Papercut | Akutagawa Ryūnosuke; AR [✔]

00 → Prologue

The world was dark enough for me... How darker could it get?

I am stuck in this silence that I never heard for a very long time. The type of silence that I never wanted to hear. The silence... The silence that I thought I would never encounter.

But now here I am, down on my knees. I lifted my hand to see grains of ashes pass through the gaps in between my fingers; some grains staying in my palms because of the blood that I may have touched on the ground.

Everything was a complete mess. What kind of monster could have done this chaos?

I forced myself to stand up, wanting to go around the area before the police nor the military arrives to inspect the tragedy in front of me. My right leg was severely damaged from the shrapnel; a very open wound visible in my thigh. Blood continues to flow out from it; I may die from too much blood loss just from this casualty alone.

Fire still continues to rage at some parts of the area, but they soon started to disappear as the rain started to fall. The rain continued to kiss my filthy skin, sending countless of shivers down my spine.

This won't help at all. I'm just getting weaker and weaker overtime.

Oh wait-

I am weak.

I am nothing but a lost soul, wanting to help people with nothing in return. I surrounded myself with people whom I thought could save me from my eternal fall to the deepest depths of nothingness.

But no. For them, I was nothing but a tool of kindness, abusing my offers and capability to help them out to my extent. For them, I am nothing but a useless person. No matter how much I did for them, they will never see its worth or my worth as a person.

When I was younger, my folks always tell me "What you do unto others, will be done unto you. What you reap is what you sow. Plant kindness, and you will harvest kindness. Plant evil, and you will harvest evil, as well."

I believed in their words; I even joined to have faith to the Almighty Being...

...and still I continue to fall down towards this endless darkness.

I tripped on a gap that I didn't notice, making me immediately fall on the ground as a result of my weakening body. I couldn't hold myself to stand up anymore. I just wanna stay in this position forever... in peace.

I want to disappear from this world. The pain circulating throughout my body was starting to make me numb, but still not numb enough for me not to feel it slowly killing me.

As I was about to close my eyes, in hopes of someone might save me from this misery, a tall figure started to form in front of my eyes. It was drawing closer to me, and the footsteps start to be more audible. I slowly tried to look up to see who it was, but my vision wouldn't stay still to focus on the person.

The figure turned out to be a tall man in a coat. He stopped in front of me and spoke up in a serious monotone.

"Get up," he commanded. "The police will be coming soon."

"Leave me be. Can't you see that I'm not in condition to move?"

That was rather rude coming from me. I earned no change of expression from the man standing in front of me, but instead had offered me his hand for me to grab.

"You wouldn't want to end up in the wrong hands, would you?"

That triggered me. I always end up in the wrong hands, no matter how much I thought that I wouldn't .

A bundle of energy started to build up within me, but I don't know where was it coming from. My head is just trying to filter out the negative thoughts that had triggered me from what he said, but apparently I wasn't in good condition to think straight.

"I had enough," I said in between gritted teeth. "I had enough of being taken for granted!"

"Hush, girl."

"PLEASE, JUST LEAVE ME AL--"

The brown-haired man stepped aside, as a dark green beam just tried to strike him from where he was before. I was paralyzed to see the sight, for the cause of the beam was... me. A compact build of energy were all gathered in my dominant hand, striking at the direction of the last position of the man whom I am speaking to rather disrespectfully.

He gave a light smirk, coming even closer to me. He raised his hand, the pointer finger generating a lighter green aura. Once again, in a monotonous voice, he spoke to me;

"Do you know what monster did this chaos?"

Who was it?! Tell me! I thought in my head, but before I ever got an answer, he aimed his finger to my forehead, nullifying the beam that 'I struck' and immediately knocking me unconscious.

"It was you."