Another Night
"Do you love me?" he whispered in
Subaru's ear. Rustle of sheets. "Say that you love me..."
Subaru shifted restlessly.
--why am I crying?-- Subaru did not
say anything.
Arms tightened around him. "Do you love
me?" the voice whispered more insistently. "Say
it."
--why? why tears?--
Unwillingly, he felt his
face turn, to look--
--why am I crying?--
--why am I
so sad?--
--please--
Subaru woke up, gasping,
his blankets damp from his sweat. His breathing was rapid as he stared,
wide-eyed, into the darkness that surrounded him. Rays of light were
just beginning to peek in the horizon.
He stared at his hands,
and wiped them on the blankets. They left smears of red on the white
sheets. He had clenched his fists so tightly that they had started
bleeding.
Ignoring the blood, he buried his face into his
hands, and
wept.
"Hokuto-chan..."
"Subaru!!" Hokuto yelled at him. "Stop being so damn
polite!"
"I'm sorry," Subaru replied
meekly.
"And stop saying sorry!" she snapped.
"You're just trying to hide behind the rest of the world with your
sorries!!"
"I'm sorry," Subaru said, even more
meekly. There was nothing else he could say.
"It's
self-destructive!" she scolded. "Don't be like that,
Subaru." Her voice softened. "Don't be like that,
Subaru..."
"I'm--" Subaru started, but then
Hokuto placed her hand over his mouth.
"Don't," she
hissed. "Don't say 'I'm sorry.' It's not right, for you to hurt
yourself like that. Are you going to go on all your life, saying 'I'm
sorry?' Stop it. Stand up for yourself."
"But this is
what I am," Subaru said, bewildered. "Hokuto-chan, why are you
making me something that I'm not?"
"It's not
you!!" Hokuto yelled at him. She calmed down. "Subaru,"
she said softly, "please, stop trying to be sorry for others. If
you do, you can't be sorry for yourself. The point of living is not
living it for others; you live it for yourself. Stop trying to swallow
the tears of others, Subaru. Or you won't have room for your own."
He took his hands away from his eyes, saw the tears
strewn on his bedcovers, on his hands.
--are these my
tears?--
--yes, they're my tears, what else can they
be?--
--liar--
--you died for me--
--not for
yourself--
He knew that was a selfish thought.
--Hokuto-chan--
"What do you mean,
Hokuto-chan? I don't understand you," Subaru said, confused and
unhappy.
"It's all right, Subaru; it's nothing,"
Hokuto dismissed the topic abruptly; she had always been like that,
flitting from one topic to another, as whim demanded it. "Subaru,
do you love anybody yet?"
"What do you mean?"
Subaru said, starting to redden.
"You know what I mean,
silly; why are you blushing like that, if you don't know?" Hokuto
smiled.
"A-ah, well, um...I love you," he said
lamely. He looked embarrassed.
"That's all very sweet and
nice, Subaru, but I mean really 'liking' someone." Hokuto replied.
"Well....um....no..."
"Subaru!!"
"I'm sorry..."
"Hokuto-chan," Subaru
whispered. "Hokuto-chan, I miss you so much..." He rubbed his
eyes, feeling more tears spring up, and sighed, a gasping, incoherent
sound that was half-sob and half-sigh. He knew what Hokuto would say, if
he saw him now:
"Subaru! Stop crying! Why are you
crying for me!?" Hokuto would
scold.
"Because--because you're dead," Subaru would
say.
"Don't cry for me!" Hokuto would be angry, now.
"I don't want you to cry for me! You're not crying for me; you're
crying for yourself, and that's nothing more then self-pity! Don't hurt
yourself like this!"
Subaru would cry
harder.
"Subaru," Hokuto would say, in a much softer
voice, "don't cry for me, please. I made my choice a long time ago.
Don't live in the past." She would bend down, brush the tears from
Subaru's face. "Don't cry, Subaru. You have so much to live
for."
"Yeah right," Subaru muttered,
bitterly. "So much to live for. Some life I have." He put his
hands to his sides, ignoring the blood streaked on his face, on his
bedsheets, on himself. Sliding his feet off the bed, he padded silently
to the window, to look at the dawning sun.
"I
suppose," Subaru said to himself, almost contemptuous, "that
Hokuto-chan wanted me to live a happy life, and ignore
Sei-ch--Seishirou-san, ignore what happened." He looked down at the
wood floor, at his bare feet. "I wonder why she thought I'd do
that?"
He suddenly remembered his dream from last night,
and forced himself to forget. It was nothing, only a fragment of a dream
he had a long time ago, a dream that he saw broken before his eyes when
Hokuto-chan was killed. The Seishirou-san he remembered had been nothing
more then an image, something he dreamed up in the depths of his mind.
Turning away from the window, he reached for a random shirt in
his closet to put on. He thought, vaguely--I think if Hokuto-chan saw
my closet like this, she'd have a fit--as he pulled on his shirt and
absent-mindedly tucked it into his pants. He tossed the bloodied shirt
aside, brushing off the flakes of blood that had dried on his palm.
He reached for his coat, and put that on as well, just as
absent-mindedly as before. The dried blood made streaks into his coat,
but he didn't notice, nor would he particularly care if he did. Another
random thought floated into his mind: Really, I think Hokuto-chan
would go into convulsions at this point about my
clothing...
Looking into the mirror to make sure he was
presentable, he raked a hand through his hair and picked up the keys to
the apartment building, brushing his hand across a cigarette pack. He
remembered, vividly, an eternity ago, the day he had bought a pack
for Sei-ch--
NO. I will NOT think of that. Subaru pushed
the memory away ruthlessly, and closed his fingers over the cigarettes.
He stuffed them into a pocket, and grabbed a lighter as well,
clenching that tightly, forcing the memory of their meeting earlier away
from his mind. His hands trembling with the effort, he put the lighter
into the pocket, and left, locking the door behind him and pocketing the
keys. He wondered why he did that. It wasn't as if he really cared if
someone entered his room and searched--they would find rather poor
pickings.
He opted against taking the elevator to go
downstairs. At this particular moment, he really didn't want to see
anyone, especially in his mood. Opening the emergency exit door, he
walked down the stairs, slowly, listening to the sounds of his
footfalls.
He left the building and stepped out into the
streets of Tokyo.
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