Rabbits Die of Lonliness
Trigger Warning for attempted suicide/ suicidal ideation
…
He looked out at the Tokyo skyline, smatterings of colors and lights beneath him in the pitch blackness of night. He shivered as a breeze blustered by making quick work of his hospital garments and settling as a chill deep in his bones, one that not even being burned alive could dispel.
Happiness was gone without him, the boy in bright yellow seeming more a dull brown. A prized sunflower rotting, moved into an extravagant vase in vain hope that it would survive. The roots were dead though, flowing through it, poison.
He gripped the chain-link fence meant as a safety railing and climbed, jumping over to land on the outside edge of the roof.
Now unhindered by any blockades he walked slowly towards the edge of the roof.
SLAM!
He flinched as the noise cut violently through the stillness of the night, turning to see the glaring white light of the hospital hallway and the contrasting darkness of a frantic woman's figure.
"Don't do it Hide! We lost so many already, please! I'll never forgive you if I have to lose you too!"
"A-Akira?"
She rushed over to the fence "Hideyoshi Nagachika get back on this side before I come over there and make you!"
He let out a self deprecating laugh, "What's the point? He's gone now and this life isn't worth living without him. Did you know Akira? Rabbits die of loneliness."
She slid her feet into the gaps of the fence and started climbing. "He would want you to live!"
"How would you know? You don't even know his name."
"He loved you right? Of course he would want you to move on."
"Well you're right, he did. He was afraid he'd hurt me and pushed me away. He's selfish like that, deciding that people's lives would be better without him without ever asking them. Well now it's my turn! Let me be selfish just this once! I'm not complete without him."
"But what about us? What about everyo-"
"Akira please! Just let me stop the pain."
At this point she had made it over the fence and had a hand on his wrist to keep him from doing anything rash.
"You idiot! Your life means just as much as his did! That pain you feel now? With your death someone else will just feel that pain instead and it'll be an endless cycle of hurt!" She pulled him into a hug. "I'm selfish too Hide. You're like a little brother, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if you died like that."
The conflict on Hide's face was blatant when he spoke next, "I guess today's just not my day. Head back over, I'll be right behind you."
"Fat chance. You're going over first."
"Damn, well it doesn't hurt to try." He laughed.
He landed on his feet as he got back down to the safe side of the roof and trailed a hand across the new scar tissue coating the lower half of his face.
"His name was Kaneki, we've been best friends since elementary school. We confessed to each other the day he died."
She held his hand in comfort "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize, it wasn't your fault."
"Still, he didn't deserve what happened to him."
Hide thought about that fateful day those beams fell, about that room with it's bloody checkered floor and (not so) innocuous buckets full of fingers, the death he suffered at the hands of the white reaper.
"No he didn't."
There was a moment of silence as they looked down at the world around them and the beauty of a city at night before Hide spoke again. "You know I had a plan, if it worked that ghoul would've eaten more than just my face and Kaneki would've survived."
"Idiot, of course he couldn't stand by and watch that."
"I'm glad though, I got to give him one last kiss."
"Oh Hide." She looked at him with sad eyes, rage bubbling up at the ghoul that stole so much from this kid. "Come on, let's head back in. You'll get sick if you stay out in the cold like this."
…
Somewhere far away in the Scottish Highlands, unbenounced to the rest of the world a white haired boy blinked open his eyes.