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The sky is hauntingly blue and clear. On this strange day, where the sun seemed to stretch on endlessly, for once not clogged by the ashen bombs that cloud the air constantly, rendering visibility to a high altitude, the sky is clear. But it’s certainly not quiet among this beautiful sight or unscathed. Absolutely not. Everything was gone.
Trees? They were ripped to bare, blown up to only be turned into small chips of wood. No life.
Grass? The driest weather had eroded each and every single grain, marking it unrenderable and a chaotic mess.
Water? Every drop was used for something else. Water was sacred and had people sacrifice the other just for a taste of something so sickenly sweet. So sickenly sweet that they so longly craved that couldn’t ever been brought to their filthy, impoverished lips.
Houses? Every single one of them was blown up, nothing left behind, everything destroyed eventually. Not much was left to be seen or even preserved and certainly trying would mean absolute and certain destruction and death.
Even families were now displaced. Those who managed to flee ran; though there was not much to run, for hundreds of miles, they ran anyway because even if they didn’t survive, what the woods had for them was a far better fate than whatever resulted from staying in this cursed and ravaged city.
It was a shame. Well, Hanasato Minori hadn’t ever imagined an effervescent society would ever crumble into an ephemeral sense of despair during her lifetime. But that was what had unfortunately occurred— at least, from the ruins she had experienced.
Even the idol who had hope and branded herself from never giving up, the one who always believed in tomorrow being another day for hope to spawn, soon lost a single bit of anything resembling hope, anyone who hadn’t at this point was pure naive and asking to get killed by a terroristic and dictatorial regime corrupt to wartime.
Honestly, it was just devastating at this point in time. A land corrupt to the native that was originally their own was displaced, everyone killed, any hint of tradition and life erased. It was eudamonic to even be alive and somehow find enough to eat in this society.
Many hid away in dark corners in their homes, those who hoped some form of revolution might occur one day and everything will come back to normal.
People died waiting for something, a spark of hope perhaps to see that society would somehow rebuild from the ground and take back what they had stolen.
But nothing happens.
Nothing ever does, of course.
It’s just silent, the few left obeying silently as to not die.
And this was just normal.
Another bomb drops through the city— several in days by now. The government has grown careless and wants to kill anyone somehow hiding in the dark corners still. For a perfect society.
This has become a normal occurrence for many living among the city, the sounds of warfare, violence and blood that play in the city as constant silent hymns. Soldiers walked to buildings and shot people, tearing them apart with weapons of mass destruction. Terrorizing the few that ran with threats of killing everybody they knew if they had ever said a word, stalking them to new destinations and never setting one free.
Even screams; probably the desperate ones from being trapped in silence for so long, were all natural now and instead were merely ignored, even though each and every time, the hearts of few shook. Would they be next? Where’s their family among this mess? And most importantly, were they even going to survive this mess? Where was their mother, their father, their sister..
Where was everyone?
Through the cracks of a building, one molded by the thousands of weapons used among the city and soldiers that broke it down, two girls— a brunette and a pinkette, sit together. Their legs are dangling outside of a beautifully broken window, one that was once full of life just like this city. Everything, now, was destroyed. All of it. Nothing of life seemed to remain in the city.
But that was okay. All of this was okay. Hanasato Minori had the one person that she wouldn’t dare take another breath without next to her side— Akiyama Mizuki, her universe, her most beloved and precious love.
Hands synced in perfect unison, the same ten fingers, the same crinkle in the eye when they used to share giggles filled with love, legs that wrap around each other desperately. Unconsciously, their hands immediately entwined.
Minori doesn’t even bother hiding anything anymore, there is no point.
Her lips grasp the pinkette, Mizuki’s hand so gently, pressing the most desperate and tender kiss to the other’s lips.
The two practically devour each other right there, their lips crashing together like a million stars passing between them, right now, something they had only ever done in silence.
This was meant to be, the two of them were meant to be together forever, forever and for all of eternity— they’d be together even in death, even if Hanasato Minori herself had to physically kill herself to meet Mizuki in supposed hell, dying with their hands pressed in the palm of each other, kissing so desperately while caressing the other even in the last moments. Because it was meant to be. She was meant to be with Akiyama Mizuki, Akiyama Mizuki meant to be with Hanasato Minori.
Now the whole world, one that thrived off of hatred, could see just how sinful and beautiful they were together. How their lips formulated the cutest smiles, the fact their hands were pressed so delicately that even their scars seemed minuscule pressed to the other, how beautiful something akin to sin really was.
Homosexuality, a long sin, was still prevalent even until the very end. If the government had taken away every last thing of humanity, then the last thing their sinful and disgusting lips would ever breed is their love for the other.
They couldn’t suppress or beat the homosexuality out of somebody as the government had tried before, that part was for sure.
Nor could they shoot every homosexual or even anyone that deviated from the norms of society and the straight sexuality.
Nobody is around to shame or to disgust the two star-crossed lovers, nobody to witness their hidden love and rebellion to the hands of the regime.
Certainly, they’d be shot together for two women— a transgender woman and a woman to even date, let alone hold hands. That’d get them instantly shot and burned, their bodies separated in death. But Hanasato Minori didn’t care. If only humans judged something that was so natural, so normal, really, who was the perverted and sinful one among them? Surely, not them, for experiencing the most basic desire of love that every man and woman were allowed to do. What did supposed God judge as right and wrong anyway?
