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The news of Doumeki’s death left Watanuki in a daze for weeks. His passing hadn’t been painful, no disease, simply the end of an old man’s life. He passed peacefully in his sleep. The message was delivered by one of the daughters of Doumeki and Kohane. Watanuki refused to see anyone after that for the next week, including Maru and Moro. Even though he wanted to, he couldn’t even go to the funeral and say his last goodbyes to his dearest friend. He was trapped by the shop’s curse. He always knew that this day would come, but he’d never really been ready for it to happen. Doumeki was gone. The one person he’d relied on and trusted the most in his life. Though he never said it, he loved Doumeki. There had always been a hope that maybe Yuuko would return in a couple of decades, and then he would return to Doumeki’s side.
Meeting Haruka in dreams was even harder now. It reminded him of all he’d lost. All he’d thrown away in his grief for Yuuko. He’d let go of Doumeki, and now he could never go back. He could never make things right. What a child he had been all those years ago when he’d donned Yuuko’s robes and committed himself to the shop. It seemed so noble then, like the right choice. Now he was left with nothing. No one. He had Doumeki’s children, but it wasn’t the same.
I should have died with him. We should have grown old together. Now I’m condemned to this fate, alone forever. He cried, knowing this is how Yuuko must have felt all those years, and a fresh wave of grief overflowed from his soul for the woman he considered a mother—having been condemned to this pain and loneliness for so long, destined to grant the wishes of others but to never have your own fulfilled.
Watanuki went to sleep that night in tears.
He saw Haruka sitting under the sakura tree in front of Doumeki’s temple. His heart ached desperately seeing the face of the man he loved. A fresh wave of tears fell from his eyes again. When will this feeling stop? He approached and sat down next to Haruka, but Haruka didn’t say anything. Several minutes passed until Watanuki could clear his throat enough to speak. “I’m sorry. You just look so much like him. It’s hard.”
Haruka put an arm around him and pulled him into his chest wordlessly. This felt off. Something about Haruka was off. He wasn’t this quiet. It honestly felt more like…
“I’m sorry,” he said in a nearly inflectionless voice. It was then that Watanuki looked up into his face, wide-eyed and disbelieving. The eyes that looked back were identical to his own sacrificial one. He hadn’t seen this face in decades, and it made his heart hurt. He was so beautiful.
“D-Doumeki?...” Watanuki’s voice wavered. The arm around him went up his back and touched the back of his head to run his fingers through his hair. It felt nice, and Watanuki closed his eyes only for tears to stream down his face. His shoulders shook, and the hand touched his face to wipe away the tears on his cheek with his thumb. Watanuki grabbed his hand and held it there as he openly sobbed. He’d never really cried in front of Doumeki before. Not like this. He still didn’t know if this was actually a dream or not. He’d never seen Doumeki before like this. He’d dreamt of Doumeki in the last few weeks, but this felt different. More like when he met with Haruka.
“Is it really you?” Watanuki opened his eyes to look at Doumeki, and he saw a look there he’d never seen before: one of unimaginable grief. His stoic look was broken, brows drooped, conveying the deep sadness in his eyes, frown made more pronounced by the brief quiver of his lip.
“Yeah, it’s really me. I’m still connected to you, remember?” He ran his thumb under Watanuki’s shared eye gently.
“I miss you…” Watanuki squeaked out and began crying again. Doumeki leaned in, put his forehead against Watanuki’s, and closed his eyes.
“I miss you, too. So much.” Hearing those words from Doumeki made his heart gush with such conflicting emotions: joy, sorrow, love, and regret. Watanuki gasped between his sobs, letting everything from the last sixty years out from the depths of his soul. Doumeki just kept stroking his face quietly as he squeezed his eyes tighter, and tears of his own ran down his face.
“I’m so sorry…” Doumeki whispered. “I should have done more.”
“All this time… I never said it… It seemed so insurmountable before, but now, it all seems so pointless… so trivial… None of it matters anymore, and now I wish I’d done everything differently!” Watanuki sobbed.
“It’s okay.” Doumeki opened his eyes and gazed into Watanuki’s.
“I never saw it before, but I see it right now in your face. I can’t see anything else. Why did I never see it before?” He whimpered.
