Author's Notes: …this is really quite an odd little piece (I fear it reads like an overly long drabble!), and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. I started writing it a very long time ago, and for some reason I recently felt like turning the pages of strange dialogue into something resembling a story. I'm not sure if I succeeded. You'll let me know, won't you? If there's one thing I truly adore, it's people who give my feedback!
At any rate, it did turn into a story that goes into the mess that probably resulted post-series in a way I've not seen before. Someone probably has done it before me, but I don't recall seeing it, so…this is my account of Utena looking for an ally after leaving the twisted kingdom of Ohtori Academy. Here's hoping it doesn't turn into something longer, eh?
As usual, I lay absolutely no claim upon these characters; they belong entirely to people who are most certainly not me. I only write fic because this series makes me think entirely too damn much. The poetry is all T.S. Eliot's, by-the-by (and though the story was inspired by The Journey Of The Magi, it is named for a line from The Hollow Men; I just don't know sometimes, I really don't). That man is always making me think of Nemuro, that's for sure. [rolls eyes] I also must thank all of you who have ever read my fics and commented upon them, as few and far between as you are. You make it all feel worthwhile. Thank you so much for all of it.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these kingdoms
But no longer at ease here, in the only dispensation
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
~ The Journey Of The Magi, T.S. Eliot
Death's Dream Kingdom
I could tell from the expression on the face of the nurse that the entire situation was a novel and disturbing one for the general staff. Even though they are used to the fact that I have a benefactor of sorts, they are equally used to the fact that he is never present. In fact, they are used to the general truth that I have no visitors at all. It makes them sleep easier, to think that even though I came back from the dead I'm still not really alive. People who are really alive have people who care about them, come to visit them…come by to say hello, to talk about inconsequentials, to while away a thousand hours in the space of what only seems a few minutes.
Nobody ever comes to visit me. In their eyes, that makes me dead…and given that I have lain motionless in a bed here for thirty-three years, perhaps that is no strange thing. My recovery must be like a return from the grave, for them. And an entirely unwelcome return, at that.
(I am not sure about it, but I think the period of thirty-three years makes some of them uneasy in and of itself. Then again, ironic humour – or humour of any kind, in fact – never has been my strong suit.)
I was seated in the armchair I have beside my single window when she was brought to me. It was with a wry kind of supplication that I turned to look at her, and I must admit with some shame that I then found small amusement in the way she recoiled from me. She hadn't been expecting this, and I could assume from not only her reaction but her appearance that she had not suffered her time in that place the way I had. She looked faintly older, her hair short and her facial features more defined, but she certainly didn't look like a chronic invalid, or even a recovered one.
"…Professor Nemuro," and it was like a question, a wondering gasp. I, on the other hand, was frankly more surprised by the fact that she knew my old name and title.
I dismissed the nurse with a wave of one fragile hand – already they are accustomed to and irritated by my high-handed method of dealing with people – and indicated my unexpected guest should join me. There was an empty chair – the standard cheap hospital type, as compared to the well-worn but comfortable armchair I was interred in for the day – and she took it reluctantly. I thought I could guess why. Taking a seat meant she was in for the proverbial penny and pound, and I could see she was considering bolting. Personally I regarded that action as useless, given she would never be able to deny herself that she had seen me like this.
If only memories could be that disposable.
"Tenjou Utena," I said finally, knowing my voice sounded like crumpled paper being smoothed across a table. Her morbid fascination was easily apparent in her eyes, and I supposed it was understandable. After all, nothing grows old at Ohtori Academy. I stayed twenty-one years old for thirty odd years in that place, but even then I did not appear my age. I believe the records said that Mikage Souji was seventeen. I don't remember that point too clearly, but then none of that really mattered to me in those days.
In fact, the only thing that mattered was eternity – the only thing that mattered was an illusion. Such is the curse of wise men damned by faith in hollow minds devoid of all true wisdom.
"…Professor Nemuro." Her voice was a little stronger as she said my voice the second time, but I could see the faint tremble in her hands as she fidgeted, smoothed her jeans over narrow thighs. "I hope you don't mind me coming in like this."
"Tenjou-san." I said this so wryly, so sharply that she looked up with narrowed eyes. "I haven't had a single real visitor since I came to. Now, I know in the past I've had a reputation for being attached to my solitude, but even I have my limits."
"I didn't know that." She said that thoughtfully, eyes examining mine briefly before dropping again to her lap. "I don't think I really know much about you at all."
