(Yes, we will.)
Dead cicadas sleeping underfoot, the few fleeting seconds between the rewinding nights crept by once again.
Tick tock, did the neverending world resound with for miles by empty miles. The endlessly broken down clocks hadn't repaired themselves for the next show just yet.
Amongst the fading clicking and clacking notes the traveling wind had also quieted down enough to let bits of conversation be whispered outside of consciousness.
"Hey, Hibiya-kun?"
Swathed in a non-changing time, all and every light dwindled down to nothing in the coldness, stillness, all waiting for the air to swirl back to normal and start again.
"Hn?"
Three pale figures were all that could be seen to those who were looking, if any apathetic-minded entity was looking down at them from above at all. And if that were so, it mattered not to them, as they were alone through and through.
"If you could go home right, now what would you do?"
The two taller shadows crunched through the re-falling snow laid on the ice-covered ground; the smaller one between them was too short to even come up to their knees, soundlessly pawing on top, idly.
"I'd go straight to my bed and sleep of course."
Only one of them was leaving tracks behind.
"Hehe, yeah me too. But first I would hug my parents. We've been here so long that I've actually sort of forgotten what they looked like, you know?"
The boy glanced at the girl, straining his eyes to memorize her face as the darkness was determined to block her out of sight and mind. It was getting harder every time they walked down this way.
"I know."
Although it was quite hard to see they knew that the cat had suddenly spurned up its speed, feeling the snow that it had maliciously kicked right into their faces.
'Hurry up brats,' it seemed to imply very clearly.
The boy felt the urge to slow down, the girl doing the same, but it was all they could do. The haze forbade them to ever stop walking until they reached their destination.
"...if we weren't here, what would you do with the rest of your life?"
The blackness surrounding them was growing thicker; the subzero temperature more suffocating with every step, no longer strained and resistant. They had learned that there was no point of trying to escape a long time ago.
"I'm not sure, I haven't lived it yet. Maybe stay in the city? I've seen how cool it can be now, thanks to you Asahina."
Cold-rooted emptiness coming from everywhere at once gravitated towards his precious companion. Hands clumped into fists; a voice barely above a bitter mumble.
"No."
Not-so-suddenly, their quiet journey's end came finally came into sight, apparating from a foggy, unclear outline in the distance.
"Thanks to me we're stuck here forever now."
A door.
"It's because of me that we can never see our families ever again."
The doorway that always lead to their next death, whichever one of them it would be. Coated with the twirls of beckoning frost and the scent of rotting blood, it stood alone and distinct against a hollow void.
"Why we can never see light ever again."
The one that looked identical to the one after it. And the one after. And the one after that. Always, always.
"Why we have to keep on dying..."
The spell they were under remained eternal, absolute, ensnaring. The door was staring at them head on now, a giant in size and a midget in kindness. The cat stood right in front of it, patiently waiting for them. It knew everything with calm solemness. Sneered in the face of their helplessness.
"...between the choice to go home again..."
Both of them were truly trapped, locked away in an everlasting cycle; already the chilling air was beginning to whirl at their minds and make them forget the words they had shared as the emptied out, broken girl grazed the knob.
"...I don't think I'd like the city that much anymore."
Hibiya's insides felt emptier and more meaningless than usual, he may as well have been see-through. Vision only lightly skimming over the events before him, his hands felt limp like that of a puppet as he watched Hiyori grab the knob fully-handed, numbing both of their souls to one more end, yet definitely not the last.
"...I'm..."
Suddenly, just as her hand on the knob began it's slow, agonizing turn, something seemed to seize the cat. It's dull, vindictive golden and red eyes twitched, only to be taken over completely by the red, burning, blazing, bright. Sharp as a snap, the small creature surged passed them and out into the dark, winding space they had just left behind without a second's warning.
"...so..."
Hiyori didn't notice it at all: her eyes had already been lost within her long ago. Her hand kept turning.
"...sorry..."
Hibiya, however, hadn't been fully frozen just yet and turned his head lethargically towards whatever it was that had captured the cat's attention so. Steadily and picking up speed along with the sudden faster-falling snowflakes, Hibiya blinked in surprise at the sight before him, blinking back the rest of his emotions as well.
"...Asahina."
Right behind him, shimmering like a fragile projection was another door. It was almost glowing; illuminating the rifts and crevices around it like a beacon. The innumerable snow from above rumbled and tumbled down as if the sky was trying to cover up this new discovery.
"Asahina!"
