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Yukari’s legs ached as she made her final ascent up the stairs of her new apartment building, a hefty cardboard box in hand.
“Why did I have to get a unit on the sixth floor?” She thought to herself as she climbed the final few steps and turned the corner into her hallway.
At last, the door to Yukari’s new home was in front of her and she eagerly crossed through the open threshold to drop the box she was holding on the floor.
“Ugh. Finally.” She sighed aloud as she practically threw herself on to the couch pressed against the left wall.
It was a tiny, one bedroom apartment– well, really a one room apartment as the only part sectioned off was the bathroom. The unit consisted of one room with a currently bare bed frame and a kitchenette off to the right side; the only interior door, on the left side of the room, led to the tiny bathroom with a shower barely big enough to take more than one step inside. Still, despite the meager size of her new living arrangement, Yukari was happy to have been able to even afford her own apartment at all. Everyone she knew at university was still either living in the campus dorms or in apartments with two or three other people– but not Yukari, she had somehow managed to save up enough money from her miscellaneous modeling gigs to get her own place.
Exhausted from the two hours she spent hauling boxes up six flights of stairs, Yukari took her time to rest where she was sitting. She knew she would at least have to unpack her mattress and sheets if she wanted to sleep comfortably that night, but what were a few moments to recuperate? Her rest was short lived however as she soon noticed a suffocating heat in the room.
“Why is it so hot in here?” She wondered from her seat on the tiny couch.
Yukari sprang up to her feet, suddenly realizing the source of her discomfort– the window was shut, on this painfully hot and humid July day. Yukari made her way across the small room over to the closed window and attempted to hoist it up. She had zero luck however, the hinge at the bottom seemed to be completely rusted over.
“Dammit!” She practically shouted as she instinctively kicked the nearest box.
Realizing she might have seriously damaged something fragile, she quickly bent down to inspect the victim of her frustration. It was a smaller cardboard box, at least compared to the others in her apartment, and had nothing other than “2009” written in marker on one of the sides. That was interesting. She had purposefully labeled each box with what they contained, not with any dates or other identifiers. So why was this one box marked with only a year? And a very particular year at that: the year the entire course of her life changed, her second year of high school.
At the sight of the peculiar date on the box, Yukari’s mind wandered back to that time in her life. To say it was eventful would be an understatement. It had been a school year filled with danger, crippling fear and profound loss. Loss. She remembered that feeling well. In her mind’s eye she could still conjure up the face of that boy with his indigo hair and blank expression. She had seen him smile though too; it didn’t happen often, but she eventually found ways to coax it out.
Suddenly, Yukari found herself smiling too. It had been a painful year, but it was also the year she found a group of people that could just as easily take that pain away. Even though she remembered the terror filled nights spent wandering around Tartarus, she also remembered the nights spent talking and laughing with everyone in the common room of the dorm. She remembered also the days spent with that boy, Minato. The walks home from school that slowly turned into trips to the mall, and then, eventually into dates to the movie theater or the flower shop to pick out her favorite pink daisies.
She glanced at the box again, sitting on the floor in front of her. She hesitated to open it at first, but the image of that boy popped into her mind again and she knew she had to see what was inside.
Yukari grabbed the box opener she had left sitting atop the window sill and moved the cardboard box into her lap as she sat down on the floor. She waited for a moment, letting out a sigh, before bringing the blade of the box opener to the tape sealing this mysterious box shut. Inside, was a layer of bubble wrap and then a photo frame turned upside down. She gingerly picked up the frame to inspect it and saw her own, younger, face looking back at her.
It was the photo S.E.E.S. had taken just before leaving the dorm to head to Mitsuru and Akihiko’s graduation. They had all packed up their belongings beforehand and weren’t planning on returning to the dorm after the ceremony. As such, they all decided to take one last group photo before the third years graduated.
Yukari scanned the faces in the photo– they were all smiling, both with their mouths and their eyes. Everyone was truly happy in the moment that photo was taken. It was then that her eyes shifted over to where Minato stood in the photo. He smiled too, but his eyes did not seem to agree with the rest of his face; they were dull and hollow, where life should have been, there was only a cold stare at the camera.
A wave of cold sorrow washed over Yukari’s body at the sight of his empty expression. At the time, she had had no way of knowing what was really going on or what was about to happen. It was only hours later that the happiness she had known in that photo was swiftly snatched from her.
