Days passed with strangely variable speed in the afterlife, as both Seishirou and Ora had long since noted. It seemed that perspective affected the world even more heavily here than it had in life. Or perhaps it affected it the same way, and they only wanted to believe that it was different here. It was hard to say for sure. At any rate, they had the strange sensation of having been companions for years and yet having only just met.
As a result, they had developed a tendency to wander a bit through… well wherever they were. Neither of them was sure still and as neither of them was particularly philosophical, they did not spend a great deal of time dwelling on the subject. Instead they explored, not out of particularly curiosity regarding their surroundings, but out the much baser boredom that had taken them each over. Seishirou had jokingly called them both restless souls once, and Ora had agreed, although with less amusement than she might have once. Ever since the discovery of Kazuhiko's possible new romance, she had become considerably less vibrant than before.
It was on another of their aimless walks that they met a most unusual woman. The two had come across a field of strange purple flowers, that upon closer inspection, proved to be thousands of tiny swallowtail butterflies in every shade of purple from the palest blanched lavender to the darkest midnight violet. Strangely however, not a single butterfly moved, leading the two to believe at first that they were in fact fake, merely paper illusions, until Ora lightly brushed the tip of her finger of the one of the butterflies wings. It twitched slightly, then readjusted itself on the bare stem, looking as ornamental as ever.
"They're beautiful." Ora breathed, a bit of her happily child-like nature glimmering through the veil of depression for once.
Seishirou was less fascinated by the insects however, and looked more wary of the field.
"What's wrong?" she stepped a little closer to him.
"Who's there?" He called warily.
A woman's voice chuckled and the wings of the butterflies rustled.
Seishirou stiffened.
"Seishirou, isn't it?" A woman with long trailing strands of black hair appeared in the tenebrous field some yards away.
"I don't believe we have had the pleasure of meeting." He replied coolly.
She gave a positively terrifying smirk as she approached and leaned in close, tilting his chin up to get a better look at him. "Hm, no, I guess it wasn't this you, but the other one that I met." She replied then gave him a teasing smile. "You're too old to be the version of you that I met. But then" she laughed "most people are older and no longer the same person I met before when our paths cross again."
"Who are you?"
"Call me Yuko. It's not my real name of course, but who would ever give their real name to one like you?" she laughed.
"How did you know he was an assassin?" Ora queried.
"An assassin?" Yuko raised an eyebrow at her before turning back to Seishirou. "Is that what you became in that life? Well that's appropriate." She flashed a grin at Ora once more. "I had no idea what he did for a living back when, you know, he was actually still living. I just know better than to share personal information with anyone, especially someone I have no doubts is dangerous in all of his lives." She winked at Seishirou. "You were a vampire hunter when I met you. Very sexy profession. Or maybe it was just the glasses. I always have had a thing for men with glasses."
Ora giggled. "I know what you mean. It's part of what got me about Kazu-" she broke off, leaving the three of them in abrupt silence.
Before it could stretch on for an uncomfortably long time however, Seishirou at last spoke up again.
"And what is it that you did while you were alive."
"Ah, now that," she began in a serious, foreshadowing tone that had both Ora and Seishirou leaning forward slightly and holding their breaths despite themselves, "is a secret!" She finished triumphantly and the other two glanced at one another, silently asking the other if they too thought that perhaps this woman was not entirely sane.
"Besides." Yuko continued, ignoring their incredulous looks. "It wasn't what I did before I died that was interesting."
"You've been doing something here that's interesting?" Ora at least was still willing to hear her out.
"No, unless you count sitting around in this field as interesting." Yuko gave them a look of pained boredom. "It was while I was stuck in between that I worked in wish sales as it were."
Ora immediately imagined red lights and seedy street corners but Seishirou's eyes narrowed for an entirely different reason.
"The Space-Time Witch."
She grinned. "Sharp as your counterpart I see."
Ora looked between the two of them. "The what?"
"The Space-Time Witch. It was a title of mine you could say." The mysterious woman fingered the stem of a particularly vibrant flower. "I granted wishes, still can actually, but always at a price."
Ora opened her mouth to speak but before her lips could form the words, the woman's features fell into a grave and lonely expression.
"I cannot give you what you want to ask for." Yuko plucked the flower and the butterflies that made up the petals, scattered in a flurry of violet wings, leaving her with an empty stem. "Something lost can never be regained. There are no paths back to the person that you have once been."
"Then what do we do now?" Ora asked.
