The last time Maki remembered seeing a streetlight overhead had been at least an hour previously, but all that meant to her was that another night of her seemingly pointless existence had passed by. Her car was silent, the backseat spotless and empty of passengers in the late hour, and she couldn't bare to turn the radio on to break her well-deserved silence. All night she'd had people in that seat, trying to talk her ear off as she drove them from point A to point B, never expecting to see them again but almost wishing that she would with some of them. Some were loud and boisterous from the moment they sat down, some opened up when they realized she wasn't one for talking, some told her about their good days and others told her about their bad ones.
None of it bothered her, not anymore, unless those loud voices started sounding a lot like one she'd tried her best to forget, or if those bad day stories turned into talking about hospitals or hospice care or end-of-life directives; in those cases she would coldly, harshly, tell the speaker to shut up, sacrificing her tip money for the satisfaction of not having to relive memories she'd rather forget. Every night she had this same routine, driving strangers to their destinations and leaving town once the bars had closed and she could get back to the place she'd reluctantly started to call home.
Her life had been shaken up, destroyed at its very core, when she'd had the love of her life die in the bed next to her while she'd slept, and the moment his funeral had ended she had looked at his grandparents (who'd assured her they had family in her until her dying day), and told them she appreciated their offers of giving her a home but that she couldn't stay anywhere that Kaito had touched. That meant trading in the car she'd taken him on his final journey in, getting a new one that was admittedly a lot nicer, and taking on the life of a drifter who made a living driving people around. Distancing herself from everything that reminded her of Kaito had been easy in a material object sense, but there were two things that she could not erase.
One was the memories of him, specifically before he'd gotten too sick to be healed, which were aggravated whenever people like him were her passengers of the hour, but those people who insisted on sharing news of their dying relatives with her dredged up those same memories as well. The other was her two tattoos, the galaxy on her leg and the quote on her arm, which she covered up at every possible moment because just looking at them brought tears to the corners of her eyes. Her, the usually unflappable Maki, crying over ink etched into her skin at the request of the man she'd married in his dying days. It felt embarrassing to admit to, but she had to accept that he'd touched her soul deeper than he'd touched any physical belonging, and as long as she lived, she'd never rid herself of him.
When Maki saw another streetlight, she knew she was just about to her destination. All she had to do was cross through the small town and then salvation would be on the other side, and she could sleep off the rest of the night, just to do the whole song-and-dance again the next day. This existence was barely worth trudging through, but she felt like she had no other choice on what to do, given her sketchy upbringing and her complete loss of the one person she'd ever loved. She had to make her money somehow, after all, and falling into doing hitman work like she'd grown up with wouldn't do Kaito's spirit justice.
Although, she was sure that being a rideshare driver wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind for his queen of the cosmos, or galaxy, or whatever cheesy thing he'd said to her in his last words. Just thinking about that specific statement made her chest tighten up, and she had to take a few deep breaths to keep herself from bawling at the steering wheel while she crossed back into the darkness outside of the town, the lights quickly dimming in her rearview mirror. The house that she'd bought with the money Kaito's grandparents had given her when she'd let them know of her intentions to leave was on the outskirts, nestled in the trees and out of view from the main road out of town, and after she'd pulled off the highway she only had the lights of the stars above and her headlights to guide her home.
This was the sort of place Kaito would have aspired to live, with its lack of light pollution and beautiful front porch for stargazing, which was part of why Maki had decided to buy it over anything else. She'd never once looked at the stars herself out there, but she'd been told by the realtor that the views were lovely. Parking the car out front, she locked it before letting herself in the house, latching the door tightly behind her; there was next to nothing in terms of furniture between where she stood at the front door and the bedroom up a set of three stairs, but this was home and that was what mattered.
She turned on the stove, set a pot of water to boiling to make herself a quick meal, and while she waited for that to heat up she went into the bedroom to put her purse and keys in their designated spots and change into her pajamas, making sure that she picked long sleeves and pants to cover the tattoos. When she went back out to the kitchen she was already feeling exhausted, and she decided that rushing through cooking so she could just get to sleep already was in her best interests. The heat was turned all the way up, she threw some noodles into the pot, and she waited for them to fully cook, fishing out a small portion and scarfing it down plain before heading into the bedroom to retire for the night.
In her rush to get to sleep, she'd carelessly left the rest of her meal still sitting on the high heat, and as she drifted off almost the moment her head hit the pillow, she hadn't had the time to realize her mistake.
