Hurts.
Hurts.
HURTS!
Ichihara Yuuko wanted to cry from the intense pain, but she couldn't. She opened her mouth, but no voice came out. So she struggled with the pain in silence. Nothing helped. Well, she had nothing, to ease her pain.
Nobody told her, dieing is so painful!
She, in the end, didn't have anything at all, just feelings. There was a vortex, in the beginning, she barely remembered. She didn't mind the faintness of the memory. It wasn't important. She died, as she wished. Well, kind of. But none of the spirits mentioned her any following pain of death! This pain covered everything in haze. She is dead. Since when? The witch didn't count.
But the woman did. She couldn't call herself a human being, although she was one. Somewhere in the ancient times. And now. Nothing feel pain, but the human, the human alone. And she felt pain. She was unable to endure it. But she had to. The pain stayed, and the intensity didn't ease down. Yuuko was unable to do anything against it, and also unable to bear.
She tried to cry.
She opened her mouth again and again, trying to cry. Never a single sound left her lungs.
So she did it again and again and again. Without any result. There was no mercy.
Or there was. After of an eternity, the pain slowly subsided. Not too much. Just to a bearable level.
She calmed down enough, to slowly feel her surroundings. But there wasn't too much to discover. Her eyes didn't work, and there was a complete silence. Maybe her hearing also was lost, with the smell and the taste. The only remaining perception was touch. She felt, she was floating in a thick liquid, the feeling of this wetness on her skin gave her the only impression of reality.
Because it was real.
The slowly easing pain, the liquid, embracing her whole body. She sensed her body parts, her long hair. Yes. There were everything on its exact place. It was her body. She was Ichihara Yuuko. Everything is hers.
Except a thin string. She found it, while she caressed her body, to make sure, it was hers. Well the string was very thin, like a hair. Thinner. She wanted it to remove, and tried to tear out, but touching that made her to cry from pain. A simple touch gave her such an enormous dose of pain, Yuuko left that in place.
It was the right decision. The pain finally went away, but she didn't regain her senses. Well, sometimes she sensed some flavor, like cinnamon and ginger, but when she tried to capture the source, the taste vanished.
So she finally didn't do anything, just floating in the liquid. It was a peaceful, calming thing to do. Boring, but with the pain was gone, she had enough time to think.
She had her memories. All of them. It took quite a lot of time to scroll over all of them. Here or there she stopped. Tried to relive the feelings of those events. She wanted to go back to those places, to those people, her heart was aching to be with them.
All those episodes belong to Watanuki. Well, the time was playing with them, and it seemed their timing was always off, but she couldn't forget his painful tears, learning her death. The last moments with him. He told her, she was important to him. He didn't say love, but from Watanuki, it was impossible at that moment. But some kind of love was clearly there.
From both sides.
Yes. Yuuko had to admit, she was in love with him. She was always in love with him, all her life, despite the length and the happenings of her long life. But Yuuko wasn't sure about Watanuki's side. Well, the time was definitely was playing with them, and ruling the tangled timelines was difficult. Sometimes those events altered, sometimes happened anyway. She tried to master them, but so little she could do to manage to get Watanuki's love. Time was definitely played with them. Their timing was always off.
Only the memories were hers. But those were there. So she was peacefully floating, and enjoyed the movie of the memories of him.