A/N: Written for WIXOSS bingo: the non-flash version, #008 - prompt: inhuman.
Understanding as an Outsider
Kazuki couldn't understand the desperation, and he probably never would. The closest he could get was probably words from Yuzuki, but he couldn't hear Yuzuki now. And he didn't even know when last he'd heard Yuzuki, and when Hanayo had become that voice he heard instead.
He couldn't understand how Hanayo could do such a thing, even if Yuzuki's friends didn't seem angry, just worried and understanding. They understood, maybe because they were Selectors as well. Kazuki wasn't, and he never would be. Only girls could be Selectors and that seemed like such a silly and unfair rule. Especially when it meant he couldn't even talk to Yuzuki.
He could only listen to Hitoe relating the words, and hope she really did understand, as well as she seemed to. But even she couldn't fully understand. She hadn't become an Eternal Girl. And she hadn't fallen in love.
But what else was there? Kazuki couldn't understand either, how Hanayo could ask for a love not directed to their soul and then accept it, continue to accept it… But she hadn't, had she? If she had, she wouldn't be in that hospital bed now. And Kazuki wouldn't suddenly know – when he'd been so oblivious before. And this was after knowing about the Selectors and LRIGs and Selector battles.
All he knew were words. That Eternal Girls had to fulfil the wishes of their previous Selectors or risk vanishing. And LRIGs had to accept their Selector's wish or risk being stuck forever. And not everyone was as lucky as Hitoe, to get a friend who would take that risk for them. Yuzuki hadn't. And Yuzuki had been the one to pay the price for it.
Kazuki gripped her card harder. Even if he couldn't see her move, she could…and hopefully she could feel him too. They had that at least, amidst all these uncertainties, these deficiencies in understanding. Hope. Or delusions. Or who knew? Maybe this all was the delusion? This card game that had evolved into an all out war between girls with wishes, wherein there was no victor. How had it even begun? And why? And why only girls? Did boys not have wishes so strong? Or was the one who'd begun this believing that face, that lie? It didn't matter. It wasn't for either of them, girls or boys. The girls were simply dealt that hand: that cruel inhuman game.
It seemed like an endless thing, growing exponentially, spiralling out of control. An endless thing with no large purpose in the end: girls' souls recycling between desperation, despair and life as an LRIG, as an Eternal Girl – and that word just glamourized the end point, didn't it? Yuzuki hadn't said anything about the cost. Maybe she hadn't even known.
Or maybe, that one day she'd seemed so sad, so despondent, she'd learnt the truth. And decided her wish was important enough anyway.
No…he didn't think that was it. If she'd learnt a truth that day, it was a different truth. Yuzuki wouldn't have let someone else's voice declare her true feelings if she'd known. He was sure of that.
He didn't know Hanayo – or other LRIGs, or even Hitoe and Ruko – at all. But he knew Yuzuki, whatever form she was in.