I'm Ready When You Are

Thorned rose, clenched fist, red rivers that flow from between my fingers.
Struggling to find comfort in the dry, dead petals, their white tainted and faded.
Gifted since long ago, once beloved, now scorned, ruined, hated.
The thorns stuck to my flesh, grew into my veins, melted with my nerves.
Like an unwanted weed that was allowed to grow.
Green invading red, forcing it still, fist turned into stone.
More painful now it is to rip it off than it was the day before.

Chapter 1: Not Ready

Chapter Text

I was sitting on my desk with a book in my hands when Monika told us that club activities were starting. We pushed some desks together into a circle, with Sayori and Monika sitting at my sides. But the seat in front of me was empty. And for some reason I just kept thinking that something was missing.

I looked to my sides and I could just see the smiling faces of my club-mates. They were urging me to read their poems, to exchange with me, to get to know me better by the way I wrote, by the way the words flowed out of my pen. Honest and patient, their eyes invited me to stay put, to share poems, to read and sit back.

But something was missing. Something was lacking in the clubroom. Despite its comfort, despite the warm sun coming through the windows, despite the soft smell of freshly brewed tea, there was something lacking.

I tried to stand up, but my legs refused to move. I tried to reach out, but my arms were stuck on my book. I tried to ask for help, but not a single noise came out of my mouth. All my words got stuck in my throat, the more I tried to yell the more I choked on those words.

There was something missing, and I don’t know what to do to find it back. I don’t know what was holding me back from just reaching out. Every muscle in my body tensed up against my will, forcing me put, like having stared into the eyes of Medusa.

The school bell rung and like clockwork I moved. Step by step, my feet took me away from that desk. I wanted to turn back, I needed to turn back. I needed to find it. I had to find it.

The school bell rung louder and louder, clearer with every moment as I kept struggling to turn back. The world started to lose shape. The smiles of my classmates began to fade away, like a flash of light that scarred my retinas. The darkness of the world clogged my vision, vertigo started to set in, the school bell run harder than before once again.

And as I fell, as the darkness consumed my being, I could only think of that missing thing. That precious thing. That wonderful thing.

Let me find it, I begged to the world. Let me reach it.

Let me hold on to that precious thing.

The ringing in my ear becomes not just clear but obvious. The darkness of the world floods my eyes even after I open them. I recognize my position in the world, my state of being, my nakedness beneath the covers of my bed and the weight of them over me.

And then I recognize the ringing. It’s the ringing of the doorbell.

I turn around from my bed, still a bit dizzy from such a dream, and struggle to read the clock on the bedside table that faced the window, the curtains slid open to the extreme as to let the entire brightness of the full moon into my eyes. Two fourteen in the morning and the doorbell still rings.

But as the confusion from having woken up slowly begun to disappear, the feeling of despair begun to creep on me. The realization of the reason why the doorbell is ringing begun to sink into my stomach.

She needed help.

I try to stand up quicker than I usually do, finding the end of the bed and the underwear I wore before going to bed. The doorbell rings again, and I hurry myself in getting dressed with my long-sleeved shirt and pants. I exit my room and as I walk down the stairs, I mentally prepare myself for what was coming next, for what awaited me beyond the entryway.

I reach the entrance door after passing through the living room, stopping right in front of it once the ringing of the bell stops.

And for a second, I hesitate. I find myself reluctant to opening the door. I wonder if this is something that I need in my night. I wonder if, perhaps, I still am dreaming, and this is just a trick of my mind.

But then I think of the first time this happened. I think of that night, so many months ago, that I was first thrusted into this situation. Into this sick routine of pain, of secrets, of awkward silences and avoided glances.

And I pinch my upper arm lightly, dreading the concept of being awake for this, fearing that this is real. My anxiety spikes once I realize that indeed, this is not a dream, and my uneasiness almost makes me turn back around and hide in my room, not wanting to accept that this was happening, not wanting to let this unhealthy pattern to continue.

