//And here comes the climactic scene for which I don't much care. I actually wrote part of it while high. Kid you not. I was on a bus to Otakon scribbling in my notebook, and someone on the bus was smoking up. Later I looked at what I had written and laughed my ass off. Then I kept it because that was vastly amusing. You'll probably be able to figure out where I was under chemical influence. Now, it screams at me to revise it.//
Miteki came to in a hospital cot. Before she opened her eyes, she knew two things:
One, Miki was beside her.
Two, Yumi needed miso soup.
"Oh, Kodama-san! Are you awake?"
"Yes..." The pain in her head was still almost blinding, but the concern on Miki's face did enough to dull it.
"Something exploded in the Tower, and you...you got sick and fainted. It was really strange. There was a huge sound, and all the electricity went off, and people were passing out..."
"Oh...I remember." The feeling of incredible, unstoppable fury with huge words that ripped through her mind. The shock of excruciating agony from her clairvoyant senses that made her fall to the ground, clutching her head, before she lost her lunch and then her consciousness.
"Are you okay now?"
Sitting up, she smiled weakly. "My head hurts, but I'm fine. Did you...did you find me?"
"Juri-sempai saw you. She was afraid you were going to choke. It was so weird, like an earthquake, but not..."
"It wasn't an earthquake. It was Yumi-chan."
Miki's eyes widened. "What? How do you know that?"
"Sometimes, I just know things..."
"Really? Like...ESP?"
"Yeah, like that."
"What did she do?"
"Something we can't understand." Miteki tried to stand, but her sense of balance protested. "She needs my help..."
"Oh, careful!" Miki caught her, and they both blushed.
"I'm okay..."
"No, let me..."
He supported her up and out with his arm around her, and then he even stuck with her long enough to help make the miso soup. It was like the old adage of a blessing rising from a calamity.
"Yumi, please eat. Just a little bit. Please."
It was almost dark out. She had fallen asleep after the bath; now Touga had made some noodles for dinner and was trying to get her to ingest at least one bite. But of course, she was refusing to, staring at the yellow flowers in a glass on the center of the table.
"My dandelions are wilting," she whispered, scarcely audible. It was her first attempt at words for some time.
"We could go out and pick fresh ones. We could keep some, and make dandelion salad too. It's really good, much better than noodles for this hot weather anyway. Do you want to try it?"
"Dandelion Bride," she said mistily. "No roses for this one. Dandelion Bride."
He shivered. Did she have to talk like that? "Please, won't you eat a little? You won't sleep well if you're hungry."
She nudged her plastic cup again. He obliged and refilled it with iced barley tea. At least she wasn't making herself go thirsty—this was her fourth glass.
A knock on the door sounded. "Yumi-chan? I brought you miso soup," called her friend's gentle voice.
Yumi got a look of panic and curled up like a pillbug, hiding her face in her knees. Touga went to answer the door, touching her head as he passed, trying to reassure her.
He blocked Miteki's entry, taking the warm container. He wondered again if he should leave Yumi to the care of her best friend, a girl and therefore less of a threat, but realized that he cared too much to leave her to anyone else. "Thank you. She's very sick."
The accusation in her grey eyes disappeared when she saw how pale and distraught he was. "What happened?" she whispered.
He shook his head with pained regret, indicating that it was too dreadful to even speak of in Yumi's own hearing. But Miteki's look was anxious and demanding, and he had to tell her so that she might understand. He took Miteki back out to the hall and closed the door silently. He saw that Miki was there too, waiting out of sight from whoever answered the door, but just as concerned.
Touga couldn't look at them as he said it. It hurt in his soul, as though speaking of it to others would make the nightmare more real. "The Trustee Chairman...he tried to...to violate her."
Miteki's hands flew to her mouth as she made a gasp of utter horror. Miki, equally wide-eyed, moved closer to her as if to protect her from the wickedness of it.
"What—what can we do?" said Miki.
"Nothing. Nothing but try to return her to herself." He turned with sorrow and remorse in his movements. They could see his anger with himself for failing to protect her enough.
"Thank you...for telling me," Miteki managed quietly, since he didn't have to tell her and it had clearly taken some effort for him to do so.
Touga shook his head again, hating to be the bearer of such news, and returned to Yumi's room.
"I didn't believe her..." Miteki murmured. "I didn't believe that the thing she was fighting could be that evil..." She was shaking as they walked away.
Miki took her hand. "Are you like me? ...That you never think of how evil the world can be, and it always shocks you?"
Miteki looked down, blushing. "I ought to be used to it."
Inside, Yumi was still curled up, convinced in even that short a time that he had seized the opportunity to run away from her. There was no reason why he shouldn't. It was better for him, that he should leave her to the darkness. Soon, her creator would come for her and take her back to his world of numbing pleasure and fake stars...
