Chapter Text
He wanted to try living with her.
It’s a foolish desire, even more so to indulge in the thought like a pricey box of chocolates, craving more with the pleasure of every bite, every taste, more, more, more of that sweet heaven of a fanciful life. Hanako had no need for it, once upon a time, not then those who’d once bore a connection, however slight, to him have long since left this world, pulled under the veil of the shore to disperse and wander as aimless souls, no identity, no tether, fading into obscurity as their time as some greater apparition’s plaything comes to an end.
Tsukasa is the last souvenir of such a life, memory drenched in bloodstained waters too tainted in the thick syrup of sin for the river Lethe to bathe the both of them, wash away the gash of a life so distant it’s unfathomable yet forever chasing tail, stalking him in the shadows of peace. Not a moment left alone to dispel it. So no. Hanako had never felt any attachment for the land of the living, of little concern to him personally when interactions are all business. Customers are customers, quick, few and far between, transactions where the client’s wish becomes his to grant and the price his to name. They come and they go, fickle want after fickle want. That’s just the nature of the thing. And he never cared, never once grew attached to those involved.
That is, until her. Against all odds, one Yashiro Nene swings by Hanako’s toilet cubicle, a wish as shallow as any other, to be loved by a boy who never looked her way, never cared, so why —
— Why, when she’s one girl among many, why does she stick out like a sore thumb when faces had merged and blurred like one of no.4’s paintings had been watered down a touch too many. Why is she as crisp as an Autumn day, vivid and vibrant amongst a pastel world?
(Hanako didn’t care for her then. Didn’t, he swears it, but —)
Something draws him in. Something captivating. Completely fascinating. And Hanako doesn’t want to call it a crush because he is no.7 of the mysteries, their leader , and delusions of the thought are incomprehensible. So, no, he’s not swayed by her sugary sweet laugh or chubby cheeked pout like he’s barely made it past puberty. Out of the question.
It’s curiosity more than anything. Yes. Idle curiosity for the girl who calls herself Yashiro Nene.
( With her rekindles the need to want again. To beg and beg for what’s just over the horizon, so close yet so far out of reach. To try living. For her.
Maybe it’s selfish, a wish granting supernatural in desire of granting his own. But, as much as he’ll try and reason that it just happened, and was never his intention at all, that small part of his mind will always remind him that that’s exactly what this was. Chasing after a dream to call his own.
If Hanako left that bag of scales with the intention of them being in her full line of sight, where just about anyone could see them, that isn’t anyone’s secret but his own to tell.)
Hanako tells himself he never meant to grow this attached, but perhaps, just maybe, he wanted a role in her life from the very dawn of the beginning.
Perhaps he’s just begging for it.
With uncalloused hands Hanako holds her own doused in sparkling flecks of moonlight, a silver halo cast from the heavens above. Like curious young angels can’t help but peer a prying eye down through partings in the clouds, those swathes of cotton their cover when the only other witness would be the moon.
Yashiro’s beautiful, unfairly so, he thinks, and yes, he has always known. No new revelation there. But there’s something so mystifying here, a cosmic phenomenon in the peace of early night, where Yashiro is bestowed upon all the light of the first star, a guiding beacon towards the north. He would follow her to the ends of the Earth if this barrier let him, and this girl, this wonderful, wonderful girl has no idea how tightly she’s got him wound around her finger. All the strings are Yashiro’s to pull and he’s simply enamoured in her and her light. How the moon kisses her cheeks, flush with silver, he may as well be gazing at the North Star itself. For all he’s seen, up there, ever distant, she’s the one shining brightest. The one that’s fallen, plummeted from the heavens, stripped of her wishes, of her life lived in full.
( Like a star field, a galaxy, she will fade and flicker out, for stars are but a memory of the living, echos of light long lost to the eons of time.
And Yashiro is but a living memory. He knows how this will go, how it will play out. Not just anyone can see him, you see. Exorcists, and those bestowed with the next level of sight. But she is neither, nothing out of the ordinary.
