It was slowly slipping out of his hands, as if he was trying to hold petals with his palms wide open. Oh, didn't it hurt as it did; it was like trying to hold fragments of glass. He couldn't put them back together no matter how hard he tried, and the more he tried to hold on tight, the more they dug into his skin, the more he bleeded. Even so, he didn't want to let go, because he knew there was no hope in the false relief he would get from letting go of the sharp fragments.
"It's better to move on", "is this what she would have wanted?", "you're not letting her rest in peace", is what they would all say. He could practically hear them that very moment. But, what did they know? What could they know? They were not her. They were not him. They could only pretend to care, when they couldn't imagine even half his pain. They were all the same; how could they expect him to change when they didn't themselves?
It was so hard to watch how imposibly slowly the shards slid down his arms, fluttering away from his reach. But, if he tried to reach out to one of the lone fragments, countless others would drop instead, so he could only helplessly watch. Even his lifeless, cold eyes got tired of glaring at the blood-soaked memories as they vanished, and so he often thought of merely giving up. What would happen if he did? Surely he would never afford to get to whatever place Ayano had gone to rest; he would never be able to reedem himself that much.
Countless times he thought about all the small (and big) things he could have done to change the outcome. Maybe if he had cared to ask "are you okay?" at least once more than he did, she would still be there. Perhaps if he had shared with her softer words, if his tongue had not been as sharp and poisonous, her smile would have lasted longer. If only he had worried about her as he should have, she wouldn't have vanished. It was all his fault, and he knew it well.
But then, what was the point of all this suffering, of all the sacrifices everyone did, when even he was forgetting about her? She was slowly sinking deeper into the darkness, farther away from his reach. He had to remember her, because it was the only thing he could do for her. She had died because of him, Shintaro owed her at the very least that. Even if it meant all he would make memories of would be her; even if it meant there was no space in his life for making any other memories, he would shut the world out if it meant he could do one last thing for Ayano.
The brightest memory was the one of her red, in her scarf, in her clothes, in the air around her. Red was what he least wanted to remember her by, but if it was the thing that kept her from slipping out of his hands, then so be it. He could not care less as long as she was, in a way, with him. He'd endure it, until his very last breathe -the sooner, the better.
As he gazed at the blurry image of a dark-haired, smiling girl, these thoughts crossed his mind. No, he would never let her die. A small wind swept by, and in a blink she was gone. He was woken up by a certain familiar high-pitched voice.
This time Ene really had crossed the line.