Please, Ritsuka, just this once. After this you will never see me again.
Your voice, that soft and melodious timbre, plagues me incessantly. A voice instilled into eternity by death. A voice that could not be smothered, not even by blood.
You knew, that death took away not your life but my liberty to forget you.
Reveling in your memory. Every moment of every day, ceaselessly seeing the transparent shadow of your beautiful face, taunting me.
A thousand words unspoken, saturated that silence between us, filled by the boundless sorrow poured forth from your voice. You'd rather die than let me go.
Passing through the familiar bamboo forest, impregnated with the reminiscence of you, your scent, pure and cold like the morning dew of spring. A breeze passes by and the leaves rustle in the same neutrality as when you still were, but you are not now.
Wallowing in your memory. Every moment of every day, ceaselessly feeling the transient whisper of your warmth-less touch, caressing me.
Your perfect gift to me, that calm and lifeless body bathing in the pale light of death, but even Dis (1) cannot overshadow your beauty.
Which is more cruel, to pin down the butterfly, or to unpin it only to let it fly with broken wings? I could not make that choice.
No matter how many times I kill, I cannot erase that last mournful smile from my mind. I wish the blood in battle could blot out the silvery purity of your hair, the scent of dying fear the faint lavender so unique to you, but no matter how much blood I spill, I cannot forget you.
---
"Who is that?" Asked the boy standing beside Ritsu.
"Who?"
"The one standing in the bamboo fore…Ah!" Suddenly recollecting that Ritsu can't see, the boy bit his tongue and apologized quickly. "Sorry."
A shadow of a smile graced Ritsu's lips. "It's okay." He doesn't need his sight to know who it would be in the bamboo forest. "That's Aoyagi Ristuka."
He heard a sharp gasp from his young companion.
"Th-That's Aoyagi Ritsuka, the Loveless Sacrifice?" Disbelief saturated the boy's tone.
The mirthless smile deepened on Ritsu's face. "Does he not look the part?" A useless question to which he already knew the answer. Aoyagi's strength goes only so far as the battle.
"Uh…that's not what I meant. I just…" The boy stuttered and mumbled in a quieter voice, "I just thought that he would be more…forceful,"
Ritsu smirked. How true! A walking corpse drowning in the memory of his lover. Who would have thought that the fragile and solitary figure in the twilight shadows is Nanatsu no Tsuki's ace, Aoyagi Ritsuka.
"since he's so ruthlessly strong in battle." The boy continued.
"That is not strength. It's desperation." Ritsu remarked quietly.
"What do you mean?"
The older man smiled and didn't answer the boy.
Desperate to erase that person's presence from his heart of ashes; floundering helplessly in the seething despair of a love too ephemeral. There is not a moment's respite, even when his heart is already empty.
1: Dis: Pluto, God of the Underworld