[LOOP 1] - Act I
“If she wanted, she could simply hide her injuries from view. After all, someone like her…has exactly what it takes.”
She knows there’s no point begging. No point pleading to whatever deity who would listen that Damon isn’t about to say what she thinks he is.
“Her talent! As the Ultimate Cosmetologist, Diana could easily cover her wounds!”
There it is .
It takes a while for the deduction to settle. Diana could liken it to a ghostly vapour, dispersing across the courtroom in a silent blanket, the briefest moment of reprieve. She takes a beat or two to calm herself, to formulate some kind of explanation before the courtroom ignites in an uproar of chatter and accusations.
She needs to say something fast , if not to calm everybody down, then to silence the violent mélange of doubt and fear beginning to rise in her chest.
They would hear her out, right? The mistake she made was neglecting to say everything from the start, from feeding into the distrust that splintered their unity as friends. She tries to keep herself steady when Desmond looks almost convinced of the possibility, nodding his head in contemplative agreement.
“It makes sense…with the right equipment, she could probably disguise even a bandaged wound…”
She just has to wait, find the best time to jump in. Maybe when they’ve explored the possibility, she’ll find some contradiction, some reason to doubt the conclusion they’ve all come to. Maybe she’ll say something about that note, or the wound, or that bobby pin, that puddle of blood on the floor-
“As Diana’s bunking partner, I’ve seen firsthand how many different cosmetics are in her room. So, unfortunately…I have to agree.”
She’s abruptly jolted out her pondering by the familiar voice directly opposite her. Her eyes immediately dart to its owner, the quiet, elusive Eva Tsunaka. Many times in the past – well, at least in these past two trials – they’ve thoughtlessly meandered there. Eva is just effortlessly captivating in her mannerisms, even when she isn’t speaking. But her words, however cold…they’ve stung before, but have they ever hurt like this?
In those steely cerulean eyes are a boon. A boon that offers much to the willing viewer, a boon full of knowledge that fascinates, that snares Diana in its clutches without abandon. That’s why she searches. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for. Disbelief? Sympathy?
Regret?
I thought we were friends , are the words that want to tumble out her mouth. Corny and overdone, maybe. But the desperation in her eyes is desperate in itself not to be read that way, for Eva to see beyond what looks like damning evidence, to use that sharp wit of hers to…to maybe… defend her . Was that all but a silly dream? Was there really nothing, no shred of remorse in the measured coolness of her voice? Could she really look away like that, with nothing to add but an agreement that served no purpose except to dig her a deeper hole?
“Well, Diana? Did I get anything wrong?”
Was Damon right? Was she just naïve to believe that her kindness wouldn’t have gotten her into trouble, that she shouldn’t have extended that courtesy to her friends in this academy? That if she happily skipped through life, that someone was bound to stick their leg out on her so she’d trip…
…And take the fall for them?
Yet even now, with the distinct certainty that she had been framed, she couldn’t even bring herself to fathom that someone had been behind it. That someone would go out of their way to address a letter to her, set up a stun gun of all things, cut the power, and flip the lock in the Boiler Room all so they could entrap her in a dark and dingy place with a knife-wielding man where she’d to nobody’s doubt suffer before being inevitably being caught red-handed next to Wolfgang’s body. She could ask the question again and again, ask why this could ever happen to her, specifically her . But it’d be screaming at the sun to no particular avail, just yelling without a discrete purpose.
What do you mean, why you? Logically , Eva’s voice hammers into her brain, logically, there’s only one answer .
Ignore it all you want, but you’ll never prove it wrong .
She has to tell them…tell them how she could’ve ended up in such a position, so they could work it out together. As a team. As friends . Surely it is, she parrots to herself, surely they’ll listen. Surely they’ll understand, surely they’ll see why, and it’ll be smooth sailing from then. All she has to do is come clean, and nothing will go wrong.
Why hadn’t she in the first place?
Why did she hide it?
“N- No…no,” she starts, thinking it best to deal with the first accusation, then work her way up in severity from there, “But I-”
Kai flashes a horrified look that makes her want to shrink away, and before she knows it, he’s speaking over her.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. Diana, did you just say… no ? As in… no, you’re not wrong that I covered up my wounds ?”
