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Flick.
Then the sizzle of burning paper.
Sheldon encouraged her to quit it before it became a bad habit before he left for the Splatlands and Yon told her it made the house smell, so she mitigated smoking to just in the space between after work hours and before she went home.
Hachi wouldn’t call it an addiction. She found no pleasure or calm in the action. No relief. No desperation. And she never smoked more than once a week. It was already foul enough to try once a month. But she supposed it was a pattern for a reason.
The truth was, it was all just her chasing a constant yet distant memory at the back of her mind, listless, far, untouchable in nature and yet its sensations still stinging upon her lungs. Like she’d forgotten them and yet they layered over her eyes like a burned image she was searching for within an aimless tunnel…
What an original concept that was for her. Cod. She’d never experienced that sorta schpeel before.
...Schpeel.
That was a rude way to phrase her own waxing of poetics.
Maybe she was getting much crueler to herself than she ought.
Hachi sighed, leaning her back against the brick wall. She supposed the problem this time wasn't forgetting a moment though, but being tormented by an entire scene. I mages of sunrise etched city, a dulled lighter, and their face just inches from her own with only a pair of cigarettes to separate them- still replayed through her head over and over like a record, the tape constantly rewinding, the snake still swallowing its tail. Tormented. Tormented.
No.. tormented was a much fouler word than she desired for. Torment was crass, uncareful, struggling, and painful. Hachi was not in pain. She was numb. She was helpless against what came upon her. What was bothering her was within her. Squeezing her hearts instead of brushing her skin. Sending chills up her spine and breathing through her like she’d been possessed by an ghostly entity.
Haunted.
...Yes, haunted was the better word.
Hachi was.. haunted. Haunted by the memory of that quiet night. Haunted by the taste of smoke that she wished she’d partaken of when it hung on their lips. Haunted by the very ghost of their company that had now been taken from her. Haunted by the idea she could’ve made them hers if she just asked.
Because that was true wasn’t it. Or at least it’s a nice fantasy. Hach thought, all whilst mulling over the real nature of it, getting lost in the pages and hanging by her lines as she indulged herself on her own curiosities and lost track of the world that surrounded her. Yet I’ve known it since they swore it to me all that time ago.
They were both so young and afraid then, but they’d convinced themselves to be brave for everyone for so long they’d forgotten how to be gentle for themselves. Hachi remembered what happened- what they’d said- almost just as vividly as she remembered the day they’d left for the Splatlands;
“No matter where you are, I’ll come for you and I’ll save you. No matter where you are, if you let me, I’d be there.”
It was already so unbelievably arrogantly kind at the time that Hachi had been stunned into silence right then and there. Her claws had laid in their hands. They held their enemy like the most precious of porcelain. Like she was fragile and they were brutish.
But what made it so much more appalling was due to how they said all that while still being strapped to their hospital bed with their bandages freshly and practically welded to their half ruined face— They were the most ruined portrait of art Hachi had ever seen and yet they still so confidently declared such devotion.
San would do anything for her if she asked wouldn’t they. Hachi’s shoulders weakened at the thought. She could demand them to come home, she could imagine them jumping up without a second of hesitation.
She could request their hand and they’d hand her their mind and heart with it. Hachi could ask for anything from San and they’d tear themselves apart just for her. She could. She wanted to. It was cruel.
And Hachi would do the same for them if they asked her to.
She wished they’d ask her to.
She wished that they'd want her to do the same for them.
Hachi wanted San to command her will. To tell her where to fight. To point in a direction and command her to follow, to crawl, till her last bloody breath– so long as it was at their side.
Their side, yes— Where it was the most unsafe– but the closest to them. And she’d do it. To be by their side. Because that’s where she wanted to be- because then they were right there–
But they never would. They would never ask that of her. Because they knew what she wanted. She wanted peace. She wanted a reprieve from the horrors. And San never trusted themself to find such a fantasy, even with her.
They both knew Hachi avoided hell because she’d been in its embers long enough– but San failed to notice that she would dive headfirst into its hearth once more if they called out to her.
Maybe a part of her wanted to prove she would, could, just for them.
Maybe it was just because she couldn’t find the strength to tell them what was simple enough, but she was desperate enough to die over them just to convey it.
Hachi sighed a puff of smoke out. How long had she been holding such a breath in. Was she still holding it? This breath? This waiting? This smoke in her lungs? Was it still burning in her chest like a lingering motion? Was she hoping it’d stay in?
