“The next station is Akabane, Akabane. The doors on the right side will open.” The train announcement buzzed, informing me that we were arriving at Kita City in just a moment.

Yoyogi Station didn’t have a direct line to Kita, so I had to transfer to Ikebukuro on platform 4 for the Saikyo Line that stops at Akabane Station.

I suppose this is all pointless information, but… It's nice to focus on something mundane. It's easier to think about than murder.

Than Killing Seina.

It won’t be painless. But it’s necessary, she’s played her part. Pushed me forward when I needed to be pushed, but also held me back when I wanted to go.

No, that’s a lie. She’s done everything I’ve asked for and more, and that’s the problem.

She’s done everything.

Not me.

I’m ready to let her go, one last fire to burn it all away. To burn her away, and at last, unify us as one.

It hurts to let go of someone you care about. Especially if that person is yourself- a part of me. Some people might disagree, say that she wasn’t real or some false act I put on, a second voice in the mind that controls this broken body, and in a way she was, but she was also my shield and sword.

The perfection that made me, the bedcover I hid behind, and the front that advertised who I once was.

It wasn’t Seina who grew up with that mother and father, it was me.

It wasn’t Seina who escaped from that household, it was me.

It wasn’t Seina who jumped between the homes of fake boyfriends to survive, it was me.

And it wasn’t Seina who first took a job at Ha:Yami, who saved up for one year to buy an apartment to finally escape it all, it was me.

Except I lost myself in the process. The change was too much, I had lied- and yes, I mean me, not Seina, or a void or an imperfect mistake, but me. I had lied, since the moment I was born- I have lied.

It was embedded within me, and I’ve always done what I was told.

I lied to my parents, and even after I escaped, I lied. I put up a false facade of this perfect girlfriend so that men whose names I don’t even remember would fall in love and pamper me, but it wasn’t pampering, it was a temporary refuge where I sold my personhood and body to earn it.

So it wasn’t even a refuge, but a hotel with a steep price tag.

Then there was Ha:Yami, and I took to it like a duck to water. Of course I would, I was already doing everything they wanted at home, so it came easy, naturally, just another lie.

Yet it was never the lie that broke me, that transformed me into the void and decay that fell off Seina’s corpse as she rotted.

It was the truth.

Once I finally earned enough money to buy my own apartment, I no longer had to lie to pay the rent to a landlord who desired gratification and my body more than yen.

That’s what made me, alone in that room that I owned, I had no need to lie. And the moment I stopped lying, it all fell down.

Who was I? What am I? Where am I?

I never found an answer, but I knew what I wasn’t.

Seina.

I had lied for so long, that I didn’t even know what I was anymore.

Taught to do what makes others happy. Taught to please, to live not for yourself, but for the idea of yourself that has been written in between your skin more controlling than your very DNA.

I realised I wasn’t a person. How could I be? I had no likes of my own, no needs or wants or desires or loves. I did what I was told to do, I acted how people expected me to act, and I performed as perfectly as I could be.

Broken, impure, worthless puppet unable to cut the strings sewn into my skin.

But I can see the strings now, the dagger held tightly in my hand. I control where it goes, who holds it and what it cuts.

And I know what to do.

“Thank you for riding this train.” The announcement buzzed again, the doors opening onto the platform.

I stepped out of the train and headed down the stairs to the street level. Passing the ticket barriers, I caught my appearance in the reflective surface of a metal wall, blurry and unrecognisable.

Blue eyes stared back at me, cutting through the shimmer and shine of the metal. Long waterfall-flowing blonde hair ran down my back, wet and bunched up from the rain. A slim tall figure with an hourglass barely hidden beneath a soaked shirt, the straps of my bra visible now that my coat was discarded and burnt, highlighting the bust of my chest to any wandering eyes, and there were plenty. My soft white skin covered me, wet and silky, tucked under the fabric that stuck to it, and my perfect face- not once perfect, but still perfect, foreign, yet distinctly Japanese.

It is not Seina who stares back, but me.

Perhaps not perfect yet, or clean, or pure, or beautiful.

But it is me.

And it would remain me forever, once I burnt away the source of this lie.

That little room where I forgot who I was. Where I created Seina to fill the void that I became once the lie left me.

The room is pure white, the bed, the curtains, the drawers and chests. The entire thing is the same shade of white. Like a hospital room, but my disease is curable, and I can be saved. I am the nurse, the doctor, the carer, the surgeon, and the patient.

