Ribbons and Pearls
Cold Burning
Why did it have to be this way?
Always, always, always.
"I'm sorry…I couldn't…" the samurai gurgled around the blood seeping into his lungs.
"Hush," the girl said beside him, holding his hand. "Y-you'll be fine."
Her voice broke. Their voices always broke.
"I-I love you…so much…" the samurai said as he weakly caressed her face, wiping away the hot, crystalline tears.
"Don't say that now," she pleaded. "Tell me tomorrow."
He smiled as a thin trail of blood trickled from his lips and then down his chin.
"T-te…tell me you…love me…" he breathed, the cloud of white from the cold almost invisible this time.
"I love you!" she wailed helplessly. "I love you so much. If you die, I swear I'll kill myself."
He laughed a little and coughed up more of the thick red life in him. Some of it spattered across her face, turning pink where it touched the tear trails.
"You're not…so stupid…as that…"
"People do stupid things for love. Look at you," she cried with a small, sad smile. "You stupid man. It was pointless to try to save me."
"No…never pointless…if it makes you smile……Be…….happy……."
"Shinji? Shinji?!"
The girl stared a minute at the un-breathing flesh beside her. For a moment, the whole world was silent, un-breathing like the corpse she clung to. Then, her face broke and she screamed as she buried her face into the thing's shoulder. Her wails pierced Botan's heart like nothing else. It was the sound of a heart being torn into tiny pieces no one could put back together. With each sob, each pathetic wail, Botan felt her own heart break bit by little bit. But she was a professional at losing pieces of the heart.
As cold microscopic starflakes started to fall from the sky, frosting everything in that blank white, Botan watched as the samurai's soul shed it corporeal skin. The girl continued to cry, not seeing this semi-transcendental ascension.
'I-is she going to be okay?' the samurai, Shinji she supposed, said with a look so painful, she was amazed his new spirit form didn't bleed for it. Those sobs were tearing his heart apart just as much as the girl's.
For a moment, Botan forgot her job. For a moment, her smile faded and was replaced by blankness. For a moment, her eyes sharpened and a cold fire seeped into them. For a moment, all she could do was stare at this scene from fate's grand play with nothing but the blackest, most bitter hatred and contempt for the wretched worlds fate's toys had to live in. For a moment, she wanted to tear, rip, claw it all into tiny little pieces. And then cry herself into oblivion.
The poor girl in the elegant kimono would do nothing but cry for the rest of her life. It had happened too many times before to miss the signs of it. Botan hoped the girl's life was short. Hopefully she lacked common sense and would stay beside that lifeless flesh all night. The snow lay melted around the still warm corpse (not cold yet, but fading fast, just give it time) but the rest of the world was cold and ice. She would die of hypothermia.
'She should go in. It's cold,' Shinji said. 'She shouldn't sit in my blood like that either. Blood was never her color. She looks best in springs.'
The voice of another soul was enough to send that cold fire back to its hearth. Botan was back on the job, a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. The hardest part was always that damned cursed twinkle.
'Good evening, Takara Shinji,' she said with a bubbly giggle. 'Welcome to the afterlife. My name's Botan, and I'll be your grim reaper this evening.'
