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No one dies from a hole, no one can. And yet why have I been drowning in one? A hole of regrets, deeply buried. In the window to my left, in daylight, I am unable to open my eyes in the bright morning sun.
The sun burns my eyes every time I wake up, I wrap myself in my place and try to sleep again, to return to that world that feels tangible, where everything is beautiful and calm. That place where I can be myself. Where days go by differently and I've had more than a hundred different lives with her. I've seen her in over fifty different wedding dresses, with over forty different hairstyles, wearing over thirty different engagement rings and living the same life together.
In my dreams, Yashiro sleeps peacefully in our bed and around us there are only stars. I sing her favorite song as I run my fingers through her hair and then I close my eyes. The stars of the sky descend and lie on her lashes, I wonder why she cries if we are being so happy but she doesn't seem to be able to say it. With her eyes closed, she purses her lips and tears flow from her face.
Her eyes tell me I don't understand, and maybe it's true, I can't understand it. This life that we live is not ours, perhaps she feels that it’s separating me from the life that waits outside, the life that no longer has her.
When the day ends, I return to the dark. In the cold of the night, with my head in the window, I look at the moon and think to myself: Today I want to see you again. I want to meet her again, I want to do it all over again, but I am full of fear. Even when she knew her life was ending, she seemed to fight for her happiness until the last days. Smiling broadly, a smile that shone like the moon.
Can’t be changed. Can’t be different. I had seen that day a thousand times. It happened in my nightmares and I cried until I felt I was drowning. I asked the Moon every night after that day to give you the life I lost and I felt small and insignificant in her light. I felt she was laughing, that she saw inside me and said to me: How can a boy like you make such a wish to me? Do you know what you've done? You know it, you know it. How can you be such a shameless kid to implore me such a wish?
I know, more than anyone, I know. I know that I hate myself to the bone and that my soul will one day fade away like that. I know I will hate myself as long as I remember my own name, but I don't want to forget hers. Don't make me forget her name when I pay for my sins. Even if I’m crying, please, Moon, don’t make me forget her name. I want to remember it forever and record it in my memories. I want to know if in our next life I can meet her.
I want to know if she hates me.
Yashiro… Will you hate me for making that wish? Will you hate me deeply for doing what I did?
I try to tell myself on some nights when the pain is unbearable: “there is no way you could have known. How could you know? You were a child, you were full of dreams.” I say those words to myself because they are the same words she said to me.
"This is why humans and supernaturals cannot be together." No. 1's voice tells me. "Wouldn't it have been better for her to never know? Doesn't it make you feel ashamed knowing what you've done?”
"It is not a crime to be in love." Answer the voice of that girl dressed as miko. The same one that gave her the idea that this would work, that we were fine. "There is nothing we can do about it. You can't wrap your feelings and throw them in the trash.”
No it can’t be helped. They become deeper and more intense. They feel like needles in my throat, like crystals in my empty stomach. If we could get rid of everything we felt, I would have dumped my love for her long ago. Maybe if I had, I would have thought of a better solution with a clearer head. Maybe I could have saved her.
"Tsuchigomori-sensei said he has seen the future change once." I remember hearing from her, in a whispering voice that spoke to me as if she was afraid. "That there was a person who did it."
When her scarlet eyes open, she is looking at me as if asking for permission to continue. She looks at me and destroys me because she knows that I am not what I appear. That I am in pieces and deep down, I am a child. With her hands she holds onto me as if she could hold onto her life. With the salt between her eyes, I was unable to tell her the truth.
“I did it once, I will do it again. I'm going to save you, Yashiro.”
And she cries, as she cries in my dreams. She cries so much that it hurts, so loud and so close that I can't do it. I swallow the tears and make the same promise over and over again. I repeat it to believe it myself. To make me believe I can really do it, but when the day is over, I'm all alone on the cold bathroom floor. There is no more life at school and I’m completely unprotected from my own thoughts.
