I have a problem.

It took me a while to admit it. Denial... there was something nice about ignoring your problems by pretending they didn't exist.

But I couldn't put them off forever.

If I continued down that road, it meant I was a coward.

And I was many, many things, but I was certainly not a coward.

I gripped the sink with my hands, my eyes going over the explanations in the Chakra Encyclopedia one last time.

1 - Slow down your heartbeat

2 - Circulate the chakra in your lungs

3 - Breathe in

I rocked back and forth on the stool, clenching my teeth. My hair stood on end.

You can do it, Shoto.

I had plugged the sink and left enough water in it to submerge my nose and mouth.

There's just enough to fill a glass. It's impossible to drown yourself.

My fingernails were scraping the white acrylic.

Go ahead.

I breathed in. Then I dipped my head into the water.

My nose barely touched the shimmering surface before I jumped off the stool, furiously wiping the drops from my skin.

You can't go on like this.

I knew it, of course I knew it.

Are you planning to never take a shower again for the rest of your life ?

I clenched my fists and closed my eyes. I could hear the sound of the water stirring and splashing against the walls of the sink.

And what happens when you're outside and it rains ? Will you curl up in a ball and have a panic attack ?

“I am not a coward”

What is the difference between death at the hands of a villain and being drowned by your brother ?

I opened my eyes wide.

You will die tomorrow if you don't try to live today.

I turned back to the sink.

I placed a shaky foot on the stool. The plastic creaked. I almost hoped it would break.

I put the second one down. The stool remained stable.

I forced my eyes up from my feet to take a look at the water. It was calm. Harmless. I grabbed the sink and forced myself to lower my face. My eyes were wide open.

It's okay, it's just a little water, it's okay-

My breathing became ragged. My stomach swelled and deflated quickly, my torso rubbing against the sink's edge.

My muscles spasmed. My neck twitched, my head moving back and forth like a crane, not knowing whether to go down or up.

Blood dripped from my nose.

I closed my eyes. I sucked in a deep breath.

Okay, no problem, that's for another time-

My muscles relaxed. I stopped shaking.

-we've already made progress, that's very good, now we'll go backwards-

I betrayed myself and put my head under the water.

My fingers broke the sink and sank into the sandstone. My shoulders tensed. My back arched backward. My whole body was trying to pull me out of the water. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to stay still.

Panic overwhelmed me.

I'm going to drown, I'm going to drownImdrowning-

I opened my mouth. My lungs were empty.

The heartbeat. Calm down, Shoto. Calm down.

I dug my fingers deeper and deeper into the sink. I could feel the cracks spreading under my palms and across the white surface.

But I couldn't let go. They anchored me in a reality where water was not omnipresent, a place where it could not drown me.

I closed my eyes and stayed still.

My heart pounded in my throat. My face was burning from all the blood that had risen to my face.

I gripped the sink tighter.

My pulse slowed.

It's good, it's perfect, go on.

I called upon my chakra.

Warm, familiar energy unfolded. I visualized the tentacles of light reaching out to each end of my body.

They reached my lungs.

I knew what I had to do. I just had to…

I stand there for a while, waiting for him to let me come to the surface. But he doesn't let me come up.

My throat constricts.

My feet hit the water. His elbow digs into my shin.

My lungs are on fire.

His hand is bricks on my neck.

My feet hit the stool.

His nails are digging into my neck.

Someone knocked on the door.

Breathing in is the easy solution. Open your mouth and let the water in.

I opened my mouth.

A fate worse than death.

I breathed in.

And this time I did not drown.

Relief washed over me.

I barely had time to get my nose out of the water before the sink collapsed.

I blinked, looking foolishly at the chunks of sandstone stuck in my hands.

A cloud of white dust hovered in the bathroom. The column fixed to the wall was half smashed. A jet of water came out of it and splashed me in the face.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The hinges on the door gave way. I barely had time to turn my head before it crashed on the bathroom floor.

Enji, wrapped in flames, stepped on it. He looked furious.

His eyes did a quick sweep of the bathroom. His gaze lost its intensity when he realized that I was alone.

He looked down at my bleached hands. The pieces of cement flowed like a river of powder between my fingers.

“I just sat on the sink...”

*

Dr. Seiya's living room was uninviting.