Hypocrite that I am, calling this situation unhealthy when I already have my own unhealthy activities.

I try to control the shake of my hand, try to ignore the growing pit in my stomach, try to control my breathing, and I unlock the door, thinking I´m ready to face whatever lies in the outside world.

But after opening the door, I realize that I could never get used to the horrid sight of Natsuki´s beaten up face. I feel my blood rush away from my face as the cold air of the outside world seeps deep beneath my skin, touches my bones and sinks into the marrow, freezing my body from the outside in.

But it’s my soul what freezes the most and my heart what cracks when the pale moonlight shines on Natsuki´s broken nose, on the dried blood that she struggled to wipe from her busted lips, on the purple and blue blotch of skin on the entire right side of her face, on the cut on that side’s cheekbone and on the swollen eyelid of the same side. Her bloodshot eyes shoots daggers into me, ashamed and enraged that she had to come to me once again as mine tried to avoid not watering up.

“Sorry…” She looks down to the floor as her dry throat lets out her weak and raspy voice, and I curse myself for thinking that the best thing she can have for it is a Liquorice root tea.

I struggle to find the proper words to express what I feel. “I’m sorry” for making her feel like this is my fault, that I am sorry for inviting her into my house just for these kinds of situations. “It’s okay”, because I asked her myself to come to me for these kinds of situations, even though it’s not okay to even let these situations happen from the start. “Come in”, because it’s the courteous thing to say to a guest. “I can’t take this anymore”, because I don’t know how much heartache I can take from seeing my friend in this position. “What happened now?”, because even though she never tells me the truth, I need to make sure that she wasn’t in danger somehow, that this was just another accident, that this is the last time she comes through my door.

But in the end, within my rushing mind, I cannot find the proper words to the situations. Not just because of my social anxiety, not just because of my regular anxiety, but because nothing I say will even get a proper response from her, regardless of how I formulate it.

And so, unable to find a proper response, the only winning move is not to play. I step aside wordlessly and allow Natsuki to enter the house.

Just like me, she silently enters the house and goes straight to the couches on the living room, not even trying to hide the limp on her right leg as she sits down. I close the door, the cold air quickly evaporating and leaving just a ghost of its presence, not fully gone but at least not bothering us anymore.

I take a moment to look at my guest, my broken friend, shaking inside the jacket she wore. Even though we live five blocks away, that 15-minute walk, maybe more considering her limp, in this cold and in that pink skirt wasn´t going to do her any favours.

Natsuki allowed herself to rest on the couch and close her eyes, breathing slowly as she finally rested her feet. Focus on the most important thing, Yuri. What has higher importance right now? Physical wounds I can tend to later, since she isn’t bleeding heavily in some way. Talking is out of the equation, as I truly believe that whatever I say could worsen this situation.

I think the tea is the best option for now.

I walk to the kitchen almost undisturbed, as I have done many times before this night. Effortlessly, almost in instinct, I turn on the electric kettle and open the cupboard full of tea, searching and finding that black envelope with a tea bag inside. I take it and open it, discarding the paper into a trashcan and finding a clean cup to put the bag and two scoops of sugar from the container beside the kettle. Now I just have to wait for the water to heat up.

“You’re not gonna ask me what happened?” Her words cut through my focus like a razor on my skin, just as painful and just as sharp. Her words pull me back into the reality of the situation and I can’t stop myself from shaking in fear, in shame, in horror, in pain.

Natsuki was hurting and I forgot about her for a minute.

I open my mouth but no sound comes out. I struggle to even say that I’m sorry for not asking, but the truth is that I struggle to even acknowledge that this was happening and I wasn’t doing anything to help her. I don’t know how to even start helping her.

Ironically, I can’t even help myself when I am hurting. I just make it worse. Just like I am making Natsuki feel worse with my silence.

“I-I…” Like a whimper, a pained whisper, just that vowel leaves my mouth. The water inside the kettle starts bubbling harshly, and I take it as a sign to not even try to converse, to just focus on the situation, to just start helping.

