The clouds were heavy with rain as she walked from her car to her apartment. She walked slowly since she wasn’t ready for what she knew she would find. She had no idea how long it had been going on…only that it had been going on.

It started when she noticed this or that had been moved. Then she could some lipstick that wasn’t hers. She asked her boyfriend about it; his answer had been it was for her birthday.

It was a lie.

She opened the doors and walked to the elevator as she wondered why. Though, at the end of the day she found…that she didn’t care. She had tried to love him and even let him move in. She knew that he loved her yet her feelings felt locked away. They were behind a door that he couldn’t unlock.

Hitoshi wasn’t the first that she had gotten with. feelings. She had dated countless guys and found that she felt nothing but friendship for all of them.

Izumi fingered the gem hidden under her shirt. Only he could probably unlock those feelings. Just like that gem on the necklace had become a constant comfort in life.

The boy wasn’t real.

She knew that he was nothing but a dream she had once. It didn’t stop the emotions that she felt. Or how she compared every man she dated to him.

She compared them to a dream. She compared them constantly to something that had never been real.

A dream of a boy that had never been real, a life that had never been real. It was pathetic and ridiculous, something that she should do. It didn’t stop her from doing it though.

It was like some part of her wanted the dream to be real. For him to be real. It only served to make all the other men in her life fall short to a boy. “I need help.”

She walked down the hall when the elevator doors opened. The carpet beneath her shoes was worn and old, something that had been there before her time. The walls were a sunny yellow like the world was a happy place despite the old carpet. Normally her eyes looked for little details in the walls or the doors.

It felt so stupid as she walked to her apartment. As she walked to what she knew she would find inside.

206 appeared before her. Her apartment door stood there in her way. It almost felt like it was urging her to walk away…to come back later. That wasn’t an option.

Hitoshi deserved more and so did she.

She pulled her key out and unlocked the door. She didn’t take her shoes off as the noise of bodies fucking filled the air. Izumi followed it to the bedroom where she watched them.

The woman’s eyes were closed as if she was too absorbed in what they were doing together. Her lips melted into Hitoshi’s with a passion that Izumi had never felt for him. Every move, every touch was filled with affection and passion for him.

He looked just as absorbed like she was his whole world at that moment.

Was that sex? She didn’t know. What she did know was that she watched their hips meshed against each other. To see him pull out and back into her.

It suddenly felt so wrong to be watching them. So she asked politely, “are you almost done yet?”

They instantly parted like the waves of the beach. There was a pain in Hitoshi’s eyes as he grabbed to cover himself. The woman that he had been inside made no move to do the same.

She laid there proudly in Izumi’s bed with her body on display and her legs wide open.

It felt like a challenge. But Izumi had no interest in winning the challenge offered. She didn’t really want the prize in the end.

“Izumi…you’re home early,” Hitoshi muttered. He glanced at the woman in their bed before he tried to cover her with the blanket.

She just gave him a gentle smile. “Yes, well…I thought it would be better to come home when your new girlfriend was still here.”

“She’s not my girlfriend!” He denied strongly. “You are!”

“WHAT?” the woman hissed as she sat up finally. “YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU COULDN’T LEAVE YET BECAUSE SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE CRAZY PSYCHO BITCHES THAT WOULDN’T LET YOU GO!”

“Either way, I don’t think its best that you don’t stay here anymore, Hitoshi.” Izumi interrupted suddenly. She could see that Hitoshi planned to argue the issue but she just wanted them gone. The hurt that she saw in Hitoshi’s eyes didn’t sit well with her.

“Izumi…”

“I have been thinking for a long time that this isn’t working out. I just didn’t want to lose you as a friend.” It was true, she saw him only as a friend. She had hoped that friendship would become more just like she had hoped with the others. Nothing came from it though. Nothing besides hurt feelings.

“You can’t mean that Izumi…I’m in love with you,” he muttered. The woman gasped in outrage of his words before she slapped him hard.

It looked like Hitoshi hadn’t felt it though as he just turned his eyes back to Izumi.

She just watched the woman, who got dressed and pushed past her. Izumi didn’t take it personally, the woman had lost what she saw as a relationship. She knew better despite her failed relationships.

Nothing else was said until the front door slammed shut. A sigh passed her lips then. “I’m not in love with you, Hitoshi. I never was and that was wrong of me.”

“So that’s it then? You never loved me when you knew that I have loved you for so long. I’m sorry that I had a moment of weakness,” he whispered as he stared at her.

He looked like he was ready to crawl to her. They had never had sex yet he looked willing to crawl to her. She never loved him beyond friendship…it was too much for her. What did she do to deserve that kind of emotion?

“Please stop,” she said softly as she turned away from him.

She felt sick. He was a wonderful and sweet man that she had dated for two years. She lived with him for three; she knew that she would never fall in love with him.

