Shion buys a sweater that won't fit him.
It's a stupid decision and he knows it.
It's hand knit, a soft brown-red color, an antique really. It smells a little off, and the yarn texture is scratchy. The sleeves are long and there's a small hole forming on the left cuff. It looks like it's been worn before, loved before. Her grandmother didn't make it, but she'd love it just the same. Shion knows it. It would fit her perfectly and she would love it.
Nezumi would be angry with him for the waste. But Nezumi isn't here, and Shion's at the checkout counter with his heart in his throat and his hands around the scratchysoft bundle in his hands before he can stop himself. He buys it.
Because the sweater looks warm.
The sweater looked warm and made him think of how they met and he wanted her to think of it too.
He takes the sweater to her grave and folds it tenderly, with shaking fingers that have too many callouses- each one feels like a memory.
(They feel that way when he wakes up in the middle of the night expecting a kick but never receiving one. Expecting a call, a hand, a pair of grey eyes, a heart beating beside his own, but never, never, seeing one.)
He kneels in the grass, damp from the early morning air and touches the cool stone with practiced familiarity. He brushes through the "S" with his index finger.
His eyes catch at the sweater, still in his lap, and he's hit by how small the neck hole is, how thin the wrist cuffs are and wonders for a moment if he got her size wrong but knows it's right because he knew her size and forgetting has never been something he's good at.
The rage that suddenly fills every vein in his body surprises him.
He is angry, so angry for a moment, at that sweater.
He is angry at that sweater for being in her taste but not being in her closet.
He is angry at that sweater because its job is to warm and it never will.
He is angry at that sweater for being a 16 year-old girl and not an 18 year-old woman.
It is so small.
And Safu was never supposed to be small.
He can't face her like this and he buries his face in the sweater wishing it smelled like one of hers and not someone else's flowery perfume, and he whispers the words he's said countless times in front of this grave, over the last two years at various difficult times and in various weather.
"I'm sorry."
And he is. And it will never be enough.