Curate, connect, and discover
i'll only hurt you if you let me . / Uta @ Yomo
hurt, by definition, comes together with pain.
pain is familiar. pain is something that ghouls as species have known for longer than they’d remembered each other’s faces, what little they saw of them, when the masks were cast off. renji observes more than he speaks, notices the wounds and torn skin already patching itself together in a gruesome display of rank: back then, they’d been considered a dangerous threat to the CCG, or to the general public.
humans. ordinary humans whose bodies broke and didn’t mend.
bodies that did nothing similar to what uta’s system is beginning to try, under the influence of whatever it is that kept that clownish smile plastered on his face. excitement? seems likely.
he waits until the open tissue is all healed, black ink molten across a pale canvas. there’s a revelation in the way uta’s eyes reflect the dim moonlight. fluorescent signs sprout from the tall buildings, further narrowing the already reduced space in this back alley, cascading them in bright hues and deep contrasts, their shapes a pair of protruding anachronisms in the urban landscape.
this privacy - the pause that follows feels loud enough to drown everything else: noise of artillery, debris moved around and across the asphalt, disaster and what comes with chaos. even the rattling heartbeat in his ribcage which hadn’t ceased to plague him since they first laid their fists onto each other sinks deep into oblivion. he picks up where uta left off, his voice returning to its usual listless baritone, “it won’t be pleasant, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
there’s childish amusement in this, in the thrills uta seeks. he’s never understood it, always drawing a blank when he tried to sympathize with it. what he knows, however, is rage. he’d tasted it on the roof of his mouth, even now, if he searched long for it. on the cusp of an old era, only uta and, perhaps itori, were unburdened by it, his baggage, his vengeful appetite.
they’d cannibalized, and they’d probably done so much worse, sins that follow them each to the grave - but it’s not all there is to it. not all there is to uta and him. perhaps he simply wants to drain it all dry: his options, the reasoning, any word that can keep his friend from self-immolation. renji paces closer.
“aren’t you cold?” he doesn’t know if uta misses him. renji’s never asked. part of him, a shallow part, believes that uta’s unselfconsciousness is indicator enough that he’d do well no matter renji’s stance in his circle. another part - a more selfish, boyish part that hadn’t entirely died out since their rooftoof talks, had mistaken these jabs and mockery for fondness, of a kind. so it often went. he exhales through his nostrils, sharp breeze cutting through loose strands of white hair. the scent of rain, drying blood, this; it’s all a grim reminder that anything could’ve gone wrong, had he not been sincere from the start.
“do you remember” renji asks, “the first time we met? it wasn’t much different than how we are now.” normally, teens outgrow their fixations. renji doesn’t think uta has dropped it entirely, but it’s still difficult to figure him out in a way that won’t piss renji off. even now, he feels annoyed. there’s time for the two of them to try and hurt the other. that entirely depends on how well uta fares from here on. a creature of terrible potential. renji lowers his knees until they’re touching the ground, hooks uta’s arm around his shoulder, working as an achor, and eases him back to his feet, eye to eye, just like it’d been a decade or so ago.
“it was like this, too.” his lip twitches, the birth of a smile, one that he’d thought long lost. “you can walk, let’s go.”
@antinomos