I give up on talking, as I never really was good at it in these kinds of situations. I take the kettle and slowly start pouring into the cup the warm water, holding it with my two hands as to avoid shaking too much and spilling it on the counter.

Once done, I put the kettle back on its place, turn it off, and take a metal spoon to swirl the contents inside, letting the tea brew to completion.

I take the cup and turn towards the living room, avoiding eye contact with my guest as I made my way towards her. I don’t even want to look at her again. I don’t think I could handle it. If I looked at her beaten face, if she looks at me with that pained look…

I fear I would ask her if it was her father again.

I put the cup on the table in front of Natsuki and awkwardly wait for her to take it, leaning my head downwards as to hide behind my bangs. Natsuki takes what felt like a minute before I hear the rustling of her clothes and the soft scrape of the cup against the table as it is picked up.

She blows twice softly before giving the tea a sip, then quickly puts it back down on the table before leaning back in the couch.

“Thanks.”

And then we are back into silence, into awkwardness, into this shared moment of discomfort.

The first time Natsuki came like this was one inconspicuous night during last year’s summer break. She came to my house with a cut cheek and a bruised arm, which in reality was a sprain. She begged me to help her since I was the closest person to her house and she was alone in her house when it happened, so she couldn´t heal herself for the time being. I was surprised at first, but I did help her out of cherishment to my friend. I asked her what happened as I applied an ointment on her arm, but she only looked away and said that she fell off the stairs.

“I’m sorry for bothering you.” She said once I finished bandaging her arm up. I could tell she was ashamed of herself, ashamed of letting herself be weak in front of someone. She was red all over her face and she avoided looking at me most of the time. But that night I asked her to keep a promise to me, to us.

“If you ever need help, don’t ever be afraid to ask me to help you.”

And while I still am thankful that she seeks me out, that she trusts me enough to let herself be weak in front of me, at the darkest of times I sometimes regret having said that.

The second time she came to me was before Christmas, this time being her leg what troubled her. Once again, it was at night, but this time it was snowing and she had barely anything warm on her other than a sweater. I helped her bandage her leg and asked what happened to her. But she once again looked away as she said that a box of decorations fell on top of her.

But the distinct mark of the sole of a shoe on her leg only made me worry more.

And so, for every passing night of the week that followed, I wondered if I was going to see her again in that situation. I lost some sleep wondering how that mark came to be on her leg. She never said anything about any shoes, boots or whichever footwear could have fallen over her with such force.

And it was a nightmare that night what revealed to me that she must have been stepped over.

After that, every time Natsuki came for my aid I started asking less, talking less, and began looking more, studying every inch of her wounded skin. With every secret meeting, I began finding more and more signs of struggle, of dark purpose, of dangerous intent upon every bloody blemish on her skin.

One time I found the mark of a belt on her back. One time I found four knuckle-shaped bruises on her stomach. One time I found the outline of a hand on her neck.

And as these visual clues began to fill the empty spots of the puzzle within my head, the image became clearer and clearer.

But despite being so painfully obvious that there was something going on inside her house, that she was experiencing not accidents but attacks, that she was withstanding not clumsiness but some sort of abuse…

I did nothing but heal her. I didn’t offer my help beyond what she asked of me. I only healed her wounds, but I never dared to invite her to spend the night, to escape the horrors in her household for one moment. And even after realizing that the perpetrator of such atrocities was most likely her own father, I never found the will, the courage to dial emergency services, to speak out, to ask, to assist, to help solve a problem.

I just couldn’t find it in me to just reach out to her.

“Can we start, please?” Her words once again shook me out of my trance, quickly reminding me that I needed to help her, that she was entrusting her body to me in this moment. I look up from the floor and once again I find myself looking into her eyes, full of shame, of pain, of embarrassment, of regret…

I dodge those pink orbs by turning around on my feet and rushing myself to the bathroom, pulling from a cabinet my first aid kit. I open it and take a look inside, finding nothing but the bare essentials for such a task. I close it and, from the same cabinet, I take a green bottle full of an antibiotic ointment and a bag full of cotton balls before closing it and leaving the bathroom.

