Hello again, my ever-faithful readers! Welcome back to "A Tale of Grace"! I've missed all of you! ^_^

(Life update inbound!)

I really apologize for how late I uploaded this next chapter! It was supposed to be mid-February, but then I went on a field trip that weekend, and then the following week I got horrible stomach flu that was complicated by said stomach flu partially paralyzing my gut so that I couldn't poop for an entire week (aka: bad constipation). Then I tried to rush it by late February or early March. I tried what I could to finish it before my hell week (so many exams and requirements...) in Civil Engineering, but I really couldn't without really risking my test grades (And still, I might have failed my first long exam in Structural Engineering anyway huhuhu)

But then, the coronavirus spread so much in my country just last weekend, so school is officially out for this entire week! However, some Institute of Civil Engineering (ICE) professors and some of my fellow CE students are quarantined right now for coronavirus, so I'm worried that a lot of my friends and I are infected without us knowing about it. There are apparently some confirmed cases inside University of the Philippines Diliman already too. Some of my friends who live in dorms and boarding houses inside UPD are pretty much trapped there in their area, either by forced quarantine or by the fear of getting infected.

I really hope this situation improves, and I'm glad that UPD (probably the Genome Center and National Institute for Molecular Biology and Biotechnology [NIMBB], where I had a class in last semester) was able to make quality and cheap testing kits (only 1500 pesos per kit, if I recall correctly), so the government and Department of Health can use them! I love UP! ^_^
I hope you are all safe, wherever you may be! Stay safe, sound, and sanitary! Wash hands often, and wear masks when going out, but as much as possible, don't go out unless it's urgent! ^_^

With all that out of the way, I hope you enjoy this chapter! It's the penultimate chapter for this book, and the final chapter will be coming out sometime next week! ^_^

WARNING: Part of this chapter is unbelievably dark and depressing, and some of you might feel uncomfortable reading that specific part (you'll know what I'm talking about when you get to it), but trust me, you'll get through it. I don't quite believe in trigger warnings, but if ever there were chapters in my entire planned-out series that needed trigger warnings, this would be in the top three for sure...


Chapter 31: The Reason I Wanted To Die

The pitter-patter of a light drizzle stirred Boruto in the early morning hours. The sun had not yet risen over Konoha, and the young shinobi opened his eyes to the darkness in his room. To him, his bedroom was nearly as dark as when his eyes were closed, but it was not anywhere close to the blackness of the void that he saw Sumire fall in. It could not compare in any way to the chasm that nowadays appeared in all his dreams and tortured him to no end. And whether those interactions of his with Sumire in that alien realm with the violet skies and the comet-like stars, were only a dream, or his hyperactive imagination, or actually real life, or even another dimension altogether, Boruto could not say even until now, and that uncertainty continued to bother him and eat at his psyche.

For several minutes, each of which seemed to drag on for weeks in Boruto's mind, he stared at the long, slender, bluish pillow he had in the tight clutches of his embrace. With the comforting pillow right in front of him, he could almost imagine her violet hair, her gentle smile, her unique scent, her deep purple eyes, and the warm touch of her smooth skin. Thinking of her and her voice caused more tears to flow down the streams that had formed on his face over the past week of crying. This surprised him, but only because he did not know how it was possible that he had any tears left for him to shed.

Eventually, after what seemed to him to be lifetimes stacked one after the other, Boruto's reddened eyes and dark eyebags turned away from the pillow and towards the phone he had on his bedside. Pressing the home button, he saw the phone light up, and his eyes squinted because of the glare of the phone in the dark room. He then saw on the screen that it was 4:11 am of August 7. "It's been a month… since…" Boruto's own thoughts were cut off when he saw the picture on his phone's lock screen. It was the photograph of their group's reunion at Thunder Burger two months ago, the night of Kara's attack on Konoha, and several days before Sumire's birthday. Sumire was in between Boruto and Sarada, and while her arm wrapped around Boruto's back in the picture, her eyes gazed lovingly back to Boruto in real life. His hands trembling, his breath hitching, his heart and mind ridden with guilt, Boruto dropped his phone onto the bed, and so the room fell into darkness once again.

But Boruto did not try to fall back to sleep, because he was sure there would be no comfort for him there. He knew that only grief and misery and pain were waiting for him in his sleep, like opportunistic vultures circling above their dying prey. Instead, he stood up, paced several laps around his room, and looked outside his window from time to time. It was still rainy and dark outside, with only a handful of covered bulbs lighting the front of the Uzumaki home and the flower-filled garden that Himawari took care of. The latter piqued his interest, since he remembered that last night, in one of the very few times he had left his room in the entire week since his return, Himawari told him that she had planted in her green patch some special flowers for Sumire.

After several long minutes that seemed to drag on for weeks at a time, Boruto at last decided to go out into the front yard, even if it was raining outside. Boruto dragged his feet to his door, his hand sweeping the top of the wooden table that was his study desk. He felt something cold snag onto his hand, and he instinctively put it in one of the pockets of his shorts. But for some reason unknown even to him, he could not identify what he had gotten from his own table, nor could he clearly remember what he had placed there within the past week. The young shinobi left his room, walked downstairs, and opening the front door, made his way through the dimness outside to Himawari's small garden plot, without paying heed to the drizzle of raindrops falling onto him.