But it’s the best way to move forward for everyone. To be honest…so that no one else gets hurt. And maybe if she had been honest before, if she hadn’t been so desperate to cling onto Wolfgang’s authority despite knowing in her heart it was a stupid trap, scared to push the bounds of the grip he had on all of them…
What could she even say? She didn’t want to disappoint him? She thought that maybe there was the off chance she’d let him down, keep him waiting? That she genuinely believed Wolfgang would operate as covertly as he had in that letter, that he’d tell her to keep the fact that he had her blackmail a secret?
Maybe .
Because that would explain why he was holding a knife. Maybe the killer, whoever they were, had made a leap in logic. But they weren’t wrong after all. They weren’t wrong, and that was enough to make Diana’s stomach twist.
If she hadn’t been so desperate for that blackmail , then-
“Well, y- yes , but that’s not the-”
“Oh, crap. Oh …crap. You guys know what this means, right guys? Diana is…Diana just…”
“Diana just…?”
“Diana basically just confessed…!”
Confessed ?
She’s perfectly aware it’s an illusion of her own making, but the trial room seems so clearly to be shrinking with the intent to close in on her. Everyone’s voice is starting to sound the same. Each blink projects the same image onto the back of her eyelids in four nausea inducing dimensions. A charred-through Wolfgang mingles with the scent of mold and boiler room rot, tears and snot salting her tongue as trembling hands fiddle desperately with a flimsy bobby pin – Tozu really did put all those products there for decoration – which gives when she remembers the snap! crack! and she flinches, fracturing it in the janky lock. Her throat burns with shame when she reaches for the last pin in her pouch.
I’m not scared , she’d told herself then.
I’m still not scared , she tells herself now.
The concealer on her unbandaged wound stings. How hadn’t she realized it? Five people are talking at once, too. She might gag. No, she’s going to gag.
That blackmail. That dumb blackmail. Wolfgang was an excuse. In Diana’s eyes, his leadership never amounted to much. It still doesn’t, even now. She hates that in his absence, she finally allows herself the thought. That’s the way everything is, isn’t it? Wait until the silence following a gunshot to consider your next move. Look out for yourself and not those you lost. Laughably simple and still taboo marked down in value, shunned to times of crises. Perhaps it was what everyone needed, but she’d always known it was founded upon the shaky ground of rallying everyone against the common enemy . Sure, she wasn’t so skeptical of it at first, but that enemy consisted of fellow students, no, it was bound to collapse in on itself and crumble.
Diana knew that kind of justice would never prevail, nor did she ever want it to.
Yet she still…
She still…
“ Whaaaa ?!”
“A confession?! Are you for real!?”
You what?
You became complacent?
She tried her best. She did everything , everything in her power.
No, really, be honest .
Be you, Diana .
Is that so hard ?
Of course that’s difficult, when she doesn’t even know who -
Her fist tightens. The sensation attached to her wound blurs the line between discomfort and pain , “T- To the…the covering it up, but not the-”
“I- It makes sense though, doesn’t it? Diana got wounded, which proves she got in a fight with Wolfgang…which means, all that stuff about Wolfgang going to the boiler room really did happen!”
It did, but not in the way they think it did. She didn’t kill him. She isn’t a murderer. She isn’t a murderer. She isn’t .
But you still went to the boiler room -
But that was for an innocent cause. Innocent. Just innocent. She never meant to bring harm onto anyone, she wanted to resolve everything peacefully. That was why she abided by his words, why she didn’t say a thing to her , even when her roommate put a hand on her shoulder ever so gently and asked whether she had been feeling alright recently, that she looked troubled, if she was busy, if she had plans with a softness so uncharacteristic to her that it made Diana’s face burn.
She wouldn’t have lied under any other circumstance, not to her . She wouldn’t have lied if not for a good cause.
Really? You’re going to use that excuse?
What’s that good cause you preach for? Your blackmail ? What’s on it? What’s so important, huh? What is it that you want so badly? What is it that you’d kill for ?
She didn’t kill. She never wanted that.
How does it matter what you want? You basically did .
She played right into the killer’s hands, she did, she knew it, and she had just let it happen. All for that piece of paper. All because she chose herself above it all, because the secret on it would tear her to shreds .
Why didn’t she tell him?