Still, she did this to him. She had somehow turned him into a lovesick fool that wanted her more than his dignity. What did that say about her? He hadn’t been the first to turn out like this. But he was her best friend.

She should have never let him ask her out.

“Izumi?” He called, bringing her back to that moment.

The moment where she was breaking up with him. She turned back around to look at him only to find him in front of her. As naked as he had been in the bed when she interrupted him. He was still aroused somehow and she nothing at the sight of it. “Yes?”

“Do you really feel nothing for me right now?”

“I just never have…for anyone. I want to feel something for you beyond our friendship, I tried for so long.” Not just with him either. She had tried to feel something for every man she had ever dated. They all failed to arouse anything. It was like her body and mind rejected them even when she didn’t want to reject them.

“Why can’t you feel something for me?” He questioned her. “Maybe I can help you feel something if you help me to understand this.”

“You wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand beyond the fact that I’m in love with a dream.” A dream that had never been real beyond the necklace around her neck.

“A dream?” he muttered as if he didn’t understand.

She wouldn’t blame him if he never understood. She barely did. It was only the faded memory of that boy that called to her. He was a child in the dream just like her, a normal boy dressed in skins.

His ruby eyes always on her mind. At times it almost felt as if they watched her. How she watched that was true. “Yes, I’m in love with a dream.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know…I barely do,” she told him. “I dreamed of him once as a kid. It only took that once though, I have been his since.”

“He is a dream though, you’re flesh and blood, Izumi. You must see how ridiculous that is?” He asked her.

Yet as she stared at him, Izumi saw that he couldn’t take anymore. The same was for her; she could take any more of this relationship or the lies. She turned away from him then. She walked out of the apartment and down the hallway.

He called after her, there was no point in answering though. She could think of what else to say. She was at her limit for everything.

She stood before the elevator but it was too slow for her to stand it. She went to the stairs as her mind churned with what she had done. Nothing felt right because she knew that she was the problem.

Her and Kacchan were the problem. They were a problem with no clear answer to be had.

She had talked with therapists and doctors about it for years. It was a mental illness called Erotomania. Others suffered from it, seemed resistant to treatment where Izumi welcomed it.

She wanted to love. To have a rich relationship with another, to build a family one day with someone she loved. She wanted love to grow old with. Her emotions had become chains that held her trapped from that. They wrapped around her, bound her until she closed her eyes.

Then she was with him, her dream. For years, he had grown with her then she suddenly found him as a man. The boy was gone just like the little girl in her.

But still, he wasn’t real.

With a sigh, she stood before the staircase and wondered what was next. There was no ready answer so she just took a step down when she felt the hands.

The ground was gone in the next moment as the world spun around her. She saw only a feminine figure before she hit a step that whispered of terror. She knew what was going to happen, braced herself. Yet she couldn’t stop it. Pain hit her at angles again and again, to the point that everything had gone black.

OoOo

The air smelled sweet as her senses slowly returned to her. The ground was soft, unlike the hurt concrete that she had expected. The sound of fighting and metal sounded in the distance. When she opened her eyes, she found herself surrounded in a forest of red.

The beautiful crimson trees and the almost pink grass was all something that she had seen before. It was from her dream of Kacchan, this was his home.

“I’m dreaming,” she muttered as she stared at the world around her. “I’m either dead and this is my heaven because of Kacchan or I’m in a coma and I’m dreaming of Kacchan.”

She just continued to lie there. She was at an utter loss of what had happened.

She knew that someone had pushed her down those stairs. She knew that this wasn’t reality, it couldn’t be. But a part of her hoped it was because he was there in that reality.

“So what are you going to do, Izumi? Are you going to seek him out or wait here?” she asked herself.

“How about I fuck you to death instead?”

Izumi jerked up at the sudden voice to see an unnatural creature slowly walk towards her. It looked like a blend of lobster, man and praying mantis that created an ugly mess. Her stomach wanted to empty itself at the sight of it.

She slapped a hand over her mouth when her stomach tried.

Its eyes watched her like she was a tasty treat. It was reason enough for her to find her footing and run. It shouted after her in an almost singsong voice. “You can’t get away! We’ll still eat you at the end of the day.”

The brushes hit her here and there as she ran. Fear held her, blinded her as she ran away. This wasn’t the dream she wanted but was a nightmare. There was no Kacchan and she was going to be fucked to death before being eaten. This was not what she had planned this morning when she got up.

She was meant to break up with Hitoshi, hopefully, keep him as a friend. She meant to move on with her life. Look for the man that would cure her of her Erotomania.

Instead, she was probably dying in the real world as she ran away in her mind to avoid a monster.

The day was officially shitty.

Otherworldly Love Chapters Otherworldly Love Chapter 2