Himawari's garden, which was beside the pathway from the main door to the gate, was a small rectangular garden that was demarcated on three sides by a short three-brick-high barrier and by the wall of the house on the far side. The two lamps on the corners of the garden plot lit the area and kept the plants company with their warm yellowish-white glow. Boruto noticed that the sunflowers and lilacs, which her boyfriend Inojin and her aunt Ino gifted to Himawari on her birthday to shower her love on, were thriving on the left hand side. Meanwhile, still growing strong on the right hand side were the lavenders that Himawari planted several months ago as a show of support and encouragement for Wasabi and Namida, since she had read online that lavenders signify true and eternal love between two women. There were many other flowers there, such as red roses, diversely colored bougainvillea, vibrant peonies, and even three rare selenias that were whiter than clouds and glowed resolutely in the darkness. All of these were situated around the edges of the plot.

However, Boruto's attention was drawn to the center of his sister's garden. In the middle of all the flowers, there were sopherias, bright pinkish violet flowers that were blooming and enjoying the slight downpour in the pre-dawn morning. The ground around the sopherias was still slightly raised and disturbed, and this helped Boruto recall that his sister had planted them only the previous afternoon. But that was not all that Boruto saw. At the front of the brilliant violet flowers, there was a laminated sign staked to the ground. Within the shelter of the plastic lamination was Inojin's photo of Himawari and Sumire planting seeds within a small plot inside Nue's dimension during Sumire's birthday last June 12. At the bottom right of the picture, there was a note that read, "In Loving Memory Of Sumire". It had Himawari's legible handwriting, and the letters were written using her special calligraphy pen-brush, which Boruto recalled that Inojin gave his sister when they first started going out together around nine months ago.

Boruto took a long look at this photograph, with the help of the light from the lamps and the selenias growing in the front of the garden, and he remembered that the two were planting seeds of the hardy selenia flower, said to be capable of surviving even in places of extreme cold and glow inside even the darkest of caverns. He also recalled Inojin telling him that he and Himawari were planning to plant all of the selenias in Himawari's garden, but decided to set aside a handful of seeds to further beautify the landscape of Nue's dimension, and that the next time they would return, they would plant even more seeds and flowers.

"But there isn't going to be a next time…"

That mere thought piled onto all the emotions and regrets he had buried deep within himself over the past month, and it was like the weight of the entire world crushed what little resolve he had left in his weakened mind and his shattered heart.

He was completely overwhelmed with all the guilt he felt, not only for failing to rescue Sumire, but also for Renga freezing to death during the descent, which Boruto thought he had directly caused, along with the deaths of Metal, Udon-sensei, Tsuru, Doshu, Shizuka-sensei, and Nemuru-sensei, and the resulting disbanding of Team 40, Team 25, Team 5, and Team 15. He felt worthless for lacking the strength and abilities to keep his friends alive and safe, to protect the ones he loved and the ones who loved him.

In his tormented, grief-stricken mind, Boruto thought that he failed all the people he had ever loved, all the people who had ever loved him, and either they were now dead or they were suffering immensely because of things he did or failed to do. And he could not forgive himself for it. Every time over the entire past month that he glanced at his own reflection, he saw only the very definition of unforgiveable and irredeemable.

Because of all these, he no longer knew what purpose he had left to live for. He no longer knew why he should go on.

The young Uzumaki looked away from the garden for a few seconds, but wherever he looked around the city that for the most part still lay peacefully asleep in the hour before dawn, the more Boruto was reminded of Sumire, of the breakfasts and lunches and dinners they and their teams ate together, of the joint missions and training sessions their respective teams went on together, of the times they studied and sparred together, of the heart-to-heart conversations they had together, and of all the special moments they shared together as two extremely close friends.

And how he ultimately failed her in the end. And how all of those memories were now gone with the wind.

Boruto had been drowning in deep agony for a long time now, but with that flow of unwelcome and unwelcoming thoughts, he now felt that he could no longer breathe without his brain mentally forcing his lungs to inhale and exhale. He fell to his knees on the wet muddy ground before his sister's garden. He burst like a collapsing dam and cried his lungs out. It was not in any way a loud shriek or a cursing shout at the heavens above, but a long and continuous cascade of convulsing sobs, pained gasps for breath, and a flood of tears from his nearly-blood-red eyes that were already so dead-tired of crying but could not stop nor do much of anything else.