Yuko stared at the stem, wilting in her fingertips as if lost without the butterflies. "We keep moving forward."
Silence fell over the field and it struck Ora then how silent butterflies could be, that thousands of them would make no sound, not even that of paper wings rustling in the wind.
"What if what lies ahead isn't a place we want to go?" Seishirou spoke the words that none of them wanted to say.
"Only a fool would allow themselves to get stuck."
"Like you did." He replied.
Ora stared at the sky above her, wondering at the inky blankness of it. "We are all fools then."
.
.
The snow had cleared up enough that they had at last been able to reach old Tokyo and now Sue and Subaru found themselves trudging through the slush toward another train station. It was strange, Subaru thought, to be headed to the capital, and yet to pass through Tokyo. It had been decades and yet he could not adjust to the shift of power. Then again, what about this new Japan had he adjusted to at all. Lost in his own thoughts, it was several yards before he realized that the dull crunch of grimy snow and concrete beneath his boots had lost its companion. He paused and looked back to see Sue standing before a dilapidated wrought-iron gateway.
"What is this?" She wondered aloud as Subaru approached her.
"A park."
"But there are no roller coasters or attractions."
Subaru shook his head. "Not a theme park, just a park."
"What does one come here for?"
"Nothing anymore, by the looks of it." Subaru stared at the name engraved in the stone columns on either side of the gates. Though eroded away nearly into oblivion, he could still just make out the grooves of the characters.
Ueno.
"What did people come here for once then?"
Subaru closed his eyes. "Once, people came here to enjoy the trees and nature."
Sue's eyes widened. "Trees were once a luxury to be enjoyed on a regular basis?" She lay a hand on the gate. "But only a few, right? That's why it's gated off like this?"
"No, the gate must have been added to keep people out at night. It used to be wide open to the public at all times."
Sue gazed inside with wonder.
"Will you enter with me?"
That was it, no question of was she allowed to enter, no question of would she. Only the question of whether he would he join her.
"Yes."
The gates gave readily at her touch, as though they had been waiting all this time for her to arrive and they entered the park, which Subaru noted was far more grim within than it had appeared from outside. The grass was bare in spots where it looked as though chemicals had burned it away, leaving ugly patches between overgrown and viciously thorny looking weeds. The concrete had cracked and eroded into crumbling pieces that looked more designed to trip unwary trespassers than to facilitate visitors. A bench had been blown over by the wind at some point and lay with its rusted legs in the air like a dead and pathetic insect. Even the light was grayer, filtered by ashen leaves from gnarled trees.
Yet Sue made her way through the wreckage without hesitation, looking around with only curiosity.
"It didn't always look like this." Subaru felt the need to explain, to justify.
"Things change." Sue replied absent-mindedly then paused, staring at something a few feet away.
Subaru followed her gaze to the sakura tree standing alone, away from the rest of the groves, with no grass, no flower, not even any weeds, surrounding it. He supposed he should not have been surprised to see that it was thriving amid the chaos and destruction.
"The petals… Sue wandered over the tree and reached up to touch a blossom. "Why are they pink?" she wondered aloud, stroking the delicate petals lovingly. "Every sakura I've ever seen has only had all white blossoms."
Subaru was silent for so long that she began to think that he had not heard her, or simply did not want to answer and she turned to look at him expectantly. At last he spoke up.
"They used to all be pink. A long time ago."
The petal drifted away and Sue raised her head to admire the blossoms still clinging to the wiry branch. "They're beautiful."
Subaru felt his features twist into a vague semblance of grief.
"I used to think so too."
"Do you not anymore?"
"Knowing the price of beauty can mar the beauty itself."
Sue turned to study him again with a far more intense, calculating gaze, reminding him again that she was no mere romantic teenage girl.
"Or could it let you appreciate that beauty more? Wouldn't looking past the aesthetics be an insult to the sacrifices that were already made? Refusing to see the beauty in the result won't return things to the way they were." She plucked a single, especially vibrant flower and held it close. "You can't bring back the people whose blood made these petals so lovely."
Subaru started. "How did you know-"
"I can hear them." Sue closed her eyes. "It's like the faint voices of their souls are still echoing amid the branches.
"What are they saying?" Subaru approached her slowly, magnetically.
"Different things." She opened her eyes and only then did he realize how close they were standing. If he wanted to, he could reach out and-
"We should go." She announced suddenly. "We'll miss the train."
Subaru followed her out of the park, pausing only once to glance back at the sakura tree in wonder.