"Yumi, stop!" She had taken the bandage from her hand and was biting on it again. It was proving very difficult to keep her from doing that. Keeping down the worried scolding that came to his lips, Touga dressed the wound once more.
The memory came back of hitting Kyouichi's hand with a kendo stick, and then tying the strip of fabric...he'd done it on purpose for an excuse to touch, to give an apologetic kiss... He'd always been that way. White butterflies hadn't changed so much. It only brought out the cruelty that was in him from the beginning.
Yumi knew it, and she kept insisting on loving him. No part of a person can ever be so stupid as one's heart.
"Here, your friend brought miso soup," he said, and poured it into a bowl for her. It was still steaming. "I bet she knew that's what you really wanted to eat."
She eyed it suspiciously and then sniffed it, as cats do before they deign to eat whatever their fool human has provided them. But she was only ascertaining that it was indeed Teki-chan's unsurpassable miso soup. It was, and it smelled good. Teki-chan's miso soup was not darkness. Perhaps if she ate enough of Teki-chan's miso soup, it would begin to combat the darkness inside her. Teki-chan did not make miso soup for Mayumiare the Rose Bride. Teki-chan made miso soup for Yumi the weird girl who made her think of dandelions.
She ate all of it.
Then she was keeling over with fatigue. Her mind had no energy left to torment her.
Touga moved to put her in bed, but when they got close to it she squeaked and backed away, terrified. Apparently she couldn't stand to be near a bed yet, not even her own, not even to sleep.
It was practically too hot to sleep on a bed anyway. He grabbed her pillow and put it on the sofa, then opened the windows to let in the night air and turned off the lights except for a low lamp. She curled up on her side when she lay down on the sofa, but soon stretched out because it was too hot not to do so. He wanted to hold her, but she was still shying away from him, though it seemed she was unable to move without him leading her. So he sat down on the floor, leaning his back against the sofa, his head near hers.
Her eyes remained disconsolately open. She was so tired, despite the nap before, but somehow not sleepy.
He went to turn off the lamp but instead picked up the library book of ancient poetry sitting beside it. She liked to hear him reading to her, especially these millennium-old things. He opened the book at random and read the poems aloud until they both drifted off.
Sleep was a bad idea. There was no escape in dreams. End Of The World had her on the sofa in the planetarium, but the backdrop of the fake stars was that red which he was not allowed to have.
"I'm dreaming," she told him. "You lost. I'm dreaming, and you aren't here."
"Oh, I am here," he murmured. "I'm in your mind. I've been waiting for you to fall into the dreaming state, to take you in your sleep. It doesn't work quite as good as reality, of course, but it'll do for now. And invading your dreams has its own advantages. He can't save you here." He smiled dangerously, and she realized that she was naked.
She tried to conjure some clothes; she knew she was dreaming, so it should have worked; but it didn't.
"You may be dreaming," he said, "but this is not your dream. It's mine." He drew her close and kissed her, and no matter how she tried to will herself away, into some other shape, nothing helped. "You...are mine."
Touga! she screamed with all of her soul. It should have summoned his dream-form to save her, but all that happened was that the ceiling disappeared to show the night sky, and the stars danced into pictures of him.
Akio laughed. "A light show to protect you? How about one to tease you, then?" He waved his hand toward the sky, and the stars showed Touga and Kyouichi tangled together, that scene from the dojo.
She watched, for even in dreams of star- pictures she was unable to look away, and she could not escape him as he touched her, invading her...arousing her.
She was supposed to destroy him. She knew she had the power, at least enough to get him out of her mind, if she could remember that fury. But the spell of dream lust was too strong. She fell to the dark enchantment...
"In dreams, it's even easier for you to lose yourself. The command of desire can take over your subconscious completely, without any interference from thought or emotion...just as I take over you, Mayumiare..."
It was true. There was no fighting it. She had to come and nothing else mattered. Nothing. He did all sorts of things to her, playing with her, bringing her to the very edge, sensation that was too intense to be purely subconscious imaginings. "Touga—!" she cried, one last attempt, but really it was a cry of pleasure.
"Still crying his name? Hm, no, I can't have that." He looked into her eyes, even though they were squeezed shut, because in dreams that didn't matter. "Say my name, or I won't satisfy you. Say it."
If she were awake there might have been a choice. But here there was none.
"A...ki...o..."
"Good girl."
Finally, he took her. She heard her dream-voice moaning and yelling, wordlessly, at the pleasure that erased everything and seemed to never end. He did not cry out or moan as he came inside her, inside a dream, but only closed his eyes and smiled, almost a laugh.
She woke. Why did she have to wake up? Why couldn't she sleep the eternal sleep after something like that?
