Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
⋆ ⋆ ⋆
HOW LONG HAS it been since Satō Ayame first had this torturously peaceful dream?
She's curious to know the answer herself, to be quite honest. She thinks the dream first appeared a few months after Suguru left her in this world after promising not to. It always begins the same way: this black, eternal void where there seems to be no safe haven from the darkness of her own mind. She tries to prepare herself for what happens next every night, but she finds she never can — the sudden feeling of not being able to breathe always catches her off guard. Every breath she sucks in never makes it to her lungs, just burns at the back of her throat as if to tease her of what she could have. Her vision is blinded by all of her worst fears coming true at once, her body paralyzed and unable to break her from watching as every single person she cares about is bloodily torn away from her. And then, just as she begins to feel herself blacking out from the pain of it all, it happens ...
Her savior appears.
First, it's just his voice calling out to her. It's faint, but it brings her a bit of calm and makes all of the horrible things go away. She's back in her pajamas and she's no longer possessed by rage, but now she's shaking with a familiar fear she hates, and she still can't get control of her breathing in order to get oxygen into her lungs — she still feels like she's drowning in her own sea of blood while something (someone?) inside of her is trying to claw its way out.
Then, there's a gentle hand placed upon her shoulder, and peace washes over her body like a hot spring. Oxygen fills her lungs as if it had never left, and she no longer feels like she's going to die in this dream. She opens her eyes and she's in the fields behind the Gojō Estate where she spent the majority of her youth. The blades of grass sway in the wind soothingly, each one that brushes against Ayame's legs bringing more peace than the last. The gentle hand that was placed upon her shoulder lifts as the person it belongs to sits amongst the grass, and Ayame finds herself slowly falling until she's suddenly sitting down, too.
Once she's settled on the ground, Ayame tends to wrap herself up like a small child. Her knees gather by her chest and she wraps her arms around her legs tightly to protect herself from anything else that may happen to her here. Her companion on the other hand, the ghost of Getō Suguru that brings her what little serenity she has when sleeping anymore, is next to her as relaxed as can be. He sits with his legs crossed and his upper body leaning back on his hands that sit behind him; his hair is styled just as it was when he was alive, half up in a bun whilst the rest of his midnight locks hang effortlessly down his back with his usual bang that dangles and curls just below his jaw. He never has on his monk attire when he visits her in these dreams, just a pair of sweatpants and a black t-shirt, the kind of clothes he dressed in when he wasn't putting on the persona of a kind shaman trying to help the people.
He's always so calm, like he was before it all fell apart — before he left her to rot at the hands of the very people he despised, all in the name of his hellish crusade to save her from them. She hates him for it, she really does. She hates the both of them — her brother who thought he was a god, and the god they both worshipped. She can't believe they left her all alone.
But it's easy to let go of that anger when she hears his voice again.
"Ayame?"
She misses him so much. She just wishes it were real. She just wishes she could hear him outside of this place — in the real world, where she could be with him without the fear of him disappearing when it's time for her to wake up again.
"How was your day today?"
Ayame easily falls into routine once more. She talks about her day as if her feelings of loss had never surfaced, mentioning every detail worth her brain power to the man beside her. She lights up when speaking about Satoru and Megumi, an especially familiar smile adorning her lips when speaking about the latter. This boy has become her savior now, he knows that much to be true. Megumi keeps her afloat and away from her dangerous thoughts — away from the influence of her brother or Suguru, in a much more calm place of complacency by his (and Satoru's) side. Suguru feels her discontent with how Satoru lives his life, — refusing to speak about their losses, their hurts, their forever broken hearts because of what he had to take from them — but she never allows that to cloud her love for the man who has never done anything but protect her from the world. She loves Satoru, that much is clear, and she would not be living today without him.
After a while, though, the dream must come to an end. The beauty of the Gojō Estate fades until it is just the two of them left in the black hole of Ayame's mind. She never looks at Suguru once the void returns. She's too scared, too afraid of what she might see. It's all too good to be true, she knows that. What she took from Suguru when he died was simply what was left of his cursed energy — merely his essence to keep a small part of him alive inside of her. She gained half-black hair and the ability to eat cursed spirits as a means to preserve her cursed energy, but she could never manifest such a consistent image of him through all her grief and rage throughout the past year. Whenever she imagines him outside of this place, he is but a blurred and bloody image of the man she once knew. There is something wrong about him here in this dream, something off and sinister and downright awful about his energy once they get to this point in her subconscious, that she fears facing who he might really be.
He, however, never fails to keep his persona — even once he drops the innocence and lets his real energy flow into Ayame's being, one life-saving dream after another. She knows he is not her real god, and he knows she is aware. Neither seems to care, but Ayame knows his guard did not drop until hers did. She let him in first, whoever he is, and she will happily do so every night if it means seeing the perfect face of Getō Suguru again. (He gets the feeling she's growing to love him more than the man she thinks he is, though.)
"I guess I have to go now," he eventually sighs as if it is the last thing he wants to do in the entire world. (And maybe it was true that he found time spent in Ayame's dreams was much better than any alternative these days.) He stands up in one swift motion and Ayame follows suit like a puppy following its owner, as she usually tends to do. He always smiles at the action, and Ayame always feels herself flinch without ever having to see it. "You'll be good for me, right, Mey?"
"As good as I can be," she replies distantly, her stance unwavering.
Suguru places his fingers delicately on the white strands of Ayame's hair, tucking them behind her ear. She finds herself leaning far too deeply into his touch. "Until we see each other again, little flower."
