of other students gathering, and he did not feel so frustrated at the thought of Kana's visage eventually popping out of the sea of surrounding faces. It was not so much that Noboru's feelings went under any kind of major evolution, or that they had vanished some time in his dreams the night before. But the truth — I think... I like Y/n — settled at the base of Noboru's understanding with an accompanying squeeze of his heart. Once the emotion was recognized, Noboru could have some control over it.

Or so he believed. But that belief was shaken with Kana's appearance. Although, Noboru could not hear her past the music in his ears, there was a reassuring expression on her face as she patted a girl's shoulder. She was speaking to a whole gaggle of her other friends, and they were surrounding her unusually close, like insects buzzing around their nests. Noboru had no reaction to this; forced himself to have no reaction to her. Other than cold amusement at their conversation the other day —

"I stare at you too," an embarrassing confession Noboru saw fit to ignore. Feelings born out of a delusion that Noboru would ever look at Kana for more than half a second. And that was all, for a few seconds. Noboru's frustration, his disgust, had cooled down to a mellow detachment.

Until a flash of metal caught his eyes.

The music was pulsing in Noboru's ears, his eyes stretching wide, as he watched Kana lift her hand — the same hand he had injured the other day. Two of her fingers were bandaged and one was in a thick, medical blue cast with a metal frame. She was displaying it for her friends, but she was also showing it off, unintentionally, to Noboru as well. And in that moment, Noboru saw potential. His hand reached into his pocket, he quieted his music...

"I was just a little clumsy the other day. Please, don't worry about me! It's just a broken finger..." Kana was explaining her friends' concerns away, smiling and pushing her eyebrows up in gentle reassurance.

Kana's friends predictably fussed around her, choking out their apologies and their sympathies. Noboru, meanwhile, rose the volume of his music once more and stared out at the train tracks. Before, he had been inspired by the thought of causing a little accident. Yet, the more Noboru thought; the more his incomplete fantasies began to take a satisfying shape, he understood that an accident was not ideal.

"I was just a little clumsy..."

There was something about Kana taking reluctant responsibility for her own injury — for what purpose? Her misguided, juvenile feelings for Noboru? — that sat ridiculously well for Noboru. He realized in that second that if he were to ever... If he were to ever erase Kana from the world, he did not want it to be seen as an accident. He wanted the fault to lie with her. He wanted to orchestrate that perfect symphony of manipulation. But these thoughts... that was all they were...

Noboru's eyes wandered over to Kana, and then back to the tracks. They were only thoughts, Noboru could never...

But it was mistake, wasn't it? To think in absolutes? What reasons truly existed for Noboru not to take liberties —? If he could do it, why not —?

Noboru shied away from the turn his thoughts had taken. In the same moment, the train finally arrived and he forgot about them... for a time.

Right up until the moment Y/n saw Kana's cast.

"Kana! What happened?" Y/n's concern spilled over, as he caught sight of the girl — and that manipulative bitch.

Noboru had watched as she deliberately chose to wave at Y/n using her injured hand. She had played coy with her other friends, hiding her hand behind the flare of her skirt and insisting nothing was wrong. Only when the game was figured out and her hand seen, did she feed them her fibs and reassurances. Noboru had been watching her since the station; had seen the routine a few times by now.