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Breath of fading life
Longing cry of vicious wounds
Silent emptiness
When he went to his friend Mona for help, he didn’t expect things to turn out like this. He was concerned about some nightmares he was having lately, he didn’t dare to imagine he would find the very same girl from his dreams in front of him. How many times had he screamed her name in pain? How many times had he seen her die in his arms?
“Ayaka.” He couldn’t stop the tears from falling. He felt the void in his chest filling till the verge of spilling, and nobody could convince him that that girl wasn’t her.
“Kazuha.” She was crying too. He took a step towards her, and when their hands came together he knew he wasn’t dreaming. There was only the two of them in the world in that moment, and their eyes conveyed all what their mouths couldn't.
Or so he thought.
He heard someone clearing their throat beside them and he suddenly remembered he was still at campus, surrounded by people. They both let out of their hands at a time and looked away, blushing furiously.
“I-I’m sorry…” he wiped away his tears, feeling embarrassed.
“It’s okay, we just want to find out what’s going on, you know?” Lumine was puzzled, her gaze going from one another. But Kazuha couldn’t possibly answer, as he didn’t know how to explain it at all. “Did you already know each other?”
“Not really…” Ayaka answered with hesitation in her voice.
“No in this life, is that right?” Mona intervened. “I was just talking with Kazuha about this, I didn’t expect you two to find each other so soon.”
“So they really…?”
“They seem to keep their memories from a past life, yeah” she said as calm as she was talking about the weather. “Oh my, Layla would love to hear about this.”
“Who?” Kazuha was finally starting to compose himself, though he couldn’t help but let his eyes wander now and then in Ayaka’s direction.
“She’s a colleague of mine, she seeks to learn about constellations bonded by fate.”
“The what?”
“You know, like soulmates? The red string of fate? Your other half? However you want to call it.”
“That’s sounds… unbelievable” Ayaka sounded skeptical, but she glanced at Kazuha once more. There was such conflict in her eyes, he felt conflicted as well.
What was even the meaning of all that? The only thing he knew for sure was that he couldn’t bare to be apart from her again. His hands itched, the warmth of her hands still lingered on his and he longed so bad to hold them once more.
“I’m sorry, Mona, I know you’re just trying to help but there’s a lot to process right now” he said, his head spinning.
“You’re right, Kazuha, let’s not rush into conclusions” Lumine’s soothing voice stepped in. She was looking the both of them with worried eyes, and she seemed as confused as they were by what was happening. “The mystical explanations can wait…”
“Mys-?” Mona bit her tongue to hold back her indignation. Lumine ignored her.
“…I think you need to sit down and talk this through first” she suggested. “Would you want us to leave the two of you alone?”
She was trying to help too. But as much as she was friend with both of them, he knew she wouldn’t want to force them into an uncomfortable situation. They were still technically strangers, after all. Kazuha and Ayaka exchanged another glance and nodded in silence. It was weird, at first they couldn’t tear their eyes apart from each other, and now they could barely hold their gaze. As Lumine and Mona said goodbye, he could feel his heart rising in his chest.
They took a sit on the bench behind them and remained silent for a while. What could they even say by now? Everything felt surreal. The park and the people around them seemed to vanish again and his mind wandered to another long lost memory.
“I had a dream” she was the first one to speak. She sounded calm, as if she was seeing the same thing he was. “I was sitting on a flower field under the sunlight, the spring breeze messing up with my hair… there was someone beside me.”
“I arranged your hair and made you a flower crown…” he smiled. “Then you laughed when I started playing music on a leaf.”
Ayaka laughed. The same beautiful sound he remembered reached his ears clearer than ever. Their eyes finally met again, and there were no painful memories this time.
“I stood up and started dancing” Ayaka continued, their fingers entwining over the bench. “But I spinned around so much that I lost balance and fell into your arms.”
“I held you tight…” Kazuha caressed her cheek softly, and she leaned into his touch. “…and then I kissed you…”
He paused, his eyes stopping at her lips for a moment. And then he leaned in to kiss her. Everything felt so right and perfect, and he could feel his heart rasing as she kissed him back. And he thought that even if he couldn’t understand what it meant that their souls were bonded, he didn’t want to ever let her go.