Clearly, Wolfgang didn’t really think anyone could be watching at any given time. Finding themselves alone was hardly as monumental a task as the letter made it out to be.
Why did she choose to believe for her own sake? Why did she get to pick and choose when to soothe herself with the promise of a figure she could trust? Why did she knowingly abide by rules she didn’t make on the off chance ‘Wolfgang’ was right and somebody really did have an ear out for her blackmail?
Well, somebody certainly did have it out for her .
Why did she do this to herself? Why were they all staring at her? Why couldn’t she speak? Why did their scrutiny make her skin crawl and her eyes prickle with tears if she knew she didn’t do it? Why did it hurt so badly? Why was she standing now in the same place she had all those years before, when she didn’t have her makeup to hide behind?
One wipe and it’s over , a voice in her head jeers.
“W- Wolfgang,” she forces down the guilt-shaped lump in her throat, compelling herself to speak, but all she does is warble and choke, “I- I didn’t kill him, I swear!”
She swears .
She swears.
Does that mean anything?
To them it must, she’s been nothing but honest.
…Up until she had lied by omission during a murder trial -
Toshiko fans her face desperately, a bead of sweat trailing down her forehead, “I see…I- I see now what you’re saying…Diana…she lured Wolfgang into the boiler room…and now, she’s been lying this whole trial, hoping we would never suspect her! Aaaaah! How cruel !”
“Guys, come on…d- do you really believe I would’ve planned something like that?” it’s fine, she just has to hold them off until someone realizes that something’s off. That’s just the way it goes, isn’t it? They can’t be so rash, can’t think of condemning one of their friends to death just for the sake of getting it over with. It can’t be so easy to heave the blame onto someone’s shoulder, especially considering that that person is-
Especially…what?
Especially considering that that person is her ?
Could she really say something like that now? Act as if it were a given that one of them would jump to her defence purely on the basis that she wouldn’t commit a crime like that? Was she really going to cling onto the idea that, to others, goodness laid within the very fiber of her being, emanated from her in bright, bold strokes, painted on her face, her eyes, her soul?
“Diana… you …”
“I d- didn’t! I wasn’t the one who knocked him out, I just…I- I just…” she leans onto the podium like it’s a lifeline, but she can already sense the feeling creeping up and onto her limbs. The poison ivy threatens to ensnare her, paralyzing her defence, leaving her cold, desolate, alone .
“Then what the fuck were you doing there in the first place?”
I see you, and therefore you see you, in me. I’m a little like you…I’m a little like everyone, you know .
As long as you genuinely believe there is goodness inside you, you can believe in me .
That was a cruel joke. A cruel, embarrassing joke. Never had she found herself so genuinely blindsided by it all. Never had she thought someone would be able to reach past all of that. Never had she thought someone would think to grab her by the throat, wring her speechless, and hang her out to dry for everyone to see. She was simply too good, too good for someone to bear seeing her panic, rifling through the names of everyone in this courtroom, waiting, waiting for someone to rely on, someone who trusted her, someone capable of rebuking everyone’s words with logic and determination. An ally .
“I promise it isn’t me…I just…can’t…I can’t lie to you, but I just wanted to…” her voice drops to the most pathetic whisper, she’s not even sure if she’s still audible, “...I wanted to help.”
Wenona?
No, the entrepreneur had never quite approved of Diana’s particular brand of optimism. Even now she can feel the disdain in her stare, the vindictive sense of justice that has her closing that shutter before it even fully opens.
“Tch…to think she could preach about friendship after committing a violent crime…”
“And try to send us all to punishment…”
“Perhaps that was all a farce to begin with.”
“Golly, you’re right! If we’d voted for the wrong person, we’d all have been executed!”
Toshiko? Ingrid?
Even if they had faith in her, would they really be capable of making a case of it? In fact, how far did that faith even extend? Enough to believe she was good, but not so much that they’d believe it implausible if the majority argued against her? What would be of their faith then? Would they just jump ship, try to turn her kindness against her? Would they doubt? Rebrand her into a liar with no intention but to put a veil on her face to preserve herself with cheap words and empty gestures?
If that weren’t true, then why was she thinking like this now? Were they right after-
Damon?
The man was clearly scared. Why would he say what he had just to sow discord among them? He definitely feared it too.
…Dying.
