ODE TO THE MURDERED, bonten

11.5

PART ELEVEN POINT FIVE !
a taunt to you.

AN HOUR EARLIER, YOU WITNESSED the seductive color red dancing beneath your irises once again, stepping inside the club after pocketing your phone as the warmth and the mist of heavy-laden perfume weigh down your lungs. your fleeting eyes ghost over the crowd, finding that familiar sable-headed friend of yours that retreated from your apartment with messy, heartbroken troubles.

    now that you've examined the nightclub in your sobered / well-trimmed sunflower mind—all you felt within the confined building with heaps of 67% of half-denuded body crowds was an overwhelming burden on your shoulders.

you ignored the people that wanted to call your attention upon you entering the room, unbuttoning the first two buttons of your collar shirt from the warmth that kissed your skin from the heavy club breeze, fixing your gaze solely on finding your roommate amidst the red ocean of lights; it wasn't necessarily long until you found her figure perched on a bar stool, her crooked form leaning heavily against the counter as her rattled up veins brushed with a drunk of alcohol that stacked in front of her.

    even when your friend was a heap of mess right in front of you, with a rumpled up white collar shirt that's been rolled haphazardly till her elbows, denim pants loose around her ankles but hugs her small waist so perfectly and soft strands of black hair spilling all over her shoulders and heart-shaped face—she'd still look the same beauty as before, the same lovely friend you'd met since day one after arriving at Tokyo's train station from Kawaguchi, struck by severe homesickness and awe.

    you breathe out another sigh, slowly approaching her with a hardened gaze. "Mars."

    she doesn't respond to you, making you lift your hand to comb back strands of your hair out of your forehead in annoyance.

"ignoring me now, are we?" you ask rather bitterly, your eyes burning holes at the side of her skull.

    she shifts a little like she felt your gaze, sobering up as your voice caves deeper into her mind. "all i want—" Mars lifts her head, and what came out her parted lips was nothing but a broken out whisper. "all i wanted was for the two of us to stay together, i didn't mean what i said back at the apartment, sorry."

    all i wanted was the two of us to stay together, her sentence makes you perk up in suspicion. somehow feeling an underlining ghost haunt the back of your skull from her statement.

    "what are you talking about?" you asked, tempting her to tell you the truth.

    a deafening, unbreathable silence corrupts your two silhouettes; suddenly the heavy crowds that surrounds the two of you fades into a blur and all you can see and hear was Mars and her clean-cut revelations to something that you wanted to hide atleast a little more longer,

    "before, when i decided to clean your room that one time when you were out the apartment i found some papers in one of your desk drawers."

    you freeze, and she continues. "i know i didn't have the permission but at first i thought those papers were nothing but miscellany you'd keep in your drawers but i accidentally saw the contents and i knew from then on that it was more than that." Mars turns her serious but steady cobalt-blue eyes towards you.

    "i know who you are, y/n."

it felt like a million pinpricks of needles digging under your cold skin, your mind starts running on nonexistent plumes of smoke and your heart that was doing nothing but dancing slowly through your rib cage starts colluding and crashing, starts beating a quick and rampant tune / a cacophony mess within barebones—you couldn't believe your ears.

"Mars, what the fuck?!" you cannot contain your rage that paints your face in fury, though you were lucky your voice was immediately drowned by the heavy music, not wanting to draw as much attention to yourself, though your outburst had frightened the bartender that has been accompanying drunk Mars and her careless indulgence of vodka for the past five minutes, he pretended to ignore the two of you and walked over to another customer a few feet away from you two.

Mars continues to stare at you in pity, despite the rather boisterous exclaim that had left your nude lips. "y/n—"

"no, don't you fucking know what personal space is??" you were pulling roots of your hair now, a little frustrated as your hands instinctively touch the phone hidden within your cargo shorts. "fuck! i can't believe you just—"

you were interrupted when a scream breaks out from the club, you both spin your gaze near the entrance and though you cannot pinpoint what really was going on, you can see the crowd that was once idling on the dance floor suddenly scattered in panic.

    a bile rises from your throat as you swallowed hardly, then—from one of the open second floors you see a silver twinkle pointed at you.

    you swivel your head and your eyes meets a gun barrel a few meters away from you.

    you turned your shoulders towards the hidden silhouette on the second floor, even from this distance—those molten marigold eyes were always so easy to recognize even from afar. your surroundings go into a standstill, you didn't move an inch, only locking your eyes solely with golden ones as you hear the the trigger being pulled and two loud shots slice through the thickening air, a rowdy and chaotic billow that roars between every nook and cranny of the club accompanied by surprised shrieks from bystanders.

and though the supposed gun was pointed at you it never hits your skin, instead all you felt was a rather warm embrace enveloping your form encasing you with a familiar homely sweetness that brought nostalgia plummeting through your veins. a waft of putrid smoke caresses your nose but Mars' bergamot ambrosial is surrounding you fully, her hug tightens as she places her cheek at the side of your neck.

    your eyes widened, bones turning two times colder. "huh?"

    "i forgive you." was the last thing she says, brushing the inked tattoo on your collarbone one last time before slumping coldly in your arms.

at this point your knees had weakened its resolve and you find yourself stumbling towards the ground with your friend within your hold, but she was heavier than usual, colder than usual and she no longer breathed or moved but your brain doesn't analyze the situation, your ears doesn't pick up the chaos in your surroundings, your breath hitched and your eyes are widened but you don't feel anything but shock that bites and gnaws your skeleton, only until you could hear the voice of the bartender shouting at you did you reel back into the real world.

"are you okay?!" he screams in panic, that is until he noticed the body of the drunken lady he had attended to in your arms, red soaking your clothes.

"call the ambulance." you say breathlessly, refusing to see red that burned your skin, your arms, your clothes until it envelopes you and chars you from this world.

this was the third time you felt like falling again.

    one angel departed from you when you were merely thirteen, the second angel who saved you and was clad in silver addiction left when you were in your waking misery at the age of fifteen perishing right after leaving you in an empty cold embrace—and now the scent of metallic blood, charring smoke and the familiar and homely scent of your roommate meshes in an untidy storm, you feel her skin losing color / losing the warmth as she melts in your arms, falling like a crooked bag of skeleton.

the world really loves taunting you until you break, reminding you that you are never worthy nor do you have the luxury to save others. your unsteady gaze finds yourself looking up at the second floor again, but those golden eyes had vanished, leaving a cold expanse to drown your mind.