"You can't do it. You can’t do it. You can’t save the person you love. You can't, you can't. Why are you lying to her like that? Why do you tell her that everything will be fine when the future in her book doesn’t change? Liar, ugly liar. You lie to the person you love.”
These arms holding me now are mine. The tears that are now overflowing and feel so cold, are they mine too? Am I crying out of shame or crying out knowing I can't do anything for her?
Ah, even now. These shameful tears are also seen by the Moon. She has seen me cry for over fifty years, tied to this cycle where I’m waiting winters to pass.
"You can't see what I see." I heard Yashiro say that day when she decided she wanted to stay the night. After tracing my jawline, she rested her warm hands on my face. With her fingertips, she touched my lips and leaned down.
I felt myself falling apart with her kiss.
It must have been terrible. I wouldn't have wanted it to be like this. The next time my brother asks me, what do kisses taste like? I will answer that they taste bitter and salty. Those are the most horrible things because they make you feel small, the ground disappears and the air becomes thin. That her kiss accelerated my heart even if it’s dead, the warmth returns to the cheeks of a body that has been dead for five decades.
I hate remembering those kisses because they make me miss her like I've never missed anything.
No one dies from a hole, but my brother died at my hands with one. No one dies from a hole, but they buried my body in one and hers too. Our bodies lay cold beneath the earth and above the stars.
The boy told me that Yashiro’s funeral was beautiful. They surrounded her with flowers and her face looked gentle. He said she didn't seem to be suffering, that there was a smile on her face. Her hands were holding each other together as if she was making a wish. Tell me, Yashiro. Were they your favorite flowers? Did they decorate you with lots of colorful flowers? Did they choose red flowers that would make your lips shine?
The boy said they also put makeup on her and dressed her like a princess.
He said they dressed her in white.
"Why did you do that?" I asked her when she moved away from my face. With nervous hands, her eyes were crystallized. I called myself a jerk for saying that.
"Sorry." She apologizes, first smiling and then crying. "Sorry, Hanako-kun. I’m so sorry. I didn't want… I didn't… I don't want to live with regrets. ”
With the sleeves of my shirt, I picked up each of the tears that shed that night. I squeezed her body to mine as if I wanted to melt in it. We repeat that same embarrassing kiss, I don't know how many times. I stopped counting them after thirty because I couldn't know where my lips ended and her began. And then, we kept it secret.
“You are a horrible person. You don't deserve this.” The sound of my own voice repeats it, every time I take her hands or cover myself with her arms. “You are a despicable boy. You are empty inside, you know that.” But Yashiro's voice is louder and I just want to hear her.
"Let's make a promise, Hanako-kun.”
In the darkness that covered our bodies, I heard her voice in the middle of the night as if it were a whisper of the wind. Approaching me, holding my hands, she moved closer to my ear as if she wanted to tell me a secret.
“If we were to be born again, let us live this same life. Let's repeat the same mistakes so we can meet again.”
I was supposed to be the one giving her a ring. I wasn’t supposed to be the one covered in tears. With the ribbon holding her braided hair, she tied the red thread to my finger. In the moonlight, she whispered her promise in my ear while pretending to tie that same thread to hers.
"Make sure you tie it tight." my mouth says as she smiles and our laughter is embarrassing. "We don't want it to fall apart."
It’s the same familiar sight, but it feels so sad. Even now, if I keep myself quiet, in the silence of the night I can still hear that voice of hers so gentle like that night.
How I remember clearly our last days as if they were reflected in a mirror.
“Can those mermaid scales really keep us together?" Yashiro asked in a voice that mingled with the wind.
I have the strange feeling that there are things I wish I didn't know the answer.
"Why aren't you more honest like this?" Yashiro laughs when I tell her I promise the same. I pretend I'm upset because I don't want to tell her “It must be because I'm scared."
With my hands on her lips I try to silence her answer when she wants to tell me the same thing. My heart withers because I know I shouldn't hear them, I know that if I hear those words from her mouth it will be more difficult.
