Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 320. Kiri (by Monoral)

Explosions.

BAM BAM BAM

Fire soared; more explosions.

BAM BAM BAM

The bird took me higher, the thick black smoke rising with us.

I couldn’t see what happened on the ground, which became farther and farther away, but when I turned my head, I could see the beautiful crystalline world burning brightly.

The gigantic trees fell one after another; there were constant explosions, which must be the other crystalline figures.

The fire should have already reached the portal, and if it was like in my vision, it should have crossed the portal into our world.

My head hurt tremendously, and I retched a few times, unsure if it was from what I was seeing or from the black smoke that was everywhere.

I looked at the heart above me and fired my gun at it—this was what I should have done the moment I saw the soldiers entering.

Fuck, there was so much I should have done up to this point.

So many dumb mistakes.

The moment I struck the big black heart, it stuttered; the pulsing became irregular, albeit never stopping.

The wings, however, stopped completely, and the big bird, together with me in its ribcage, fell.

That familiar feeling of falling to my doom—ah, I hadn’t missed it one fucking bit.

The air grew hotter as we went downward; I felt my clothes melting, the flames licking over my skin, devouring me.

The bird crashed into the fire—into the ground, and so did I.

A bone from the ribs broke, and something stabbed into me, the fire engulfing us, and everything hurt when there was only red around me.

I pulled the bone out of me, my body burned, the shock sending me into a state of elation, my brain working with all the happy hormones to stop me from feeling pain as I melted, healed, burned, healed, and then melted again.

Red and hot—so fucking red and hot, so fucking elating, so fucking painful that it felt fucking PURIFYING.

I didn’t care how much it hurt or how much it didn’t.

Why?

Why else? It’s because I had long ascended into the realm of the gods.

A dumb, stupid, forgetful one, but I still am one. And this god now wants to see what was left of the bodies—the victims of another of the many grave mistakes I had made—before I would return home and could hate myself forever.

Yet, did it matter? As long as I could hate myself in the company of a certain someone, it didn’t seem all that bad anymore.

I took one step after another, navigating blindly inside a world of flames, just going where I thought I should go. I walked and walked, feeling like this could very well be described as hell on earth, everything beginning with a single bullet—how fucking hilarious.

I was ripped from my thoughts when I crashed straight into a wall, throwing me to the ground.

I laughed, or tried to; the heat that had melted my lungs through my nose was now entering through my mouth as well.

What am I doing here? My dazed mind stumbled along with my body; my eyes were useless, my hair was gone, and my clothes had been burned away first thing.

Didn’t you just want to prove that you have lost every last bit of humanity? Aren’t you just showing off, rationalizing, and faking pity for the humans you wanted to save with plain self-punishment?

What are you going to do if you are burned beyond recognition and your dog doesn’t recognize you anymore?

What will you do if you are only a mush of flesh, and he turns away and tells you that you are too ugly for him?

But if I am a god, why can’t I do one fucking thing right?

Dizzy, dazed, hurting, and elated, I stood up.

No.

The reason I am in these flames is because of a feeling, because I am feeling a certain attraction.

I put my hand out, feeling for the wall against which I had just crashed, slamming against it with moderate force.

I tried to yell, but through the fire and lack of oxygen, I couldn’t get a word out, only making my insides go up in more flames.

Yet I heard it.

"HELP!"

"IS SOMEONE THERE?"

"WHAT IS GOING ON OUTSIDE??!"

I slid my palm against the wall, feeling sharp crystals piercing into my skin, my lips forming into a smile.

Good job. I have no idea how, but my little counterpart is protecting them, just like I told him to.

Now, should we continue to show off?

"Stop showing off!" Lauren yells at me when I take one of the dead fish and open its mouth at her.

She lands a punch at me, not thinking I would dare to touch the dead fish when I was so disgusted by the sight of my father gutting it just yesterday.

"You told me to touch it!" I throw the fish at her, and she screams deafeningly.

"MOOOOM!!!"

"Give me some peace!" Our mom yells back from her spot in the sun, and I break into laughter.

"That was our dinner." My father lifts the fish and sends me to the corner to reflect on myself.

Just that the joke is on him, because there is no corner at the lake where we currently are.

So when he tells me to go, I run to a hidden spot between the trees by the lake and dunk my feet in, splashing around.

"Where is Kenny?" Steve asks loudly, but my father just tells him that I am reflecting and that he should do something else.

I look at the water, my feet, and then up at the sky.

Somehow, this scene feels really nice, though I can’t say why.

Time seems to stand still, the sun starts to set, and the moment I think I could have been forgotten, that I am being neglected here in my ’corner,’ my mother plops down beside me.

Even though it is early evening, she is still wearing her big sun hat, and I can’t seem to see her face clearly.

"Why didn’t you come back, Baby?" She asks, her head propped on her arm, as she looks at the water ahead.

"Because I’m reflecting, ma’am," I say, suddenly feeling angry that she didn’t come to bring me back sooner.

"And did you do it? Did you reflect, my baby?" She asks absentmindedly.

"No."

"Then that’s good." She clearly wasn’t listening at all.

"YOU AREN’T EVEN LISTENING!" I burst out, and I hear my father clear his throat a bit away as a warning.

