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The night was too quiet.
His head, on the other hand, felt too noisy.
With the arrival of October, the nights were no longer warm, but now brought with them the onset of coolness, a reminder of how close winter was. He's wearing only a jacket, but even so, he couldn't feel his body warming up. It was as if everything had become a little colder since that day; the atmosphere, his emotions, himself.
Being in a safe house (one of Nagumo's many safe houses) outside the city had its advantages; there were no other people's thoughts flitting around in his head, the noise of the city's endless traffic could no longer be heard from there, and, above all, there was nothing to draw attention to him as he smoked on the roof of the house.
There was a time when he no longer felt the need to smoke, to feel the smoke flooding his lungs and his throat and eyes burning from the tobacco that was permanently damaging his system. But some nights, he felt that need returning, nights when he wanted nothing more than to sink into his thoughts and the smoke of the cheap cigarettes he had grown accustomed to as a teenager because they were the only ones he could afford on his meager hitman's salary.
Shin almost smiled, remembering those first times when the smoke burned his throat and made him cough from the bitterness. Now, however, it was a habit, almost a necessity. The little glowing stick looked at him (it didn't look at him, it was just an inanimate object with no eyes or emotions) like someone looking at a hungry stray dog returning to the hand that fed it in an act of kindness. He had promised Mr. Sakamoto that he would quit, and he had been abstinent for almost twelve months, but the situation had changed and now his promise had been broken.
“Once again, I'm disappointing Mr. Sakamoto,” the voice echoed in his head like a small whisper, a reminder of his constant failure. He took another drag on the cigarette, feeling like every particle of smoke that entered his system tasted like defeat.
Shin didn't like to admit it but even defeat now felt like a habit. A constant beat in his mind reminding him that “I'm not strong enough,” “I keep failing,” and “I couldn't save anyone.”
Every time he closed his eyes, he felt the blood on his hands again, blood that wasn't his. He could see the bodies of the people who had died throughout his life, people he couldn't help because he wasn't strong enough: Haruma, Satoda, his father.
Every time he closed his eyes, he was back on level 5 of the underground JAA prison. His wounds throbbed, his nose bled, and Tenkyu's body beneath him tensed. Every time he closed his eyes, he felt Tenkyu's thirst for blood again, he remembered the thoughts he read in his mind, how he planned to kill Sakamoto, Aoi, Hana. There was no doubt or regret, only a goal to accomplish.
When he closed his eyes, he could feel his hand moving again to kill Tenkyu.
The second cigarette he lit no longer burned him, but instead his throat grew accustomed to the smoke he hadn't tasted in months. It was, in a way, comforting to taste the bitterness that spread in his mouth, a taste so strong that it kept him in the present, almost like an anchor reminding him that he was no longer in that prison, but in a safe house located outside Tokyo, after the store (his home) had been destroyed by Uzuki.
He didn't know which reality was worse.
“Hey, can't you sleep?” Lu's voice reached his ears first, and seconds later she climbed onto the roof and sat down to his right. He didn't need to answer; they both knew the answer.
“What are you doing here? You should go get some rest.”
“Look who's talking. I could say the same thing about you.”
“My situation is different.” that's what he told himself, like a mantra repeated on loop in his head. If Sakamoto hadn't had to go stop him from ruining everything in prison, maybe he could have prevented the shop from being destroyed, or Aoi and Lu from almost dying.
Standing guard all night was the least I could do to avoid causing Sakamoto any more trouble.
“I don't see how it is. I mean, we all almost died. In one way or another, but the same fate.” she took a small canteen out of her own coat and drank half of its contents in one gulp. He was pretty sure Lu had also promised to stop drinking so often, and especially in front of Hana, but Shin wasn't going to be the one to reproach her for that, considering that the cigarette in his hand was almost finished and the temptation to light a third one was still latent under his fingertips.
Neither of them spoke for a while, they didn't comfort each other, they just stared at the night sky for a long time, until a third presence —which he was already expecting, because he had read his mind a few seconds earlier— peeked its head over the edge of the roof.
"Hey, guys, there you are. Can't sleep either?
“No,” they replied in unison, and that was enough for Heisuke, who also climbed up and sat down to their left.
“I got up to get some water and didn't see either of you on your mattresses. Why didn't you tell me you were here? Now the three of us can have a sleepover!” Lu and he looked at Heisuke in disbelief, but he didn't seem to notice, or didn't care, and instead took a bag of cookies out of his coat.
Without saying a word, the three of them sat in silence as they ate the cookies Heisuke had brought. It was a miracle that none of them had a harmful addiction.
Having Lu and Heisuke by his side was a comforting feeling after such a long week (month, year, life).
Shin never had siblings, he had never even had a family, but when he was with them, it was as if a part of him felt full, a part of him that he didn't even know was missing. Lu drove him crazy, she was messy and childish; Heisuke, on the other hand, was too dumb for his own good, sometimes he genuinely didn't know how he survived so many years on his own without dying. They both gave him headaches, sometimes even nightmares, but he simply couldn't imagine living without their company, without Lu's jokes, their occasional chats, or their movie nights; nor without going to the arcades with Heisuke, their debates about manga and anime, or spending the afternoon eating whatever he found to share.