Natsuki already took of her jacket while waiting for me, having placed it beside her on the couch. Her attire consisted of just a white blouse and her pink skirt, such little clothing for such a cold outing to a friend’s house. She most likely grabbed whichever first jacket she could get her hands on before rushing out her house in the dead of night.

“W-Where…?” Not wanting to keep her waiting a second longer, and desperate to get this scene over with, I finally break the silence as I sit beside her.

“On my face, where else?” She doesn’t turn her face to mine, but just stays facing to the front, giving me unrestricted access to her beaten side. I sigh deeply, trying to focus on the task at hand, and start the process of healing her.

I take one cotton ball out of the bag and soak it slightly with the ointment. Natsuki closes her eyes shut, preparing herself for the sting of the contact, as I inch the ball closer and closer to her face. And in the moment of contact, Natsuki cringes and recoils with a sharp inhale through her gritted teeth, her hands curling into fists on her lap as she struggles to stay still.

“F-Fuck!” She whispers as I wait for her to recover. “J-Just fucking do it, please!” She begs me to continue, and I have a hard time swallowing my worry as I resume applying the ointment, causing her to cringe again, but this time she tries harder to keep still.

And so, the minutes pass. I put away one, two, three cotton balls, covered in a thin layer of dirt and blood as I pass over the cut on her cheekbone, making sure to use alcohol on it as well. Natsuki’s silent curses, whimpers and moans of pain barely make an echo on the house, but they strongly resonate within my skull, drowning my brain in her obvious signs of pain.

Pain that I could have helped her avoid. Pain that if I had been brave enough, I could have helped from happening in the first place. These marks, these bruises, these cuts, they all could have been avoided if I had asked her, if I had insisted, if I had decided to help her.

But here we are. Victims of a choice I never took. This blood I help clean up, these wounds I help close up, these cuts I help avoid getting infected are all the direct consequence of my non-actions. This is divine punishment, some sort of indirect torture that I have to look after. I am the one that allows Natsuki to keep getting hurt, and I am the one that looks after her once she was hurt.

“Fuck, my nose is bleeding again…” I recoil to her words, surprised at how I hadn’t realized that her nose was literally facing several degrees to the left. I look at Natsuki and find her trying to hold her nose shut as a small but constant trickle of blood starts to drip from her nostril.

The crimson red that dribbled into her fingers plunged me into some sort of shock. For a moment I was laying in my bathroom floor, knife in hand while the other was covered in a similar shade of red. The ringing in my ear muffled my own shaky breathing, the dark vignette in that surrounded my vision getting stronger with every passing second as the adrenaline flowed through my body, blurring my vision as my blood pressure sunk as low as the floor I was sitting on.

“Yuri! Paper, please!” Her yell takes me out of my own mind, but the ringing in my ears still muffles her voice. I shake my head slightly as I rush to the bathroom, quickly yanking the toilet paper from its resting place, and rush back to the living room, noticing how the nosebleed had stained Natsuki’s white blouse and skirt. She yanks the roll out of my hands and quickly rolls up a plug to stick into her nose, but it quickly made her wince in pain as it still is very much broken.

“I-I need to…!” I fumble with my words as I sit on the table in front of Natsuki, taking care not to topple the cup of tea. “I-I have to r-realign it!”

“Then fucking do it!” Natsuki tries to hold on to her nose, not wanting to bleed anymore on her clothes. But once I got my hands close to her face, we both decided to forgo any decency, any sense of cleanliness, and she let her hands down, allowing the river of blood to continue flowing.

We both knew it was going to hurt, so I wasted no time explaining what I was going to do and I just reached forward to grab Natsuki’s nose with my thumb and index, causing Natsuki to recoil violently and scream in pain. I pushed through the ringing in my ears, the screams of my friend, the throbbing behind my head and the slick, warm feel of the blood that got smeared on my hand as I carefully pushed and pulled the cartilage back into place with a loud scraping noise and finally, a crack.

