The Fears of Shiki Tohno
If you could erase every bad thing that ever happened to you, would you do it?
Would you make it so that someone whom you lost never left? Would you make it so that the mistakes you made in the past never happened? Everything tragic that could have been prevented
was prevented? Would you take all the pain away? All the suffering, all the anger, all the desperation, all of it? The tears that didn't have to be shed, the lives that didn't have to be lost, the mistakes that didn't have to be made?
Even if it meant losing everything you'd picked up along the way?
Even if it meant, in turn, also erasing everything you had learned from that pain? The resolutions that a person made to become a better person? The experiences that hardened you to be stronger?
Certainly, Shiki Tohno used to believe that it'd have been worth it. The possibility of erasing his pain at the cost of what he had learned from it all as well. But he had learned since then. For all that his Mystic Eyes could destroy, he couldn't erase time. So there was no use trying, wishing, in the first place. And even if he could... He knew better now. The boy was nearing 20 years old now. Soon, in just a few years time, if he'd even still be alive by then, the time would come where he would be sooner called a man than a boy.
To think that he had changed so much. It only felt like yesterday that he was just another, unassuming high school student. "Victim A," he referred to himself in a self-deprecating manner. A time when, rather than immortal vampires and interdimensional demons, his biggest problems were his anemia and enduring the wrath of his younger sister. A time when he would have given anything to take back all the mistakes he'd made.
But he knew better now.
He knew that with pain, came experience now. When he saw himself, he saw someone who had been on an almost never-ending journey. He really was different. He really had changed. He was older, more aware. He knew of his flaws, his limitations, but also of his strengths, his virtues. And he owed it all to everything he had lost along the way. For everything he lost, he gained something new. It wasn't until he almost lost it all that he realized it though. It wasn't until he almost died that he realized the will to live that burned deep inside him.
Beyond the fear of himself. Beyond the drive towards death. Beyond the unwillingness to be happy. The fire of wanting to continue on living resonated within him.
If not for himself, then perhaps for
her. Because
she would have wanted him to live on and be happy. And he wasn't about to start dishonoring her name. He'd already done enough to her. Now, it was time to make up for everything.
YES, IT HURTS, DOESN'T IT? IT HURTS TO DIE! DID YOU TAKE THAT INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN YOU KILLED ME WHEN WE FIRST MET? JUST DIE! DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE!
The voice of Arcueid, his dear friend that had dragged him into the world of vampires and apparitions in the first place, rung in his head like a bell, brought about by the mist that surrounded him as his body, his very being, floated in the middle of empty blackness.
Arcueid had a hard life, and yet, she probably didn't even realize the gravity of her pain. She was just that stupid. The single cause of the existence of the "special" Dead Apostle Ancestor, the feared Serpent of Akasha known as Roa, Arcueid was just as responsible as the villain Roa was when it came down to the body count. She has to live with that guilt forever. Even though Roa is long dead, she'll have to carry that burden forever. Knowing that, if only she never gave into the temptation of drinking blood, many innocent lives could have been preserved.
She would learn from that.
Without fear of it, almost as if to mock it, Shiki inhaled deeply, taking in more of the mist into his being. And with an almost nostalgic smile, no less.
It reminded him of when he first came to Silent Earth. And saved the multiverse.
It was ironic. It was dreadful, but not without humor. This mist that spurred about scenarios that he feared the most. It comforted him. For whatever mysterious reason, he could only smile, bitterly or not, at the voices that the mist rang in his head, like a lullaby soothing him.
If you continue to associate with that woman, Tohno-kun, I'll have to kill you. But you never truly cared about how I felt, did you? You would always rather be at her side.
Ciel-senpai was always good at faking. Faking being the jealous type. Faking being the good-natured, hard-working upperclasswoman at school. That was how she lived her life. Lying to other people. Lying to herself. Hiding behind masks, outfits, swords, glasses.
Maybe if she was more honest, the debacle between her, an Executor of the Church, and Arcueid, an unholy vampire, no matter how good her intentions were, would have been settled in a cleaner fashion. If she was more open, perhaps she would have gotten together with Minato-kun on a less bumpy ride. Her life, even if she had changed now, was full of "if only" scenarios, and the number wasn't going to go down from there. But no matter.
She would learn from them.
You... You left me! You left me all to myself! You never cared for me at all! I hate you! I hate you, Nii-san!
Just like Ciel, his little sister Akiha had trouble with being honest as a person. She had trouble being an open person. The spitting, typical, flawed tsundere. She always hid, however, behind only one mask. The mask of a straight, stone-cold face. Despite being younger than him, barely 18 years old now, she'd had a massive burden on her shoulders. Being raised to be a proper lady by a rapist for a father with no one else, and handed the burden of being the head of House Tohno after the father Makihisa Tohno had passed away with no hesitation, she had a hard life.
She needed that kind of cold mask to protect herself. That mask that told everyone that she was an unapproachable, strong woman that no one could get under the skin of. But in the end, it was little more than just that; a mask. And masks only hid emotions. It didn't hide that in the end, she was only a lonely little girl, whom Shiki had been taken away from so long ago, and now, he had left her again. His sudden departure made her wonder, however. Perhaps it was time to put down the mask. After believing herself to have driven him away with her yelling and accusations, it was hard not to feel guilty for letting her emotions pour out from under her mask and all over her place.
She would learn from that.
Did you ever truly care for me? You couldn't even remember who I was. After all that I'd done for you, after I lead you so far forward, you couldn't even remember me. And if that was how you treated me... Could you ever truly love someone?
