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“Sanada? Are you coming with us?”
He continued to dig through his bag, keeping his eyes low and never looking up to meet his classmates’ gaze. “Oh, um… no. Can’t.”
“Are you serious? I’ve never seen you turn down dinner,” one of them laughed. Akihiko kept his head down as their laughs slowly began to die out.
“Is everything alright?” another inquires.“Yeah. You guys go,” he says, “Have fun." He throws his bag over his shoulder and makes his way out of the lecture hall, leaving the group behind him. He almost feels guilty for leaving them behind, but there was a place that needed him.
The bitter colds of January had long taken captive the local air, and Akihiko had grown to expect the skies of grey that had dominated the past two months, but as he stepped outside, he saw something he hadn’t seen in a while--the sun. It was about to begin its journey beyond the horizon, slipping into the distance and painting the sky an increasingly rusted orange. It must know, he thinks.
He boards a bullet train to Iwatodai; the college he was attending was decently far, only about a half-hour by train to Gekkoukan, so he hoped there’d be some sunlight remaining once he arrived at the shrine. Once seated, he began to dig through his bag until he pulled out a small, ornate box, sparsely lined with tiny crystals. His fingertips traced over its edges, running along it until he reached the tiny latch, which sat evenly centered on the box’s front side. He pushed it open with his thumb, revealing the inside. The box’s innards were lined with a rich, burgundy velveteen, and it contained nothing. He stared into the case for a while before shutting it and placing his hands atop it. He stayed that way--frozen still, staring off into the space in front of him, for the duration of the ride.
He steps off the train, taking in a breath of home. He stayed out in the city during his fall and winter breaks for boxing training, so he hadn’t seen Iwatodai cloaked in winter since… his senior year. He holds the jewelry box tightly against his side, pushing his way against the chilled breeze and towards the shrine.
Naganaki looks just as he remembered it, with the evening sun barely peeking through the mountains. He stands for a moment in the center before sitting on the shrine’s stone stairs. Again, he opens the box. “I…I bought you something…” he says, before reaching into his pocket and producing a brilliantly delicate silver necklace, with a marquise-cut pink sapphire dangling from it, “I want you to have it. Isn’t it beautiful? I thought of you right when I saw it… and that tiny rabbit I got you from that toy store…” he felt as if he were about to spill over and flood the whole world. “Come on. Take it. Please?”
He is met with nothing but silence. This is the answer he knew he would hear, but part of him hoped that she would materialize out of a golden light that stemmed from his fingers as he thrust out the necklace as an offering, like in the stories he would read to his sister when she was unable to sleep. Miki. He sees the two of them in a beautiful garden, where she gently brushes Miki’s hair, and they laugh and smile. Both of them have everything. And then he sees the door. Her. Miki and Shinjiro are behind it. All of his worlds, which had turned to ash and stone before him, seem to be milled into a fine powder and spread across the landscape like a sheet of perfect, untouched snow.
His knees are to his chest as he buries himself into crossed arms, the box slipping off his lap and onto the stone beside him. His face is hot and red as he clutches the pendant of the necklace, allowing the sharp cut of the gemstone to ingrain itself into his hand as he chokes out hearty, heaving sobs that boom from a deep part of his chest. “I don’t- I can’t- why didn’t I get to try? Why did I never get to try? Why did I never get to fill your jewelry box? Or live with you? Or any of the things I would’ve done for you one thousand times over had I known? Why will this always happen?” He kept looking up, hoping to find her face in the clouds or an ephemeral hand reaching out towards him, but nothing ever happened. For all the magic there was in the world, and for all the supernatural horrors she kept sealed, there was no fantasy. No one could be wrenched from their death simply because it is willed. He had learned that once, but now it has fallen forgotten.
He continued his desperate, oft nonsensical mourning, allowing himself to lose the restraints he had so tightly kept upon himself in his new life fully in that small pavilion. It is possible that he never would have been snapped from his hysteria if it weren’t for-
“Akihiko?” He freezes, his body still convulsing from the sobs and the extreme cold, and looks up.