"Sumire," Boruto, whose eyes were shut, muttered. "I should have been the one to die… You should be alive and well and happy… I want that to happen… more than anything else! I don't deserve this life I still have…"

His two hands gripped his chest, his nails digging into his skin through his shirt that was soaked with both raindrops and teardrops. "You deserved so much more from life… more time, more happiness, more fun, more friends, more memories, more love…" He beat his chest, which was already burning in pain, out of remorse and anger. "If I could just trade my destiny for yours… my life for yours… I'd do it in a heartbeat…"

In a flare of anger, Boruto, still with his eyes closed, punched the soft and muddy ground in front of him, trying to get rid of the bottled up negative emotions inside of himself. However, he felt unexpected softness cushioning his fist's impact, and when he opened his eyes, he saw in the light of the glowing selenias and the lamps that he had actually killed one of Himawari's sopherias. The poor flower lay crushed on the mud, some of its violet petals shorn off, its pollen scattered to the other flowers nearby, and the green stem snapped in three. He now felt even worse for being the reason for the flower's untimely, undeserved death, and it further piled onto his guilty feeling that he was a key reason why Sumire died as well, whether it was directly or indirectly a consequence of his actions or inactions.

"I'm so sorry, Sumire," he repeated again and again like it was his mantra. "I'm so sorry…"

While doing so, his hand brushed against the unknown object in his pocket, and it felt sharp to the touch. He pulled it out from his pocket and discovered that it was his own kunai. Semiconsciously, he gripped the sharp blade of his kunai with his left hand and then pulled it free with his right. Blood oozed from the lacerations on the palm and the fingers of his left hand. But Boruto did not seem to mind the blood or the pain that came with it, because he ever so slowly guided his bloody kunai to his left wrist.

"I'm… sorry… I'm so weak…" He slowly and lightly swiped his blade against the soft skin of his wrist, causing a paper-thin red mark to appear. "I don't deserve any of this…"

He slashed once again. This time, he forced it on his skin slightly harder, and it was enough to break through his skin and draw his blood. He stared at the viscous crimson that slowly streamed down from his wrist and hand to the ground.

"I don't deserve to be alive…" Again, Boruto forcefully pushed the kunai against his own wrist, and he sliced hard for the third time. The gash deepened, and now blood copiously flowed as some of the main wrist veins were breached.

Though his nerves were screaming in pain, though it felt as if both his wrist and hand were set on fire, Boruto still replaced his kunai on the deep gruesome wound on his wrist. "I can't keep… my promise… to you… I want to die…" He dragged the razor-sharp edge through his wound as how someone would rake a plow into the ground. Without warning, dark red blood splattered at his face. He knew the spurting meant that some of his arteries had been struck open, and he indeed felt the blood draining out of his body faster than before.

The initial sensations of pain and fear and panic withered away, with only the discomfort of bleeding out remaining, as well as an unexpected serene calm, as if he had fully accepted his impending death. In his mind, Boruto reflected, "The reason I want to die… is that I've lost my will and my reason to live…"

Beginning to feel faint and dizzy, he dropped his kunai and then swayed dangerously forward before catching himself from falling into the garden. Falling to his knees, his vision blurred from both the blood loss and the waves of tears that rushed down his cheeks, and then he saw double, and then triple. "The reason I cry is that I can't unlearn the tenderness and warmth of another person's touch…"

He began to black out, and his mind flashed back to its most cherished memories, of moments with his beloved parents, with his sister, with his adopted brother Kawaki, with Hiashi and Hanabi, with Sarada and Mitsuki and Konohamaru, with Shikadai, Inojin, Chocho, Wasabi, Namida, Denki, and the rest of his friends. "The reason I long to be loved is that my heart has become so hollow and cold and hard…"

The last thing that stuck with his mind for a long time and gave him some sense of solace was Sumire, but hers was different. To Boruto, it did not seem to be a memory at all, but rather a hallucination or an apparition, as he blinked and suddenly saw Sumire appear in front of him. She was crying and desperately trying to cover his gaping wound. He heard her telling him that she loved him dearly, pleading for him to stay alive, to live on for her, to carry on. But he shook his head, and the blood kept spurting, seeming to phase through Sumire's hand. "The reason I can't stop thinking about death… is that you smiled so beautifully at me…"

He began to fall forwards, but somehow, his hallucination of Sumire seemed to catch him. She laid him on his back beside the garden plot to avoid him crushing Himawari's precious flowers. Boruto spent the last of his energy raising his right hand to Sumire's cheek, and he felt its familiar warmth. "I just hope… I can… see you again…"

As the vision of his blurring eyes faded to black, he could have sworn he heard Sumire reply, "Boruto-kun… You will, in time… I promise…"

*******XXXXXXX*******

After what seemed like only a few seconds, Boruto opened his eyes again, and he woke up on his soft bed inside his room, with a tiny sliver of the dawn's sunlight flowing in through a gap between his two window curtains. He was more confused than he ever was in his entire life, since it had seemed all so real, and so he wondered if his mind was now playing tricks on him. "Was that… really all just a dream?"