If he wanted to protect himself so much, surely he’d think before calling the vote. They could put their differences aside, maybe he’d realize that she was just trying to protect herself all the same, and see past Diana’s mistake, that one mistake…he had done the same for her , after all.
But when she had asked him, yesterday, if he knew whether her roommate was doing fine, all he offered her was a simple shake of the head, a shrug that was clueless, or maybe apathetic . That was to say, ‘it’s not anything anyone of your caliber could even hope to comprehend’. Even as she caught them disappearing into a storage closet together earlier, even as she spotted them leaving shoulder to shoulder, close enough for their fingertips to brush, with neither making so much as an attempt to retract them, he dismissed it all.
And dismissing things was never in Damon’s nature.
What are you, my follower?
Do you want me to be?
Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough to convey that to him, that she was fully aware of what she was doing. Then what did that make her? Stupid. Contradictory. But someone who knew . Someone hardly as clueless as she made herself out to be. Not one of them, someone who followed along for the sake of it. Maybe that was enough, maybe that would really have been enough to get her out of this.
She was a little different, a little more like him than he would ever think. But he had to understand, she had a reputation to uphold.
Then, wouldn’t that perception of her make her even more likely to perpetrate the crime?
If he believed in her, even a little…
Even if he did…then what was he even to believe in?
“Seriously, Diana? What the hell is your damage?!”
Her kindness? Her self-sacrifice? Or the fact that it was formidable how she had turned them into fortresses, defence-weapons, if he could bear the oxymoron? A debater shouldn’t be unfamiliar with the notion of understanding something they don’t necessarily agree with.
No, she had already long destroyed the idea of a Diana someone could have faith in. So how was it that she ever felt so safe? How hadn’t she ever realized that she didn’t have anyone after all? Anyone strong, smart, capable…who looked upon her as a friend…
Or maybe Diana had leaned on her too much.
Eva.
Eva, Eva, Eva.
The intellectual, Eva Tsunaka. The genius, Eva Tsunaka. The mathlete, Eva Tsunaka.
The Eva Tsunaka who was so deeply wounded that Diana could feel her heart leaking like a sieve, weeping into the space outside her lungs, with no one to relieve the pressure welling up in her chest or do so much as to allow her even the room to breathe . She could feel everything boiling within her, the hurt she held on her tongue and swallowed just so no one would see, at least not anyone in the academy she had most definitely deemed too cruel for comfort.
And wasn’t that selfless in and of itself? Wasn’t it a selfless thing to do, to keep that all inside of her?
One look at the hint of a smile on Eva’s face after Diana held that chess set toward her, outstretched, the mere suggestion that her mouth could curve even further upward still and she was swept clean off her feet, left entirely without respite. At that exact moment, it was hardly a conscious thought in her head, but there was something so deeply ingrained within her that just knew she was dead and set on a path there’d be no turning back from. Irrevocably. Inexplicably. She knew it in her bones, felt the glorious writ that would soon grow to command her very being. Her soul, once lacking form, would bear the imprint of Eva’s, until they fit so perfectly there was no telling where one of them started and the other ended. Zero tolerance. Truly a feat of mechanical excellence. And only, only what Eva deserved .
“It’s not…like what you all think.” she starts, voice shaky, “I- I got a note from Wolfgang, asking me to come down to the boiler room because he had my blackmail. Wh- When I got there, Wolfgang was…h- he was already in the water, acting weird.”
When Eva’s deft hands took hold of the set, their fingertips brushed, and Diana felt weak in the knees. She called it the work of some external force, as if an entity greater than her had compelled the redness welling up in her cheeks to do so, lean close enough to smell more than the perfume on Eva’s clothes, the shampoo on her hair…close enough to absorb the very essence of her . She could ignore that she had only inorganically reproduced the connection Eva already had, that all this was only a situation borne from the desire of not two, but one. She could almost convince herself that the mathematician had intentionally extended that miniscule moment of contact by a second or maybe half, that she pulled the chessboard back deliberately late, that Eva too was trying to play it safe.
In the world she had created, second best didn’t exist.
Eloise follows up, “And you mean that this was when he attacked you with the knife?”
“Bullshit!” is what she tunes out.
