To Wait For You- Komaeda Nagito X Reader

Chapter 8: Without the Sun

She was like the Sun.

She had people orbiting around her; some were so close it burned them, some were so far- they were the coldest they could be and they wanted to be closer. The lucky ones were in the perfect distance to feel her warmth and live with her peacefully. In one way or another, all the people who met her felt attracted to her. She was the brightest person you could ever meet.

And him?

Well, in her little System, he was Pluto; a strange, little cold planet that no one wanted around the Sun, but who oddly was spinning around her in circles, in the opposite direction as everyone else.

Unfortunate, unnoticed-

-Yearning for her warmth.

~*~

It hurt him.

It did. He couldn't help but feel conflicted. In this pain, there laid his loneliness. And in this pain, there laid her happiness. To see her smiling, and know he wasn't the reason, the person it was for. To see her crying, and know he couldn't be there by her to wipe away the tears.

To hear her laughter, and know he was unable to find reason to share it. To hear her cries, and know he was unable to do anything to soothe it.

Though, perhaps someone like him didn't deserve it, but-

It hurt him. It really did.

~*~

Today, the sky was nothing at all.

It's like a canvas, where a child began to draw on it with a pencil, and then erased it in a way that spread the grey. And all the while, rain streaks down, invisible until it hits the ground.

He watched as she spoke openly, freely with her friends, conversation mingled with occasional laughter. He missed the times when it was her and him. He wondered, had she too forgotten him? Like he was nothing, but a voice washed by the wind.

'Stop acting like an Ex stalking the person who dumped them, you idiot...' His mind chided at him. He wondered if the usage of the word 'dump' was too much, too arrogant of him, surely, he was insulting her by even implying she stooped as low as to get into a relationship with him, and he felt something eating away at his heart, was it guilt? Maybe it was. But something else was there too, a sharp jab to his heart, that turned his stomach into a deep pit of despair. He frowned at the foreign emotion.

Why was he even with her? Of course, he was indeed drawn to her hope, but...

She couldn't hear him anymore. She was almost the same as everyone else.

Only, she was different. It was a fact that no one could ever deny.

She differs vastly from the people who decorated the world in random.

He had found the justification of his being by her, even though, unnoticed, and possibly forgotten. It was because in this world, where he had nowhere to go, no place he belonged. She was someone who gave him hope, warmth, and convinced him that it was okay to be happy, that he wasn't trash, only much more. She was 'home'.

She always will be.

~*~
Hypnagogia occurs at the threshold of consciousness. Whether you're escaping into sleep or it is brought on by your screaming alarm clock, it happens. It's where your lucid dreams form. Hypnagogia is the bridge from bodily control to your brain's freedom. It's the last few moments of an exciting dream, your borderland state, the predormitum process. It's where your body feels awake, but your mind is a continuous wanderer, scaling the hollow valleys and soaring summits of your imagination.

His second favourite place was hypnagogia, his first being by her side. He could still feel relaxed, but think at the same time. It was where the epiphanies came and the hard decisions were made. He left his carousel of erratic ideas to the flat, steady land of waking life. There, he could work out a problem quicker than he could awake. There, he could see clearly, and everything was simple. No one was there to pull the wool over his eyes or smother him with human interaction, or influence his words and take away his freedom. He had complete control over his mind in that abridged hour of utopia.

And in hypnagogia, he could see her, smiling with him, and know it wasn't real, and not have to wake up and suddenly realize it was an illusion, because he already knew from the start, and he could indulge in the false warmth of her.

And in hypnagogia, he allowed himself to wonder: "Does she remember me?"

~*~

A tugging pull at his gut. It was there again.

Komaeda flinched. After ceasing to exist in every way, after ceasing to exist even to his very own embodiment of home, hope, there was this sensation that frequented his gut. It took everything, anything, out of him to will himself away. And that only lead to it pulling harder, only subsiding after a few minutes.

The reason why he had yet to give in to the pull is- It was familiar. Too painfully so.

It was the same pull that lead had him to her.

It could be because he didn't want to get attached to anyone else. Or because he didn't want to get forgotten again. Or because he couldn't find it in himself to bother. Or because he had blamed it for the pain of being forgotten that he had no choice but to endure.

There were many, many possible reasons as to why he resisted the temptation. Why he didn't want to risk anything else.

And out of the many reasons, there came another one.

Or; it could be because-

-He didn't want to leave her.

~*~

Watching her smile, watching her laugh.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. He tried not to follow her, he tried not to see her. Not seeing her had suffocated him. It had hurt him in ways nobody could define. At first, it was a sharp, stinging pain, an ache in his heart. Then, it grew.

He turned his gaze away from the girl. A vast array of nature's best was presented to him in the forms of sight, smell and wind.

He had always loved the flowers and the birds, loved the sunlight and the clouds that drifted by. He had always loved the way the leaves move in a breeze and that soft whispering sound they make, like nature loves to chatter too. Yet the tiredness that begun a while ago remains like a veil over his skin, grey and cold. And as he watched the petals and the twigs sway outside the window, there was only a creeping sorrow where there should be joy. It sits like November rain on his skin, enough to chill what was once warm inside. At any other time, he would have called a friend, someone who stuck for a while, asked for the warmth he needed to ward it off, just a little is enough.

And now that he couldn't possibly do that, he just let it come, drop by drop and he felt like it is an ocean falling upon him instead of rain - that the grief of years he carefully suspended has all condensed right above his head into a cloud large enough to block the sun. The hurt was a spider web, intricate, yet strong. He thought in time it will pass and the sun will regain its warmth, but the joy from his heart was gone. He couldn't cry, he had no tears to. It was empty.

They say it can't rain forever, that there will come a time when it must cease, that the last drop will have fallen.

He doubted that. For the first time, he felt truly hopeless.

And thus, he understood.

Letting go wasn't a one-time thing; It's something you have to do each and every day- over and over again.

~*~