Faded

15. Snake | ヘビ

Izumi:

And once again, everything was ruined. It was difficult to pretend to be calm and maintain my good attitude towards you. I couldn't talk to you, or even see you. You behaved coldly, alienated, plunging me into the loneliness that I dreaded deep down. At one moment, it seemed like you couldn't care less about me, and I could just leave. Not run away, not come up with a plan, just disappear into the emptiness of the forest. I didn't even think about the possibility of getting lost.

When I left the house, you chased after me. You roughly grabbed my hand and I tried to break free, but ended up slipping and falling. You dragged me across the ground and pushed me against the wall. I regained consciousness, and in an instant, a snake hissed in front of my face.

"It's poisonous. If you try to leave again, I'll have to set it on you," you said without menace in your voice, as if I were talking to a robot. I couldn't recognize you. Again, this unfamiliar person I was afraid of.

I slowly moved away and lay down on the ground, nervously biting my lips until they bled. Self-harm. I was angry at you, but I inflicted pain on myself.

You didn't react, which made me even angrier, and now I started scratching my own face. In captivity, these seizures began to occur.

"Stop, don't do this, please," you gently took my hands and squeezed them, so I couldn't continue tormenting myself.

You could see that you were shocked by such erratic behavior, but you tried not to make a big deal out of it.

"I will never do that again, I promise," you whispered hoarsely. And you were completely sincere with me.

That's when I felt that I was stronger than you in some way. You were only dangerous in words, while I was dangerous in action. Once, I even tried to stab you with a pocket knife that I stole from you while you were sleeping.

In general, I could romanticize your image according to the conventions of teenage romance novels, where a bad boy holds a cute girl with childish behavior hostage, physically tortures her, and then falls in love and becomes good and kind. But that's a cliché. It's not about us. You didn't hit me or raise your voice. You didn't come on to me, didn't starve me, or torture me. You were impassive and closed off. Melancholically calm. And only now do I understand that it wore me down much more than being in the forest amidst uncertainty."