Fandom: GOTH - Otsuichi
Mods please use the f: book (category) tag
Rating: T
Length: 300 words
Content notes: blood, (naturally) dead animal, reference to canonically-implied past self-harm, disregard for accidental self-injury
Author notes: The title is from Drowning (2013-11-02).
Summary: Morino Yoru, a meditation on contrasts.

There’s a dead bird on the sidewalk when Yoru walks to the bus in the morning. Just lying there, tiny wings spread, stick legs akimbo.

(Yoru runs the fingertips of her opposite hand over her wrist.)

At the beginning of class, a stack of quizzes gets passed down each column. The student in front of her fumbles, papers scattering, red drops falling across the desk.

“Can someone take Ishikawa to the nurse’s office for a bandage?” the teacher asks, and Ishiwaka’s friends immediately volunteer.

(Yoru holds her paper up. Against the sunlight, the red pales to soft brown, still fading.)



Yoru wakes in the night, the quarter moon cutting a slice of bone out of the sky. Her neck feels cold; she pulls the covers back up, bunching them beneath her chin.

(Beneath the pillow, her fingers curl around the length of rope, surface smoothed by countless nights like this.)

When she washes her face in the sink, the porcelain patch in the basin falls in. Yoru tries to pull it out but the angle is awkward. It’s only when she sees the drops on the sidewalk behind her that she realizes her hand is dripping.

(Drops splatter like flowers.)



Humming under her breath, she’s just about to reach for her handkerchief (the blood will surely clot after a bit) when a hand reaches out to pull at her wrist.

“We have a deal,” Kamiyama says. He lifts her hand to look at the cut, a ragged line across the palm-side of four fingers. It’s not deep, but messy enough to be inconvenient, and still seeping.

He doesn’t ask, just pulls Yoru along past flowering trees and curious eyes to the nurse’s office.

(Yoru remembers wrapping a bandage with slippery fingers.)

The nurse scolds while patching her up.

(It’s nice.)