A/N – Hello everyone! Thank you for viewing my story.
I wanted to let you know ahead of time that this story will be more difficult to read as I took inspiration from William Faulkner, the author of the American classic "The Sound and the Fury". The story will seem fragmented but it's supposed to be, for whatever reason you would like to interpret.
Also, I'm currently in college and updates will be sporadic! I promise the chapters will be worth the wait. Please excuse grammatical/spelling errors, I do not have an editor.
Chapter 1.
This story begins with the end of another. After centuries, millennia ceased with her. With every cough that racked her emaciated body, her soul left the world. She would hobble the garden, long unkempt and overgrown just as her own body, until she collapsed, her voice too weak to call out. After working an eighteen hour day, he found her among the lilies. Her frail body was covered by the tangled mass of leaves and stems, only her face remained surfaced in the sea. For a moment, he froze and saw the lioness that once existed. Another cough awakened her and she began to choke, air would not fill her lungs. She made muted grunts that awoke him from his disgruntled thoughts crossed with memory. With a startled gurgle, she was lifted to his arms and pat on the back like a newborn. Breathe in, out.
She was sentenced to the guest bedroom, her hospital bed positioned so she could spend her days overlooking her garden. As her legs lost complete function and she became wheelchair bound, she retained her uplifted spirits. Her golden brown eyes sparkled with an unquenchable fire for life which he could spend hours gazing into. However, as hospice care nurses began to visit everyday for the next few months, and she realized she had lost, she dulled to a breathless whisper. For a month, she would only eat when forced, she slept for days on end, and her medication became a demon that devoured all.
Her mind was almost gone when she suddenly pulled the wires from her arms and dragged her body from its sarcophagus. The thump of her body against the wood of the floor woke him from his nap between shifts. He sprinted to her room to see a mangled corpse dragging itself on the ground, blood trailing from open wounds of IV's. With a slight huff of surprise, he lurched backwards. She let out a gurgled sob in response, her body curling into a ball on the ground.
Ever slowly, he tiptoed back to her room, the scent of sterilized equipment and an unwashed body encasing him. He wrapped his arms around her frail body and picked her up from the floor then placed her in the wheelchair that had been sitting unused for weeks. Silence followed their movements, he pushed and she shoved. Yet soon enough, they were in the garden, under the trees that once bloomed brightly with vibrant cherry blossoms. Lightening had struck the tree, leaving it half dead, half alive. Often, she had joked that she and the tree lived the same life, but at least the tree was recovering. She was silent.
"Remember when we had first met?" He asked, his hands on her shoulders. She shivered in the mid-spring breeze, the sensation reverberating to his soul.
Her head rolled to one side, the drugs drowning her once more.
He knelt to her side, his hands grasping her frozen hands. "I remember." He continued, "You told me to not be so cruel to girls when I declined their confessions, to be considerate of their feelings. I wondered what kind of person you were to say such a thing, but that was before I knew you."
After a long pause, she squeezed his hands weakly. A blush crept on her cheeks and flourished onto her ears, her brows furrowing in frustration. "That's because you're an idiot! You were so cruel to them! I had to step in." She yelled angrily, her fists flying towards him.
"But I'm glad I did. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to meet my adorable girlfriend." He said, his lips curling into a sly smirk. "Fiancee."
"I had been living a life not worth living – a half-written, monochrome story with an uninspired author. But you, you came into my world and brought this brilliant light that brought the possibility of color to me. As we began to know each -"
"You stalked me!"
"As we began to know each other, I was shocked with an array of colors I had never seen. Every day, every adventure, I knew I loved you."
"U-U-Usui." Her face was scorching red, the setting sun, but she continued to scold him. "Don't say such rash things."
He clenched her hand harder, her delicate hands popping. "But it was true. I loved you so much, but not as much as I love you now. I always thought things would end differently."
"That I wouldn't die?" Her head rolled forward, her lips forming odd syllables that would not create words.
"We wouldn't die."
"Relax, I'm the only one dying. You need to take responsibility and help everyone through this time."
"What about me, Misaki?"
"I don't worry about you. You have always been able to handle yourself."
"Do you truly not understand how deeply I love you? Does my love not mean anything to you? How can you treat me like this?" His voice escalated with every word. Never before had he yelled, but his whole body shook in realization of what was to come. This was the farewell.
She pressed the IV button above her bed to pump more medicine, then rested her hand on his head, running her fingers through his blonde, combed locks. "Any man who would fly between England and Japan to see me every day after class in college obviously is insanely in love with me. Your love is the only reason I am still alive, you annoy me enough with it to keep me going. And I am not treating you like anything. You're acting like a child. I am going to die, there is nothing we can do about it. I need you to be there for my mom and Suzanna."
"But me?"
"You will be fine. Life will go on." Her words, the world, slur.
His voice was barely audible yet cut through the silence, "Please, not now."
Slowly, her eyelids slid shut. The breeze cut through her body once more, then light filled her being. She was warm, glowing, the sun blazing on her shoulders as she lifts her legs out of the wheelchair one by one and onto the grass pathway at the end of the garden. Behind her, she hears the heartbroken scream of her husband. She turns to him, so too does the world, and places a firm kiss against his temple.
"I love you."
The world imploded, then disappeared from under their feet.
Usui did not attend her funeral. He broke the news to his mother and sister-in-law and helped them through their mourning for the following weeks, just as he had promised. Every night when he would return home, he would enter the guest bedroom and sit on the chair that would be next to her bed. For hours, he would gaze at the spot where she had been. Licht would join him, purring gently in an unusual act of kindness.
The medical bills were paid in full by the Walker family, condolences. Usui quit two of his jobs then, the Walker family also offering him a position in their infirmary. With this, he would visit his patients once or twice a month, then return home. In the weeks home, he would watch the ever gray world pass in a static lull.
Finally, the dam broke.
While packing away her clothes, he found the photo of them at her part-time job. Long ago, she had said she had gotten rid of it by mistake, but there was no mistake. She had had it that entire time. Misa-chan blushed, her brows furrowed down and her lips down turned as she was forced to take a picture with Usui.
Until that moment, he had not realized the abyss left in her wake. But as his memories returned, and he could not turn to Misaki and tease her about the photo, it came into focus. She was gone. Her ferocious attitude, her secret smiles of ecstasy, her overly blunt, determined personality: gone. He would not return home to a destroyed kitchen with scorch marks to the ceiling and burnt rice balls sitting, waiting, at the table, or her bent over her laptop in determination to seal a contract between countries. He would not wake in the morning and memorize every detail of her face as it furrowed and lifted during her dreams. She was dead.
His shell cracked. His body hunched forward and a loud, harsh sob lumped in his throat. His hand covered his mouth while his other hand rubbed the film of Misaki's face. For eternity, Usui sat in their closest with the picture pressed to his chest. The image branded his unrelenting mind. His tears faded as he reminisced.
The next morning, he opened the windows of every room of the house. The scent of the salty breeze and decomposing plant mater filled his lungs as he inhaled deeply, as though he had forgotten how to breathe. In the guest bedroom, he leaned out the window across from where the bed once sat, staring. The prominent and demanding brilliance of red tiger lilies swayed starkly from the rest of the keeled over plants in garden.
"This is so nice!" She murmured, stretching her arms above her head and smiling into the breeze. "What took you so long? I would have done this a month ago!"