The room was hazy, and Maki couldn't tell where she was other than that it was a room of some sort. "Hello?" she called out, annoyed at how she could barely see her hand in front of her face but she could tell there were walls boxing her in. "Where the hell am I?"
There was no response, and that irritated her deeply. She walked around, the walls always seeming like they were the same distance from her no matter where she went, and as her legs started to grow tired she realized that she didn't know how long she'd been trying to find her way out of the hazy room. Right as she was about to throw in the towel and give up on getting out, the haze cleared and she found herself in her old bedroom, at her old apartment, a place she hadn't been in over a year, since Kaito had died.
It looked exactly like she'd remembered it, down to the bed being set just like it had when she'd left it before embarking on her long road trip with him. "Huh, guess we're going to forget what happened here," she said, approaching the bed and feeling the rough sheets under her fingertips. "Not like this place is worth remembering overall, though."
"I'd say it's pretty memorable, actually." The voice came from behind Maki, but when she shot her head around she saw no speaker, and every fiber of her body wanted nothing more than to see who she swore had said that. "Oh, are you looking for me?" it asked, as she went back to looking at the sheets, curses muttered under her breath in response. "I'm sorry, I don't know what you expected, having tried to forget about me and all."
"I haven't tried to forget about you," she replied after brushing her fingers across the sheets again, the temptation to speak memories of the last time she'd slept in that bed at the tip of her tongue. "I'd never forget you, after what happened."
"Then look, I'm right in front of you." Maki lifted her eyes from the corner of the bed she'd been focusing on and saw that there was a man sitting in the very spot he'd died, except looking much livelier than she'd seen him in the weeks preceding his death. "Good to see you again, Maki Roll, it's been a while, hasn't it?"
Her chest feeling heavy as she mouthed words she wasn't sure she'd be able to say, Maki stared at the man who was in her former bed, taking in how unlike he ghost he looked, despite her knowing that he was dead. She knew this wasn't Kaito, she'd held his lifeless body after he'd passed and she'd been there when he'd taken his last breath, in the spot right next to where he currently sat. "Y-you're not real," she said, breathless with each word. "This is a trick, a dream, a—"
"Well, yeah it's a dream, I wasn't going to try convincing you of anything else." He didn't seem to be moving from his spot, but Maki could've sworn she felt Kaito's warm touch against her arms, against her neck, against her face, and when she blinked he was gone, standing behind her and holding her tightly. "Nothing can bring back the dead quite like a good night's sleep, or a near-death experience."
"I haven't had a 'good night's sleep' since before you died."
Kaito chuckled, the laugh sounding so real that it made Maki melt in his arms, but when he spoke he sounded serious, not playful. "Then obviously that means you're having a near-death experience. Come on, Maki Roll. I just said that."
At once, his grasp on her body became a grasp on nothing more than her soul, and Maki shot awake in the bedroom of the house she'd bought, far away from that sterile apartment that she'd just been in, the sound of alarms blaring and the smell of smoke wafting through the house. Her heart pounding, half from having just been with Kaito and half from the adrenaline of waking up to a perceived fire, she jumped out of bed, threw her clothes on, and grabbed her car keys from where she'd set them on her dresser and her purse from off its hook; when she went to open the door out to the main room she found the doorknob burning to the touch. "Well, fuck!" she screamed, her skin on her hand feeling like it had been singed in its brief contact with the knob. "Guess I'm going out another way!"
She was beyond thankful that she'd at least gone through most of her nightly steps before coming to bed, otherwise she'd have been without her belongings, and she was equally as thankful that her bedroom window had no screen and was not far from the ground. Leaping out of it was easy, as was running around the house to find her car, and it was there that she saw the flames flickering out of the kitchen window, the roof engulfed and the fire moving fast. Her eyes were frozen wide in horror, but she could hear sirens coming, someone must have been able to see the flames from their nearby home and called for assistance, and she knew she didn't want to be there when the firefighters arrived. Climbing into her car, she got as far as she could from the house as fast as she could safely go, barreling down the road towards the small town nearby with zero regard to what she was leaving behind.
She was halfway back to the city when the adrenaline began to wear off and her exhaustion hit her hard, but she was determined to get back into the city before she fell asleep. Fate had a different plan for her, however, and as her eyes, irritated from the smoke and her tiredness, began to flutter asleep, she lost control of the car she was driving and sent it off the road slowly, a turn that turned into a flip, sliding off the side of the asphalt and into the brush and trees that lined the road.