Grey curls fringing the border between black and white brush delicately against pale skin, tenderly caressing the gaps within the chameleon snaking its way up her arm. External force , once more, willed her to lean further yet, break the air, and the space between them. To take it all away. But no. Suddenly her bracelet felt fragile. The unease in her stomach felt more like a threat, a harbinger of uncertain doom. Diana had to touch it once, twice, to make sure it hadn’t shattered and fallen apart under the weight of her own heart.
Eternal reverie .
Life became a dream, it all so farcically melted away like wax off a wick in Eva’s proximity. She couldn’t help it. The mathlete was cold, cold, cold, rough edges and harsh words, but she inspired feelings so warm, warm, warm that she had Diana scrambling to act, even if she had reserved none other than the occasional passing thought in her head.
A lie, of course . Eva was so much more than that .
She forgot what interacting with people was supposed to mean to her, she forgot about the others, about society, and what there was to gain. The losses, the consequences, all of it vanished when composed, collected Eva Tsunaka lay right beside her, ebbing every trace of fear and doubt away with that austere look on her face. And Diana wanted, she wanted something for herself like she hadn’t since time immemorial. It had already begun to throb, but her eyes had caught Eva pressing a pen to pursed lips for a heartbeat too long and then she started to ache.
For once, there was nothing good and holy to hide behind. It was pure, unadulterated, self-serving longing , the kind of longing she didn’t even realize she had stumbled and fallen into until her shoes were muddied and all she had to do was blink to find herself waist deep. The quicksand almost cradled her – no wonder she had been so readily willing to submit – and then she realized why she had walked the other way, why she even kept it out of her grasp in the first place.
Of her short but explosive tenure as a cosmetologist, Diana had always managed to find the perfect spot to chip at and pry open, a way to wiggle herself into her clients’ hearts. Selfish, wasn’t it? But she didn’t have a choice. Her artistry held something of an obscenely symbiotic dependence on the connection she had with the person in the mirror. Without it she became boring, uninspired…anything but ultimate worthy. Perhaps that was why she had long abandoned what could very well have become a promising career in the visual arts.
One silent night, in middle school, give or take, she found herself at her table. The entire house was asleep, she recalls. She had never liked to stay up late. Something about the feeling of being the only one with their eyes open.
A portrait of the one thing that is the most precious to you .
An odd assignment, wasn’t it? She was still young then, so it wasn’t uncommon to hear mockery bubbling up around her, joking around about turning in some video game or anime character she had to pretend not to recognize.
Di, you’re such a huge try-hard that you already know what you’re gonna draw, right?
Man, I’m gonna be so embarrassed if they put my painting next to hers .
She hummed, twirling a lock of her hair. It was unnerving for it to be so quiet she could hear the ringing in her own ears, but she’d take it over nothing at all. What was she meant to do? If she drew her mom, she’d have to explain why she hadn’t drawn her dad. If she drew her dad, then she’d have to explain why she hadn’t drawn her mom. Then, what else was there in life? School and she’d be called a nerd. Anything beyond that was too complicated to capture. Friendship? Then she’d be shunned for neglecting to treasure her family. Love? Not an option, lest someone misinterpret what she had drawn and label her a hopelessly romantic freak.
Then what made something precious? If value was nothing but a web of debt strung high above her head, then maybe she needed something without one. Liberated through pricelessness. Unbound, flying high and free. Into her vision she stamped the imprint of a blank sheet of paper until it refreshed with every blink. And then she swore, for the briefest moment, she caught a glimpse of herself, and her entire world came crashing down.
White was a reflective color, wasn’t it? White canvas, white paper. It was almost blinding, wonderful, open and airy. By all rights, flawless and unblemished. Extraordinary, beyond human. Tainted by none, one could even say.
Skin was hardly the same. There were restrictions. No wiggle room to press hard and hurt, use pigment that just wouldn’t stick. The shackles were mind-numbingly soothing, a set of rote rules that whispered excellence to her. Nothing of herself. She was too much or too little without something to keep her in line.
Skin says you stop there , and she says okay .
“Y- Yeah…he was yelling and screaming, and…before I could even think, there was a huge flash…and an explosion. Th- That was probably what killed him, right…?”
Okay.
Okay, this is it. The secret to a heart.
Lies. Little white lies.