To check if he was dreaming everything up, he looked at his left wrist. There was no scar, and there was no pain at all. "Hmm… so this is reality… it was just a dream…"

However, his body felt unusually cold, so he checked under the blanket and saw that he had no clothes on, which surprised him since he almost always slept in his pajamas. He shifted around his bed, and his elbow nudged against something soft and warm to his side. He turned around and gasped in surprise as he saw, on the other side of his bed, Sumire lying asleep, her long unbraided purple hair so familiar and dear to him. Her face looked relaxed and even joyous, and she snored quietly and peacefully. Boruto glanced under the blanket only for a second and then respectfully averted his eyes when he discovered that she too was sleeping nude as well, even with the strong temptation to keep his gaze on her. Boruto asked himself, "What the hell is going on now? This can't be real… Is this just another dream, or maybe a dream within a dream? Is that even possible? Or… am I dead? I don't know what's real and what isn't real anymore…"

Nevertheless, Boruto was allured by what he saw in front of him, and he carefully snaked his arms around Sumire's stomach so as to not wake her up. He held her bare back, one hand on the small of her back and the other in between her shoulders. It felt real to him, and he gently pulled her closer to him and snuggled his face next to her neck. He smelled her familiar floral scent. He felt her warmth tingle his skin. And he was content with letting the entire day pass on by with her by his side.

But while Boruto was still taking into account everything that he was sensing around him, the woman beside him started to wake up, as she felt more of his warm breath brushing by her neck and his heart beating wildly against her own chest. She slowly opened her violet eyes, blinked several times, grinned and giggled in bliss, and deepened her cuddle with Boruto by pulling herself closer to his warm body. "Good morning Boruto-kun…" She ran her hand through his banana-yellow hair. "My love… my one and only… I sure hope you enjoyed last night…"

Boruto broke their embrace and fixed his gaze at Sumire's face, which was partially covered and obscured by her unbraided hair. Sumire rolled onto Boruto and settled on top of him, dragging the blanket with her. He felt her lay her twin mounds on his chest, her soft and smooth skin rubbing against his own, and he could not bring himself to believe what was happening right in front of him. "This… This is a dream…"

"If this is a dream," Sumire smiled sweetly, "then it is a good dream…" She closed the distance between their lips and gave him a long kiss. Boruto rubbed the back of his fingers up her cheek, but he couldn't help but feel worried that this was not real, that his mind was merely playing another trick on him. It showed crystal clear in his troubled facial expression, and Sumire noticed it quickly. She pulled his head closer to her bosom to try and coax him into relaxing. "Is anything wrong?"

Boruto hesitated, but Sumire encouraged him more. He did not want this moment to be wasted, so he decided not to talk about his failure to save her. Instead, he went with an admission that was both still true and more general a statement. "I don't know anymore… I don't know where to go, what to do with my life, why I'm still here… My way is hidden from me now…"

Sumire whispered into his ear in response, "Boruto-kun, your way? It is already laid before your feet." She leaned in and stopped when the tips of their noses touched. "But you cannot falter. You have to keep pushing on, keep fighting on, keep living on for tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. Don't ever lose hope. Never give up."

"Sumire-"

She gently pushed her fingers against his mouth and stopped him from contradicting her. "If you trust nothing else, trust this." She pointed to his heart. "Trust me. Trust us."

"I will… I promise." He grasped her hand and kissed her once again. But she cut it short and looked into his blue eyes with an inquisitive, if not knowing, look on her face, as if she sensed that something was still eating at Boruto. "Are you sure that's it? Is there anything else bothering you?"

Boruto paused for a second then shook his head, since seeing and being with Sumire already replaced most of the other thoughts inside his head. "Nothing else." He laughed a bit. "I think I had a nightmare, but now I can't even remember what it was… It's like a… What could I call it?"

The answer came to Boruto and Sumire at the exact same moment. "A half-remembered dream?" The two giggled in unison afterwards from coming up with the same answer at the same time, and Boruto was sure that their gleeful laughter would wake everyone else in his house.

"I just want this to last for a lifetime," Boruto wished.

Sumire nodded, but turned away. "I want that to be the case too… but this can't last forever. I have to leave soon…"

"No… don't leave me again-" However, Sumire's hand pressed once more against Boruto's lips, and he was hushed again.

"We'll see each other again, Boruto-kun," she reassured him with a smile. "I promised you, remember?" She alternated between stretching and squeezing his cheeks. "After all, something always brings me back to you. It never takes too long…"

For what seemed to Boruto to last ages, they lay there in silence, side by side on the soft bed, content with each other's company and warmth and love. But as Boruto was starting to fall asleep in Sumire's arms, he heard her clear her voice, inhale deeply, and then speak.

"Once, like a dream, you looked at me, and everything felt new. Time slipped away, the past seemed to fade, my hope restored by you. And I know for some, it's temporary, like a shooting star soon out of view. But this will always be, it's my destiny to be in love with you. Some people fall in love for life. Others never get it right. Love's fickle when it calls. One thing that I know for sure, longer than our lives endure, you're my forever fall."

Sumire's voice began to grow fainter and fainter, farther and farther away from him. Boruto struggled with all of his might to stay awake, but it was as if he was being lulled back to sleep.