She was covered in cold sweat, except for the dampness between her legs, which was another thing entirely. There could not possibly be anything on the planet as disgusting as herself. She felt diseased in every cell of her revolting, treacherous body.
Her sense of balance was gone. She fell off the sofa, onto Touga who was asleep sitting up against it.
"Ow! What the—? Yumi!? Are you okay?"
She gagged. Realizing she was about to be sick, he got her to the bathroom in her dorm, which was more of what they called a water closet, a compact sink and mirror and toilet. She doubled over and retched violently into the latter as he waited outside, eyebrows drawn with worry.
Partially digested miso soup was particularly vile, and the awful taste prompted her gut to reject everything else she'd consumed the previous day. She gargled mouthwash and staggered back out, letting him sit her down on the sofa, only to find in the next few minutes that there was more to come up. Tears and snot ran down her face, and she trembled. It was nearly half an hour before her stomach decided it was done, and by then he had to hold her up. She was sure she was dying. He handed her mouthwash and a towel to wipe her face, and when he let her down on the sofa, she collapsed, shaking and sniffling.
Her eyes looked wild and glazed. He put a hand to her forehead—though her face had a sickly pallor, she was far too hot. He didn't need a thermometer to know she was in danger. He turned the lights on and began looking for aspirin, though he wasn't sure she'd be able to keep it down. By the time he found it she was sitting at the table pulling apart the wilting dandelions.
"Yumi, you have a bad fever," he said, taking her hand. "You need to lie down."
"Dandelion salad!" she shouted, throwing the little petals at him. She tried to stand and went reeling.
This time he got her to lie down on her bed, from where she was less likely to fall, and held a cold cloth to her face. She didn't seem to recognize him. He got her to take some aspirin, but before it worked she went thoroughly delirious. She chanted all of the kana syllables in order and then started raving, strange names and nonsense.
"Athanynth? Athanynth, I don't like it any more. I can't do it. Lyly'efandwr was right. Even Tur'raskevevry was right. Let's go home. Where's Endrei'anna? Tell her to open the door. Endrei'anna, open the door. Endrei'anna, open the door! Open the door! Endrei'anna! Open the door, Endrei'anna! Open the door!"
Her voice was so urgent, so anguished, but there was nothing he could do for her besides put more cold water on the cloth for her forehead, and hold her hand although she couldn't feel it.
"Yumi? Yumi, can you see us?" cried Athanynth.
"She can't really," said Johriishang. "She's just sick."
"Open the door, Endrei'anna! Open the door!"
"Why can't we take her back!" Tears glowed on Athanynth's face. "Poor Yumi! Look what they've done to her!"
"She accepted all of the risks," said Lyly'efandwr. "But she must not have been one of us to begin with. No being of our race has ever become human with a soul."
"Such strange stories," Johriishang murmured. "The seeking of the gods is so strange. Every story must be different. How do we know that this has never happened before?"
"I know it. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again." Lyly'efandwr looked down at the delirious Yumi. "We have the ability to walk between worlds, not to become part of them."
"This world has to be the strangest," said Athanynth. "One of the goddesses wasn't even human. She was from yet another race of beings. And so is her brother the demon."
"They are of a race even we do not know," Lyly'efandwr agreed. "Anthy-sama has a soul; yet she and her brother could always see us. Even now she could be travelling between worlds to search for her Utena-sama. Maybe Tur'raskevevry and Endrei'anna are trying to help as well as watching."
Johriishang looked at the strewn dandelion petals. "And we didn't even see that Anthy-sama wasn't human. I wonder why that is."
"Because she and her brother are powerful, and they did not want us to see it. They must have the talent of glamour," said Lyly'efandwr. "Morning Star is not a demon, however. He is what they call a Darkling."
"Darklings are humans," Athanynth argued.
"Not always. It is a term for any fallen being."
"Is he the one called Lucifer, like Mayumiare and her friend the oracle said?" Johriishang wondered.
"Don't call her that," Athanynth scolded him. "That's what Morning Star calls her now. Her name is Yumi."
"Lucifer, the first Darkling, from the legend called Paradise Lost..." Lyly'efandwr cocked her head. "It could be. Human legends always have greater meaning than they seem to. Perhaps Yumi will uncover that mystery as well."
"How many more mysteries can she take?" Athanynth whispered.
Fever was a defense mechanism. It was designed to rid the body of infection, but could also do the same for the mind. Yumi woke in the morning with her head utterly clear.
It wasn't that she didn't remember everything. She knew her body had become sick to try and get the darkness out. She knew the darkness inside her remained. But now she could face herself with a grim determination to take things as they came. The illness was gone, and she was starving. The sunlight seemed somehow different, newer.
