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It's an urge that never goes away. Not really, anyway. It throbs at the base of Reki’s brain and nudges at him like a puppy begging for attention, brightening at the slightest flicker of attention and begs heavier inside him with hopeful whispers, winding around the base of his legs and murmuring support.
It's a constant idea that has him judging the varying results he'll get from different heights and different falls. Which bridge or building would be fastest and how he'd make his way there without an ambush of questions from his parents- or at least questions he could lie in response to plausibly.
He researches endlessly, hours spent on different medications and long and short effects of each alongside toxic dosage levels and length until said toxins begin to kick in, exactly how and when and why.
It springs up at every vague mention of injury or medication or hospitals or heights or knives or food or people or love or death or life or pain or-
A bewildering beg for attention and scream for notice whenever anyone else shows up to class with a scraped knee or headache that makes Reki cold and grouchy and sadistic because why can't I be in such pain. Why cannot I be given similar remorse, even though in the same situation I AM given such grace. The urge is a constant beg for more. To get worse and worse and WORSE until the pain consumes you physically so that they can all see the matching distraught outside rather than curled in a flaming ball deep in his belly.
It's watching his classmates be cared for and loved gently in their injuries while he stands to the side with pure longing and jealousy for an external wound to prove his desperation. An ache for attention in a selfish way that makes him snap and snark and bare cold, blunt fangs that hold no meaning but misery and the same throbbing need for something he just can't place, for everything and nothing to consume him.
It’s pressing a shitty craft knife to his neck and pulling at the skin with the other hand to calculate how deep would reach his oesophagus, or if the wrist would be better. The neck is easy to see. Failed red lines where he chickened out last minute are sharp against his pale skin and pierce the splattering of freckles like the connection of constellations, but it's joining tiny dots to thread a steadily growing urge that gets deeper to the goal in every attempt at the flickered exit door. A constellation that's so bright, so painful and stinging and sharp that no one seems to even notice.
It's sulking when his oldest-younger sister plays with the twins. Loves them and cares for them and helps them in a way that Reki can't. Doesn't. Won't. He doesn't know why. He loves them, them all, but he's just not good at caring. He used to be. And sometimes he is!! Sometimes he's great at wiping their tears! But sometimes he stands at the side and wishes he was crying. Because he's selfish. So, so, selfish. He can't even play with them when the beg him, clawing at his hoodie until he pushes them off him and watches their tears well up after he snaps and glares and they go tattle to mommy like the shitty brats they are. See, he can't even think nice thoughts. He's a horirble, cruel, disgusting brother and son and boyfriend and friend who thinks disgusting awful thoughts about people's bodies and choices and voice and hair and clothes and judges everyone and everything and he just. Doesn't. Know. Why. He's not a mean person, Reki doesn't know why he bites. He doesn't know why he cries when he's mad and yells when he's sad and isolates himself after he makes a mistake and blames others for his tears and self inflicted scars and blames himself for everything you've done and everything he's done and every war and every tear shed and every scraped knee and every wailing baby and-
It's crying when Reki’s teacher talks about calories and weight in health and PE, about proper nutrition and how sausages take tens of years of your lifespan, shaking when his mother points out a crappy diet he's been sporting for months or reciting the newest article headlining carcinogens or other big words that flash glaring red sirens telling you a fucking BANANA is gonna explode your insides because of its toxic chemicals full of needles and is destroying our youth as we know it- shit that he shows JOE, just in case, who laughs and ruffles his hair. Not sure if it's making fun of him, laughing at his lack of knowledge on heart-bursting cured meats or radioactive grapes or whatever, but it seems to amuse him, so Reki chuckles along nervously and cuts another food and another bleeding line on his arm.
A painful hiss that tells him if he ignores one set of thoughts, he'd be fat and ugly and sickly and disgusting and untouchable, while the others simply remind him that he'd be sick enough to be dead if does eat. He'd be dead on either path, in his mind. But he still flicks between each idea, each diet, each plan, each medication, each slit, each relief, each substance each-
It's something so set in stone. An idea and event that's carved into an unforeseeable date in the calendar of his brain, something he has confirmed to be tomorrow at 8:30pm, by overdose in the town far from a hospital and lacking residents, identically set in a fuzzy day months from now, never sure when or how, but sure that it's the only way he'll go.
There's no future, he knows. Or maybe he just doesn't want one. Maybe he's one of those weak pussys who can't even make it through the first day of adulthood, preferring the easy way out where Reki doesn't need to struggle through the hellhole of life everyone laughs about. The life everyone chuckles about, ruffling his hair and telling Reki that it never gets better. So casual, so accepting of the miserable office job he's bound to be chained to, the uphill, boring and sleepless nights of parenthood and constant arguing and hitting and yelling throughout marriage, and family, and friendship, and endings, and beginnings, and new lives and new deaths and fears and sickness and love and breakups and-
Everyone says that their teenage years were hell. Everyone says adulthood is lonely. Everyone says growing old is painful and sad. Everyone says it never gets better.
Isn't Reki doing himself a FAVOR in leaving the game early? In shutting down the damn console and leaving? If there's no point, no sugary ending unless it's dying in your loved ones arms alongside them- and even that has millions of cons branching away from it- what is the fucking point?
He doesn't even want to get better. Reki doesn't remember a life not running through options out of it. Not darting his gaze through every exit door, ones that aren't glued to the walls on hinges and wooden frames. Maybe it's that getting better means putting in effort. He hasn't been very good at putting in effort lately. At least his parents and teachers have been reminding him of that, very sweet of them.
Maybe,
Maybe it's that getting better means stopping. Undoing progress. Gaining that weight back. Throwing away those rusted blades. Locking the medicine cabinet. Stopping throwing up and scratching at his collarbone and hips and stopping the firm raps against his fist and side and legs and stopping the bite marks he leaves on his arms like a rabid dog. Maybe.
Maybe it's that getting better means living.
It never goes away. Not really, anyway.
Maybe for a little bit!! A reset, a restart! But just.
Just for a small while.
Not forever.
He doesn't think it'll ever be forever.
But dying is forever.
Killing himself is permanent.