Warning: sensitive content. Language, imagery, etc.

"6 pieces nuggets, matcha-flavored mcflurry, and instant ramen for my brother who has no life." Bastard.

"Get the fuck out."

"Aren't you supposed to welcome me home?"

"

"6 pcs nuggets, Matcha-flavored McFlurry, and instant ramen for you." The bastard said, walking inside the house loudly: metal clanking, boots thumping, a presence that is never missed. I knew it was him since I wasn't expecting anyone. I sank in the couch, eyes closed.

"Get out."

"No thank you, really Naruto?"

"A mail from Cambridge arrived this morning. I wonder why didn't they email you since you don't live here anymore...but anyway. Congrats."

"Funny. I didn't think they'd take me seriously. Even when my essays had enough profanity thanks to you." He goes to the fridge for a tomato. "You're unusually down. Get your ass to work, idiot. Get auditions. Thankfully your name hasn't vanished from IMDB."

"Give me a day to think why you'll ever want to attend a college university. What are you gonna do, spy on the organization that was hired by Trump to win or become part of it?"

"Is it my fault if I'm so smart?"

"Oh, I forgot. You're the genius one. My 88.1 general average is no match to yours."

"That's not exactly what I meant. People are entitled to a brain, a good number don't use it. That's what makes them stupid and annoying." Sasuke continued. "If you keep acting like a child, you'll never figure out what you really want, brother. If you keep on writing angry and sad thoughts on your journal, you're letting them in. Your poetic soul deserves to be out there, acknowledged and exposed. Why kill yourself, when blood can only be blood if it isn't yours to spill?" I could hear the bastard spin his revolver with two fingers, sounding almost normal. Sasuke always carried a gun, it was a pretty gun, and it was clear that he was keeping it to protect himself. The scariest knowledge I have known today, was that fate made it clear that both my brother and I share the same gene--the gene of having an alter-ego. "Sorry. It may look like I'm influencing you, but no. Don't be a shooter, big brother, or you'll find it very fulfilling. It gets blood on your hands."

"Don't call me that. We're one day apart."

"Don't be killjoy. I like the sound of it."

My brother fits himself into the couch, sits on my feet. I was watching Death Note, which was coincidentally an exception to his list of dislikes. Uzumaki Sasuke rarely got attached to anything, and whenever he did, he would hold onto it like his life depended on it.

I suppose it was because at an early age, we've seen many things. Between the two of us, it was him who almost had it. There was a time he stopped talking and that was when I desperately got in labor to make his fever go away. After that, he just became silent; and the boy I used to play with became someone that was out of my reach. He was home, but his mind wasn't.

Sounds familiar?

Worse--he started to drink. He had a whole other friends with him. Student in the day, a rogue teenager in the night. But because I was an introvert, I never got the guts to tell his gang members to back off and just leave him alone.

Now, I don't know what to make of him. I'm still processing the fact that my brother may be doing unlawful things and he's not in jail.

"You still have nightmares?"

"Every night." I say.

"Oh, fuck. You said you don't need medical assistance."

"And I don't. I just need time."

"You know, if our story was a play, it'd be a comedy. I just find it hysterical that we're a dysfunctional family and we're still alive. The beauty in our chaos is, in this world surrounded by death, we manage."

I didn't say anything.

He reached for my arm. I fought three times to fight it, but I wasn't in the mood to go boxing with him. He didn't look pleased. "The hell are you doing with your life, huh? You think that's pretty? You think this is cool? Just because you're hurt doesn't mean you get to make the damage heavier, you fucking moron. Don't forget I can still shoot you in the head if I want to."

"I still see him."

"Who?"

"Menma."

Sasuke, as expected, took my journal. He opened it like all my shit were there. And he was damn right.

And, his eyeballs widened.

Uzumaki Naruto

Journal Entry

Could you still recall the person you've become, before you built yourself? Before you society painted you inside its grimy frame?

I look at the mirror and I see a monster. Put me in a painting and its frame will drip in blood.

"Oi. You promised not to read that."

"Shut up."

You are what you love. No one gives a damn about you, do you know that? No one cares. You were just a beggar back in the day, and nothing changes that. People don't change, Naruto. They just fool themselves into believing they really have.

You're not real. You're just a figment of my imagination so stop.

The more you reject me, the more I'll come around.

The thing about Menma is, sometimes it's a game of who loses the temper. We torment each other with pretty words, though at the end of the day his teachings would replay on the back of my head.

I dream nasty beautiful things: I am stuck in a watery cage, transforming into a demon fox with nine spiky tails. You would see it is a very bad dream, but at the end of the day, there is always a girl that appears behind me. I can't seem to catch her whispers, or know her exact appearance, but she is a figure of white. It burns my sight to be this close to her. But then I look at the waters in the cave and realize, out of nowhere, the demon in me has been tamed.

Sasuke closed the book with tears on his eyes. Teardrops reached his cheeks. I was supposed to remind myself of an anime I recently watched, but then I caught a picture of my head: an image of him crying, telling me he was afraid of the dark. And he was being metaphoric. It was his alter-ego, consuming him, making his eyes turn blood-red.

"Hey, I'm here. I'm here. Don't cry. Things will be alright. I won't leave you."

"He's always here. Madara is always fiddling on my mind!!"

Silence.

"The problem with you is simple--" He said. "You don't know how to believe. You don't know how to believe on yourself."

Slam.

All alone, with no one who cares for you.

I close my eyes and sigh.

"Say hi to Sakura for me."

--------------------------------

unedited //