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She’s always hated how much the cherry blossoms remind her of him.
They had been blooming the day he’d picked her up from the small clinic in her dirt poor town.
He’d claimed he needed her skills on the battlefield as he whisked her away from the village tainted with poverty and sickness to the front lines of a battlefield painted with blood.
He hadn’t been wrong. She had been valuable in creating his Immortal Regiment.
Men becoming immortal at the cost of their sanity: only a man like Mori, Ougai could ever think of something so twisted and sadistic.
Mori, Ougai: her ‘savior’, her jailer, and her savior once more.
‘Savior’ for pulling her out of her blissful life - ignorant and childish - into a world of misery and death. A world where men died at the hands of other men. Perhaps that was the true state of the world - she wasn’t sure - but she would love to go back to her beautiful state of ignorance.
Jailer for keeping her in the warzone - for making her heal men on the brink of insanity again and again and again until they could stand it no more. Death lost its meaning under her touch. She was an angel - an angel of insanity and madness. An angel for the darkness inside the hearts of men. The Angel of Death. The name that haunted her nightmares to this day. The name she could never truly escape, even the war was long over. Even though the man who had called her that was long dead.
Savior because he had led her true savior to her. After the war: when she had been locked up in a room. Well, she wasn’t sure if the door had been locked - she didn’t have the will to check. He’d come to collect her, come to make her his Angel of Death once more. But he’d brought a silver wolf with him. A silver wolf with no intention of letting her fall back to the darkness. Fukuzawa, Yukuchi - her true savoir.
He’d pulled her out - shown her the beauty of the light.
She’d never gone back, not even sparing it a glance.
Still - despite years spent away from Mori, there were still things that remind her of him.
Like the sound of gunshots and screaming.
Like the sight of blood hitting pale white floors. She’d gotten Fukuzawa to change the floors of the Agency infirmary from a pale white to a darkish green instead, so that the blood would not startle her as much.
Like the smell of antiseptic. She’d had to get over that one - forced herself to be around it long enough that it didn’t bother her anymore.
Thankfully - most of these things were avoidable in the Armed Detective Agency.
Only one thing continued to haunt her.
Cherry Blossoms.
They bloomed every spring - it wasn’t something she could exactly avoid - but every time she saw the faint sakura petals float through the early April air, she would tense up and run back to her apartment.
She would run faster than she thought possible, eyes tightly squeezed shut until she entered the safe walls of her tenth story apartment.
Tenth story because it was closest to the sky she never got to see when she lived in the underground bunker.
Tenth story because the wind did not bring the cherry blossoms up that high.
Just as a precaution, she would draw the blinds tightly shut - obscuring all light. Then, she would just spend hours just staring at the golden butterfly pin that the soldier had given her.
She didn’t even remember his name - that soldier whom she had led to suicide. He had been the first and last one to call her an angel. The first time as a term of endearment, the second was a bitter blow to her and her ability.
Thou Shall Not Die : The Promise of immortality at the simple cost of your sanity.
It made her sick, sometimes. Sick to know how many lives she had destroyed with this cruel ability of hers.
Her mind continued to spiral as she stood at the Agency window, watching the cherry blossom petals float around in the gentle spring wind. She hadn’t realized that the sakura tree had bloomed early this year.
“Yosano! Someone needs your help!”
She blinked, turning to head back to the infirmary with a faint smile
That’s right - her ability was no longer something evil: she was no longer an Angel of Death.
She was the Angel of the Armed Detective Agency now, and she would not have it any other way.