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Mizumono — Hanna & Willa — Alternative “bad ending”
The house lay in half-light. The smell of wine, iron, and dead flowers floated in the air like a broken mass. Hanna waited standing, motionless, with the false calm of someone who has already decided to burn.
Willa entered, her black boots echoing on the wood. Her dark brown hair fell in shadow-stained waves, her glasses gleamed in the dimness, and the crimson liner of her eyes made her look like a walking wound.
Hanna smiled with the sweetness of a trap.
—𝐼 𝓁𝑒𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌 𝓂𝑒… 𝒯𝑜 𝓈𝑒𝑒 𝓂𝑒 —her voice was a broken whisper, like a secret torn from the skin— 𝒜 𝑔𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒶 𝓇𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝑔𝒾𝒻𝓉. 𝐵𝓊𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒹𝒾𝒹𝓃'𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝒾𝓉.
Willa lowered her gaze. Her lips barely moved, between fear and coldness:
—I don’t know if I can call it love. I only know that I care about you… I appreciate you, and that maybe that should be enough.
Hanna trembled. Not with rage, but with pure devastation. She took a step toward her, lifted her chin to force her to look. Her eyes, dark as a storm, shone with tears and contained fury.
—For me it isn’t enough. For me it’s not the same to be your friend as to be your lover. I dreamed we were music, Willa… and I discovered that only I was playing the melody.
Willa pressed her lips together, feeling the edge of that truth. She wore eternal mourning, the neck of the shirt tight around her throat as if branding her: I can’t, I don’t know, I don’t want to.
Hanna traced the beauty mark beside Willa’s nose with her fingertips. A gesture both tender and cruel.
—I loved you the way one loves the impossible: with the certainty it would destroy me. And still I opened the door for you. I invited you to my table. And you… —she leaned in, her lips brushing Willa’s ear— left me alone at the banquet.
Silence weighed like a knife. Outside, the storm thundered.
Hanna stepped back, and then she smiled with a terrifying sweetness, the kind offered just before pain.
—Willa… if I am the black sunflower, you were the hand that tore off my petals. One by one, between love and leisure. What melody remains when the instrument is already broken?
Willa wanted to answer, but Hanna was no longer listening. The wound was done. As on that night, Hanna had loved to excess and had been denied. And in that denial was born a void no word could fill.
The house clock struck the final hour.
The last symphony had already begun.
(The opening)
Thunder split the night in two. Outside, rain lashed with fury; inside, calm was a poison at rest.
Hanna held the curved knife between her gloved fingers. The blade gleamed like a contained lightning bolt, patient, waiting for music in flesh. Her eyes, wet with black tears, looked at Willa with broken tenderness.
Willa, dark hair plastered to her face by damp, saw it and did not step back. Her glasses reflected the faint light, and the red liner made her look like a sacrifice already marked.
—Hanna… I never promised to love you —she said in a low, icy voice.
Hanna smiled, trembling.
—You didn’t need to promise it. You only had to be there. You only had to jump with me.
There was a silence in which both breathed as if the air were lead.
Then Hanna, with the delicacy of a final caress, slid the blade against Willa’s abdomen. The metal entered like a kiss of fire.
Willa’s moan was half pain, half surprise. Her hands, stained black and red, clutched Hanna’s arms, as if seeking to steady herself on the very executioner.
Hanna rested her forehead against hers, whispering through tears:
—Opening you is my last way of loving you. I show you that inside you there is music too, even if you never shared it with me.
Blood welled warm, like a dark wine that stained the floor and Willa’s attire. Each drop was a measure, each gasp a chord.
Hanna held her as the wound opened, as life shed itself like the black sunflower in cruel hands.
—This is ours… the last supper. If we couldn’t be lovers, we will be eternal in this shared pain.
Willa tried to speak, lips painted red now dyed a deeper crimson. She barely managed to murmur:
—Hanna… you devoured me.
And Hanna, eyes closed, replied:
—No. I only let you know me… and that was more than you could bear.
Thunder roared again.
The rain kept falling.
And in that instant, love and destruction blurred into a single act: opening, offering, and end.
— The final banquet
The knife lay on the floor, abandoned like a broken promise. Hanna held Willa against her chest, feeling the heat of blood mixing with her clothes, with her skin, with her soul. The whole house seemed to beat with them, as if time had stopped inside the wound.
Hanna laid her down gently, reclining her on the floor pooled with red. She leaned in, kissing Willa’s forehead, soaking in her metallic perfume.
—I gave you a rare gift… I let myself be known. And you returned it with silence. You couldn’t return it.
Willa’s breathing was an irregular murmur. The red cat eye, undone by tears and sweat, seemed to draw broken wings around her eyes. Her mouth trembled before she said:
—Hanna… you were always more than I could hold.
Hanna closed her eyes, feeling that edge of confession as a last comfort and a punishment at once.
Then, as if the air in the house became unbreathable, Hanna rose unsteadily. She walked toward the door with slow steps, dragging the shadow of crime and denied love. She opened the door and the storm received her with a violent embrace.
Rain fell over her like absolution and condemnation. Hanna lifted her face, letting the water mix with the blood still dripping from her hands. Her heart ached, not only for Willa, but because in that instant she understood that the melody she had dreamed would never sound as a duet.
She knelt in the soaked garden, her body folded by sorrow. And with a slow movement, she brought the knife to herself, pressing it against her side. The blade entered gently, as if it had been waiting for that moment.
A gasp escaped her lips, a broken smile on them. The world unraveled into red and water.
Hanna collapsed to her knees, blood flowing into the rain, staining the earth like a profane altar. In her mind only one image remained: Willa with her brown eyes, the beauty mark by her nose, the red liner like a portent.
—If this is the end… at least we die as music. —she whispered, before letting the storm cover her completely.
Thunder roared one last time, like a final applause.