Work Text:
At the risk of sounding dramatic, dying is weird.
Coming back after dying, though… it’s weirder.
Truth be told, I couldn’t tell you much about what death feels like. It’s like sleep, but not. People say it’s peaceful, and I guess that’s true, but honestly, it just felt like nothing.
Nothing.
That’s what death feels like.
Dying at sixteen is weird, too.
It feels like Aira Shiratori died before I ever really go to figure out who Aira Shiratori is.
And I should be grateful. I guess I am grateful. Momo Ayase gave me another chance. Acrobatic Silky died again, so that I might live. My second lease on life, and I’ve met people who see how fucked up I am, and they’re still here. They still defend me. I feel more vibrant, more alive now than ever.
So why do I see a corpse in the mirror?
When I was a girl, I used to see stars. Childhood is a beautiful thing, where everything is new and big and important and fascinating and novel and then my mom died.
After that, I don’t think I really saw myself as innocent anymore.
And then I died. And I came back.
But sometimes I think that dying took from me an innocence that I didn’t even know I had.
Because Aira Shiratori is alive and pretty and popular and vibrant, but Aira Shiratori died in the belly of a yokai right after attacking an innocent woman.
Now Aira Shiratori is trapped in a body that no longer feels like her own. In a body that blushes and bleeds and flushes and flees and feels so alive but is still so horribly mortal.
Mortal.
I hate that word, and I hate what remains of Aira Shiratori, because what remains of Aira Shiratori is a memory of what she once was, of what I could have been. I can’t see the stars anymore, because all I can focus on is the endless expanse of empty space between them, and wonder if that was death.
Aira Shiratori is dead. Even if I’ve come back, anything and everything I was before is dead. So what am I now?
What remains of Aira Shiratori is a facsimile of everything I wanted her to be. Confident, but cute. Proud, but proper. The girl that my mother would be proud of, when she returned. Or, rather, when I joined her.
What remains of Aira Shiratori is the disappointment of death. Of having died, and never feeling my mother’s arms around me. I always took comfort in knowing I would be rejoined with her, in the end. And then I died, and there was nothing.
What remains of Aira Shiratori is the fear of nothing. The fear of knowing neither joy, nor pain. Neither comfort, nor discomfort. Just void and nothingness, the hollow empty that threatens to swallow her whole when she stares into the mirror for too long.
What remains of Aira Shiratori is a hollow vessel. An emptiness.
What remains of Aira Shiratori is just a corpse that’s still alive.
And maybe that’s all she will ever be.