Very often does she hear the ‘ I don’t think I’d look good in makeup ’ or the ‘ I don’t really know if this is my style ’. The truth about her art is that there’s always a vision. And sometimes the vision agrees with its beholder, but not the individual it imparts itself upon. There’s ways to get around that. One is forgoing it entirely. There was no doubt that she was completely fine with coasting on technicalities – she wouldn't have earned her title otherwise – but if her clients wanted something worthy, worthy of the distance they travelled and the time they spent sitting in that chair…
Then Diana just had to lie.
She catches the light, tilts her head at just the correct angle. With care, she transforms. Stories from when she was young, as if she still isn’t, talking up some tree of wisdom rooted in absolutely nothing.
“Aye, just out of curiosity…you mentioned a note. Did you happen to discard it?”
“No…n- no, I still have it with me.”
Of course Diana had faith in Eva.
The tortured soul. The misunderstood. The contrarian. The martyr. Both pretenders. But they had roles to play, she could never reach completely, only hope that Eva wanted to, and that someday the combined force of their love would overcome it all, stop them from once again falling into place in jigsaw-perfect precision.
Eva knew she was good. Good at puzzles. Good at logic. Good inside. One ‘just a mathlete’. The other ‘just a cosmetologist’. She thought she could reach it, the part of her that Diana knew vehemently protested against it all, the vengeful part of her that earnestly believed she didn’t deserve any part of the hand life dealt her.
The next day, the chess set on Eva’s nightstand had been demoted to the coffee table, a curious mask lying in its stead. Persona , she recalls. Not quite the most popular video game series, but hardly obscure for anyone who was into that sort of scene.
Is there even any doubt as to where that came from? Who that came from?
Cassidy raises an eyebrow, “Well…can we see it?”
She silently violates the boundary between them when she reaches for it, presses the protruding beak of a nose to her own. Tries to stare it down, but only ends up staring through the eye holes, flecks of red mottling the striking black shading her field of vision.
Persona .
Persona , she says to a room for one. The couch pushed up against the plush mattress might have tried to convince someone otherwise, but the looming shadow a taller bed casts over it vehemently protests. One out investigating, the other clinging onto whatever lingers.
Persona . She feels the word stretch her lips, her tongue. With it stirs the unbearable idea that, perhaps, she had only understood a small part of Eva. Hadn’t reached the part that mattered.
You looked at me like you didn’t believe me, but please . My care for you extended beyond that . I just…I just had a reputation, a reputation to uphold. A reputation. A reputation .
Is that so wrong?
To want others to believe in me?
You were never secondary, I just …
I had obligations .
What are you even fighting for? Blind faith doesn’t exist , replies Eva scornfully. She’s sure Eva heard it in her response, a brain which wanted to agree lampshaded by a heart that didn’t. A fickle heart. A faithful heart. A fragile heart. A trusting heart. Something to hide the ache of reality within her. Something of a narcotic. A one-stop shop. A cure for everything.
I chose everyone over you. It’s all my fault .
She sucks in a breath when she inverts her right pocket and nothing surfaces. Her heart is pounding with the ferocity of a bass drum by the time she reaches into her left, as if it, stubbornly, does not want to anticipate the same result but can’t help so. Murmurs are already stirring when her other pocket spews nothing but fabric. Blocking out her ears becomes a challenge when she almost ravenously makes a grab for her pouch, emptying its contents onto the laughably limited space atop her trial podium. Something clatters to the floor, hitting Desmond’s podium with a metallic thunk.
Thunk .
Snap ! Plop . Craaaack -!
Her ears ring. It’s getting hard to breathe. Suddenly, she’s responsible for the lives of thirteen other people and it’s all too much to bear. The burden might as well be straddled against her chest, pressing the air out her lungs with unrelenting force.
Why, if I was so good, so good to everyone…
Why don’t I deserve it ?
She’s selfish. She’s so selfish.
Maybe any semblance of kindness in her really was play-pretend, all artificial and syrupy to coat the stench of the withered girl within. She couldn’t even qualify as a shell of anything, there just wasn’t anything there .
You trusted everyone not for them, but for you . That’s why you cling to them .
You’re scared .
No, how could she let others make judgements on her behalf? No. How couldn’t she? What else had she been doing her whole life? How could she prove her innocence? Start from scratch? They were talking over her like she didn’t even exist, as if they had already crushed her under the weight of justice and all she could do was await retribution.