It’s obvious from the very beginning.
The shore has set its sights on her. There’s dwarf stars burning themselves out in her gaze, looking forwards as she finds herself slowly moving a step closer towards the far shore everyday. Those ties are strong, suffocating, second by second, breath after breath. It’s only a matter of time. Of hours left ticking down on a clock face.
But —
It’s just not fair.
Hanako knows how cruel fate can be, twisting strings like it’s own personal plaything, again and again, fraying ends cut short in a single swift movement and the rest is history. He knows ‘not fair’ when it spells out the entirety of his life and consequential death to the letter.
Life loses, and death takes. The same game, same outcome, time and time after. He’s known this the whole time, aware of Yashiro’s nearing end, and yet, and yet —
When did he start to care?)
“We should stargaze again some other time. Please?” Yashiro’s so hopeful, glittering, sparkling with a bucket list of desires. So many wants, and yet so little time.
And she has no idea.
He’s lying through his teeth, but how can he, how in the world can Hanako say no when she’s gazing at him like that?
With her, the stars and the secrets they know, the pasts they carry, it all almost aches a little less.
Almost.
Hanako’s heart stopped beating long ago, yet somehow, beyond all logic, she tricks it into an erratic rhythm, a beat that goes and skips a few. Then it’s there again, badum, badumming away like he has any need for silly little things like oxygenated blood pumping around an incorporeal body. The real deal is six feet under, elsewhere, blanked in soil, festering as rotten flesh with little need to remain in contact with the bone. Out of service for quite some time now, decommissioned longer than it’s been running, it has nothing to keep alive. Not anymore.
Yet the very sight of her reaches out to something in him, latching on where it grows fonder.
It offers the breath’s pretence of what it’s like to feel alive . She has so much life to give with that vibrant soul of hers it hurts, like staring straight into a sun with the naked eye, and how he craves it so.
It’s a life that’s meant to burn out soon. Too soon, time on this plain waning flake by flake.
(He’s no intention of that fate coming to pass, won’t drag her down with him. Will fight tooth and nail for the future, because it’s her wish, his job, but he cares too. Far too much for his own good.
It’s decided. So long as fulfills his contact, she keeps on living, and her heart can keep on beating for the both of them.
Yashiro Nene will live.)
He wanted to try living with her, but that’s just indulging in the same fantasies Yashiro loves with her storybook heart and soul. It’s a dream, one reality’s boundaries leave no room to manoeuvre around.
An impossibility.
But that doesn’t mean she can’t live. Whilst his life has been and gone, a payment already taken, her’s shines brighter than ever before. To get this far is a miracle in itself, and one Hanako is satisfied enough with to be done.
Even if they must part ways from here on out.
With the added expansion to her life force, parting ways has unspokenly become an inevitable end to be reached sooner or later. They can’t be forever, not when this school will be but a distant memory of the past to her, him forever lurking here, Yashiro with a pair of crows feet, laughter lines for a life long lived in joy, and hair a starlit grey. She’ll be old and so, so beautiful just because she’s made it past the rules of fate governing otherwise, avoiding the bounty of the far shore with a claim on her soul to reap. She’ll be beautiful, stunning even, because she’s made it that far.
He’s of the past, and in her past he will remain. Never once will she look back because she won’t remember.
But it doesn’t matter. Hanako won’t forget. Magenta eyes and daikon legs, she’s not one to be easily discarded. Not with all she’s given him. All these hopes he’s revived in him, just for a short while, but long enough to carve herself into his death for lifetimes.
He’s no child. Hasn’t been for quite some time.
But there she was, picking up the childhood he’d been quick to shed and, with dainty hands, let him soar through the constellations of his dreams. Long enough to let him dare believe —
But it was a dream, nothing more. Just a childish fantasy to return to the shelf of forgotten toys to the child frozen in time. Rockets and model solar systems collect dust and cobwebs fit for the Halloween spirit, and now, another dream joins the collection.
And like those dreams predating it he, once more, will let it die.