Recommended BGM: Uso to Honto - Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso OST
I thought everything will be over after death. I have never believed the concept of Heaven and Hell. I always thought that the life after death is merely a fairy tale. A story where people are made to feel hope for a paradise for all the good deeds that outweighed the bad or fear for an indefinite suffering for all their sins. But here I am, floating in a space of nothingness where everything is pitch black. It's odd how I do not feel frightened. Neither do I feel warm nor cold. I feel as if something is waiting for me yet don't know where that road that leads me there start.
Where is this place?
I tried to observe and see what's beyond the darkness but alas, this pursuit is futile. I still don't see anything but darkness. I decided to close my eyes for a moment and a picture of a person came into mind. I saw a young brunette standing right in front of me. The memory seemed so blur and I couldn't see a clear look on her face. It seemed she was confused and worried. I'm thinking this is the first time I've met her in this memory. The vision faded into white and stayed like that for a while. I was hoping for another picture but to no avail. Then I opened my eyes again. The darkness turned into a spiral of picture of events that surrounded me. Most of the pictures were of the young girl I saw. How she cried, how she smiled, how she grew up, how she cut her hair short and how it grew long, how she looked surprised, how she looked pleased, how she looked like when she sleeps.
Another faces were shown of a number of people. But a bigger picture showed me faces of two children. One with a hair like the first girl I saw, another one with a hair similar to a dark grey sky. I wonder why the helix focused on these three people. They must have been really close to me, like a family. The spiral continued to circle around me, showing me visual images of childhood to adulthood, from life until death. Then suddenly it struck me. The memories came crashing into me like a collision with a huge amount of force, like a cannon fired against a flimsy straw house.
Now I remember. This is... me.
I was happy. To disappear within her arms, unto the last second of my yearning for her touch and for every sensation of her that I could perceive, I couldn't ask for more. And so I parted my lips from hers and smiled at her for the last goodbye, I finally turned into ashes and smoke, and became one with the earth.
But I feel like it was the most selfish thing to think about. Leaving her crying and embracing the wind to where I've faded into, I couldn't help but wish I had more time and wishing that I could have stayed and clasped every single second. But I realized it wouldn't make any difference. I still made her cry: the number one thing I never wanted to do.
It never really crossed my mind. How she would live without me or how I would live without her. Or how the kids would live without one of us. Perhaps I was too confident about the thought that we would live for eternity or maybe just for a thousand year or maybe more if we're feeling selfish and forget about Yuki's death wish to give her life to turn Kaname into human. Or how we would survive every deadly blow given to us. But that night, the night where the physical pain didn't hurt more than the pain I shared with her, had made me realize that death can come to us anytime. No matter how long you live or how content you are. Death just comes to you anytime, like a monster that carries you away like a child.
But there's a few things I'm totally sure of: how warm her embrace and how tender her kiss was. Perhaps I am being too repetitive. Yet I cannot help but to describe her, how I feel about her. I have lived a life of fulfillment despite the pain the past has given. I have received the love I have waited for years after all the patience. But aside from all the love they have given me, seeing her smile again for the last time was already enough for a final gift. Meeting her was indeed a blessing.
Everything faded into white again for a split second. It felt like an eternity spending my time within that darkness but now I find myself standing in the place where I held my last breath, my last kiss, and my last embrace in front of the woman I have loved for all my life. I looked at my hands as I clenched them, feeling no pressure against my skin. I didn't feel anything. And then I looked at her. She kept weeping as tears flooded the remaining ashes of my being on the ground. I silently watched, grasping my constricting chest where my heart resided. Then I realize I felt no heartbeat, I was petrified. I knew I was gone in this world forever. I am now left as a spectator of the present, where I am nothing but an audience inside a theater. An element where one's reaction and emotion does not change the outcome of a play. A huge part of me still couldn't believe it, another part of me tells me I have to accept it.
Her weeping has stopped after the tears have run dry, staring into the blank space. I took a step forward, two step more... until I was near enough to try to touch her. Then suddenly a slight breeze came and she snapped, as if it has interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence. Something tells me that I should not try to touch her, like a condition of this new life I have been given, some kind of consequence I cannot comprehend if I were to break a barrier.
A life of a ghost. That's what I called it.