Everything had fallen apart around her as quickly as Wolfgang’s authority had devolved into utter madness. The somethingness that came from others, the tangibility she had chased like a high had already ebbed away, rendering her naught more than a needy child with nothing to do but grasp desperately for anyone whose skin wouldn’t rip if she dug her nails in and pulled .
Her belief was juvenile, naïve, but it felt good.
And why would it matter if it worked ? Why would it matter whether she was free or not if doing so soothed her, calmed the dreaded inhibition that constantly threatened to overtake her?
“I- I swear there was a note, there…” she mutters, her lips growing numb, “U- Uh…I just…”
“...She claims there exists a note, but miraculously cannot find any.” Wenona crosses her arms, “What a surprising development.”
Gritting her teeth, she shamefully locks eyes with the only individual that had any hope of corroborating her statement.
“Eva…!”
Eva blinks, tilting her head ever so slightly. She might be the only one in this room who isn’t looking at her like they’ve already decided she’s murderous scum. They print all over her killer , traitor , deceitful , but Eva’s thousand yard stare looks past it all.
This is it, isn’t it? The test of their friendship.
Please .
If this means anything to you…
If I meant anything to you …
White lies.
Little white lies.
“I don’t recall.” Eva twirls a lock of hair, her knuckles rapping against the podium. Her words feel like a sucker punch to her gut; she actually reels from the betrayal, “This is the first I’m hearing of something like that.”
Diana heaves pathetically, a horrible sputtering noise that calls to mind the sound of an engine failing to start. Pathetic is all it is. Pathetic to the core. Pathetic, pathetic, had she really expected Eva to lie for her ?
“Please. Eva, if you don’t, we’re all going to- we’re-”
Something wet hits her hand. Her vision is blurry, she’s yanked forward by a cough, a choke, she fumbles to check her hands, but she’s clumsy now, sloppy. More makeup hits the ground.
Maybe she should have been more aggressive. Shouldn’t have veiled her desire in platitudes, should have bared her longing out in its full shameful glory.
Mark sighs disdainfully, tugging his beanie down to avoid looking her in the eye.
“Come on. That was obviously a cover.”
“Dude…” Jett opts to cross his arms, tilting his head in genuine disappointment, “Did you really think you could say that without proof?”
“I- I did,” she wheezes, “I had- I did ! I just- I-”
She knew how to contour. She knew how to give lips appeal, hide red-bitten-rawness with irresistible allure. As much as she feared, feared being alone in front of a vanity, she still greeted Eva with a glossy smile. Slept at the edge of the bed. Left her blanket folded back, untucked on one end. Casually dropped a remark about how sore lying on a couch made her. Handed her that chess set with every intent to continue their conversation with a game.
And it never came. She was left by her lonesome with her feelings, a mask, and a chessboard on her coffee table, half-played. All that dotted the boxy field was black and white, and she was disgustingly neither .
But he had nothing to offer except a curt shake of the head, so, so much like the one she had seen only yesterday. Not meant to assuage her doubts, but to expel her from the conversation, “As if we’d believe he had any reason to attack you anyway. It makes sense for you to use your advantage as a trustworthy person to leverage Wolfgang into such a position.”
“I told you guys,” she rakes a hand through her hair, strands of pink falling out their curls and wisping across her face as her voice rises with all the wrong kinds of confidence. Even she knows how stupidly guilty she looks right now, “He wasn’t himself -!”
“He’d certainly have let his guard down around you,” Wenona scoffs.
“Why would I ever kill a friend? I- I promised that I- I-”
“Just give it up, asshole! Your shitty promises mean nothing !”
“...It’s true. Promises hardly hold any weight against fact and evidence in a court of law. Besides, how could anyone vouch for your character if we’ve only known you for the former part of September?”
But despite everything, despite all that she had done, despite her words, her time, her effort, her sacrifice , had it really all amounted to nothing like this? Was it so easy for good and evil to come full swing into one another, bounded only by the gap between the two ends of a horseshoe? Was it so easy to bridge that gap with a patchwork truth that, out of pure convenience, they’d abandoned the reality of her kindness for?
Her kindness ?
That’s the truth about people .
The stone cold, bitter truth .
The one you’re so desperate to hide .
