Paper airplanes were a favorite of high school students.
It was mostly the delinquent students who made the paper airplanes, shooting them across the classroom at each other, the teachers, and into the trashcans. Of course they always got in trouble, but they never let the teachers or school staff rain on their parade. It was all a part of growing up and leaving childhood behind, enjoying those games while they could.
Zane wished he had understood why people got so mad at him sooner. If he had just taken a little more time to enjoy life as a child, he could've been happy. He could've been the perfect Ro'Meave Angel everyone expected him to be.
Maybe then he could have stopped, maybe then he could have prevented this from happening. But it was too late to back down now.
All he had to do was let the chair drop.
A sickening feeling was forming in him, further delaying his death. He couldn't pinpoint the location of the sickening feeling, but if he had to guess it was either in his stomach or his head. An overwhelming storm of depression and sorrow was rising inside of him, pushing him closer to the end of his life.
He looked down at his forearms, where scars lined them from his elbows to his wrists. The sleeves of his school uniform were rolled up, exposing the marks of self hatred he had given himself. He remembered the first time he had cut himself when he had started to become depressed. It had been by accident as he was washing the kitchen knives, but it had felt.... good.
No one would care if he was gone. If anything, they would rejoice at the hearing of his death, throw parties and have a township festival. He knew they all hated him. More than half of the people attending Phoenix Drop High didn't even know he existed, but they didn't have to. The rumors and gossip were enough to make them all hate him.
His older brother had tried so desperately to keep a low reputation for him, knowing Zane had an extreme discomfort around other people. Zane had been thankful for the attempts, but he couldn't stop the rumors from spreading. He had let Garroth down, he had damaged his reputation by walking home with him that one day.
It was all his fault.
But he could fix it.
All he had to do was let the chair fall.
He couldn't help but think of the one he had developed a crush on. A stupid, pathetic high school crush that would mean nothing in adulthood. Of course Zane only had an idea of that based off of what his mother always told him and his brothers, that they would recover from petty high school crushes.
Zane didn't know what that would feel like. He would never get the chance to. He was going to end everyone's misery tonight, it was the one helpful thing he could do that was right. Still... he couldn't help but imagine his crush crying over his dead body. Yeah, he knew it was a bit creepy, but he couldn't help it.
His name was Gene. Gene Charleston. He was the leader of the local juvenile delinquent gang, consisting of three people, and called the 'Shadow Knights'. They were a symbol of superiority in the youth, a sign that adults couldn't control everything. How badly Zane had wanted to be a Shadow Knight, like they were. But every time he approached them, he was rejected and beaten.
Zane was surprised he hadn't been put in a coma or a coffin by them yet. He didn't know which would've been the easier solution for him, death by getting beaten up by bullies/delinquents, or hanging himself.
Coughing, whole flowers fell from his mouth, mixed with blood. Ah, right. He had that issue too. The Hanahaki Disease, he believed it was called. From what he had heard about it, it happened when there was one-sided love. The only way known to get rid of the disease was to go through a special surgery, which would take all feelings that were not returned along with the disease.
He knew that Gene didn't love him, and that he never would. The delinquent gang leader only had eyes for a female student, one that had been in Zane's homeroom. Aphmau was her name.
Yes, Zane was jealous of her. He wanted Gene's affection, to be loved by that cruel, seemingly heartless senior. He had wanted to the one who would change Gene for the better. In a sense he was, he was taking away an annoyance in his life.
He looked up through the hole in the ceiling, seeing the moon at it's peak and in a crescent shape. He had loved to look at the moon and all the different phases each night when he was younger, but then he had grown up.... a little too fast.
Zane knew his family wouldn't bother to look for him. They knew he stayed out at late hours and half of the time never even came home. He felt like a disappointment in his father's eyes, a mistake in his mother's eyes, a nuisance in Garroth's eyes, and a distant figure in Vylad's. They wouldn't bother to look for him. No one would. It was perfect. It would be like he had just faded away into nothingness, and no one would notice.
Alongside many other things, he wished he had tried harder to be a true Ro'Meave. He should have tried harder to be in Vylad's life, to be more like Garroth. Why did he have to be such a failure?
Letting the silver moon in all it's serenity be the ast thing he saw, he closed his one working eye and let the chair fall.
It was all over.
All his suffering, all the disappointment from his family, all the rumors and gossip about him. He was free from it all. None of their words or feelings could get to him now, wherever he was going. Did people even go anywhere after they died? Zane wasn't sure of what to believe in anymore.
He was finally free.
As for what happened to the others? As Zane had suspected, no one had really cared rhat he was missing. The rumors and gossip quickly dissolved into old news, and people went on with their lives. The Ro'Meave Family had searched desperately for their missing member, refusing to give up until they knew what had happened to Zane.
As for Gene? He couldn't have been happier. He had blackmailed Aphmau into dating him, and Zane was out of his life. At least for now, he had always reminded himself, not yet knowing that Zane was dead.
But, alas, Zane's suffering was not over like he had imagined.
Unable to place his soul in either of their Realms, Lady Irene and Shad had sentenced Zane to Limbo. He was cursed to wander the mortal world as a spirit, watching as the lives of his family and classmates went on. He watched in horror as his brothers practically drove themselves mad over his disappearance, unable to do anything. Whenever any of his family members would sleep he would wrap his arms around them, whispering to them about how they would make it through it all. About how they were strong.
There was one other thing that had followed Zane into his cursed afterlife, though. The one thing he had thought only mortals could have.
The Hanahaki Disease, and his love for Gene.
