As soon as the elevator doors closed, Chiyuki felt the smile slip off her face. The tears that had begun to fall started pouring faster and faster down her cheeks. She felt the elevator going up, and couldn't even bring herself to be happy about what that indicated.
It was just too much. She was still reeling from the shock of having to come face-to-face with the pain she had caused her mother. But now, everything that she had left was slipping away from her with each inch the elevator traveled.
Chiyuki wasn't dense enough to have spent all that time with Decim and not realize what was going on in her own heart. She knew that she was in love with him. But there hadn't been any point in expressing it. He was an arbiter, and she was a human waiting to be judged. She had steadfastly sealed her emotions away, until Decim's gentle smile had ripped the seal off violently.
She fell down onto her knees as sobs wracked her body. She distantly heard the elevator door ding, but ignored it in her sorrow.
A wry voice interrupted her. "Are you just going to sit there all day? Not that day or night matters much here, I suppose."
Looking up with a start, Chiyuki tried to dry her tears as best she could to locate the voice. Nona was standing in front of her, one hand propped on a hip. Chiyuki brought herself to her feet, trying her best to dry her eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm coming," she said, steeling herself to take a step out of the elevator.
As she exited, she saw a large room overrun with ivy. In the center, there was a glowing pool table with galaxies dotted across its surface. She would have been more interested in examining the table if it hadn't been for the man standing next to it. He was an older man, with light pink hair and a beard pulled into a tie at the chin. He looked relatively harmless until Chiyuki noticed his eyes. They were black, dark like a void, with slitted green pupils. Those eyes stared straight at her unflinchingly, sending a chill down her spine. Chikyuki tried to distract herself from the feeling by turning to Nona. "What am I here for?"
She smiled slightly. "Direct to the point, then. I have a proposal for you. As you may have noticed, we are rather short on staff here. You have done an admirable job as Decim's assistant. Therefore, I would like to extend to you a choice." She walked farther into the room, trailing her hand along the edge of the pool table as she went. "You may either reincarnate as Decim chose for you." Chiyuki stifled a little gasp at this reveal, but Nona continued, "Or you may be reborn as an arbiter." She came to a stop next to the man and gazed at Chiyuki, clearly waiting for an answer.
Chiyuki stared. She repeated dumbly, "An arbiter?"
"Yes. An arbiter. You have shown that you have a knack for the job." Nona waved her hand in the air. "Of course, you still could use more training. We would send you back to Quindecim to complete it. When Decim feels that you are ready, you would be given your own room." She smiled wider, taking a few paces forward. "So, what do you say?"
The old man finally spoke, and Chiyuki found that his voice also sent chills inexplicably through her. "Are you sure this is a good choice? Human emotions were not meant to be involved in this."
Nona tilted her head back to the old man and smiled. "You already know my thoughts on the matter." Turning back around, she said, "Now come. What is your decision?"
Chiyuki stared down at her. "So you mean…I can continue to be with Decim?"
"Until your training is done, yes."
"I can…" Chiyuki hardly needed any thought. Even if she were to reincarnate, there was no guarantee that she would remember anything, or be with those she had cherished in life. All that was left to her was Decim. And here she was, being offered a golden opportunity to have what she desired. She stood up straighter, and nodded firmly. "I want to do it. To become an arbiter."
The old man clicked his tongue and turned away, but Nona ignored him. Her smile blossomed on her face. "Excellent. If you will come with me, then."
She walked past Chiyuki to the elevator, where Clavis was waiting. He smiled as usual and asked, "Where to?"
Decim had been trying to pick up the pieces of his existence since he had sent Chiyuki to be reincarnated. Fortunately for him, there was plenty of backlogged work. He threw himself into it, taking as many back to back cases as he could until they all blended together. To help bolster his newfound emotions, he kept Chiyuki's dummy with him as he worked. He found it alleviated some of the loss that he was experiencing for the first time.
After a case with two siblings, he leaned on the bar and gave a heaving sigh. His gaze trailed off to the side, caught by Chiyuki's dummy. It sat lifelessly, staring straight forward with an artificial smile on its lips. As usual when he looked at it, Decim felt a pang in his chest, one that he was becoming unpleasantly familiar with. He supposed this was just another emotion. He was starting to develop a deep dislike of these emotions that kept bombarding him when he thought of Chiyuki.
Determinedly, he straightened up, turning his face forward to greet his next guests. He heard the elevator ding, and frowned slightly. It had sounded like only one elevator had arrived. Was one of the other arbiters coming to see him? Or perhaps Nona? Either way, he would show them the same hospitality he showed to everyone. He saw two figures coming down the hallway, and bowed his head, saying, "Welcome to Quindecim." He began to raise his head up, then stopped halfway. He stared, dumbfounded, at the woman he had thought he would never see again. Opening his suddenly cold lips, he managed to get out her name. "Chi…yuki?"