The patient in her hospital bed. But she is not waiting for the doctor to pull the plug. She is waiting for the fire.

One last fire to burn it all away.

“Another drink, Nao?” A gristly and slightly large in the tummy bartender asked her with a concerned and familiar smile.

Nao startled and pulled her hunched-over body off the wooden bar, her brown hair falling down her face as she did.

“No thank you.” She replied by reflex, swiping the hair out from her eyes. “You know I don’t drink when I’m upset, why are you asking?” She shot back, her eyes in a squint.

The bartender leant on the bar and just shrugged, “Just checking up on ya. Want another juice? On the house, as always.” He winked, a fragile attempt at cheering her up.

Nao shook her head. A hole had been carved out in her heart, she was the one who’d run away, and gotten angry, but it hurt her all the same. It wasn’t all Seina’s fault, they’d both made a mistake.

She called Seina a child and had always seen her as one. It's one of those things that happens when you think you’re older than you are, the age gap between them is only four years, but that’s enough for Nao to have always viewed her as the same little teenager whom she met four years ago.

It makes sense, no one would fault her for it, except for maybe other teenagers. A 22-year-old meeting an 18-year-old, they’re both adults, but there is a lot of difference that sets them apart. After all, the brain doesn’t stop developing until 25, or at least that’s the deadline science sets, it might take longer, or shorter. Everyone is different, so who can say for sure?

When you’re 18, it's easy to convince yourself that everything is done, that you’ve grown up and are ready to face the whole world by yourself. But the reality is a little different from that, and it's only once you’ve passed 18 and gone into 20, that you’ll realise how young you were back then.

Of course, the same will happen at 30 when you look back at 20, and then again at 40 once you reflect on 30. It’ll keep happening all the way up until there are no goalposts left to pass, and you’re being lowered into the ground, a gathering of family around you in tears.

That’s the dream, or at least that’s the dream Nao thinks people have. They might, they might not, people can be so similar and yet so unique in all strange weird ways. No one can truly predict them.

Though they try all the same. Playing the same guessing game a hundred generations old that all sorts of people have played before.

A mother attempting to determine what colour dress her daughter will like most.

A priest speculating which sermon to deliver to his flock.

A judge evaluating the rights and wrongs of a criminal.

It's been like this for a while; humans trying to figure out humans, and the end is nowhere in sight.

“Right, spit it out. We’ve got a strict no-moping rule here, and you’re getting dangerously close to breaking it.” The bartender declared, gently and kind, but pressing all the same.

This was an old bar, hidden on the first floor of an old house. It was made of hinoki, a type of wood native to Japan and the first choice for the majority of all wooden construction on this little island.

It was cramped and long, imagine if someone took a hallway and suddenly turned it into a bar, running the countertop parallel to the wall barely half a metre out and lit up with old yellow lights that flickered on and off every time someone pushed by a stool.

Old, worn, decaying and crumbling; the ideal words to describe this place. And Nao loved it all regardless, it was home to her. Always would be, always will be.

“Alright…” Nao relented, accepting the chance to get it off her chest, “There is this girl I work with. She’s… I like her, but she’s a bit strange. Not really, she’s just really good at her job, you know what I do at the Ha:Yami.”

The man hummed, his voice not exactly approving, but understanding all the same.

“She has this act, I can’t explain it fully. We all have a little joke that it's her ‘work mode’, once her shift starts she becomes almost like another person. I don’t mean this in the way that someone puts on a fake smile, or uses a higher-pitched voice at a customer service job. She actually becomes another person.”

“Ok, go on.” He prompted, leaning in closer now and fully listening.

“It's… I’ve never really felt comfortable around it, it's barely real. You might not notice if you don’t know her well, but I can tell. It's one big act, and I was fine with ignoring it at the club, y’know let her do what she needs to do to put food on the table. It was odd, but I understood it. Well, I thought I did- until she used it on me.”

“And you feel like that invalided your relationship? She is your friend, correct?”

“She is, and yeah, I do. I asked her a question, and she used it on me.” Nao answered, her head looking down at the bar, counting the scratches and nits in the wood.

“What was the question?” He asked innocently, and Nao awkwardly shuffled in her stool and turned to the right to stare outside the small window onto the empty yet packed street.

“Sorry, that’s between me and her.” She muttered, her tone one of finality, leaving no room for negotiation.

“I get it.” He said waving his hand while thinking of what else to say, “Have you tried calling her? You aren’t done with this friendship, are you?”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Nao let out a sigh, more guilt than frustration. “She barely checks her phone- but yeah, I did.”

