Chapter Text
This should be impossible.
He’d held onto it for so long, had been kept safe by it for years, even decades.
This seal was his safety net, the only thing keeping him from… whatever uncertainty he wanted to keep under wraps from everyone, including himself.
And now it was lying on the floor in front of him.
Not on his face like it should be.
Like it HAD to be.
Panic swelled in his gut as he scooped up the fragile white square in his hands, and the once vibrant red font seemed to dull between his trembling fingers as if it knew its job was unfulfilled.
His hands acted on their own, plastering the seal back on its familiar spot. For a second it holds. It holds and Hanako’s world has stopped tilting.
But the power used to keep it in place has faded. Its strength is gone.
It slips off his face like a dying leaf from a twig and stays on the floor. And he realizes it can no longer restrain him. Not without someone else to seal him back.
He’s alone, though, in the third floor girl’s bathroom. A casualty of yet another time he thinks he doesn’t need help. I can handle this, he thought. I can stop it. He had felt its hold weaken a few days before. He knew time had been running out.
Now he wished he hadn’t put off asking for help until today.
Hanako can feel something unpleasant, a distant emotion he doesn’t want to examine any closer crawling into his mind.
He’s afraid of it, clutching at his head as if that would stop whatever is invading his thought process.
His fear was rapidly changing into something else, however. Suddenly it was a growing sense of relief, and freedom. He was free, he was finally free!
Euphoria quickly coated him like jell-O, drowning out every ounce of reason he had. He reveled in glory as the powers he had carefully contained ran rampant. He let himself go for a moment, to bask in the wonder of it all, no polite composure, no safety measures, no caring about anything or anyone, he was above it all, he was above everyone!
But then Hanako caught sight of himself in the mirror.
A horrible grin had stretched itself on his face. His normally bright round pupils had shrunk to dark sharpened slits.
His grin dropped. Eyes widened with horror at what he had just thought, of what he was just thinking about doing.
His grin came back sharper.
He hated it, hated himself.
In desperation he flung himself at the mirror, smashing it to bits with his knife, but he could still see that horrible face, that terrifying grin, and before he knew it he was breaking the other mirrors, but the face remained intact and he couldn't escape it.
He didn’t know when he started screaming, but his cries rang in his ears as he wildly sliced everything, crunching window panes under his shoes and hacking the sinks to bits. He doesn’t need to breathe and yet he’s still out of breath, frigid tears dripping down his face, and when he looks up the walls have big gashes and the faucet sinks are dripping water all over the wooden floor, the stalls are swung off of their hinges and the beautiful windowsill he so loved to sit on and talk to Yashiro on warm schooldays is reduced to splinters.
His body is racked with sobs but he has to keep himself afraid, he has to keep himself sane.
He has to remember.
He has to remember who he is.
No matter what, he can't let himself go.