Protagonist! Please Stay Away from Me 2!-Chapter 16: Your Throat Will Be Crushed if You Don’t Finish Your Words

Chapter 16: Your Throat Will Be Crushed if You Don’t Finish Your Words

The city unfolds around me like a stage set for someone else’s play. Pavements gleam from the afternoon rain, and the crowd moves with a purpose I don’t share. Then again, there purpose is controlled by someone else.

A definite pattern.

That’s what these puppets follow.

I walk without aim, my steps light, my body slipping through their currents like a ghost no one bothered to believe in.

I had covered my face with a mask. The jacket on my body, protected me from unnecessary attraction.

Time loosens when I walk like this. Minutes feel like hours, hours like something thinner than a breath.

People stream past me, vivid and self-contained. I wanted to laugh at them.

A woman on the phone laughs too loudly, the sound cracking open the air for a second before it seals again. A child tugs at his mother’s sleeve with a desperation that suggests the end of the world is shaped like a plastic toy.

An old man scatters crumbs for pigeons, watching them with the concentration of someone who has finally found an audience that doesn’t interrupt.

I watch all of them with a strange, steady calm.

It isn’t dislike... anymore.

It’s distance. There is a pane of glass between me and everything else, invisible but unbreakable, and I press my gaze against it instead of my hands.

The honk of cars, the murmur of voices, the shrill whistle of a traffic cop reached me as if they are traveling underwater. Even the smell of roasted peanuts from a street cart and the faint sting of damp dust don’t quite make it all the way in. The world feels desaturated, as if someone has turned down its contrast and forgotten to turn it back up.

A man in a rumpled suit brushes past me, clutching a briefcase like it is the last remaining proof he matters to someone. His eyes carry a tired sort of hope, fragile but stubborn.

For a heartbeat I wonder what it would be like to care that much about a meeting, a promotion, a Tuesday afternoon. A normal life. Once, I think, I might have asked him the time just to open a crack between our separate worlds. Now my face stays neutral, my mouth trained into silence. I let him step back into the crowd, one more figure swallowed whole. But why should I interact with puppets?

Sometimes I think that being a puppet is much easier than being a real person.

At the square, a group of teenagers’ sprawls along the steps, loud and unafraid of echo. One girl has blue streaks in her hair, the colour catching the light like a small rebellion. Their laughter spills over the stone, careless and unedited. Something stirs in my chest, a faint tug, like the memory of being that certain and that alive. I turn away before it remembers how to hurt.

I keep moving. I am not invisible, exactly, but their eyes slide over me with the same vague awareness they give to lampposts and bus stops. The crowd parts around me by instinct. No one pauses. No one greets me. Still, sometimes I notice a fleeting hesitation after I pass, as if my silence disrupts the air for a second before the city closes over it. If I had removed my mask and jacket, they would have looked at me—talked to me.

When I stop at a shop window, I removed my mask.

My reflection looks like someone I met once and never saw again. I study the outline of my face, the way my eyes seem to be looking past the glass instead of at it. Behind my reflection, everything is moving—colours, shapes, people with shopping bags and hurried steps. For a moment, I feel as if I am watching myself from a balcony high above the street: a solitary figure drifting through a life already in progress.

Then the moment breaks. I lower my gaze, put on my mask. Stepping away from the glass, and fall back into motion. The sound of my footsteps disappears into the city’s hum, as if I was never here at all.

Puppets.

All of these are puppets, controlled by someone.

Why leave me?

Control me too.

Relieve me from this pain.

I take a turn toward a dark alley, where shadows pool like spilled ink between the buildings. The streetlight barely reaches here, casting jagged edges on the brick walls, and the air thickens with the smell of damp garbage and something sharper—fear.

Do I fear this?

No.

Up ahead, a group of men circles a teenage girl, their laughter rough and jagged like broken glass. She backs against the wall, her schoolbag clutched like a shield, her face pale under the faint glow from a distant neon sign.

One of them, broad-shouldered with a shaved head, steps too close, his voice slurring mockery as he tugs at her sleeve. "What’s a pretty little thing like you doing out here alone?" The others snort, closing in tighter, their postures predatory, hands gesturing too freely. She shakes her head, voice small but defiant— "Leave me alone"—yet it trembles, her eyes darting for escape that isn’t there. Her uniform is rumpled, skirt hiked from the scuffle, ponytail fraying like her nerve.

"Leave her alone," I hissed. They turned towards me.

"You are a woman, right? Then, why are you wearing a mask? Remove it." The shaved-head man gave me a scrutinizing look. "Remove it. Let us see your beauty."

A wave of disgust washed over me as I glared at him.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked him.

The shaved-head man laughed loudly. One of his friends snorted at me. "Lady, we love teasing women. If you are beautiful, we will tease you too," he said.

Everyone laughed at his words, except me and that girl.

"So, you think no one is controlling you?"

They stopped laughing, and looked at me with weird eyes. Another man stepped forward, hands clasped together. He said, "Control? No one controls us, Lady. We are the ones controlling ourselves... from fucking her." He pointed at the girl.

So, these people think no one is controlling them.

Then again, how pathetic is their controller?

I sneered, "Is that so? I don’t care who’s controlling you. But I am the one who will release you."

From life...

From control...

I turned towards the teenage girl. She had a scared look on her face as she turned towards me.

"Go. Get out from here," I said blankly. What I am going to now... is something that no little girl should see.

"But—"

"You should go. I will not repeat it again," I said.

"But these goons—"

"I will handle them."

The teenage girl looked at me with hesitation before nodding her head. Throwing me another grateful look, she ran away.

"You bitch—"

Before he could finish his words, I grabbed the shaved-head man’s throat and slammed him against the wall. "I dare you to complete your words," my eyes flashed dangerously, "I want to hear you complete your words. Or else, I will crush your throat."