After Lily

Prologue

Kai Harukawa watched the blood spread in between the tiles, outlining the little white squares in a deep red. The body had finally stopped twitching, and was still. Had he really done it?

Had he really killed himself?

He stood over his own body, and as the pool of blood got wider, he did something that he hadn't done once in the entire last year of his life.

He laughed.

Weakly, at first, but as the seconds passed he felt the laughter bubbling up stronger then he had expected. He had done it. He still wasn't sure how, but he had done it.

He had won.

Of course, now he was dead - a ghost, obviously, something that he hadn't even believed in up till his last year, where his life had suddenly spiraled into a living hell.

He pushed the thought out of his head. Regardless of what had happened to him, regardless of everything he had been through, it was all over now.

It was finally over.

He repeated the thought to himself over and over again, engrained it into his head.

He looked at his new form. He could see himself, though when he looked into the mirror, he wasn't there. That didn't even faze him. After all, other then a faint sense of weightlessness, he felt almost exactly the same as he had when he was still alive. Slowly, he lifted his arm, and moved his fingers back and forth. It was easy, the way it should be. He pressed his hand against his face and let out a small gasp of surprise as he felt the contact. It was all just like before, everything. He started to laugh again.

What the hell had that bastard been so afraid of? He looked disdainfully at his body. The pool of blood had settled, and everything was still. The eyes gazed emptily at the closed door across the room and the mouth gaped open, as if trying to some how let out one last cry. But for what? Forgiveness? He couldn't imagine that was the case.

He looked into his face and realized that it was like he was looking into the face of a stranger.

He felt a brief shudder, and turned away from his body, suddenly not wanting to see it anymore.

He walked to the door. Looking briefly at the closed door, Kai decided to try his first attempt at using his new ghostly powers. He pushed his hand against the door. Oddly enough, there was still a slight resistance, as though he was pushing his arm through a wall of pudding. His hand suddenly fell through, followed by the rest of him.

He gathered himself and walked through the hallway.

As he walked further down, the sounds of his father and younger sister making their normal morning preparations for the day ahead of them drifted towards him. The two of them were in the kitchen, eating breakfast. They still didn't know that he was dead. He wondered briefly when they would figure it out, and then pushed the thought out of his mind.

They wouldn't understand, he knew.

They would never understand why he had done it, but he still couldn't bring himself to hate them. They were still his family, and he still loved them, despite everything.

If only he had been able to say goodbye.

Well, it's too late for that now, isn't it?

He quietly waved an invisible goodbye and left his house. He didn't want to be there when they found him.

It's all over now. He thought to himself again. Everything is over.

He wondered how many times he would have to think that to himself before he started to believe it.

He sat down on the street across from his house, wondering just what the hell he was supposed to do now.