"That's what makes me curious," and at the inquiring look she gave me, I shrugged. "You knew me only as Mikage Souji. I'd be fascinated to know how you found me here under a completely different name."
"It was something that Miki-kun said to me," she began hesitantly, as if she thought I would not know the name; at my nod of acknowledgement, she continued. "And something you said. Both of you talked about the Hall where you…lived, I guess…burning down. You mentioned to me the name Nemuro, and you were the only Nemuro who sounded remotely like what I was looking for."
"Well, being in a coma for thirty-three years really does do wonders for your public exposure." I smiled wryly, and then continued with: "Particularly when one comes out of it as unexpectedly as I did. My status as a miracle of modern science aside, what is it that I can do for you, Tenjou-san?" I paused, and adjusted my wire-rimmed glasses facetiously. I still couldn't become accustomed to the clear lenses, but even the mere thought of coloured glass made me nauseous. "As I remember it, we did not part on amiable terms."
"No, we didn't." Appearing to grapple with her own thoughts, she remained silent for some time before she spoke again. I let the silence continue; why should silence bother one such as myself? I spend my days in silence with the journals and articles I have the nursing staff bring me. I may never leave this private hospital again, but my cold, unchanging sciences can always be brought to me in some shape or form, and that is all that truly matters in my new, insular world.
"You weren't really like that, were you?" She blurted it out quite suddenly, and I could not help but raise an eyebrow in mild surprise.
"You mean, like Mikage?" I thought about it briefly for a moment, realising as I did so that my mouth was dry. I took a sip from the fragile painted tea-cup at my side before I spoke again. "I'm glad you've picked up on the fact that I was not Mikage at all, Tenjou-san."
"You changed when I defeated you in the arena." When I raised that eyebrow higher, she closed her eyes momentarily, opening them to continue. "The other…the other duellists, they always lost consciousness, and I was always told to leave them where they were, that they would recover best on their own. You…" She paused again, hands fisting in her lap. "You, you stood in the sea of desks with the over-turned pictures and held your sword like it was a foreign object. I looked at you and you looked at me and I swear that you didn't see me at all!"
"Well, I didn't have my glasses, did I?" I pointed out pragmatically. "Also, up until that point I was acting under a delusion that you were somebody else. In fact, the whole time I knew you I had been steadily confusing you with another person until the both of you ceased to be individuals and were as one."
She seemed intrigued by this thought, but also determined to leave well enough alone for the time being. "The point is, I decided that…what happened in Ohtori was probably more complicated than I ever realised, and that I…that it would be all right to come and talk to you."
"Because the Nemuro in Hiroshima was nothing like the Mikage in Houou? You have faith, Tenjou-san, but then that always was your most defining characteristic."
"I know it was." I had been mocking her lightly, but she took it like a brand of honour. "Professor Nemuro, I know that you've…you've been through a lot." She stuttered over her words as she really looked at me, and I felt almost sorry for her. "But I need to talk to you."
"It's a novelty," I told her offhand, and took another long sip from the water in my tea-cup. "You know where I have been, Tenjou-san – would you care to enlighten me to where you have been?"
"I think the American phrase for where I've been is 'on the side of a milk carton.'"
I blinked. "On the side of a milk carton?"
"Missing without a trace for an entire year." She was frank and honest, but I could see the telltale shine of bewilderment in her eyes as she told me this. I wasn't at all surprised. When I had come to some months ago, I had terrified not only the young, new nurse on duty, I had terrified myself. Not only had I spent the majority of my life in death's dream kingdom, I had spent all that time as a young man. Looking into a mirror and seeing what Ohtori's illusions had guarded me against, well.
The price of my fleeting years of eternal youth was accelerated ageing in real time, so that I do not look my fifty-something years. I instead am a living-dead septuagenarian, at least in all appearance. Tenjou Utena seems not to have suffered quite my fate, but she looks older than the fifteen years she must be now; perhaps a youngish twenty-one?
Time is a complicated enough phenomenon even without the interference of one fallen prince.
"With no memory of what happened to you?"
"You mean, outside of Ohtori Academy?" There was distaste easily apparent as she said the name of the cursed school that held us both so possessively before expelling us so violently into the real world it had snatched us from. "I remember everything that happened there – even stuff he made me forget for a while, like you – but…there is nothing of me out here." She paused, and then sighed shallowly. "I looked up the records of the school, but they say that I never attended at all. The police were slightly weirded out by the fact that I could name so many other students on the roll, but apparently not one of them remembered me when they were questioned."