The one that lurks within you .
The one you tried so hard to veil with lies .
“Then this case is cut and dry, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry,” Desmond sighs, “I don’t want to believe it either, but there’s no better option.”
“There is no other option, for that matter,” Eva agrees.
“There’s so many things we still haven’t- it’s- it’s too early to- to -”
Diana doesn’t know what to think. She wants a pit to open up and swallow her into the ground so she can surface from out the other side of the earth born anew. She wouldn’t mind it at all, being thrown into unfamiliar waters if it meant just a chance, just another chance to rectify everything.
But what would she have done?
Trusted everyone less?
More?
Given all of herself?
Renounced her desires entirely?
What was the point of being able to try again if she didn’t even know?
But her stubborn brain remains pleading for it. One more chance , the tape rewinds, replays. She picks up the needle and scritch-scratches the record in the process, but it doesn’t matter if it plays back distorted as long as she can hear those words again, one more chance, please, one more chance .
Just one. Let me try again. I could have made things right .
What is another chance if there’s no purpose to it at all?
Most of all…she…
So selfishly…
So desperately…just wants to live.
Even without a purpose…she wants to live.
What is another chance to her if she doesn’t even know what to make of it?
Her honest, abhorrent, revolting answer – it doesn’t matter. If she has to suffer in silence, so be it. If she needs to live by pretending, she can bear it. She can smile when Eva glares, when Damon looks down on her like she’s worthless, even how her classmates now regard her with utmost reprehension, like scum on the bottom of their shoes, if only she gets to live . As long as she’s still here, she can bid all of it away somehow.
She’d find a way to live.
...Not without everyone .
It’s hopeless .
“U- Um…Diana…is that…blood on your arm?” Kai covers his mouth, fingers digging into his cheek. He looks like he’s about to hurl.
Desmond’s eyes flicker to the ground below him, to an object neither he nor the cosmetologist had bothered to retrieve. Concealer. Concealer .
“...Wolfgang was carrying a knife, wasn’t he?”
Her crying. Crying. She had washed it away. She had washed it away, and now what looked like irrefutable evidence of her guilt was out in welcome of anyone’s scrutiny.
“Oh my god,” mumbles Grace, the profanity stripped from her through shock.
Diana’s heart hits the floor with a thud, and so does the last of her hope.
“You killed him…” Ingrid attempts to right herself, but can’t help her slight slouch, looking equally as sick, “You…killed Wolfgang.”
Just as she’s about to open with a tirade of fervent pleas, a grating baritone intercepts her.
“Hm, hm, hm…is that your final answer?”
“Uh…is this a trick question?” Cassidy scratches at her head, “This is, like, the kind of thing teachers ask you when you shout out the answer in class and you’re wrong.”
“ No ! Y- You’re missing- You guys aren’t- There’s- There’s…the…the blackout,” her voice breaks, blood hits the courtroom floor when she rocks back and forth, as if she could rip out the podium if she yanked hard enough, “The- The t- taser! The. The- The dotthe -”
“J- Just stop,” Eloise looks her in the eye with tears brimming in her own, yet there’s something resolved, something brutal inlaid within them. Diana wonders if, in the final split second of a match, that gaze is what her opponents see before they know they’re cornered, before they're struck down, “Please. I’m sorry. You can explain yourself later, b- but it doesn’t change anything.”
“Onhisneck I- I- I can’t! I can’t, I can’t you’re all goingtodieall of you, all of you!”
“Diana…it’s over.”
For you all . For you all . For you all.
“Then I take it you all have concluded that the blackened is Miss Diana Venicia, correct?”
“ Please ! Please, if you don’t want to die, then please, please just listen -!”
“Well, all of you, bar your killer, speak now or forever hold your peace!”
“You piece of shit!” Grace roars, “It’s one thing to fucking kill someone but you’re still here trying to weasel your way out of it?! Don’t fucking piss me off!”
“My, my…I’ll take it. The confidence!”
“ Just listen to me !”
“I’m not listening to a killer ! I’m not- not listening to someone who killed him -!”
Tozu makes an awful clucking sound. He seems to have registered the words he’s about to say, or maybe he had been preparing for this all along, “How very confident you are. How confident you are…to be so very wrong .”
...And it all ends how it started.
With a mistake.