Not wanting to dwell on that photo any longer, Yukari set it down beside her and turned her attention to the rest of the box’s contents. Underneath where the frame had been, she pulled out a piece of parchment paper folded over something long and flat. As she brought it towards her, a single faded pink petal fell into her lap. She opened the paper to reveal a perfectly preserved gerbera daisy that had a sweet and inviting fragrance still lingering on its dried petals.
The scent of the flower brought Yukari back to a particular day in late summer. She had started her walk home from school with Minato as usual but had asked him to make a detour with her; she remembered that she had wanted to buy some fresh flowers for her dorm room, and so they walked to the flower stall near the train station. She had felt kind of bad for making him go with her but she didn’t want to forget about the flowers before she could enjoy their presence on her window sill. Minato stood near the front of the small shop while she looked around, searching for her favorite flowers. She couldn’t find them however and had just about given up looking when she heard a voice from behind her,
“Are these the ones?” Minato asked, holding up a bouquet of flowers to her. Yukari quickly turned on her heels to see what flowers he was holding– gerbera daisies. He had found exactly what she was looking for.
“How did you know which ones I wanted?” Yukari asked, “I don’t think I’ve ever told you what my favorite flower is.”
“Well, I realized you had looked everywhere in the shop, except for where I was standing,” Minato answered very matter of factly, “All there was around me were daisies, and well, I figured you were probably looking for the pink ones since, well, y’know, it’s kind of your color.”
Yukari took the flowers he was holding out to her and gazed at them, suddenly appreciating them a lot more than she would have if she found them herself.
“Thank you.” Yukari replied, with a sweet smile. Minato smiled back and she felt a strange feeling in her chest, almost like wings flapping against the wind or leaves fluttering to the ground.
Even to this day, Yukari remembered that sensation so well– it was the first time she had felt that way about Minato.
She folded the daisy back into its sheet of paper and set it on the ground next to the photo frame, now eager to see what else the box had to offer. From it, Yukari pulled a stack of photos tied together by a piece of twine; they were the kind you got from those photo booths found at malls and the like. There were easily a couple dozen and they all had a stamp at the bottom from Paulownia Mall. Nearly every photo had only two people in it: herself and, Minato.
Yukari flipped through each one, relishing the smiles on their faces. Unlike the photo in the frame, Minato looked truly happy in these. His face was full of life and his eyes shone with vitality. She felt her heart flutter again when she got to the last photo in the stack– this one had her and Minato smiling together as usual in the top photo, then her planting a kiss on Minato’s cheek in the second, but the last photo showed him leaning over to kiss her, a shocked expression on Yukari’s face. She remembered that day well too, it was the first time they had actually kissed.
Yukari felt a tear roll down her cheek, she hadn’t even realized she was crying until now; at the same time however, she also felt her lips stretching into a smile. It was bittersweet looking back at these mementos. She had been so happy with him, no one in her life had ever made her feel the way he did. But she had to lament that it ended so soon, that they had such little time together. That she didn’t even get to have the honor of being with him in his final moments. Yukari no longer held resentment or envy in her heart for Aigis; but, still, her absence as Minato took his last breath stung deeply.
As another tear rolled down Yukari’s cheek, she gathered up the photos and tied them back together with twine, setting them down in the ever growing pile next to her.
She could see only one more item in the box, and this one was even more elusive to her. It was a CD in a blank, clear case. Written in marker on its surface was, “For Yukari.”
The back of the case had a piece of lined paper taped to it with words scrawled on its surface; but it seems the case had gotten water on it at some point as the ink was completely blotted out and illegible. Yukari frowned to herself, she remembered Minato giving it to her but she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, remember what songs he had burned on to it.
Intrigued to know what was on the CD, Yukari walked over to the box labeled “Music” and tore the tape open. She rummaged through the contents of the box until she found her portable CD player lying at the bottom and her earbuds wrapped around it.
Abandoning the boxes on the floor, Yukari sat again on the couch and placed the mysterious CD gently into the music player. As she plugged in the earbuds, Yukari looked around the apartment. There were still boxes upon boxes to unpack and the sun was slowly starting to set. She knew she still had a lot of work to do, but at that moment, she didn’t care. All she wanted to do was be close to him again, to hear what songs he had chosen for her. She laid down on the couch as she put her earbuds in and got ready to discover what was on the CD.
“Unpacking can wait.” Yukari thought as she pressed play.