Etsurou Ikeda [D3] Everything Is Borrowed
Koko’s silky, supple bare back arched as she gently rocked backwards and forwards, skirt hitched up to her smooth waist and legs straddling the boy’s sparrow-like frame.
Etsurou’s line of vision remained firmly focused at her soft breasts and the wavy, auburn hair which draped across them like velvet curtains. He’d never seen a pair close up before; much different from the confiscated magazines which were guarded like the Holy fucking Grail in the teachers staff room. At first, the sight of them made him want to burst out laughing. He also wanted to laugh when Koko starting kissing him on his mouth, on his chest, on his-
Well, when she kissed him there, it was kinda strange.
The entire scenario was strange. Minutes ago he had been playing computer games and now he was totally naked with this hot babysitter chick on top of him. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing and it was obvious; their class had had one sex education lesson all year. One. Singular. Where the teachers spent one hellish hour explaining reproduction, safety against infections and not giving into peer pressure. Everybody laughed at the demonstrations (except Katsue who, not uncharacteristically, refused to take part) but nobody took them seriously. Because sex was for adults. And Etsurou was a kid. He didn’t need to know about stuff like contraception because he never, ever planned on getting that close to a girl anyway.
And what was contraception again, anyway? He couldn’t remember. Him and Koko… they weren‘t using it, were they? Did that mean she was going to get pregnant?
The pace began to quicken. Whatever was going on, it felt pretty damn amazing. It made him forget the drunk boyfriends his mom used to bring home when he was little; that’s usually what he remembered when he was alone at night. How they used to ruffle his hair and leer at his sister in her pink pyjamas and then go upstairs and make loads of noise in the bedroom, only to emerge hours later as his mother’s brand new prized possession. Of course, this never lasted. The novelty would wear off and his mother would end up having to look for a different boyfriend, because Akihiko was a gambler, Yoshio was married and Toshiya was a drunk. Or, like Kenji, they were all three.
Not forgetting those prize pricks that would beat her to a pulp and rob her blind. Or the ones that used to push Etsurou down the stairs or lock him in the basement all day alone, crying and frightened, just so they could avoid looking after ‘Reika’s little brat’. Etsurou must have spent hours at a time in that dark, dank, spider-riddled hole without food, water or even a toilet
Yes. Sex, whatever it was, made him forget. Made him forget the gap his father had left behind.
Meeting Koko’s eyes, the babysitter smiled and placed his eleven year old hands on her breasts. He cupped them and returned the grin.
He didn’t have control of the past. But he did have control of this.
And that made him very happy indeed.
He approached Sora Tsurumi with caution, as though it were feeding time at the zoo. This was, after all, the same girl who he had cheated on with Mizuki just to piss her off, just to hurt her. The twisted satisfaction one gets from making Sora cry was delicious - she was like an emotional punch bag you couldn’t help but antagonise, chipping away at her psyche until there was nothing left but an empty shell.
“Sora,” he nodded, “it’s alright, I’m not gonna hurt you.”
Oh, won’t you now? Like you didn’t hurt Yori you mean?
Sora emerged from the shadows and into the sunlight, totally aloof. The girl’s sharp, angular face was stained with tears and dirt; she looked utterly exhausted. Honestly, how Sora had even managed to make it out of the classroom alive was astonishing in itself. He had half-expected her to be shot before having her name called. She was notoriously high-maintenance and hyper-sensitive before the Program, let alone actually taking part in it.
To his relief she seemed to be bearing up quite well - he could barely handle her histrionics when they were together and he definitely wasn’t putting up with it here. One tantrum and bang, she was fucking out of here.
“Etsurou,” she groaned, pressing her doll-like head against his chest. Her liquorice thin arms clasped around his chest and the scent of her honey-hued hair made him dizzy. Not being this close to Sora for months reminded Etsurou of how he would wake up on sultry summer mornings to find her head resting against his shoulder, a strand of hair tickling his nose. She was hard fucking work and moaned constantly if she didn’t get her own way but being with her had sucked the boredom away from Neko Island, at least, and she could make him laugh when it suited her. Had it not been for her terrifyingly irregular mood swings and whinging nature he might have actually bothered to get to know her properly instead of treating her like shit for four months.