“That’s good.” He nodded and stood up a little straighter.

“I caught her smoking. That’s what started this.” Nao suddenly added on, her gaze looking down into her barely touched glass of orange juice.

“Smoking?” He questioned, confused about why that was an issue.

“It's stupid, I know. But I feel responsible, It was my fault, I encouraged it. You know how I am with smoking, I thought it would be fine as long as I kept it away from her. It didn’t make a difference, she picked up my dirty habit and has been smoking for the last 4 years. And the best part is she kept it secret from me, it's almost like she knew it’d make me upset. I mean, how selfish can I get? I could have done somet-”

“Nao.” He chided, cutting her off in an instant, “Is this about Seina?”

He hadn’t met Seina, but this wasn’t the first time Nao had bought her up. Half the time it was minor things, Nao telling him about something cool or funny that Seina did while at work, always tactically leaving out the strangeness and nerves that Nao felt from witnessing work mode in action.

And the few times it wasn’t the minor things, it was worry. That painful unease that she’d go down the same path as another girl a tad bit too similar to Seina for Nao to look past.

“Yeah, Dad. It's about Seina.” She replied, her voice more meek than usual.

He grunted, “I figured it was either her or Mikako, but Mikako doesn’t smoke.” He paused, his eyes carefully running over his troubled daughter, “This happen tonight?”

“Yeah, in the parking lot outside the Ha:Yami.”

“What do you want to do about it?”

“I want to apologise to her, say I’m sorry for hitting her, and shouting at her- getting mad at her too, it was unfair.”

“You hit her?” Her dad asked, his eyebrows rising stunned.

“I know I shouldn’t have, but the moment she used it on me. I- it was as if all those years meant nothing between us, I didn’t feel like a friend, just another client. Someone to be obliged, not a person she wanted to spend time with.”

He nodded, understanding laced in his every movement. “This isn’t about Seina, it's about Rin, isn’t it?”

And for a moment, Nao didn’t have an answer to serve up like a fine French dish. She only had silence, a quiet whisper of nothingness that floats across the wind like a fallen leaf in Autumn, a storm brewing all around yet it continues on its course unswayed.

“No,” She spoke delicately as if she was afraid her words would vanish into dust if she said them too loudly, “Not anymore, it's about Seina. I’m worried she’ll do something she might regret.”

“You know where she lives?” Her father asked, already fully aware the answer was a resounding ‘yes’.

Nao gave her reply with a gentle hum of confirmation that was met by a stern nod as her dad followed it up with, “I’ll call a taxi.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Her father was on the phone in a heartbeat, ordering up a car to take her. Nao sat there motionlessly, but it wasn’t the immobility of guilt or responsibility this time, but of resolve.

Perhaps not entirely, but it was there, stirring beneath the facade of happiness she so commonly kicks herself into. It might seem like an act, a forced smile or a semblance of a laugh. But it isn’t, it's a choice.

A choice to look into the mirror and finally decide to overlook your flaws. To push past the loss of youthfulness on your face, the imperfect marks that dot your skin, and the constant judgement that you place upon yourself like the jury of a thousand critics.

Evaluate yourself, and then move to evaluate everyone and everything around you. It's a childish act, but it's one we carry with us even after we’ve left school and grown into what is supposed to be a mature adult.

It fades with time, once you realise that you’ll never pass the panel of judges that is your mind. And that as you age the total score you give yourself will only lower and there is nothing you can do to stop it.

Nao figured this out younger than most, back when she still held the traces of the child she is and will always be inside her. People don’t grow up, they just learn to better hide the child we are, and will always be.

So instead of scowling in disgust at the face that peers back at her in the mirror, she smiles. It made her feel better, so she did it again, and again, no longer solely for the mirror, but for every little thing that gets her down.

However, that’s the strange part about the brain. Even if you’re sad, or depressed, if you smile for long enough you’ll eventually convince yourself you’re happy. That chemical cocktail of dopamine that pours itself into your body each time you laugh, and smile, and grin- it actually works.

And sure, it might grow numb after a bit, but that’s fine. It’ll happen long in the future, maybe when Nao is old and grey, or perhaps before then, in a few years, or months, or days.

That’s the thing about being young, you don’t really imagine yourself as old until you finally are. And then you’re left as a child trapped within a body barely able to carry itself up the stairs.