He couldn't imagine living far from Hana or her stories about how she was doing at school, her ramblings about Sugar, or her company to play whatever games she wanted. Nor without Aoi's cooking, her advice, or her constant need to make him feel like part of the family.
He couldn't imagine walking away from Mr. Sakamoto a second time.
“I'm not a good person.”
“ –hin, Shin!” Lu's hand shaking his shoulder pulled him out of his thoughts. Both she and Heisuke were now looking at him with concern etched on their faces. “Are you okay? You were lost in your thoughts for a while.”
“Was I? Sorry, my head's been a little noisy today.” The smile that appeared on his face must have been anything but reassuring, judging by their expressions, but the last thing he wanted was for them to bear the burden of his problems, not when his breathing was already agitated and his vision too blurry. Maybe he shouldn't have lit that third cigarette, feeling his heart rate accelerate with each pulse.
“Are you sure? Do you want to... talk about what's bothering you?”
He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to continue burdening them both with his own mistakes. It would be too selfish of him to talk about his problems when they all had their own battles to deal with at the moment.
All his life he grew up hearing comments about how he was just a nuisance, trash to be thrown away. He never had friends, let alone family, and now that he finally had both, people who saw something good in him and considered him part of their family, all he did was cause them trouble with his weakness. He was weak, he couldn't protect anyone.
“I should have let you die.”
“ –hin, breathe with me. Come on, inhale and exhale.” it took a few seconds for Lu's voice to register in his head, but he obeyed her instructions. He could feel his trembling hand clutching someone's shirt —when his breathing normalized, he realized it was Heisuke's— and a heaviness in his chest he had never felt before, as if the entire weight of the world had been placed in the center of his rib cage, and it was so heavy that he couldn't breathe.
He didn't know how long they spent like that, but it must have been several minutes, because when his vision stopped being so blurry, he realized he was no longer sitting, but now lying on the roof, the cigarette in his hand had disappeared, and the position of the constellations had moved much further south.
A panic attack was the last thing he needed on his long list of things to feel pathetic about.
Lu and Heisuke said nothing, they just stayed by his side, watching to see if he would get worse again.
It took longer than he would have liked to find his voice at the back of his throat, and when it came out, it felt more like a muffled cry than his own voice.
“I'm sorry, I'm just causing you problems.” the voice in his head wouldn't shut up, but shouted louder, repeating the same word over and over again: “Selfish, selfish, selfish, SELF—”
“What are you talking about, idiot?” Lu's voice beside him sounded broken, and Shin had to look away from the night sky to look at her. Both Lu and Heisuke looked at him with furrowed brows, their eyes shining with tears about to spill, as if he had offended them in the worst way with what he said.
“Yeah, bro, what are you talking about? How can you think you're causing us problems?”
“How can you not think so? All I've done lately is bring trouble! I couldn't stop them from hurting Mr. Sakamoto, you always have to save me at crucial moments, the store was destroyed because Sakamoto had to stop me from breaking the family rule, I was about to kill Tenkyu! I'm not a good–"
“You saved me in the lab!” Lu's voice cut him off mid-sentence, her hands now clutching his face, her gaze fixed on him, two pairs of eyes looking at him with all the intensity that could exist in a human soul. "That day I said some very ugly things to you, and yet you still came to rescue me. No one who isn't a good person would risk their life for someone they've only known for a couple of months."
“But it was my fault...”
“You trusted me when no one else did!” now it was Heisuke, who was no longer even trying to stop the tears rolling freely down his cheeks, who looked at him with such determination, as if he were his target. "I was never good at anything but shooting, and you trusted me and my abilities to cover your back. You became my friend even though I shot you during the airsoft competition."
“But—”
"And that time you went to Thailand to rescue Mafuyu, the brother of the guy who tried to kill you, just because you're a good person and can't stand to see others suffer.
"Or when you took Amane to the zoo so he could live a normal life, even if just for a day, because you know how sad it is to grow up without experiencing a normal life in a world of killers."
"And when you took Hana to the theater to see that Sugar movie she was so excited about, even though you don't like being in enclosed spaces with children because their thoughts are much louder than those of adults and give you migraines."
"Last month, you found a home for an abandoned kitten because it made you sad to see it in the rain."
"Shin, you were even willing to get your hands dirty with blood to protect your family. No one who isn't a good person would be willing to go that far for the people they love most."
He never had any friends, nor anyone he could truly call family. But then, at some point in his life, he became a member of the Sakamoto family. He liked laughing at Lu's silly jokes; or playing silly games with Heisuke when he was bored; or listening to Hana summarize the Sugar movie she had gone to see with her dad the other day; or when Aoi taught him how to cook something other than instant noodles; he liked it when Sakamoto told him he could count on him, and that he was happy to consider him part of his family.
“You're good enough for us, Shin, and that's all that matters.”
He didn't know when dawn began to appear on the horizon, bringing with it enough warmth to start warming his body, slowly breaking the coldness he had felt in his extremities since he went down to the prison. He didn't say anything else, he didn't contradict them, but he didn't agree with them either, because part of him still felt that he could have done things better, but as he felt Lu and Heisuke's bodies curl up next to him to get some sleep, he thought that maybe he could allow himself to make a couple of mistakes, as long as it meant that they would be there to hold his hand and give him a push to get back on track.
His head was no longer noisy, and the voice in the back of his skull finally fell silent.