Work Text:
To my dearest Hanako-kun,
Did you know your bathroom has learned how to live without you? When I was passing by the other day, I'd found out that they were going to renovate the place next year after I graduate. It'd apparently been closed for a while, but I hadn't paid attention to it until very recently. Moss has been growing wild and reaching out of the windowsill that you used to sit on when you observed the view past the school gate.
In living the first two years of the life that you've extended for me in my initial year of high school, I've come to realise that I truly knew nothing about you, nor did I ever try to have a simple conversation with you over what was on your mind. Your existence was a mystery to me, even in your last moments. I barely remember the last words that you spoke to me out of pure shock of the circumstance, but I'll never forget the face you made.
Those little triangle spectacles extracting your physical being. Your hands clasped behind your back as you stood tall. That weak smile on your face that you attempted when your eyebrows' sporadic movements clearly signalled that you were less than happy with the results of your own doing.
And those beautiful amber eyes of yours, donning the colours of the golden moon that shone light through the window. The sheer film of doubt that clouded over your orbs when you gazed at me, unmoving until the last speckle of your existence vanished into thin air, leaving only the cold breeze and distant night glow.
You once told me that starlight was ancient, that when we look at the vast night sky, we're seeing ghosts and shells of what used to be meaningless meteors. I didn't realise then, but you were telling me of the insignificance of loving something that was long gone.
In the present day, I wonder why you didn't also tell me about how meteors crash into each other because of their strong attraction for one another, solely for the purpose of burning brighter together, even if it's through violent death. Would you think that would've meant something about us too?
Hanako-kun, could you say with absolute confidence that back then, you truly loved me?
You did numbers on Kou-kun, you know? For a whole year, he barely ate and cursed both you and Mitsuba-kun for suddenly vanishing. When you decided to bring on the second severance, you've turned what should've been Kou's lesson about cherishing and honouring a person through memory into a dark and twisted legacy of unwarranted abandonment and loss.
Hanako-kun, you may think that life comes to a halt the moment your death robs you of a future, but that's not true. The time that Kou-kun, you and I spent together, was that simply 'passing the time' for you? Because I can say with absolute confidence that I enjoyed your company. I fed off your vitality, and more than ever, I was able to live happier with you in my life. Wouldn't you say the same for you? Even if you're not alive, how could you say that what you were experiencing with us wasn't basically life? That it wasn't precious enough to live inside your memory?
There is nothing that I can reminisce on except the pure memory of your face and that agonising look from the night you disappeared. Boys pass on the street and I feel myself descending into insanity when I instinctively turn my shoulder to catch another glance at any that look like you – that cruel mistake of false resemblance. I wished life would become full circle again like with the clock keepers, and that one misstep would lead me back to you and our summer that we spent together.
You were undeniably cruel to extreme extents for leaving all of us. For leaving me behind, as if your 'noble' sacrifice would mean anything if you weren't around to watch me grow. Even now, I know that a short life lived to the fullest extent would've meant more than eternity without you. Your existence is unbearable, but that only testifies to how I wholeheartedly loved you and wanted to believe that you truly considered every possible solution before choosing to abandon me.
But what is love to you?
I thought I understood love all too well in my first year. Love is about cherishing a person in a way that is… loving. Going on dates, having sneaky rendezvouses at school to do god knows what, calling until late hours and eventually falling asleep with the phone on the side of my pillow. It was innocent and naive, and I couldn't achieve any of it with you.
But still, being in love with you was a privilege of mine. Your eyes always told a greater story, a space in your irises that were so hollow and endless that they reflected the deep, dark matter of space within them. Yet for some reason, those same eyes lit with the light of a blinding, dying star when they turned to me. They were charming enough that I couldn't help but toss out all those stupid concepts of an ideal romance at the age of 16, just to live happier alongside you. My love for you was the desire for simple coexistence.
But that wasn't what love was to you, was it?
Love to you was the act of self-sacrifice for the sake of protecting others. To provide everyone with a conclusion that they could be happy with, even if it was at the cost of yourself or even others that fall outside the scope of your concern.
Your self-destruction and willingness to push anyone down if it meant that you could achieve a goal. How you hid that twisted desire for possession by calling it a display of love, that you were working to give me a better life. I don't, for the sake of my fragile, naive heart from two years ago, want to acknowledge that as love. No, it's the result of your deep resentment of yourself and desperation to make your mark on me in a way where I'd never forget you, even when I'd left. This endearing, but also completely wretched tendency of grasping at absolutely anything if it was to become of benefit for one single component of your life that you couldn't bring yourself to loathe: living, breathing life. You gave up everything for me to experience an extended life outside the walls of this high school that rightfully shouldn't have been mine.
I spent much of this letter brooding and scolding you over your actions like the little girl I was when I scolded you for taking advantage of Shijima-san's abilities, but none of that is truly important.
Amane Yugi-kun, I love you. And I wish I could've pulled you from the tide all those years ago. I wish I could've stopped myself from going into the Red House and telling Tsukasa-kun about your death, and maybe that would've made enough of a difference on your family for you to have lived on and become the science teacher you were meant to be. Maybe, you could've been there to witness the first landing of the moon from the very headquarters that the rocket was launched from. I'm sorry I robbed you of such a future, and I'm sorry for being responsible all this time for your natural inclinations toward self-sacrifice. I'm sorry for coming into your life only to mess things up, to rip the Yorishiro off your beloved brother that you vowed to protect this time around. For the rest of my life, I'll atone for my sins and never forget the debt that I hold to you. Hell, that's literally what you wanted from the beginning when you decided to wake up and disappear from this world. Now I'm falling right into the hands of your possessive nature, even though you're not even here. In fact, you linger in every aspect of my life.
The girl I was from before the severance still comes to visit me on certain nights before I sleep, telling me that your act of sacrifice was useless and unnecessary. That it only proved that you never cared enough about me to consider what was important to me. She recycled old sappy scenarios back in the day like, 'what if we really dated?' or, 'what if i was able to make him human again?' as if to torment me for the fact that I'd never live out these scenes and remind me of how days were simpler when we just stayed in a bathroom and cleaned.
Nights like these, the drawn silence and faint sound of crickets arranged them into the syllables of your name and I cried endlessly from the mere thought of your presence.
When the street lights accidentally go out and shroud my neighbourhood in darkness, I've begun to wonder if the stars in the sky are blinking awake to check if they're still in orbit around each other. And if so, whether or not you're checking on me in the same way, from a place further than the boundary. And these stars, if aligned and tilted in a slightly different manner to rearrange the constellations that rule this world, whether or not that would've been enough to warp this twisted time I have to live in without you.
Your smiling face agonised me to think about, especially when I considered how tight and phony those grins and awfully stupid remarks that you made must've been when you were pondering the cosmic amount of complications that you had to solve before passing on. I wonder, still, how much I knew of you was real. But whilst I said I didn't accept your form of love for the sake of my younger self, I can acknowledge, now that I'm graduating, that you loved me with only the purest parts of your heart that you had buried under all the darkness. That you tried to specially pick which parts of me you wanted to reveal without hurting me.
You're a beautiful memory from my high school life. I came back to this bathroom and placed this letter here to sincerely thank you for bestowing this life upon me, even at the expense of yourself. These fragments of life that you've given to me in the form of your generosity, I'll be sure to store them away safely into a sanctuary in my mind. One that resembles a planetarium, one that resembles home.
Amane-kun, this could've been your home. And if, by some miracle, you find this letter tucked away in the peeling walls of this abandoned toilet building, call for me to take you there. Call for me to take you home.
Yours truly,
Yashiro Nene