She remembered fragments of her delirium. Unseen watchers, three of those once her friends, had been there. She couldn't recall their names, or what they looked like to fevered human sight; their voices had come to her as distant nonsense fading in and out. Probably no more than a hallucination. Yet it was so strange to even have thought that she saw them...
Touga was curled up like a kitten on the end of her bed. It didn't look very comfortable, however. He must have been ready to sleep anywhere after her fever went down, not wanting to leave her so that she woke up alone, but wary of frightening her by getting too close.
She wanted to wake him with a touch, to run her fingers through his soft hair, to kiss him. But she did not deserve any such luxury. He was too beautiful for her to touch.
"I'm hungry," she announced instead. She did feel she could put a sushi bar out of business for the day.
"Hnn?" He stirred, stretching, and then the situation came back to him in reverse chronological order. He was taking care of Yumi. Yumi had been sick. Yumi got sick because he hadn't done enough to protect her... He sat up, asking anxiously how she felt.
"Hungry," she repeated, but her voice seemed to have receded far away again, small and quiet.
"Oh, good, that means you're better. I'll make you something..."
"I want to go downtown." She wanted to go to a restaurant and be waited on and eat until they kicked her out.
He touched her forehead, peering into her eyes, which were clear and lucid. To all appearances, she was fine. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. I want to go off campus."
It was probably much healthier for her to walk around, and especially to be wanting to, he thought. And wouldn't it be better for her to get off campus permanently? The place was being so cruel to her... "We'll go downtown, then. But I'll have to clean up first." After he'd begun spending so much time with her, telling her so many things, he had a stash of clothes here. He needed a shower, though, so any girls who had the same idea might get some bonus eye candy.
"I'll wait." She curled up resolutely, hugging her knees. The cicadas were buzzing again, and she could listen to them.
Her army of cicadas.
Her soul was still torn in half. She was not sure of her name. But right now the struggle was deep within her, away from the surface. She was able to think only of how terribly hungry she was and all the expensive food she wanted to eat.
He returned quickly, with only a towel around his waist, trying to grab clothes quickly so he could dress in the water closet and not threaten her. But he was enticing like that, and the crazy girl with funny ears wanted to jump him, like she would have once upon a time.
You mustn't touch him, said the prisoner of the roses. You must not! You will poison him!
The struggle came out. Like the devil and the angel on one's shoulders in corny cartoons.
Just a little. Let me be close to him. Just a little. I can't live without being close to him.
She moved toward him, her eyes big and unreadable. She seemed to be asking him something.
He waited. Was she going to kiss him? How would he know how far to go without hurting her more?
But she paused with her face close to his, just close enough to feel his breath, as close as she dared. She shut her eyes, her hands moving to almost touch him, wanting to so badly.
He froze, having no idea what to do for her.
Then a great shudder went through her and she turned away. He took her hand, trying to let her know that she was not tainted as her mind told her, not too unclean for him.
If anything she was still too pure for him, but she'd never believe it.
Slowly she turned back to him again, and her eyes were just clear, there wasn't any expression that he could see. Carefully, as though seeing how far she could go without the world blowing up, she put her fingertips to his face, touching his eyelids, his lips, and then, almost reluctantly, travelling down to his chest and...
She didn't seem amorous. It was like she wanted to make sure he was real or something. But men were not built to resist this. His towel fell off. If she kept moving downward, he'd have to...
She pressed herself up against him. She wasn't trying to be erotic, but she was succeeding. "Yumi—please—"
No! You cannot touch him! You will pull him into darkness! Walk away from him forever, and let him escape!
That is what End Of The World wants you to think! End Of The World hurt him, and so anything that he plans is what you must fight to the fullest! For him! Disobey, for him!
Her hands wanted to touch him, her lips wanted to kiss him, regardless of how many pieces her soul split into. She brushed his eyes closed gently with her fingers, and put her lips to his so softly, no more than dandelion fluff.
He needed more than that, but he clasped her hands and gave her the same kind of softness, like a first kiss. Except for the part that he was naked and getting hard. If he'd known she would be like this, he would have made the shower cold.
Every moment she touched him was defiance to End Of The World—who would punish her later, surely, but all she had was now.
She wanted to tell Touga to claim her. But she was afraid...afraid of desire...
"Yumi, I need you. Don't...don't do this unless you want me..."
She kissed him with passion for a moment and then broke away. She had no idea what she was doing. He saw her lips move in the word, "Sorry..."
He took a moment to think unsexy thoughts, dressing quickly, and then told her, "No. Don't apologize. Everything's too confused for you to know what you want. But when you see, then I'll try to take you to wherever you want to be. That's what I want you to know."
She clutched at herself. Her voice, as was becoming usual, was barely audible. "Why do you feel that way for me?"
"Because the brightness inside you...is so beautiful."
She turned to him and fell against him, letting him hold her.
