Doki Doki Bittersweet
Disclaimer: This is a fan work with characters belonging to Team Salvato.
Notes:
First story ever, decided to write this after playing Doki Doki Rainclouds and decided to give some love to the depressed genki Sayori. This story takes place in an AU setting hope you enjoy! Also let me know if you want more, not sure if I am good at this sort of thing.
In a small unremarkable town a train pulls into a lightly populated station. The weather was fair with the sun peaking out of sparse clouds and a light breeze cooling the air. The picturesque moment of the train coming in for disembarking was complete with a man stepping off the cart onto the platform and breathing in the air.
This man was Hisao, a young man in his early twenties returning to his old hometown he had moved into during his childhood and the place he met one of his most cherished friends and more besides his whole world.
This friend was Sayori, a girl he met when he first moved into town. They first saw eachother when they both happened to be playing outside on their neighborhood block. They lived only a few houses from eachother, and happened to be the only kids that lived there. Sayori was an outgoing and cheerful girl to Hisao's opposite of lazy and laid back manner. Despite this they clicked together and found themselves spending time with the other in their house or in the neighboring forest to Hisao's consternation.
Hisao had always felt Sayori was the careless one in the relationship and always found himself looking after her. He had frequently cleaned her room for her when she would have gotten in trouble with her parents who like his seemed to be absent most of the time he was over. He even had to help her put a fire out in her kitchen after a botched attempt at cooking noodles for her ever present and inconvenient gluttony. He did all this always complaining or bellyaching to Sayori about it, but secretly was pleased to always be reliable to a friend and so he continued to do it almost every other day with each of them being an "adventure" in her words.
They continued this unusual dynamic of friendship until the end of middle school, where gradually larger classes separated them and responsibilities limited their spare time until their second year of high school they finally reconnected through shared classes and interests. Hisao had invested himself recently through Literature class into more grounded and adult stories, finding it similarly interesting to his manga that he had continued to read from early adolescence. While he would continue to insist manga had maturity in it, he found the more fleshed out and more deeper themes in books and stories to be fascinating, losing endless time into worlds or situations he couldn't experience himself.
This evolved later in the class into poems. Hisao never considered writing anything beyond the required coursework let alone his own stories. But poems he found put more emphasis on the emotions and language than any structure of a full story. It finally dawned on him the beauty of it when Sayori shared a poem with the class for a graded project in writing and presentation. The words pouring from his friends mouth were nervous but also full of emotions he never knew Sayori could feel so deeply. The poem was nothing special, but the way she recited them sunk into his mind and he felt more connected with her then ever before. When she was finished, she poked her fingers and looked sheepish to what seemed like the whole class but Hisao noticed she wasn't looking at them.
She was looking at him.
After that he found himself writing his own poems outside of class, and likewise Sayori did too. They shared their poems together and found eachother spending time together just like before high school. They found time to read books, eat with eachother during lunch and class break, and simply relax outside. Hisao found more and more that his friend Sayori had more to her than the happy-go-lucky girl she always shown to him. He noticed more and more the themes of happiness and sadness in equal measure in her poems and behind her facade. He paid more attention to the words and emotions she wrote in her poems and all the things she did with him as their time in school passed on.
He struggled to put a name on the overall theme to her poems and some of the things she let slip, but he found it one day while watching her walk in front of him back to their street.
"Bittersweet." he said clearly to her that day out of the blue and she looked at him seemingly puzzled.
"What are you mumbling about now Hisao?" she laughed as she twirled around to face him when he suddenly stopped.
He took a moment to gather his rather spontaneous thoughts before continuing on and saying "I struggled to put a name on the poetic theme of what you write Sayori, it always seemed somehow happy and sad almost at the same time and I think its called bittersweet."
Her smile suddenly waned slightly and her eyelids drooped slightly over her pearlescent blue eyes like she was tired and said "I never thought of it like that Hisao, I guess whenever I write some stuff comes out I didn't know I had huh?"
