"WHYYYYYY?!" My crying was unstoppable. My chest collapsed between sobs as every heartbeat missed its rhythm, hesitated, faltered. Veins bulged beneath my skin, carrying fire instead of blood.
My stomach twisted, rejecting everything, and pain doubled me over. I vomited. The memory spun like broken glass, tearing my being apart. Every shard ripped, cut, and pierced my soul. My own past had become a knife.
And my mind? It was the blade of the blade, piercing me with violent pain hundreds of times.
"S-STOP! STOP…" The void devoured my voice. Drool, vomit, and tears drenched me. "Please. E-enough. She… Maia… no… please. Maia…" My breathing locked. Air failed me. Panic settled in my lungs. "…c-can't… b-breathe."
"Hey, Aki." Her husky voice emerged from somewhere. The sound struck me like a wave breaking against my mind. Maia emerged from the darkness, smiling. The contours of her face shimmered like an echo, a specter imprisoned between the knot of now and before.
My vision blurred. I shook my head, wishing it would end. Why was this happening?
"N-no… not again. You… you're not real." I wanted to grab my own head. Forced myself to look away. If I looked… if I saw… Maia's bloodied body reassembled before me. The same ground. The same red. The same rain. The same everything. Always her. "E-enough…" Desolation reigned in the brief glimpses of lucidity.
My mind was a battlefield where I always lost. Maia's death tormented me. Her smiles haunted me. Her body stretched on the ground hunted me.
Despair flowed like paint. Suffering was a cruel brush, accentuating the hues of an unhappy painting. Every memory scribbled new wounds into my soul. Anger, resentment, and fear danced above my head like demons, delighting in my agony. Stop. Please, go away.
"I'm real." Her voice sounded closer, so gentle and convincing and, at the same time, so deceitful. Her hands touched my face. But there was only nothingness. Only the disconnection of existence.
"Y-you…"
"Aki, I love you too." She smiled. The same smile. The same gleam in her eyes. The same way of whispering my name. Maia. But it wasn't Maia.
"G-go away…"
"Do you really want me to go?" The illusion tilted her head, wearing the same melancholy expression and that warm energy I knew so well.
"N-no…" My voice was no more than a remnant, a broken murmur.
"Then I'll stay. I'll always stay with you." She knelt before me, her knees sinking into the void.
Everything around me wavered, as though I were imprisoned in a rotting dream. "You're gone…"
"I've always been with you." Her eyes shone in the dimness. A gleam that wasn't Maia's. The smell of blood rose from her skin as her pale aura flickered.
My hands trembled. A spark traveled down my spine, and a stab of pain climbed to the nape of my neck. My throat burned, and my entire body screamed in rejection. "Stop…" I lost the rhythm of my breathing. "Stop… Stop… Stop…"
Her hands reached toward me. The same hands I had held when she was… the same hands whose warmth I had stopped feeling. I could tell. I knew this was unreal. An illusion. "Aki."
The world exploded. Flames swallowed everything. Snow began falling from the ceiling. Snow that burned my skin.
Maia held my wrists. "I'm here. I'll always be here." Her voice coiled around my mind, embedding itself in my chest, my ribs, my heart. An endless torment.
The shock traveled through me again. "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!" All the pain condensed into a single scream. The memory dragged me away. The scene vanished. My body was hurled back into the abyss of my own mind, condemned to relive it all.
Again. Again. Again.