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The girl wasn’t sure how long she had been here, alone in the darkness. There was an invisible, intangible force pressing on her chest, making it hard to breathe. She felt disconnected from the body which supposedly belonged to her, though she felt more like a spirit possessing it on most days. She could not feel, and for once in her life, she felt comforted by that. She didn’t want to feel, to feel was to be putting herself in danger. Feeling was what got her here in the first place. Feeling is what linked her fragile heart to a colorful and kind soul—a bright ray of hope she would never truly reach.
She lay there for what felt like an eternity, she hoped it had been an eternity. The suffocating darkness soothed her like a mother would to a frightened child. The prospect of disappearing for good was like a melody to her weak self that was almost as beautiful as K’s songs. She believed nobody would find her here—after all, who would venture this far out into the Sekai? The area leading up to this place had a heavy air that any reasonable person would avoid. Not Mizuki, however. She was anything but reasonable.
Mizuki gave up on breathing. She let the invisible weight win. She let the thick air dictate when she got to breathe, hoping it would soon tell her body it no longer needed to breathe at all. This was far, far more than merely disappearing—this felt like a cleansing of her putrid, rotting, and disgusting soul. She would free her friends of the zombie masquerading as a normal, functioning girl. She would free her group from an animator that was beginning to lose her barely kindled spark. She would free her precious friend, Ena, from worrying and fussing over someone who should have done this long ago.
This was nice, Mizuki thought. She could finally make up for all her sins and wrongdoings through the act of eliminating herself from existence. Indeed, she would finally be free at last herself. No more stares, no more mocking, no more pity, and no more harassment. Truly, this was a win-win situation for everyone, was it not? She was so close to disappearing, she could feel it. If she simply laid here, in this far away space of the sekai, for a little longer, she would vanish. She would’ve smiled if she could.
Faintly, she began hearing someone scream. She could not tell what they were saying, nor who it was. In fact, she barely even heard them at all. No matter, they were likely too far away to find her. She prayed they wouldn’t find her—for their sake and hers. The Sekai seemed to tighten its grip around her neck, as though it heard her pleas to disappear faster.
Alas, it was far too late now, as that person’s footsteps grew closer, barely registering in Mizuki’s shattered mind. She could feel the vessel she inhabited being lifted up, she could feel the person calling out her name—a name she felt was not hers. She could feel as the person checked for her pulse, and how they let out a sigh of relief at her faint pulse. She could feel how the person ran with her in their arms, wheezing and coughing until they managed to get Mizuki and themself out of that cursed and fatal area of the Sekai.
Mizuki wanted to scream, to shout, to slap, to kick, to run away, to do anything to get this person to take her back, to let her disappear, to give her her freedom back. In the end, all she could do was lay there, her body far too heavy for her. She felt like a prisoner in her own mind.
She could feel this mysterious person drape something—seemingly a jacket—on top of her, a futile attempt at comfort. Still, it seemed to spark something inside Mizuki’s thawed heart—something risky, such as affection. She wanted so badly to know who it was, but her body refused to cooperate. Still, she tried and used all her energy to creak one eye open. The person seemed to jolt, and Mizuki’s vision was blurry. However, she could see enough of the colors of the person's overall shape to guess who it was.
The figure she saw through her blurry eyes had short, brown hair. She couldn’t tell how long it was exactly, so it could have been either MEIKO or Ena. Still, with the way the person screamed earlier—so loud that even Mizuki’s clouded senses could faintly make it out—she only had one person in mind who this could be. MEIKO cared, of course she did, but she did so in her own quiet and observant way. Indeed, the one who always cared loudly and recklessly had always been her dearest Ena.
The effort of keeping an eye barely open soon became too grand for Mizuki. She let her eye close, resigning to this futile attempt at salvation. It was pitiful. Both girls knew this wasn’t what salvation looked like. They both knew that salvation was intangible. Salvation was like God, there was no proof either existed. The most people could do for either concept was believe until their dying breath, never getting confirmation whether it truly exists or not.
This may have been salvation from death, but was that truly salvation at all? Is that not simply prying away the illusion of freedom from suffering from the sick? How could being forced away from true freedom be any form of salvation? None of it made sense to Mizuki.
Except for one thing she had always known deep down. She knew she and Ena could not exist without the other, not properly, at least. She knew that they completed each other’s souls. She knew Ena would struggle to move on. She knew Ena would blame herself, no matter what reassurance Mizuki may have written in a parting gift. She knew Ena’s pure, kind, and bright soul would begin to rot without her. Part of her hated Ena for it, because it gave her a reason to stay tethered to this awful place.
She could feel Ena brushing through her hair, adjusting herself in a way she thought would be more comfortable for Mizuki to lay her head on. She could hear Ena trying to be strong, trying not to cry and sob. She could only imagine how much Ena was trying to blame herself. She wanted so badly to say anything, to do anything. She wanted to comfort Ena, she wanted to stop Ena’s worries.
Still, she was too weak to do anything—both physically and mentally. She found no energy left in her for anything. She wished this whole disappearing thing could be easier. If she could vanish without a trace, erase herself from the fabric of space and time, perhaps then she could be free without shackling someone as great as Ena. In the end, no such miracles existed. This was no fantasy game where the tree containing the world’s knowledge could be burned down. She was not a fictional character who could, through brute force and sheer will, erase herself from the memories of all and begin anew. She was human.
So, she realized she had no choice but to wait it out for now. As long as she waited, her desperately sought after release from these shackles binding her to this world would come. Mustering up the near-zero energy she had, she moved her hand to hold Ena’s. A pitiful show of comfort and life. Like that, she resigned to her fate of masquerading as a truly living person.