- A Yui Monologue -
There are spiderweb scrawls across the dust, ages of worlds lying forgotten
on the floor. Discarded they lie, the memories we buy, like a little
kid's balloon at the circus that eventually ends up above the clouds.
What happens to those balloons? Figuratively, they're always real
somewhere, floating interminably above us. Little bobbing angels
on strings. Flying...
The clock ticks lazily, each passing second announced by what seems a tolling
bell in the silence. Tick, tock. The time passes. Lives
flash as seconds, tiny flares, miniscule sparks. They always fade.
Sometimes, Time seems to stop, and I have to listen to make sure the seconds
are still fleeing by. That's when the wind whistles outside, a mournful
dirge, and it's calling me. That's when the shadows leap, and the
night turns cold like ice. That's when the nightmares come, and the
seconds are more comforting. I need a clock, need to hear it passing.
Time never leaves me alone. All I need to know is, just one more
second...
Silence oozes, it drips like mud when there's no one else around.
That's when every heartbeat rolls like thunder in my ears and I have to
hold my breath to check. I'm real. This is real. No more
shadows in the night to steal time away. It comes like a chant, a
mantra I whisper in my own mind. I'm not alone...I'm not alone...I'm
not alone! Sometimes I have to remind myself to breathe; or else
maybe Time will go on without me. And I'll be forever stuck here,
floating alone, an abandoned balloon in the sky. It's worse to be
forgotten now than to be forgotten in the future. Time remembers.
Time knows. Every particle of dust has a story.
And me. What's my story? Yui Hongo, the former. The forgotten.
Someone's best friend…once. Someone's almost-love…if only.
The silence around me is filled with excuses, and they throb with the beating
of my heart. Excuses as to why my seconds are filled with desolation,
excuses as to why I bear them alone. But I'm not alone. Never
alone.
"You'll never have to bear that again," Nakago had assured me. Of
course not. I'm a priestess now, the Seiryuu no Miko! I'm important.
But important means nothing, it's one of those words that slips like water
and disappears as if never real. Important, yes... but I was never
important to important people.
Seconds tick and I sigh, hearing them pass. Knowing that elsewhere,
they pass and mean something, but here they are only more time wasted.
Just one more second... I live in seconds that mean nothing to me.
Silence cloaks the air as dark as the new moon.
The moon, yes - turn away from the sun, Yui. Why have I bothered?
I am nothing but a reflection. Even in full brilliance, the moon
is shining only with the grace of the sun. And the stars - as inconsequential
as the seconds that fall from the hands of the clock like particles of
dust. Wasted. Discarded. Abandoned. The wind cries
its haunting melody outside, and I am reminded of the insidious breezes
of spring. Spring, when the cherry blossoms drift lazily, when the
air is filled with sweetness. Summer, when the laughter of children
rings to the heavens, echoing hollowly from the stars. Autumn, the
moon in its haughty splendor, the land raped for its riches. I shudder
at the word. My memories are not yet dust.
Winter, then, completes the year. Winter, when the wind shakes like
the howling of a wolf - a lone wolf, its cry soaring eerily from the barren
hills. When I look from my window it does not matter how full in
bloom the trees are, how luminous the moon. The seconds are indifferent.
Perhaps I should be, too.
Sometimes I wonder at Fate. How foolishly she casts her dice, how
carelessly she plays! Children whose fingers slip from the strings
of their balloons never stop to think. And so the discarded playthings
wander, unnoticed, forever. How cruel she is sometimes, that Fate,
in her childish games. Ruthless, perhaps, out of necessity.
But with whom does she engage in these amusements? The master of
Time himself? To him belong the seconds, which touch the hearts of
all. Oh Fate, how coldly you cast me to this life. Am I to
live with only the solace of each passing moment? What joy lies in
counting the steps to your grave?
The days are cold now, the sunshine weak like faded cloth. I block
it out; turn my face from it. I will not be anyone's shadow!
And then the nights are endless, each second lasting for millennia.
It is the shadow reign that I can never bear alone. Too long, too
long spent in company with the sun. Too late?
I kneel in the faint scattering of moonbeams through the window, knees
pressed hard against the floor. Teach me, I beg of the night.
In the silence, my clock ticks. Show me. I will win.
I will win. Miaka will see! I will never be her shadow again.
Too many years had been spent, fooled by her words. The sun is only
using the moon, using her to reflect the sun's light to the world in both
night and day. No longer, I whisper to the seconds. My company.
My guardians. I hold my own court of stars!
The dust scatters as I rise, years passing before my feet as I cross the
shrine. The floor is chilled against my skin, as cold as the moonbeams
that have drifted inside. My feet stir whispers as I hold the clock
between my hands, close to my heart. Is my heartbeat what makes the
seconds tick, or is the fleeing of the seconds what urges my heart?
I can feel both moving as I walk.
Yui Hongo…the free. No more do I bend with every word that slips
from the mind of someone else, no more do I fall with the seconds.
I'm no one's shadow! I don't live in the seconds of another!
I clutch the little clock in my fingers, leaning against the doors to the
shrine. Seiryuu's symbol shines there, broken as I part the doors
and step into the moon-bathed hallway. Night's hold on the world
is still great, and the stars glitter distantly as the hands of my clock
trace the same old paths. Oh, Miaka, Tamahome, why, why am I so alone
now? I speak, tell myself that all is different. I am important,
I am free...
But the seconds still tick on, and the shadows still leap, and the dark
reigns a little longer. Breathing in the silence, I remind myself,
just one more second...and the nightmares will end.
Yet somehow, my one second seems to last an eternity.