Even if it hurt her– Poisoned her– would it be worth it to keep holding onto it? For the feeling of her heart being warm? For the feeling of a choked up sensation burning tears into her eyes. Or was the smoke itself just trying to escape her? Was pining a good enough word to describe what she felt? Was yearning a better fit to judge her silent obsession?
Was obsession too self deprecating of a word for someone who wanted to be let free of these feelings?
Was she asking too many questions?
Was she not asking herself enough?
Hachi chased for a world to live in. San chased the danger that threatened it. She remembers the night she told them her decision to never be an agent again. Their slight disappointment, and yet their immediate resignation of opinion.
“I... see. I understand.”
No they didn’t. This work was their life’s purpose. To help people in this way was their only way to worship life and breathe. Hachi’s choice to leave it all beyond the helpfulness of companionship instead of duty and honor– Hachi believed her decision would forever be alien to San’s understanding.
And yet they supported her. And yet she still found reasons to feel upset. Was it so selfish of her to wish they’d fought a little harder? To– hate her just a little bit for leaving? Was it that easy for them to let her go?
Was it that easy for her to let them go?
Hachi sighed. I’m a hypocrite. She wanted to berate herself but found herself only swamped with the other waves of implacable desire; She wished San would come home already. She wished it’d just... happen. Reaching out was much harder than waiting.
But waiting forever was beginning to become its own sting.
So many obscenities she wished she could spill. Hachi took another drag and stared far in the mist-like lostness of her mind’s pondering. This was the second time she’d stayed behind for someone, hadn’t it.
Hachi reached up and unpinned her tentacles slowly, staring into the glimmer of her golden toothpick with the same silvery dead eyes that reflected back at her.
Flickers. Sounds. Sensations of a different life. Of a different world. To tap into it, it felt like the numbness of stepping out of the cold for the first time. Unfamiliar and unkind. Prickling across her skin like a wave of discomfort.
And yet, as she thumbed across the smoothness of the toothpick’s texture, she sought his name. Like a phantom’s lonely whisper- her one friend she left behind, by not chasing after him at all.
Though parted by the ocean deep,
My oldest friend, we meet again.
I touch your face; you rouse from sleep.
Hachi wondered what he’d think of her now. She wouldn’t recognize him. Nor would he recognize her. They’d become more than strangers. More than any two people could become. But the guilt still ate her like a fresh wound, festering and broiling with a shame.
Would it be the same if San and her were ever to drift apart? Where their safe distance became a bottomless chasm? Would history repeat once again? Would Hachi be subjected to the same bleaching of memory?
She couldn’t stand this endless float through murk.
Waiting to either sink beneath the waves or be pulled out.
This, yearning.
Hachi found herself embroiled within it. Like a caged subject once more.
She grunted, flicking the cigarette out from between her fingers and giving it a harsh crunch against the cement.
Maybe her eyes would forever be blackened with disappointment. Maybe San would never be her’s. She knew she’d always surely be yearning because that was her nature in the same way they’d always be fighting. Were they ever meant to be? Maybe they were far too beautiful of a thing for a creature like her to keep in the first place.
Maybe all those things.
Maybe even more.
But perhaps ‘maybe’s were useless in the grand scheme of ponderings after all.
Because ‘maybe’s weren’t exact. ‘Maybe’s didn’t align quite to reality without confirmation to cease. ‘Maybe’s didn’t give her freedom from the fact the squid she loved the most was far away from her reach and entangled in something she refused to be burnt by again.
‘Maybe’s weren’t going to save her from loving San.
‘Maybe’s weren’t going to keep her from missing them.
Hachi pushed off the wall slowly with a slightly shaken sway to her name. The Square had felt almost haunted now. A shell of its former bustling self. It felt peacefully stagnant now.
She remembered how overstimulating it was first moving here. Now a permanent resident- she savored the waves of change the place had gone through and would still go through in the future- still colorful and kind, just a little sunbleached and worn.
She wondered if San missed the square or plaza more.
She wondered if they thought of Inkopolis at all.
Hachi let out a suffering cough that lingered in the sting of the moments prior. I need to stop smoking. Or Yon will surely complain. She chided to herself. Going through all this junky hurt just to relive the cinders of a nice party memory was getting old.
But she knew she had an extra pack at home. She knew the thoughts would follow her wherever she stepped. Hachi knew the taste of smoke against her lips would be another sensation to chase again.
She knew she’d wait forever for that urge to partake in mystery once again. She knew she’d never shake the desire to rush out in the blinding unknown just to be by their side.
Because Hachi chased for a world.
Let poetry speak the rest of her shame.