Next to the door was a huge bookshelf that looked more like a student's dorm room than the living room of a psychiatrist. It was filled with a whole bunch of open books, annotated or scribbled on, lying on edge or in a precariously balanced pile.

Oil paintings of doubtful taste stood next to a collection of vintage pistols stored behind a glass case. The carpet and sofas smelled of tobacco, and the only window was a hole in the wall.

It was a narrow hole, cut so high into the wall that it looked like the doctor was afraid one of his patients might escape.

A glass table (cleaned for the occasion) separated two leather chairs from a brown couch.

Touya swayed forward, his feet brushing the floor for a moment before he sank back into his seat, clutching the armrests between his fingers. He clapped his hands together and squeezed them intensely before releasing them.

He smiled nervously at Rei, sitting on the opposite couch.

The corners of her mouth were hardly upturned. She was very pale.

The door in his diagonal opened. Touya had already forgotten about his mother. Enji crossed the threshold.

He was dressed in his hero's costume and looked tired.

“Ah, father”

Touya's smile brightened.

“Mr. Todoroki”

The psychiatrist, who was sitting on the chair to Touya's left, stood up to shake his father's hand. Touya mimicked and stood up to watch his father walk past him, his eyes shining. Rei saw his expression and looked sheepishly down into her lap.

Enji walked around the coffee table and sat down at the end of the sofa. Rei did not even give him a look.

Touya was on cloud nine. He looked excitedly at his mother and then at his therapist and waited for one of them to speak.

The clock struck noon. A bird flew out and chirped to announce the time. Touya twitched in his seat. The bird continued to chirp.

The doctor opened his mouth, but Touya, too eager, interrupted him:

“The doctor says I'm fine”

His father's expressionless eyes rested on him.

“He said that I have made great progress”

Touya turned to his psychiatrist to continue. The old man gave his parents an embarrassed look.

Touya frowned for a moment but continued:

“He said that soon, I won't need the medication at all. That's great, isn't it ?”

He expected his mother to jump up and down. That he would stop being sick was all she ever wanted for him.

“We can be a family like we used to be. Just the five of us”

The doctor shuddered.

His father's face darkened.

Touya kept smiling.

No one said anything else.

The boy's smile wilted. He shifted his confused gaze from the doctor to his father.

“What, you're not happy ?”

Only the gurgling of the water machine answered him. His smile disappeared.

“Mom, what's wrong ?”

She hadn't looked him in the eye even once since she had arrived here.

Unable to look at him, Rei buried her head in her shoulders. Like a fucking ostrich.

“Mr. Seiya ?”

The old man's eyes were fixed on his father.

Touya swallowed hard. A knot formed in his throat. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. Took a deep breath. Turned to his father.

“Dad ?”

His father was still looking at him with those cold, expressionless eyes, the same eyes he would look at a stranger with.

“We have decided-”

“You",Rei cut him off “You decided”

She was flushed, as if she was about to burst into tears, but her voice was full of anger.

“I have decided that for your health and the good of our family, you should go away for a while. For treatment”

Touya's clear eyes darted back and forth between the psychiatrist and his father.

“What do you mean you want me to get treatment ? I'm fine, didn't you hear what I said? The doc wants me to stop taking the medicine”

Enji had not come to the meetings with the shrink very often. Maybe that's why he had bad ideas, why he didn't understand that Touya was doing so well.

Seiya licked his dry lips.

“Touya, what your father wants to tell you is that it would be a good idea for you to go to a special place where other children of your age go. You would get a lot of help there. You could probably get better”

Touya shook his head. He refused to understand what that meant.

“Wait, wait, wait. What are you doing to me ? What is this place ?”

Except for Enji, no one dared to look him in the eye. And he didn't like what he saw in that dark look.

“This is an asylum, right ? You're sending me to a madhouse ? You think I'm crazy ?”

His father's silence was quite eloquent.

Touya's stomach weighed a ton.

“You need help, Touya. It would only be a matter of weeks-”

Touya was seized by a hysterical outburst:

“Why are you doing this to me ?! Everything is fine with Shoto, I apologized !”

Seiya shuddered and physically moved away from Touya.

Enji straightened up, his attention aroused.

Of course, when it comes to the prodigal son…

“You've seen Shoto ?”

