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[A non-existent letter written the morning before the final confrontation with Shion]
Dear Omi,
The things I'll be writing in this letter, besides those that concern the inevitable which is to come, are things I've been meaning to tell you for the longest time—things I never really had the courage to tell you before. It's funny, how taking death seriously makes you learn to take life and the people in it seriously. I'll probably be dead by the time you start reading this. Or if not dead, exactly (if not more dead than I already am), then I'll probably be in a place far, far away from you. Thinking about it, it's probably better that way.
Weiß isn't gonna be holding out much longer, considering the way things are going now. It's strange, don't you think, how much weight the past has on the present. They keep saying time heals all wounds, that the past is in the past and that the bygones should be left as bygones, but it's really just a heap of bull. The present is nothing more than an extension of the past, a result of the past. Nothing ever really changes—things just become more clear as time passes, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything's changed significantly. When the world accepted Copernicus' theory of the sun being at the center of the solar system, it did not mean that that was the precise moment the earth started revolving around the sun. The earth's been revolving around the sun ever since; it was just discovered only around that time. Nothing really changed. Nothing ever really changes. People might grow, but they are still living in the same bodies as they did when they were first conceived. One might call himself by a different name, but that doesn't make him any different from the man he was before he started living under a new name. The same heart still beats within his ribcage, the same past still stretches out behind him, the same skeletons still overflow from his closet.
It's so strange, it's amusing, is it not? A bunch of folks from the previous Weiß generation start wanting their original job back, and the new employees out of the way, and everything starts falling apart into dust. Or maybe it was nothing more than dust to begin with. Maybe the assassinations we did in the safe shadow of night were just our exuses for pathetic, dust-like living.
I sound so gloomy, don't I? You're probably wondering why I'm saying these things, why I'm acting this way, why now of all times, why in this letter. You're probably thinking that the way I'm acting now is not like my normal self. Got some news for you, kid—this is my normal self. This is who I am, and "everybody's favorite Youji-kun" was just an act. It was fun, for a while. I could almost believe it to be true. It's so easy to be dazzled by these lovely illusions, these pretty distortions of reality.
But illusions are illusions, no matter how 'realistic' they may appear to be. They are not reality, no matter how badly we would wish them to be—it's a sad fact of life, but it remains a fact. There is but one reality, and for me, it's a reality that takes the tangible form of a limp, lifeless corpse with short, blood-matted black hair and dead, unblinking eyes. A corpse that was once called Asuka.
I might not know you that well. I've only lived with you for about three years, and in those three years, we've never had a real conversation. Time might pass that we may never get the opportunity for one again. But just because we haven't been speaking doesn't mean I haven't been listening. Your words, when we bicker, during those precious times I've always cherished (although I might not seem to), tell me everything. Your eyes, when they turn my way, express things words could never even begin to say. The things you do, the things you don't do, speak to me while your lips are silent. They let me know what I need to know about you. It's the only way I can find out more about you without disturbing your world anymore than life itself already has.
Your soul tells me that what you want is that which we were banished from—the sanctity of normal living. Disturbing it each night when we don the cloaks of emotionless murderers has made you more in awe in it, has made you appreciate life more than those living it ever could. You cannot, unlike myself and Aya and Ken, restrict yourself to believing that this is the only life we can live, that the road ahead is a single path with no forks that lead to a better destination. Maybe that is because you have the advantage of youth; you young ones are oftentimes the more romantic ones when it comes to wistful dreams and fairy tale fantasies (which, in the end, wind up sustaining you when all is forsaken, all is lost). Or it could be because your loss of memory has led you to believe that yes, the past can be forgotten, that the predestined life ahead can be re-created or, if it is self-determined, can be lived as you wish.
I wish I could be more like you. Hopeful, strong-willed, indomitable… but it is too late for me. Life has not intended for me to be like you—if it had, then you wouldn't be so special as you are now. I lost my youth ages ago, if ever I possessed it to begin with. My gentleness I threw away the moment I realized that a good and faithful, loyal loving heart leads you nowhere. I've long surrendered my chances of happiness, and once gone, they can never be retrieved. I've lost so much time. I don't have much left. And there's really nothing more to do, save finishing this letter. There really isn't much left to say.
You feel that despite the weight of your sins, you still deserve a chance to be happy in the future. And I marvel at how you can forgive yourself so, how you can forgive yourself for killing your brother, for participating in the assassination of your own father. But they were evil people. I don't doubt that maybe a part of you loved them, but it couldn't have been bigger than the part of you that was terribly hurt by their having forsaken you when you were a child, the part of you that had no dear memory of them.
After this mission, what's next? Who else is there to issue these missions which have become our sole reason for existing? Birman and Manx are dead, a terrible loss. Your dad's gone, and this guy who's our new Persia… I honestly don't know how long he'll last with Shion and Rindou around. The government will probably find out about us sooner or later and have us dispatched, if Shion doesn't finish us first. Either way, we don't have much longer to hold on.
I don't know what you're going to do after this mission's done. I'm not even sure about what's going to happen to us. But I can't help feeling that there's this terrible doom awaiting us at the end of this tunnel where we're walking through with blindfolds. I don't want to go without telling you this, what I've been meaning to for what feels like eternity to me.
I love you. I love everything about you. I love how nice your legs are whenever you show them off (consciously or not) in those revealingly short shorts of yours. I love the way you give flowers to crying girls who show up at the shop downstairs, and sometimes, foolishly, I wish I were one of them, so I'd know what it's like to receive flowers from you. I love the way you cook. I even love the way you yell at me when I'm slacking off. Heck, I just love you! And I've loved you ever since… well, ever since a damn long time.
I don't really know why I love you, and I doubt I have much time to contemplate on the possible reasons with what few days we have. I don't know why, I just know that I do, and that's all that matters to me. I don't care if you don't understand what I feel, I don't care if you don't love me back, because all that's important to me in this world, all that's ever been important to me ever since you showed up in this damn dark life and made it a shade brighter, is that I love you. I don't deserve you, but dammit, I love you so much, I could almost change just because of this crazy love.
I know you're probably thinking that it's Asuka that I love, that I'm probably confusing you with her the way I did that time Aya first entered Weiß. But that's where you're wrong. I don't love Asuka. I stopped loving her a long time ago. I hate her, in fact, for everything she's done to me, for how she manages to hurt me even from beneath the grave. But she's been such a big part of my life—or at least, she used to be. She's still here inside me, even now that I've stopped caring for her. When you care for someone a great deal, even when they're gone, they're still there. They're still affecting your life in one way or another, whether you're aware of it or not, whether you want it or not.
Please, hate me if you must, but believe me at least when I say I love you. Believe me because it's the truth. Believe me when I say I'll love you forever. And I do say it: I will love you forever, nothing's ever gonna change the way I feel about you now. When a man dies, that which he has in his heart at the moment of his death he will carry till forever is through. I have my love for you in my heart now, and I'll have it with me until I die, which probably wouldn't be too far from now. I will love you forever.
If I write anything more, I'll start wetting this page with my tears. Do you know how long it's been since I last wept? Only you can make me cry this way again. The funny little things love can do to a man, really.
Anyway, before I leave you with my goodbye, I'm copying out this poem for you. It's called Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, by E. E. Cummings. It's my favorite love poem, and it conveys what I feel about love and about you better than my own words could ever do.
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what is is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands
Take care always. Wish I could say, "Until next time." Goodbye.
With love,
Youji-kun
~*~*~*~
Fin: 10/25/2K
11:40 p.m.
Retouched: 10/26/2K
11:30 a.m.
~*~*~*~
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled ~ A Love Letter from Youji, by Chibi Chiriko