The Lines We Draw

[MethodicalSlacker]

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Milo: Refuse

"Thanks, but no thanks."

Milo found that his vision had once again fixated itself on a dark spot in the kitchen tile. It's all he can do to keep himself from shrinking down and melting into it, an ocean on the floor. Neither of the Diaz brothers ever learned how to swim. If Milo makes it through this, he never will. It'll be a link between himself and his brother, he thinks to himself, that they never learned, one unique situation where Milo can always look at a body of water and have an answer to "what would happen if Lucas was here and I fell in?" and the answer would always be "drown" for the rest of his life.

There wasn't anybody to tell him what to do. No guiding hand, no alluring heavenly voice. Whatever came of Milo from this point forward would have to build from within. He couldn't attach himself to anyone anymore. If he got too attached, they'd just be taken away from him. Like Lucas. Like his parents, in their emotionally withdrawn state, as absent as their first born son.

"I can let them know myself."

The more he looked at Gyu-Ri, the more he felt himself hating her. She represented, in no uncertain terms, the absolute crushing inadequacy of his family. The lack of strength and resolve they had in the face of any crisis. A fundamental, brittle weakness. Snapping under even the lightest of pressure. And when they needed someone to help them out, they turned to the sister of the departed's first middle school girlfriend. Herself a child, effectively. Milo wanted her gone. He wanted the idea of her gone. There was savior in her. There'd be no savior in anyone anymore. Milo had to save himself. Milo had to save everybody. Milo couldn't save anyone. Salvation was impossible.

"Better it comes from blood."

Milo turned away from Gyu-Ri, turned the corner, and walked back into his room, slamming the door behind him.

The next time he came out, four days of meals placed on the doorstep later, he went into the bathroom, took a shower, got dressed, put on his tennis shoes, and went for a walk that he didn't intend on coming back from.

[Cicada]

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You are no savior.

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> Gyu-ri : 

"I'm well aware."

You weren't sure who'd said it, or if it had been said at all. It had sounded an awful lot like your own voice, which a lot of things did when they bounced around on the inside of your own thick skull. You washed away the nauseating uncertainty with the dull torrent of the sink, along with all else it washed away. Your fingers dumbly moved through the formless weight of the water, ever shifting, and all your thoughts raged on. Headwaters eternally replenished.

You never stopped coming, the same time every day, until they asked you to stop. Occasionally you changed the meals you brought.

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> _

((Concluded))