Her mouth opened, as if to speak, but the words that she knew she should say stayed buried within her. They wouldn't come. The tears choked them back.
So, instead, she said two words that were never to be believed, but that were so commonly used, they were trusted as much as anything else.
"I'm sorry." She said the words thrice.
But this time, she was. He knew that the receiver of the words would deny that it was ever her fault, and assure her gently and forcefully all at once that she couldn't have done anything different.
The receiver was unable to hear.
She held his motionless –lifeless- body as tightly as humanly possible. The flames that surrounded the two- the flames that he had created- were closing in, circling and snarling like pack animals.
A single tear fell from beneath her glasses onto his cheek. Some stupid, irrational part of her hoped that it would somehow bring him back.
Needless to say, it didn't.
His hand fell from hers and her grip loosened.
Takahisa sempai... Takahisa sempai!
She didn't say the words aloud, never mind how much she wanted to scream them, let the world know of her grief, let them suffer too.
She wished, then, that she had held his hand tighter, that the dead weight of it had not pulled it from her grasp.
She wished that he could hear her.
She wished that he hadn't died.
But this wasn't something she could blame on him... was it? She had killed him, her will, her very hands...
She stared at the hands in question. The tips of her fingers and the heels of her palms were wet and sticky with a rapidly drying liquid. The liquid was the colour of... the colour of his eyes, when they were lively and bright and kind... loud and happy, when they spoke, in those brief moments of peace when their lives weren't threatened, those moments when time moved as fluidly as water.
The blood was wiped hurriedly onto her skirt. He wouldn't like her to think about him too much...
It would just make it more painful for her.
She hesitated. She didn't know whether to stay or leave.
She knew what she wanted to do, obviously. She wanted to stay with him forever, feeling her legs grow achy and numb as his weight pressed into them.
Another tear fell. Liquid sorrow.
She felt the urge to say something, other than simply "I'm sorry".
Once again, the words didn't come. The words she had loved to use so much in the past... She needed them now. Where were they?
She could feel the hazy heat of the fire licking at her bare arms. She needed to leave, quickly, then...
Or did she? Did she want to die with him, burn with him? If she stayed, then she would never truly stay until she was actually with him, and that would only be when the flames devoured them both.
His flames, the flames he loved so much...
Yukiko Hirohara's decision:
She didn't stay.