“He even told me that he forgave me. That it was okay ! So everything is fine, right? No need to send me to the madhouse !”

The sad and indifferent faces of the psychiatrist and his father were like a slap in the face.

Touya, his heart pounding, leaned over the coffee table and grabbed his mother's hands. He squeezed them between his own.

“Mom, you can't let them do this to me ! You can't let them take me !”

Rei looked up at him with tearful eyes. Touya himself felt his eyes getting wet.

“I'll die out there with all those crazy people. Don't let them, Mom. I beg you, don't let let me go”

Rei started sobbing.

“I am sorry”

Touya stared at her, his eyes wide. A bitter taste filled his mouth. He tore his hands from hers and turned to his father.

“Dad, you can't do this to me !”

Enji remained impassive even as Touya started crying.

“You did not leave me any choice, Touya”

Touya's heart was in tatters at his father's betrayal. Any trust that he might have had in him was shattered to pieces.

Touya threw himself at the feet of the last person who had not yet condemned him.

“Mr. Seiya, you know that I'm okay! Please, please tell them that I am fine !”

The old man shook his head, moved, but forced himself to remain firm.

“It will only take a few months at most. Once you are healed, you can return to your family and everything will be as it was before”

Touya shifted his crazy eyes from the psychiatrist to his parents.

Pity, sadness. Apathy.

He had been honest with the psychiatrist.

He had told him everything, hoping that he could help him to heal. He had told him that he had

had no intention of drowning Shoto.

That he only wanted to wash him so that Mama would be happy.And then Shoto had started to push his hand to get his head out of the water.

Touya had felt angry. Why did he fight like that? It wasn't as if he had ever hurt him.

He had continued to fight. Touya was getting angrier and angrier.

And then he asked himself: Wouldn't everything be better if Shoto wasn't around anymore?

Mama would continue to give him all her attention. He would be Daddy's favorite again.

Yes, everything would be perfect.

So he started pushing him underwater.

His eyes swept over the three adults around him.

Their accusing looks pierced him from side to side.

And suddenly he was sure: they knew.

They knew that if his father didn't get there in time, he would be done with Shoto. They knew that he would have preferred it that way. And that he didn't even feel guilty about it.

That's why they kept him away.

Because he had been honest. Because he told them the truth.

They didn't care about him or anything that happened to him. They were all against him.

They were all with Shoto.

And suddenly, Touya saw red.

He grabbed the coffee table and turned it over with one hand. It shattered on the floor, glass flying all over the room.

Rei barely had the time to widen her eyes when Enji stood up to block her view and protect her from the flying pieces of glass. The doctor sank back into his seat and covered his head with both of his hands.

“Calm down, Touya”

But it was stronger than him now. His left hand was shaking and his blood was boiling. Something inside him was thirsting for revenge, something inside him was screaming at him to destroy everything.

“Is that what you want ?”

He grabbed the water dispenser and threw it to the ground. A piece of glass pierced it, and the water spilled all over the living room.

“You want me to be crazy ?”

He broke the glass case with one blow. He didn't even notice that his fist was bloody.

“Look at that !”

With a wave of his arm, he swept away the entire collection of guns and gold coins. They crashed to the soaked ground, some even breaking upon impact.

Touya, the corners of his mouth turned up in a caricature of rage, threw himself at the painting.

He ripped off the first one and threw it against the wall. It bounced before one of the golden moldings came off.

He picked up the second and kicked it in, tearing the canvas apart.

He picked up the stool from the old dressing table and smashed it against the wooden cabinet. It bent but did not break. Touya, mad with rage, continued to hit the furniture. He wanted to destroy everything so that everyone would feel his pain.

Big, unfamiliar hands grasped at his clothes. They lifted him from the floor and pulled him back.

“Let go of me! Let go of me !”

His feet throbbed. He searched for support and clung to the doctor. The old man resisted. Touya tore off a piece of his checkered shirt.

Terror clung to him from the pit of his stomach.

Suddenly, Touya lost all the anger that animated him and became fearful again.

“Mom, tell him it was an accident !”

His mother shook her head, both hands over her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks. Touya turned his frightened eyes to his father.

“Dad, don't do this to me! Dad !”

He was being dragged towards the door and no one did anything to stop it.

“I'm sorry, I won't do it again! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm-

The door closed on him.