Had it always been there? Hibiya couldn't remember and didn't know why, but the aura that wafted from it seemed familiar. Soothing. Alive.
"..."
It seemed so angelic, so needed, so safe. A franticness not like any other was pouring into him from an invisible cup. He had to go to it, she had to go to it, they both had to go to it!
"Hiyori!"
With the cry of a simple, nearly forgotten name, a tiny bit of her seemed to have awoken from its cold slumber.
"Hn?"
She stopped her twisting hand mid-way.
"...why don't we go through that door instead?"
Bringing her deadened eyes away from the door in front and to the one that lay behind. It was lit up strongly now and shined a reflection in her glassy vision.
"Huh... was that always there? I don't remember it at all."
A comforting tune hummed from whatever was on the other side of the door, whistling through the long-overdue winter air. Warmth itself seemed to be radiating out from the cracks and slits at its sides. Light...
"Does it matter? Let's go through it; do something different this time."
Hibiya took an experimental step towards the shiny, strange door, just to be sure that he could and the haze wouldn't just pull him backward to the one chosen for them without their say. When it didn't and he stayed right where he was, the boy felt a new sort of triumph; the old, foreboding one seemed so much farther away now.
"Come on! It'll be fun. What do we have to lose anymore?"
Tentatively, Hiyori dropped her hand from the ancient, wizen doorknob and way, echoing his steps toward the new, unused one. The faint startings of a long-lost excited smile ghosted her lips.
"Alright."
Holding out his hand to meet hers, it was grabbed quickly and they started their walk in a direction they didn't think was walkable. Memories from way before and feelings of all kind were already beginning to stir and return.
"Ah, it feels so warm around here Hibiya-kun."
Hand in hand toward the unopened frameway, their spirits rose and refilled clearer than ever with every step away from their death-door. Was the new one an exit or an entrance? Either way, it was shining brighter and brighter by the unpassed second.
"Yeah. Maybe we'll finally find the sun on the other side?"
His most treasured, dearest friend squeezed her fingers around his, life breathing back into her more and more. With a gleeful sound, she let go and skipped ahead of him.
"I hope so, I think so! Race you there Hibiya!"
The instinct to say something sarcastic immediately knocked inside him as Hiyori stuck her tongue out, drawing him to follow. No -kun, huh?
"In your dreams Hiyori."
No matter how effortlessly it was to call the remark out, it was alarming how he had almost forgotten the feeling - how long had it been since they had last been together the way they were supposed to be, together as themselves...
"Wait up at least!"
It was best not to think of those times just yet, the times when he had been nothing but selfish, clinging on to an alluring, whitely person who gave him nothing but contempt, ignoring the one who gave him nothing but affection.
Ko...Ko, Kono-
And yet, he couldn't even remember that person's name, and it was the name of that very same person who he had taken for granted that he never wanted to forget. Hibiya began to hike up his pace.
"Meow."
Abrupt and utterly unwanted, the black cat had once again appeared out of nowhere and inconvenienced everyone and everything. It cut in front of him and blocked his path with the full of its body.
"You, move."
Shooting a scalding. hostile look down at the despicable little kitty, the young boy attempted to walk past it. Each time, the furball never failed to find ways to slip and slide faster than him and prevent any more steps.
"Fine, have it your way, I'll just kick you out of mine."
Hibiya pulled his leg back, gathering strength inside his boot-covered foot so he could give the hardest punt of his ended life. Preparing impact on three, two, one-!
"..wha..."
His foot stopped mid-swing, it's furious drive to smash the goddamn animal out of sight gone in favor of pure, aghast shock.
"W-what the-"
Right before his eyes, the cat had disappeared. Or maybe 'morphed' would be a better term to describe the grisly, appalling scene.
"-hell?"
What had used to be musty black fur stretched back and pulled itself underneath the skin, melting away to revealing white-coloured, smooth-looking, hard plates underneath. The body itself thinned out to the length and shape of a strangling rope. A long forked tongue disgorged out and flickered the air, coming dangerously close to touching him.
"A snake?"
A snake indeed. Smaller than the cat it had previously been, yet Hibiya knew for a fact that it was probably longer than him and Hiyori combined, it spoke without moving it's scale-covered mouth, the words echoing and rocketing in his brain from an unseen abyss within the abyss around them both.
[Only one may leave.]
Hibiya stared down at it in confusion, his mind grappling with the mystic words that had squeezed themselves into his mind, ricocheting around without consent.
"W-what?"