“Junpei?” he’s just how Akihiko remembered him on the day he left, standing under the arch with his hands in his coat pockets.
“I have no idea how,” Junpei says, “But I had a feeling someone I knew was going to be here. Or just… around. I’ve gotten calls from Yukari and Mitsuru, but…”
“They don’t quite know it like we do… do they?”
“No,” he almost laughs, “I don’t think so.” Junpei approaches Akihiko, taking a seat next to him on the stairs. “Wow,” he gestures to the necklace in Akihiko’s now-opened palm, “That’s beautiful.”
“It was for her jewelry box, I-I gave it to her on Christmas. I told her I would fill it, so I’m going to." Junpei can only muster up a mournful, compassionate look. A hush fell between the two men. “Can you still… I don’t know… feel her?”
“Chidori? Yes, I can. I think she’s the reason I… felt… your presence."
“That must be a lot.”
“I’m thankful for it, mostly. I get to keep her with me, in a sense.” Junpei regrets the words almost as soon as they are spoken, seeing Akihiko shrink even further. “I didn’t mean-
“They’re with me, too. All of them, in different ways.”
“That’s how you should be thinking about it, man,” Junpei gently pats him on the back, “It’s far easier said than done, though.”
“I… had all of this grief for Miki, and for Shinjiro, and she just. Always knew. Always understood. I told her once that I would've pretended to be over Miki for the rest of my life if it wasn’t for her,” his voice begins to shake more voraciously, “Now what?”
“Listen, I don’t know an awful lot about anything,” Junpei starts, “but I’ve learned. Learned a lot more than I ever thought I was going to. ‘Now what?’ is the question that everyone asks themselves for the rest of their lives. And they all have different reasons, y’know? They graduate or quit their dead-end job. We all live through something that will end. It just so happens that everything for us ended at the same time.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“It isn’t. Especially for you. But I think that you are the kind of man who will take this shitty place you have found yourself in, and make the world more fair for everyone because of it. That’s what you wanted to do before, right?”
“It… was, yeah.” He had nearly forgotten he had dreams or aspirations of any sort. He was so focused on surviving the day-to-day that any sense of achievement fell by the wayside.
“So do it.”
“I… can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It seems like I'm incapable of it entirely. Whenever I want to help, I end up causing more pain and suffering. I could never trust myself to protect people.”
“Akihiko, you saved the world.” Junpei’s brows furrowed as he said this, and the phrase hung heavy in the air.
“But she’s-”
“She saved the world, man. She had too.”
“She was what mattered.”
“She wouldn’t want you to think that, and you know it.” Silence loomed once more.
“I… I know. I just,” Akihiko hiccups, in a pale imitation of the sobs he was no longer physically capable of, “I want her back.”
“Yeah.” Junpei rests a hand on Akihiko’s back, “I know.”
“God,” he sighs, “you must. I’m so sorry, Junpei.” Akihiko gently rocked back and forth, again holding his knees to his chest.
“I’ll be alright, and so will you.” Another, much calmer and peaceful silence falls between the two men once more. Akihiko’s eyes shifted, and as they did, the shimmer of the necklace’s chain caught his eye as it flowed out of his clasped hand. He fumbled towards his side, unfurling himself and collecting the jewelry box that had evaded him earlier.
“I’m gonna keep it in here,” Akihiko says, glancing up towards the sky. The stars were fully visible now, but the combined brilliance of those millions of tiny crystals was dwarfed by the moon, full and bright, which seemed to lie squarely in the center of the sky. “To keep it safe for you, until it can be yours. Is that alright?” he delicately sets the necklace within the box, resting it upon the lush velveteen, and quietly latches it shut.
“I can see why she loved you so much,” Junpei remarks, his eyes lingering on the box.“You’re a good man, Akihiko.”
“Thank you.” The two sat there for hours, talking and laughing and remembering all they had in the year previous. The moon kept a quiet, focused eye on the two men, as she too recalled having loved and left--she shone ever brighter with the knowledge that her jewelry box would one day be filled.