She chuckled but Hisao in a moment of clarity saw right through it. She knew that she felt that way and it wasn't some background emotion on paper. In that moment Hisao thought she looked scared and panicked and after all this time of her being the happiness and him the brooding he was overcome by a bout of unusual concern.
"I don't think that's it Sayori, I can see it in your eyes something is wrong and I think you've always felt this way even if I didn't notice." Hisao said with a rare look of understanding on his face.
She stepped back almost as if someone pushed her and looked at him, hints of sadness and panic quickly morphing into shame and guilt with a touch of anger.
"You… weren't supposed to notice anything. Why after all this time do you suddenly care about what I think or feel Hisao?!" She exclaimed totally out of character for her.
Hisao was taken aback by this sudden change in her and the air but realized this wasn't really about him or the poems and books they read or wrote but about something deeper in her. He looked at her still leaned back posture and the beginning of tears in her wide eyes and said "I don't know but you're my best friend Sayori and in some ways all I have, so if there is something wrong I hope you can tell me about it." and smiled at her also suddenly swelling with emotion he didn't know he had.
The world suddenly changed from its dull grey of monotony and boiled over with color as he focused in on her. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed in, tears tracking down her face as despair suddenly made itself known in her big eyes. Her sniffles that started shortly after he first spoke started breaking into sobs and Hisao knew at once his friend was hurting.
"If I just didn't start writing with you after class or just kept to myself you wouldn't notice anything! You wouldn't notice, you wouldn't care, and I wouldn't have hurt you with my meaningless presence!" Sayori shouted as she covered her reddening face and sad eyes.
Hisao took a moment to think about that, realizing he had almost totally forgotten her before that day in Literature class. His mind started clouding over with self loathing as he knew he almost tossed aside the only thing he had in this town and his life.
"You're right Sayori, I barely thought about you over those few years." Hisao said his voice shaking.
Sayori suddenly jolted as if shocked and turned around to leave, her face still covered by her hands but Hisao reached out and grabbed her arm.
"But that isn't on you. It's on me, you're the one that brought fun and happiness to my life when I had nobody. I was just a kid that had his whole life changed and everything taken away but you showed up and without any reservation became my friend" he said with unusual confidence and strength in his voice.
Sayori was halted as his voice bounced inside her head, overwhelming the scattered and painful thoughts she had all the time. Hisao moved his hand up her arm and grabbed her hand, pulling it gently from her face and did the same with her other hand, holding both in front of them as he looked her in the face and eyes.
'She's so beautiful." he thought at her shocked face and widened eyes. Despite the tears in her eyes and moist and reddening cheeks he was suddenly overcome with her. Her blue eyes that shined like stars on an ocean, her light pink hair that always seemed messy but just seems right framing her face, and the sudden realizations of what a fixture she's been all his life.
"You aren't worthless Sayori, if anything you bring worth to my life. Filling it with color and words I never had before, anytime I am with you is when my life seems like its truly moving and has meaning." he whispered loud enough for just her to hear. He moved one of his hands from hers and cupped her cheek.
"I don't know why it took me this long for me to realize what I felt that day in that class, but you are truly my life Sayori and I'm an idiot for letting you go before." his palm on her face grew warm as she reddened even further and Sayori looked up at him still sad but with something else.
"Hisao..." she stuttered quietly as she felt the world grow less cold with the feeling of his warmth on her face. She was shocked at his sudden vibrant wall of genuine affection out of her cloud of despair.
Her lips parted to say something before exclaiming in surprise as Hisao enveloped her body, arms circling her and warming her cold interior. She felt something behind the rainclouds obscuring her eyes and started crying still sad but also happy.
'Bittersweet.' she thought with a slight smile on her lips.
"I will never leave you behind again Sayori!" he said softly into her ear and she pushed her hands from out the front of his chest and wrapped around him.
"I guess this is okay..." Sayori whispered mainly to herself.
Everything changed for Sayori that day but maybe not for the worse as she originally thought. Instead of feeling burdened like she thought Hisao would feel, he became emboldened and visited her every morning to walk her to school, or make breakfast or just talk and sit with her on weekends that would normally just be her being in bed staring at the ceiling.
