Silver Linings
It was a perfect ending, really.
Ichiko sighed and threw another jagged cobblestone into the river. It skimmed the edges for a few moments, before it's inevitable sinking to the murky bottom. Night had fallen hours ago. The only light were the city buildings in the distance. Ichiko had ran here in a fit of confusion and realisation, to the place where she, Suzume, and Yumemi were always together. Night had beckoned the horizon, and there she was: alone, on the grassy banks, watching the other side with little interest. (She briefly wondered if this was what Kazuya felt like.)
Solitude gave her too much time to think, but it was the place she felt the most comfortable. She was a contradiction wrapped in deluded hypocrisy.
Of course Yumemi would love that red-guy. She'd read enough manga and watched enough television to predict where the story would go. They'd be strangled by the red string, and low and behold: those islands would claim her like they had taken everything else in her life.
And the way Yumemi looked at him…
She didn't need to tell Ichiko how she felt. She could read the emotions like they were printed on pages of her life story.
Ichiko groaned aloud and sat on the grassy banks. Stories like those always left out the endings for the friends who supported them through it all. They also never included the idea of the best female friend falling for that same prodigy.
"Why?" She muttered, glancing at her hands. Once, she had thought them too big for a man to hold.
That's because you never wanted a man to hold your hands. You've always wanted her hands. You've craved it for years, haven't you? You yearn for that soft touch, knowing you can never have it. That cruel voice whispered in her ear a mantra of repressed desires. It's voice lingered like a cold breath on her skin, making it prickle in internal truthful disgust.
Her eyes pricked with tears. They slid down her cheeks and burned.
She failed to hear footsteps behind her.
"I-Ichiko."
Her head snapped up, and she turned her head.
Puffed chest. Out of breath. Yumemi stood there with messy blond hair covering her face.
"I found you…"
She rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of her jacket, and cleared her throat. "Y-" She flushed when her voice cracked.
Her gentle form approached her slowly. Careful not to tread on her emotions. "Ichiko, you ran off when Munto came to visit. Are… you okay?"
Ichiko nodded, though her neck felt stiff. "Mm, I'm fine. I just got weirded out by him. You know how it is."
Yumemi knelt down in front of her. Her jade eyes scanned over her expressions like a computer. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah." She curled up again. "Just lost in thought."
There were no more questions spoken aloud, but Yumemi lay down on the grass, and pointed up. "Do you remember when we were little?" She whispered. "When I was the only one who could see those islands."
"How could I forget?" Slowly, she came undone, and lay down next to her. "I wanted to see them so badly I cried."
"You are a bit of a crybaby."
"Hey! I resent that!" She turned her face and scowled.
Yumemi merely giggled. Then jade caught wind of the solar light, and her eyes widened at the illumination in the sky. The islands that hung from the velvet black like lanterns on water. Ichiko thought the true beauty was in her eyes, not the world around her.
"We used to throw rocks at the stars to get those islands to come down." Her musings carried adrift in the wind, Ichiko felt it was time to knock those emotional walls down. Nostalgia paved the way toward that. "But it wasn't worth it. You got there all on your own. You didn't need me in the end."
"Yes, I did."
She sounds so sure. "I dragged you away from it."
"No, you kept me grounded in the world I was in."
Ichiko clenched her fist. "And what good did that do?" Yumemi didn't even flinch. It only spurred the fire in her veins. "I-I just made you unhappy by telling you to ignore it."
"Ichiko."
"What?" She sniffed.
"Stop assuming you know how I feel."
Her entire body in her froze. The fire flickered out, frozen over by dread. It's not a double entendre. She just means about all that's happened.
But the way Yumemi leaned over to look at her face, to gauge every detail, made her heart skip a beat. "The problem with you, Ichiko," her cheeks heated up when Yumemi brushed her hair out of her eyes. "Is that you assume. Mostly, you're on track. But when it comes to the heart, you like to blind yourself in order to feel better about bad things."
When Yumemi took her hand, Ichiko could damn herself to hell and be brave enough to kick the devil in the balls, if she could taste that happiness again.
"Y-You…?"
"You helped me more than you'll ever know." She smiled at her. "And I wish you would stop hurting yourself, because you think you know how I feel about you."
"Wh-which is?" She stammered, sweat drops forming at the base of her neck.
"You think I love Munto, don't you?"
"C-Can you blame me? The two of you saw everything about each other's lives!" Her voice broke with her flustered exterior, and she forced herself to look away. "You were miserable when you couldn't see him, a-and-"
"That means I love him?"
Ichiko stopped dead in her tracks. She tore her hand away from Yumemi's grasp, stood up, and raked her hands through her hair.
"Ichiko-"
"Stop." She begged. "Please, just stop." Her voice sounded tired and drained. It was a mental conversation said aloud, and it scared her into denial. "I-It's supposed to turn out that way! It always works out in those stories: you'll go on and love him, have a happy ending with him, and we can just go back to being normal friends with normal interests, and just forget all about the fact that I…"
Yumemi stood up and faced her directly. "Forget you what?"
She buried her head in her hands. If she was to say it, Yumemi wouldn't get the satisfaction of seeing her pathetic face."...That I love you." She breathed out. "That I've been in love with you for so long I'm terrified of what it'll be like when I stop. If I can stop. But I don't know what else to do."
Silence was often like the night; plenty of places for terrors to hide and surprise you. It was cold, left you bare and naked and cold from the exposure. She wrapped her arms around herself to stop the last shred of courage she had from escaping into the cold night air.
"Munto is a very good friend to me, it's true." Yumemi placed a warm hand on her shoulder. "I feel a connection to him that transcends worlds. I know that I'll know him for the rest of my life, and I'll always be there to help him if he needs me to. However."
Ichiko peered beyond her fears. "...However?"
"My place is here, on Earth. With the people I grew up with, with the people I love." Yumemi took Ichiko's hands away from her face, and held them tightly in hers. "With the people who have been here for me since the beginning. Who kept my reality from crashing down from things I didn't understand." Ichiko's eyes widened when Yumemi smoothed her thumbs over her hands. "Most of that," she said with a smile. "Was you. It's always been you, Ichiko."
Her heart skipped another beat. "Me?"
She nodded.
"B-But it's… not normal, is it?" Ichiko stuttered.
Yumemi's brow rose. "I see islands in the sky and have crossed the space-time continuum, and the idea of loving a woman is what bothers you?"
The absurdity of the noton made Ichiko's lips poke upward. "Well. I."
Yumemi gently moved her hands away from Ichiko's, only to cup her cheeks softly. "I can't tell you that I feel entirely the same way that you do, not just yet. But I think I'm on my way to. So please, Ichiko" her smile grew a little. "Will you give me a chance to catch up?"
Another few tears fell. The words that Ichiko would have said were caught when Yumemi pressed her lips to hers, and all doubts melted away as Yumemi wrapped her arms around her neck. When she closed her eyes, she wasn't afraid of the darkness anymore.
It might of not been the perfect ending in television shows and mangas.
But "perfection" in someone's ending was overused, anyway.
a/n: I FINALLY DID IT. I FINALLY WROTE AN ICHIKO/YUMEMI TALE AND HAD YUMEMI JUST AS A VERY GOOD FRIEND TO MUNTO. MY LADIES GOT THEIR HAPPY ENDING AND NOW I CRY BECAUSE MY GOD THIS WAS FEELSY TO WRITE. (Please review. I will smile and cheer!)