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On April 1st, Senku brings a freshly picked bouquet of Myosotis Sylvatica, Clematis Viticella, and Bellis Perennises to her grave.
“You’d enjoy these,” she murmurs to the stone laying there, “you were always into that flower language nonsense.”
Senku is surrounded by silence.
“Sorry I didn’t bring any nightshades, I know they were your favorite.” The word “were” leaves lightly, fragile; it’s almost not there, and if Senku concentrated hard enough she can nearly fool herself into thinking it’s still “are”.
“You should be at least a little grateful, you know. Wasn’t easy to try and ask around for what different flowers meant as a human.”
“I’m not even sure the aliens have such a concept.”
Senku sits down to lean against the tombstone. Her clothes rustling against the ground bring temporary relief. But silence sinks in again and she isn’t used to it at all. In the past there’s always something to say, something to listen for: soft breathing, humming, singing— even the slight crunch of grass beneath feet. Senku strains her ears. Can she still hear it? Something like that at least? It doesn’t have to be a melody, it just needs to be evidence of presence.
But she won’t get it. And she knows this. She’s tried plenty of times before.
It's a sad sight. Woman of science turning to Ouija Boards and ghost monitors–everything she once sneered at–for even the slim chance of a response. Maybe she’ll discover something akin to quantum physics, that there’s a fifty-fifty chance an electron’s spin comes out up or down the x or z axis instead of zero despite all logic saying otherwise.
“Happy birthday.”
“Do you want me to sing you a song?”
“I mean, I can… if that’s what you want.”
“Well, here it goes…”
And then she stops. Her voice is nice– she was raised with that being her only value, obviously it is. But she still can’t do it. Of course, how could someone who’s only ever learned duets sing a solo?
She feels pathetic. The only thing special about her and her humanity crumbles away without the one who made her human.
“You know, it’s been four years, a month, thirteen days, twenty hours, and seventeen seconds since I last saw you.”
“There isn’t any more Alien Stage.”
“Sorry I haven’t ever really visited, been busy with rebellion and everything.”
It’s quiet.
“I nearly killed everyone after the final round…didn’t expect that, huh?” Senku attempts to make a joke, but the atmosphere stays dead.
“I cut my hair? While out with Hyuna.”
“I think it looks nice.”
“I wonder what you would think.”
“It reminds me of you.”
Something squeezes in her throat.
“I don’t like being dramatic,” she murmurs against the wind. It feels like it’s starting to get damp. “You know that…it’s just...”
“I miss you, Gen.”
Senku remembers the feeling of Gen’s hands threading through her hair. Her hair is odd, no doubt— it’s partly because of the exotic nature that she was sold off for such a high price—it was always hard to braid and manage. Even so, Gen found a way to make it look stunning.
She was always telling her to be more genuine, to be more open and honest, that she didn’t need to be so guarded and pragmatic all the time. ‘You can be straightforward, it won’t be embarrassing with me,’ Gen said, so long ago.
“So you’re getting embarrassed now?”
“Well how else am I supposed to interpret it? You’re the one staying quiet.”
She feels something wet slap her toes.
“I guess you used to have solemn moments too, in the bath and everything.”
“You were quiet then, too.”
At the edge of Ankat Garden campus. The sunset in the distance, only tears and heavy breathing and those eyes. A surprised Senku holding on to a terrified Gen by only the strength captivity would lend them.
“Was I really not as desperate as you? If I had the same look in my eyes as you, if you looked into a mirror instead, would you still have rehearsed your death so many times?”
She can’t believe she’s saying this out loud. But no one is around her, and she can’t even find it within herself to feel cringe. She’s only human, a sad desperate human in love with a once desperate ghost. The rain starts to fall heavier.
“If you didn’t catch me that day you probably would have been able to win.”
“Maybe if we never met, you would have been able to win.”
Senku’s face starts getting wet.
“No one can really compare to you, even in Anakt Garden.”
Gen wouldn’t want Senku visiting just to cry, she thinks. Maybe some childhood tales would do. Gen always liked stories and reminiscing on the past.
“Why did we switch dresses before that performance? That was kind of silly.”
She laughs and the sound travels farther than she wishes. It’s been four years, yet she’s still used to hearing an echo bounce back.
“I didn’t tell you then, but I thought you looked very pretty.”
Gen really looked like an angel in all white. Then the memory of dark red splattered all over the white dress that was supposed to be hers makes Senku freeze.
“Nevermind.”
Her nose starts to get wet from the rain coming in sideways.
“I snuck around town and had something called a carbonated drink the other day. The principle behind it is interesting.”
“It’s basically the idea of dissolving carbon dioxide in water, and when it’s forced under pressure it’ll form carbonic acid.”
“Then if you release the pressure, it’s not going to be stable, so it’ll escape the water in the form of bubbles.”
“It’s really fun to drink, tickles your mouth a little.”
“The one I had was sweet.”
“I think you would have liked it.”
Nothing.
“I remember, you always enjoyed gossiping, right?” Senku doesn’t remember, she knows. But for some reason she still wants to preserve the conversational air.
“Apparently Till liked me, can you believe it?”
“Kind of more in an idol or fan manner, but still.”
“It’s funny because I never thought of him as any more than a classmate or friend.”
“That was always you.”
Somehow no matter how hard she tries, the conversation always circles back to Gen. And with Gen comes the memories that keep Senku shaking with tears down her cheeks in the middle of the night.
