|| 𝗩𝗘𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗖𝗛𝗢𝗥 - various DODEU oneshots

... mirror

this is really short because i just need to get something written and done..
HUGE TW bc i like traumatising my ocs ::
        bedwetting , bloody descriptions , child abuse , alcoholism ... omfg
the OGs will remember my old fanganronpa 'hope's best wishes' ... hopefully u remember pookie Mizu 🤭
maybe i'll write a part 2 in mizu's healing era when he has friends 💆🏿‍♀️  if ur lucky

Mizu Nakaya stares into a mirror.

The mirror is cracked, smeared and stained with blood and tears and sweat. It has been this way for years. Mizu has memorised every crack, every chip in the glass, every jagged corner that has bitten at his skin as he walks past, its own morning kiss and bedtime hug, reaching out to grab at him before releasing him almost as quickly as if stained. It may be the only thing in Mizu's bedroom that has not changed, arrogantly stagnant in its existence. It is unlike his bedsheets that have been torn apart and changed every few months, ripped to shreds and flushed in batches down the toilet.

He has found, through years of experience, that one can only wet the same sheets a few times before the stains become stubborn, dull, brownish-yellow smears that coil around him as he sleeps. He can only wet the same sheets a few times before the stains cannot wash away with vinegar and soap. The stains persist, existing to remind him of what, not who he is: a thing, a thing so weak that it cannot be sixteen - no, no, it must be a baby, a meek, defenceless infant, writhing through the night and waking sweat-stained, rattled with tremors in pools of urine.

It is a cycle. It is a cycle that Mizu cannot break, not now, not now that his body has grown so used to it. His skin no longer itches throughout the night, and he can sleep through the gradual soaking of his bedsheets without so much as a twitch. Sometimes it is not urine. Sometimes it is blood, dark in the moonlight, creeping up his bedsheets to smear his face, smear his dreams. Sometimes it is blood that oozes out of wounds that he has scraped back to life, revived with his fingernails, enveloping him in blankets of wet wine-red waste with all the warmth of a blade's edge.

He does not know which he prefers.

The urine is easy to clean. He can wash his clothes and leave them to dry and his father will be none the wiser. The sharp smell dances with the sharper smell of alcohol, and Daddy is usually too intoxicated to tell the difference.

But when Daddy is sober it cannot be explained away. He cannot explain how the nightmares flood his senses and twist his bladder, wringing it dry of fear for the night. He wonders if it is because he is afraid, he is afraid that Daddy will not believe him.

No, Daddy will believe him. He knows this because Daddy is his nightmares - he's the spiders and the monsters and the hot, spindly hands dragging him into the depths. Daddy has written them and fed them to him for years and years, yet Mizu has yet to spit the contents back up, retching and heaving yet coming up achingly empty. No, the problem is that his father will not help him. Daddy will not tolerate a child that bedwets, regardless of nightmares that kill him over and over again, nightmares that spread him bare upon his stained sheets and beg him to beg for death. He will beat the bedwetting out of him, or at least he thinks he will. Instead, he'll only beat a new night terror into Mizu's already aching heart, cramming what little lies dear to him to make room for something jagged and poisoned. Mizu will be tormented by that for another month before the cycle resets.

Mizu thinks he prefers the blood.

The blood does not smell. At least, it does not smell as bad. It smells coppery and sharp, like the edges of Mizu's mirror. It runs down the sink in the early mornings when Mizu cleans in red rivets of bygone agony. Mizu knows the colour. He knows the colour when it bleeds afresh from his red-raw arms. He knows the colour when it is drying upon his skin. He knows the colour when it is splattered against his father's fist. He knows the colour it dries in on his bedsheets. On some days, bad days, it dries upon the bedsheets in warped shapes that Mizu likes to describe like one describes the clouds. The shapes all look like him.

It's better than the mirror, he thinks. He can see himself reflected  a thousand times over in the little  red pictures on his bedsheets  - ah, he didn't know his hair looked like that, thinning out by the nape of his neck in tiny wisps. He didn't know his legs were so long and spindly, like a spider's.

Maybe Mom didn't like spiders. He certainly doesn't. Maybe that's why she left so hurriedly in the dead of night, without so much as a glance to Mizu's sleeping frame or a kiss to his forehead as he slept upon clean bedsheets. Ah, if he was a spider to her, then Mizu supposes he can understand why she left. He might've done the same thing.

Though, he thinks he would've killed the spider first, so that if he were to return, it would not still plague his thoughts and crawl upon the floors and beg to sleep in her bed.

The mirror does not speak to him in the same way.  The mirror tells him things about himself that he already knows, that he does not need to remember. The mirror tells him that he has matted hair the same colour as a white peach, pallid and pink. It is the same as his father's. The mirror tells him that he has a sickly reddish hue to the tip of his lumpy, broken nose that deepens in the winter when his clothes do not provide him with sufficient warmth. It is the same as his father's. The mirror tells him that he has ugly orange eyes, akin to the colour of a robin's breast.

That, too, is the same as his father's. So if he stares long enough at his broken reflection in the mirror, he can draw some similarities. He wonders why his father must hate him so, if they bear such resemblance to one another.  Perhaps his father does not like the way Mizu's face contorts in fear so often. It might explain why he tries so often to force it into a more pleasing expression, though Mizu cannot smiles as nicely with missing teeth, he thinks. Or maybe his father cannot stand the way Mizu's eyes shift so feverishly when he is around, so he grasps his face between hot, sweaty hands and forces Mizu's gaze into his, and beats him when he looks away.

Oh, but Mizu tries, he tries, he really does! But he cannot look well at a face that looks upon him with nought but hatred, he cannot smile to a man that will whip the teeth from his mouth and the breath from his lungs. He is scared, scared of his father's voice, his smell, the shadow he casts on the wall when he turns the corner. He is scared of him in pictures, too,  especially the frames that line the hallway that are too high up for his father to knock down.

There are three: one of Mizu's parents in their wedding garments -  his mother, in a flowing white kimono and his father in an intricate suit. Mizu remembers the white of his mother's outfit. She'd used it to bandage Mizu's broken-bottle wounds, tearing small scraps from the fabric to wrap around his arms, watching them soak red. Mizu thinks she'd cried while she tended to him, as she tore her most beautiful garment into pieces to mend her broken thing of a son, but he cannot remember. All he knows is that the outfit lies in torn pieces beneath his father's bed, and the red-run pieces once tied around his forearms curl in crumpled heaps in a basket in the laundry room that neither of them speak of.

Another of the three of them when Mizu was small, small enough for his father to hold him completely in one arm , small enough for Mizu's tiny hands to grab at his father's nose. He does not like that one. He does not know why.

And one more, of a boy and his father, staring into the camera. It is the one he makes a conscious effort to avoid whenever he crosses the hallway. His father's eyes - because he recognises his father, if just by the eyes alone -  bore into him no matter how hard he averts his gaze, wordlessly questioning him. In the picture, the pallid pink-haired boy on his father's lap smiles down at him. He has a full set of teeth, so Mizu knows it's not him. His nose is unbroken and the tip is as pale as the rest of his face, so Mizu does not recognise him. His eyes are a brilliant shade of orange, the colour of summer fruits.

Mizu does not know the boy. He's not sure if he'd like to.