"Don't disappoint me."

"I know. I won't. I pormise," Makoto sighs and leans back into the grass. "It won't turn out bad, it just can't."

"How can you be so sure about that?"

Makoto's momentary frown slides into a half-smile as he remembers. "I'm not. I can't be sure of anything in this world. I could die," and he sits up to look over the collapsed shack hanging at the edge of the grassy hill. "right now. I could die tomorrow. Or the day after that. I could die, on accident, at any moment. Do you ever think about that?"

"That's being dramatic. You could die. Just like it could rain, just like you might get coffee. This is an if-what argument you have going, and frankly," he says, "it's a pretty weak one." 

"Yeah," Makoto continues, sitting up and lacing his fingers together. "But if that's the case, why try if I'm gonna die as sure as the sun will rise?"

"Exactly. There it is: the Drama Queen."

"No, I'm being serious!" Makoto turns to see a mirror hovering over an empty landscape. His reflection walks away from him with his hand over his eyes. "What's the point in trying if the end result is just me ending up in the ground? Or just slowly, slowly dying? I don't get it."

"What's there to not get? We all die. At one point or another," his reflection looks back at him with empty sockets and a furrowed brow. "Everybody's racing to the finish line, and we all know what happens when we cross it, don't we?"

"So then what is the point of trying?" Makoto yells. "I can't be sure of anything in my life. I just CAN'T. EXCEPT FOR THAT. WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, THAT'S THE END RESULT SO WHY NOT DO WHAT I WANT TO DO?

"Why...Why can't I just love who I want to love?" Makoto's voice fades into a whisper. 

His reflection contemplates him with the barest hint of a smirk marring his usually placid features. He reaches out to Makoto, as if he wants to rub his shoulder but is stopped by the reflection's glassy surface. 

"You can," He hisses. "Love him, inside, outside, it doesn't really matter. Right? Love is love, hmm?"

Makoto doesn't respond. He walks away from the mirror. Thunderclouds roll across the previously clear sky and echo across distant mountains and flash the angry wrath of a god's lightning. 

"Love is love, hmmm? Isn't that it, Mako, hmm?" His reflection throws his head back to cackle and wipes away an imaginary tear leaking from his empty sockets. "Only you can decide who you love, no one's stopping you huh. So I guess the only person who is stopping you, is you.

"But isn't that a scary thing, huh Makoto? Admitting who you are to the world, telling your dad about who you love."

Makoto stops. He looks over his shoulder to his reflection to see himself laughing and doubled over in what can only be painful hurrahs. "I guess you're right," Makoto says, voice hollow.

"And think about how disappointed he'll be once he finds out. All this time, wasted on a pansy of a son. And you know what he says about time; once wasted, you can't get it back and boy oh boy did he just waste the last 18 years of his life raising such a pathetic son."

The laughter echoes loud and clear across the barren landscape, stripped of trees, grass, and all forms of life. A cinematic tumbleweed slashes across the horizon. "And and and," Makoto's reflection is too busy trying to catch his breath. "Imagine his face when he sees you and Haru together, not as friends this time, but something more! Do you think he'll take it well? All those times Haru was over, you swimming together, sleeping in the same room. He'll feel like you made a fool of him."

"But we never did anything," Makoto interjects.

"But you never told him, your entire life, you never told him this," his reflection snarls.

Makoto shudders and collapses onto his haunches, eyes wide. "I-I was afraid. I knew what he'd think and-and I didn't want his opinion of me to change-"

"And that's where you went wrong, Mako boy," his reflection tuts a little and walks out of sight. Makoto feels a tap on his shoulder and whips his head around to see two gaping holes inches from his face. "Secrets only grow more fetid the longer you hold them close."

"This," Makoto gasps as he falls away from his now corporeal reflection. "is just a phase. I'll get over it soon enough."

"Awh," his reflection stands up and kicks some dust over Makoto's shivering form. "Didn't you tell yourself that when you were 6 and you first joined the Iwatobi Swim Club and saw all those shirtless boys? Didn't you tell yourself that when you were 11 and there were physical examinations in school and your face was beet red because you got to stand in line with all your classmates, including Haru. No," his face crumples into a demonic smile. "Specifically because of Haru."

"So do you think," he continues. "that even after seven years, after all this time, it's still a phase for you, Makoto? That's a hell of a long phase if you ask me."

"I'm not asking you," Makoto mutters out. As much as he wants to rebut his reflection, everything he had said so far rang true and its potency still stung. This is exactly what Makoto was thinking, had always been thinking. Was something defective with him? Was something inherently wrong? If he ignored that part of himself long enough, would it go away? Could it go away?

If people got word of what he's really so self-conscious about in the locker room, if they found out that he wasn't normal, maybe they would hate him?

On top of all those questions was the fear. The shocking, overwhelming fear of being alone after coming out. Haru would not be obligated to return his feelings, no matter what. His parents wouldn't understand why he found men so attractive. Well, maybe his mother would, but definitely not his father. Disownment was the least of his problems, disappointment taking the crown of his fear. 

Feeling that he somehow failed his younger siblings. Feeling that he failed his parents as a son. Feeling that he failed Haru as his friend.

That disappointment afforded to his loved ones was more than Makoto could handle and the idea of not existing suddenly seemed so tasteful.

Everybody knows that happy endings rarely happen in real life. The few happy endings in real life are sappy and emotional, but the happiness fades away and there's just mutual disgust and entrapment. 

And then there were the stereotypes to contend with. He wasn't 'flamboyant' like most people in the community were like. He didn't look the part and he sure as hell didn't sound the part. Makoto did not like the idea of living up to any kind of stereotypes. Partly because he could never fit in with it, and the idea of tight tight pants for normal wear (yes he wore speedos that wrapped around his skin for swim, but the water was his shield, the murky depths his cover), made him blush to the roots of his floppy hair.

For all of his life, it was either do or do not, you were or you weren't, have or have not. There was never a spectrum, it was always a polar effect. And Makoto felt like he was drowning in the middle of both extremes. 

He looked up at his reflection roughly kicking a tumbleweed to the side and grimacing.

Looked around at the emptiness he was resigning himself to.

And he stood up.

Surprise was not the only thing registering on his Shadow's face. There was an undertone of fear masking his features. "What are you doing?"

Makoto didn't respond, resolutely heading towards his reflection, who reflexively took a step back for every foot Makoto gained. The sky dwindled into a gray swirl to a pinpoint in the distance and the ground began to shake and collapse in heaping chunks arond them.

"Makoto, what the hell are you doing?"

Makoto still trudged on and grabbed his reflection just as the world slipped into a blackness deeper than the blind and the very ground breathed out a sigh as it vanished.