▆ ▆ ▆ ▆ ▆ ▆ → OYASUMANISAI ＊ Tenshin Shugoshin ! Kurerisa Meri Gyutosuki
" Good Night Guardian Angel "
"You don't remember me."
The words brought a new sense of agony within my heart and a wrench of pain within my very soul. I gulped back the tears as I coward backwards from the boy, tumbling to the coarse ground as my feet catch upon a ridged rock. I gasp for air and clutch a pair of cold arms around myself, as if I were holding myself together. I clutched so hard, my nails digging into my unnervingly unfamiliar flesh, as if I were to split apart in any second. I was falling apart. Nothing was right.
The boys firm, cold eyes etched harshly into my own, as if he were analyzing my every move, watching with an expression that would identify that he hadn't a care for what he saw. He just watched, mouth shut and intense turquoise eyes examining my disturbing movements.
"Stop that." His hoarse voice finally escaped through his taut lips. I looked up to see his arms both stiffly removing the ones that were attached to myself. Why do I feel his touch? These arms aren't mine. The sharp talons released their grip from within the surface of the skin that suffered like mine. My breathing caught as I thrust him away with a quick jolt of the foot that didn't belong to me.
A look of sheer shock washes over his face as he releases the grip on the arms before me. I trip and plunge back once again, as he stands slowly and casts a shadow over the feminine body extended beneath me. I reveal my sense of fear as I gasp at the dense air.
"You don't remember me." He repeated again, and I opened my mouth, only to have nothing release but a hiss. I feel my heavy head fall to the chest underneath.
"Who are you?" I shout unexpectedly, feeling the words vibrate up through the stiff throat I found, hearing the voice that cracks by a thousand slits echo into the young night.
"… Please," The boy dropped his head, voice softening for a mere second. "Ask yourself that."
I released the breath that I had been holding in as my vision blurred.
Who are you?
I looked down to the filthy hands covered in blood that lay across the curved long legs. I twitched the toe of the right foot. My eyes broaden.
"… This is me?" The same alien voice escapes my mouth as the thought expands within my aching head, contemplation reverberating about the body I can now feel shiver and shudder beneath me.
"Your name is Kurerisa."
He feels my vision search his lowered head and looks back to meet my eyes.
"Kurerisa Meri Gyutosuki." He continued, stooping down towards me. The moonlight shone through his strands of silver hair, the access light nearly blinding my tender eyes. My heart sank as I realized that this girls' forename… he meant to say it belonged to me… but it didn't.
"N-no." I stated, forcefully and swiftly taking his sleeveless haori within both of my newfound fists, dragging his face in with much struggle so that his inhuman like features were displayed only inches before mine. "How would you know," My voice sounding raw and ravenous for air, "… who are you?"
A cold, icy hand snatched one of my palms away from his vest, clutching it with enough force for me to shatter my notice back to his eyes, suddenly swarming with silent emotion. I held my tongue as his tight lips opened once more. "My name is Toshiro Hitsugaya." His eyes closed.
"You don't remember me," He sucked in the surrounding air, thin but enough, between our two faces. "I'm not sure if you want to." His pupils appeared once more as he forced his eyes open. They were yet again bitter and harsh. "Do you remember anything?"
"Should I?" My voice sounded soft for the first time I had heard, the voices in my head overlapping my common sense. I heard my breathing come ragged again as some new source of pain overlies my being. I promptly steal my hand from his, bringing it to seize upon the stomach I felt searing with throbbing. I free a low whimper of unaware.
"Kurerisa?" He manages to murmur, before filching me by the shoulders. "What's wrong?"
All I can do is unlock my mouth so a trickle of something hot and irony seeps down my chin, and quiver as the feverish squall of heat runs up my bent spine. I scream.
"Kurerisa!" He shouts sternly, taking me in both arms now, façade infuriated. If I could have, I would have surely felt his heartbeat through his chilling chest- but the sounds of my own pulse and screaming is much too loud for me to have focused on any other. The whole body I wasn't able to conclude was mine in the first place was now convulsing with the most gruesome shocks of severe agony I could ever had anticipated. The same thing stressed through my head;
Wake up.
Wake up.
It's just a bad dream.
Please, wake up.
