#im feeling unwell so i wrote more touhou as is tradition

[cookiethebirdthing]

Worlds Apart

A story about Maribel Hearn being unwell below the break. Check the trigger warnings before deciding if you want to read.

She was being questioned again. It happened so many times before. Renko would question her. Would question her experiences. Why? Why did she seek to hurt her?

Maribel closed the video stream. She couldn’t do this right now. She wanted to say something. She wanted to let her friend know how much she hurt. She wanted to shout at her, belittle her, ruin her. It was always the same. No one ever believed her. Could she not speak for her own thoughts? Apparently not.

How could she know what she thought and felt? She didn’t know any more who she was than a passerby on the street who caught mere glimpses of her. Perhaps even then, they could trust their own subjective experiences. What a luxury they took for granted. To be able to trust their own world. That everything around them was solid— real. That no matter what, there were objective truths in this world that remained constant.

How fucking lucky they were. When one can trust neither their external world nor their internal one, what do they have to turn to? What is reality to such a being?

She wanted to cry. To punch a wall. To punch Renko. To truly, irrevocably, and unforgivably hurt her. For now, she blocked her. She didn’t block her. She couldn’t. She needed Renko to see. To talk to her, to apologize to her. For trying to take away what little she had. For trying to destroy her reality.

She muted the notifications in the messaging app. She didn’t want to hear a single thing from that piece of shit’s mouth. It’s not like she cared anyway. Fighting her tensing muscles, she placed it down gently on the floor. Maybe had she the money…

When all the things that make one human are stripped away, what is left? She felt human. Did she? Was she? Were she to ask someone what made one a human, the only response she would get is a stab to the heart. How could she even mistake herself for one? If all but her could claim the title of human, then clearly it was no title to hold dear at all.

And yet, it was those differences that brought her to this same place again and again. Across the shimmering, moonlit ocean she stared. What was out there? What was left? Should she plunge into the abyss? Would she ever resurface? It wasn’t for her. Not yet. Not until the last of the world was blanketed in the uncaring sea.

She turned back—back to the glimmering city she called home. All the marvels of the current day packed into a pretty little box of unending exploitation. There she sat on the floor in the center of it all, the closet door locked tight and the dim lights above her struggling to illuminate her own hands.

The darkness around her twisted and snarled, enveloping her. That was fine. It didn’t matter, not when there was nothing left to feel. It was all so distant. At some point, the light had turned off. She had been the one to do it. Like a turbulent sea, the world buffeted against her. The thin pane of reality she was left on buckled under her weight. Her vision wavered, maybe. There was no stillness to be had in such a place.

It was doubled, she realized. Everything. Another dimension maybe. She wiped her glasses, but it didn’t help at all. She could see it. The lines and shadows fell apart before her eyes. She could— 

A high-pitched noise cut through her world, shattering it into place. She blinked. It was all still there, but… normal again. Maribel frowned, looking down at the tablet whence the noise originated. She picked it up and unlocked the screen. Renko had messaged her. She had messaged her a lot. She guessed from the timestamps that about an hour had passed.

hey are you okay ,, merry ? Merry i m.sorry if I said the wrong thing please respond when you see this i understand if your mad i just wanted t o say im sorry only message back if u feel up 2 it <3

Maribel tapped the text area, causing a keyboard to pop up.

Hey, I’m fine. Don’t

She held the backspace button until the draft message was cleared. Then she held it a few moments longer. She stared at the blinking cursor for a while.

💜

She pressed enter before turning off the tablet.