FINGERS CROSSED, yuzuha usagi

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

How did people make the most out of their lives? How did they avoid biting their tongues and drowning with their own blood? How was it possible their memories didn't come in waves of 1,720 feet? How could they go on a simple way, repressing the desire to turn around after each step they took forward? Just how.

In all the years that had passed, Yasuko seemed to drift farther away from the answer. All she got left was the way her heart jumped out of its cage whenever she looked in the mirror, hoping her eyes wouldn't look like her mother's did, tired and lonely. Day after day, it became harder to understand the way the water rushed by, yet never came back as it did one second ago; the way time went by, and never returned what it took from her. Day after day after day, Yasuko missed what life had been like when she was just a child, running on the shorelines, chased by her mother's camera and the giggles she felt in her shoulders every time she breathed.

Have I been a bad daughter?, she thought, a metallic taste walked down the back of her throat, something that left scratches like barb and had never let her feel her mother's pain. Maybe their souls were just very old friends, two wishes that were desired later at night and whispered onto beer cans that cheered against the other and echoes of laughter spilled over a carpet. Maybe their souls were simply not meant to meet again, and still, despite it all, they did, in a hospital room and in a house for three, in a kitchen wrecked with love and a table overflowing with homemade pasta warming the already warm air.

There were times when Yasuko let her mind go blank, only to feel the pulsations on her chest, where she missed like a kid every second she had lived, and then there were some where she didn't, where she was sure a soft epilogue was all she needed to fully exist in the upcoming second. Love had been something heavy to carry around, something she hid under her pillows and left her fingertips stained, and she had been locking up with a key all her life until she had been taken to The Beach and everything took a twist.

Things changed first after she crossed paths with Ikehara and Aguni. And then things changed for a second time when it happened to be Usagi the one waiting for her around the corner. Even after The Beach was left covered in ashes, Yasuko's subconscious sought her, she pined for the hours she had spent glancing back at her over the shoulder when she wasn't watching, the midnights she scribbled words on paper to fold under her room's door, the day she finally got the courage to talk to her without Ikehara close to hear her stuttering and give him the opportunity to later laugh about it. At the end, it was as if the Earth was truly made for lovers, as if that if she had been lucky, she would've gotten to fold towels for those she cared about, and that would've been enough.

But Yasuko didn't think it would've. She had only needed more time to clear her mind, more time to look at her eyes, more time to decide trying to fool her heart was a bad idea when she felt it wriggle every time their gazes met. Yasuko had only wanted her soul to vibrate, her hands on her hips, lips on her neck, someone to hold her for one night as she didn't know how. But love was short, and it escaped out the space between her legs like a curious cat hurrying to bathe under the sun, and always left the door unlocked.

"I've been thinking about something," Ikehara's mumblings reminded her where she was at, why her body felt stiff and her face was covered by blood and tears, why one of her hands had long ago stopped responding to her, and why she didn't want to open her eyes when she heard his body crawling to her side. Trying to focus his eyes on Yasuko's trembling figure, he blinked three times, "Do you think you'll ever forget me?" Blood slipped from the corner of his lips, down his neck, yet all she did was hide her head deeper between her arms.

I thought we'd have more time, she thought in a rush. A sob broke out of her lips once her teeth let go of her bottom lip to take a breath in.

"You know what you are?" Yasuko spit, bitterly. The anger always came back, like love did.

Ikehara couldn't help but smirk at her without another thought in mind, even if the feeling of something rotting in his mouth gave him another spasm.

"Hot? Smarter than you? The man of your dreams?" Before he could get going, Yasuko interrupted him.

"You always do that, you always have to involve yourself in the middle of trouble when I'm handling things fine by myself, when-," Yasuko's words dissolved in her tongue mid sentence, "You'd done this many times before and I had to take care of you each time, and this time you promised it'd be the other way around, that I didn't need to worry if... If..." All of a sudden, her arms uncovered her head, dropping tiredly onto the floor. The fourth time she spoke, she didn't do it angrily but wearily, "It was your first promise."

"I made others before."

Yasuko shook her head sideways.

"No, it was the first I really wanted to trust when you said it out loud."

For a moment, neither of them knew what hurt the most, if the pain on their bodies or the pain that tinted their voices. Ikehara swallowed the trembling that was about to take over his jaw when he opened his lips to ease her mind. Looking at her, eyes still tightly shut and fists clenched, Ikehara finally understood what was troubling her; the problem was he had a habit to break promises and put them back together like they were nothing, as if the meaning behind them wasn't too serious when, for Yasuko, it was. If he pronounced it aloud, it mattered, and if he let it marinate on his eyes, it could be left alone, it mattered a little less.

"Next life." He whispered.

Unconsciously, Yasuko looked up at him.

"I promise I'll make it up to you next life, so let's find each other and let me take care of it." With every second going by, it became harder to fight against the tears building on her eyes, afraid that if one of them dared to fall to the ground, it would cause an earthquake that would only travel all the way where Ikehara's cheek rested facing her, "You can cry, Yasuko," his fingertips brushed the bridge of her nose, "It's all good."

But it wasn't, both of them knew it wasn't. It wasn't all good because Ikehara's sight flickered and Yasuko noticed; because he had been shivering over a pool of his own blood all that time; because Yasuko couldn't do no other thing than just watch him drift away and come right back with a quiet cough and a pained grunt; simply because.

"I'll forget my name before I forget you." She said, bringing up her uninjured hand to tangle her fingers on his hair.

His gaze softened.

"If I could reset time and go to the beginning, to the moment we met, I'll choose you again." He confessed.

"I know," Her tone lowered itself to match his, as if energies spoke and theirs linked by their hands finding each other's skin, "I'll choose you too."

Then his lips parted, and she prepared for the worst.

Don't, she pleaded.

"Just say it." Her own voice betrayed her.

Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.

"It's okay to let go." Ikehara caressed her cheek lightly, gentle as his soul had always been as it followed hers.

╭┈────────────── ˊˎ-
this was emotionally draining
🤣🤣 (es llanto)