OUTCAST - satosugu

Chapter 3 - A story for the camera

Sugurus' POV: 

Eighteen months flew by, carrying the weight of a heavy thousand memories. A foggy humid weather filled the winter air in Tokyo, and December was written at the top of the calendar page. I found myself in a hotel room in the suburbs of the city.

It was almost dark. There was a horrible, erratic humping my chest, as if a large bird were trapped back inside my ribcage and beating itself to death. Gasping, I lay back on my bed.

When the worst of it was over I sat up. I was trembling all over and drenched in sweat. Long shadows, nightmare light. I could see some kids playing outside in the snow, silhouetted in black against the dreadful, salmon-colored sky. Their shouts and laughter had, at that distance, a painful quality that echoed in my head. I dug the heels of my hands hard into my eyes. Milky spots, pinpoints of light. Oh, God, I thought.

Bare cheek on cold tile. The roar and rush of the toilet was so loud I thought it would swallow me. It was like all the times I'd ever been sick, all the drunken throw-ups I'd ever had.

While I was washing my face, I began to cry. The tears mingled easily with the cold water, in the luminous, dripping crimson of my cupped fingers, and at first I wasn't aware that I was crying at all. The sobs were regular and emotionless, as mechanical as dry heaves which had nothing to do with me. I brought my head up and looked at my weeping reflection in the mirror with a kind of detached interest. Dim, cold purple eyebags lay under my eyes, making me look straight out of a horror movie.

What does this mean? I thought. I looked terrible. Nobody else was falling apart; yet here I was, shaking all over and seeing bats like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. A cold draft blew through the window. I felt shaky but oddly refreshed. I ran myself a hot bath, and when I got out and put on my clothes I felt quite myself again.

I sat on the floor at the chest of drawers cramped in the corner of the hotel room. Cheap plaster was stuck to the walls, and it was slowly starting to putrefy and smell. I recorded myself talking.

"So, I don't know much about this whole venting  thing, it's pretty stupid, and I'd rather not call it that actually." I looked away and licked my lips. It felt so silly, like I was a kid in the seventh grade crying over getting rejected at recess. I pulled myself together. 

"Does this work?" I adjusted the camera to focus on me. "I would've just written this, but I have no paper or pen; only this camera I carried with me. It still has a few pictures of my family and I, even though they're very low quality."

"Alright, so!" I exclaimed "Oh god, where do I even begin. I'm asking myself how I ended up here and the first thing that comes to my mind is the summer of 2006, when it all fell down. Things were very busy, mostly in June. Cursed spirits were springing up like maggots." 

The lure of actions carried on so:

During the summer of 2006, sometime when the hydrangea flowers just start to bloom...

"Who the hell's Star and why are people so obsessed with it?" Satoru scoffed, swinging his leg on the wooden porch outside his dorm. The sun had just risen and Suguru, who'd been up and dressed since the first wink of dawn sat next to him, wrapped inside a blanket. A black stray cat lay drowsing on his lap. 

"I don't know, but I don't think it's safe what we're getting into." Suguru remarked, petting the cat's furry head as he felt purring tickling his lap. 

Shortly after came a sleepy Shoko, damp and flushed from her morning bath, and her chestnut-colored head chaotic. "What are you guys chattering about? It's barely eight in the morning." 

"Do you know Tengen?" Satoru looked up to her fastening the buttons of her cardigan.

"Nope, never heard of it." She sat next to Geto, resting her chin on her knees. "What is it?"

"I think our teacher's just getting us do some boring work." Satoru sighed, leaning over to Shoko.

"What - what did I miss?" she frowned. 

The boys exchanged looks. "Mr. Yaga assigned us to take care of someone, her name's Star."

"You two have special assignments? Man, must it suck to be the best ones in class." she chuckled "Anyways, I'm grabbing some coffee, do you want some?"

"No." They answered simultaneously for she left, leaving a trail of footsteps in the vast remains of patched snow in the grass. 

Tengen, or how the religious followers called it, Star, was an immortal sorcerer now living inside a middle school girl's body. Targeted by many threats, Kenjaku included, it was required to be attentively protected at all costs by the two strongest sorcerers of that time - Gojo and Geto. 

A day passed and matters progressed.

Curses, a shotgun, and spilled blood and guts on the ground like a pomegranate. It was no long after the series of disasters when Toji Fushiguro left upon the boys a scar that started to unravel itself. 

Back to the recording:

"There is to me about this place a smell of rot, the smell of rot that ripe fruit makes." I rubbed my pale forehead, feeling the skin fold under my fingers. "Have the hideous mechanics of birth and death been so brutal but painted up to look so pretty, have so many people put so much faith in lies and death, death, death. They don't even know curses flow out of 'em; can't even see what kills 'em. Why does the weak rule over the strong?"

I put two fingers to my forehead, my weak hand gently trembling in the air. "That man, Fushiguro, fucked us all up in the head. He shot that girl who was fresh out of middle school." I tapped the temple of my forehead suggesting the shot. 

"I still wonder how my classmates didn't notice my changes, but more, how it didn't seem to affect them at all. I kept telling myself that what I saw wasn't uncommon, but that thought made things even worse." I laughed out my words. "I used to help by destroying myself, but I realized that's awfully convenient for the world. I kept swallowing curses and it tasted like discipline. But no one understands," I leaned closer to the camera, whispering "they taste like shit and vomit."

The camera stopped focusing on me, and instead it showed the dirty dark hotel room, with one yellow light flickering from the bathroom and highlighting my bloody Jujutsu High uniform.

"Imagine this," I clasped my hands together "getting bit by a snake, but instead of healing from the poison, you chase it to understand why it bit you and prove you didn't deserve it. After Fushiguro died, I spent hours in bed and watched the sun rise while having all these thoughts inside of me tangled like a weed." 

The camera focused on me again as I carried on with my erratic blabbering. "I was dragged down by a very, very fragile string that was ready to break at any moment. It was the lowest point of my life. I kept trying to console myself, but at that time Satoru became the strongest and got many missions for him only, and since Shoko didn't get personal tasks at all, I was alone on my mine too."

"Haibaira died in a fight and no one bats an eye." I started sniffing quietly, but tried not to disturb my speech. "He was the sweetest student. We all loved him."

I cleared my throat loudly, preparing myself for my next confession. "So, um, there's no going back now. Last night I killed the people of my hometown. I'd say it's a pretty bold start, isn't it? I'm taking care of two little girls, they're very sweet. The news spread extremely fast (goddamn the internet), and Satoru and I fought. It was bad, really bad." 

The camera buzzed, sharing vibration until under my palm. "I have no battery left... Well, this was a relief..." I sighed "I should do this more often."