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Hina watches 11:59 surrender to 12:00 on the digital clock’s winking face. It has officially been a year since Sakura attempted.
Sakura lies beside her. She is still, her breathing even, but Hina knows she’s not asleep. She knows this innately, without any good reason. How she could pick up on something this inconsequential, and not her girlfriend’s intention to end her own life, of that Hina is clueless. She’s coming to realize that she’s clueless when it comes to all things that really matter.
“…are you cold?”
Sakura speaks into the dark. Her light rasp finds Hina, coils around her, brings an instinctive pulse of warmth. She can never be cold beside her.
“No, all good,” Hina softens her voice, although there’s no one to fear waking up. She wills the tremors to stop. She hasn’t realized they were pronounced enough for Sakura to feel. She squeezes at her palms, presses her thighs together. Her body is hesitant to heed her internal command.
Sakura begins to shift. As she does, the entire bed shifts beneath her, the mattress caving in, the frame crooning. Now she’s on her other side, facing Hina.
Hina, as always, fixates on the sight of her in motion.
She has always loved passionately. Sakura is not the first subject of her all-consuming focus. Her mom says she’s got a one-track mind, but Hina likes to think her mind has grown since meeting Sakura, since she began loving her. She is not hungry and as desperate to distract herself as she was before. Before, when she devoured hobby after hobby, dedicated her life to one passion after the other, and caved in on herself whenever that love fizzled out.
She loves Sakura. It feels so good, to love Sakura.
And a year ago today, after reassuring Hina of her own love hours prior, Sakura fed herself a fast-acting poison and sat down to die.
…it’s not fair to think of it that way. Hina knows it’s not fair. Sakura hadn’t been lying, or just saying what she thought Hina wanted to hear. No, she had meant it. In Sakura’s mind, by ending her life, she had been supporting Hina. Saving her.
“…”
They look into each other’s faces. Hina sees her thought spiral reflected in Sakura’s eyes, narrow and contemplative, her full lips taut.
Hina imagines the face she’s making. She wonders just how obvious it is, what she’s thinking.
“…could we talk?” She says eventually. It feels like the wrong thing to say. It would be safer…it would be less painful to lie awake in the quiet, instead.
“Of course.” Sakura’s expression remains fixed. Hina gets the impression she expected this. The knowing goes both ways.
“…” Hina cannot settle for holding and soothing herself, not in this moment, so before she drums up words she reaches for Sakura. Her fingers ghost her jaw, drift up to her ear, brushing a wayward lash of white-out hair behind it. Her skin is hot to the touch. “Sometimes, I…I get mad when I think about it.”
In an instant, Sakura’s impenetrable stare morphs into one of turmoil. “…you cannot be faulted for that, my girl.”
But that’s exactly it, isn’t it? That immediate acceptance of fault. “I can be a little faulted, I think, ‘cuz what good does it do either of us to bottle it up?” Hina hates the smile that claims her mouth. She has never known herself to smile this bitterly. She wants to swallow down this feeling. But hasn’t there been enough poison intake between the two of them already?
“Hina…” Sakura breathes her name. She seems unsure of how to go on, and it’s rare. Even in the aftermath of all this, Sakura operates with her characteristic surety and grace. But now she trails off, and Hina gets a sudden, shameful craving for the Sakura she knew Before, who never seemed to run out of thoughtful, wisened words.
She rejects the craving with a physical grimace. There is no before or after. Sakura has always had the capacity to do what she did. There has always been a deep self-loathing festering within her, and deeper still was the notion that her life matters less when weighed against that of another person.
Hina cannot love it away. Hina truly, honestly believed she could make it better, could help Sakura understand that she did not need to compromise her happiness for anyone’s sake— least of all for Hina’s. It’s a paradox in that way. Hina cannot be happy if Sakura isn’t happy, too, right there beside her.
“I’m not mad at you,” Hina says, truthfully. She caresses Sakura’s cheek with her hand, gentle— worshipful. “When they told me…when I realized, none of it was really…for you, y’know? I thought, if I had just paid attention to what you’d said— cuz, I mean, looking back, you didn’t hide it from me, not really. If I had been really thinking, I woulda realized. And then you…”
“Do not do this to yourself,” Sakura’s tone is both authoritative and pleading. “You could not have known. Hina, my only concern in that moment was ensuring that you did not know.”
“But I should have,” Hina’s voice warbles. She fought it long, and desperately, but she loses to the honesty of her tear ducts. She sniffles. Sakura’s features blur together before her.
“I never wanted for you to feel this way,” remorse colours Sakura’s every grave word.
“I don’t want it, either. I didn’t want you to hurt. I wanted to…” Hina’s breath hitches, wet and convulsive, “I wanted them to stop doing this to you!”
A wet sheen glosses over Sakura’s eyes. “…I failed to protect you. For that I am sorry, Aoi. In the end, my choice was cowardly—“
Hina kisses her so the words cannot pierce through her chest. She kisses her again and again after that first one, to savour the warmth of her mouth.
When she’s done, she hardly pulls back, her eyes locked with Sakura, her lips tender. “Please don’t try to leave again,” Hina eyes are bloodshot. Her words are tremulous as they leave her in bursts. Because, there is no point to any of it if you are not here. “If you feel that way, say something. Let me know. Don’t just—”
She cannot continue. Her voice splinters into a choked sob, and the tears come in earnest. Sakura draws her in so that Hina’s chin nestles in the crook of her neck. Hina clutches her and squeezes.
She thinks, When I thought you were dead, my future died with you.
She says aloud, “I love you,”
Sakura takes a long while to respond.
“…one day, Hina, I hope to be worthy of it.”