I gave her a sharp look. "You went back?"
"No." There was deep frustration in her voice that I did not quite like. "The police didn't want me to. I think maybe they were afraid I'd vanish again if they took me to the place I said I'd been all that time, but with no record of that being true. They said they spoke to the Dean and to the students, and showed my photograph, and no-one remembered ever seeing me anywhere, let alone at Ohtori."
"Curious that he would let the police into his domain." I adjusted myself in my chair – my bones so easily ache with the changing weather now, and I could feel rain coming on – and shook my head. "You probably shouldn't have involved them, Tenjou-san. I can't imagine he appreciates such interferences, and now he knows where you are."
"He knew where I was in the first place." Her eyes bored into mine, and I could see her point even before she spoke it. "He knows where you are too, and that was the main thing that led me to you. The fact that all your medical expenses are paid by one Ohtori Akio."
"Very good detective work, Tenjou-san." I tried not to sound too cynical, but I doubt that it came off well at all. "I wonder how you did it."
She ignored me. "I didn't want to get the police involved, actually. But my aunt insisted when I arrived back home, as they had been searching for me for that whole year I had been missing." She crossed her legs, and furrowed her brow. "My aunt Yurika said that I had simply failed to come home after school one day…she figured it was a little strange, but when the police heard my past they weren't so worried...at least not at the beginning." Utena shrugged a little here, as if it didn't matter, but I could see that her blue eyes held trouble. "Yurika and I never did get along all that well. She thought that I needed to act more like a girl than I ever wanted to. She was feminine, and quiet, and calm – it was really beyond her how she'd wound up with such a tomboy for an adopted niece."
"I imagine it was."
She gave me an odd look at the wry tone of my voice, but she continued easily enough. "It is all just…so insane. They are all convinced I ran away for a year, possibly to Houou, and that I just won't tell them the truth about what happened. My aunt still hasn't really forgiven me for it, and I daresay she won't forgive me for doing this…running away again. Running to people like you."
I had to laugh out loud at that, even though I knew my laugh sounded more like someone walking over dead leaves upon a grave than anything else. "There aren't many people like me, Tenjou-san. You should thank whatever god you believe in for that."
"There is another," she said, very quietly, "but I haven't found him yet. I found you first, professor, and I was glad…because I believe that you can help me."
I let my curiosity slide a moment, more because I didn't want to encourage her to go and annoy more people like me. As far as I am concerned, we are out of Ohtori…and we should not ever wish to go back, whatever the circumstances. "Help you? Tenjou-san, I am of no help to even myself. I stay in this room, day in and day out, my body useless from too many years asleep and disused. All the physical therapy in the world will never make me what I once was, whether that is Nemuro or Mikage. I must admit one thing that is odd about this, however – and that is that even though my use is over, he keeps me alive with his money and his influence. I suppose it is a thank you of sorts…because even the world's best chessplayer is helpless without pawns to play."
"Doesn't it bother you, that even here he still controls your life?" Her question is blunt and sudden. "That maybe one day he could, I don't know, stop paying your bills and leave you with nothing?"
I could see in her eyes that she herself could not live with the thought, and I wondered how he continued to cast his shadow over her life. Always one for keeping his options open, Ohtori Akio. Perhaps he would find use for Tenjou Utena yet, but I am not vain enough to think he has any use left for the shell that is left of me…just a hollow man with a head stuffed full of straw.
"I think it would be quite pleasant if he would stop paying my bills. Perhaps then I might be able to take another death and finally be free of him entirely." The look she gave me then was shocked and lightly disgusted. It truly meant very little to me.
"How can you say that?"
"By opening my mouth and forming the words." I could see she was going to snap back a sharp retort to that, and so I cut her off before she could speak again. "My use is not only over for him, it is over for myself. He wrung me dry and left me with nothing besides my mind, which thinks far too much for me to ever be comfortable with the things I have seen. Why he keeps me like this I do not know, nor do I want to. All I want is to truly be free from him. Isn't that a noble enough reason for you, Tenjou-san?"
"Nothing could ever be a noble enough reason for wanting to kill yourself," and now she sounded both disgusted and hurt. "Can't you see that I only want to be free of him too?"
"We have different perceptions of freedom, Tenjou-san." I pointed this out to her almost gently. "Your freedom is to live your life in peace. My freedom would be in being allowed to die with the dignity he has never allowed me in the past."