“I wish to meet you again”. Yashiro manages to say, even with my hands covering her lips. “And again, and again, and again…”
"I'm in love with you" I said to her, but only my heart could hear it. “And I think I'll be in love with you always.”
Our last days were the happiest. Tsuchigomori-sensei advised me to allow myself to forget it and so I did. We did all the things that even when I was alive I didn't. Like watching a movie and pretend to fall asleep on her shoulders, growing vegetables and baking donuts. In my memories she looks like a star, so fragile and tiny. So far away from my touch.
“You will forget about me eventually, aren’t you?” she asked me, in our last week together. “Surely you can find another assistant. With pretty legs and everything.”
“I think I’m done with human assistants. They’re so noisy and clueless!”
I think she is going to be mad at me for my silly joke but instead, she wraps her arms around my body as if she knows the end is near too.
“Please, don’t forget about me.”
With her face buried in my chest, I want to have hands like feathers and hold her softly forever. I want to hear her heartbeat for the rest of this afterlife. I want to know how tearless kisses taste. I want to know why we cry whenever we kiss.
“You know that what happened is not your fault and you know you can talk to me if you want.” the boy says after she’s gone.
“What if... my wish to meet her again shortened her life?” I want to say, but my lips are sealed.
“She wouldn’t like you being like this. Almost sleeping all the time, not wanting to see anyone. I know you need your space but... Look. I know how you feel. I miss her too.”
No. You don’t. No one can know how I feel. I knew that those days were meant to end but I wasn’t ready for it. I knew I shouldn’t love her like I did. I should have tied my heart tighter, but I couldn’t. I was a hopeless boy in love. I couldn’t help but melt into her kisses. I couldn’t help but long for her love for days and days.
No one can know that, I can't let anyone know that. How am I supposed to feel like after losing the only person I have ever loved in my own hands?
"What are you saying, boy? I'm alright." I said, unable to meet his gaze. “We did everything we could for her, didn't we? She was destined to die, we already knew that. There was no way we could avoid it. ”
I feel his fist on my face when I said that and then, his arms around me and I know he's crying too.
"You don't have to hold this. You don’t have to hide it and suffer alone.” the boy says to me and I remember the same words from Yashiro. "I know you still wear that red thing she gave you."
I tried my best to hide it. I promise you, Yashiro. I tried my best but I couldn't. How could I lie saying that I don't love you? To deny my feelings would be to deny that you existed in this world and we met. That you gave me the most precious days I could ever have and that this, this was our story. When you lived, we were both happy and we dreamed of the future. We dreamed of a world that could hold us, a promise that could tie us together and a curse that could bound us in life and death.
I don't remember the boy's last days anymore and this bathroom also turned gray. I no longer remember how many years have passed since our last day together, but I know I'm running out of time too I have dreams more often.
Right now, that voice tells me it has been enough for me.
I have looked at the Moon so much throughout my entire life that I have begun to think that you live there. Are you waiting for me in the stars, Yashiro? Are you waiting for me to be born again?
I hear Nene’s voice again now. Her last words she said to me, with her sleepy eyes and her gentle face while she’s holding me.
“Hanako-kun, forgive me. I’m sorry I couldn’t be with you at the end. Please, live the rest of this time to the fullest and then, come to me. When your time comes, come here with me. We will be together like the stars in the sky.”
No one dies from a hole, but I’m dying with one. I’m fading, melting in my regrets and so... Nene. Yashiro Nene. I want to tell you this now because I’m feeling sleepy:
If I disappear in my deepest regrets before I reach you, please, know that I meant to love you till I did.
Please know that I’m a liar. Back then, I wanted to say: I really think our time was worth it.
I didn’t forget about you once and this thread in our hands never fell apart so I’m sure there will come a time when we will meet again.
Ah, is this? Yes. I’m feeling it again. This warmth must be you, isn’t it? Yeah... I knew you were going to be my last thought.
I knew all this time that you were the Moon.