Get away! Oh, get away, get away! You will hurt him, you will poison him!
No. This is truth.
Her stomach rumbled. "I want to go...to a really good restaurant."
He had to laugh. "Then we'll find the best one."
They spent the day downtown, and when they got back after dark Touga thought she looked completely worn out, though she insisted on staying awake to read. She hadn't turned a page for several minutes, and her head was nodding.
"Yumi, aren't you tired?"
She shook her head. "I can't sleep."
"I'm sure you can. We walked around a lot today."
"No, you don't understand." She got a look of total fear. "I can't sleep."
"Nothing will happen," he said, taking her hand. How well he knew... "I'm right here."
"You can't stop it..." She curled up and her voice fell even farther, the whisper of a child's fear of the dark. "He's in my dreams..."
He couldn't keep from enfolding her tightly in his arms, furious with himself. Why couldn't he protect her? Every time he thought he could save her, something worse happened. He tried to shield her from that final secret; from End Of The World; but there was no way to stop the cruelty of her own mind after he failed...
"I wish I knew how to protect you. I want to find the way to protect you. I wish—I wish I could become all the things you need me to be."
Shaking, she looked into his urgent cobalt eyes, slowly brushing the soft crimson away from his face. He meant everything he said to her now.
Now, when it was too late.
She was always seeking her own doom. She wanted her heart broken; why else would she give up an eternal vale of dreams for one who left only tears in his wake? She wanted darkness within her; why else would she step willingly into the planetarium?
How can he protect someone like that? she thought. How can he even try to protect someone who always ends up cursing herself?
There was no way to protect her. But the fact that he wanted to was enough.
Still she had the last shining thread, unbreakable, unending.
So to spite the darkness, to prove that she would not be ruled by it, she kissed him intently, twining her arms around him. The torment would follow later. But later was later.
He was almost startled, though she didn't have to tell him why she was being that way. She wanted belong to him, to know for herself that she was his and only his. He was afraid she'd hate herself for it in the morning, and he wanted her to belong to herself. But if this was what he could do for her...
If he could protect her from candlelit ink-velvet nightmares with a lover's embrace...
If she found her happiness in his arms, he would hold her.
They went to the bed, her bed, where only he had ever been with her, where only he was allowed. Someone hit the stereo controls and Ayumi played very softly.
"...I saw the end of an era with my own eyes.
And in truth, I actually do know
That it's my turn next.
You'll find me, won't you?
I'm betting that you'll find me..."
He made love to her with a tenderness that no one would have expected from him.
She loved him, and the thing about her was she could get rid of everything else and still have herself, there in that one truth. All the darkness of black holes and skies of exploded stars meant nothing beside it. Only this was true.
And she cried quietly in his arms, because at the center of everything she still had that pure, beautiful, bittersweet happiness; and she knew in her heart that this was the last time.
She fell asleep in that power, and no one could invade her dreams. But she woke soon, before dawn, knowing what she had to do.
There was one path forward.
I hate leaving him. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
But I must. This is the path. This is how I must go.
He does not wake. I'm afraid he will. Maybe I'm hoping he will. But he doesn't.
I hate it.
I'm weeping again as I look at him in my bed, his arms still curled around where I should be. And he is beautiful. I kiss his hair, breathing deep his scent, holding the moment in my heart. This is what they call "blissful suffering."
I didn't say it last night, so I leave him a note on my pillow. Flowery high-winded crap can't tell you how I feel. I love you. I feel like collapsing in tears, but I get dressed in my standard-issue uniform. I wipe my eyes and walk outside. The sky is a metallic grey-blue, pale silver in the east, where the morning star gleams.
This is the path. This is how I will free him.
I am no longer afraid of you, Morning Star.
But as it happens, I am not the only one out and about at this hour.
Some things are too coincidental to be called coincidence, I think. That's why they have words like "fate" and "destiny" and "karma."
Kyouichi and Yumi ended up on the bridge at the same time. They couldn't pull off completely ignoring each other, but she waited for him to speak.
"What the hell are you doing?" he said as though the sky would fall if he cared.
She had no need to lie. "Good morning to you, too. I'm going to the Rose Gate. And yourself?"
Neglecting to answer, he looked at her suspiciously. She had a pensive expression, tears on her face. "What's with you? Why are you in that after you were so proud of yourself in that Student Council uniform?"
"That uniform got ripped." Strangely, she could answer his interrogations with complete calm.
"So why do you look like you're on your way to a funeral?"
"It's my own."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Finally decided to give up on this life?"
"No, I wouldn't put it that way."
"And how would you put it?"
"An ink-black destiny."
He laughed viciously. "That's a good one. I'll burn some incense for you."
"How kind of you. And what are you doing out so early?"
