Chapter Text
The pain in his head was terrible. Screeching birds, screaming kids, the sound of nails running down a chalkboard—he’d rather here any of these instead of the noises echoing inside his head. Echoing, growing louder. It was terrible, and he never wanted to move again, but he had school soon, should be getting ready for that, but Rei can’t force himself to even open his eyes. All that’s waiting for him is the darkness of his room. It wasn’t because the lights were off, or the sun wasn’t out. Even if the sun was shining brightly in the sky and he had ever single light in his house on the room would still be dark.
It wasn’t the lack of light sources, it was what was in his room that made it dark. Something scary and terrible that overcast his room like a cloud does to the sun on a stormy day. What was it? Who knew? He didn’t. Sometimes it looked like an animal, sometimes like some kind of huge, terrible, beast made of pure darkness. Other times it was fine. A lot of the times it was fine, actually, but he knew today wouldn’t be fine. The noise in his head always meant he’d see something.
They weren’t real, supposedly, Thomas said so, Ryouga said so, and Rio said so— all in quiet comforts while rubbing his shoulders during a particularly bad episode, trying to let him know that it wasn’t real. He believed them, he did, but how was he supposed to tell what was real from what wasn’t?
He groaned to himself. He didn’t want to go to school, a headache this bad normally meant trouble, losing control, maybe almost hurting his friends again and no he’d rather die than do that again, not after last time, not after what happened to Yuuma. Rei wanted to cry again.
The screeching in his head got louder with every minute he had his eyes closed, somehow he was able to understand what they were trying to say to him. Open your eyes, Vector, open them. Why did this one always call him Vector? It was a nickname, one he loved a lot, but this one never called him Rei.
Durbe tried to explain to him, once, that maybe this particular hallucination was linked to something from his Vector persona. He didn’t get it. Then again, Durbe was a nerd, and he didn’t understand nerd talk. Rei let himself snicker at calling his friend a nerd.
“REI,” he heard a shout and groaned. More voices? There were too many already, and he opted for the same tactic, ignoring them. “REI!” The voice sounded so angry, he was scared, and he heard his door hit the wall with a thud. It was coming for him. Maybe this wasn’t a hallucination, maybe this monster was real and it would hurt him. Something grabbed his shoulder and he was being shaken really hard.
“No! Go away,” he squirmed away from the grasp, but it was holding him too tight.
“REI!” The voice snapped again, “get the hell up. It’s time for school.” School? Why would it care about school? Rei slowly cracked his eyes open. His mom. Oh. She looked so pissed. Shit.
“Mom!” he said suddenly, his adjusting to the room. Behind her was man, in a mask, and he had a knife. “Mom, mom, behind you!” His mom, with her hands on her hips turned around, looked him straight in the face, and then turned back to Rei.
“There’s nothing there, God, you’re such an irritation. Get up before your dad wakes up.” Rei shivered and got up, pulling his clothes on his body. He didn’t want to make his dad mad, it was scarier than his mom being mad. Sometimes he preferred his dad, but he didn’t want to explain to anyone where he got bruises from, not today. So today, it was his mom he’d let himself deal with.
His brain hurt, but he couldn’t skip school, his parents would know. He’d just have to ignore his friends or something. He wanted to cry. Cry for himself, mostly cry for his friends for having to be around him. He wanted to cry for Yuuma.
All day he sat there in his chair, completely on edge. No one paid him any mind, none of the students, nor his teacher. He was grateful. Maybe after dealing with him for so long they could read the mood. Idly, Rei drummed his fingers on the desk over and over, trying to distract himself. He could still hear them, the voices, the screams, it was horrible. Every once in a while, he’d look over and see blood, blood smeared all over the walls and he tried to tell himself it wasn’t real, wasn’t real. Why was it bothering him so bad today?
Rei shoved his hands in his pockets. He felt cold metal press against his fingers. What was . . .? He felt over it with his fingers. His knife. He was going to leave it today, so why did he bring it? He’d tried to never bring it, and hadn’t in a while. Why was it in his pocket? He swore to himself. Fucking hell, he must have pocketed it during a moment.