"Your trust and honesty helped me believe. A ray of hope shined through. You set me free, saw what the world couldn't see. I found my joy in you. Every life is filled with passing moments. Like the seasons change, they come and go. But this is infinite; nothing, even death, can separate our souls, cause you're my final goal…"

*******XXXXXXX*******

"…Some people fall in love for life. Others never get it right. Love's fickle when it calls. One thing that I know for sure, longer than our lives endure, you're my forever fall." Sarada sighed, leaned her head against the wall, and closed Sumire's yellow notebook with her one hand. Her eyes wandered around Boruto's room, and one by one, she saw the concerned faces of Naruto, Hinata, Hanabi, Konohamaru, her parents, Himawari, Inojin, Wasabi, Namida, and Mitsuki, all of whom were worried about Boruto.

Sasuke was talking with Naruto, Hinata, Hiashi, Hanabi, and Konohamaru outside the room in the corridor, near the open door, and Sarada could hear her father talking to Boruto's parents about post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, survivor's guilt, and suicidal ideation, as well as assuring them that what happened was not their fault. Meanwhile, Sakura continued to apply her fabled medical aura on Boruto's left wrist. The green glow of her powerful healing jutsu was closing the wounds and was even removing any scars that would normally be left behind.

On the other hand, her friends sat with her in the area of the floor between Boruto's bed and the mahogany study table, with the lone exception of Wasabi, who was standing beside Boruto's bed with Sakura. The cat-like kunoichi was hanging another clear plastic bag of blood to go with the intravenous drip that had been injected into Boruto's right wrist.

Namida spoke, "I didn't know that Sumire was a good writer. The similes and metaphors she used were so meaningful."

"When Sumire read this aloud to me," Sarada admitted, "I honestly thought it was just about the happiness and love she was feeling that time. It was only after we all got back to Ame that I realized it was so much deeper in meaning, that it was heavier in emotions, in thoughts of life and death."

"It certainly has both its blissful and melancholic sides to it," Wasabi noted. After making sure that both the blood bag and the IV were dripping correctly, she excused herself from Sakura and sat down beside Sarada and Namida, who in turn leaned her head on her girlfriend's shoulder. "It… It sounded like she had already accepted what Denki said to us…"

Himawari turned to Sarada and asked, "She wrote this for Boruto, right?" The youngest Uzumaki frowned. "She really loved my big brother…"

"Yes Hima." Sarada wrapped her arm around Himawari's shoulder and pulled her close. "She really did."

Sakura added while in the midst of treating Boruto, "I liked her vocabulary, she spoke from her heart, and she was able to express those feelings of hers to the readers very well. And not just that last one you read… Wait, what was it called again?"

"You're My Forever Fall," Sarada responded.

"A wonderful title. And as I was saying, it wasn't just that poem that was nice. All seven of the works she wrote there were very, very touching."

Sarada then flashed back to something that her best friend had said. She sighed. "Namida, I just remembered… Sumire wanted you to turn these writings of hers into real songs."

Namida gazed at Sumire's notebook for a few more seconds before agreeing to the task. "One of these days," the brunette songbird replied with a determined smile, "I'll try to give these lyrics the melodies they deserve. Who knows, maybe these songs will become big hits when we release them in the future?"

Meanwhile, Sakura rechecked Boruto's wrist and saw no more traces of wounds or scarring left. She stopped applying her healing jutsu and exhaled in relief. "I think he'll be okay. But Hima dear, are you sure about the time you saw him outside? And what exactly did you see?"

"Yes Aunt Sakura…" Himawari began to recount what had happened a few hours earlier. "I woke up at 4:30 like I usually do nowadays. I looked out my window to check on my flowers, and I saw my brother outside… I thought he was just looking at the new sopherias I told him about yesterday, the ones I'd planted for Sumire… So I took my early morning bath to get ready for the day. Then I put on some clothes to meet him there and tend to my flowers… And that's when I saw… a lot of blood… and my brother… and…"

She trailed off, sighing and staring unblinkingly, as if she were reliving traumatic memories, and so Inojin grew worried. He pulled his girlfriend close and hugged her tight. "Hima, I'm here… I love you… Boruto will be alright, I'm a hundred percent sure of it."

"I'm okay," a pensive Himawari insisted. "Anyway, I dragged Boruto inside right away. I woke up Mom and Dad, and they called you for help."

Sakura replied, "I got the call around 5. Hmm… Did you slow his bleeding in the meantime?"

"Mom did," Himawari answered, although it was apparent to everybody that she was still deep in thought.

Wasabi bit her lip. "We don't know exactly how much time went by between Boruto… trying to… you know, and Himawari finding him. It could have been ten minutes, or twenty, or at the worst-case scenario, it could have been around thirty minutes of him bleeding out."

Namida asked, "How much of a difference does that make?"

"A lot. His wound was very bad, and the arteries and veins in his hand and wrist were sliced open. So the amount of blood he lost depends on how long it took for the wound to be closed."

"If he lost around 20% of his blood volume," Mitsuki explained further to his friends, "his body would enter into a state of shock. Thirty to forty percent would normally lead to traumatic reactions, while fifty percent blood volume loss could be fatal."