He insisted she visit a doctor for her depression, and after long months of more rainclouds they found medication that worked for her. Hisao never wavered and helped her through the ups and downs of her mood swings as the cocktails were adjusted to her. The rainclouds gave way to an overcast with Hisao as her shining sun peaking through the clouds.
Eventually while they were eating dinner in Hisao's living room watching an anime she found she enjoyed called 'Parfait Girls' he grabbed her hand and drew her eyes to him as his now normally happy face broke with some nervousness.
"Sayori we've been best friends for what seems like our entire lives now. I know you still feel like sometimes you are dragging me down or wasting my time but I wanted to tell you this past year was one of my most precious in all my life." he said with his voice cracking and his eyes shining from tears beginning to pool.
Sayori started shaking as her mind thundered through the medication and previous months of happiness as she started thinking he was about to leave her. His tears marked in her mind his sadness at having a worthless girl like her around.
The whirlpool of clashing emotions and thoughts suddenly turned to calm waters as Hisao in her moment of panic scooted next to her and grabbed her by the shoulders as his nervousness was overcome with his happy thoughts of Sayori. Her eyes rose up to meet his face and his wide smile, tears there but not quite going past his lashes.
"I just wanted to say I love you Sayori with all that I am and will be." he stated and wrapped his arms around her shaking from the plethora of happiness, her peach shampoo overriding his senses as he cried happy he finally said what he was thinking but didn't realize since almost the day he met her.
The voice inside of Sayori's doubts and fears came to a complete halt in the face of such overwhelming affection and happiness being brought to bear on her. His warm body and her slowly dampening shoulder bringing into focus what Hisao really thought of her while she was overcome with her illness, and what she thought but never dared to hold onto of him.
"I love you too Hisao!" she exclaimed as she held onto him for dear life, forcing herself to give voice and action what she was too afraid and self doubting for years. She shut her eyes hoping this wasn't some scenario with a horrible ending her mind conjured constantly whenever she thought happy thoughts.
They sat there enveloped in eachother for what seemed like an eternity, pouring the emotions of one into the other and vice versa. Their eyes dried up and gave way to content smiles as their worlds fully exploded into visceral color and sound. On their sea of their minds memories that seemed sad and turbulent calmed. Their happy memories shined like beacons across a storm while memories of them together exploded into a symphony of bliss.
Eventually they let up and faced eachother, both smiling and taking in the other. Both flawed but together improving. Both seemingly the opposite but rather the same where it mattered. Almost at the same time they inched forward while their hands entwined with the other, reaching out with everything and they kissed. Tentative at first but growing in intensity and passion as their emotions mingled in a new way. Sayori's eyes fluttered as she smiled through the kiss, lost in Hisao's steadfast happiness and passion for her that burned away the rainclouds that tried to drench and separate them before.
Eventually they separated, their souls singing and stoking to inferno that was always there but merely a cinder.
'This all brings me back.' Hisao thought as he walked down the platform and started his way back to the house. The streets and houses all seemed the same but with time grew more warm. As he got closer to his destination his mind flashed back to places he was with Sayori. The neighborhood where he met her and became best friends, the school and road where they became inseparable, and finally when he stepped onto the sidewalk leading up to his home, where they became eternal together.
Despite the letters and calls back and forth he still worried about his Sayori. Even though she insisted he go and continue his education on a scholarship he earned he wanted to stay with her. She finally put her foot down and guilted him into going with her shining blue eyes saying "How will you take care of me if you aren't the best you can be silly?!" and that was that. I sold my soul to her bright smile and soulful beautiful eyes long ago and couldn't counter with anything rational.
Finally he reached the door and unlocked it with his key, about to turn the knob and open it when the door suddenly slung wide open and a wave of peach scented air and warm feelings suddenly enveloped him and the taste he missed hit his lips.
He embraced his life, his world and his eternity as they broke apart and stared up at eachother. Sayori grinned, her eyes alight with joy and said "Welcome back beloved, it was raining but I am glad it cleared up when you came!"