She wiped her face and struggled to stand with a trembling knee. She turned and open the door and I started to follow. I hesitated whether I should continue when she shut the door close, thinking if I'd be able to feel or touch anything other than the pain I've felt in my chest. I tried to push the door, but a portion of my finger surprisingly passed through. I ignored whatever just happened. I had to follow her.
I saw her climb the stairs and approached the hallway that led to our room. She moved sluggishly as if she had to work for a week straight without any sleep. I still remember the last words I have heard from her: "As you wish… in your last moments, I'll love you in the way that vampires love." She uttered those words as if she knew every system, every cell unto the core of the soul that existed inside of me. She knew everything I am, and I knew her.
She hasn't spoken a word since then.
She paused for a moment before she turned the knob, gently pushed the door as the creaking sound echoed the hallway filled the lonesome silence. She observed the empty bedroom. Our bedroom - where we used to spend our time alone together, where tiresome nights were turned into something worthwhile as she laid her head on my arm and her hand on my chest as we slumbered into serenity. Where the kids would go when they couldn't sleep at night as we were about to close our eyes. Where we had our first love making and for more that came.
I still remember how she led me through the bed and we gazed through each other's eyes, as if we're the only ones we could see. We sat beside each other, her face looked warm. A different kind of expression that I've never seen. She then kissed my neck and gently pressed my ears with her lips. And then I responded. I leaned over her and kissed her back. It felt different. Everything was different that it felt so peaceful and right. And we kissed more and more, momentarily catching our breaths against our mouths. And then we began searching for something more this love had to offer, something more than the satisfaction from consuming each other's blood. Then with the passion that grew intensely, I was no longer hesitant but hungry and yearning. But we didn't want it to be like that - hurtled. Not for our first time of making love with one another. And so we slowed down, gently but firmly, making ourselves understand that we could receive as well as give, teaching us that there was reward in patience.
She walked towards the bed, sat on the edge and grabbed the sheets and smelled them as if it evoked a vivid memory, as if she was able to feel my presence again. Sometimes I would catch her doing it and pretend I didn't see anything. She would make excuses. Silly excuses. She was pulled in by the scent for quite a while, in a way that has not been so consciously apparent. Then she walked towards the closet next. She saw something so familiar then searched for my clothes. She paused. Then she saw the white shirt I would always wear. She held the sleeve that dangled as she caressed them the way she caresses me. She held the cuff of the sleeve closely to her face, as if the cuff served like a hand that brushed her cheeks. She struggled not to cry. She closed her eyes. She then took it out and removed the hanger. She went back to the bed and took off her coat and boots. She cradled the shirt as she laid down and covered herself inside the sheets where our scents have lingered. She embraced herself with the shirt as if there was a person inside her arms. As if I was there.
I sat beside her as I studied her face. Her eyes looked weary and puffy. I tried to remember if I have ever seen her like this and I realize that I have only seen it a few times. I have yet to see a few faint lines in her face that would add to her description.
The tears started to well in her eyes again. She couldn't stop it any longer and didn't matter if it soaked her pillow wet but made sure her cry wasn't loud enough to wake the kids sleeping by the next room. She whimpered and whimpered again and again, only to catch a deep breath until she could barely release any air. I couldn't move an inch with all the sorrow and grief I witnessed, wishing I could pat her head like I used to. Yet there I was, like a helpless little boy, like I was once.
Then she eventually stopped crying. She struggled not to fall asleep, but began to anyway, out of exhaustion and desire. It's hard being left behind. They're gone and you become incomplete. And all day you imagine about the what-if's. You try to make yourself distracted, yet your memories of them comes back all of a sudden, like a beast you have created on your own, making you think you have tamed it only to find out it attacks you when you least expect it.
The youthful look of hers has stayed even after almost a century. I will never see that face of hers again and how I regret it so bitterly, the face with which she will go on without me, never to be kissed by me. That face of hers which will belong to a world that I can no longer exist in. And now I am merely a memory, finally relegated to an absolute past. But this was a face that I was always familiar with. The face that I would see first in the morning as I wake up with a feeling of unity, sense of security and safety. And she, herself, was beautiful, and priceless. Allowing myself to be absorbed in this wondrous bliss, I held value of what I've seen simply for what she was. For simply being.