"Cleaning the dojo, of course. You fool." It should have been obvious, with him in kendo dress.
They walked in silence for a few moments, until Yumi said rather humbly, "If I may, I'd like to ask you a last favor, as I go to meet my fate."
"What's that?" he asked, slightly amused.
"Please forgive him."
He turned and slapped her to the ground.
She got to her knees, eyes downcast, holding her bruised cheek. It struck him that she looked just like Anthy.
But, unlike Anthy, Yumi stood up again.
"You little slut," he spat. "Don't you presume to know what's going on."
"Don't you think I wish I didn't?"
"Exactly what is it you think you know?" Kyouichi narrowed his eyes.
She replied with the song lyrics. "Unable to do anything, unable to forgive, the two people hurting each other..."
"Stupid bitch. You've lost it." He continued walking. "Hurry on to your 'ink-black destiny.' I don't need to hear any more of your babbling."
"But you will, because we happen to be still headed in the same direction."
"Why the hell are you going to the Rose Gate?"
"If you really want to know, you'll have to follow me," she said, without knowing why.
"What, and act as second to your honorable harakiri? No thanks. You're on your own, girly."
"Good. You'd be in danger if you came along."
He didn't look at her, but she could see she was making him curious. "Oh? Why's that?"
"You think I'm going to kill myself. It's like that. But not my body. I'm going to give up my soul."
"What are you talking about?"
She looked up at him as though expecting him to understand. "I'm going to the castle in the sky."
He made a skeptical sound. "You have lost it."
She was quiet as they passed through the main gate, then the entrance lobby. Just before he turned toward the dojo, she said, "If nothing else, please don't forget what I asked you. I'm selling my soul for it." She bowed in farewell.
Why didn't she feel any resentment toward him? Was she really that far gone already? She couldn't really understand her lack of cruelty.
"Not much of a deal," he snapped, wanting to hit her again, but deciding she wasn't even worth the trouble. He walked away. He could hear her singing to herself.
"Unable to do anything, unable to forgive, there will be those people who hurt each other..."
She really was ruthless, he thought. Good riddance.
Yumi walked across campus and into the forest, where it was still black as night. Thick ivy and branches covered the Rose Gate, but the foliage untangled and withdrew on its own as she approached. It looked considerably more ancient than it had during the duels, lending it an even more mysterious grandeur.
She thought of him fast asleep in her bed. This was the only path, and she would walk it for him.
The sun rose behind her. She grasped the handle.
All of the duellists still sleeping woke with a gasp.
Touga sat up. There was no one beside him.
"Yumi?"
He looked around her room. It was utterly silent and empty.
His elbow crumpled paper, and he picked up the note on the pillow. Dread struck into him.
"Yumi, no!—"
The great spiralling staircase was cracked and crumbling. She got into the gondola and it began its slow, rumbling ascent. Strangely, her uniform changed again to the dueling outfit.
When she reached the top she saw that the edges of the Arena had all crumbled away, and pieces were fallen from the stone structures where the unseen watchers would be. The great, wide sky was the grey of dawn. But the gondola kept ascending, farther, and farther, toward the Castle of Eternity.
The eroded Arena dwindled below her. And below that, it seemed that far, far down, perhaps kilometers away, there was a landscape, but not a familiar one. An old one, a magical one, a fairy-tale landscape. Another dimension?
But it changed as her ascent continued. She could see forests disappear for fields, rivers fill in, towns and cities spring up. All of human history was passing before her eyes, far below.
The landscape arrived at the present, and the gondola stopped. The tallest spire of the upsidedown castle was just within her reach, a bright orb at the end.
She stared up at the castle, so close. It was huge, and shining, and silent. It had a strange silence that was almost, somehow, a sound, as though the sound it made was too vast for any ears to comprehend. As though it drew its song back into itself, like light to a black hole.
Not in the deepest recesses of her mind did it occur to her to turn back. Fate compelled her inexorably forward. She stretched both arms up and touched the bright orb.
A horrid, agonizing shock went into her. She screamed. She felt a transformation, and then the pain left. She opened her eyes in a room the size of a cathedral with immensely tall windows, and she knew, without looking, that she wore the dress of a Rose Bride.
Yumi's dress had a slightly different design, however—a more alluring one, as she was no timid and modest Himemiya Anthy. It was dazzling white with black and red trim, the top more ornate and more provocative, the skirt open in the front to show the sheer, sparkling red underskirt. Her tiara was carved with those same filigree designs, flower buds and snowflakes, as the blade of the sword which Touga had drawn from her.
She knew she was inside the castle. This place seemed to have even less substance than the Arena. It felt like a dream, but different, since this was not the inside of her own mind.
The footsteps came.
Ohtori Akio, in full regalia, bowed to her, the courtly bow of a fairy-tale prince. "So you've come."
