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} it can burn us both
Dec. 20th, 2015 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dormitionMinato steps off another train in another town with the same headphones on his ears. The music is turned up louder than normal; he's trying to drown out not just the thoughts of those around him, intrusive buzzing white noise that it always is, but his own thoughts.
He's... regretful to have left Iwatodai. Isn't that strange? By the end, he hadn't even minded hearing what they were thinking, just those few people who'd broken his shell. They were complicated, kind, hurting people, all of them, and Minato had had to leave them behind. He hadn't even bothered asking his aunt if he could stay.
He was shuffled along to another school. At least this would be the last one before he was free to run his own life. Trouble was, he wasn't sure what he'd run it to if not the ground. Even if he went back to Iwatodai, they wouldn't be there. Yukari, Junpei, Mitsuru and Akihiko, all of them, they had no reason to wait for him. They had their own lives. He'd know; he'd heard their every hope and fear.
There's no real place for Minato in that, is there? They don't need him.
As he's walking down the road to his new dorm, he realizes belatedly, and very fuzzily, that there is something else he's hearing. He thumbs off his music, but it persists, like someone frantically knocking on a door, or... a rising pressure in his ears, an airplane taking off and gaining altitude.
What is that?
He stares blankly into the distance across the street at a shop display, people walking by him on either side like flowing water around a stone, and for the first time in his life intentionally tries to stretch his mind out rather than retreat it in. Minato instantly winces, an uncharacteristic twitch of his facial features, as everyone grows loud and overwhelming. The headache that's building is already piercing. He slowly tunes them out nonetheless, like adjusting the focus on a camera and searching for that pinpoint speck that'd caught his attention, a seething hot coal against his sensitive mental fingers.
Who is this? Tentative, uncertain, as he never is.
He's... regretful to have left Iwatodai. Isn't that strange? By the end, he hadn't even minded hearing what they were thinking, just those few people who'd broken his shell. They were complicated, kind, hurting people, all of them, and Minato had had to leave them behind. He hadn't even bothered asking his aunt if he could stay.
He was shuffled along to another school. At least this would be the last one before he was free to run his own life. Trouble was, he wasn't sure what he'd run it to if not the ground. Even if he went back to Iwatodai, they wouldn't be there. Yukari, Junpei, Mitsuru and Akihiko, all of them, they had no reason to wait for him. They had their own lives. He'd know; he'd heard their every hope and fear.
There's no real place for Minato in that, is there? They don't need him.
As he's walking down the road to his new dorm, he realizes belatedly, and very fuzzily, that there is something else he's hearing. He thumbs off his music, but it persists, like someone frantically knocking on a door, or... a rising pressure in his ears, an airplane taking off and gaining altitude.
What is that?
He stares blankly into the distance across the street at a shop display, people walking by him on either side like flowing water around a stone, and for the first time in his life intentionally tries to stretch his mind out rather than retreat it in. Minato instantly winces, an uncharacteristic twitch of his facial features, as everyone grows loud and overwhelming. The headache that's building is already piercing. He slowly tunes them out nonetheless, like adjusting the focus on a camera and searching for that pinpoint speck that'd caught his attention, a seething hot coal against his sensitive mental fingers.
Who is this? Tentative, uncertain, as he never is.
