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Wakaba stared at the tears bubbling from her eyes and draining down her reddened cheeks in the mirror. She panted from her run all the way to this mysterious building, not stopping until she had collapsed into this chair inside an elevator, sparse save for the mirror and a picture of a butterfly behind her. Thankfully the rumors had been true about a place you could go to spill your secrets and find your way without needing to see another person’s face. She wanted a reason to stop herself from crying, and crying in front of anyone would have been so embarrassing. “I-is anyone there?” she asked with a sniffle.
“I am here,” answered a deep voice, cool and detached, one that echoed above her. “You may begin.”
The floor vibrated through her feet; the elevator began to descend.
Wiping away her tears, Wakaba swallowed the rest of them and cleared her throat. “Counselors are supposed to keep their clients’ secrets, r-right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Wakaba stared at the ceiling; the red sweaty face in the mirror only added to the sting of her heart, so she refused to meet her own gaze. “Because I might have been breaking school rules, but I don’t care. I was letting Saionji Kyouichi live in my dorm with me in secret for as long as he needed to, as long as I wanted to.” She paused, expecting the disembodied voice to ask why or remark on it in some way. She replied as if she had been asked anyways: “Because he’s so weak and pathetic right now, hurting and in pain, that I want to help him get back to his cool and confident self, so he can be happy again. I love him too much to let him stay that way.”
The thrumming below her feet grew stronger. Was the elevator speeding up?
“Go deeper,” prompted the voice. “Dig into what you feel.”
Her hands tightened into fists on her thighs. She dropped her head and stared at her knees. “...But it doesn’t matter how much I love him. He doesn’t love me. I know that now.” The vibrations of the elevator consumed her whole body. “The gift he was making for me… he gave to her .” She spat the pronoun. “He gave it to Himemiya .” The name seethed and dripped from her mouth, an acid burning away at her throat. “The girl always hanging around Utena, the girl always around Saionji, the girl that he was always in love with.” The heat she had run through to get to this elevator felt nothing like the burning under her skin now, the fires that blazed from her tongue as she continued, “Nothing I do for him, nothing I give to him is good enough. Because she’s the only one that he loves, the only one he cares about.” Her nails dug into her palms. “She’s got a special face, a special glow, a special smile--something that draws people to her and takes away everything and everyone I love. She’s a thief to people like me--a thief! I can never forgive her! I don’t want to forgive her!”
Any tears she had shed when first entering the elevator had evaporated with the growing blazes of her fervor. “She takes everything from people like me, people who aren’t special, people who blend into the crowd. Because that’s all I am--a face in the crowd. No matter how hard I study or how much I love, I can never stand out from that crowd. Special people may as well live on another world or another planet with how detached they are from the crowd!” Her shoulders tensed. “But when I had Saionji, when he lived with me, for once in my life I felt special. His specialness was becoming part of me. And if I could have just kept him a little longer, just a little , my life would have become special too. I would have evolved into the beautiful person I want to be.” Her voice raised as she continued, “But that girl… that girl!” She shook her head. “That girl!”
The elevator screeched to a halt. Wakaba no longer trembled, and her heart swelled against her sternum in a well stoked fire. She stood, firm as a tree against all seasons.
“I understand,” the voice replied. “Your only option is to revolutionize the world.”
The elevator door slid open. Wakaba turned towards the open doorway.
“The path you must take has been prepared for you.” A person in the room beyond beckoned with a hand. “Come.”
The anger simmered and bubbled within her gut as Wakaba stared down the pale-haired man whose silhouette she perceived past the blue light of the elevator. That hair was so similar to… Another special person that was leaving Wakaba behind. She stepped out of the elevator after his prompting to come forward, and the anger shot like lightning through her chest, her fingers, down to her toes. Heart pounding ever stronger, she and him locked eyes.
