SEE YOU, SOULMATE [✓]

00:27

Xiao stood rigid in front of the vexed woman, refusing to let a single glimpse of anguish show on his face. She, however, was repelled by his indifference. It was better when he yelled. When he cried. When he was a shaking mess.

   It was better to see him break.

   "You really are a waste of space ── leaving was the one good thing you could do and yet here you are, breathing! Right here... right in front of me!"

   Hundreds of glass pieces clanked against the floor, escaping him narrowly. That was one plate down.

   He didn't even recoil at the impact.

   I have someone who loves me, he chanted the words inside his head. But they couldn't give him the solace he needed ── not when he was enduring his mother's screams. Screams that pierced through him worse than the razor lying underneath his bed.

   He always fought back. It made the situation worse ── but he did. Now he tried absorbing her hatred. It didn't change anything.

   "Please. Do me a favour... I'm begging you." Loud sobs filled the suffocating room. "I'm ── I'm begging... can't you see it? Please see it... I'm losing my mind..." She grabbed him by his shoulders, lips quivering in desperation.

   Perhaps, he should have gone through with that jump a little earlier. Then he wouldn't have met her. Then he wouldn't have started believing again. Then he wouldn't have been blinded by the idea of being appreciated.

   Then he wouldn't have hoped to live.

   Xiao wanted to apologise to her again. For what he was about to do. He had made up his mind... and the woven flowery bands, her words, couldn't save him. He was sorry, that they couldn't save him. That she couldn't.

   "Good night, mom."

   All he received in return was an incredulous look, soaked with abhorrence. She didn't answer. And he didn't expect her to.

   He pushed open the door to his room, locking it behind him to avoid any more mental distress. He wouldn't hurt himself ── for it hurt the one he cared about the most.

   Selfish desires polluted his thoughts, but he wouldn't let them take over him. One last time, he wanted to leave her a message. To carve it in his skin. It would be the only bruise that wouldn't hurt.

   I think... I can love you. Or at least I could have.

   He shook his head; he almost gave in.

   Fishing through the contents of his drawer, he grabbed a glass bottle filled halfway with sleeping pills. His insomnia had helped him find a way, a painless one. A way where no harm would be done... to his skin. And to hers.

   He drew in an exhausted breath. His mind was a dangerous, dangerous place right now. A very sad one, too.

   All he could do was apologise. Continuously.

   "I'm sorry for hoping."

   And I'm sorry, mother, for failing you over and over again. I'm sorry for thinking I was strong to bear your shrieks and resentment, when I'm all but that. I'm a coward. I'm weak.

   I'm sorry I couldn't love you. I'm sorry I couldn't love myself. I hurt everyone ── my soulmate, the most. I hope she finds it in herself to fall in love with someone. Someone who marks her with kisses,

   and not with cuts.

   I wish I called out to her today. I wish I was greedy enough to make her stay, to involve her in the misery I live in. But she has so much love to share. I can't have her give it to the wrong person, for it will run out soon.

   I have known her truly for a day, and I will know her for another.

   He gently ran his fingers against the black hair tie keeping his locks together. A ghost of a smile haunted his lips, even though he was grieving.

   Her memory will disintegrate when my consciousness will.

   "She will remember me as Alatus," He intoned. "Alatus who never showed his face again. Alatus who she couldn't find."

   She would never know Xiao - the boy who gave up.

   I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it.

   On a bed of wood under the moon, he used every single pill he had left and gazed up into the infinite cosmic abyss through his window, with only gravity holding him onto the surface of the earth. The sunset in his irises brimmed with tears ── he grew increasingly aware of his heartbeat, each one of which was a poem written to himself, of his lungs with broken chunks of air. He grew increasingly aware of him being alive.

   As he faded away into his final dream, he hoped for one last bedtime story because that made him feel loved. He hoped for a hand to run through his hair, a touch that dripped with affection.

   Tortured, aching with anguish, yet he could only think of three words.

   See you, soulmate.

—

—fin.