The snake only gazed up at him with an unreadable look before swinging its head behind. Red eyes and a thin, purple tongue wavered and waved toward the glimmering door. Much to Hibiya's horror, it looked less shiny than and pristine than before. Like it was fading.
"What do you mean 'only one'?"
Hiyori was waiting at the foot of it, basking innocently in its dwindling glow.
"Hibiya! Where are you? Hurry up, I can't see you!"
Eons seemed to pass between the bewildered boy and the quiet, listening snake. It looked back up at him with judgment, but also with a sad sort of mercy.
[Only one.]
Puzzled beyond belief, Hibiya kept switching his gaze between the serpentine creature, the distressed girl calling out into the dark for him, the tall, wobbling door, until-
"Ah."
-all was understood.
"I see."
The snake sucked in the quivering tongue back into its mouth, satisfied that the boy grasped the message at last. Only then did it slither to the side and out of Hibiya's way, nodding its flat head elegantly as if to show the respect one would show to the deceased.
"Thank you."
Another regal bow and more indiscernible blinking from the white serpent.
[I'm sorry.]
With that, it crawled away past him and through the spiked snow, toward the door, slipping underneath the doorframe, out into the world, beyond the beyond.
Don't be.
Thoughts came and fleeted away just as quickly through the youth's mind.
This is an easier choice than many others.
Another call echoed back to him, louder than her call before. It was hard to tell if it was because Hiyori was getting impatient and raising her voice or because all other noise had just then suddenly died down. As if even the world itself wanted to hear what was soon to be.
"HIBIYA! Come on! You're the one who showed me this door in the first place!"
Taking only one single moment to gulp down any hesitance and fear, the young boy's feet started out with small steps, then bigger ones, then jogging ones, and finally sprinting ones. He made sure each step was stronger than the last, lest he break and fall down into a complete mess.
"I'm here Hiyori, no need to worry."
Smiling and clasping both of his hands once he got to her, huffing and puffing out his lungs, the young girl only laughed.
"I didn't, don't you worry. Oh, did you see? I think I saw a snake or something zoom under the doorway a few seconds ago. Did you see it from where you were?"
Everything about her had been restored: her optimism, her cheer, her hope; all of it back to the brim just like that, and all from spending a small amount of time next to the door and its saving, welcoming existence.
"No, sorry, I didn't."
A lie, but words nonetheless. Floating sounds that were gone in an instant.
Just a few more things to say, a few more seconds, just a bit more time.
While the shuddering dimension still allowed him to.
"Ahh, maybe I imagined it. Well, it's no matter anyway. Let's go through this door now."
In one swift motion, the girl opened the door fully. Both companions raised their arms up to shield themselves from the blinding flash that popped right out.
"Wow."
Freezing and red-tipped, the universe seemed to have stopped on its incessant head. Amazingly, nothing but pure light sprang from the other side, stopping them from getting a good, clear view to what lay through it.
"Haha, I know: wow!"
The brilliance leaked in and blossomed everywhere; blaring itself into the vast, empty world's folds and pockets, washing away the cold and painting over the night. The haze screamed through its silence, demanding the door be closed and order be restored like a child throwing a tantrum.
"Come on then, let's go Hibiya."
As Hiyori began to move towards the door whilst tugging him along, Hibiya breathed a gulp of dry air and took his decision in. An elbow was grabbed softly to halt her.
"Why don't you go through it first?"
She looked back in puzzlement. As if on que, the snow slowed and the wind withered.
"Eh? Why Hibiya? Can't the both of us just go together?"
The atmosphere spiraled and shrunk until it concealed only them, two dead children and a portal that could only open once to only one.
"We wouldn't fit through; the door looks pretty thin, doesn't it?"
Turning her skeptical expression from him to the doorframe, Hiyori tilted her head in order to inspect it's so called slimness. It gave him the opportunity he had been seeking, yet wished with every bit inside him that he didn't have to.
"Hn, I guess so. Why me, though; why don't you go first and then I'll follow?"
He could only smile as his dearly-loved, ridiculous, beautiful friend still searched the flare with her eyes and argued with him. He tried to burn her image into his eyelids.
"Hehe sorry, but you have to be the one to go first."
While Hiyori was still mesmerized by the living luminescence, Hibiya put his lonely plan in action. One last thing to say.
"Why?"
He walked up behind her, completely tranquil. One last goodbye.
"Because your smile doesn't belong here in the dark-"
Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders. One last push.
"-it belongs in the light."
