Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of characters used. All are licensed to their respective owners. I am not making any money through authorship of this fic.
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Chapter One
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Dear Yumi,
If you are reading this letter it can only mean one thing. The day that I have been dreading, even before I knew it was to come… has been and gone. I am married now… probably being driven far away from Tokyo. Far away from the one I truly love.
Yes Yumi, I said it. Well, wrote it if you wish to argue the point. I'm smiling you know, smiling and crying at the same time… sitting here, thinking of you. You, who taught me how to accept such contradictions that exist within myself.
My dear Yumi, I love you... I'm… in love with you. That's something I've only said once before… and I've only heard it once from your lips. I'm not even sure if you understood it in the way I meant you to. After that… I suppose we carried on playing our games, holding each other close, yet never close enough. Always together… and mostly apart.
Now, I do not even know if I am writing this so much as a confession, rather more of an apology.
I'm sorry for never being able to show you how much I care for you. I can picture your face as you read that last sentence… you'll be disputing me I'm sure, wanting to tell me that I was there for you, that I did show I care. That is your way Yumi always choosing to comfort me regardless of the situation… or my behaviour.
In any case, regardless of how much care or support I offered you… none of it ever came close to conveying how strongly I feel for you.
If I only had one wish, it would be that you and I lived together, in a world other than this one. Where one's need for freedom is never negated by duty. Where character is never measured by the amount of one's sacrifice.
In that world… as well as this one, my only wish is to be with you.
Is it stupid of me to write this to you? Is it cruel? I guess I think it is… cruel for the both of us, but still, I believe that you needed to hear these words, even if they are the last I say to you. I love you Yumi, you are the most precious thing in the world to me, and you always will be.
I promise to keep you in my heart, for you are whom my heart belongs to.
Forever thinking of you, Love always,
Your Sachiko. (I do believe after all that… onee-sama is a little inappropriate).
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Fukuzawa Yumi held the fragile piece of paper in her hands, she cradled it for it in its fragility, it reflected exactly the way she was feeling inside.
Though Sachiko's last line was supposed to wrap the whole thing up in a light-hearted amiable way, as if to say… 'don't worry, it will all be alright, somehow.' Yumi could not be placated.
So she held the letter, it was all she could do. She held it for all she was worth… the letter, the confession, the apology… the honesty that had come a month too early.
'… 'married now,' 'far away,' these fragments swam in Yumi's mind… none were true.
Sachiko's wedding was not until next month… something had gone drastically wrong in the chain the events were supposed to follow. Or, as an even scarier thought for Yumi, something had gone drastically right.
She was on her knees now, in too much pain to cry… too hysterical to be able to show it. All she could do was kneel, kneel and shake. The girl was in a panic, suffering from a total loss of control.
The purity of the words contained in the letter wrapped itself around her heart, those words were everything she ever wanted to hear from her onee-sama, all she ever dreamed about.
But she knew Sachiko was right, the world they lived in, was not an ideal one for fostering happiness… nor for accepting true love over duty.
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Two young women, slightly older than Yumi was, stood a little away from the girl, exchanging equally pained looks with each other.
Each asking the other silently, 'Was our decision the correct one to make? Did we even have a right to make one in the first place?'
"Yumi," the tallest of them all started but paused as she felt a hand on her arm.
The girl on the floor did not respond, instead she stared at the sheet of paper, the deep orbs that were her eyes now boring holes into it, looking, begging for some sort of clue, an answer to her questions.
'What is this? Why am I holding it?,' Yumi thought furiously, her young mind being overwhelmed by too many conflicting emotions.
'Why does this say my name, why does it say hers? Love it says. Promises it offers. What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to offer?'
"What the hell am I supposed to do?!!," she asked… or rather, she screamed out into the room.
She was full of anger and unchecked frustrations. She just swore, maybe she would be sorry later, at that very moment, she couldn't care less. She was just hit with so much reality all at once. Reality, that was often more a train hurtling in your direction rather than a mere slap in the face.
The older girls were startled by her outburst, but neither was surprised by it. They let the distraught Yumi continue on with her pained tirade. Dutifully keeping their distance, yet silently offering their support.
"What is this? It doesn't even sound like her! Sachiko-sama would never… never write this! This isn't… it can't be her," Yumi began her statement strongly, only to falter near the end, her delivery of the line finishing in a whisper.
'No,' she thought. 'Maybe… maybe this is my onee-sama. It is, she's just being honest now, laying all her cards out on the table because… because she thinks it's too late… because… she's in pain.'
"Yumi," the tallest said again as she kneeled by the girl and wrapped an arm around her.
The girl's shoulders shuddered a little before they started shaking violently, her tears had now begun to fall, a sign of her emotions catching up with her.
Through her tears she tried to speak, to demand answers from the two that had brought her here, to this place rampant with joyous and painful memories from them all.
They had brought her to the Rose Mansion.
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It had only been a week since Yumi had graduated from Lillian. Exactly a week. That day was supposed to be a peaceful one, she was scheduled to have tea with two of her most respected and cared for eldest sisters.
Ex leaders of her High School, the elder generations of Rosa Chinesis and Rosa Gigantea, they had brought her here… handed her a letter… and placed the entire world on her shoulders, perhaps knowingly, perhaps not.