Kaito was there again, looking just as healthy as he had in her dream, but this time in a shapeless place, no form or function to the air that surrounded him. "When do you think we're going to meet again?" he asked her, his eyes gazing straight into hers but not seeing her, his expression blank. "I don't think it's tonight, do you?"
Her body was frozen, her arms and legs feeling like they were pinned in place and her whole core unable to so much as flinch, but she could talk and she was going to make use of the words she had. "I don't know when it'll be," she admitted, "but I hope it's sometime soon. You gave my life purpose, Kaito, and I…I don't know how to live without you."
"It's easy, you just do it."
Unamused, she replied, "That's easy for you to say, you had to live every day like it was your last because you didn't know when your last would be."
"And who helped me with that in those last few weeks?" Still looking straight through her, Kaito waited for no answer, especially since he couldn't see that Maki was looking sheepish, like she'd forgotten her role in his adventurous final weeks of life. "You jumped right in the moment you realized I wasn't going to get to live life to its fullest and then the moment I left, you changed. Suddenly you went into doing much of nothing at all. What's up with that? Did losing me make you forget how to have fun?"
"It might have," she snapped, her throat suddenly feeling like it was being constricted, but the words came easily despite the pressure. "But what else was I supposed to do? I didn't really live before you, I wasn't going to suddenly start living without you!"
Pausing as he leaned back, Kaito blinked a couple times, reaching up to rub at his eyes, and when he pulled his hands away they were both wet from tears, his eyes leaking at the corners. "I'd always wanted you to live a long, happy life without me, Maki. Carry on the Momota name with pride. And now…and now…"
"And now what?" she asked, trying to prompt him to finish what he was saying, but then he reached out to her with one of those tear-soaked hands and she felt his touch, his fingers linking with hers. At once, she'd realized why his demeanor had changed and she felt immense guilt, understanding that she wasn't cemented in place and didn't feel the pressure or pain she'd been experiencing from the life she'd been leading. "Oh. I'm dead, aren't I?"
He was sobbing as he pulled her closely into his chest, the absence of a heartbeat as she buried her face into him, taking in a familiar scent that she'd never thought she'd smell again. "I don't wanna admit that you're dead, I wanna see you live on!" he told her, still holding her hand and using it to pull her closer and closer to him, even though she couldn't exactly get much closer. "You're meant to be my living wife, not my dead one! How could this happen to you?"
"I…I don't know," she said, her mind suddenly blank from what had happened to put her back into the ghostly embrace of her deceased husband. "I can't remember a thing."
"Then there's still hope!" He pulled back from her, eyes shining despite the crying, only to come right back to holding her tightly. "I'm gonna hope that you're just here for a minute, not for the rest of ever. I love you, Maki Roll, but I don't wanna see you here until it's really your time."
She didn't know what to say and so she said nothing at all, staying there in his embrace until she could feel her throat being choked, her arms going numb and her legs almost crumbling, Kaito's strong grasp keeping her standing. "Stay alive for me," he told her, his grip on her not letting go until she became intangible, something that he could no longer touch.
Not because she was dead, of course, but because she was alive.
Gone was the life of independence, gone was the life of living for only herself and on her own. The wreck she'd caused in her tiredness had temporarily paralyzed her from the neck down, and while Maki would stubbornly work back through those injuries she was never going to be living the life she had before she'd decided to abandon her burning house. Her days were spent under the care of her grandparents-in-law, who'd stayed by her side at the hospital and waited for her to have the strength to tell them about her chance meeting with Kaito in the in-between, somewhere that wasn't quite life but wasn't death, either.
From then on, with her body weakened and permanently changed, she lived every day for Kaito, re-learning to walk and move and do things without assistance. Whereas Kaito had gotten weaker and helpless as time had gone on, she grew stronger, until she was as normal as she was going to get. She'd have dreams where Kaito would encourage her to keep going, and so she would, all for him, because he was her guiding star, the light of her life, and without him she never would have made it through the wreck in the first place.
Her bed and a bathroom, her place for the end in the hills far from the city, hadn't been what she needed right then in her life, and Maki wasn't going to make the mistake of letting her longing for her dead Kaito destroy her life a second time. Every day could very easily become her last, and she was going to live with as much vigor and enthusiasm as the luminary once had.
A/N: I have been tossing around this fic for a while now, unsure of if I wanted to write it or not. the original piece is so haunting and painful that writing a follow-up felt like a daunting task, but the image of Kaito and Maki meeting somewhere that isn't quite life, but isn't death either stuck with me until it broke me down to write this.