The Final

By Insomniac Owl

Naruto hadn’t wanted to watch the film at all, but in the end he was drawn to it, as people are drawn to a car wreck or a newscast of a murder. There was that same magnetism about it, that terrible pull that draws people to horror movies and rape scenes. It was not so much curiosity as an attraction to violence - a violence made all the more terrible because of the subject.

In the first segment Sasuke has set the video camera on the edge of the shelf, angled so that the lower half of his body was cut off. He is perched on the edge of his bed, his orderly room making up the background (all dusted and polished, and just like Sasuke). He keeps touching his hair. Nerves, Naruto supposed.

“I should probably leave more of an explanation,” Sasuke says, “but to be honest, I don’t quite understand things myself. It’s gotten to be too much, I guess, all the stresses and the pressures, and I can’t see that it’s worth much to stick around here anymore.

“Am I afraid? Not really. I mean… he runs a hand slowly through his hair not really. I’ve come close enough that I know more or less what it’s like, so it’s just what comes after that I’m unsure about. And I’m not afraid of that. But, um….”

The film stops here, and there is a moment of darkness before it returns, this time from the countertop in Sasuke’s bathroom. It is an entirely different atmosphere. Sasuke does not speak here, does not even show his face, and if Naruto hadn’t recognized the bathroom he might have been able to convince himself that this wasn’t Sasuke at all, but a stand-in. He could just see the back of Sasuke’s head in the mirror, a complex series of reflections Sasuke probably hadn’t intended, and which was all the more disturbing because of it.

There is mostly sound in this segment - which makes up the entire rest of the film - as well as the occasional glimpse of Sasuke’s head in the mirror. Naruto watched him for a while before Sasuke ducked out of view, and then Naruto could hear the water going, splashing into the bathtub that Sasuke plugged up in the first few seconds of tape.

Sasuke sits on the edge of the bathtub while the water runs, one toe in the camera’s field of view. He swings it every now and then, creating a rhythmic scraping noise against the porcelain. He goes to shut the water off and his foot slides out of view, and that is the last of Sasuke anyone sees. He must have had all his things set out beforehand, because he doesn’t need to go back to the sink.

The water ripples at the far end.

Sasuke picks something up, the object scraping lightly against the porcelain, and then (if one listens closely) one can hear a tiny hiss of breath. This is where Sasuke cuts his wrists, one after the other right down the vertical vein.

At that point, Naruto was hard pressed to keep himself silent. His shoulders had begun to heave, the movement spreading until his entire body trembled and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He buried his face in his hands, but by then there was nothing left to protect himself from.

All that was left on the screen was a mirror and a very clean bathroom.

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