ENG - My best friend's sister ᵐᶦᵏᵉʸ ˣ ᵒᶜ

86

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"I killed him," he whispers. "Right here, where we're standing right now," he adds.

Tears forced their way inexorably into my eyes as my voice whispered, "It was an accident, Mikey. You didn't kill him."
"Yes I did, whether it was intentional or not. It's my fault," he confessed, his eyes averted. The silence before he continued felt like it was tearing my heart apart.
"In hindsight, the years that followed were pure hell. I gave up everything: school, family, friends. I hung out with people who took refuge in alcohol and drugs every day. And I became one of them," he continues calmly. "I was barely sober and wanted to simply drown the pain of loss, be it in alcohol or drugs."

I swallow hard and the tears stream unstoppably down my cheek as I claw my nails into my palm. The fear I felt before has now completely disappeared and I am ashamed of having judged him. I want to hug him, hold him close, but his story stops me.
He continues: "I randomly beat people up in hospital because I was annoyed by the way they looked or the way they looked at me. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got it for no reason, just because I was frustrated. I picked fights with other gangs for kicks, and so the number of my enemies grew enormously."

Another pause.

He wipes his face and sighs heavily. He turns around again, leans against the railing and rests his head on his hand. "I was practically homeless at the time, even though I had a home where I could have always gone. Instead, I lived on the street, surrounded by a group of junkies. There were women in the group too, all older than me, they were in their mid or late twenties I guess. I started getting drunk with them, popping pills, using needles or sleeping with them," he finishes the sentence.

My heart stops and a whimper rises in my throat. I can no longer just stand there motionless and walk towards him, putting my arms around him - hugging his back as he stands with them facing me. I cling to his upper body, bury my face in his back and soak his top with my tears.
He doesn't move, remains frozen and continues to stare into the darkness. After a short pause, he sighs softly and continues his story: "One of them called herself my girlfriend, but that wasn't the case. She was kidnapped by a gang that was hostile to me, raped countless times, tortured and mutilated." His voice breaks as he continues. "And I didn't care," he whispers. "I just didn't care what those people did to that woman, even when they killed her in the end. It left me cold, even today." A shiver runs down my spine as he whispers these chilling words. I press him even closer to me anyway. It's a cruel thing to hear - something I don't really want to hear.

Suddenly he turns in my arms and puts his hands on my waist. I can feel him looking down at me, but I can't look him in the face, I'm too ashamed to have thought about him like that. I bury my face even deeper into his chest. I don't know what to say, but it doesn't seem to bother him, because he starts to speak again. "What happened to that woman was repeated with others who were seen with me. They too were raped, mutilated or killed. Some were released, but in the end death would have been better. One of them blamed me for the fact that she had lost her legs in such an incident and committed suicide in front of me because she didn't want to go on living like that and blamed me for it. I didn't give a shit about that either and it left me cold," he mumbles. I feel his grip on my waist tighten and he starts to tremble slightly. I don't want to cry, but the more he talks, the more tears leave my eyes. I bite my lips so hard that I can taste the blood.
"I just carried on as if nothing had ever happened - always moving on to the next kick. I treated these women like dirt, slept with them when I felt like it and let them serve me. I let them get me the pills I needed to stay high and then left them behind. Ken-Chin and Baji were the only ones who tried everything to get me out of it. They took a beating themselves and it took them years to get me out of there. They were the only two who didn't give up on me," he says, and his voice is calm - frighteningly calm.

I can hear his heartbeat as my head is directly on his chest, and he is fast, very fast. I believe him, every single word. He has no reason to lie to me. I was expecting so much that would be so bad that he couldn't tell me. But this is beyond even my imagination; it sounds like a horror movie - a terribly bad movie. I can't even begin to imagine how painful it all must have been for him.
"How long ago was that? " I ask him, my voice choked with tears, it's more of a croak.
"A little over four years and I've been out of there for about a year and a half," he tells me calmly. I swallow hard, frantically trying to calm myself as I claw into his top.
"Mikey," I burst out barely audibly. "How old are you?" I ask, trying to control my voice to get the words out clearly. Just the fact that I have to ask him this question proves to me again that I know absolutely nothing about him when I don't even know something as simple as his age.
He pauses for a moment and says simply: "19."
I open my eyes, which have been squeezed shut the whole time. I move my head away from him, pushing away slightly so I can look at him. "You... went through all that at fifteen?" it bursts out of me, my voice higher than I thought it would be. But that quickly becomes irrelevant when I look at his face, which is also covered in tears.

He is crying too.

He quickly wipes his face to remove the tears. "Pretty fucked up, isn't it?" A faint smile graces his face as he continues, "I killed my brother and, in a way, those women too." He puts the hand he just wiped his face with on my head.
"Anyway, that's why everyone tells you I won't do you any good. I'm not even mad at Baji for saying something like that. He's just worried about you and afraid you'll end up just like..." He breaks off his sentence, but presses out the rest through clenched teeth. "He's afraid you'll end up like those women. Raped, mutilated or maybe even dead."

My heart races painfully in my chest and the blood in my veins freezes. I avert my eyes from him again and try to organize everything he has just confessed to me in my mind. I need time to process it; my tears stop, whether from fear or shock, probably both.
"This..." I begin, mentally searching for words. "... won't happen to me, will it?" I ask him cautiously, afraid of the answer. This whole situation scares me, the thought that the same thing might happen to me just because I've been seen with him.
"No. I didn't care about what happened to those women - I still don't," he says immediately without thinking. "But you don't. I will never let anything like that be done to you," he adds, averting his eyes.
"Still, I'm afraid something will happen to you if I'm not around you, because of what's happened in the past, because of me," he says a little more quietly, hugging me close again. "I'm scared of my own reaction if something like that ever happens... If just saying it's over upsets me so much, I don't want to know how I'll react if someone lays a hand on you," he mumbles, resting his head on my shoulder - hugging me even tighter.

The fact that he himself is toying with the idea that something like this is possible scares me, more than anything before it. Maybe I'm selfish to think that I don't want this to happen to me, and maybe it's just as selfish to want to stay with him, even though there's a risk of it happening and I'm unconsciously hurting others around me.
He mumbles into my shoulder: "I know it scares you, but please don't leave me because of it. Everyone I've loved so far has left me, I don't want to lose you too."
He lets out a quiet sob, which brings tears to my eyes again. After another sob, he continues to speak. "You can hate me or be mad at me all you want, but please don't leave me," he pleads softly. "I never really wanted to fall in love for fear of being left, but you were just there and my God damn heart longs for you so much," he adds.

I'm terrified, especially of the things he's just confessed to me and that the same thing could happen to me. My own feelings threaten to overwhelm me. My head is screaming out loud that I should run away, that I'm not safe with him and I should fucking listen to what everyone is telling me. But my heart has fallen so deeply in love with him that it doesn't want to leave him alone, not after this confession, which I'm sure has been anything but easy for him. He finally trusts me and that makes me incredibly happy, even if the situation is anything but happy, on the contrary - it hurts incredibly. I'm struggling between my mind and my heart and don't know what to do.

But as so often, my body reacts on its own; I put my arms around his neck, bury my hands in his hair and whisper tearfully: "I won't leave you."

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