Below the Thresholds

Dread

⚠️ Unless u just don't care, this story has spoilers for it's other counterpart "Crimson Limerence"⚠️

"Dear Rigeal,
I know that this letter won't find you well- as nothing that I ever do finds you well anyway; but I'm still putting in the effort to write this. I'm sure that you're fully aware of just how devoted I am to capturing your attention, but nothing seems to work no matter how hard I try. That being said, I'm going to leave you alone. I'll leave you alone for a year or maybe two, and then when college comes around...expect me to come back. Don't forget that, and don't think that I'll forget it either. -Sincerely Mei."

That was the last thing I heard from that little creature that always followed me around...watching me...every move I made. That was the last I heard of the dreadful puddle of bones for two blissful years. I read over that letter time and time again, and I looked at the lipstick stain that she left...right next to the blood stains. Disgusting but... artistic I guess.

I knew she'd keep her promise like a loyal dog learning new tricks, but she couldn't hide from me that she was still following me and watching me at every possible moment. That was fine by me, as long as I didn't have to deal with hearing or seeing her close up. Days went on and on without her, and I was building myself up as a proper student and worker. Yet even still, I dreaded the day that college would roll around...and crush me with the fate of having her near me again.

I wished that she would just understand that no matter how hard she tried she could never reach me. She was a smart girl, but she was defiled and unpresentable...odd, unsociable, unstable, and it showed. She was everything I couldn't be associated with. Everything I would never be.

Anyway... that letter went in the trunk of bullshit she'd mailed to me over the years. It was all evidence for the day I needed to use it against her.

But even as irrelevant as she was to me...I had to worry about her. I had to worry about what she'd do and who she did it around. Harvard isn't exactly a laid back place so she was a potential threat to the entirety of my future, unless of course...I just dealt with her. Got her out of the way...or maybe...just shut her up.

I had two years to plan all of this out, and I had an array of paths to go down. I could pay someone to distract her, get her grades down and take away her attention from getting ahead. I could just kill her...that would be easy enough...just claim she killed herself. She was already being heavily watched by staff members and officials. But none of them liked her anyway so even if they did find that she was killed, it was entirely possible that they wouldn't care to tell anyone. But something told me that killing her just wasn't the right idea. As I said before, she was a smart girl and...I didn't want to take that away from the world, it needed more intelligence- presentable or not.

Then...there was the complicated route of just shutting her up. I could let her follow me around and talk with her, amuse her just to get her to cooperate. Not to mention, taking that path...it might be easy to mold her into something worth being seen with, if she'd let me.

I'd have to come to a conclusion soon.

Over these two blissful years, I had a copious amount of time to go over everything and decide. I came to the conclusion that I'd just leave her alone and slowly lure her in...slowly. Then I would very gradually try to mold her and if she didn't cooperate then I'd just run her ragged until she had to give up on me, Harvard, or everything.

It was the easiest method out of all of them. I already knew how to ignore her and get her to keep her distance, and I certainly understood how to entice her, and I knew how to drain the motivation out of anyone be it by fear or by difficulty.

Now I just had to put it all into effect, not that it was much anyway.