In which Takane never gets her old body back or reveals her secret, and is left with constant reminders with no one to vent to. Meh.
Reminder of Days Long Gone
At times, Ene felt terribly lonely. Ayano was gone forever, Shintaro, although Ene spent her days with him, was a boring NEET, and Haruka, that annoying idiot, had… become something else entirely. It wasn't as if Shintaro knew who Ene had once been either, so even in the aftermath of the endless summer, it was at times terribly frustrating to keep up her persona.
Ene knew she should've told Shintaro who she was. It was a bad idea to keep the person she associated with practically everyday in the dark, and Ene knew that eventually, one day Shintaro would find out, as he did for everything. Even so, Ene didn't really care when Shintaro would uncover that secret, since it wasn't as if he could do anything to her.
'Course, it was always possible that Shintaro already knew, was already aware, but simply never bothered to tell her. After all, Ene had revealed a rudimentary knowledge of Shintaro's past gaming habits, as well as sharing an almost identical hairstyle to her… old self. Besides, in the years of memories Shintaro had locked up in his head of the heat haze day, there was bound to be at least one timeline where she'd revealed herself.
Still, Shintaro wasn't the biggest problem Ene had. At least he was still similar to his original state, even if he'd grown much more pathetic. Konoha was a much, much bigger issue.
Konoha was identical to Haruka's old video game character. For a shooter based in the past, the character designs were oddly modern. That constant memory, the living proof of their old relationship, if you could call it one was someone that Ene had to see every single day. As much as she tried to, Ene couldn't stop hating the cyber-boy, if Konoha could even be considered human.
Konoha had super strength, and was basically immune to events fatal to most regular people. Super speed too, and who knows what else the pale boy had in common with an archetypal video game lead. Konoha was even as mindless as a video game character, simply living the agenda of those around him, barely clinging to any sense of agency, which of course, was limited to Haruka's last wish of wanting to be with friends.
Ene knew that, in her transformation, she couldn't possibly have married, let alone dated Haruka, had Haruka remained true to himself. Even so, to watch a foreign entity prance around in Haruka's body, even if that was Haruka, just wasn't something Ene could stomach.
Despite the tears Konoha had shed, ignoring the wishes he so desired, Ene's every glance would make her shiver inside. She'd once heard that in video games, there was a rather fine line between humans who closely resembled and acted like humans, and those that were noticeably off, to the point at which it just became downright creepy. How human they seemed, how right they looked, but at the same time, strangely eerie. Like a zombie, a robot, a mechanical replica. They look like humans, but aren't.
Konoha was like that. To Ene, he resembled Haruka, her old crush though she'd never admitted it, but something was off. Konoha wasn't Haruka, their minds were fundamentally different. Konoha, in body, aside from the abnormal colouring, shared the exact same proportions as Haruka. Ene had yet to measure Konoha, but she wouldn't be surprised if the measurements matched.
Even so, even though they were both part of the Dan, Ene could barely cover up her disgust. Konoha was just wrong in every way, just looking at him disturbed her. Regrets piled up on her everytime she looked his way, the thoughts of days long since past.
Haruka was much better before than now. Granted, Konoha was practically impervious to disease, but Haruka had had… a magic to him. Something about that boy, that annoyingly frustratingly ignorant boy, had attracted her. Not as Ene, but as her old self. As Takane Enomoto.
Haruka wasn't perfect, but Takane didn't care for perfection. Nothing was, and Haruka was close enough. Even if he had a life threatening disease, even if Haruka was absent sizable chunks of the year, Takane found herself gravitating towards the tall sickly boy.
Takane wondered what it was about him that she liked oh-so-much. Ayano would, on occasion, try to get her to talk about… 'love' and such, but Takane would never take up her offer to do so. As much as Takane enjoyed teasing her kouhai, she was another story. To Ayano and Shintaro, it had been fun prodding them on both sides, like a game, though neither side would admit anything. On the other hand, Takane took her own relationships seriously.
She supposed that might've just been a lack of empathy for Ayano, but Takane could never bring herself to approach that forbidden topic, that elusive word, love.
Could that attraction have been Haruka's personality? That kind smile, the carefree nonchalant attitude, those amazing drawings, what was it? Takane wondered if her attraction was limited to the mental realm. Ignoring her many insults and put-downs that Takane didn't mean, she quite liked his face, his wide eyes, his large yet slim frame. There were a lot of things Takane liked about Haruka, but had he ever thought the same way about her?
Takane wondered what Haruka would think when he looked at her. Irritating classmate? Friend? Only ally in that lonely special needs classroom? Maybe even a crush? There were a million possibilities, answers, results to the elusive enigma, but Takane would never know. If Konoha hadn't appeared in place of Haruka, if Haruka had never been reborn as the albino-esque amnesiac, then what could have become of them?
Right. Nothing. Takane would've been Ene, the bubbly little cyber troll, who poked and prodded Shintaro all the while avoiding the past. But what if, what could have happened had they not met under such… negative circumstances? If Haruka hadn't had such a violent illness, or even if they hadn't met in that quaint little special needs classroom, would they still have ended in such tragedy? Oh, right. There was no 'they', no 'we', no 'us'. Takane Enomoto and Haruka Kokonose, no matter how close, were never an item of that fashion.
And that was why Ene hated Konoha. She hated him for a lot of reasons, but in the end, to her, Konoha represented the realm of possibilities. He was the stars, the far away glimpses at worlds unreachable. Konoha was Haruka, but only in body, he was a pale bright shadow of the person Ene had once taken a liking to. In that, she couldn't forgive him, no matter how childish it seemed.
Ene wondered if Shintaro felt the same way, if the NEET thought of the quiet pale boy in the same light. Perhaps as a reminder of days long since passed, the times when Ayano lived, those happy days of innocence and longing. As Ene, she knew that Shintaro was rather… deeply affected by Ayano's loss, but did he see in Konoha the same scapegoat she did?
The quiet curiosity was a small one, but grew the more Ene saw them, which was practically everyday. Shintaro got along just fine with Konoha, even going out of his way to interact with the pale husk of Haruka, something that boggled Ene even more than the game.
Ene wanted to know, no, now she needed to know. That quiet little question had grown into a craving, a mental curio. How had Shintaro learned to cope with the loss of old his friends and his loved one? Did those two years serve as a way to forget, or by finally discovering the reason behind Ayano's suicide, had he come to terms with her death?
Shintaro and her were more similar than Ene wanted to admit. Both of them had lost their favoured one on the same day, and vanished themselves, Shintaro as a social recluse and Ene as Ene. So how did he cope? Was Shintaro merely accepting his fate as a given, a granted, a decision of fate?
It took a full week before Ene finally broke that wall, that mental inhibition. It took a full seven days of contemplation before Ene resolved to cave in.
"Hey Master! I have something to say." She called out, pressing her face to the screen to block Shintaro's access to the internet.
"What? Spill it already." Shintaro muttered, trying to free the mouse from Ene's grasp.
"I'm…"
PROMPT: Write about somebody you used to love.