As a horrified realization began to spark in her expression and the makings of a protest began, the boy behind her gave a single, tender shove following his parting whisper, resulting in neither of them getting to finish. With that, all of Asahina Hiyori's being and all of her tears and the full length of her characteristic red scarf were thrust into the shining morning. A silhouette of her reaching out to pull him with her was immediately absorbed into the sun before her desperate hand could even brush against his jacket.
"H-Hibiya!"
With that final pleading scream, the door vanished completely; swallowed up by the inky-black fangs of the omniscient, defeated haze in a bright, bluish whirl.
Hibiya had no words to say as the ground shook and then stilled, the air trembled and then steadied, the lights went haywire and then settled back into dimness.
He had no words either when he turned to find that the original door was gone as well, disappeared to seem like it had never been there at all.
No cats in sight. No snakes for that matter either. The clocks had all fallen away.
There was nothing, absolutely nothing even as the dark matter in the air began to take concrete form, reshaping themselves as buildings and traffic lights and bridges and poles and slides in the faraway distance. The very same worn-out environment they had been imprisoned in for years. The place he was now imprisoned in forevermore.
Only now, the endless rounds of the same night seemed to have finally ended, replaced by a single constant state of reality.
His reality. For now and for worse.
Stiff and tired, hands raised up to cover eyes. Knees sank down onto mushy, sludge-like snow.
So this is what 'lonely' feels like.
What an empty, awful feeling. So much more unbearable than simply dying for real and disappearing without a sound like he had expected to happen to him once Hiyori escaped.
Hiyori... I'm sorry.
Father.
Mother..
Anyone...
Sorry, sorry, sorry, but looks like I won't be seeing you for a while, huh?
Memories kept rising in and out of him, each more painful than the last. A family he wished he could've gotten along with better, people he might've been able to call friends if he hadn't been too stuck up to acknowledge them, a locked in past and a canceled out future.
It was all folded in his mind and completely gone at the same time.
And yet...
"I think it's cute. And besides..."
Gasping and remembering only then, a hand flew to his pocket. Feeling around for the desperately desired object, he brought it up to his face the moment his digits grazed the smooth plastic. His shaking, swelling eyes drank in every inch of it longingly.
"I didn't buy it for myself."
A small, ridiculously silly-looking, dinosaur shaped keychain.
"You need something to help you remember the city since you hardly bought anything for yourself."
Splish-splash went the few, tiny, yet sure to grow droplets that leak from his eyes and onto the dinosaur's goofily grinning face as he laughed, half in despair and half in ease.
"Dumb Hiyori..."
Recallings of an equally goofy girl who had finally broken free into the world she belonged to came flooding back to reside in his heart-
"...thanks."
-as did the knowledge that she would be fine. She had a sister along with nieces and nephews waiting for her in the real world after all. Her future would be as bright as she was, now that she had one again.
"I'll remember-"
(A muttering not only for himself but also to his surroundings and everywhere they reached out to. Was it just him and his bliss-filling brain or was the sky brightening?)
"-and I won't forget."
Pressing the trinket to his chest wistfully and standing up tall, Hibiya wiped away any leftover water from his drying eyes with his other hand. It didn't occur to him until just then that they hadn't been making frozen patterns over his cheeks like usual, and instead slid straight down just like tears were meant to.
The ice underneath him was thawing as well; a serene, peaceful reflection staring back at him from the clear puddles. It was almost as if the warm daybreak was finally coming back to this place. Maybe it would turn out to be a normal winter day after all.
Sentimental thoughts wrapped around his soul, the boy named Amamiya Hibiya who was now lost forever and for good walked out into the newly rising dawn.
Please live on for the both of us.
Alone, but content.
I'll keep you with me, inside here, until the end of time.
(Yes, we did.)
Huh, this was a different style than I usually write in. Hope it serves well anyway.
That's a wrap on Touketsu Daze~ A thousand thank you's to everyone who stuck with this story and I hope you'll stay for all the others! As always, reviews are looked forward to and appreciated no matter their length or content.
Guess I've got a vacant spot in my 3-fics-at-a-time regime now. Instead of a poll, this time, I think I'll take in suggestions instead. So feel free to write in any song reversals you'd hope to see next in the review section of this finished fic, or on any of the other ones I have. Or send me a pm on here or message my Tumblr (you can find it on my fanfic profile.) I'll take them all into consideration when choosing.
See you soon.
*I think I'll let the current cover picture stay as it is. Not like Hibiya's getting out of this fic and to elsewhere anytime soon ")