Work Text:
The last time I felt alive was a long time ago. And today is very much the same.
I didn’t know how I could end up in this tight darkroom painted in black. There is only one giant window to its side, along with a wooden door. If these walls could talk, they would scream nothing but silence. The room would only amplify the harrowing atmosphere with just two wooden chairs in the room. I sat on the one side, and… a boy sat on the other side.
I immediately resorted myself back to reality as I rubbed my eyes, “I’m sorry, Kazuha. I was lost in thoughts.”
The boy smiled, a tender one that calmed me down, “We were just talking.”
I composed myself, fixed my posture, and straighten my back, “What were we talking about?”
“You telling me about a dream.”
It struck my mind like a cold arrow. “Yes… That one.” It haunts me back, very much. “I dreamt… that I was in a forest engulfed in the fire. With…” I took a deep breath, “…you. And the others. We tried our best to stop it, but everything seemed ominous. It won’t die down, and it felt like rain, but it never pours.”
Kazuha frowned, and then she asked, “Were you with us. Yoimiya?”
My throat felt dry. I couldn’t answer correctly. “No,” I said. “You… left me behind.” I felt tears coming out, but I tried to stop them. “The fire kept rising, all around me. I needed help, but the ground gave away, and I couldn’t feel anything after that….”
When I peeked at him, his brows pulled in and he looked downward. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, trying to comprehend what he was thinking.
“Kazuha, what does this dream mean?”
He smiled. He just… smiled? That cunning bastard. He then said, “Dream doesn’t mean anything, Yoimiya. It’s your memories that were just playing tricks on you. They’re just noise, not a real thing.”
I don’t understand him at all… But is it really mean nothing? Surely it means something. And what is real if I’m already dead?
I have lived years in this room. He came only a handful of days and said that I had died for several years now. I can’t move on to the afterlife because I… missed the deadline? Does that mean I live in a loop?
I don’t feel that my memories are lost. All I can remember is that I woke up in this dark room, and there I saw him, telling me that he knew me and he would do whatever it takes to make me remember the memories I cherished. An everlasting memory. as it marked with tattoos in my arm.
Memories that he tried so hard to bring it back. It feels like a whirlwind inside my head. And I’m in my own natural disaster beneath my skin.
“That answer doesn’t seem to satisfy you.”
I blinked several times, not realizing that Kazuha was waiting for my response. I felt that he was hiding something. So that I could find the answer on my own. But why? He said he wanted to help me. Why kept the details out? What if that dream becomes a reality that I live before my demise?
And then I just looked at his dazzling, slightly crimson iris and remarked, “Because it’s not completely honest.”
“You were saying I lost my memory because of my death, yet you tell me that dream is a trick from my memory.” I don’t stand this bullshit… I asked him again, “So tell me, Kazuha — the one that claimed that he was my lover in the life before this — are you really going to help me with my predicament…” Not again, not the tears I felt in my eyes, “…or are you going to leave me again and come back years later?”
I quickly wiped away my tears to see his teary eyes. He also feels the same as I do. I knew that. Maybe I’m too stubborn to cooperate. Maybe I’m too asking too many questions that took a toll on him. But it’s crazy that he can stand me in my condition like this… He’s the only lovable soul that I could interact to.
With a flat, monotonous voice, he dropped his shoulders and said, “This is the very question that plagued my mind. This question has driven me with guilt… ever since I failed to save you from the loop. The very fact that I still can’t accept: I can’t help you.”
He stood up and asked, “Yoimiya, do you know about the butterfly effect?”
I didn’t know anything about that, so I shook my head.
Then he circled the room. He talked to me in his tender voice, “For years, I have tried to do everything. Patiently standing by your side every week, recollect every bit of your memory, hoping you to achieve equilibrium. Time runs differently for both of us… One day for me means one year for you. And within those times, we tried to break the loop — every week.”
“You always remembered every bit of memories, from the day you were born to the day you die. We thought you would go to heaven, but then you still appeared. Lingering in this world like a leech that wouldn’t let go, again and again.”
“So then we decided to plant a seed. Planting with one simple idea that made you remember and carried in every single loop. An idea: of the very reason that made you can’t move on.”
“A seed, or a flap of wind. The smallest flap of the wing that came from a butterfly could turn into hurricanes on the other side of the earth. The butterfly effect, the very concept that we plant as an idea inside your head.”
Kazuha then sat on the opposite chair again and looked at me directly, “An idea: about your dream.”
I blinked several times, “My dream… about the forest fire?”
He nodded, “The rain that never pours.”
“Then why do you say it doesn’t mean anything? When it is the very idea that you- we planted in the beginning?”
He went silent. I thought there was a glimmering of hope for a while, yet he was giving me an ambiguous response again. He then said with a voice that almost broke him, “Because I’m scared if your memory will lead you to the right place, or are we just going to repeat this all over again.”
With that in mind, I quickly recalled the dream again. If that’s the final straw, the only way to get me out of this hell, then I would find the center of it all.
“I- Okay… I was in a forest fire. And you left me behind…”
“Yoimiya, I didn’t leave you behind.”
What did he say?
“…What did you say?”
He only stared at me, with no words whatsoever. “Kazuha… I need you to help me.”
“The rain that never pours. Buried under dirt, a diamond in the mud.
Infinity is waiting there because nobody can burn a glass.”
A diamond… in the mud? What is with that?
“I didn’t understand that… Kazuha.”
“I didn’t leave you behind. I came for you.”
I cried harder than before. “Kazuha, please… You have to help me.”
“I can’t help you, Yoimiya.”
“There’s nowhere that’s safe….”
Burning sensation all around me. I feel the heat rising; it blurs my vision. There's nothing but cold in this dark room, yet I feel the scorching flame engulfing the whole room.
I can’t stand this anymore… I don’t know how long I could withstand this. I just want it all to disappear. I closed my eyes and ducked under, hoping that this would all go away.
Help me…
Help..
…
..
.
And then, I feel his hand on my cheek.
I opened my eyes to see his smile again.
“Remember?”
There it was, his voice, a silvery voice that I remembered him of my love. The love of my life, the one that helped me in Inazuma… It’s him.
But what I remembered was a different voice. A slightly guttural voice, like he was about to cough in blood.
He then removed his hand from my cheek, and then with a more serious face. He asked, “I can’t help you, Yoimiya. Why is that?”
It returns—the memory.
The fire that engulfed us. It’s not a fire but an extinguished one. Already filled with dead trees and plants, ashes rise to the ground, and I recalled…
“Because you’re dead.”
Lying in my arms, amongst the ashes.
“Because you’re just a memory…”
A memory that I built. The memory I recalled from the time we met when he tried to break the loop.
And then, the last thing I remembered. A bloody hand, my hand. With a cut of the bloody diamond that I held firmly in my right hand. The blood that came from…
From…
“Because I killed you.”
…
..
.
My body tremors. I remembered everything clearly now, the terror of that day when I killed him with my own hand.
And then when I looked over him, he wasn’t there. And the room was gone, replaced by the barren wasteland where he and I met our demise.
I screamed so loud. I would sacrifice everything just to return to that time and undo all of the things again, but I couldn’t. Crumpling and sinking to the ground, I hid my face from the world, not to let people see me from my own sin.
And then I feel my body fleeting away. So wispy as I feel rays of light illuminate my body.
I don’t know what this means. I don’t know if I would loop myself back and forget all of this, just to restart all over this again.
And then, I heard a voice coming from above. A similar voice that has been haunting me and keeping me company… All this time.
He said, “Hello, Yoimiya….”
“…don’t turn your back on paradise.”