I honestly don't know where the hell this came from...I was supposed to be redrafting my English coursework and it just appeared...so here you go, and be warned, it's slightly depressing...

I've been alive for sixteen years. Well, sixteen years and eleven months and twelve days to be precise, but you get what I mean, right? It isn't really very long, compared with some people. And it's ages compared to some people as well...

That was a terrible beginning, I'm sorry...

Um...well...I guess I should really start with my name. My name is Rei Kon, and like I said, I'm sixteen. And I want to tell you a story. That sounds stupid as well... I mean, when I say story I'm not talking about once upon a time in a land far far away or anything like that. I'm talking about real people, and real things, not like blonde princesses in towers and dragons and knights in shining armour.

Because in real life there are no knights in shining armour, and the only dragons you have to worry about aren't fire breathing and scaly. And princesses don't always need rescuing, and sometimes they aren't princesses, if you get what I mean.

I suppose what I really mean by that is...well, in fairy stories it always has to be a prince and a princess, doesn't it? And she's beautiful, and he's handsome and they all live happily ever after. But that isn't -real-. What's real is a guy and a guy trying to live, and failing, and not living happily ever after.

His name was Kai. Kai Hiwatari. Kai and Rei. It sounds good, don't you think? Kai and Rei. Rei and Kai. He always thought so. He said we could move away and get married somewhere where they allow it as well. Kai and Rei Kon Hiwatari. He was full of plans like that. He was a dreamer, I suppose. But in a good way...he...made me feel as if he could break the world into little pieces in his hands and put it all back together again in a different order, like he could make everything better for everyone.

I suppose he was destined to be like that, really. Brought up in foster care because his parents died and his family wouldn't take him in. I suppose you have to be a dreamer, so you can run away into your fantasies when remembering their betrayal becomes too much. He spent half his life in a dream, I think. And the other half being bitter.

But that isn't fair, really. That wasn't all he was. He was kind, though he didn't like to show it too much, and he was intelligent, much cleverer than me. Almost straight As for his GCSEs, given a definite place in college...but he never got there in the end.

At first I didn't understand why he did what he did. It didn't make sense. He had everything going for him- he was fit, healthy, had a foster mother who loved him like he was her own...

And he threw it all away.

I remember being told what had happened. Judy, his foster mum, coming to my door and collapsing into tears. At first I couldn't understand what she was saying, but then I realised. She was saying 'He's dead' over and over, sobbing her heart out. It took me a while to take it all in. I'd brought her in and sat her down, made her a cup of tea and brought it in to her before I felt tears sting my eyes. I dropped the tea all over the carpet and we ended up hugging, clutching at each other, grief-stricken and emotional.

My mother came in soon after, and took charge. She managed to get the whole story out of Judy while I sobbed, sick to my stomach. Kai had...had... I looked down at my own wrists, seeing Kai's there and seeing blood there, pulsing from deep cuts.

I couldn't fully believe it for a while, not until the funeral...but then it really started to hurt. A horrible throbbing ache somewhere over my lungs, all over my chest. Heartache. I felt as if I blamed him at one point, because he'd run away from me, he'd broken himself and me in the process and he hadn't cared how much I would hurt when he left me behind...

But I couldn't stay angry, and the rage burning me up inside turned to pity, and I cried for days and days locked up in my room at the top of the house. And if I was a princess, then that was the time I needed a knight in shining armour. But he was dead. He'd killed himself. I don't know how many days I stayed buried under my duvet, soaking my pillow with tears and hitting it, punching it and screaming at it in sheer frustration and despair. Judy came to see me. He'd left me a letter, they'd found it in his schoolbag.

I couldn't open it.

I stared at it and cried for God knows how long, minutes, hours, days. I felt like I should leave it closed. I didn't want to know what was in it, because no reason he had to give could make up for the fact that he'd taken himself away from me and left me this way. But I had to open it. I -needed- to. I had to look at his writing, his messy, scruffy scrawl and see what his final words to me were. I had to know.

So I opened it. And while I was reading, I seemed to move into some timeless, transcendental reality. He was speaking to me again, speaking right into my heart and I could almost -see- him in front of me, see the sway of his hair as he moved, the creases in his clothes, his smile...I could feel his warmth surrounding me, heard his soft voice whispering in my ear as he stroked my hair.

All my love. That was how he signed it. All my love, Kai.

And it was over, and time snatched hold of me again. He was gone. He was gone and he was never coming back, and all the love in the world couldn't make up for that. I know you won't understand, he wrote. Of course I didn't. I didn't understand how he could have sat there and wrote to me about how much he loved me and cared about me knowing that not long after he'd be watching himself bleed to death.

