... Yeah, it's serious xD
Chapter 35: Vow of the Fourth
She woke up, finding a presence missing from her. Where was that presence? Where did the presence go? It was unlike that presence to leave without at least notifying her…
She looked at the time, realizing she had a mere hour sleep in. The woman rose out of her bed and stood in front of the balcony door, looking into the cityscape with intention of trying to pinpoint that presence that was not supposed to be missing.
“Yui… Where are you?”
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“But how…?” Reina asked as her eyebrows arched outwards, in a somewhat scared expression. “How did it break?”
“I don’t know…” Yui said as she looked on the floor. “It happened a year ago… It simply…broke… One minute I was cursed, the next minute, it was gone… I didn’t do anything in particular that may lead to it breaking… But it simply… came…”
“That’s wonderful, it would be great if I could fly too…”
Yui looked up at the sky, looking nearly teary-eyed, “I can’t fly anymore…”
“What do you mean… What do you mean it simply broke?” Reina tried to stand her ground, trying to take in facts in hopes of putting it together.
“It was a sudden thing…” Yui looked down to face Reina again, “Without warning, it disappeared. All of a sudden, it felt like my vision cleared. Inside of me, there was no one but me. The spirit that restricted me was gone. The sky was so blue… When I thought about how I could never fly in that sky ever again… I was sad… But at the same time, I was happy… I felt like I had finally become human…I was happy…”
“But why do the others still think you are one of them? Are you still being held down by something? Even now, you are still at Rika’s side…”
Yui turned away from Reina, so that the younger will only see her back. The older lowered her head and closed her eyes in deep reminiscence, before finally saying, “…I will not come to return Erika’s feelings, because from now on, as I always have been before, I will be by Rika’s side…” She turned but her head to look at Reina out of the corner of her eye, watching Reina return her gaze in a thoughtful manner, trying to understand her, “There were those times where I too, had feelings for her… But those times were enough for me. So if I let it end like this, they will turn into trifling memories, and someday… They will disappear…” Yui looked away again.
Reina felt her eyes water at the thought of Erika continuing to be lonely.
“That’s all there is… “
However, the younger caught a small noise from the other with her ears. Reina moved forward and used her hand to turn Yui’s head towards her.
Yui was sobbing silently.
“If that’s the case, you should look happier when you smile…”
“Maybe I’m an idiot, but that didn’t feel like a waste of time to me! Bumping into each other in the store… Bumping into each other in the park now… I couldn’t get you out of my mind! Because I thought our coincidences meant something! Because I was happy! Sorry for wasting your time!”
“I do want to see her... I really do… I could kiss her as many times as I want. I am not possessed anymore… Even though everyone else is still chained by that suffocating curse… Only I… Only me, in freedom, can go wherever I please, can love anyone… But… But it’s because of all this…” Yui held her head with her left hand, obscuring her left eye and resting her fingers inbetween her loose bangs, “It’s because of this, I have to stay by Rika’s side…”
Rika cried uncontrollably with her hands grasping the wall for support, “Why…?!”
“Rika…” Yui raised a helpless hand, at a loss of what comfort she could bring.
“Why?! Why was it lifted?!”
“I…”
“Even though there were chains…!”
“I don’t even understand… It just happened all of a sudden…”
“All of a sudden…” Rika tried to calm down her tears.
“What awoke in me, I don’t even really understand…”
Rika turned her head to look at the younger, noticing that Yui had a different look to her eyes… “What are those eyes? Why such far away…”
“Rika?”
“Don’t look at me with such distant eyes! Please!” Rika threw herself on Yui; they both stumbled on the floor with Rika grasping the fabric of Yui’s shirt, looking up at the other, “Don’t go! Don’t go anywhere! Please don’t leave me!” The tears were now returning, “ Stay with me! Don’t leave! Stay by me forever! Don’t leave me… Don’t… Don’t…” Rika now cried into Yui’s chest, “Don’t… Please don’t…”
Yui, too, was crying.
“Don’t abandon me! Yui… Please… Please… I beg you… Don’t go…” Rika tried to wipe the constant tears from her face.
“I just couldn’t push Rika away… For her, the bonds we share are everything… Without the Orochi, God has no foundation. So, I swore on that day… The day the cursed was lifted, that I’d stay by her side…”
“I’ll always be here…” Yui said as she hugged the torn Rika, “I’ll always be here by your side… I swear. I swear it.”