"Your freedom is in running away." She sounded more disgusted than hurt this time, which made perfect sense to me. I couldn't see how anything I had to say should hurt her in the first place.
"At least I know I will be running far enough away to a place he cannot touch me."
"You don't know that."
"I must point out that whatever you have in mind is similarly lacking in the foolproof qualifier."
"You don't even know what I want to do." Her voice was low, and when her eyes met mine they were cool and hard. They were inviting me to ask her what she planned, and even though my head was beginning to ache and my bones had never stopped singing in low voices of pain, I asked her.
Sometimes I am as much as a fool as she.
"What are you doing, Tenjou-san?"
"I'm looking for Himemiya." She paused, eyes drilling into mine. "I need to find her, and I know you can help me."
"And what makes you think that I would be able to help you?" My question was genuinely surprised, for I was surprised and simply hadn't the time to hide it before I spoke.
"Didn't you know Himemiya?" She sounded surprised, and a little uncertain thanks to my words; it did make me wonder how thoroughly she had thought out any of her actions before running to the hollow man I now am.
"…I suppose that depends on your definition of know, Tenjou-san," I pointed out pragmatically, but I was tired as I took my glasses off and gingerly rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Isn't it likely that she is still back in Ohtori?"
"She's gone."
I dropped my glasses, and didn't even notice I had done it until she quietly pushed them back into my hand. I was staring blindly into the tea-cup and nothing else really mattered.
"The Bride has left and he still has his power…?"
"Why do you think I want to find her?" She came back into focus as I shakingly put my glasses back on and really looked at her. In that young woman I could so clearly see the coiled strength of her spirit, like a lioness ready to protect her young...the power of it frightened me. How can one so abused still be so ready for more of the same? "I really wanted to find her at first just…just because I couldn't bear the thought that I had failed her." I noticed a tremor in her voice, but could not comment on it as she continued. "I wanted to…I just wanted to know if she was all right."
"That was the real reason why you let the police ask about you at Ohtori, wasn't it?" It was a simple rhetorical question, spoken more to myself than her, but she answered it anyway. "You were going to go back and get her, despite whatever it was you went through before he graduated you."
She looked at me, carefully and hard as she processed the real meaning of my purposely chosen words. "How do you know he threw me out, Professor Nemuro?"
"Because in my experience, nobody leaves that place without his permission." I could see she wanted to know what my "experience" was, but I was not in the mood now for recounting tales of times past in a school where time never really passed at all. "The Chairman no longer has his Bride, and yet he still has influence enough to keep me here and keep you out of Ohtori. What do you think this says to me, Tenjou-san?"
"The same thing it says to me." Such strength in her words, and I could easily enough hear the comparative lack thereof in my own. "He might need Himemiya to play the real Game, but he has more than enough power to continue with the little games in the meantime."
I raised an eyebrow. "The meantime?"
She was staring at me, eyes hard as if she couldn't understand why I didn't want to admit I saw what she did. It's peculiar, really; she should have known. "In the time before he finds her himself."
"And what makes you think he wants her back?"
"Professor." Her tone was as hard as her eyes. "He never would have thrown Anthy out of Ohtori…or as you put it, graduated. I was thrown out because my use to him was over. He took my soul sword and tried to open the Rose Gate, and he broke the sword. I am useless to him now, you see? But Anthy isn't. As far as I can see he can continue to do what he's been trying to do for god knows how long, but he needs Anthy to do it. So he never would have thrown Anthy out of Ohtori! The only explanation that makes any sense is that she left of her own free will…and I don't think he would have liked it."
"Tenjou-san, I admit that this makes some sense even to me. Himemiya-san is a part of his power, and the key to regaining the entirety of that power himself. It is not, however, your responsibility to make sure that he does not. You obviously played a part in encouraging her to leave, and I think that it where your role should end. Let it be, Tenjou-san. We've done what we were hired to do, and there's no reason we should offer up ourselves for more appearances in his little farcical world."
"How do you know that he doesn't need us anymore?"
I snorted, indicated my rotting shell of a body. "Because I am useless to him now, aren't I?"
Her eyes flashed blue fire, but I could see that she couldn't bear to look at me because some part of her believed that I was right. "Then why are you still alive?"
I smiled, bitterly. "Because not even the great and arrogant Ohtori Akio will burn all his bridges, Tenjou-san. You'd do well to remember that yourself."
"But that's precisely my point! Don't you want to be free of him now that you know he might want you back? Don't you want to be able to leave this place and go back to where you came from…take back everything and everyone he ever took from you?"
