Title: Funeral
Written: 2013
Warnings: None.
Characters: Saburota Toudou
Summary: Saburota was there at his brother's funeral.
"That's why you already have nothing left."
Sweet fragrance clashed against the tart decay stench clinging to the mahogany ashes.
Slight echoes of the clatter of wooden sticks sharply broke an uncertain silence.
His own hands barely held to the wood. The muscles didn't want to flex, the nervous system didn't want to signal, the cortex didn't want to.
He didn't want to-
He picked up another piece.
-anymore.
Abyss. The boundless nothing and his age-old companion, quiet desperation, were all he could sense. A weary man grown tired of it all. Why was he. Where was he going. Did it matter.
Taking the last bone fragment between the wood, he let it hit the linoleum. Rancor clouded his mind.
It never mattered. Not the fear. Not the isolation.
Why… Why did you let yourself get murdered. Why did you make me not feel a damn thing about your funeral. Why did you turn me into this.
You were the strong one. Not me.
Notes: According to the Wikipedia article on Japanese funeral customs, after a body is cremated, relatives pick bone fragments from the ashes and transfer them via chopsticks from relative to relative to an urn. That's what Toudou's doing here. I presume it's a huge faux pas to drop a bone fragment on the ground.