“I’m so, so glad you found me. I’ve been alone for so long, and-”
“So have I,” he said gravely.
He took a gamble with that comment. It was more than plausible that Sora had seen him with Chie, but he was willing to bet that he could tell Sora the world was flat and she would lap up every word like a thirsty dog. She was hopelessly devoted to him like that.
“I just want you to look after me.”
Etsurou hushed her and she immediately fell silent, sobbing quietly into his chest and gripping hold of him as though at any given moment he might disappear into thin air. There were ways of dealing with Sora’s emotions and, some how, despite having the sensitivity of a jackhammer, Etsurou usually managed to calm her down by simply embracing her. Or, he did, when they were together. Etsurou rested his chin against her hair and let her weep, though his eyes were constantly scanning the streets, on the look out for an attacker. Nobody better fucking dethrone him now. He had this game in the bag and if Sora messed things up she was going the same way as Yori.
“It’s alright,” he whispered soothingly, putting the image of Yori‘s blood drenched face from out of his head. He cringed at the memory of her blood that had trickled down his face like warm milk. “I’m here, you’re gonna be fine. I promise.”
Keeping his arms around her petite body, Etsurou tried rather haphazardly to manoeuvre the pair across the street, away from any prying eyes that may be lurking within the vicinity. Her duffel bag trailed carelessly across the warm concrete. For a split second his eye caught hold of the metal, dark barrel of a gun poking precariously out from just beneath the zipper. His heart beat quickened. She might be of some use after all.
It wasn’t until they were sheltered by a random house Etsurou had guided them to that Sora exploded. She wailed and hung to him for dear life.
“Jesus, Sora,” he half-yelled, “let me check the place out first, alright?”
Sora dropped limply into a chair, sunk down the back, and making no effort to compose herself, resumed her crying. This wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle; Etsurou had seen Sora react similarly to her favourite pair of shoes getting muddy.
He began to check the house out, his finger resting on the trigger of the pistol as he interrogated each room with his eyes. The musty smell of cats and wet clothes reminded him that this was Mrs. Oka’s house, a slightly mad babysitter he had to endure before Koko came along. She refused to look after him following an incident where he pretended to fall down the stairs, nearly sending her into ‘early cardiac arrest.’ That’s what his mom told him anyways, though how it could possibly be “early” cardiac arrest was beyond him. She was like a 150 or something fucked up like that.
After a minute of exploring, Etsurou deemed the house unoccupied and therefore safe enough to inhabit for a while. It was just as well. He needed to regain some energy so he was fresh for killing tonight. Returning to Sora, he pulled his purple hoody off and wrapped it around the girl’s shivering body, drained from emotional fatigue.
She’s dead weight. She’s going to pull you down, make you slow. She’ll get you killed, you know it. Sora’s not cut out for this. You need to put a bullet through her head now, take her stuff, and get the fuck out of here. If she doesn’t pull you down, she’s competition.
Rubbing his temples, Etsurou ignored the reasoning in his head and pulled up a chair to face Sora. Rummaging through his bag he handed her a chunk of bread.
“Take it,” he offered, “you need to eat, you look like shit.”
She smiled wearily. “Thanks.”
“Who else have you seen?” Etsurou asked, swigging from his bottle. Better to get to the grisly business as soon as possible.
“Nobody,” Sora shook her head, rocking slightly on the armchair and clutching her scrawny legs. “I’ve been on my own since I left the-”
“Don’t kid a kidder, Sora,” he half-snarled. “You’d be dead by now if it wasn’t for somebody’s help.”
Tears leaked down her gaunt face like rain.
“Yurina,” she sniffed after a moment. “I was with Yurina, for a bit…”
Yurina hadn’t been on the report. That was a shame; if any girl on this island deserved to die it was that frigid dyke. Her pussy probably had cobwebs growing on or some shit.
“What about you?”
Etsurou turned from her and walked to the window pane; a film of dust layered the glass so that the world outside was half-obscured. It felt like the island had been deserted for years, not days, full of the ghosts of memories and a life he would never, could never, return to.
“Makoto.”
“He killed Satoshi!” she gasped, the penny dropping. “What happened?”
