Today her mother doesn't even make it out of her room. She knows it's because her mother doesn't want her to see her red-eyed and broken. Sachiko has always been the anchor of their family. She was the one who would wake up early to prepare their lunch boxes for them, and she was the one who would rub their father's tense shoulders when he came home tired after a long day at the police station, and while their father was always used as the perfect example of justice, their mother was the one who had taught them to stand up for the weak. To this day, she has only seen her mother cry on that one day. Even last month, Sachiko had been almost normal, the only indication of her grief, of her guilt, the dark circles around her eyes.
Sayu suspects that his birthday will always mean more to her mother than his death day. A memorial of a mother's hopes and dreams, of the hard work it took to raise him, of all he could have been. It must be hard, losing a child.
Sachiko will spend the day holed up in her room, remembering. But not Sayu. She makes her way down to the graveyard, picnic basket full of snacks and incense swinging on her arm in time with her long strides. The air is warmer than it usually is in late February, almost balmy in comparison to last week's snow, but still cold enough to warrant pulling her warm cap over her ears and lacing her fingers through her black leather gloves.
As she reaches the tall iron gates, she briefly nods to the security guard. He nods back, straight and unflinchingly, and as she passes by she lets out a small sigh.
She reaches the plot with the unmarked granite headstone with little difficulty. Though the stone is one amongst thousands, she knows exactly to where she is heading. She lights the incense and sets it at the foot of the headstone. Next to it, she lays out in offering some of his favorite snacks, the potato chips that he loved so much and the fuji apples that she always saw him taking from the kitchen. She kneels on the cold concrete and claps her hands together.
"Onii-chan. Happy Birthday."
It's easy to fall back into the role of oblivious little sister. To chatter on and on about her daily life, about their mother's health, about their father's work at the police station. His remains are not here- his ashes had been taken away by the government- but she can imagine him rolling his eyes in the way that he often did as she complains about her homework and stuck-up professors. Back then she had often gotten angry at him, that he wasn't even listening. And then he would heave a big sigh and say, 'Well, I guess there's no helping it. I'll help you with your homework later.' Though she would have never admitted it, those were some of her favorite moments, when her brother would sit by her side and berate her for being unable to use the quadratic formula.
She brings out her lunch from her picnic basket, a simple bento box that she had packed this morning with sushi rice and tamagoyaki. She pours herself a cup of tea from the thermos.
She feels the coolness of a shadow passing over her, a tall figure coming from behind the headstone blocking the few rays of sunshine.
"Would you care to join me for lunch?" she asks, not bothering to turn her head.
The stranger comes around from the other side of the stone and crouches down beside her.
"If you don't mind the company, then I shall," he says, settling a plastic bag carrying a square shaped box onto the ground. He unties the bag and opens it, crinkling it into a ring around the box.
"I suppose I should also make an offering while I'm here."
His long spindly fingers poke open the box, revealing a lightly frosted sponge cake decorated around the edges with colorful fruit slices. He cuts a thin slice using the plastic cake cutter taped to the sides of the box and dishes it out onto a paper plate, to be set next to the apples.
"You knew him," she remarks, watching the stranger cut himself a much larger piece.
"That I did," he says.
"Did you love him?"
The stranger turns his head to stare at her with his owlish grey eyes. "What do you mean?"
"Everyone loved him. Did you?"
He frowns. "Nobody could love-"
Sayu interrupts him sharply. "I'm not asking if you loved Kira. I'm asking if you loved Light."
The man is silent for a second.
"No," he answers.
"I see."
They eat their food in silence. On the man's third slice of cake, he brings up abruptly, "You do know? What he did?"
"I know," she says plainly. "I think I've always known. I just didn't know I knew until I was told." She laughs a little self-deprecatingly. "They told me, and all the little things he'd been doing so strangely fell into place, and all I could think was, 'Oh. That makes sense.'"
She winds a strand of her dark hair around a finger. "Light always said I was the stupid one. But it wasn't that I didn't know, but that I didn't want to know."
The man wipes some sticky crumbs off his face and onto the ground. "But you will still forgive him?"
Sayu's finished with her lunch, so she starts to pack up her bento box and thermos, placing them neatly back into her basket.
"We all have sins. Mine was being ignorant. Light is my brother. If I as his little sister don't forgive him, then who will?"
The stranger stands, and a gust of wind whistles through his dark unruly hair. He looks down at her with a curious gaze.
"You're an interesting one, Yagami Sayu-chan."
He hunches over to collect his cake box from the ground, tying the plastic bag handles into a knot, and he starts to walk off, back in the direction from which he came.
Sayu stands up too, and brushes off some of the dirt from her knees. She steps in closer to retrieve her incense when she sees the little blossoms of blue leaning against the backside of the headstone.
'Did you love him?'
'No.'
She smiles into the distance, into the afternoon sun where the stranger is ambling off somewhere. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Thank you, L."
Forget-me-not
-Remembrance during partings or after death
-A connection that lasts through time
-Fidelity and loyalty in a relationship, despite separation or other challenges
-Reminders of your favorite memories or time together with another person
-True and undying love
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