But that’s a tale for another Nao, an older, wiser one; a version of herself that she cannot even begin to imagine yet, stuck in this body packed with youth that she is.

It's better this way, she’s sure of it.

The doorknob to my apartment was cold, and the room colder still.

I entered, my bed welcoming me mournfully, the purity of its white tried to envelop me. But in this moment, I was not the mirror, and there was no need for whiteness to reflect into me in a vain attempt to appear clean.

My room is pure white, empty, emotionless. The white bed tucked against the wall, the bedside tables that sit on both sides, the one on its right holds my poison. A bin sits in the corner empty, and on the white walls hangs a mirror covered by a matching white piece of paper. Two doors connect to my bedroom, one leads to a wardrobe on the right, and the other to the living room-kitchen hybrid on the left that also houses the front door.

You can learn a lot about someone based on their room, how orderly it is, the cleanliness of it, what colours they’ve chosen and what they represent, as well as the type of items they’ve picked out to decorate the interior.

It might not be the best test of someone’s personality, but even the absence of care shows a lot. After all, even someone who left their room as is, or furnished it with only the bare necessities is telling us a bit about themselves in why or how they did it.

The reasons could range from disinterest all the way to preferring to spend money on other things that strike their fancy. It doesn’t matter too much, but I enjoy seeing all the tiny things that make people who they are scattered around their room in the oddest and smallest of places. So hidden that even they might not notice the story of their life that it narrates.

I wonder what other people would see in my room, what story could they pull from this blankness?

I know my story. One of lies so vast and encompassing that I forgot what the truth was.

This room is the source, its white taunts me, reminding me of what I lost and what I never had a chance of becoming. Sterile, barren, chosen because there was no personality to decorate this room once the lie vanished and I reverted to a void without her.

I ripped the piece of paper off the mirror, the last time I stared into it I saw Seina, and she mocked me; demanded to know why I still live. I didn’t have an answer for her then, that face in the mirror that was always my own and never her’s.

I still don’t. Not completely, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ll find my answer without her, and she’ll never get to hear it.

My lighter felt heavy in my hands; I took out the package of cigarettes in my bag before discarding it into the bin. It was soaking wet, unusable as it fell out of my hands. So instead I retrieved the second pack in the drawer of my bedside table, the fire flashed and the poison ignited and fell to my lips.

Carefully removing the mirror from its nail in the wall, I dropped it into the bin. It didn’t break or crack, simply landed with a gentle thud.

Next, I made my bed, attentively smoothing out the bedstreets and laying the cover over the mattress before fluffing up the pillows. It was such an everyday action, one that millions of people do every morning, yet it meant so much more to me.

Then I placed the bin in the centre of the bed and piled all the remaining poison inside of it. The last cigarette stayed on my lips, as I breathed in and out, letting the smoke cloud the room.

I flipped the lid of my lighter open and watched the small flame dance.

Was it stupid? A pointless action that was more symbolic than anything?

Yes, yes it was.

I didn’t need to do this, burn away this room like it's the source of a plague outbreak. As if cauterising this wound of a bed would make it all better and I’d wake up tomorrow in another house, a real home where I need no lies or truths to love to live this lethargic life of mine.

But I would.

This is where it all began. The first time I stopped lying, and realised I had no truths to speak of. It's a strange thing, to live your entire life for the pleasure of others, adapting your very being to better fit the cut-out of the role you have been made to play.

It's an even stranger thing to discover you have no idea how to live in the truth. So you break in your blankness, and you start to crave the lie, desire to live in it daily as it becomes the only thing that feels real.

In a way, I’ve always been an actress. My whole life has been relayed to me from a script, this very existence is an act, a role that I played not for myself, but because I had been taught to do this.

I had played this role for so long that I forgot what I was outside of it.

This apartment, a room that I chose for myself, and that I lived inside without any director looming over me, reminding me to smile, or laugh at unfunny jokes, or telling me how to do my make-up for that night, or demanding I wear clothes that highlight my body over my face, or making me do as I’m told- as I’ve always been told.

It wasn’t freedom, this room. It was the intermission between scenes made up of lies.

And now it would burn. One last fire to melt the shackles of her, to remove the separation and finally let me live as a whole.

My hand dropped the lighter.

The fire began slowly, creeping itself into the white blankets, and making a home on the outskirts of the white metal bin. It danced across the sheets, settling right before the metal frame of the bed as it covered the whole thing in a red glow.

