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After a long decade of absence, a decade of close proximity seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Ten years of living together, of marriage, of quiet evenings, and of lazy mornings spent wishing the alarm clock would have never gone off. It was a happy ten years, but not necessarily an easy ten years.
The first couple years were relatively simple. Every night, Saiki would come home and restore Aiura’s health (and therefore her whole body) by twenty four hours. It was a routine, something he didn’t even need to think about. Aiura, at first, worried that he would forget. Any second that passed beyond that scheduled moment would send her a second closer to her downfall. But he never forgot, he was never late. On nights when he was kept late at the office, she might gnaw on a fingernail with worry that this would be the night that he’d miss it and she’d hurdled hours closer to death. But he could teleport. Worse case scenario, he’d fake stomach issues, go to the bathroom, zap home, restore her, then head back to the office. He never needed so much as a reminder. So Aiura eventually stopped fearing, got comfortable, and enjoyed this new sense of immortality.
The fact that she wasn’t aging didn’t phase anyone, at first. Most of their neighbors were elderly and would either die before they noticed that she wasn’t getting any older or become so senile that they couldn’t trust their sight anyway. Eventually, though, her parents made comments when they’d visit about how, not only was she miraculously living past her given life expectancy, but she looked just as good as she did years ago. Saiki’s parents didn’t catch on as quickly, since his mother was also a graceful ager, but they too, after about seven years, realized that the creases under Aiura’s eyes never deepened. Gaslighting could only carry Saiki and Aiura so far, so they stopped visiting family as often.
There was one other catch. Aiura’s condition never worsened, but it also never got any better. Saiki was holding out hope for a cure, that one day there would be a medicine she could take so that he wouldn’t have to keep up their nightly restoration ritual, but more importantly so she wouldn’t be so breathless and achy at the end of the day. Even if he had given her over three thousand Last Good Days, she was still sick and tired at the end of them.
One morning, as Aiura looked out of the little window over their kitchen sink, she mumbled something that Saiki had been dreading for a decade. “I think I’m ready.”
“No,” he told her simply. She still had things left to do, places to see, people to meet. And he still needed her. Ten years weren’t nearly enough.
“I’m tired,” she said. She looked at him over her morning cup of coffee, bags under her eyes. “And I’ve been cheating death long enough.”
Saiki shook his head, gripping the kitchen counter. But it had always been her choice. “If you’re sure.” And he knew she was. He could read her mind, had been reading her mind over the last few months as these thoughts were formulating and the decision was solidifying. He felt something unfamiliar stinging his eyes, so he reached up to scrub at them. The back of his hand was wet. Strange.
“Hey, don’t cry about it,” Aiura said softly. “I mean, we never deserved these ten years together in the first place, right?”
Yes, it had been coincidence that brought them back to each other and it had been Saiki’s interference with fate that kept them together. “You deserve more,” Saiki answered, more with his heart than with his brain.
“It’s okay,” Aiura told him, a smile on her face. She really was ready. “I think we’ll meet again someday.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But we’re soulmates, right? That has to count for something in this universe.”
Saiki wasn’t exactly convinced, but being soulmates had gotten them this far and he knew better than to doubt Aiura’s premonitions by this point. “I suppose you’re right,” he agreed.
“These next few days are gonna suck, though!” Aiura lamented, tossing her head back and groaning, adding a bit of levity to the heavy, morbid subject.
“Good grief. If you’re going to be a baby about it…”
Aiura squinted at him for a moment before barking out a hearty laugh. Even if she wouldn’t be okay, she’d still be Mikoto. Until the end, and maybe even after that.