YOU, ME, US [ okkotsu yuuta x reader ]

11: TO PREVAIL

You are his savior, and he is the reason for your demise.

Okkotsu can't seem to wrap his head around that fact. Did you always know that saving him would lead to your doom? When you told him you'd protect him, no matter the cost, did you realize that the cost would be at your life?

Suddenly, the morbid organs of the curse don't bother him anymore. Suddenly, all Okkotsu can think of is you, and not of the kids who are half-alive in front of him, not of his classmate who falls to the floor, struggling to breathe.

Okkotsu thinks of you, you, you.

(It has always been you.)

"Okkotsu, tell me honestly!" Maki yells, gasping for air in between her words. Blood trickles down the side of her leg, cursed eyes beginning to emerge across her skin. Calloused hands reach for Okkotsu's collar, tugging at the white fabric.

"Why... Why did you come to this school?!" she breathes out, sweat trickling down the side of her forehead whilst her torso heaves up and down. "What do you want? What do you want?! What do you want to achieve?!"

Maki gathers all the energy from her ruined body to shout at Okkotsu, her frantic eyes darting fervently across the boy's face, searching for even a flicker in his resolve. Okkotsu's lips tremble, eyes growing wide, but Maki notices the way something sets ablaze in those dark irises of his.

He's coming alive. Okkotsu is rising from the dead and reborn anew, the certainty in his irises returning in the form of a shooting star, zipping across the void. Golden light seeps through the mouth of the curse, permeating into Okkotsu's skin, making him glow despite all that's happened.

"I..." He thinks of you, you, you. "I don't want to hurt anyone anymore." Despite the quiver of his limbs and the distress in his mind, Okkotsu's voice is steady, his resolve crawling up his throat and spilling fluidly from his mouth.

There's more to it than that, though. He doesn't want to involve you in the sorcery you loathe, he doesn't want you to be on death row because of his own wrongdoings. Okkotsu doesn't want to hurt anyone, sure, but more desperately, he doesn't want to hurt you.

It has always, always been about you. Even now, as Maki glares at him through her fogged glasses, narrowed gaze prying his soul apart, Okkotsu does not waver. He unravels and reveals himself, his devotion, his fervor.

Everything becomes warm. His eyes begin to water, knuckles paling while his entire body racks with grief, his ribs caged around his weeping heart, nearly collapsing under the grief.

"I want to be needed by someone," Okkotsu nearly sobs out, "I want the confidence to feel like I deserve to live!"

Again, that's not all. Okkotsu wants to be needed by someone, and he wants to feel like he deserves to live in their presence. Okkotsu wants to be needed by someone, and he wants to feel like he's not a burden to them, but rather, a golden light. Okkotsu wants to be someone that you can rely on, someone that even you, in all your incomparable radiance, can find solace in.

He wants. He wants and wants and wants. Okkotsu wants you, he wants the world! Okkotsu wants to live, sure, but he wants to live with you! In your existence, in your presence, in anything, so long as you are there, he is content.

"Then..." Maki utters, brows furrowed, "then exorcise! Exorcise the curses, over and over again, and confidence, other people, whatever! All that will come later! That's the kind of place this school is!"

When Okkotsu was cursed, it narrowed the distance between him and you. Okkotsu's torment was the reason why he met you, the reason why the light was ever able to find him. And when the light—you—found him, Okkotsu felt as if he had seized a star, even though the star was the one who seized him.