"Pfft. I am always listening to my baby. You didn’t reflect, you didn’t reflect." She hugs me, smelling like a mother does.

"Do you want to see the ocean?" She asks me.

"Isn’t it like here?" I ask back, getting squished by her.

"No, Baby. The ocean is way bigger and far mightier, a force in itself. Let’s go there sometime in the future." She kisses my head, then my face, until I make ’ew’ sounds, but at the same time I don’t pull away from her tender affection.

I didn’t even know this memory was still inside me. This was the same lake—we had been there before, and it was where her grave would be before we could ever make it to the ocean.

I don’t know anything about fire or how to put it out. I know that different fires must be extinguished differently, that there is certain stuff that has to be used with big fires, a pulver or something, but I had never touched anything like that.

And I knew that just a bit of water would accelerate the flames.

But what about a fucking ocean?

I smiled. Mom, come and take a look; your son will flood a world.

I thought of the lake; it was a big lake, but not nearly enough.

I thought of the lake, doubled it, and multiplied it; the lake that killed her will hopefully save us now.

Fire and water, then let’s go with DAMN FUCKING MUCH WATER!

I raised my hands, imagining it up in the sky, imagining it hovering over the flames that raged here on the ground, the blue that would be saving me from the hell of red.

I felt my power drain from me as I thought of the memory: how my dad caught the fish, how my mom would lie in the sun, and how Lauren and Steve would run around, occasionally bickering. I thought about how the lake tasted and felt and how the coldness made me shiver.

Doubled and Multiplied.

And then, multiplied again.

And finally I let the water fall.

No idea if it worked; I couldn’t see, and I didn’t feel anything anymore.

But I knew it the moment my body moved without me doing anything, as if swept away by a current.

And the moment that happened, I put the masses of water back where they belonged—back to the memory of the day at the lake with my family.

My body suddenly met the ground once more.

This time I really had no strength left; the table had turned back—it had no carvings on it—telling me I had overused the giant’s power, my body unable to take more of it.

I bit into my tongue, drawing blood.

The giant’s blood did its magic; my body rebuilt itself, and this hurt like fucking hell, contrary to the time I was roasted like some damn barbecue.

In a trance, I started to laugh, and what began with strange coughing and then gurgling sounds ended with my own unharmed voice laughing happily along.

My eyes started to work again not long after, and I could see the sky that looked black because of the smoke, and in a corner between these dark clouds, I saw sunlight shining through, as if all that had just happened was only a simple storm, as if this storm had passed by, leaving only hesitant light that fought its way back to me.

I stared at the beam for quite some time before I turned my head and saw a big milky white crystalline dome, hands slamming from the inside against it.

This was my counterpart, having formed a dome to lock the survivors in; the dome, consisting of crystals, was interwoven with bloody red veins stemmed from the ground. Amidst the charcoal earth, amidst the black crystals, there was a bloody trail to a red spot further away.

I think that was where my blood had fallen from the bullets the soldiers shot at me, all the way down from the bird.

So, the fucking giant’s blood didn’t make you go berserk, did it? On the contrary.

I turned my head to look at the other side; there was steam rising from both the real charcoal earth and the burned black crystals.

There were no trees in the crystalline world anymore, the beautiful colors having all turned black.

A pity for that beautiful landscape.

So?

Wasn’t it now time for my counterpart to free the survivors, for us all to return back to our world, and for the credits to appear?

Or was it that the danger hadn’t been over yet and my counterpart was still in protective mode?

"HAHAHAAHAHAH!" I laughed out loud; no matter what was going to appear, I had neither the power nor the will to fight it.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

"HAHHAHAHAHAHAHA!" I spat out blood, not able to move even one muscle.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA!" But laughing was alright; that I could do because if I didn’t laugh, I would have to cry, or I would have to just kill myself to get it over with.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

"Save me."

Henry, you fucker. How would I be able to save you when it had always been me all along, when I was the person in need of saving the most?

So?

Where are you?

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

A shadow fell over me, and I thought it was the monster that had finished rearranging itself, but—maybe I was hallucinating—there were big warm hands grabbing me, and my back was pressed against a chest as I was lifted into a sitting position.

"Missed me?" An unbelievably deep, raspy, and familiar voice sounded, and I felt a heartbeat slamming against my back.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

A finger tapped at my chest two times before it slid down to my navel.

"You, lying here naked—is that an invitation?" That was what he said, but the terrorized tremor in his voice was impossible to ignore, the fingers digging into my skin as if he couldn’t believe I was real, impossible to miss.

He smelled like him; the teeth biting my shoulder felt like him, the arms that clung to me with so much force, as if he wanted to break us both, were just like his, and so was the way he felt for my pulse while bullshitting me.

Everything told me that it was him, that he was finally here, that he heard my prayer and had come to finally—TO FUCKING FINALLY—save me.

"You took your sweet time, you fucker." I started.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

"When you destroy its heart, it only gets stronger," I mumbled weakly.

"I got it." He turned my head and pressed his lips to mine, feeding me blood while we listened to the bones rearranging themselves, to the cries of the survivors caged inside the dome.

"I got you, Kenny." He pressed my body against his before kissing me again.