He closes his eyes and, as he always does, he sees Mika.
He sees Mika, brave, selfless Mika, who always put his family ahead of himself and regretted nothing. Mika, who'd submitted himself to that noble to earn food and supplies and a chance of escape. Mika, who'd thrown himself at that same noble with a gun and no plan but a desperate desire to protect the only remaining member of his family.
Mika, who'd bled out in his arms as he begged him to run.
Mika, who, in return for all he'd done for him, he had abandoned.
Mika.
"Why did you leave me, Yuu?" he asks, hand outstretched pleadingly, white clothing coated in blood that pools from the stab wound in his chest, that ever-present smile cold and unwelcoming.
He knows that smile well. Mika never seemed to stop smiling. He'd smiled as he'd introduced himself when they'd first met, smiled as they were dragged to the vampire settlement, smiled as he explained what he'd put himself through to make their lives that tiny bit kinder.
And he'd smiled, infuriatingly, in typical Mika fashion, as he'd died.
"Why did you leave," the voice echoes, swirling around him like a cloud of dust and dirt and guilt. Out of the mist rises Akane, eyes cold and dead, a bloody trail spilling from her torn neck down her dress into the abyss. Their other family members follow, equally blood-stained, equally cold, equally dead.
"Why didn't you save us?"
"We trusted you, Big Brother Yuu."
"How come you get to live when we died?"
"You abandoned us, Yuu," Mika states, voice drowning out the hisses of the others and dragging his attention back to his dearest friend. "You abandoned us to save yourself."
He says nothing, does nothing but stare into the depths of Mika's eyes. He'd heard once that a person's eyes were a window to their soul. Mika's eyes definitely did so. All of his emotions were written neatly in those bright blue eyes: joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain. While his smile may have lied, those eyes never could. Not to him.
Those eyes, like those of their family, are dull and grey, frosty and iron-like, hatred and judgement. Dead. Those eyes sear into his own soul, virulent and violent, everything Mika was not.
"I'm sorry," he chokes, and he means it. More than anything, he wishes to go back and change things - to take Mika with him, to save them all, to stop Mika giving himself to that noble in the first place.
But he can't go back.
All he can do is live with his decisions, knowing despite the unrelenting guilt he feels that he'd done what Mika had wanted, that he hadn't had a choice, that he'd had to leave.
All he can do is live on, for the children, for Akane, for Mika, and avenge them all.
"I'm sorry," he repeats, and opens his eyes.