Chapter Text
Blood.
Blood, and flowers.
Water, cold and still and strange like a half-forgotten memory.
Blood, flowers, and the scent of water, ever slipping out of reach, always just out of grasp.
A girl's perfume, bitter and strange, soft and sweet, a caress along the side of his cheek as light as a feather and black as night. Can a touch be black? Can a scent, a feeling?
Water surrounds, cold and strange and no longer still. The blood blossoms, like flowers in spring, like a diffusing scent that can't be escaped, tainting the stillness and warping the chill into something painful and yet painless. Breath and voice have become muted and dull, echoing through a great distance. Echoing.
Echoing.
Ah, that's it, isn't it?
He's dying.
Sinking into water, hands holding his arms as a voice speaks somewhere too far away, should he be sad? Should he be afraid? It's not a scent anymore, just the memory of what used to be, but he can smell blood and flowers. They're surrounding him, aren't they? Blossoming in the water, like the beginning of spring, like things breaking through the cold to be born again.
He's dying.
He's not afraid of it, and yet...
He doesn't want to die.
Hands hold his arms, caress his face, hands pull him up towards the surface and hands pull him down towards the roots. The water tastes like blood, tastes sweet like the scent of flowers in bloom, burns like sake after a vow.
God, his vows.
Did any of them survive?
Is he dying alone, or is he just going to rejoin his parade once more?
The voice is speaking, somewhere far above, somewhere far away, somewhere in the years he tried to leave behind. She's laughing. She's crying. She's whispering, maybe in prayer, maybe in command. Maybe making wishes.
What is she asking for?
Voices ask him to come back, call him.
He doesn't know how to tell them he can't, not anymore.
He's dying.
God, please, God, he doesn't want to die.
Not like this.
Not alone in the water, with only the quiet blood and the quiet cold to hold him. Not alone in the water, surrounded by the scent of spring flowers and the wishes of a woman who can't save him no matter how she tries. Not alone with hands pulling him up and dragging him down.
Not alone, without his parade.
Without his family.
He can't leave them behind.
Please, God, if you're listening, if you exist somewhere in this world.
He can't leave them behind.
Not like this.
Not
like
this
In the distance, he can smell yamabuki roses on the breeze.
And Rikuo
opens
his eyes
again.