"And how would you know anything about what he took from me?"
Utena looked surprised for a moment, possibly because of the harsh note that had entered my tone. "I know there is someone from your past--"
"You never knew anything about me, Tenjou-san," I interrupted her, calm now but still wishing she would live the sleeping dogs to lie, to pass away in the peace they wanted so badly. "To be frank, you didn't want to know…Ohtori simply told you enough to bring a strong dislike for me into your existence. It was all he needed to do, after all. But that doesn't really matter. Why should I want to find anybody here on the outside world?" I asked. "There were only two people I was at all interested in, and one is dead while the other is permanently beyond my reach. I am satisfied to sit here with my window and forget the rest of this world ever existed, let alone that world."
She paused on the brink of complaining about my lack of vision, obviously because the next question jumped out at her and could not be ignored. "…you do remember everything about when you were at Ohtori Academy originally?" she asked, her voice quiet. "When was it, exactly?"
"In the late nineteen fifties," and I could see her surprise even though she tried so hard to hide it. It might have amused me, if I'd been the sort of person to be much amused by such things. "I thought you might have figured as much, if you've had access to my medical details."
"Not that much access," she muttered, though I imagined she was lying. It didn't bother me, if only because I could easily understand why she had asked the question. Hearing the truth from the source rather than simply just reading it in an inanimate book always makes it so much more disturbingly real.
"But aren't you concerned at all?" she persisted, stubborn as a mule. "Okay, so one person you knew then is…gone. What about the other one? Surely if you care about her, you'll want to make sure that she has nothing to do with the school and…and him again."
"She's found her prince elsewhere, I am sure." Ah, such bitterness; I had not thought my death had undone me in such a petty fashion as to leave me so inclined to wear my emotions on my sleeve this way. "I saw her once at Ohtori, Tenjou-san. I didn't recognise her at the time, but I understand now that she was there, and that she was there by choice."
"How could you possibly know that?"
"If she were truly still of use to the chairman, Tenjou-san, she would have been as much a part of my seminar as the ghost of her brother. She wasn't, except through the illusions I had of you. She came and went as she pleased. She's of no use to him."
"Even with Himemiya gone?"
"Nothing could induce me to go back to Ohtori, Tenjou-san, not even the decades-old love of a woman I haven't seen since those days. I am sure that the chairman knows this."
Utena looked down to her short nails, fidgeted. Her voice was very low when she spoke again, and I could hear the pain making her voice uneasy. "He also knows how to hurt people."
I laughed again, but without any humour in it at all. "And he knows that if he wanted me, he wouldn't need to hurt me to make me return. He could just take me there himself, hospital bed and all."
"But what if it doesn't work that way?" she asked, strength returning to her voice as she looked up at me with those beautiful blue eyes. For they were beautiful, after all. I wondered why Ohtori hadn't been able to use this girl to get what he wanted; even I could see the great wellspring of power that was within her. She made me sigh, look again to the tea-cup before me. It was nearly empty now.
"What do you mean?"
"…I remember reading about legends and fables once. That vampires can't come in unless you invite them."
I furrowed my brow, unconsciously raising a hand to rub the bridge of my nose in that nervous gesture again. "What does that…oh. So you are suggesting that perhaps the chairman can only find use in pawns who come to him willingly?"
"He had his ways of making people need to duel, whether they truly wanted to or not." Her memories were sour, and I wondered how deeply the wounds whose scars I could see had gone. "I'm sure you know about that, professor."
"I haven't been in an elevator in years." Off-hand, but not off-topic. "I would never go back to Ohtori willingly, Tenjou-san. Not even for Tokiko. She's moved on the way she was always meant to…she's probably married with children…grandchildren as well, most likely. And it is not as if she loved me."
"But you loved her."
"I thought I loved her," I corrected.
"You loved her." Stubborn as a mule indeed, this pink-haired girl. No wonder Ohtori had found her so valuable a tool in his little duelling games. "You wouldn't have been so useful to him if you hadn't."
"I don't know about that. Tenjou-san, you don't know what happened to me…as I don't fully understand what happened to you. But suffice it to say I've found out a lot about the illusion of love, and its application to people that you never loved in any such way before the chairman got involved in it."
She was watching me quietly. "You can't create love from nothing, professor." A pause, and then a wry smile that was far to old for even her lovely too-grown-up features. "Isn't some kind of scientific law or something, that you can't create something from nothing?"