She walked up to the bar and smiled at him, her eyes turning upward happily. "Hello, Decim. I'm back."
"But…but how are you here? Did you die again? I didn't think it had been that long since you left, how could you have…" As she opened her eyes, he trailed off, having been given his answer. Her irises bore the crosses of an arbiter.
Turning to the other figure, he demanded, "What's going on?" He was beginning to have that pang in his chest again.
His boss smiled. No, smirked, really. "It's just as you see. I have decided to make Chiyuki here an arbiter. It seemed such a waste of her experience and skills to simply send her back to be reincarnated. She is to assist you for a while until you feel she is ready to run her own room."
Although he had asked the question of Nona, he felt himself staring at Chiyuki as he received the answer. He could hardly believe she was really here. As Nona finished talking, he nodded dumbly. He could almost hear the smirk spread to her voice as she added, "I'll leave you two alone then. Just don't take too long, you'll have more guests coming along soon."
As Nona's footsteps retreated back down the hallway, Chiyuki came around the side of the bar until she was standing next to Decim. She pushed her hair behind her ear, looking almost shy as she said, "Well, aren't you going to say anything?"
Decim stared at her, feeling the pang in his chest swell until it was unbearable. When it reached the point where he thought he might burst, he shot out his arms and swept Chiyuki up in them, crushing her against his chest in a hug. Her arms circled up around his neck, and for several long moments, they simply clung to each other.
A shaky voice rose from his shoulder. "I take it you're happy to see me, then?"
He squeezed her tighter. "Is that what this is, then? Happy? I feel like my heart is heating me from the inside out."
She chuckled a little. "Yes, I think that's happy. Unless you don't like the feeling?"
"No. I think…I like this feeling very much." He ran one hand up her back, resting it on her hair as he continued to hold her.
But the moment was broken when Chiyuki asked in a strange voice, "Decim? What's that in the chair over there?"
He released her, taking a step back. "Ah. That's the dummy you used the last time you were here."
"That's what I thought." She craned her neck around him to look at it, then looked back up at Decim. "Why is it there?"
He dipped his head down, unsure of exactly what to say. "I can't really give you a good answer. When you left. I felt pain in my chest all the time. Having it there…having something that at least looked like you made it hurt a little less."
Chiyuki's face softened, and tears welled in her eyes. "I see." She stepped closer and reached up to cup his face with one hand. "I'm sorry I kept you waiting." Craning her neck up to him, she placed a soft kiss on his cheek.
Decim's eyes widened. He felt his chest surge with emotion. But unlike the usual ones he felt, this one was different. It was wonderful, beautiful, and all-consuming. He stared down at Chiyuki, his mind reeling. If he had felt like that just from her giving him a kiss, then what would it be like…before his mind could catch up, he was leaning down, matching their lips together in a gentle kiss.
As he withdrew, Chiyuki's wide eyes stared back up at him. He was thrilled to discover that this indeed did elicit a larger reaction than before. He leaned back down and gave her another kiss, lingering on her lips this time before straightening up. This time, Chiyuki managed to gasp out, "What was that for?"
"I wanted to see what it would feel like. I felt something nice when you gave me a kiss, so I thought this would be better."
Chiyuki removed her hand from his face and placed it on her chest. "Oh, I see. And was it?"
He nodded once, emphatically. "Yes. I would very much like to do it again."
She looked up at him, her face quickly turning red. "Decim, I think there's time for that later, after work. Right now Nona said we had more guests coming soon." She gave him a sunny smile that made his chest warm up again.
He was fascinated with this array of new emotions. He dipped his head down, speaking to her in a low voice, "All right. As long as you explain all of this to me later. I have a lot of things I want to try to understand with you."
Her face reddened even more as she turned to face the front of the counter. "All right. But for now, you have to behave."
Two women stumbled off the elevators, dazed and confused. They looked at each other, and one exclaimed, "Yui! Thank goodness you're here! I was starting to get scared. Do you know where we are?"
The other woman shook her head. "No, not at all. But I'm glad to have a friend here. Come on, let's go down the hallway and see if we can figure out where we are."
The two women advanced down the hallway, turning a corner past some bamboo and a small artificial pond. As they turned the corner, they paused.
At the end of the hallway was a bar, with two people standing behind it. They both bowed as the white-hared man spoke. "Right this way, please." They straightened up, and the woman with black hair said, "Welcome to Chidecim." Both of them smiled in unison as the two women walked forward, unknowingly, towards their fates.