Haunted archer

He remembers

Touji woke up with a sudden start. It wasn't normal for him anymore. Thanks to Shino's presence in his bed, he had barely had a reason to feel uncomfortable, so he slept well lately.

Touji looked around and when his eyes were getting accustomed to the darkness, he saw Shino's dark figure sitting on the bed. Touji turned the bedside light on and kneeling beside Shino he waited until the boy was ready to talk. He was obviously upset about something. On his cheeks were tears and the look in his eyes was so desperately forlorn, that Touji had a hard time keeping his hands to himself. He felt that this was the moment, that Shino himself needed to reach out and speak.

"I did step in front of that car. And I saw it coming. And I did .. want to die." Touji felt scared. Was this the understanding, that would take Shino away from him? He wrapped his fingers around his wrists and waited for Shino to tell the whole story.

"I don't think I planned it. I don't remember any conscious thought like this. I didn't want to die in the common sense of the word. But do you know how hard it is to be understood as one person by your appearance and then, when you say what you think, everybody's scared away. It was like that for me at school. Whatever I said got looked like it was something coming from someone else's mouth. And why? Just because society's norm is to see beautiful people act in one way like they have no other choice. And when I said something out of the norm, asked a straightforward question, they looked at me as I had changed, as if I had a sickness I needed to hide. It was tolerable I guess. I could burn it all away with my cheerful attitude and I didn't fake it. It felt like I couldn't fake anything. But you know, why I acted like that after your phone call with your mother. That day, my mom was really tired and I got scared of her." Another tear was falling from Shino's chin,

"She is the sweetest woman I know, and the guy she was with, well I couldn't get along with him at all. My sister liked him, he was always laughing and joking, and they seemed to match. And my mom deserved to be happy, but because I didn't like him and didn't bother to watch farther from my self righteous views on life. I could not show how much I didn't like him. That morning, my mom came to me and said that she left him... for me. She had ended their relationship just because I didn't like him. Because she had lived her whole life to get me through school. She was happy when I was happy. And now she was unhappy because I didn't even bother to change another of my impression of a person. Of course, she didn't tell me that she felt unhappy, but I could see that. I wasn't so insensitive, that I couldn't see behind her' facade. That morning, I didn't think much about it. My sister even said to me, just before she left school, that I should look somewhere besides my own opinions too if I didn't want to see our mother staying alone forever. If I didn't want her to be sad and busy until she got too old to do anything, but to live to us, her children. This was the time she could live to herself, as we were big enough and she was still young enough." Shino was outright crying now.

"Consciously I didn't think much about this. But I guess some part of me did, because, when I was dealing with another girl telling me, how I was not what they had imagined me to be. That my appearance and my countenance didn't match, it somehow clicked. What they all said, what my friends always said to me, what my mother did for me, what my sister had said to me. I didn't blame any of them. I blamed myself. It was like a sudden explosion in my head. The thought, that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I actually didn't register that car as a suicide option. It was just two steps and no thoughts. There was no regret. I didn't register any pain. I didn't think of anything." Shino lifted his eyes and looked at Touji, who couldn't hold back his tears anymore. All he could think was that why had they not met before. Shino was like a fresh air for him, why could he not have shown him that, before he died. Would it have changed anything? Now Touji reached for Shino's hands and held them gently.

"What are you feeling now. Now that you remember it all. Do you regret it?" Shino shuddered, but he had stopped crying and he looked a bit more steady as he answered.

"Yes, I regret it. It was such a big mistake. I should have seen the reality and accepted it, not got put down by it. I can't even imagine how my mother feels. How she felt after that. How everybody felt. I can't do anything about others, but I can do something about my family."

Touji looked a bit confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I have to let them know, that I did not blame them. I did not do this because or for them. It was my own choice and though I can't tell them I feel now that it was a mistake, I still can not let them think bad of themselves."

Touji got the idea, but how could Shino do that? He hoped that he wouldn't do something weird like make Touji talk in front of his mother, with his ghost or something.

"I will write a letter. My mother knows my handwriting, and she is going to believe it. I know how to write it, so she would believe it. Will you deliver it to her?" He looked at Touji. Touji knew, that there probably wasn't much he wouldn't do for Shino, so he nodded.

*This is how I'm gonna put it. I did not plan the suicide.. or the death of him like this. It just came to me, when I wrote the last chapter. Just at some point, I discovered that there was a whole ~1000 words I had written about Shino talking. I just decided to go with my feelings and let it be like this. It's probably the best way. Let me know, what you think about it?

song: Mom - Jun. K(2PM). This is my favourite song about mothers. There are two more, but I won't put them here, now. Shino's feeling for her mother should sound like this... I think.
Jun. K is the main vocal and main songwriter in 2PM. I have adored him, for about 3 years. The voice and almost all about him, even his two dogs :) But he sings this song better than any other... This is also my own opinion, not saying anything, about what other's should think.
Jun. K is singing it really sincerely and with a lot of feeling, his own mother, was really sick at that time, and he sang it as he meant it. That's how I see it.
The real author of this song, I think it's Ra.D.