“You should hate me.”
She shuffles, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Kotoko,” she begins, sighing, “I don't really hate anyone.”
Kotoko laughed. She couldn't relate, really. Sometimes, it felt like everything Kotoko was, was hate. (And Mahiru was love.) “I don't really regret it, you know?” She confided. “Even though you've been kind, you've been nothing but kind. Is there something wrong with me? Es thinks so. They could have stopped me, if they really wanted. They could have…” She shakes her head. “I don't regret it, really. I will bite any sinner, no matter how nice, no matter how seemingly kind . You have no idea what hides behind the veneer of ‘kindness’.”
Mahiru stares at her, pressed lips, troubled eyes. “Kotoko shouldn't worry so much,” she tells her. “Just as there are cruel people in the world, so are there kind. To doubt that… I think that sounds lonely.”
Kotoko's lips warbled, ever so slightly. “Lonely?”
“Isn't Kotoko lonely?” Mahiru asks her. “Otherwise, why would she be seeing me?”
Kotoko considers this. “Maybe it's guilt,” she laughs, breathy and shaking faintly, “I don't really feel regret, but guilt and remorse are different things, aren't they?”
Mahiru hums, smiling softly. “Maybe,” she agrees, “Or maybe Kotoko misses me.”
A trembling breath in. “You know, when you told me happy birthday, I was really…”
Happy, Kotoko doesn't finish. “I know,” Mahiru says.
As if it is easy. As if it is simple.
“Do you?” Kotoko asks her. “Do you, Mahiru?”
Still smiling, the ghost huffs a laugh. “Of course. I could tell from your smile, couldn't I?”
“I thought you were crazy. Still do, really. You should hate me. I want you to hate—”
“But how could I hate Kotoko-chan?” Her eyes curled into crescent moons, and Kotoko felt the urge to howl. Nameless, shapeless grief.
“I don't regret it. I can't regret it. If I regret it, everything will be for naught. How can I be forgiven?”
Mahiru laughs. “How couldn't you be? Sinner to sinner. Lover to lover. How couldn't I forgive you, Kotoko-chan, when we are the same?”
She swallows. “I don't think I'm anything like you.”
“Of course Kotoko is.” She tilted her head. “After all, like I said, isn't she lonely too?”
Kotoko shudders. A chill.
“You should hate me,” she repeats.
Cruelly, Mahiru laughs, gentle and barely there. “I don't.”
The verdict seems to chim in time with her thoughts. Her and Es are one in this, if not anything else. She can feel the phantom pains of blood she's tried to scratch away still clinging to her hands.
Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty—
Mahiru smiles at her kindly, anyway.