Neon Walls

Yours.

Mother: I hope you’re well, son. Call me when you have time.

“I- huh?” Suguru blinks at the screen. 

It almost feels comical, like a big joke that the universe planned out for him. As if there wasn’t already a mountain of pure shit for Suguru to unpack. His mother hadn’t picked up a single call or even sent a text message back after Suguru moved out. Besides the one wildly unhelpful reply before their first assignment. 

Suguru’s hands tremble. Taking a quick deciding breath, he tosses his phone onto the bed. Before allowing that mess to wind him up, he needs to fix the current one first. When Suguru bends down to open a drawer, his hair moves with him and an awful crunching sound follows. It almost makes him physically recoil, resisting the urge to shake his head as he normally would. 

Once he’s grabbed a change of clothes and the supplies Satoru had laid out for him, Suguru tries to keep his thoughts calm on the way to the showers. It works a little. There’s no rational reason for Suguru to be terrified of a simple phone call, but blocking the idea out is the only way he won't drown right now. 

It takes a lot of effort to avoid the many mirrors as he enters the locker room. He can pretend it's not so bad as long as he doesn’t see the real thing. Pretending is a lot harder when a hideous brown color runs down the drain at his feet. As he watches the bloody stream, the sound of running water seems to increase in volume until it’s almost deafening. 

Shutting his eyes and turning the water temperature down calms the feeling. Suguru keeps bracing for the cynical and cruel voice in his head to really let him have it for the events of today. There’s so much material for it to work with, for it to make him feel worthless and out of control. 

That’s what should happen, that’s what always happens at times like this. 

_____

“Ow, ugh.” Suguru winces at his reflection. In hindsight, his mother’s sewing needles was a stupid idea. They’re so thin and bendable, it takes several tries and a lot of physical work to force them through his earlobe. The left side is already done, he can’t give up now. He dumbly stabs his finger when the needle pushes through the right ear. 

Suguru licks the spot of blood off his finger, looking at the finished result. He’s surprised and pleased with how evenly they line up. Even with the shaky and woozy feeling now, he smiles. Earlier that day, he’d snooped through his mother’s things while she wasn’t home. Out of the old jewelry she hasn’t touched in years, Suguru settles on simple black hoops. 

Something he hadn’t considered is that the earrings themselves are thicker than the hole left from the sewing needle. So he spends another painful ordeal forcing them through, taking a few breaks when the action makes him dizzy. To be fair, he would have gladly used the proper tools for this. However, he’s only twelve, too young to get his hands on anything like that without a parent. 

After cleaning up the crime scene left behind, Suguru is quite happy with the final product. Most kids would probably be afraid of what might happen if they’re caught after doing something like this, but not him. Things happen exactly as he knew they would. The piercings aren’t acknowledged at all by his parents, if they were even noticed in the first place.