"But based on his wounds," Sakura assured them with her quick mental estimations, "he may have lost up to 25 percent of his blood at most, and that's if he was left untreated for a full half-hour. It's still horrible, of course, but it's much more manageable."

"That's good news," Wasabi clasped her hands together. "He shouldn't have any lasting damage or impairment."

Himawari nervously exhaled. "I sure hope that's the case…"

However, something about how Himawari had been reacting bothered Sarada, so she asked Boruto's younger sister, "Hima-chan, I don't mean to press, but are you sure you're not leaving out anything else?"

Himawari's mouth opened, but it took her a few seconds to reply. "I just… I also saw something else… and I don't know how to explain it…"

Namida asked, "What do you mean? What did you see?"

"No, you might think I'm crazy…"

Inojin held her hand and promised her, "We'll listen anyway."

"…Fine," Himawari finally relented, and she breathed deeply before saying, "I… I think I saw Sumire… looking after Boruto…"

Stunned silence followed, and all eyes were on Himawari, who quickly added, "Listen, I'm worried that I might have seen things that aren't real, maybe because of the trauma of seeing my brother like that…"

"No wait," Sakura insisted. "Hima-chan, please tell us everything you remember. Don't leave anything out."

The youngest Uzumaki nodded. "When I went outside, I saw my brother… and something like an orb of light or chakra, I'm not sure what it was. It was like a white hand wrapping around the gash to bandage it, and I think it slowed down the bleeding… I think it even went inside the wound…"

As Himawari continued to describe the apparition she had witnessed, Sarada's mind flashed back to Mount Tirad, to the evacuation of Rem Fortress, to the perilous descent that followed, to Sumire's fateful decision to stay behind, to their attempt to come back for her, and lastly, to the luminous bursts of chakra that flew outwards from Sumire mere moments before the final explosion occurred. It was only then that she thought of the possibility that those flying orbs of Sumire's chakra could be connected to the ghostly light that appeared before Boruto and Himawari hours ago. "Could it… Could it really be?"

However, she could not be sure if the two were in any way connected, nor could she come up with any logical explanation as to how or why. "Maybe I'm just hoping beyond hope…" She thought to herself. "Maybe it's just something I desperately want to be true… even if I know there's no chance for it to be true…"

She looked around and saw Wasabi and Mitsuki eyeing her and each other, as if they too were wondering about the same thing. But none of them spoke about it, even after Himawari finished and after Sakura offered both words of consolation while dismissing what she saw as probably some combination of her lack of sleep, extreme acute stress, and the glow of her hardy selenia flowers, among other possible factors.

For a while, the room fell into an awkward, uneasy calm. It was only broken when Inojin coughed to clear his voice. He then asked his friends, trying to further improve the vibe inside the room, "Do you guys know why Shikadai, Ryogi, Denki, and Iwabe are still deep asleep right now?"

Most of them shook their heads, with the exceptions being Sarada and Himawari, the latter rolling her eyes while in Inojin's embrace. "Ugh, you kept updating me on their game last night," she snorted in amusement.

On the other hand, both Wasabi and Namida inquired, "What happened? What game?"

"The Kaminarimon Company Livestream last night," Sarada answered. "Extra Lives, right?"

"Yup, that one." Afterwards, Inojin elaborated to the others, "At Denki's suggestion, they were the final segment of the Extra Lives livestream online last night, and the donations the company got during the stream went to the orphans of Kara's attack on Konoha."

"How many people watched them?" Namida asked. "And how much money did they manage to raise?"

"Around 2.3 million people have watched it so far, and I think by the end of the stream last night, they managed to raise 4.12 million ryo."

"Wow! What did they do in their segment?"

"They played one game of Uno together on their laptops. It lasted more than three hours and twenty minutes."

"GEEEEEZ!" Wasabi's eyes narrowed and her eyebrows furrowed. "How the hell could a game of Uno drag on for that long?"

"It was the rules package they used: First to 500 points, special rules for 0 and 7 cards in play, and stacking the card-adding wildcards was on. It was so wild that in one round, Shikadai started a chain reaction of add-4 cards that ended up right back at him, since everyone else also had their own add-4 wildcards. So in that one turn, he was forced to add 16 more cards to his own deck!"

The young shinobi and kunoichi burst into a chorus of laughter and groans. "Oh fuck," Wasabi giggled uncontrollably.

Namida added, "Yikes, that hurts just hearing it. He must have lost his mind after that…"

"He did, he really did," Himawari confirmed with a knowing smile, before pulling out her phone. "Hold on, I'll look for the video…"

"Ryogi won in the end," Inojin continued, "and they all ran around Denki's room and cheered that it finally ended."

The laughter in the room reached fever pitch when Himawari showed them the long video, skipping far ahead to the part where Shikadai was breaking down into fits of mad laughter after 16 more cards were added to his then-nine-card deck. The comedic insanity continued over next three minutes of the video, when Shikadai and Ryogi actually called their worried parents, Shikamaru and Temari, in the middle of the video to tell them that they were stuck in the live-streamed game for charity, that it had no end yet in sight, and that they would go home once they could.