"Did it hurt?" she asked. "Did it hurt, when Anthy left you?"
She meant the words to sting, but if they did, he showed no sign of it. "Of course," he said simply.
"She left because you destroyed the one she loved." Here, in the castle, it came back to her. She could remember Tenjou Utena now.
"I didn't destroy Tenjou Utena. I don't even know what happened to her." He got his amused look. "And what might your point be?"
"My point is, I have one condition. I know creatures like you are bound by a promise."
He smiled. "Very well. You've proven yourself a force to be reckoned with. Tell me your condition."
"Touga and Kyouichi. Let them go. Free them, and never go near him again. Don't try to play literal-word games with me either; you know what I mean."
He wouldn't tell her that it was not his power that kept them hating each other. She'd have to see that for herself. Anyway the important part was the part she'd blown up the Tower for. "Yes, I understand. And you, Mayumiare, are bound by your destiny as the new Rose Bride."
"Swear it."
"To your condition, I swear." He held out his hand as though asking her to dance.
She had no fear left in her, though she felt a trickle of revulsion as she gave him her hand. "Then I am the Rose Bride."
"Done."
Her ring snapped into pieces like plastic and fell, clinking on the polished stone floor.
Churchbells pealed wildly. Rose petals of every imaginable color swirled about like elegant confetti. He pulled her into that romantic embrace and, as he kissed her, a numbing ink-black tranquillity descended over her soul.
It was the tranquillity of his possession. End Of The World had her soul, and she would never have to feel anything again.
Touga burst into the dojo and grabbed a katana from a display rack.
"What the hell?" Kyouichi exclaimed, busy cleaning. He knew it was something to do with that annoying blow-up doll.
Touga didn't even look at him, but said as he nearly ran with the sword, "Stay out of it."
Oh? Touga was telling him to stay out of it? Well that just meant he'd have to get into it, now didn't it.
Yumi had told him to stay away because he'd be in danger. Touga seemed to be saying the same. Conclusion: Kyouichi had to see what was going on.
He liked to clean the dojo at sunrise. No one else came around; no one could intrude on the only place he found a semblance of peace. But it could wait. The dojo would still be here tomorrow. Once interrupted, he was unable to get back into that peace.
He took another katana, unsheathing it a little to check the blade. It looked passable. He thought of taking the short sword as well, though, since Yumi had sounded like she'd need it.
An enormous white rosebud appeared in the center of the Arena. Slowly its petals unfolded, and the bells rang out, and all of the shimmering watchers joined their voices in a huge, tuneless, wordless song. The rose blossomed, and out of the center stepped Akio and Yumi, End Of The World and the Rose Bride, small as pixies against it.
The Arena was transformed. Around it, beautiful structures of bright stone towered and laced and interlocked, covered with carvings and vines, and with watchers who perched on every ledge, singing. At the edges, paulownia trees thrived in full bloom, and the Arena itself was no longer drab grey stone but a glowing ivory color. It was, more than ever, a place of enchantment.
"The phoenix is said to roost in paulownia trees," Akio remarked.
"Never again," snapped the new Rose Bride.
He laughed. "Yes, of course. That era is over." He took Yumi in his arms as if to carry her over the bridal threshold. There was an elaborate arch with vines of red and white roses through which he walked out of the great rose, and then arch and flower dematerialized.
"Unhand her." The point of a katana touched Akio's throat.
He set Yumi down and faced Touga, to whom the new Arena had given a new uniform. It was black, flamboyant and militaristic, with red trim and white cuffs and white cords and plenty of brass ornaments. His hair seemed even deeper red; his expression was angry and valiant.
Seeing him, so terribly handsome like that, she had the very cliché feeling of falling in love all over again. But she was far away from him now. She could not be near him, only gaze from afar. She did not want him to see her this way. The Rose Bride wanted to hide in the arms of Akio, who would calm the shame and agony of leaving the one she loved to sell her soul.
"Is this a challenge, Seitokaichou?" asked Akio.
"I'll pay you no such attention. The duels are over. Go back to where you came from."
Akio laughed, the loud contemptuous laugh of a villain. "Would that I could. What do you think I've been trying to do?"
Touga withdrew the sword and seized Yumi protectively. "Yumi, what are you doing here?"
She pushed away, shaking her head, unable to meet his eyes. "I am Mayumiare, the Rose Bride."
His eyes grew almost fearful. "What?"
"You heard her," said Akio, placing his arm around her. "If you would have her, then fight for her."
"I won't 'have' her. But I will keep her away from you." Touga took stance, wishing he had it in him to just kill Akio.
"Touga, don't!" cried Yumi. "Just leave! Please, get away!"
"Now, Mayumiare," Akio told her, "if he wishes to duel for you, it's your duty to prepare us."