It was honestly an eternity before Minori pulls away from Mizuki’s lips, the briefest moment to make sure she could breathe in this broken society as both sigh. Her hands grab Mizuki’s face in the most possessively adoring manner possible, without the need of violence or hurt.
“You love me.” She states, the once cheerful girl’s voice and expression turning as high pitched as before. She can get lost in those goddamn eyes if she looked for too long, too lost in the secret of knowing how forbidden this love is. How forbidden she is.
Her hands grip tighter, not bothering to hold back. “Say it loudly; you love me.” She desperately replies, but that reply is void as she kisses her desperately again.
She doesn’t need a reply for reassurance to know that she loves her. She loves her, so, so, so, so, much. Nobody could take her sweet baby away. Nobody. Absolutely nobody.
And that was why when Akiyama Mizuki breaks free from the kiss, just to hold her own gaze, wordless breaths coming out to form “I love you, my beautiful angel,” holding her hands like she’s fragile glass, she wasn’t surprised. Her baby, her absolute angel, loves her so much. She loves her so much.
She smiles, her throat turning tight with each word she continues to speak, unable to contain how much she loves her to herself. “Good. Because you’re mine. And you know that, right? You’re mine. I love you so, so, so, so, so, so, much, my sweetheart. You’re the reason I even have hope for another tomorrow again.” She pauses, before continuing quieter.
“and, I wouldn’t even be alive without you. You’re singlehandedly saving me. You’re my savior, my angel. I’m your savior, your angel. You’re meant for me and I’m meant for you. Even my body heats up naturally around you, even for the longest time when I barely knew you. When everything was normal. Do you know that? How much hope you bring back to Hanasato Minori, the girl full of once hope and joy? You’re my biggest fan, you..” Her face morphs into so much more then joy can represent, so much more then she thought could ever be possible, pausing.
“I can’t even contain just how much I love you. I love you more than I can even express. And you know what? You love me too. I don’t care how much of a sin my love for you is! I don’t care anymore! Because,” her face morphs into tears despite her happiness, her voice getting unconsciously louder.
“You're mine! I finally have you and you have me and nobody is to judge! Nobody in this bigoted world is going to ever know of our love but that means nobody will hate! Nobody, nobody, nobody will. We can finally kiss openly, even if it kills us both. I can’t even formulate how much I love you.. because.. because.. I just can’t! I’ll love you until death! I love you so much, Mizuki!” She bursts into happy tears, sad tears, all of the tears in the world.
But her sweet angel is right there. There to hold her face and hug her the tightest possible again and again. She’s there and never leaving her side, her love. The one who reciprocates everything she confessed to her and more.
So, everything is right. Nothing was going to change and she was going to be okay— they were going to be okay. Together.
“So, Minori, let’s abandon them all.” Mizuki ambitiously asks, right as they hug, her own sorrowful smile melting into something more mischievous and the slightest bit of hope flashed across her face. Something Minori hadn’t seen from her in the longest time ever. “Run away— from here, to anywhere. Just us two together.” She pulls Minori up with her, both of them grabbing their guns while still holding hands.
“And then, we can get married. Just us. Once we find..” The pinkette’s voice falls silent, hand rubbing Minori, her girlfriend’s— no wife’s— knuckles with delicacy as she waits urgently for a response.
This might be their last time ever alive together.
They might never know what security or shelter might ever be, but that no longer matters. Not in this bigoted and so cruel and corrupt world.
They’d die for love.
Minori was scared but she’d do it. Anything to keep the smile on her face and to be as happy as ever with her.
Anything to call the love of her life her wife would certainly be better than a million treasures and riches could ever be at this point.
““Yes, I will. We will. The two of us, because,” her face smiles more softly than ever before. “Tomorrow is always a new day.” She confesses that old desire and belief yet again: tomorrow is always a new day, as the two turn to leave the building.
But Minori hesitates, the longer she stares back at her own reflection in the broken fragments of glass. It was what Haruka had always told her, what Haruka was before she…
And in Mizuki’s eyes, reflected from the broken glass fragments from the window, Minori saw her former soulmate’s eyes— Haruka’s, reflected back in hers, something she so longed for. She could tell Mizuki was thinking the exact same; Ena’s, everyone the two girls once formerly loved and all they had lost.
But Minori was far too ambitious for her own good. She always had been. Running away with a girl would be so forbidden but it was what she wanted. She was doing this for both of them. Both of them— Mizuki and Haruka. She’d do this for both of them, especially Mizuki, but Haruka would’ve wanted this. It was what she wanted her legacy to become in the very end.
“I’m ready.” Both of them breathed a collective sigh of relief. Finally, this would all be over. So soon. They just had to keep walking and keep walking forward, not bothering to look back to their surroundings again. Because tomorrow would always come a new tomorrow. It had to.
And so, that was why, in the very end, the two girls, equally desperate to escape such a cruel world of hatred, misery and darkness, no matter what way possible, turned towards the staircase, finally entering out of the room, towards the ground and they ran away the second they got out.
They ran far, far, far away and they kept running.
Because, maybe, just one day, there would be something of a new tomorrow waiting out there for them. And just maybe, maybe, they’d be able to finally get married under the stars like they hoped and not be so sinful to the world around them. But they were content on being sinful girls together, because, even for now, their love existed.
And it was proof that love could still exist.