His eyes twinkled in the reflection;
“I didn’t want to tell you, Sora,“ he turned to face her, frowning. “I mean, he just went crazy and starting attacking Satoshi for no reason. Me and Chie, we both tried to stop him, but it was too late…”
“Oh my God,” she covered her mouth in horror and recoiled in the chair.
Jesus, he was a pretty good actor. Although Sora was dumb she was relatively more observant than people gave her credit for.
“He’s probably killed at least a few more people, by now, so we’ll have to be careful.”
Sora nodded, clearly struggling to comprehend such a revelation about a former classmate.
“Thankfully,” he remarked, feeling he deserved some kind of award for this, “me and Chie got away from him, but then I lost her and…”
Trailing off and pressing his forehead against the cool glass for dramatic effect, Etsurou sighed and dropped his survival pack to the wooden floorboards.
For a long time they were quiet. Every minute that went by was a minute closer to the game being over; night would soon fall and already their sloping shadows bathed the walls like giants.
“I loved you, Etsurou,” she half-blurted. Her strained voice was dangerously fragile, like butter scraped over too much bread. She wasn‘t looking at him anymore, her eyes were unfocused and glazed over. “I did. And I was so stupid to think that you loved me, too.”
He didn’t answer. What was there to say? That he agreed with her? It was true, he had never loved her. He had cared for in his own way, but love? It didn’t exist.
“You were the only one I could talk to about it,” she murmured, barely audible. “The only one…”
Her anorexia. Everybody in the class had known about it; hell, everyone on the island did. How many elevens years olds become so starved that they slip into a coma and end up on life support? Up until Sora, he didn’t even know what an eating disorder was. Really, even now, he still didn’t understand how somebody could not want to eat.
Once, after the pair had had a blistering row, he told Sora that he wished she would have just died from Anorexia. Etsurou remembered pushing her waif-like body up against the wardrobe door and hissing in her ear that she was nothing but a fuck to him.
What was wrong with him?
“I’m sorry, Sora.”
The apology was a choking liberation; he felt like he was flying and drowning at the same time.
“I’m sorry for everything.”
“Who is that?” Koko asked, pointing at a photograph of himself and Sora eating ice creams on the beach.
“Some chick,” Etsurou yawned, kissing Koko’s neck.
“The anorexic one?” Koko quizzed, attempting to sound indifferent.
“How did you know she was anorexic?” Etsurou raised an eyebrow. The defensive tone in which he questioned her surprised even him.
“I do live on this island, Etsurou,” she rolled her eyes, turning to face him. “And the last time I checked there weren’t many anorexics here.”
“Yeah, well,” he shrugged, “well, it’s not a big deal, is it?”
“Oh, it isn‘t?” Koko’s eyes glittered. She ripped the photograph away from the wardrobe door and crushed it in her fist. “Well, that’s good to know. She‘s fucking ugly.”
Etsurou winced but concealed it with an air of casual indifference.
“Go ahead,” Etsurou snorted. “She‘s a loser, anyway. I don‘t even like her that much.”
Although it was the half-truth, sex with Koko wasn’t as enjoyable that afternoon. Etsurou failed to push the smiling face of a girl holding an ice cream with the sun in her eyes from out of his mind. It stayed there for a long time.
Etsurou watched the sun-baked sky grow slowly darker through the window - when the familiar crackling noise of the death reports disturbed a dormant flock of birds he had to double check his watch; had six full hours really passed since he had scared Chie away?
Instinctively, Etsurou and Sora marked danger zones on their maps and pondered over their fallen classmates. It took twenty minutes to calm Sora down over hearing Kasumi Ren briskly adding Yurina Kaneko’s name to the growing list of the dead. Although Etsurou was secretly pleased he consoled his ex-girlfriend in the best way he could.
Things were, however, looking up. Keeping Sora alive might prove to have its uses. She was decent enough company when she wasn’t throwing a tantrum and if he was lucky she might even blow him before the three days were up.
Maybe the reason you’re keeping her alive is because you know it’s your fault her anorexia got so bad. Maybe you actually care about her more than you thought.
Etsurou looked up from his pistol at the yawning girl and suppressed a titter.
Please.
((ooc: I'm not really pleased with this post -_- I promise you that the next one will be much more interesting, as long as I get Ichirou Nishoka. :D ))