Sing, Like Blood Going Down a Vein

The earliest thing Mizuki can remember is killing a snail.

She was a toddler at the time, but the memory is still vivid. The wetness of her palm. The prickle of the shell shards digging in her skin. The feeling of something long and slimey wielding under her fingers.

She’d bawled then, when she realized her snail friend had stopped moving. She hadn’t meant to hurt it; she only wanted to see it closer.

(Foreshadowing is a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Unfortunately, Mizuki has never paid attention to literary analysis, and therefore did not realize that she could only bring suffering to the people she loves.)

She remembers a gentle voice soothing her at the time. Someone who loved her very, very much, gently explaining that animals and people are very fragile, and she should be more careful next time. That was probably mom, though Mizuki can’t recall her mother ever sounding so soft.

Mizuki is prone to nightmares.

She never remembers them when she wakes up, save for some contextless flashes: the shine of metal. The sound of a drill. The smell of iron. Red. Red. Red. Everywhere.

She’s learned early not to seek comfort from them. Instead of going to her parents, Mizuki sneaks into the living room. Exercise always calms her down. She paces in circles, steadying her breathing. She has to be quiet. She can’t wake up her parents; Mom will take dinner away from her again and she’s already so hungry. She has to be quiet. She-

Sees the aquarium.

The thing seems enormous compared to her small frame. Daddy is really proud of it. Colorful fish swim in the fresh water.

Behind her eyelids, Mizuki still sees glimpses of bare viscera, still smell the stench of raw meat, and she is so hungry.

The fish squirms when she grabs it. Its scales are slippery, but her grip is stronger. Did grandpa hold fish this way, she wonders? Did he feel how alive, how desperate it was to be free? It’s so helpless. So vulnerable. It thrashes and turns to no effect. The fish struggles, and Mizuki’s nightmares are at the tip of her tongue, and-

She shoves the fish inside her mouth.

It’s a pleasure. It’s a delight. She can feel it fighting as it slides down her throat. Mizuki is hungry, hungry, but deeper than that, she desires to feel alive, to hold the full weight of a life inside her mouth. Her entire body sings at the sensation. She has never felt so full.

Then the guilt dawns on her.

She just disobeyed Mom. Mizuki had deserved to be deprived of dinner, and here she is, eating anyways. She’s eating dad’s fish. Eating it raw, all slimy and wet, like this snail years ago, like the last of Mom’s kindness.

Mizuki rushes back into her bed and hides under the sheets.

Mom and Daddy never finds out what happened to the missing fish. They never even suspect her. But anytime they get sushi, anytime Mizuki finds raw fish in her plate- she remembers. She remembers.

The third thing Mizuki kills is a rat. She catches it as it runs from the pantry, her parents on its tail. The thing is fast but she’s faster. Its claws scratch her skin in a desperate attempt to lighten her grip. She really should throw it away, or give it to her parents, or a thousand other things.

Six years old and she still has nightmares. She should be a grown-up now, no longer a baby scared by her own shadow, and yet, and yet. Her dreams may not stick around but they still haunt her, and she wishes, she wishes so badly she could just make them real so she just do something about them.

She squeezes. Just for a second.

The rat’s neck snaps.

It’s- exhilarating, almost. She’s strong. She has power. The body cools in her hand and all Mizuki did that to it. It’s dead and she’s alive she’s not a prey not an animal she in control.

Then her Mom catches up to her, and she beats that violence out of Mizuki. She keeps her hands to herself afterwards. She never experiences this pleasure again.

Her parents divorce. Mom moves away, and Daddy makes her live with a friend of his. It’s… different. It takes a while, to get used to it.

“Hey, hey. Breathe. It’s okay. It was all a dream.”

It takes a while, to get used to company in the aftermath of nightmares.

“Don’t worry about it. I was already awake anyways.” Date tells her, which they both know to be a lie. “You wanna talk about it?”

Mizuki doesn’t want to talk about it. She wants to scream. She wants to rage. She wants to shove him down and take a knife and open his chest like a trenchcoat. She wants to pull out his innards with her bare hands feel their weight size warmth on her fingers she wants to pokes and prod under his skin and see if it helps her remember.

Date is a pushover, she knows it by now; he jabs back when she insults him, but it doesn’t go any further than that. He never genuinely yells at her. He never hits her. He taught her how to fight even though she could very well use that knowledge against him. After his lessons she fought the bullies in her class and bathed in their screams as she knocked their teeth out. Would it be different, to fight Date? What would it take for him to stop acting so gentle with her- a brick to the face, a broken bone? What would it take for him to realize that she yearns for death and destruction the way her classmates yearn for their first kiss? God. She wants. She wants. She wants to twist his fingers until they snap she wants to reach in and tear off his good eye she wants she wants she wants she wants,

“I’m fine,” she says, and rolls her back to him. “I’m fine.” And she prays that he doesn’t push her to say any more.

Her dreams change, after seeing Mom’s corpse. The gore fades in favor of the merry-go-round. The drill turns into a column stabbing through a horse. Sometimes she’s the victim. Sometimes she’s the murderer. There are always two people; one strapped down, helpless, and one hovering above, hurting the other beyond compare. Sometimes Mizuki is both; dreams are odd like that.

They tell her the truth about Saito in pieces; they trust her to fight, they trust her to lead a company, but they still think her a child to be protected. She gathers bits and pieces of the most incomprehensible medical terminology she has ever heard. It’s confusing, and annoying, but mostly what she hears is this:

• Saito Sejima derived pleasure from violence.
• Before he got into homicide, Saito Sejima used to kill animals
• Saito Sejima killed his first person at twelve.

Mizuki does not know a single thing about literary analysis. But she can recognize a mirror when she sees one.

(Is evil born, or is it made? Is sin inherent to a person, or is it a choice? Saito Sejima had a brain defect that lead him to murder. Then again, Hayato Yagyu was perfectly healthy, and he headed down the same path. What chance does Mizuki have, then?)

A week after the explosion of at the Cathedral, Mizuki throws her bed against the wall.

The bedframe shatters at the impact. When it falls on the floor, she latches on it, clawing as its feet, peeling layers of wood from its slats, tearing its innards apart. There is no method to this destruction; Mizuki punches, snaps, breaks, she even bites, until the piece of furniture is reduced to a useless pile of shards at her feet.

Date is gone. Date is gone. The one person who has ever stuck by her side, the one person who has ever chosen her, is gone. All because he was a self-sacrifical bastard ready to get shot on the off-chance that it might let her live. All because she was too weak and slow and stupid to protect him.

She’s burning. She’s boiling. She needs to kill something. She wants to hurt herself. She wants blood and flesh and bones, she needs to feel alive in a way only death can offer her.

She looks down at her hands. Her fingers are full of shards. She’s bleeding a little. Fingers are so fragile. She could tear one off so easily. She’d just need to bite, and then tug. She could pluck out her own teeth, rip off her tongue, dislocate her jaw and throw it away. She’s so full of violence and fire and the world does not care.

Slowly, Mizuki reaches the first-aid kit. She’s not a good daughter, and even less a good person- but despite everything, despite everything, Date believed in her, and that’s something she cannot break.