Rock Paper Scissors

1

I could do the evil thing and let this be the only part of the story, but, you know. Plot holes.

The sun shouldn't have appeared through the clouds. The sky had no reason to be blue. The streets needed to stop being busy. The people shouldn't have been carrying on with their lives.

The world didn't deserve to be happy.

Somewhere in the busy city, Mariku stood and peered out the window, looking down at the world from the apartment.

The world was so loud and so quiet. Everything was moving and everything was still.

For the first time in weeks, he let the sunlight touch his skin. The warmth should've been comforting, but Mariku only felt mocked. He scoffed, drawing the curtains and shutting out the light again. Compared to the bright, colorful outside, his home was dark and grim. With his back against the window, he gave himself a minute to look around.

Mariku didn't dare to touch anything. He wanted everything as it was left. He didn't move the book that lay opened and un-bookmarked on its coffee table, empty glass was set beside it, not had the couch been sat on from the moment Mariku had entered again.

Moving on from the living room window, he made his way to the bedroom. He didn't want to--- in fact, forcing his legs to keep walking was an exhausting feat. His arm even shook as he pushed the door to open more; the creak was almost eerie.

A sudden wind carried through the air to leave the room, a breeze that hit Mariku's face. He bit his lip, hard, to stop it from quivering.

It still smells like him.

He wanted to say something, but he couldn't find the words. If, for a moment, he could speak, his voice would crack. And he would cry.

He'd never cried before. So why now?

But everything was just exactly as it was. The blankets on his bed were still wrinkled as if he'd gotten out of bed in a hurry and some of the clothes from his dresser were wrinkled on the floor. Mariku finally let out a laugh-- the poor thing must've left in a hurry if he didn't even bother to put away the clothes he didn't want to wear.

Mariku finally reached down and ran a hand along the pillow, almost imagining the boy who slept there each night, sometimes crying, yawning, or scratching his nose, but his eyes remaining closed and his breathing always soft.

The tired, weak legs holding Mariku up couldn't take it, so they gave out from under him. He knelt at the bedside and rested his head on the mattress.

With his eyes shut tight, he could almost feel the warm fingers run through his hair. He couldn't help looking up, hoping that he might've been there.

But he wasn't.

Crying would make everything better, wouldn't it? It was appropriate for Mariku to give up, let go, and mourn. Grieving might've lifted a weight off of his chest, but he didn't want that. He wanted to hang on for as long as he could. If even a single tear had threaten to leave it's duct, Mariku blinked it away. He refused to believe this. Any of this.

Death wasn't new to him. People in his life had died before-- most of them by his own hands-- and he always felt just fine afterwards. Mostly by doing so, he had even felt much better than before. But from the moment he was told that Ryou was gone, he couldn't seem to understand what made death so enjoyable in the first place.

It seemed that Mariku wasn't the only one capable of taking lives away.

Ryou's death was a mystery--- they found him dead at a frozen river bank, making the snow beneath his body red with his blood. It was foul play, no doubt---everyone blamed Mariku.

"Bastards..." he muttered under his breath, through gritted teeth. "...why would I rid of the only thing I care about?"

Mariku's alibi checked out. He had no motive. Yet, people had been pointing fingers at him before he had even known that Ryou was deceased.

He didn't know what to do with all the time he seemed to have in abundance. Everyday seemed to drag on for thousands of years. He just wandered everywhere, keeping his eyes averted from anyone else's face. They looked at him with different perspectives, ranging from fear to pity.

Everyone waited for Mariku to lose it. They all thought of him like a ticking bomb, or a volcano on the brink of eruption. Any minute, something could trigger him and chaos would ensue. Very rarely did anyone ever tell him anything about what happened to Ryou.

They've even resorted to not talking to him at all.

I am not going to lose it. Ryou would hate that. He wore a scowl on his face that quivered when thinking that Ryou would've said something to him, in consolation or support. He wanted Ryou's voice more than anything.

He was a rock that would stand firm.
But, inside, he was crumbling.