Attending one's own funeral is a surreal experience that no one should know. The face that is in the casket is undoubtedly my own but I'm staring down at it instead of up from it. I can see the brown hair that's still nicely tussled, smooth skin that is unusually pale, and lips that should be pulled into a thin smile are frowning just a bit. Not to mention that my green eyes aren't shining from beneath their lids. My eyebrows are relaxed while usually they're constantly expressing a story or joke.
Death is stoic. It is beautiful.
But it's beautiful in a twisted sense of the word. In the sense that Edgar Allen Poe was a beautiful writer. Oh, he'd eat this stuff up, staring at your own dead body.
I'm not moving. My corpse isn't moving, obviously, but I'm also not moving from my vantage point. Whatever being I am is stiff and hollow as it gazes into the casket. Both mes are empty, and I don't understand why I'm here if I can't do anything. Why make me useless?
Just as I think this, time slows down as I begin to feel things. An arm comes around my shoulders and I feel the fabric of a suit on them. A woman steps next to me—someone I recognize from family functions long ago—and also looks down at the me in the casket.
At first I am sluggishly confused, still in this time warp of stillness, but then a great moment of realization and understanding washes over me, the kind of moment humans remember eternally. It comes as the woman speaks.
"I had a twin once, too."
Water: streaming down my face and splashing against the one resting on the pillow below me.
Thought: I'm the one left behind.
Sound: a long, terrible wail that hurts my ears.
"HIKARU!"