“If that’s it takes for that child to go on without crying, I will deceive the others, and I will keep living as if possessed by the fourth head. If that’s what it takes for that child to not weep… That’s what I thought…”
All senses of insecurity relinquished as Rika heard those kind words, and felt that kind embrace. Amidst her sobbing, she backed from Yui, and gave her a sincere smile, a smile that came from the heart.
Yui recalled the phone conversation she had just before she had left for the park.
“You pitied her?” the voice on the other line mused. “But there aren’t any ties between you anymore, right? You should have pushed Rika away, right? For her sake, at that time, and now.”
“I just couldn’t turn away…” Yui said as she bore a face of sorrow. Reina was fighting to stop her sobbing of her own. “The curse was definitely lifted, but even if I felt that those chains had become nothing…”
Even though it might have only been out of pity…
“I couldn’t leave! I swore… I swore to stay at that child’s side. Until the day that that child doesn’t need me anymore, that broken, weeping child who clung to me… I said for the sake of this girl, I will go on living… Weaker than any other… More fragile than anyone else… For her sake… For the sake of that sad girl…”
“I see…” Reina finally managed to say, amidst her tears. “Though… ‘without the Orochi, there is no foundation for God…’ can you elaborate on that…?”
“There’s a woman that Rika despises like no other.”
“Who is this woman?”
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Megumi stood idly as she watched the hand of the other loom closer, wanting to touch her face.
“Megumi!”
The third head looked down the hallway to find Rika running towards the two.
“What are you doing?!” Rika growled as she used a hand to move Megumi back, and then stood in front of her in defense, “How many times do I have to say it before you understand?! Don’t you dare come near them!”
“Ojou-sama… You’re wrong… She was only saying hello to me…”
“That’s right, we were only exchanging greetings, is that such a sinful thing to do?” the other woman added on.
“If I were tolerant of allowing you to see them, you’d be seducing them right away!” Rika glared contemptuously at the woman before her. “What are you doing here anyway?! Go back to your own apartment!”
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“That woman is a bit ill… In her body, and mind. There are many things Rika holds in her heart, but even now, for her, that one person… The one who used to be so close with her… Shibata, Ayumi. I honestly don’t know how they came to hate each other so much, but there is one thing I know for certain: they will probably never become close ever again…”
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“If you use such filthy words, everyone will become fed up with you,” Ayumi said with much spite as she too, glared contemptuously at Rika. “Muracchi… You poor thing…” she sighed painfully as she attempted to once again, caress her face.
“Megumi isn’t some poor thing!” Rika raised her voice as she slapped Ayumi’s hand away, “They won’t become fed up with me! We’re tied together by our bond! Ours is a world you can never touch!”
Ayumi let out a ‘feh’ noise, before saying, “Are you still spouting that useless fairytale shit? Stupid child. And how many times must I say it for you to understand? Love isn’t bound like that, that’s not the real thing. That foolish eternity that you cling so much to with such stubborn determination is a sham. Dreams are delusions. I pity all the idiots you’re holding down with that crap.”
Rika charged at Ayumi and grabbed her neck.
“Ojou-sama!” Megumi widened her eyes in shock. The older woman was helplessly struggling to get the younger off of her.
“Then tell me what is real then! Is it friendship real? I know for sure that that isn’t perfect! There’s a swarm of people who abandoned their best friends for selfish causes! You sure did!” Rika yelled as Megumi tried to pry her back. Eventually, Megumi was successful as Rika’s hands were finally off Ayumi’s neck; thus, Ayumi bent over, trying to regain oxygen amidst her coughing.
“What is the ‘real thing,’ what is a ‘lie,’ what is ‘fiction’? No one can create a definition for that! Especially not with the Orochi’s bond with me!! Or for eternity! No one has the right to deny that!” Rika still shouted at the other woman.
“The real thing! It does exist! You were the one that trampled over that precious bond!”
“Like hell I did! You were the one who instigated it! I’ll kill you!” Rika tried to release herself from Megumi’s tight grip, but to no avail, the eldest still held her back.
“Go ahead! Kill me! When I die, my soul shall rise to heaven! And I’ll be watching you go to hell!”
Rika’s eyes widened, it had felt like Ayumi grabbed her heart and pressured it.
“I don’t need the likes of you! You’re useless! I don’t need you!” Ayumi pointed accusingly at Rika, knowing she has struck a vital chord in the battle.