His maid, Hisui, lived with guilt and negligence. She used to be so vibrant, so full of energy, as a child. In fact, she was the one who helped Shiki get out of his shell when he was little more than a shy boy, ostracized by the rest of the family. They'd played and played so much with each other, and yet...
Before he knew it, his memories were stolen from him. Magecraft was inconvenient like that. In one fell swoop, all the memories of the happiness that she'd shared with him had been shattered. And all she could do was let it happen, so that he could be sent off somewhere else, to live with a more "normal" family. But Shiki's leave was only the beginning of her suffering. Of her guilt. After all, it was only natural to feel guilty when someone sacrificed oneself's own happiness, their own purity, everything, for the other. And when she learned the truth of the man who had housed her, adopted her and taken her in like his own daughter. She'd made a foolhardy endeavor to lose any sense of happiness deliberately in order to repay the person who had sacrificed everything for her. But in the process... She had lost something far more valuable than happiness. She lost the ability to feel.
But soon, she would learn how to again.
You let him touch me! You let him hurt me! You let him ABUSE ME! You let him VIOLATE ME!
As for she who did the sacrificing, the other maid, Kohaku, perhaps carried one of the greatest burdens Shiki knew. She and her twin sister, Hisui, were born as "Synchronizers," humans whose natural body fluids had the ability to rejuvenate another person's when exchanged or ingested. One could guess what the most potent fluid was, and how her talent had been taken advantage of by the man who had adopted her. But she let it happen on one condition. That her sister never be touched at all. And so, it happened. Kohaku was continually defiled from no older than nine years old, not just by Makihisa Tohno, but over time, his crazed son, "SHIKI Tohno," as well.
Not to be confused with yours truly, "Shiki Tohno," at least.
However, even though she managed to protect her sister from harm, every person had their breaking point. And Kohaku realized that she did not want to be a victim. She would take her revenge, and hurt those who had hurt her back. So she had orchestrated the greatest vampire scare Misaki Town had ever seen. She killed Makihisa Tohno, threw "SHIKI Tohno" out into the city to do as he wished to the unlucky women in the city, and once he had outlived his usefulness, she would kill him and Akiha as well. But it wasn't until Shiki had appeared to save them all that she'd realized what she had done. In her blind rage, she certainly hurt others as badly as she had been hurt, but all she had done was hurt innocent bystanders.
Just like those around her, she was simply a victim of her circumstances. She would have to spend a long time making up for her sins.
She would learn from them.
Hey... Shiki-kun? If I'm ever in a pinch, I can rely on you to save me, right?
But, as much as every other person had suffered in his life, Shiki knew that the real shame was the fact that Satsuki Yumizuka would never be able to learn from her mistake. Just a simple, innocent high school girl, who made the fatal mistake of falling in love with Shiki Tohno. A girl who paid the ultimate price for daring to love.
But... Then again, maybe there was nothing to learn. She loved, and she lost. But as her ghost might have said, it was all worth it. It was worth losing her life if it meant falling in love. If she had gotten another chance to live her life all over again, Yumizuka would have done it all over again. She would have chosen to live in Misaki Town again. She would have chosen to fall in love with Shiki Tohno again. She would have chosen to be bitten and transformed into a bloodthirsty vampire again. She would have chosen to die in Shiki's arms again.
Because
she believed he was worth it. So it was up to him to believe he was worth living for too.
That's what Mikasa believed as well.
So then, that only meant...
Are you ready to go now?
Her voice, along with Yumizuka's, were those that inspired strength in Shiki. As such, it was easy to separate them from the others, who tried to bring him down. Those were the voices brought about by the mist, but these voices were ones that Shiki Tohno carried on in his being.
Shiki had always been too clingy, even though he never showed it. The truth was, as distant as he came off, he perhaps cared the most for others. Yumizuka and Mikasa were the prime examples of this. He was too vulnerable like that. Not that he should distance himself from others, but he learned to know that to live was to die. It was a natural part of life. Everything had to go away eventually, as would he himself, when the time was right.
He would learn from that.
Some called him crazy, and he certainly was, but it helped.
Opening his eyes, Shiki smiled bitterly.
"What an annoying trip... Always trying to make me take these detours," Shiki breathed, slowly rising to his feet.
"But I'm ready to keep going forward. Toward the end of the path that I'm walking toward. I can't walk in circles. I can't go back. I can only go forward with all my being, so I'll do just that. I'll keep moving, until I can finally rest again," he said with absolute determination in his eyes.
Then... There's no wasting time. You have a place to come back to. A path to get back on track.
The figure that materialized before him offered her arm to him, reaching out for him, reaching out to help him, to understand him, as any human did when reaching out.
Even if people could never truly understand one other, or even understand themselves for that matter, that was perfectly fine. The whole purpose of life was the struggles behind it, and the rewards when one overcomes those obstacles. If one could understand themselves at the very least, and learn to accept themselves, then all would be okay in the end.
Shiki stuck out his arm to take the arm, only for the figure to dissipate as abruptly as she had appeared. In its place, the form of Len lay on the ground, as though bound to the invisible floor that they stood on. Smiling, Shiki reached out to Len, intending to help her. That's what life was all about, after all. Helping others, even if you could never understand others.
"There you are! Now... C'mon. We don't have any reason to mess around in here any longer, so... let's go, Len."
People truly did complement each other, but they could only complete each other as much as they could be complete as they were by themselves.
That was what it meant to live.