“I didn’t want you to see it,” Doumeki whispered. “It didn’t matter how I felt; all that mattered was that you were safe and living.”
“But I wasn’t living! You weren’t either!” he yelled in frustration. “We both gave up our lives and happiness! Just two ships passing in the night!”
“Maybe so. Yet I don’t regret what I did, and I would do it again. All I cared about was you.” Doumeki swallowed and took a deep breath to steady himself.
“I’m such an idiot! I left you alone all that time, and now you’re gone!” Watanuki croaked.
Doumeki shook his head. “I wasn’t alone. I was still with you every day. I never left you and I never will.”
“I love you so much, Shizuka!” Watanuki wailed.
“I love you, too, Kimihiro. More than you’ll ever know.” Doumeki leaned in and pressed his lips against Watanuki’s. Watanuki grabbed Doumeki’s face and kissed him back several times passionately.
“Please… I don’t ever wanna wake up…” Watanuki whimpered.
Doumeki looked down as he spoke. “Yuuko gave me something a long time ago. She said I would know when it was time to use it.” He looked up into his eyes. “I think it’s time.”
Watanuki looked at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“I always thought it was supposed to make you forget about Yuuko so you could move on. But I don’t think that’s it anymore…” Doumeki swallowed and closed his eyes again, and more tears fell. “I think it was for me. For this.”
“What are you saying?” Watanuki watched his face carefully. I can’t forget about him. Ever.
“One day, you will die, and then you will be with me again. But until then, you will live with this pain for a long time. Perhaps millennia. Alone. But I can give you a fresh start… a chance at happiness again. To make the burden of life bearable.”
Watanuki didn’t understand what he meant by any of this. He just kept searching his eyes for an answer.
Doumeki sniffed and swallowed again. “It won’t be forever. Just for a while. Until you join me again.”
Watanuki shook his head. “No, Shizuka, no…”
“I have to. I can’t leave you like this.”
“No… please don’t…” Watanuki cried. “I love you so much! I don’t want to forget about you!”
“I’ll still visit you here. Even if you don’t know me. I’ll still be here. I can’t stay away. It’s selfish of me, but I still want to be with you.”
“We should have been together,” Watanuki whispered.
“We were, Kimihiro. We always were. Our hearts belonged to no one else but each other.”
Watanuki resigned himself. He knew he’d do the same thing for Doumeki in his position. He would take his pain away if he could. He sniffed. “How long?”
Doumeki smiled the most genuinely that Watanuki had ever seen. “When you wake up, you’ll feel the sunshine again in your soul.”
Watanuki burrowed his face into Doumeki’s chest and cried as Doumeki held him in the late spring breeze with a shower of blossom petals raining around them. Doumeki kissed his head and held him tight. Watanuki never wanted this moment to end.
“Kimihiro, it’s time to wake up.”
“I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“It’s not goodbye, it’s just a brief separation.” Doumeki squeezed him. “Time means nothing to those like Haruka and me, so don’t worry about the time that will pass. You will be in my arms again soon enough.”
Doumeki leaned in to kiss him as Watanuki spoke, “Shizuka…”
Watanuki’s eyes opened, and he felt tears fall from his eyes as he was blinded by the morning sun. Someone was sitting on the bed next to him. A woman. He recognized her.
“Doumeki Hikaru.”
She ran a hand over his forehead. He sat up and saw the broken pieces of a shell on the bed. He couldn’t remember his dream, but he knew it had been filled with emotional turmoil. He wiped his eyes. She looked so much like Kohane and…
“Watanuki. How are you feeling?” She asked. He looked up and saw Maru and Moro at the door watching anxiously. He gave them a large smile.
“I feel good. I had a dream. I can’t remember it now, but I know it was a good dream.” He got up off the bed and stood on the floor in the patch of sunlight streaming in on the floor.
Maru and Moro ran into his arms and hugged him with tears of joy in their eyes. Hikaru looked up at him with a smile on her face but a somberness in her eyes. He knew her father had died not long ago. He sounded like a good man. Too bad Watanuki had never met him. He would love to shake the hand of the man who brought such a lovely girl into the world.
“Come, let’s get ready. I feel we will have a visitor today.”