A moment was something that Rei had ever since he was little. That was the phrase he started saying and that everyone else did too. It was an easy way to summarize what happened, or to explain something.
“What happened?” Rei would say to Ryouga, “can you breathe.” Panic in his voice, he was worried. What happened? Was he okay?
“You just had a moment, it’s fine,” Ryouga would say and then he’d smile at Rei, like it was no big deal his friend was just strangling him.
A moment. A moment, he thought bitterly. He had a super bad moment with Yuuma yesterday. He hated himself. He wanted to take the pocket knife out and use it on himself rather than one of his friends, but no, he couldn’t stupid, stupid, Yuuma would blame himself and he didn’t want that.
“Rei? Rei?” Someone said beside him, gently. “Vector,” he heard and turned his head.
“Huh? Sorry,” he said looking up at Durbe as the other adjusted his glasses.
“Class ended ten minutes ago.”
“Mm, sorry,” he murmured and stood up. “I’m going home.” Durbe looked like he wanted to say something, but he got away from him. He didn’t share a class with any of his friends, and today he was thankful. His heard hurt so bad he felt like he was dying and he didn’t want to see anyone especially not—especially not the boy standing in front of the school gate. In a place Rei couldn’t avoid going. If he tried to sneak past, maybe he’d be able to.
Rei’s eyes shifted down. His head was hurting so fucking badly and he could barely keep a grip on himself, but he shuffled past him, not glancing at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Of course he did.
“Rei,” said the boy, reaching forward and grabbing his shoulder in a tight grip to keep him from struggling away.
He struggled to get away regardless. “I need to get home.” He winced at his own words. Yuuma probably wanted to go home, but now he couldn’t thanks to him, and the boy was probably angry, after all they were dating.
Even though he didn’t mind too much when Rei had a moment with him, he was sure Ryouga would be angry with him. He’d blame him. He’d hate him. He wouldn’t want to be his friend anymore and wouldn’t want Yuuma to be his friend either and then everyone would leave and Rei would be so alone, all alone. He felt like he’d start crying any moment. He was panicking and he couldn’t breathe. His organs were failing, he could feel them, hear them, tell that his kidneys had stopped already, and his heart was slowing down so bad it would no longer pump blood through his body. The knife in his pocket was aching, aching to hurt, saying things like, I cut Yuuma, but it’s your blood I want Rei had half a mind to let it have what it wanted.
“Rei,” Ryouga said again, the same way as before, but this time he turned Rei around to face him. There were unshed tears in his eyes, and he bit hard on the inside of his cheek in an attempt to keep his tears from shedding. It wouldn’t be fair to Ryouga. “Rei,” he repeated, “Yuuma was asking for you.” It was such a simple, simple sentence, but one that made the tears start coming from his eyes.
“Mm,” he whimpered, Ryouga’s grip softened.
“Re—“ he started to say again, but he was turning around and running down the pavement as fast as he could. “Rei!” he heard Ryouga shout across the place. “Please, Yuuma wants to see you.” If he said anything else, Rei didn’t hear it. His face was hot and his ears were burning. Why was everything so bad, so bad, bad, bad. He was so bad, so bad, and he was running to his bedroom and flinging down on his bed, covering his ears. It was no help. His voice and so many more were whispering in his head about how bad he was, how disgusting, how gross, how fake he was. Why are you pretending to be so friendly and sweet, they said, you just want to make people hurt.
Rei thought about making people hurt a lot. About hitting them, berating them, he thought nasty things about them. It was under control, mostly. They were just intrusive thoughts and not at all how he really felt. Liar, you want to hurt people. You wanted to take your knife against Yuuma’s skin and—Rei wanted to scream. Scream about how he wasn’t pretending, he really was sweet, and he loved his friends. He wanted to scream about how it wasn’t fair he was born like this, and it wasn’t fair that his parents hated him—berated him, hit him, called him names and talked about how worthless he was.
