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Guilty. The verdict had been carved into the core of Yuuji's soul long before he was born, wailing with breaths of cursed life in his lungs. A seed that grew steadily, spread its roots and vines beneath his skin until they coiled around his neck and snapped it.
If divinity was ever real, it spared him neither wrath nor mercy. It stood idle. Buddha, Amaterasu, even Jesus, whatever faceless gods might have existed in thousands of years, they killed his future in the womb, and shaped it into loneliness and suffering. Because, for Yuuji, there had never been a choice. He was programmed to exist for others – kill for them, live for them, purge the blights and pay for their ambitions, their mistakes.
Yuuji's own life never belonged to him, and he had been too blind to accept it, a naïve boy with dreams and plans for a future that wasn't meant to be. But he did not need pity. He did not need words of comfort that served no purpose for a broken man.
His time was up, and yet he had to live.
The shadows lengthened over him as light and rumbles drew his gaze up to greying clouds. Cold and precise as bullets, drops of rain fell on his cheeks. The sky was crying in his stead. It cried the tears that have long dried, their tracks burnt into his flesh and at the back of his eyeballs.
Yuuji was guilty of loving too much, forgiving too many and smiling in the face of loss when he should've knelt before it. He was born bleeding, a bird with severed wings. And loss bit down hard into easy prey, gnawed at him to the bone like a rabid dog. It took and took and took until he was left with nothing but memories trapped in the scarred carcass of his body.
Happiness was never an option for him.
"When this is over, let's live." Megumi had told him once, a thousand lifetimes ago, when they were still foolish enough to hope for a future together.
In the witching hour of the night, they laid in each other’s arms in a dank and musty motel room. The world was quiet, frozen in time, but Megumi was warm against his skin.Their blood was thumping with the dregs of their first taste of passion, one Yuuji imagined millions of times, but never like this.
The world was quiet, frozen in time. Goosebumps rose along his skin. The air was cold in the thrashed room, but Megumi was warm against his body.
Alive.
Yuuji took comfort in every little detail that reminded him Megumi was alive. In the way his lover's chest rose and fell slowly, heart beating next to his, where it belonged; in the way a soft pink coloured pale cheeks, skin flushed with exertion; in the way Megumi's spiky hair tickled his chest, soft and damp with sweat.
He wanted to revel in the high of their combined scents, allow himself to bask in quiet just a little longer. A momentary respite before reality crashed down on them, and all the pain, all the blood, all the killing began again.
"Let's live the most mundane of lives." Megumi continued, voice just above a whisper, as though afraid to even think that such a wish could become reality.
The ghost of a smile traced Yuuji's lips, but he couldn't seem to let them tilt "What, like do taxes and laundry together?" he tried to sound amused, but his chuckle wavered into a barely-muffled sob.
"Yeah, just... Live for me." a plea branded into the crook of his neck "Can you do that?"
Any answer he could have had was stuck in his throat. A wavering promise came much later, when Megumi was asleep, and dawn was fast approaching.
"Only if you do the same."
But grief prowled around him with sure steps his entire life. Yuuji was no stranger to the invisible hand closed around his heart, its dull throb ceaseless behind his ribs. He was intimately familiar with the numbness in his limbs, like frozen lead attached to his body; with the hollow in his gut, the tightness in his throat, the weight crushing his chest.
Sometimes, he wondered how he was still able to breathe.
Light, almost imperceptible, a touch dances over his fingers. His gaze drawn down. A solitary petal stuck to skin. Grief shaped into beauty, so pure and ephemeral. He used to adore flowers – the soft pink of cherry blossoms in the spring, the vibrant blues and purple of hydrangeas caressed by golden sunrays, the scent of orange osmanthus, as sweet as peaches in the summer.
Megumi rarely talked about flowers, but Yuuji always knew.
He knew that Megumi was sick of seeing spider lilies everywhere, be it movies, books or simple anime intros, every book as though they were the only flowers made for death. He knew that Megumi thought roses were too mainstream, too cliché, a symbol for fickle love and trysts that shattered hearts. He knew that Megumi didn't like lilies or chrysanthemums because they made him think of death regardless of colour.
No, the man holding his heart never told him those things, but Yuuji knew. He knew that Megumi adored sunflowers.
"They're warm and bright, just like your eyes." Megumi had told him once, before their entire universe fell apart, and curses were nothing more than missions.
The confession struck him dumb. A teenage boy complimented by his not-yet-acknowledged crush. For a long while, he simply stared, eyes fixed on the blush rising high on Megumi's cheekbones as his classmate avoided his gaze.
If he had the courage then, he would've told Megumi how beautiful his own eyes were – the night sky encapsuled in two perfectly round irises, starry with the light of a young spirit.
They were sun and the moon. Together, but always out of each other's reach.
Low and gentle in his mind, Megumi's voice echoed so clearly, a bittersweet memory carried by the breeze. The headstone did not speak to him. It just stood there, motionless and solid, proof of a goodbye that eternity forced upon them.
In his hand, a single sunflower searched for sunlight under relentless pellets of rain. Yuuji knew that it was hopeless, only the two of them against the world.
The storm continued.
They... endured.