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They’re in the courtyard, when he leaves him for the first time.
It’s summer, flaxen rays of sunlight illuminating Icarus and his eventual killer as Hiyori implants a plethora of meaningless words onto the dim screen of his phone, messages delivered to a myriad of schoolgirls whose names he had never even bothered learning. Rei jokes about it all the time, how Hiyori could at least attempt to acknowledge those who offered him their adoration, to which he merely rebuked with the realistic — certainly not heartless, thank you, Rei–kun — fact that he discerned no value in recognizing those who presented themselves in too much of a lacklustre manner to be bestowed with the title of an equal. There are things Hiyori doesn’t say, matters that he’s certain the avowed vampire is aware of, anyway; Rei is Hiyori’s accomplice in narcissism, and he is cursed to be so.
“I’m going to England. London, to be exact,” Rei declares, after he remained silent while Hiyori had observed him moments prior, before boredom overtook him at his ignorant demeanour, and Hiyori, impatient and refusing to spend his time waiting, returned to the individuals he had been texting. Rei had adorned the title of the intellectual, absolutely horrible person he is, and there Hiyori had been, waiting for something that would never arrive. A half–hearted Try your best to have fun without me lingers on the tip of his tongue, until Hiyori realises, with an acidity he would rather perish than dwell on, that this is the glorified beginning of an empire’s reformation, and the simultaneous downfall of five ringmasters.
Hiyori has made his decision, and because of this, he will stand at the side of the fragile angel he loathes yet admires. Even if he doesn’t feel as if he has anything in particular to prove, only the overbearing want to be seen; even if he is not as heartless as Eichi, who possesses the unnerving ability of being able to trample over someone else’s kingdom without a sliver of hesitation, fires deliberately spread through forests simply to burn them down. It will start with the sun, the stars, a bluebird, and a seraph. It, too, will end with the same beings, in another order: bluebird, seraph, sun, stars. The seraph is on the brink of death. The sun and the stars have faded away. The bluebird sings alone. This is the cycle of doom they have created for themselves, four people to pay the price of organising a crucifixion.
And so, Hiyori lets him go.
Before Eden came to fruition, without the biblical imagery Ibara never ceases to insert into their discography and Jun watching over Eve and Adam alike with an intensity that was nearly unnerving in its ambitious ferocity, Hiyori never necessarily believed in God unless that golden throne had been claimed by Rei, a crown of thorns atop his head and his hands lifted as he awaited the prayers of his followers; or if Hiyori was God himself in another circumstance, honing the art of destruction as he reigned beside Eichi (for the sake of their contract) and Rei alike. But Rei’s somewhere in London with nothing but the frostbitten wind keeping him company, isolated by all of mankind, and Hiyori wonders if Rei had ever perceived him as someone who belonged to divinity.
Their communication is nearly nonexistent, Hiyori being in Japan and Rei halfway across the globe. Rei didn’t answer his two calls or reply to the four messages Hiyori tried to send, glacial in their tone, and they’d left it at that. If the self–proclaimed punk is ever seen wandering around Yumenosaki’s halls when he returns just to depart as rapidly as he’d arrived again, Hiyori stays away from him — if he’s not around one of his Eccentrics, all hushed whispers and indifference feigned towards the brutal remarks aimed at them, arrows piercing through a mortal’s heart, he’s frolicking on one of the instruments he knows how to control. But Hiyori isn’t running from him, today; he is the ever–changing one whereas Rei is predictable as ever, fingers gracefully placed on ivory and stygian keys.
Rei isn’t playing yet. Hiyori doesn’t ask why, and doesn't think he has the right to anymore.
It’s amusing, how mindless greetings like How are you? The weather’s nice today, isn’t it? can transform into its very antithesis, like monochromatic clouds engulfing the azure skies. I think the war’s suffocating me and I can’t breathe, Hiyori wants to say. Not to Rei, however, never to him. He follows the trail of that absolutely miserable statement, picks up the scattered feathers left by those who have exceeded the pace of his sluggish stride, and asks the deity who has done nothing but juxtapose and demarcate his God: How long do we have until it ends? How long until what we’ve done stops burning me alive, and all that’s left of me is my ashes?
He thinks it’s equally hilarious, how someone he used to know has become a complete stranger on the surface. Perfection is shattered and reduced to oblivion, replaced by a sinister warmth, and that stranger just happens to retain a plethora of memories Hiyori wants to plead him to dispose of, yet beg him to keep. “Rei–kun,” Hiyori requests instead, hoping to incite a reaction. “Play me something.” There he is, holding onto things instead of urging them to forget him.
“What sort of song do you want?” Rei inquires, moving under the weight of Hiyori’s invocation. It’s soft, gentle, an almost reticent thing. Rei never says no, these days. Hiyori doesn’t know whether he should express his gratitude for his own reputation of being a saint and a sinner at the same time and still being granted the intoxicating beam of the spotlight; or if he should be repenting for the fact that he was, is, part of the reason why Rei has lost the spark in his eyes.
“I don’t know,” Hiyori settles on. “I don’t care as long as it’s you.”