I did wake up. I woke up to a bright light and the same, unrecognizable boy, nearly two hundred years ago. Now that event is only a nightmare. A terrifying memory that would haunt me for an eternity. And, literally, an inner war between my very soul and power.
It's not quite a memory, I fail to deduce. I still feel this inner torture nearly every night of my frightfully painful life as a shinigami. Some nights I feel so weak- like I know I could fight this reduction of myself. But most nights I just wallow in the pain and hide within the outskirts of the Seireitei. I hide this verity well. In fact, I only have one other person who knows of this daily occurrence.
Toshiro Hitsugaya, my superior, Captain of the Tenth Division of the Gotei 13 was once the little boy who had saved me those two centuries ago. He was my only source of knowing.
My memory was permanently lost that night. How could I trust what anyone alleged but him? As sore for myself as one would assume I could be, I rather never have sought to reconcile my own feelings about my loss. I just keep on moving forward, avoiding looking back.
I remember the morning I awoke from my coma. And the way that Hitsugaya Taichou looked at me. That was the last time I had ever saw any sense of worry or empathy from him. That simply wasn't of his character. So I have come to terms to try and bear in mind that this Taichou is different from the one I knew that one day.
I appreciated that I share that connection with my Taichou. I'm not sure if many others have ever seen him like that. For some reason, I almost wish I hadn't, still, despite the fact that it was a special moment for me. Perhaps it was the fact that I was teased- he dangled his sympathy before my very eyes, and then snatched it away. Or maybe it was because I knew I shouldn't have these feelings that I do for him. Either way, if it weren't for him, my world wouldn't work.
I can't really describe it- that feeling of falling, of knowing that someone could catch you, but yet they still won't for whatever reason they have. The indisputable knowing that no matter what you do, you could never be good enough, or even that fact that you would give anything for them, and accepting that they wouldn't dare do the same.
I guess it could be just that I am so in deep I don't even desire to escape. Living in that intoxicating numbness that heartbreak can offer you. It feels so treacherously deviant.
What would Taichou say if he heard of my feelings- no doubt, a twinge of disgust? But I can acknowledge that. I can exist with knowing that… but not live at all.
I just guess that this world can never be what I expected.
And maybe that's because this world, this life, continues to move past me as I stand in hurt involuntarily. So I really don't see why I should ever complain. If I really wanted to get out, I would go. But why not stay and enjoy the burning on the inside?
Taichou would think I have gone mad. Maybe I have. But at least I have a fair deal of excuse-
"Gyutosuki." An all too memorable voice addressed.
Well, well. Speak of the devil.
"Hitsugaya Taichou." I turned around with an awkward motion and bit my lip as I flushed of absolute alarm. I ducked my head to display my evident respect of his authority.
"What are you doing out so late?" He asked, a sort of suspicion lurking in his voice.
"Midnight stroll, Taichou," I lied within raising my head to his eye level again "may I ask the same of you? Or is it confidential?" I almost smirked at my slight taunt.
"I couldn't sleep." His voice lowered as he looked away from me. "If this is so, though- allow me to escort you on your walk." Toshiro's voice sounded all too much convincing to decline.
We walked in silence for what felt like hours. This was one of those nights when the only source of light in the sky appeared to be the moon, and even our silhouettes were lost in the vast of the forest outside of the Seireitei. After several more minutes of soundless, unguided walking, I suddenly turned to Toshiro, feeling the hurt settling in upon my face,
"Who do you love?"
His face remained forwards, even as he caught his breath and step. His eyes fell onto me. I could feel it. The wind picked up, too, at that moment- leaves tousling my near bare legs.
"What?" Was all he put out, before slowly turning to face me. The moon illuminated every segment of muscles and features on his face, reminding me once again of that horrid dream. My hand clutched into a fist as a shudder ripped down my spine.
"Who… do you love?" I emphasized my entire inquiry with a sore look and a dead tone. The wind picked up again, and my bangs plunged down into my chocolate, raw eyes. The silence was insufferable.
"No one." He finally answered with a straight-faced gaze. I thought I saw his head twitch sideways as he realizes the glistening tear fall down my supple cheek. He grunts at my unexpected break down.
"Kurerisa… what's wrong?" He grimaces, letting his crossed arms drop to his sides.