"Nghhh… Ughhh…" The noisy room woke Boruto. He opened his eyes and saw blurred figures of familiar people in his room, the rubber tubes on his wrist, and the fluids being dripped into him. He blinked to clear out the blurriness, and he saw no scars on his left wrist. But he realized that this was his reality, that he indeed tried to kill himself, and that his magical morning in Sumire's arms was really just a dream. "What? No, no, no…"

"Oh Boruto," a smiling Sakura greeted him. Boruto's friends noticed he had woken up, and Himawari paused the video. "You're awake-"

"Fuck…" He groaned quietly. "I was… I was happy…"

Sarada rushed to his side. Everyone else in the room followed her. "You're an idiot, Boruto! You could have died!"

"Please Sarada, don't be too hard on him," Himawari pleaded as she, Hinata, and Naruto all clambered onto Boruto's bed and embraced him.

But he did not return their affection. His eyes remained frozen and devoid of any sign of happiness that he was with his family and friends. Instead, he muttered in response to Sarada, "Why do you think I did it?"

Namida put her hand on his uninjured wrist. "This isn't what Sumire would have wanted… You know that…"

He turned to Namida to retort, but no words came out of his open mouth, because he knew she right. "I… I know… I wanted to die anyway."

Shocked gasps echoed around the room from family and friends alike. In a flash of anger, Sarada slapped Boruto then went for another, only for Konohamaru to hold her back. Feeling guilty immediately afterwards, she pulled him into a hug as tightly as a clam holding on to its priceless pearl. Gripping his shirt, she cried, "I already lost Sumire, I can't lose you too…"

Boruto did not react to her slap, because he didn't feel the pain. In fact, he felt numb to everything around him. Whether the sensations were physical, or mental, or emotional, they were all stifled. Boruto even thought that the colors he now saw were noticeably darker in hue, as if the whole world around him had literally become darker than what it used to be.

"I can't… I just can't go on… It hurts… so much… I failed, just when it mattered most. I'm not strong enough to protect the people I love…"

Sarada protested, "No you're not!"

"I'm the reason she's dead."

"Don't say that! You don't even know the full story! You don't know why she chose to stay!"

"I'm the reason why Renga's dead too."

"That's not…" Sarada remembered that after Inojin had rescued him and glided down from the peak in the middle of the fierce snowy rain, Boruto unknowingly took Renga's spot behind the large boulder. Renga moved to another spot to accommodate Boruto, but his new place offered little protection from the freezing cold winds of the supertyphoon high on Mount Tirad, so he froze to death in the hour before their rescue. "It… wasn't directly your fault…"

Boruto continued nonetheless, "I'm the reason why Metal and Udon-sensei are dead-"

"They didn't die because of you," Mitsuki interjected. "They died from unrelated causes during our descent. It was their own mistakes-"

"But you all waited for me in the middle of the storm-"

"Not exactly." Inojin gave his version of the events. "I was there, Boruto. We were waiting in the middle of the storm for the rest of you to come down. Not just you, but also for Sarada, Mitsuki, Wasabi, Namida, Hanabi-sensei, and Sumire…"

"Hold on, that reminds me," Hanabi interrupted. "Why didn't you guys come for us after the explosion?"

The Yamanaka revealed, "When Boruto let go of Chocho to go back for Sumire, we all lost our balance, and Chocho rolled down the mountain and struck some other people before she came to a stop. We had to recover everyone who was hit and make sure they were okay. Some of them were unconscious, so we had to drag them and regroup. By the time we were done with that, the typhoon had come back to bite us in the ass. We didn't know yet what happened at the Sephiroth, so we took shelter from the typhoon while waiting for any of you guys to show up. An hour or so passed, and Shikadai and I were preparing to go back up to the Sheltered Col to see what happened to you, but we bumped into Wasabi and Mitsuki on their way down. Sarada, Hanabi-sensei, and Namida came soon after."

Boruto deadpanned, "I caused that too…"

"Listen… I'm more to blame for Udon-sensei dying than you are," Sarada closed her eyes and pursed her lips as she felt a wave of regret washing over her. "He was angry that the others chose to wait for us. When we met up with them, he lashed out. I screamed back at him."

"I did more of the talking," Hanabi gave her side. "I defended our actions, and good thing Kakashi-sensei prevented anything from escalating too far."

Sarada replied, "But I still feel like I made Udon-sensei so angry that he ended up walking to his death. And he led Metal too…"

But Boruto then asked, "Why am I alive when Sumire and the others died? Did they have to die in my stead?"

He gripped his chest as teardrops began to stain his face and t-shirt anew. "I just… I just don't feel worthy to be here… I'm sorry… Hell, I can't even keep my promise to her… to keep fighting and living… to never lose hope… to never give up… I'm weak…"

"Please Boruto…" Wasabi looked him in the eyes. "It hurts to hear you say these things."

Namida nodded in agreement and further encouraged him. "You're a good person, Boruto. You've always tried your best to keep everyone around you happy. To me, you're a wonderful friend to have."