And Rika felt her heart shatter.
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“Shibata-san said that the bond between Rika and the Orochi are not right… That those ties are unnatural and not the ‘real thing.’ So… Since Rika is heavily bound by them, Shibata-san can’t stand her…”
“I see… Whenever I see those two together, there was always this suffocating tension that followed shortly… I understand now…”
“When anyone of the Orochi meets Rika, there is… Well it is hard to explain. Did anyone teach you of the song we have?” Yui continued after seeing Reina nod her head slowly, “It’s pretty much the same feeling. Just as we cry when we hear the song played by one who doesn’t share our fate, we had cried when we first met her. There were very mixed emotions when I, and everyone else, had when our eyes connected. ‘I hate you. I love you. I want to run away. I want to embrace you.’ Something to that effect… Nonetheless, it was the other existence that was living inside us… The spirit’s blood. Whatever betraying sense we had, the spirit’s blood would reproach us, it would always say ‘don’t betray Ojou-sama.’ And if we do attempt to betray, it results in a huge backlash, and it creates a huge pain in our hearts.”
“…Risa once told me that she had absolutely no memories of it. Though, I’m very sure that Susanoo and the Orochi exchanged a promise those thousands of years ago. To be together for all eternity. No matter how many times they would die and be reborn, they wouldn’t leave his side. They’ll come to him, always. The Orochi are bound to that promise, even now. Even though they might not have memories of it, the blood surely remembers…”
“If the curse wasn’t lifted… And I could look at it, then I think that I would also think that the bonds were unnatural, like what Shibata-san said… But… There is one other thing that we can see…”
A crying girl…
Megumi hugged the crying Rika from behind, no longer restraining her heavily. “Ojou-sama… It’s all right… Calm down…”
“Ah! Shibata-san! What are you doing over there?” the manager said as she came up to them, “I’m not going to pry into personal affairs, but you are not supposed to be here!”
“Send her away,” Megumi said as she redirected Rika by the shoulders down the hallway.
As the manager and Ayumi walked, the older turned her head and sneered at the other two, “Heheh, I wonder how long you intend to cling to that foolish eternity for, you’re such an immature little bitch…” and soon, they were out of sight.
“Why…?” Rika stopped in her walk, her head not facing Megumi. “Why is she so cruel…?” she began crying again. “She only says… such cruel things…!” Megumi frowned as she watched the younger walk again, but with her hands trying to stop her tears, “So cruel…”
Megumi watched Rika collapse into tears again, and was reminded of all the times in the past, where she had seen her crying, and what the third head would do for comfort was to whisk the girl into her arms, and cradle her until her tears stopped.
And so, Megumi lifted the crying girl, and cradled her gently, allowing Rika to cry into her shoulder. “Ah… Ojou-sama… Don’t stop the tears, cry it all out… You will feel better…”
“Thank you, Megumi…”
There’s more…
“That crying Rika that I don’t want to push away…While I have someone I can not let go of… I just can’t harbor feelings for Erika…”
Reina was again, in tears, staring at the floor, refusing to look at the woman in front of her. So much was processing in her head, so much she had wanted to comment on, but wanted the story to continue.
“I’ve said so much… I’ve made you confused… But… While Rika is capable of hurting others easily… I wanted you to know that Rika has been abused as well, and is suffering… I wanted you to know just a bit of why… I can’t leave her…”
There are more words… However… They won’t come out…
“I’m sorry…” Yui said as she bowed her head, “All I do is hurt others… But even so… This is the path that I’ve chosen. The path that I have chosen of my own free will…” Yui said as she let out a sad and lonely smile, much to the sadness of Reina as she looked upon that face, “…I’m sorry, for everything…” and with that, she walked away.
My feelings are restraining me…
Near by the scene, was a woman, who had witnessed all. She growled silently at the fleeting figure, but made sure that her presence wasn’t known. She had heard the entire conversation. She had seen the faces of emotion and sorrow. And she knew she had to take action immediately. Ai Takahashi then turned around, not going to Reina, but instead, facing a certain destination, and left.
Reina sat on the bench, trying to wipe her tears away with the sleeves of her jacket.
Why the hell am I so helpless… First, I couldn’t help Erika… Then I couldn’t help Yui… And now…
I can’t help Maki…
I can’t move.
<3
Topic: Our Cursed Gift [Chapter 47: Our Final Promise][COMPLETE] (Read 170808 times)