note Hotaru's perspective in the poem Briar Rose.
Characters: Hotaru Imai, Ruka Nogi
The Altruist
Learn to let go once in a while, will you?
do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.
- mary elizabeth fry
...
Stop holding my hand, Nogi.
It's like you're strangling me.
Learn to let go once in a while, will you?
You don't wake someone up by sleeping by her side, no matter how uncomfortable lying on your chin is.
You should scream at her, shake her, burn her until she gets a gist of what's happening.
You don't develop eyebags for her. You don't stay up until the wee hours of the morning to see if she magically wriggles out of the white blankets and stares at you with her violet eyes.
You don't save her.
You should curse her to the depths of hell because you're trapped in a room that only deprives you of air to breathe.
You don't caress her fingers with your thumb; you don't tuck her ebony hair into the back of her ear.
You're not a hero, because there isn't anyone left to save.
She's not dead. I'm not dead.
But how should you know, after all? You are Ruka Nogi, the blond idiot who keeps a giant mutant chick in the Northern Forest, who carries a rabbit wherever you go to, who spends the rest of his life wilting on a hospital seat.
That's not how you wake someone up, Nogi.
Even I can't wake myself up anymore.
So get the hell out of here, attend to the needs of your peculiar pets, try to live your life and be Ruka. Don't be Nogi, because Nogi is the hopeless boy who'll die trying to be an angel to someone who's already dead; and Ruka is the boy who will become a man and a husband and a father and a grandfather. He will leave the stupid self proclaimed genius who breathes life into machines but can't even move herself. Ruka is the one who has the future because he'll leave me in the past.
You should go, Nogi - you're not my hero and you'll never become one. Rest my cold hand on my stomach and exit quietly.
You will find the world waiting for you - so colorful, so noisy, and so alive.
Learn to let go once in a while, will you?
Even if I'm selfish, you have to prevent me from stopping you. Shake off those entwined fingers and live. You have your years ahead. Piyo'll have her own chicks and Usagi his own rabbits, just as you'll marry and watch little kids with blond hair and blue eyes grow up under your care.
You'll remember me as the ebony-haired girl on a hospital bed, and you won't see my locks be lined with white. But I'm not the female Peter Pan whom you'll tell stories about in family bonfires and meals. If you want to remember me, don't tell other people how I shot you with a gun, how I captured your candid moments, how I tortured you to become the broken boy that you are today. You won't wake me up by spreading my biography like an untamed wildfire.
So stop holding my hand, Nogi. You aren't saving anyone today, or tomorrow, or the weeks and months and years after. I'm not yet dead. I'll never be, if you walk away this instant, shut your eyes for a while, and remember the times when I was still alive.
Stop being an idiot. You don't deserve this. You don't deserve all of this.
And maybe I don't deserve you, too, but that won't matter because if you're still there, I'll be (secretly) hoping that I do.
((you're strangling me and I don't even know why I'm saying all of this while I choke on breaths))
Learn to let go once in a while, will you?