“We’re still alone.”
“Rebelling hasn’t done anything.”
“Doesn’t that suck?”
She curses herself internally. Way to make the conversation sad. Except she realizes it’s not really a conversation if only one person is doing the talking.
“I read a book recently.”
“It wasn’t science, it wasn’t even science fiction.”
“Okay, maybe it was a little bit, but it was overall more literary, something I think you’d enjoy.”
“I know we never really read because we were pets, but apparently it was quite popular back from where we’re from.”
“A pilot crashes into a desert on Earth and meets a little prince that travelled over the whole universe.”
“Isn’t that cool? That’s something I’d like to do, if I was ever given the opportunity…”
“Anyway, the prince tells the pilot about all his adventures. All the people he’s met, all the things he’s seen.”
“He’s got a great and lively imagination. I think you’d like him.”
“Did you know? He’s from a small planet that’s actually an asteroid, and he can see the sunset forty four times a day!” Senku laughs at the absurdity.
“But it’s technically wrong. A day for any celestial object is really defined as how long it takes to complete a single rotation.”
“So assuming he’s counting by Earth days, then one day for him would only be 33 minutes long.”
“He’d be seeing one sunset every day, it’s just that the day happens to be only one forty-fourth of ours.”
Senku smiles a little. The sun peeks out from behind a cloud before hiding away again.
“It’s incredible. Don’t you think? To be able to travel anywhere you’d like.”
“That freedom is so appealing to me, sometimes I think that if I really just try hard enough it’s possible.”
“Sometimes I think it’s possible to go somewhere else, maybe back to Earth. Is that okay?”
“Or am I just being naive again?”
“So many different lives are so different from our own…I mean, I guess we did witness that everyday.”
She pauses.
“I know you liked mental stuff.”
“Other worldly beings wanted, or craved, entertainment, that’s some psychology you’d be excited about!”
She tries to feel her heart flutter, but who was she kidding? Acting was never her department. So she doesn't bother resisting the frown when the strings connecting her lips to her heart tug down.
“Science is the only thing that still makes us human, apart from art, you know?” It’s her default, and so typical of her to just start talking about her interests to fill local minimums in conversation.
“I know you weren’t that interested in all the technical details, but it’s human to want to innovate, to seek answers from the world.”
“To build, to create, to connect,” Senku’s heart almost lifts. It’s science after all, her favorite. And Gen was always supportive about listening to it, no matter how much she didn’t like it. But when she turns to her side expecting to meet another pair of sparkling gray eyes she freezes. It happens again, and again. Why? It’s been four years. Four whole years. She’s counted every second of it, she knows it’s been so long, it’s felt so long. She knows Gen wants her to be happy, to move on, to live her life to the fullest, most freest version possible. And yet…and yet–
“I can use science to bring you back, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ve thought about it so many times.”
She chokes.
“It’d be something straight out of science fiction, but I could do it.”
A ragged breath.
“You would believe I could do it too, you always believed in me.”
“But there’s no other world in which we could return to.”
“Would you even want it?”
She stills.
“I’m not usually scared of being wrong, you know. That’s just data waiting to be collected.”
“But when it comes to you it doesn’t matter how much data gets collected.”
“I’ve never gone against scientific discovery or principles before.”
“But I’m just so scared of making the wrong choice for you,” she whispers. A quiet admission in a world that doesn’t care about her opinion. Is that brave or just plain stupid naivety?
“Did you even want to win, Gen?”
The rain comes in streaks rather than drops now. Senku’s hair falls over her shoulders. It’s wet and it makes her jump.
“You wanted me to live.”
“I know that.”
“I didn’t want you to die though.”
“But I let you.”
“Because that’s what you wanted.”
“Did you want that?"
“Or was it that you would have rather seen me cry than die?”
There isn’t silence. The rain pours hard and beats the ground like a drum. Scattered ‘tat’s reach Senku’s ears. She can hear, but she strains her ears again anyway, like Gen’s just communicating with her on a different wavelength and she needs to tune in. Ten billion percent illogical, yet ten billion percent worth a shot if anything would come back.
“You shouldn’t have done unrepeatable experiments.”
“You can’t be certain the variables will stay the same.”
“So you did it for love.”
It always seems to come back to this.
Love, a word purely originating from Earth, even if there’s nothing pure about it. Senku and Gen both came from backgrounds off Earth. They were born into being human pets. Never having stepped foot onto Earth, how do they know what love is on a planet where love was a stranger?
“Dumbass, if you did it for love, you could have just asked me to tell you what love was. I would have told you everything chemically you needed to know.”
And Senku cries like a child, banging fists into the grass like she had banged her fists into the glass she had first met Gen so long ago. Her tears join the rain to shower Gen’s tombstone.
“Then you wouldn’t have to do anything for it if you knew it well enough.”
Here’s a thought experiment to try: the moment the last alien ticked the scale from 86-86 to 87-86, in the delay between when the alien clicked its vote and when the vote registered onto the screen, Gen’s fate could have gone either way. In that moment, she was both dead and alive, her neck both full and with a hole; a superposition. In another universe, instead, maybe she would have been the one sitting in a graveyard with flowers only she knows the meaning of. But she’s not.
It’s Schrödinger’s cat; no, rather— Ishigami’s Clematis.