Work Text:
Dear Otonashi Ryoko,
You are dead.
You should have expected this. After all, it was you who planned out this whole thing, right down to the final confrontation. Then again, you might have been surprised. Your memory was never very good. This is why you have this journal, with all the diagrams and backstory and memento space a girl with no ability to retain information could ever want. But you don’t need it anymore. You got what you came for then you got out. So it’s my job to clean up all the messes you made.
I thought the drawing was very nice. Personal. Touching. And I understand why she screamed at me when I grabbed the notebooks as I went to clean up the mess in the old school building. She’s been looking at them nonstop, leafing through the pages, smudging the graphite and ink with saltwater. She has to have them memorized by now. I only got my hands on them when she passed out, hours after she got back to our room. Her head’s wrapped in foil and I should really be getting back to wake her up and rinse out the bleach but I know how to fix over-processing. You sobbed the whole time I rinsed out the old dye, and she cried again as I put it back in. At least she didn’t fall asleep with her contacts in this time.
A part of me feels like I’m disobeying direct orders. These were really important to her, the last vestiges of the boy she loved, and she’d live with the guilt that she was responsible for what happened to him. But then, why did she shove them at me as her head hit the desk and your scarlet red eyes grew vacant, and then fluttered shut? It’s like she’s begging me to do it.
I think it’s not what everyone would have wanted for him. Especially him. His body, unrecognizable, a brutalized carcass. His theses, a decade of constant study and work, forgotten. He’d live in the mind of a fickle girl with a memory riddled with holes, at least not good at remembering how he wanted. And you both really cared about him. Seeing his worst nightmare come true sent you both into such despair. And watching you and her react dragged me with you. I’m tearing up just thinking about it. I don’t think I’m really disobeying her. So I’m going to burn these, right after I’m done writing this letter.
Maybe it’s my fault you died. If I hadn’t stuck to the backup plan and rushed ahead, you’d still be here. He taught me some things, it wouldn’t be anything like he could do, steady hands and finesse and years of experience but it’d be better than nothing. Maybe we’d have a real chance at being sisters again, like before I left and I hurt you. But she’s always a step ahead of everyone. You know I could never outsmart her. And you know I could never find it in me to betray her.
The incinerator by the old building has become somewhat of a hideaway for me. There’s something beautiful about fire. The way it devours, uncontrolled, even though we think we’ve domesticated it. Fire was never an animal. It’s unpredictable, liable to snap at a moment’s notice. It’s hungry. It kinda reminds me of her, and that makes me think of you. Whenever we’d make a cake for Matsuda-kun’s birthday after he moved in with us and mother and stepdad, and the way that your eyes would light up when the candles were lit, and then you’d lean in further and further towards the flame as if it were pulling you into a trance until you blew his candles out or he slammed your face into the frosting. And then we’d laugh and laugh. Even if Matsuda-kun yelled at us about his candles the first couple times.
I can’t remember the last time I laughed. Really laughed.
I’m sorry for making this about me. This is a letter for you. Hopefully Matsuda-kun is with you, wherever you are. I never did like him. He’s rude, controlling, wrong about a lot of things. Yet I never saw her more genuinely happy than when you were with him. That’s all I care about. I’ll never forget how you first looked at him when you woke up, like he was the only thing in the world. It made my stomach twist, and he called you a ditzy bitch, but it was so despairingly inspiring. No, really. You know I could never lie to her. Or you.
He never really liked me either. Maybe he blamed me for her. And he’s right. I’m responsible for why she’s like that. I never should have left in the first place. But she’s not bad. Everything she’s doing would’ve happened in due time anyways. We’re just speeding things along. And he was forcing some version of an ideal woman onto her, not really helping her like he thought. No one can domesticate fire. I remember when she was asleep, undergoing the wipe. He sat next to me on the edge of the bed and pressed a knife into my hand.
“Please,” he told me, a rare moment of sincerity. Maybe since he’d just finished the operation. “Do the right thing this time.” He stared at me sternly, trying to discern an ulterior motive, a secret plan. I nodded and took the knife from him. And I was never much of an actress but I was good enough to fool him.
What Matsuda-kun never could accept was that Ikusaba Mukuro died almost five years ago on a battlefield in Gaza. When she killed each Madarai it was Enoshima Junko wielding the blade. When she attacked the detective it was Enoshima Junko who threw the desk. When she kissed him she communicated everything, all the love and heartache that Enoshima Junko, no, you couldn’t. Our actions and our thoughts are Enoshima Junko’s actions and thoughts. Nobody knows Enoshima Junko as intimately as I do, because I am as much Enoshima Junko as you are, Otonashi Ryoko.
That’s why Matsuda-kun had to die. I’m watching the fire consume him now.
For once I realize why she loved him. Why you loved him.
Maybe we’ll all see each other again. We can build sandcastles and play games and whisper secrets and eat cake and laugh like we all used to, before he got hard, I left you, and you became her. But when I look back all I see are ruins, razed fields, and burnt bridges. Finality. We’re too far in now, there’s no way we can turn back. He’s never coming back. There’s no way for you to come back. I can’t go back.
I hope you’re satisfied. I know I am.
Sincerely,
Your sister