Now that she could properly see the man, she saw a face cool and serious like Saionji’s, framed in hair like Utena’s, dressed in a suit like the ones Saionji and Utena both wore. Wakaba gasped a stuttered breath, looking away from the man. This man appeared as a fusion of the two people most important to her, the two people that gave her specialness that she wanted to take back. She could only peer at him from the corner of her vision. A hint of a smile crossed the man’s face as the gaze between them lingered. Wakaba turned her head towards him again, a strange stirring in her heart drawing out their locked stare. A drawer slid open in front of him, the only sound in the black room. He broke eye contact, looking down at the drawer and placing a hand into it.
“You…” Wakaba scrambled for words amid her pounding heart. “A path was made… just for me?”
“Just for you,” the man replied, deep and confident in his reply. “Because you are truly a special young woman.”
That sentence sucked the air right out of her lungs, the words she always wanted to hear. “But I haven’t--There’s nothing special about me alone.” Her broken protest faded as she saw him pick up something in one hand and move his other hand behind his back.
“Not yet.” Ever smiling, the man approached her with clicking footsteps that rang out against the walls. “But now I give you the power to elevate your life.” He stood directly in front of her now; Wakaba took a step back at his height. “The power…” He descended to one knee and held up a ring in two fingers. “To revolutionize the world.”
Her heart fluttered, and Wakaba held a hand to her chest as she involuntarily gasped. This sort of individual attention made her mind race in an excitement she didn’t recognize. “This ring… gives me that power?”
The man held the ring up a little higher. “Will you accept this proposal and take this power to be your own?”
Despite the thoughts of Utena and Saionji and that awful Anthy swirling in the back of her mind, Wakaba smiled until her cheeks ached. “Yes. Yes! Yes, I do!” She squealed and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Oh, yes yes yes!”
The man chuckled and rose to stand. “Wonderful. I’m so happy you said yes.” He gently took her left hand in his. “You are the one chosen by the end of the world.” He slid the ring onto her ring finger. “The only one that can walk this path of revolution with me.”
“Oh…” Wakaba stared at the midnight glitter of the black ring, the rose on it nearly imperceptible. “It’s lovely.” She lifted her head to meet his gaze again, struck by the magenta in his eyes that resembled the deep purple of Saionji’s eyes. “... Like your eyes.”
His eyes narrowed slightly as his smile widened. “How gracious of you.”
The only sound was the puffs of her own breath. She was so close to him, a stranger that seemed so familiar it was like a fairy tale. She seemed to be pulled on a string to tiptoe as she moved her lips closer to his inviting smile, a princess to a prince…
Rose petals pressed against her mouth. Wakaba blinked at the black fragrant mass under her nose.
“You best save that kiss for your Saionji, should you not?” The man chuckled. In his other hand, the one he had had behind his back moments ago, was a rose the color of black ebony, with hints of blue distinguishing the petals from each other. “Take this, then go to him.”
Closing her eyes, Wakaba buried her nose into the rose and breathed deeply. This was the smell of her revolution ahead; she had to remember what she was here for. With both hands she took the rose from him, ignoring the prick on her finger from a single thorn. “... To Saionji first?”
The man nodded. “Only with his weapon can you properly duel Utena, be rid of Anthy, and complete the revolution.”
The anger returned, burning against her temples and stinging her eyes with tears. “Be rid of Anthy… and complete the revolution…”
The stem of the rose prodded at her shirt.
“...and take Saionji back,” Wakaba recited.
Her hands drew the rose out before her and stabbed the stem beyond the fabric deep into her heart.
The elevator closed with the girl Wakaba inside it. Mikage immediately dropped his smile. “You were right, Mamiya.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and he couldn’t help but shudder at how he had had to use the black rose to keep his lips from meeting that girl’s mouth. “Getting her to act on her own really was so simple, the simplest of all the duelists so far.” He turned towards a shadowed corner of the room. “Although, I’m surprised you didn’t want to give her the rose yourself. This one seemed personal to you.”
Out of the shadows stepped Mamiya, but the boy didn’t seem to see Mikage. Instead, his distant stare fixated on the elevator. He squinted, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “She’s not worth the effort.”