"Tenjou-san, I'm tired. I can't help you. Perhaps if you really need to know it, I could tell you the story of one clockwork professor and his time as both puppet and puppetmaster, but you must know that I can not help you find Himemiya. Ohtori is just another road I've travelled, the one that's made me as weary as I am. I won't travel that road again."
"Not even for her?"
"Not even for Tokiko."
And still she attempted to find a happy medium, a way of dragging me back in. "Why don't you talk to her? Ask her what she knows?"
"I don't know where she lives."
"She still lives in Houou, professor."
"Oh?"
"I don't know her number yet, but I'm sure you could ask one of the nurses to bring you in a phone book the next time they bring you all those books from the library."
My smile was twisted as I realised abruptly how deep her research had really gone; I should have given her need to engage in this insane little mission more credit from the beginning, perhaps. "I suspect I couldn't even use a damn phone book properly," I said evenly, though my words said more than just that.
The simple meaning of the sentence surprised her most, possibly because it took her some time to realise that I had been away from the world for thirty-three years and much can change in three decades. "Oh, a phone book can't have changed that much, surely!" she said finally, pushing loose bangs out of her eyes.
"Why are we sitting here arguing about phone books?" I said, leaning back in my chair and waving a hand in indication of the fact that I had long since tired of this conversation.
It was truly a pity that she hadn't as well. "Because you're a coward, professor," she snapped back, and when I opened my mouth to reply, she waved my response aside with a sharp swing of her own hand. I noted she wore no jewellery at all, not even about her neck let alone on her hands. "Why do you want to let him control you even when you've left? Why does death have to be the only way out for you? And don't tell me that there's nothing left for you anymore. I know from what I've asked the nurses and doctors here that you could do anything you wanted academically. They told me that the coma may have…may have hurt your body, but your mind is more than fine!"
"Of course I could study whatever I wanted. Isn't it obvious to you that my brain is intact?" It certainly was to everyone around me; it regularly shocked and unnerved them that though my body rotted out from underneath me my mind remained as sharp as ever. "I just don't want any of this any more. I've been to the other side and back again, Tenjou-san. Life and death hold no mysteries for me any longer, and I know which of the two states I would prefer to be in now."
"…you're an idiot." Instead of it coming out as an accusation, she spoke the words with what sounded more like wonder. "You're a complete idiot."
"And obviously less like you than you originally thought." She didn't look at me again, but her disappointment radiated from her like heat from the distant sun that still dictated lives so completely. It didn't burn me at all…yet, I could not help but speak to her again as she moved to the door of my room.
"For what it's worth, Tenjou-san, I do hope that you find what you are looking for."
Her form paused, the door held open before her with one hand, the other resting against the stark white frame. "…do you really mean that?"
"Why shouldn't I? After all, I sit here at my window day in and day out, dreaming of a Never-Never Land my education can't allow me to begin believing in. What is there for me to do but wish fortune on those who could use it more than a bitter old man like I ever could?"
"You're not so old." But she didn't sound quite so convinced anymore, as she turned around to regard me carefully.
"But I am bitter." I paused, and I examined her quietly. "When you see Ohtori Academy again, Tenjou-san, I want you to do something for me."
Still standing in my doorway, she gave me a critical look. "How do you know I'll see the school again, professor?"
"If she doesn't lead you back there, your own heart will." I paused, and coughed quietly into one cupped hand before I continued. "There is a hill in the fields beside the school, Tenjou-san. To the west of the Chairman's tower. On top of that hill there is a red camellia tree, and it flowers every spring…or so I am told. When you go back to Ohtori, would you put fresh roses on that grave?"
She looked taken aback, but only for a moment. "Why don't you come with me and do it yourself?"
I answered very quietly, my voice a dry and meaningless whisper so low I was surprised she heard it. "Because I am in my own coffin, Tenjou-san, and I cannot visit another in theirs."
Silently she watched me for some time…and then she turned to walk away, to walk a path that would only bring her voices whispering in her ears that all this was folly. I heard clearly her voice even though I could not see her face any longer.
"My track record for taking people out of their coffins isn't very good, professor…but I'm sure I will be back to take you from yours one day."
"Perhaps." I did not hear her reply to that – if indeed she had one – before she vanished from my sight with the door sighing closed behind her. I was alone in my silent room once more, but it didn't really matter. This is my open coffin alone, with its starched sheets and round corners and fluorescent lighting. Even though his hand lingers still over the lid, I do not mind his presence. I wish he would close it, and maybe she will make him do so.
Truly, I should be glad of another death.