Work Text:
We made a promise, a lifetime.
The smell of rain hung in the air as this morning’s drizzle pitter-pattered rhythmically. It snaked down as it bunched up, leaving streaking trails on Tomori’s parasol as it trickled onto the ground like teardrops. Blue light filtered through it as the sun gently shined its rays down upon her.
Fallen leaves and twigs crunched under her feet with every step as she trudged on with purpose. Mud clung to her shoes as she strayed further and further off the path into the trees.
A lifetime, together.
In some corner hidden away by trees and foliage, Tomori looked upon four little neatly stacked piles of stones arranged side by side. Each pile had a painted pebble of differing color at its base.
Pink, green, yellow, purple.
Each brought back their own memories, of happiness, of despair, of hope, of heartbreak, and of fuzzy shapes which once touched her life and nudged her along.
But, I never expected that a lifetime could be so short…
Tomori reached into her handbag, pulling out four rocks.
The first one was shaped a bit like a heart and it reflected light in a way which caught her eye. It laid to the side of some stairs when she found it.
The second one was found conspicuously in the middle of a footpath. It was of a strangely irregular shape, yet it felt strangely comfortable in her hand.
The third one was quite rock shaped, but it was rough on some sides and smooth to varying degrees on others. It was found hidden away in a corner.
The fourth one was found in a shallow riverbed. It balanced an awkward looking stick above the currents.
Delicately, Tomori placed them one by one atop each pile.
When she was finished, she sat down. The mud soiled her shorts and the wet grass tickled her legs a bit, but that was okay. Her thoughts wandered a bit as she looked upon the piles.
She had been wondering ever since they left if they were invisibly watching over her, if they were trying to reach out and touch her. She had never felt any such presence, but it didn’t matter so much. It was fine as long as she still remembered their faces, how they smiled, how they laughed. Their warmth.
Tomori reached into her bag again and took out her notebook and a pencil, placing them on her lap. She flipped to the last page she had been working on. It was divided into several equal boxes, populated with some roughly sketched characters and scenes.
It was a storyboard, one which she had been slowly chipping away at. The reason she was here today. She couldn’t get in the right headspace to do it anywhere else, so she always had to find time to come here and do it. Her publisher had been asking about it for a while now, but this was something she couldn’t rush.
That day, I learnt that a lifetime is such a fickle, fleeting thing. Like a little star in the inky black expanse.
When they went all that time ago, Tomori lost her voice.
How could a lifetime be so short? No matter how long she ruminated over it, she could not answer that question as she mourned the fact that now, she would have to walk the long, winding path of a lifetime alone. That they could never grow older with her.
If only a lifetime was that much longer…
Tomori spent many weeks inking down her pain onto paper.
It started with a pillbug, wandering a dark world all alone, its friends nowhere to be found. For a few pages, it continued like that before abruptly disappearing.
The pillbug gave way to reflections of herself, displaying all sorts of somber expressions, shedding melancholic tears into a glassy ocean spanning beyond what the eye could see.
That was all she doodled for tens more pages, until her own reflection gave way to that of theirs. They all cried those same tears as they lingered far above, where the stars lived.
Like a star, a lifetime is only a momentary sparkle in the storied history of the universe.
As even more time passed, her doodles had turned into little vignettes of moments that they could’ve possibly had together. Sharing drinks at new cafes, taking the train together, exploring the countryside, and more. She drew it all.
Eventually, Tomori came to realise that maybe they weren’t really gone. They stuck around in her heart, they talked to her, they showed her the same love they always had. In a way, they would live on as long as she did.
But, that didn’t feel like enough. What would happen if she started to forget? Tomori was certain she would never forget them, but she was afraid that she could start forgetting the tiny details, the little intricacies of their personalities, how they walked, how they chewed on their food, how they skipped across puddles on a rainy day, how they rested their heads on her shoulders.
No part of her friends deserved to be forgotten. The whole world needed to know of their warmth.
Things started falling into place from there. Tomori threw herself at her work while her parents helped with finding publishers. As she did, everyone’s faces started to morph into unfamiliar forms and their names were scrambled into syllables that felt foreign on her tongue. But regardless of these changes, they would always be Ano-chan, Raana-chan, Soyo-chan and Taki-chan.
But even when it fizzles out, the ghostlight of a star will never stop travelling through the vast reaches of the universe.
And so, in this sunny drizzle, in a place near where she used to frequent with everyone, she felt a bit closer to them. Conversations that they could’ve had trickled into her mind. Slowly, bit by bit, they became a torrent so loud and so clear that she could picture them as if they were by her side once more.
And so, Takamatsu Tomori lifted her pencil, and started sketching.
Like that, a lifetime becomes eternity.