Chapter XXVII: 'Ah, look at all the lonely people!'
No matter how hard Aran tried, he could not stop thinking about the contrast between how Gina had spoken to him earlier, and how she behaved now. Her change of mentality bothered the wolf, until he could not take it anymore and decided to speak up.
"Hey Gina, would you mind to, you know, drop your toddler act for a minute? I'd like to ask you a serious question."
She put down her toys and picked up her stuffed elephant.
"Alright, ask away," she said, no longer talking with a high-pitched voice.
'So she really was acting,' the wolf thought.
"Am I the sole reason why you're here? I mean, I find it kind of hard to digest that I hurt you so badly that you'd need this kind of treatment."
The vixen smiled, much to Aran's surprise.
"No, wolfie, you're not the only factor. Before middle school, I didn't have too many friends, but they were good friends. Or at least, that's what I thought. When you started bullying me, the dropped me one by one, afraid to become a victim as well if they stayed close to me."
"I'm sorry for that."
"Stop apologizing, Aran, you can't change it anymore," she said with a reassuring tone. "So anyway, I didn't have any peers to fall back on, only my parents. They love me, but they didn't understand what I was going through. Our teachers were practically powerless against you as well. After those four years, I felt unloved, alone, and I had little self-esteem left."
She turned her right forearm towards Aran, showing the lower half of her arm and wrist. Her other arms was still tightly hugging her plushie.
"Go ahead, feel them," she invited.
Aran extended his hands and fumbled at the vixen's arm, but found nothing out of the ordinary.
"Should anything be off?"
Gina nodded. "Try harder."
The wolf let his fingertips search her arm, more slowly this time.
"I feel something like fine lines. Are those... scars?"
The vixen nodded again.
"But there's a whole lot of them! I didn't do that to you, did I?" Aran uttered with a strong tone of guilt.
"No, I did."
Aran sighed, relieved that he was not the cause of such injuries.
"Wait, you did that to yourself? Why?"
"When I was fourteen, I started cutting myself. Whenever I cut myself, it felt like the mental pain became physical. You might find it hard to believe, but after the bodily damage, it was as if it hurt less to be alive."
"That sounds really harsh. Did you do that a lot to yourself?"
"It took me over two months to do it again after the first time. Gradually, I began to do cut myself more often, though. That is, until I met Hiro."
"Who is that?"
"He was my boyfriend. We were both sixteen, and I was still having a hard time. I hadn't had any friends for years, which had rendered me withdrawn and isolated. Hiro was kind to me at first, but I had a hard time letting the Shiba Inu come close to me. It was as if a voice inside me said that I would get hurt again if I let people be my friends."
"You said it like that's exactly what happened."
The vixen closed her eyes and tightly hugged her plushie with both arms.
"Did I say something wrong?" Aran asked after a short while, breaking the somewhat uncomfortable silence.
"No, it's just that I don't like to think about Hiro anymore."
"Why not? He's your boyfriend, right?"
"_Was_my boyfriend. We eventually grew closer together, and started sharing secrets. About a year ago, I told him about my self-harm. He... he didn't believe me at first, and thought that he wasn't doing a good job as a boyfriend. I then told him that it wasn't because of him and that I really loved him. As we became more intimate, I cut myself less frequently, but I just couldn't resist it sometimes."
"Then why did he dump you?"
"Hiro didn't want a girlfriend that cuts herself. He said that if I really loved him, I wouldn't need to hurt myself."
"But it wasn't about him in the first place. Didn't he understand that?"
She shook her head.
"It wasn't a nice scene when he broke up with me. Actually, he didn't even break up, he just announced that we were through when I caught him with another dog. He had been seeing her for quite a while."
"Let me guess, he started dating the other girl as soon as he knew about your self-harm."
Gina nodded and tried to fight back her tears. The wolf wanted to comfort her by petting her back, but decided against doing so. After all, he did not know whether she would be okay with him touching her.
"He completely bullyragged me, saying that he never truly liked me, that it didn't matter when I gave him a lick and that I was the ugliest fox he'd ever seen."
"Did you believe that?"
"Hiro was my boyfriend, why would he lie?"
"But if what he said was true, he had lied to you all the time. I think he just told himself anything to explain away that he dumped you."
"He cheated on me as well..." she sobbed. "And he told me I was the only one the day before."
The vixen could no longer contain herself and cried. As if Aran was a big plushie, she let go of her own stuffed elephant and embraced the wolf instead. This seemingly instinctive act ruled out all doubt in Aran's mind. Gina needed someone to comfort her, and if she came to him, it meant that anyone would do. He touched her as gently as possible, petting her lower back and the back of her head. A few minutes later, she calmed down again.
"Thanks, Aran."
"For what?"
"Letting me cry. I kinda needed that."
"It's okay. I'm sorry to push you, but was that the end of your story?"
"No, unfortunately not. Being put aside by the only peer I had, I felt lonelier than ever."
"So you cut yourself?"
"Yush... and quite a lot, too. But no matter what I tried, it didn't help. I needed something stronger, but I was afraid that I'd kill myself if I'd cut deeper. And that's when it hit me."
"You realized that you needed help?"
She shook her head.
"I concluded that there was only one way to get rid of all my pain."
"You... no, tell me you didn't," Aran stammered.
"I did. I told myself that I wouldn't suffer anymore if I were dead, so I decided to take my own life. A few months ago, I went to the Basalt Barrage at Lake Novamen in the middle of the night. Jumping down from the dam would certainly kill me... I wasn't planning on having to work up the courage again, you know?"
Aran nodded.
"When I stood there, on top of the dam, I hesitated. It was a long distance down and I'm afraid of heights, so go figure."
"But you're still here. What happened?"