Natsuki’s yells ceased once I let go of her nose, and instead she could only let her tears out with every heavy breath she took, panting, gasping and shaking hard after experiencing such concentrated pain. I look at my friend, covered in blood that still poured from her nose, clothes ruined beyond repair, pale as marble, shaking uncontrollably, crying softly to herself…

I look down at my hands and I find the same characteristics of my friend. Tainted, pale, shaking…

“N-Nat…” My throat betrays me, choking in my own words once again. I feel the tears start pooling in my eyes as I struggle to find a spot where to focus.

I caused this. I made this a reality. I not only allowed my friend to get hurt, but I just hurt her directly now. I could have avoided this. I could have helped her. I could have done something…

I didn’t realize how my sobs began escaping my lips. I feel the tears run down my cheeks, falling from my face and into my hands, mixing with the blood on them. I close my hands into fists, exasperated at my own inadequacy, at my cowardice, at my selfishness…

I cry, completely defeated, absolutely destroyed thanks to the realization that the pain that my friend was experiencing was completely my fault. I hurt my friend. I allowed her to get hurt. I allowed this to happen consciously. I tortured my friend, I sent her to the gallows and then wondered why she kept coming back to me so hurt.

I was slowly killing my friend with my cowardice.

“Y-Yuri…?” Natsuki’s voice is shaky, weak and raspy, but there is this undertone of worry in it. There is no more pain in her voice, no more awkwardness, no more shame. There is only her worry. Worry for someone that doesn’t deserve it.

“N-Na..!” I can’t even manage to speak, to tell her that it’s my fault. I can’t even call out her name. My sobs escalate into moans, into wails, into pained groans.

How could I? How could I betray my friend’s trust? How could I tell her to confide me her broken self when I could have told her that I want to help her more? What kind of person does that? What kind of two faced, hypocrite human being does that to someone else? To hurt and heal, hurt and heal, hurt and heal, again and again, only causing pain whenever possible…

What kind of monster does that?

“Yuri, please!” I feel a pair of hands on my shaking shoulders, pushing me up to sit straight and face the reddened face of Natsuki. Plastered with worry, with fear, Natsuki attempts to make sense of my own. There was no moment of self-consciousness, no moment of embarrassment that made me cover my face. There was only shame of myself, disappointment at myself, hatred towards my own being.

“Yuri, please just breathe.” Natsuki’s beaten face, the red on her lips and chin, the bruises on her skin, the paper plugs on her nose, every single detail on her face began to lose shape and colour, and I could then see the true Natsuki. The friend that always worries for the others, the friend that tries her damnedest to not show how really worried she is, the friend that seeks out the others when she knows that there is something wrong going on. “Just breathe with me, Yuri. You’re gonna choke.”

“I can- I c-can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Just look at me.” Her words are slightly muddled due to the paper on her nose, and even after speaking she has to swallow the blood that probably was pooling inside her nose.

“N-No, I-I…” I cough for a second before another sob takes my words away. “I-I hurt y-you!”

“Yuri, you didn’t hurt me.” She tries to breathe and speak at the same time. “Sure, putting my nose back hurt like hell, but you did what you had to.”

“N-Nats, I-I…” I swallow too, gasping after I do. “I-I’m sorry…”

“Hey, you have nothing to be sorry for. You are helping me.”

“NO!” Instinctually, I push Natsuki’s hands away from my shoulders. Underserving of her touch, of her worry, I just feel the knot in my heart undo with my yell. “I-I could have stopped it!”

“Yuri, you had nothing to do with… This. Okay?”

“I c-could have stopped it…” The pit in my stomach swirls inside me, and for a moment I think I’m about to puke. But again, Natsuki reaches out to my shoulders, anchoring me into the real world as she stares into my eyes again.

“Stop what?” She asks honestly, not knowing what I was talking about.

