Burnt Bright

Inside an unused, but not abandoned, building, a boy slept on a sofa in a big room, but that somehow felt complete despite its sparse furniture.

On the sofa, Black patches grew on its legs, like a disease slowly spreading as it disseminated rot through the furniture. Light peeked through boarded windows, casting down illumination on the floor.

It was a yellow, grimy color, but was recently wiped and cleaned, as if to say that the one who lived in it refused to give up, to allow the decadence and indolence to fester inside.

A CRT TV that barely worked was before the sofa, on a table with legs too weak to sustain the TV, but that somehow hadn’t broken just yet.

The remote rested on the soft grip of a boy on the sofa, saliva running down his mouth, as his eyes were half-lidded, a halfway state between wakefulness and a sleep without rest, a sleep ready to end at any moment a threat appeared.

The light shone on his face as it announced that another Sunday had come, another day without school

Another day, he could fully devote himself to the hunt.

His eyes struggled to adjust to the light as he was immediately awakened.

He attempted to get up, but quickly lost his footing and fell on the ground. His muscles ached from within, a small but constant burn inside of them, as his bones felt thick and unmovable, his whole body like lead.

He fell on his arms, his body locked up for a moment, but the boy refused to allow himself to stay down.

He had no such luxury.

His breath caught, things felt too hard, maybe he should give up.

There was nothing for a person like him to do.

It was too late.

All had become numb, in a gray, tasteless world… but what did he have, what did Itsuki have that could allow him to live further?

Everything had already fallen down, and the chips were thrown out of the table.

A worthless gamble for a man that no one would see.

No one would even care.

He forced, he told, every single fiber of his being to get up.

His arms pushed against the ground, and his legs kicked it to force him back on track.

He looked around, checked his surroundings, and at first to get an inkling of where he was.

And only then did he recognize it was his hideout.

One corridor, a door on the left that led to his “room”, and another to the right that led to his bathroom.

Memories had become so fuzzy and distorted that sometimes it was hard to recognize the place he had grown to call a “refuge”.

In the corridor stood the only new furniture in the whole building, a simple table with a portrait on it.

The image in it was tarnished by tear marks and the scratch of nails, in a position that every time he wandered into the corridor, or looked at it, he would look at the portrait.

Acched echoed in his chest, so stinging and powerful that it could kill anyone else but him.

His view cleared, even if for a moment, just for that time of the day.

Itsuki cleared the saliva out of the corner of his mouth as the discomfort and numbing ache became a thing of the past in an instant; his body adjusted, rejecting the pain.

The why he fought and why he went forward was mirrored in his blue eyes.

Every time he woke up, he felt that way, as if the world finally caught up to him, and he lost his strength.

And just again, and yet again, the flame of his fight, his sole raison d’être, burnt brighter; it made him struggle and survive another day, no matter what.

That should be enough.

He breathed to hunt another day.

He went to his bathroom and turned on the sink, splashing water multiple times on his face.

Despite everything, the face that still looked bak him in his reflection, was his.