notes: for day 1 - let her go (IshiHime Day)

Inoue-san doesn't understand how her happiness affects others – how she can change lives. / IshiHime. 686-compliant. (Title quoted from the Wikipedia page "Bridal Chorus".)

It's not that she isn't aware of how persuasive she is, but she seems to have written off her way of making others listen –

Making him go against everything he knows to be right –

As a sort of simple magnetism: good cheer, good looks – even good food, if one can adapt to the somewhat-odd flavor choices in her cooking. Few people are willing to try.

It would be easier, in some ways, if it were only he who was affected so. Then he could write off the way she breaks him, little by little, every time she deigns to lower her gaze to his. Then it would only be his own weakness –

His own incapability to ever say no to someone so precious. How can he defy her, when she is so desperate to be aided, to be saved, to be loved?

He understands very well why Inoue-san never expects to be saved. She knows this feeling, he thinks –

This feeling of being passed over in favor of some nebulously-defined better person, who is somehow more worthy than one's own ugly self. Fool's gold shines well enough to fool the masses, but only just.

A princess must live for the one who saves her. Humility is a virtue, yes?

– no, a good princess does not believe that she will be saved. She must lament her own unworthiness – or else she is too proud, too vain, too self-loving to be good.

How can he not be swayed by her sorrow? Inoue-san's suffering is as near to his heart as his own.

When she is sad – when he cannot see her –

When she is hurt – when she cannot save him –

When she is alone and lonely in the center of a crowded room – when he saves her, who could not protect even a single person's cracked and lonely heart –

– then his heart must also be broken apart.

When she stands at the center of the room, dressed all in white, white which is trimmed with sunshine gold – warm, warm gold like the color of her smile –

– like fool's gold flaking away to nothing, to dust, to an empty shell of earth –

She says that she is happy. She says that this is what she has always wanted, to be with him –

To be bound to him, utterly, forever and ever –

He'd underestimated the expected pain, as always.

– 'til death do they part. Amen, and hallelujah.

His eyes wander across the room, glancing over and past her.

Such a dull feeling – the awareness of being passed by, and deliberately turned away from –

Hallelujah and amen! Her dream has finally made itself into reality! If you are pure of heart, and you wish hard enough, and you just keep wishing –

She really did change the world! All praise. God bless the happy couple.

He is searching for the one person who would not be present, not for this.

– the absolute awareness of a simple fact: you are not wanted –

He stands witness for her until the end, watching her happiness – his own – heart break.

…well, with a prompt like that.

So, uh. Have this pretentious mess.