“I-I… I’m s-sorry, N-Natsuki…” I lose all control over my body. Before this moment, I tried to talk but nothing came out of my mouth. But now, I can’t find the way to shut my mouth, to not speak, to not confess. “N-Natsuki… I-I’m sorry f-for not-” I cough again and try in vain to stop talking. “F-For not d-doing something sooner…”

“…” I’m not sure if it was possible for Natsuki to get even more pale, but something in her expression tells me that she feared my next words. “… Yuri, what are you talking about?”

“I-I…” And now that I think about it, I too fear my next words. “N-Natsuki, I-I… I saw t-the belt… The m-m-mark of a h-hand… I-I saw everything…”

She stays still, eyes wide open -or one eye wide open as the other struggles to do the same- as I confess. Her grip on my shoulder lessens for a second before gripping back just as hard.

“Natsuki… I-Is…” I swallow hard, noticing how the fear in Natsuki’s face reaches a crescendo. The panic spreads across her face the moment I part my lips and the grip on my shoulders tightens when I finally ask: “I-is your f-fathe-“

“SHUT UP!”

I freeze up, recoiling at the sudden outburst of my friend. She hides herself behind her bangs, just like I did before her, and the shaking in her body is not of cold or of pain, but of rage. Anger. Annoyance.

And I can’t help but feel that there was also anguish in her.

“I fell, okay!?” Her tone focuses on the rage as the grip of her hands on my shoulders tightens, but the natural weakness in her arms mixed with the effects of the cold and the physical exhaustion can’t bring her to actually hurt me. Despite this, she squeezes my shoulder, holding them hard as she shakes in place. “My papa had NOTHING to do with this, okay!?”

“N-Natsuki…” My sobs already weakened, but even then, I can’t stop my tears from falling. “I-I’m sorry…”

It’s just too clear. Too obvious. It’s some kind of open secret between the club members that Natsuki simply doesn’t have a normal life inside her house. Countless times she has fainted on her seat, countless times her stomach had growled hard enough to be heard and cause her to recoil in pain, countless times have I noticed her hastily put makeup or her rushing to the school bathroom to put on early on.

But we all do something about it. Sayori shares her lunch with her, Monika gifts her energy bars at times, we let her sleep in the classroom, making as little sound as possible. And while the help I give is in secret, in private, in the middle of the night, we still help.

But I could have done more.

“N-Natsuki… I-I’m sorry if its t-too… Blunt of me t-to say that…” I reach to the roll of toilet paper and take a couple of squares from it to blow my nose, Natsuki still avoiding my eyes as I do this. “B-But I… I noticed… A-And I wondered if t-there was…” I swallow and blow my nose again before continuing. “I-If there is anything… I can do to help you?”

“Yuri, you are already helping me enough.” She lifts her face up with a frown on her face, displeased at my assumptions, which in the end are all still just that: Assumptions. “You would be doing me a big favour if you didn’t ask any questions, okay?”

But that look that shoots daggers, that uncontrollable shake of her body, that yell full of anguish when I mentioned her father… It’s all too perfectly coincidental. The pieces fit too perfectly. All that is left to understand is why would she deny it? Why would she avoid my help?

I need to help her. I need to get her out of that situation. I have to do something about it. She’s my friend, she has been for so long now. I can’t just leave her stay in such a horrible position, in such an awful household that has no love for her, no cherishment, no appreciation of her talents, her passion, her fire within her heart…

I need to do something.

I need to reach out to her.

“N-Nats… Please… Let me help you…” Knowing how Natsuki’s love language is physical touch -we once shared as a club activity our preferred love language-, I first clean my hand with the toilet paper and then place it on her exposed knee, cold as ice against my warm hand. She doesn’t move, she only looks at my hand for a brief moment before she stares into my eyes once more. “I-I know… I know you’re hurting… I-I can’t just let you g-go ba-“

“Fuck off! I know you’re hurting yourself too, but you don’t see me busting your fucking balls about it!”

Almost right after she says that, the grip on my shoulders disappears and her hands rush to close her mouth shut, eyes wide open as she recognizes her words.