Whatever the case, they had decided that the letter needed to reach her. The words it contained, Sachiko's words… needed to reach her at that exact moment.
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"It was only supposed to be tea," she whispered between sobs, mostly to herself.
"Yumi, stand up."
"Youko, be gentle with her..."
The dark haired girl offered a small smile but shook her head.
"Gentleness is not what she needs. She is Rosa Chinesis, just as I was. Just as we both are and always will be. Yumi please, stand up."
The girl did so, and forced herself to meet her elder's eyes.
Youko sighed and wrapped her arms around the girl as she began to speak softly into her ear.
"Yumi, Sei and I brought you here today and gave you that letter for a reason… we believe in you, in both you and Sachiko. The ending insinuated in that letter, the ending that maybe the both of you were expecting, is not one you should easily accept."
"It's not something we were willing to let you accept Yumi," the former Rosa Gigantea stated, with rare seriousness gracing her features.
"We don't even know what Sachiko wrote in that letter to you, and we don't need to know. But if she asked both Youko and I to deliver it to you the day after her wedding and if the request caused her so much pain as to actually let us see it in her eyes … it was obviously something you needed to read before it was too late."
"This wasn't the way it was supposed to be," Yumi said as she clung onto Youko with Sei's hand placed comfortingly on her shoulder. "She meant it as a goodbye."
Sei gave a wry smile.
"Sachiko often means things in ways she shouldn't," she said.
--
Youko broke their current embrace and looked into the younger girl's eyes once again.
"Do you remember what I said to you just before we graduated? I told you that I was proud of you, because you were someone that could protect my precious petite soeur. I asked you to support her…"
She stopped as she saw Yumi nodding like a child who was being given an errand.
"Yumi, I think you are misunderstanding my intentions," Youko said gently.
"I did not bring you here to repeat myself. Sei and I came here, to support you. Like family should. We gave you that letter to ensure you and Sachiko had a chance to… do whatever it is you need to do before it was too late."
'Whatever it is we need to do… But what do I need to do?'
She looked up at Youko and Sei and begged them with her eyes.
"Why won't you tell me? Tell me what I should do, because I… I don't know."
Youko placed a hand on Yumi's head and gave her hair a few strokes.
"Give your brain a little break Yumi, that is what I think you should do."
At Yumi's questioning look Sei smiled and placed her hand over the girl's heart.
"And I think you should listen a little closer to what this is trying to tell you. Understand?"
Yumi disengaged herself from the older two. Giving them both low bows before offering them the best smile she could muster at that moment, she spoke as honestly as she ever had.
"I don't know what I should do right now. I'm hurting and I'm confused… but I know I'm not lost, I have hope because I have my family. I know I have you and I promise not to cause you any disappointment."
It was a sentence that was perfectly delivered. Youko and Sei should have been proud. The words were carefully chosen, expertly spoken, was honest yet rather vague considering all the things that the girl wasn't saying.
Really, they should have been proud. Instead, they were heartbroken.
Yumi was now running on her training, on automatic… she was running on empty.
--
The girl left the room then, saying that she wanted to walk home alone with her thoughts. It was a lie of course, her thoughts were just a constant bombardment of further confusion that she neither asked for nor knew what to do with.
She countered these confusing thoughts with more peaceful ones… 'family,' she thought.Pictures of smiling faces filled her thoughts, The Roses, past and current, each her own person, and yet undeniably bonded to each other. She had offered them all support at one point or another and they offered her theirs.
'Perhaps I need to call on them again,' she thought. 'Or perhaps I need to handle this on my own…'
She ran hand through her hair, unaware of how she should vent her extreme frustrations.
Sighing, she made her decision. It was a sign of the true leadership that had been instilled in her during her training in the Rose Mansion.
If a decision needed to be made, you made it. If there was a problem to be solved, you solved it. If there wasn't anything left you could do… your family would help you. Despair was not an option.
With this mantra in mind, Yumi set off in the direction of her house.
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Sei and Youko walked home together hand in hand.
"Do you think we did the right thing?," the dark haired girl asked. "Giving her the letter now?"
Sei let go of the girl's hand and instead wrapped her arm around Youko's shoulders.
"I don't think we had any other choice. They're both Rosa Chinesis are they not? There isn't a more debilitating pain than knowing that there's someone out there that you want to spend the rest of your life with and that they feel the same way. If the whole thing is just going to end up as this ridiculously heartbreaking moment in which you both walk away thinking you have no other choice. And you never look back. You never ask why. You just feel your soul dying little by little every day until your body does."
"Sei," Youko whispers pausing to wrap her arms around the taller girl.
"I'll do everything I can for them Youko, everything. I want them to feel the exact peace and joy that they can get only from each other… as I do whenever I'm with you."
Youko smiled and kissed the other girl's cheek.
"I know I don't need to say it but… I'm worried. About both of them, my sisters, I just wish I could take their pain as my own."
Sei nodded.
"I feel the same way. But really we should give them more credit. Sachiko is strong, and Yumi… she still gives me hope."
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AN: Hey, thanks for taking the time to read my first Maria-sama fic. Just something I decided to write out of the blue, I watched the anime for the first time three days ago so apologies for the character inconsistencies, I will get better. Continuations if anyone is interested XD. All thoughts appreciated and taken into consideration.
