All Right
How funny; Shiki would've laughed if only Eri didn't look so worried and didn't cry and didn't whisper her name over and over, and that she's sorry, and that – honestly, Shiki just wanted to laugh. Because her body is pressing Shiki, a body she had used and gotten used to, a body she had always stared at admiration and envy, but ultimately, it was Eri's body that was hugging her, and it was Eri that was wetting Shiki's white gown with her tears.
Just Eri, her beautiful Eri.
"I'm right here. Don't cry anymore," Shiki says softly, gently stroking Eri's back, whispering reassuring words; just glad that Eri was there, and she was alive, and there were no more reapers, and that everything was fine again, and just, just feeling the tangible form of Eri.
And before Eri had always smiled, smiled in that way of hers that would light a room and make everything else seemed inane, smiled so beautifully that Shiki was jealous, utterly jealous, and wished more than anything in the world- more than her dream to become a famous designer, that she possessed Eri's beauty, and Shiki realized
"But you were- Shiki, you were gone, you were dead. I saw you fall, I saw you hit the- with that sound, oh god, Shiki, you were gone. I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Through her tear-stained vision (since when had she started crying?), Shiki starts to giggle, then burst out into a gale of full laughter. Oh Eri, Eri and her face twisted in pain and tears and so beautiful – and Shiki realizes that Eri and her smile; those fake smiles she gives to everyone but Shiki, they are no longer stunning. No, not compared to this Eri she is seeing now, the Eri only Shiki knows.
"Shiki? Why... are you laughing?"
Eri just has to ask, doesn't she. This brings more tears and laughter for Shiki. She is not sure whether she should weep from despair or laugh out of happiness; but she is already doing both, and so she lets it be. Eri and her question and her face with her brows wrinkled in confusion and those eyes in pain and guilt and
"I'm laughing," Shiki starts, wiping away Eri's tears with her thumb and ignores her own blurred sight, "because you're here."
And she smiles to tenderly then that Eri is dumbstruck; for her friend was only subject to shy half-smiles whiles she stood in the shadows cast by Eri's unrelenting spotlight (Eri thinks that Shiki deserves to be free; under the bright, blinding skies reserved for Shiki alone). Eri is seeing the Shiki she wants only Eri to know.
Eri is silent for a moment, wringing her hands (why?) on her own tear-stained shirt, and just for a moment, a moment that seems like forever and the forever that is only a fragment of a second, Shiki worries that Eri might leave her alone. That the reapers and death and gravity will haunt her again spectres phantoms world without Eri.
But when Eri looks up and pulls Shiki close and buries her head on her friend's neck – without the tears or the wails or the desperation, just an embrace between two friends who had lost and found each other, Shiki realizes with a resounding sigh as she holds Eri close that everything might just be
All right.
"...Love... you."
"...Shiki?"
Ignoring Eri's inquisitive glance at something only half heard, Shiki closes her eyes and focuses on the insignificant sterile sound of the hospital.
Yes. Everything will just be all right.