For the first time, my room wasn’t white and colourless. It was scarlet and hot, the fire broadcasting a projection of the ruby tone upon the walls between the swaying shadows.

I’m not sure what I expected. Some grand symphony, a statue of this achievement to suddenly erect itself over the clouds, or maybe I predicted Seina coming down and belittling me, shouting that I am worthless and should give up my life for hers.

There wasn’t even a feeling of liberation, just one of wastefulness.

Maybe it hasn’t settled in yet? Or maybe I am truly a fool?

Another idiot who chose a symbolic gesture over a genuine fix.

What is the fix for Seina? How do I finally stop using her as a crutch for my life? How do I move past her? How do I take her apart and integrate her into myself so we can combine two into one?

How do I live for myself? Selfishly and for my own desires?

I suppose it starts with a slap, a burning car that trapped me, a rat on the train tracks, and a fire in a bed.

In other words, it all starts with me. I am the common denominator.

There was never one last fire to burn it all away. There was only me. To be free of Seina, to be free of this lie and this truth, to finally let go of my past and pursue my desires alone.

All I had to do was want it.

This world is cruel and unfair, and cold, and vile, and rotten, and decaying, and impure, and unclean, and ugly and imperfect.

But it is also filled with beauty, and just a little hope.

And I want it.

The fire threatened to spread, no longer content in its isolation on the burning bed that had morphed from white to blackened ash.

I exited the room, taking a left into the kitchen area and heading outside my apartment and into the hallway. I grabbed the red fire extinguisher hanging on the wall outside, and rushed back into my house, leaving the door wide open as I sprinted.

The pin of the fire extinguisher clattered to the floor, I aimed the black nozzle at the fire and squeezed the trigger, spraying white foam onto the flames, coating them in suffocating froth as I swept the nozzle back and forth to douse the adolescent inferno.

It died in seconds, the flame leaving my bed a charred mess, but touching little else in the room.

Seina was gone. I could feel it. I would be the one to lie now, the one to tell fake stories, or smile at bad jokes, and maybe laugh at good ones. The guilt of her actions would be on me alone, but so would the enjoyment.

And I would be the one to act on that stage.

Not work mode, or some consuming black hole, but me.

But Seina.

I am no longer the void, I am Seina.

“Seina?” A voice called out to me, running frantically through my door and into my room. It was Nao, her eyes jumping from my burnt bed up to me in shock, confusion, and just all round worry, “S-Seina? Are- are you okay? What happened?” She asked, her words stuttering as she took in the scene before her.

I was still, motionless with a lit cigarette in my mouth and an emptied fire extinguisher by my side, staring silently at the aftermath of a fiery blaze. It was no wonder she was a little lost for words.

“I’m quitting smoking…” I took one last drag of my final piece of poison before flicking it into the blackened metal bin and watching it instantly vanish into the foam, “And work mode, I don’t need them anymore.”

She started crying, of course, she would.

Then she barrelled into me, embracing me in a tight hug.

Physical contact wasn’t something I was opposed to, but it also wasn’t something I cared for. Especially when it was forceful and without warning…

But… for this one time, just this once, I can make an exception.

So I hugged her back, letting the damp cloth of her clothes stick to the burning warmth of my body, our two opposing temperatures equalising each other. The freezing cold of a rainy early morning day, and the boiling hot of a fire contained within a room.

She pulled back, “You idiot, why did you do this? Your home, you can’t live here, where will you stay now?-” She caught sight of my hands, burnt and raw, something that I only just noticed now, “Oh my god, and your hands? Seina, you need to go to a hospital, did this happen just now?”

No, it didn’t. It happened when I pulled the door open on that old red hatchback. They were minor burns, but it's strange that I didn’t feel them until now, almost as if the pain eluded me all night. However, shock and adrenaline mix into a mean cocktail of drugs that tend to let you overlook small things like this.

I smiled, reassuring and kind, the warmth of my glow putting her at ease and informing her that I was completely and utterly alright, “Yes, I had a bit of an accident, I have a thin bed sheet, and I dropped my lighter. You can see what happened after that, but I’m fine, nothing permanent.”

And I lied.

Seina may be dead, and work mode cast into the void. But I am still an actress, and lying will always come naturally to me; no matter how the cards fall.

The patient outside her hospital bed. But she is not waiting for the doctor to pull the plug, nor is she waiting for the fire.

She is waiting to be the nurse. She is waiting to be the doctor. She is waiting to be the carer. She is waiting to be the surgeon. And she is waiting to be…

The actress.