"That is beyond dispute," Mitsuki affirmed. "You're my sun, after all. How could you be bad?"

Himawari said, "We have our fights from time to time, but that never means that I hate having you as my brother. You mean so much to me, big bro… I don't want you to go away…"

Naruto added, "I may not always be here to say it, but I love you, son. And the only thing I want you to be is happy."

"We all love you so much," Hinata held her son's hand and kissed him on the cheek. "Your sister, your dad, and I are here with you, every step of the way, no matter what you want to do from hereon out. You're not alone. You never will be."

"We're proud of you," Konohamaru commented.

"Truly," Hanabi agreed. "Both Konohamaru and I, and I think I can speak for everyone here, are so proud of how far you've come."

Sarada beamed. "They're right, Boruto. But they're not the only ones who are with you. We're all in this together, up to the very end."

"And…" For a second, Hanabi hesitated with her words, but she pushed through. "Umm… I know that Sumire loved you and cared for you dearly. She was my student, after all. So I'm a hundred percent sure that as long as you're happy, she will be happy too, wherever she is right now…"

"I…" He choked out. "I still feel guilty… for everything…"

"Boruto," Sarada looked him in the eyes. "No one here's blaming you."

Boruto slowly returned her gaze. "… I am."

"That's enough, everyone." All eyes turned to Sasuke, who continued, "As I told Naruto and Hinata a while ago, all your words of encouragement would likely fall on deaf ears. And it's not his fault. Even though you all are right, and even though you all have good intentions, his current mental state simply won't allow him to really accept what you have to say."

"Dad, we can't just give up on Boruto!"

"No Sarada, we're not giving up. But I have something else in mind." Sasuke looked to the side, towards Naruto and Hinata, his facial expression asking for permission. "Trust me on this."

After a few seconds of contemplation, the two relented and gave their approval. "As much as possible, we'd prefer that he stay here, you know, so we can be here for him," Naruto replied. "But since you're sure this will help him more, go ahead with it."

Hinata affirmed, "We only worry because we won't be there by his side all the time, like any parents would, of course."

Sarada was very confused, as were the rest of her friends. "Wait Dad, what exactly are you talking about?"

Sasuke turned to his daughter with a smile. "It's settled then. I'll take Boruto with me on an adventure around the world. That way, I can get him away from Konoha for a while, take his mind off the trauma, lessen the pain he's feeling right now, and help him see the beauty of life again."

"Sounds like a wonderful idea," Himawari commented.

"Yeah," Namida chimed in. "That would help him loads, for sure."

Boruto was hesitant. "I don't know about this…"

Wasabi responded, "Come on Boruto, what do you have to lose?"

Most of the people in the room also started encouraging Boruto to go with Sasuke, and as they began to talk over each other, it soon became a blast of blurry noise in Boruto's ears. He put his hands to his ears and grimaced, and soon his room quieted down once again.

"So," Sarada asked him, "what do you think?"

Boruto took his time in answering, but when he finally did, he told everyone, "Okay... I'll go."


How did you like this chapter? Again, if you liked it, feel free to leave kudos, likes, follows, faves, and reviews! All of that encourages me and helps me to become a better writer! And I love listening to your reviews and replying to them when I can! ^_^

Now, I'm sorry if that was too much for some people. Again, my stance is that trigger warnings aren't really effective. But I admit, this is top-3 to top-5 of the chapters I have planned that can indeed trigger people. Again, sowwy ='(
Also, the title of the chapter comes from a Japanese song, some of the lyrics I tweaked and incorporated into the story, especially as Boruto was bleeding out. It's a really good song, so I recommend you listen to it! =D

On a much lighter note, what do you think is happening? Is the Sumire that Boruto saw really just a hallucination? Did Himawari see things that simply weren't there? Were Sarada, Wasabi, and Mitsuki all thinking of the same thing? If so, were they on the right track? I'll reveal that soon enough hehee (in the next book) ^_^
Also, UNO exists in this universe (hahaha XD), and the game I described was partly based on real life events (Let's Play UNO and UNO The Movie, both on Achievement Hunters' LetsPlay Channel), except even longer and more chaotic. The Kaminarimon Company livestream (Extra Lives) is also based on Rooster Teeth's EXTRA LIFE livestream for medical supplies to children's hospitals and kids in need! =D

Chapter 32: "Loved Ones Will Always Watch Over You" won't be as dark as this. But there will be drama and chaos... *gasp* Then after Chapter 32... Well, I'll be writing Book 2: "A Spark of Hope" of this AToG-ASoL (A Tale of Grace-A Song of Love) series, and I'll start publishing chapters by the end of this year! Still (hopefully) weekly releases! ^_^
In the meantime, I hope to upload some related stories of Sumire, and other stories for Boruto at large. I'm also have planned several stories for Yagate Kimi Ni Naru (Bloom Into You) (aka: my favorite series!) and RWBY, and partially-planned drafts for Domestic Girlfriend, Rising of the Shield Hero, and Violet Evergarden! I hope you can read them and like them too =D

Thank you, I love you all, and I hope you all stay safe and happy =D