He was depressed. That was what he wrote. Depressed. And when I thought about it, that made me angry. Why hadn't he -talked- to me about it? Why couldn't he have -said-? He knew how much I loved him, he knew I would have done -anything- for him!

I spent more time in bed. Not crying, just laying there, staring at the ceiling, burying my head under the blankets when the constant white got to be too much to bear. My mother came and went, trying to talk to me, trying to feed me, to comfort me...but I didn't want comfort. I didn't want food. I didn't want to talk. I just wanted to be alone. Maybe I wanted to die.

She brought a grief counsellor to see me at one point, but I ignored him. What did he know? He hadn't known Kai. He didn't know how much I'd loved him. He couldn't make it hurt less, he couldn't make it better...because he wasn't Kai. And I wanted Kai back so badly...

I missed the start of college. I didn't care. I just stayed at home, wandering around the house like a ghost. More counsellors talked to me. Friends finally plucked up the courage to offer me their condolences. I scorned them. They hadn't known Kai either. They didn't care about him or about me. Saying you're sorry about someone dying is just that- something you say. No-one means it.

I suppose I started to hate everyone, and everything, because Kai had taken all my hope and happiness away with him, had drowned my ambition and love in blood and left me as good as dead.

But slowly, I started to accept it. Not understand it, not forgive it, but accept it. He was gone.

I stopped pushing away the people trying to help me. I let my mother cook for me, and cuddle me. I let the counsellors talk to me. I accepted peoples' condolences without hating them. But it was such an effort. Sometimes I even considered doing what Kai had done and end it all. I suppose what I intended was obvious to the people around me. A psychologist came, some doctor of something, and diagnosed me with depression.

I hated the tablets. They made me choke when I swallowed them, stuck in my throat and made me feel ill. All my anger went into hating them. I started to enjoy things again. I watched TV for the first time in what my mother told me was months. I went shopping, bought new clothes. Reinvented myself. I wasn't the old Rei any more. I was the new Rei, the kind of Rei who wore black, who didn't care.

Because for the longest time, I didn't. I went wild, I was out of control. I had his name tattooed on my arm, got my ear pierced, went back and had it pierced again. I was supposed to be at college, but I didn't care. I should have been furthering my education, but I didn't care. I went back and had more piercings done, another tattoo. Daily body modification. Pierced tongue, pierced nipple, pierced everywhere.

I looked in my mirror after the third tattoo and I shocked myself. I looked so aggressive, so angry...like my face was stuck in a permanent frown. So I tried to smile. It was hard at first, but it came, and my lips curved up and my eyes sparkled. And I could almost feel him beside me, a hand on my shoulder, and the sparkles in my eyes turned to tears.

I smashed the mirror. Glass clattered to the floor, and blood slithered from my wrist.

It needed stitches in the end.

Scared of what I might do to myself when she was out, my mother made me go to college. Dropped me off on a morning and phoned me every hour or so to make sure I was still there. And sure, I went. But I didn't do any work. English Language, Art, Psychology and Religious Studies. I'd never been religious, and in fact I didn't care about it at all, but that was the only class that had free places along with all of my other choices.

And I hated them all. I was two months behind in work, the teachers hated me from the off and people were scared of me. And a little part of me drifted over from not caring to caring.

I started with the work. I worked obsessively, reading up and studying everything I'd missed. I would wake up on a morning with my face buried in a textbook, and in a way, it helped. If I worked and worked and did nothing but work, I could forget the sense of loss that had never really faded. So I caught up. That didn't really help me with regard to scaring people, because it scared them all the more that I'd managed to catch up so quickly, but it at least meant the teachers were on my side and stopped ignoring me in lessons.

Maybe I started being more like the old me, but I found myself feeling less angry, less bitter. People started to talk to me. People started to hear about why I'd been missing for the first two months of term, how I'd gone crazy when Kai...left. And I had friends. Friends who I could trust, who trusted me. It made me feel like I was needed. Like someone wanted me. Like someone wouldn't run away from me as soon as it got tough.

But that isn't fair to Kai, really. Depression can be more than a feeling. It can be something that consumes your whole life and makes you feel as if there's no way out and all you can do is run away. That's what they said in Psychology, anyway.

Maybe going to college was a good thing. It was certainly good stress relief to be able to take out my anger and sadness on a canvas for art. It helped to talk about why I don't believe there can be a God in RS.

And I feel better for writing this all down. And maybe I needed to sit and stare at my computer screen trying to think of something to write for my coursework and realising all I could think about was Kai. Because I don't think you should write unless you have something to say.

And I think I needed to say this.

Fin

Um...R&R?