Valentine's Day.
Valentine's Day.
Matumoto Rangiku sneered. Valentine's day, what a pitiful holiday! A day packed full with false promises and superficial gift-giving, infatuations and hormonal teenagers getting into things they didn't know the consequences of. She took a swig out of her sake bottle, slamming it back down onto the desk with a bang!
Rangiku had the ability to turn most men into babbling, stuttering fools. They thought themselves high enough to pursue a relationship with her, when she only wanted someone to either buy sake for her or to make sure she didn't pass out from the drinking. No, Rangiku had no intention of being with a man, despite what they might have thought, and she really didn't mind whose or how many hopes she dashed on her quest to numb herself. She had never really cared for men who were only interested in her image, anyway.
They said that "hate" was a strong word, those who always wanted to sound wise and sagely, but if "hate" was so strong, why was "love" thrown around so easily? "I love you." How pathetic. Little children, who thought they knew what love was? And the promises, always the promises. "I'll stay with you forever." The world of a shinigami and the world of romance were much too dissonant to exist in one. As if they thought they could control who lived and who died? Missions were unpredictable, battles were unpredictable, minds were unpredictable...
She downed another gulp of alcohol, blinking hard as the liquid stung her throat. Stupid stupid men. Lying, useless, stupid men. Rangiku unconsciously brought a hand up to her necklace, fingering the thin chain and the cool silver ring the chain was fed through.
Silver.
Silver...
Gin.
Her thoughts finally wandered to the inevitable subject she had been avoiding for so long.
Gin, the silver-haired man who had saved her life and broken her heart so many times. The man who always left without telling her where he was going. Captain, partner, prodigy, companion, murderer...
Friend.
Many people (men, mostly) had asked her what she ever saw in Gin. He's creepy, they would laugh nervously, Creepy and a cold-blooded killer from the second he got out of the Academy. Why would you ever want to have anything to do with him? But back then, when Rangiku saw Gin, she saw...him. Not a murderer, but the boy with a funny name who had come across a starving girl in a corner of Rukongai and decided to save her.
Of course, times changed. People changed. Or maybe he had never changed, and maybe she had merely been unaware, oblivious to everything he had done, had planned to do. Maybe she was the fool all along. Rangiku unlooped the chain at her neck, letting the necklace pool into the cup of her hand.
He had given it to her one day long, long ago when they were still innocent and carefree and... together. Everything back then had seemed so black and white, compared to the gray that coated the world now. It seemed as if it had happened in an entirely different lifetime. Maybe it had.
Matsumoto glanced at a calender lying on the corner of her desk, swallowing more sake. Every square up to February 14th had been crossed out in black pen, and the image on the page above the calender showed a pink box of sugar-crusted chocolates wrapped in cheap brown silk. She set the bottle down, shaking slightly, but it was not from the cold.
He had given the necklace to her on Valentine's day.
She had taken it carefully, almost reverently, eyes wide at the gift, but feeling guilty that she hadn't thought of giving him something too. They had embraced, maybe even kissed. Rangiku couldn't really remember.
And the next day he left again.
Always leaving, never telling her where he was going or what he was doing. Rangiku hated that part of him. She hated when he would do something sweet one moment and abandon her the next. Like someone teasing a stray cat. Like she was nothing more than a hobby, a burden! She hated it. Oh, she hated it!
And then there was the day she discovered that he was a shinigami. Rangiku clenched the fist holding the necklace, her nails digging into her palm, trembling as she remembered that day. She had never felt so angry before in her life. He had actually dared to join the organization that left Rukongai residents fighting over the littlest things, like they were nothing more than dogs scraping for leftovers at a table! And he had done it without her knowing! She wouldn't have cared as much if he had told her, and she might have even joined for a purpose other than to prove him that she could defend herself, without anyone's help!
The woman stood up, blinking away the sensation of dizziness rushing to her head. She glared at the winking silver chain in her hand, where her fingernails had left stinging imprints, before throwing it as hard as she could at the ground. She then took the empty sake bottle and threw that also, dashing it to a million pieces on the wood floor.
"Dammit, Gin!"
Matsumoto couldn't stop the tears from running down her face. She didn't care. She didn't care. There was no one to see her anyway, and she still wouldn't have cared if there were.
Her knees buckled and she almost fell to the ground, clutching at the table for support. Her breath came out in ragged gasps as water spilled from her eyes and dripped onto the table. She felt so weak, and she hated herself for it, hated herself for caring so much for something as stupid as a man. She hated herself for loving the stories Gin used to tell her when they were small, the stories of princesses and dragons and knights and happy endings.
She hated herself for believing that happy endings could exist.
Rangiku cried until she could cry no more. Shudders still shook her body when she breathed, but it seemed as though her eyes had already been bled dry, like she would never cry again. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and trying to erase that picture from her mind; that picture of him that still haunted her even now, falling, bleeding, dying, grinning. Always, there was that infuriating grin on his face. She reopened her eyes a moment later, when she was sure that her face betrayed no more emotions.
She crouched down on the ground, gently brushing the shards of the broken sake bottle aside and carefully picked a thin chain out of the mess. She looped it around her neck, slipping one end of the chain through the silver ring on the other end. Then, without another glance, she slipped out of the Tenth headquarters and headed home.
Matsumoto Rangiku just couldn't stand happy endings.