Light in the Night Sky [Levi/Rivaille x OC] (Heavy Editing)

Chapter 21: Crooked Thoughts Pt.1

The speckles of ice floated in the air weightlessly, almost as light as icing sugar at a baker’s place, still visible to the naked eye. My head rested idly on my hand as I stared through my lowered eyelashes, an energy consuming yet unconvincing smile pulled across my face as I watched my fellow squad mates throw snow at each other.

“Gunther, watch out!”

“Auruo, you moron!”

Their laughter echoed from afar, almost like it was indirectly mocking my conflicting emotions of self-hate and to some degree… even cynicism. Their little figures were like black spots in the contrasting white backdrop. From that little shit Auruo, whose cocky bruised face I bashed in two weeks ago was wrinkly happy, to that strawberry blonde Petra grinning ever so cheerfully.

Growing sick of inspecting them, I swiftly pulled out my old Balisong from a deep coat pocket.

The blade that Mike had once given me had that little unique clunking with every round I flipped. I kept that forged smile fixed on my face, although my head was thick with grief. With a few scratches encrusted here and there on its handles, and even if it didn’t look as new and beautiful as it used to be, it was something fairly significant to me, reminding me of the days when I was still fresh and new, and unknowingly happy.

If Hanji was to send me down for professional counselling or something, the most likely thing the person would say to me was that it was completely normal to make mistakes and that I had to ‘move on’. The following things were just messy scribes inked on a daggy paper, handed to me, entitled ‘Dealing with emotions of Guilt’.

One. Apologize.

Two. Do something nice to make-up for it.

Three. Move on with life.

I was already utterly stuck on step one.

And problem was… there was no one to apologize to. Apologizing to someone who was still heaving through corrupted lungs with an alive and beating heart was different from facing a tombstone, or a new fresh patch of dirt a few months old. You could expect an answer, a reaction, just something from the living, even if it was just a round of hateful shrieks at you, whereas standing beside a symbol to mark the once living, you know that the best thing you could get back was just a few bonus hours of dead silence.

An arm was thrown over my shoulders, drawing my lazy, numb eyes away from the whirling blade.

“Hay-Hay,” The brunette beamed at me as she pulled me into an awkward hug, her spectacles reflecting in nature’s free light, “Come on! Show me a smile.”

My lids robotically blinked in their routine-like reply, and my attention was redirected back at the blade in my hand.

They say it was my downhill mood and my growing negativity towards life that led to my constant exhaustion, telling me to ‘brighten up’ or something. But now even ‘brightening up’ was no different from a sin, leaving behind a guilty feeling for each breath of air my lungs drew in.

“Hazel,” My impassive orbs never bothered looking up.

“It’s not your fault. You know that, don’t you?”

Unhealthy thinking. My mind had grown tired of worrying, of thinking, of caring. I was moving, yet I felt pretty dead.

My bony wrist spun in a repetitive circular motion, watching the silver blur of the handles as the spinning blade whirled in my bare cold hand. The Balisong glided gracefully, rotating around my fingers and bounced off my palm. The dainty knife swivelled through the air and twirled around in a full revolution before landing in between my two fingers, flicking its edge out.