"Nothing." I lied with a mop of my sleeve to my moistened chin. "But how can you say that?"
"Say what?"
"That you don't love anyone."
"… Simply because that's the truth," He growls and moves forward without me, showing his true antipathy towards the matter "And I don't think that should be any kind of a dilemma." I can just stand and watch him walk away, my heart sinking far down into my chest.
"Taichou!" I call out finally, catching up to him, just realizing how unfeasibly frosty is was within the midnight air and lack of daylight.
He turns to me. I stop.
His countenance had changed so much from that one night. I remember that essential innocence that had covered his regular irritable façade, and even the way he carried himself. I could detect the utter loss of concern and general insecurities. If there were any, no one could have ever identified.
I wanted to ask him what happened. I wanted to know what tainted him. I just wanted to distinguish everything that went wrong. I knew fewer about myself then I did about him… and I scarcely even knew him at this point. What did that declare about me? That I was selfish for the knowledge of him? Or that I was inevitably loyal to someone who will never heed? There he stood. I could ask him anything I wanted to.
"No one? How more inhuman could someone be?" I refused to give into the regret of my sour words, even as he gives a look that could kill. "No individual? Not even Matsumoto? Or Hinamori? Or Hyourinmaru? You wouldn't give your life to spare any of them?-"
"What a foolish way of classifying what love is. You're so naïve." His monotone words sliced into me like a sword to the heart. I fought back my tears more as my temper childishly increased.
"Is that so, Taichou? Then, since you're so much smarter than me, why don't you tell me what it is to be loved? To own love? To feel it? What is it?" I screeched into the night. His eyes tapered into two slits of ultimate rage, as mine inquiringly searched his face for any indication of care.
"Love is the hurt that one is so foolishly attached to, assuming there is no better in the world. Love is allowing someone to hurt you to no extent, allowing them to kill you. Love makes you weak and is no more powerful than detestation or anything else in the world." He scowled and released quickly, as if to make his point clear as quickly as achievable.
"You're wrong." I sniveled, forcing my voice to remain level.
"Love is the good in the world. It is the thing that connects every soul together, that allows two to intemperately suffocate in the desires of each other. It is the beating of every heart. It allows someone to do anything for another, and they don't care. I don't care." I let my eyes drop. "Do you?"
"I know what you're trying to do." He snarled, smoothing one hand through his wind-stroked hair and then letting it fall to his side imprecisely with a sigh. "If I say I don't care, then you'll be able to prove yourself further. But if I say I do care, that stands by its self. It's a failed attempt at trying to get to my head." He let his eyes fall, too.
"What's in your head, Taichou? Is there anything I don't know that I should?"
"What do you think?"
"I think so."
"Then you think absolutely wrong." He grunted. I gape at his dead expression.
"Apparently you don't care. You don't care about anyone, do you? Wow. I guess I am stupid. I should have known someone as heartless as you couldn't…"
"Couldn't what?" He deepened his darkened defiant stare.
"You couldn't love, especially not me." I scoffed. I couldn't stand it anymore. I just ignored his stare. I couldn't tolerate the thought of seeing his stone cold eyes again. I was already dying enough as it was. "Good night, Toshiro." Was all I could make out before quickly walking past him without any resonance or gaze.
None of that, I can say entirely truthfully, was intended to happen. All I wanted was to walk with him for one night. I couldn't resist. And there I had to go, doing what I do best- ruining everything.
Even now, with the tears flowing swiftly as I duck under branches and flash step as quickly as I could maintain away from where he stood, the thoughts ravage over my head and leave me restless as the pathway goes on and on. My feet start burning with such intensity, that I can barely continue. But I do, afraid that if I were to stop, Taichou would find me and question my sanity.
I started to question it myself. What did I just do? I messed everything up, that's what.
Still, was it crazy for me to have hope?
Maybe it was, considering Taichou's never-ending temperament towards the scientifically weak… I guess that's how I could put it. But, nonetheless-
I could only hope, like I always have. Hope is the only thing I own, the only thing I ever had besides Taichou's company… but even that could be gone now. And I don't know what I could do, but hope in the essence of the fact nothing will ever happen or change, even now.
Sometimes, I guess, hoping is hopeless.