He was crazy. Crazy. Sometimes he liked to call himself that. It didn’t bother him. He and his friends would make jokes about it. Calling themselves crazy actually helped, in some weird way, to cope with the fact they were, well, mentally ill. He wasn’t the only one that people would consider ‘crazy’ after all. Him and Thomas had similar problems, even, not the same, but similar. Should he call him and talk to him? No, he felt too ashamed about what he’d done. Rei had a feeling he was getting bombarded with texts and missed calls from his duel gazer—he hadn’t turned it on since last night.
He hated not being able to act normal, because he couldn’t tell what was real and what were hallucinations. It made him feel horrible to be stared at, people wondering why he was talking to air. He pretended he didn’t care, and there was always someone he could talk to and together they’d make jokes and laugh and he’d feel better. Yuuma was so great for that, in fact yesterday that’s what they were doing when---Rei let a sob shake his body.
“I’m sorry, Yuuma,” but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t get himself to go see Yuuma. He would hate him, hate him, hate him. Everyone hated, they’d always hated him, always, so now they’d give up on pretending. Abandon him, and it was all his fault, and why did he try and be friends with people? It wasn’t fair to them, because every time he had a moment, a psychotic episode, with them around, they’d always be in danger.
“Why are you apologizing to an idiot like Yuuma?” That wasn’t really nice of whoever to say, he didn’t have the energy to try and tell if they were real or not.
“Shut up, Yuuma’s great,” he said, his voice muffled by his pillow. His voice sounded a little cracked, he had been crying after all.
“Nah, he’s a loser,” said the voice again. Rei registered the noise of shoes smacking against the floor, as if something had jumped down on it. Shifting noises. A creak.
Rei glanced over. Sitting on his desk, legs hanging off, and body leaning towards the bed was the weirdest thing he’d ever saw. It was . . . him? Almost. There were slight differences. The height, for one. Rei could tell the other was slightly taller.
The other was wearing his leather jacket, reserved for times when his personality fluctuated more towards that of his persona, Vector, or when he was playing around with the others and pretending to be Vector.
His pants fit his long legs perfectly, and looked really good on him. They had the same face, but the volume of their hair was different slightly. The biggest difference was their eyes. They were the same shade of purple, but the others eyes seemed narrower, but it didn’t seem to be the natural shape, more like he was perpetually scoffing at the world. He seemed dangerous. Really dangerous, but for once Rei was completely sure this was a hallucination.
“No, he isn’t,” he grumbled. “I’m going to ignore you now. I’m not supposed to talk to hallucinations.” The other made a scowling face, but as soon as it showed up, it was gone.
“Hallucination?” he said, a little annoyance laced with amusement. “No, I can assure you I’m completely real.”
Rei wasn’t in a very good mood. He rolled over so he was on his side, facing the other boy. “Like hell you are. You look just like me, do you expect me to believe that? Go away!” He threw a pillow at his head. “Huh?” he asked confused. He was gone? Maybe the hallucination stopped, he thought, but the thought was fleeting.
No, it had just moved, he felt him before he saw him. His wrist, the one that had thrown the pillow was being held tightly in the others hand. He twisted it back behind his head and pulled their bodies close together. “Whoa there. No manners, huh?” He smirked, like he was mocking him. “Didn’t anyone teach you better?”
“A-ah,” Rei shuddered. He was scared and the grip kind of hurt. “Are you real? Somehow?” he asked.
“Duh,” said the other, like he was pleased as punch, like he’d just won an award or something.
“Oh,” Rei said. He stared at him for a few seconds. “O-oh?” his voice cracked. For a minute, the other looked smug, glad he was disturbing the boy. Until he let out a loud wail and started hyperventilating. “It’s no-not real,” he said his breath shaking so badly.
The other let go of his arm and stepped back. “Jeez, calm down. I’m probably from some other universe.”
That didn’t stop Rei from shaking and holding his head, crying that he was so confused, and why couldn’t he tell reality from make believe?
“Ca—“ the other started to say, before a knock was heard and a loud voice saying, “Rei! Shut the fuck up.” In an instant, Rei shut up, closing his mouth tightly, tears still falling down his face.
“Sorry dad,” he mumbled quietly.
His dad left the door, and everything was dead quiet for a minute. “So, my names Vector.”
Rei thought he was going to start screaming again.