Half-Empty, Half-Full
It was Valentine's day.
You just know that love is overrated when there's a holiday dedicated to it. If you truly believed in love, then would you wait for a specific day of the entire year to express it? Not that I'm trying to be sentimental. I just hate the fact that some people would wait until the fourteenth of February, get off their sorry ass, and go meet their significant other to tell them what they mean to them. It's incredibly cliché, and yet so many people still wait to confess their love for another for this one day.
The skies were a dark shade of gray, and it started to rain. It was the perfect weather for drawling on pessimistic thoughts, and to be truthful, there was nothing bright and sunny about love. It likes to make you happy for a little bit, then it turns around and gives you a cold slap back to reality. If you love, you will end up betrayed and heart broken. The shower of rain started to dampen the earth, and it was starting to feel a bit more humid.
I brushed back a strand of my silver hair. A voice from behind me piped up, "Gee, Bakura-kun, wonderful weather to be wandering around the park."
She was the last person that I would talk with. For a moment, I considered just walking on, but knowing her, she'd follow me until I responded. Dully, I retorted, "Just wonderful."
Despite the near-silence, I could imagine her smiling at my vague response. From the sound of her footsteps, I guessed that she was wearing shoes that were something platform like. I brushed back another strand of silver hair, and I imagined her doing the same with her hair moments after me. After five minutes of walking and awkward silence, I began to feel fidgety. She was like a stalker, almost, with how restless she made me feel.
I turned around suddenly, and she nearly walked right into me. When she stumbled back, giving me both an annoyed look and a sheepish one, I noted silently that she dyed her hair brown, leaving only the tips her natural blonde hair colour. "What do you want?" I asked rudely. It didn't really matter if I was polite or not with her. She'd die of laughter if I tried to be polite.
She gave me a slight smile. "There's a lot of things in this world that I want," she replied with a feint tone. Her eyes were wide, trying to make herself sound genuinely oblivious of my meaning. "Would you like me to list them all?"
"Nope."
I started walking again. She followed me, persistent about getting me to tell her something worthwhile. It was probably the only reason that she bothers with me.
Up ahead was a group of weeping willow trees, with a pathway paved with pebbles leading up to it. I knew that concealed underneath its branches as a small pond—it was very likely that there'll be a couple hidden there too, but I took my chances. I brushed aside the limp vines. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she followed me into the small shelter that the trees provided. "Why are you still following me, Khepri?"
She gave me one of those looks. "Because I can, Bakura."
What a vague explanation, I thought with slightly irritation. "So there's no particular reason at all?" I questioned carefully, ridding the question of any sense of hopefulness or desperateness. The last thing I wanted was for her to assume that I asked out of what connections we had in the past.
"Not really," she said while strolling slowly to the edge of the pond. "There's no real reason to do anything anymore. The only time that really mattered was when we were alive, and frankly, I do not consider this existence as life. More as a shadow of life."
"Oh?" I asked with slight amusement. "Humour me with your philosophy. From where I stand, both you and I seem very alive to me."
"We are only alive because we live through another body—and you can be alive, but still be dead when it comes to living life. We're bound to this world for the time being, and that is all. We're not immortal because we can move on from the plain of the living—immortals live on forever."
I raised an eyebrow. "You know as very well as I do that we're stuck here because we were stupid and allowed our souls to be stuck in an inanimate object."
Now she sounded amused. Her shoes touched the surface of the pond water, before she turned to face me. "Or so you say. Maybe you're just here because you're afraid of moving on, and that you willing to blame it on stupidity."
I blame a lot of things on stupidity because it was through stupidity that I did certain acts, and believed certain things. Mortality and hormones are probably the worst things that you can mingle together. It was through those two that I met, and that we ended up betraying our causes in the end. I've betrayed the souls of the dead when I made my relationship with her, and she committed both adultery and treason.
It wasn't as if she truly liked me. I heard her confess to one of the high priests about how she only got involved with me to break me slowly. She only wanted to get in deep enough for me to fall for her, but went too far.
I was stupid for not realizing her ulterior motives, and she was stupid for hurting herself in the process. As I said, mortality and hormones are a nasty combination.
"Me? Afraid of moving on?" I asked arrogantly. "Stop trying to make lies to cover up the truth. You know the truth as well as I do."
She glared at me. For the first time in a long time, I saw how time as affected her. Behind her eyes, there was no emotion other then anger and hatred. She never seemed to smile without a tinge of bitterness anymore. Whatever happened to the carefree her? She used to be such a happy person. Almost untouchable by depression… she's a shadow of the person who she used to be. Maybe that's what she meant about not being alive—we're not the people that we were in the past. We've gone through too much time to be.
Time made all of our emotions weaker. It's harder to feel happiness as well as we did when we were young. I don't think I'm capable of happiness anymore. I don't want to be capable of happiness. It was all because I loved her—
I bolted. I could feel her eyes watching me in confusion as I hastily ran away, and guessing from the lack of footsteps behind me, she didn't bother to follow me this time.
Love is for those who are weak, those who don't want to face reality. When someone that you know dies, you turn to the ones that love you and let yourself fall into illusion. When you supposingly fall in love with someone that you thought was special, you let yourself fall into your own world, unaware of the horrible things that are happening around you. It's only when you face the truth and reality that you can only realize that love is only a myth made to comfort those that won't accept what is.
It wasn't because I loved her. It was because I'm still in love with her in spite of all that she's done to me and what I've done to her.
Despite all the time that has passed by, I'm still a fool still stuck in the illusion of love.
The End
I do not own Yuugiou, though I do own Khepri. Please excuse the bad quality of this—I felt obligated to write something for Valentine's day. Half of this was written after my mother screamed me and banned me from using the computer for long, and the other half was when I was sick. I meant to write something fluffy, and I ended up with this. This is dedicated Valentine's day, obviously.
Constructive criticism and flames are more then welcomed, and reviews will be appreciated. If you have time to review, that will make me a happy, happy person. Characterization is probably all over the place, so I expect someone to blow up on me about that. This is my first one-shot in a long while…
Innocence Within
PS: Inert is being revised for all of you who have read the first chapter. It is now going to be only in third person for flow purposes.