View topic - Anthologies of the Aleyn Mind
Welcome to my collection. It's not much, just the few short stories, one-shots, and song-inspired tales that I decide to write up. If you have comments, I ask that you please PM me of leave a profile comment. I'd like that this thread remains only as anthology of my works. Otherwise, enjoy.
Table of Contents
1..........Itami no Tou (Tower of Pain)
Table of Contents
1..........Itami no Tou (Tower of Pain)
QuoteItami no Tou
Even from up here, I could hear them. The clamour of voices, growing ever louder, until it reverberated through this tower of pain. And clinging to the top, shivering like a stupid moron...
I could remember well the small pains it started out as. I'd tried so hard to ignore them, like my mom had always told me to.
"Bakemono!"
"Hen na namae!"
"Yuki-atama!"
Small barbs, ones I had carefully pulled out and threw into the collection. I wanted to forget about through them, to throw them away. But barbs were barbs, and they stuck in the back of my mind, always there. And before I knew it, the box was full. I remember staring at it, at those pains in the box. I'd lost count of them long ago, and to be honest they had been so repetitive that they didn't even really hurt anymore. As a child, though, I'd thought, 'If someone saw these, surely I could some sort of kindness, even if only a little?'
So I'd continued to collect them up. Every harsh word they threw at me, every jeering laugh at my expense, every piece of garbage thrown at me or hidden in my locker, every rag I ruined rubbing off the permanent marker and glue vandalism on my school desk, every prank played on me. I stored them up, and when the box was full I added it to the cache. All the time, I would peek out from around my work at the others, the adults, my peers, hoping that they would look over and see. Hoping that they would pity me and come over to comfort me and be kind to me. Filling ten boxes was easy; I stacked them up and sat atop to survey my work. It wasn't enough though. No one took notice. The adults continued to turn a blind eye. My peers didn't cease their harassment. Right then and there I resolved to build my stack higher. Higher and higher, until the whole world could see it.
That's exactly what I did. Higher and higher, up to where the birds flew, I built my tower of pain. Gradually the garbage and put-downs and rags and pranks turned into lead pipes and bandages and blood-stained gauze swabs. It was still pain, just different from what it had been before. I was fighting back, but still accumulating pains. And sitting atop the ever-growing number of boxes, hearing the whispers of a new name, a new title, I had become a king. The White Dragon of Iwatodai.
Now people were looking. Now they were gathering to see this structure of mine, discussing amongst themselves and trying to discern what it was I was doing, why I was doing it. But the attention came too little, too late. In the process, I had grown detached, bitter, cynical. From here, they had all the significance of an ant.
"Oi, all you morons down there. Can't tell what this is, can you? Shit for brains… This is my pain. The one you've all been ignoring for years. Don't waste your breath; I don't need your pity anymore."
That's right. They'd turned away for so long; why should I take the idiots seriously? Why should I trust them or care about them? I was special. I was the White Dragon. Not entirely good, not entirely evil. Chosen by a god, perhaps one of solitude, this was the place meant for me. The element meant for me.
But even then the pains kept piling in. by now, it had become habit, just another thing to do: collect it in the box, tape it up, add it to the growing stack. My tower of pain, growing higher and higher, up until it reached the clouds, and then higher still. No one could reach me up here. Here, in this Dimension that had been created by my psyche. This was my Dimension. I had created a world of my own. The king had become the god. Yet the pains didn't stop, continued to grow. I continued to gather them up, remember them, store them into their boxes and stack them higher and higher. Six hundred. Seven hundred. Eight hundred...
I had created a second Dimension. Like it had in my first world, the pains of the past reared their ugly heads again. They fell victim to my habit, and though they opened up old scars and continued to haunt me, I did what I'd always done. Collect them up, add them to my tower, in this Dimension of snow and silence. I could hear nothing but the wind now as everything culminated to my thousandth box. Stepping forward to claim the last Fragment, I was struck by a sudden fear. Up so high in this dead world, I realized just how isolated I had become. How lonely I had become. To face this memory, the worst memory of my life... I couldn't accept it. I couldn't bear to look. I was so afraid of it that I couldn't even find the voice to scream my defiance and grief and agony.
It overwhelmed me.
I succumbed, and cowered, and let the darkness take me to a place where no one could see me.
Then, in this cold, black nightmare, it came to me. Touched my petrified, mute mind. Reached my deaf ears. A song, drifting from somewhere far, far away. A shudder, and my tower suddenly shrunk to nine hundred ninety-nine. Nine hundred ninety-eight. Someone was at the bottom, steadily hacking away at my lifelong collection, one box at a time. All the time they continued to sing, setting a rhythm to their destruction of my pains. And finally, I could hear a voice, one I would know anywhere.
"Hey! Wake up! Everyone wants to talk to you... so won't you come down to the same level as us?"
Now I could hear it, soaring up from below. First one voice, and then another, and then a third, joining the song until a chorus had added their efforts to laying waste to my macabre masterpiece. How blind could I have been? All along, they had been there. Ever since I had announced my pain to the crowds, they had been watching. I had only been so absorbed in building my senseless stack to notice. As this epiphany hit home, I was glad I was still high enough that no one could see my face.
Ever from up here, I could hear them. The clamour of voices, growing ever louder, until it reverberated through this tower of pain. And clinging to the top, shivering like a stupid moron, was... Out of habit, I turned away. Damn, how idiotic was this? A god this emotionally touched after so many ears of detachment and solitude.
...No, not a god. Just me, Nagatou Yorishirou, fancying himself to be a god.
So if I wasn't a god, and without my tower... who was I?
"Here. Last one's for you... stupid whitey jerk."
...I'll just have to see with these guys, huh?
~Owari~