"You won't fight him with my sword," she said, and immediately doubled over with a sickening agony, the same she'd felt when she tried to take the ring from her finger that time. Akio caught her, amused.
"Yumi!" Touga yelled.
"You'll get used to that," said Akio. "The Rose Bride can't disobey me, you see. Anyway, of course, the Sword of Dios is inside you now. Prepare us."
When her defiance left, so did the pain, like shock therapy. She walked to a point between the two duellists, and two roses appeared between her hands. Eyes downcast, she attached the red rose to Touga's chest. It hurt to be near him. He shouldn't want anything to do with her.
He caught her hand, trying to look into her eyes, but she flinched as though struck and walked away.
Ssh, poor Mayumiare, Akio murmured into her mind, numbing her soul. I'll make it go away. I'll make it stop hurting.
Yes. This was who she belonged to. Her place was in the dark of a planetarium, where anything that hurt her had no more substance than fake stars. She attached the purple rose to Akio's chest.
"Rose of the noble castle, Power of Dios that sleeps within me, heed your master and come forth..."
The light gathered between her hands, at her solar plexus, and Akio caught her around the waist and took the Sword of Dios. "Give me the power to revolutionize the world!"
At least, it was almost the Sword of Dios. It was just like the Sword of Dios, except that where the guard should have been, a paulownia flower was obstinately stuck. Very curious.
"Hmm." He looked at the sword and flicked the flower with his other hand, trying to see if it would come off. It sparked at him, like a jolt of static electricity, as Yumi cried out and clutched her head. He tried it again and she cried out louder.
"Stop it!" shouted Touga, though he didn't understand what was hurting her.
Akio saw that he could get rid of the flower design and make it the true Sword of Dios, but it would kill this Rose Bride and put her power out of his reach. He couldn't very well remove the core of her being and expect her to live, after all.
He turned to his challenger. "So take the Rose Bride, if you can."
"She is not the Rose Bride!" Touga charged.
Once again she could hear the strange music clearly, the lyrics of the watchers who sang during the duels. But the style was different for the new Rose Bride, perhaps more romantic and less enigmatic. "Ah, build your skyscrapers higher!
It's Sisyphus and his rock; all will tumble down.
Ah, build your computers faster!
It's Icarus and his wings; all will melt and crash.
What drives civilization? Is it the end of innocence?"
They fought, and it occurred to Yumi that this must be what every girl dreamed of, to have handsome princes sword-fighting over her. To be a princess in a rose garden, in a shining castle. So strange that a dream in the hearts of all girls would in truth be the darkest destiny, which one had to sell her soul to meet.
And this was her destiny, to watch the one she loved fighting the one who possessed her now, in this beautiful place of magic, this dimension of dark sorcery. She found herself hoping that Touga would lose. If she was to belong to him it must be by choice, not by duty. And how could he and the one he loved reconcile with another Rose Bride between them? "The glittering cities full of
Everyday gods.
Cry for this psychosomatic revolution:
Capitalism, agnosticism, all are the same.
Neon lights shine brighter than stars." It hurt. Every time the swords clashed, it hurt. She couldn't tell if it was because her sword was being used against him, or because the Rose Bride always felt it when the Sword of Dios struck something.
Her sword should not be fighting him. But he had to lose. He must lose and walk away.
There was no telling who would win. Touga fought with anger, however, and Akio fought with none.
Why did he have to fight? Shouldn't there be some new generation of duellists, people she didn't care about? This was too dramatic. It was beautiful to watch, and terrifying.
He still did not know that he was fighting the man who had violated him... "Hail your new prophets!
Your salarymen and office ladies,
Your tech support and pop idols.
Heed the exhortation!
Beauty is the be-all; bed is the end-all.
Dreams are poison; love is a myth.
This is the reborn truth." So that she wouldn't think too deeply, she made herself become caught up in watching them, like an opera, like a swashbuckler movie—watching like one of the unseen audience she began as. Every one of Touga's movements was so elegant, so refined with skill, even through his anger. He never faltered, a black and red blur, too perfect to be real. The Shining Prince.
And Akio was just as elegant, with his grace born of darkness, fighting effortlessly with the devil's luck. "Do you really want to be engaged to her?" he taunted. "She won't stop being the Rose Bride if you win her, you know. You should have learned that from Utena and the last Rose Bride."
"Of course she won't stop being the Rose Bride," Touga retorted, "because she never started."
"Oh, but she did. I'm not sure she appreciates your denial, either. She did it for you. She wants you to leave her for the one you love."
Stricken, Touga faltered then, just for that moment. Akio smiled as he saw the opening, and lunged. "The glittering cities full of
Everyday gods.
Cry for this post-modernist destiny:
Seduction, salvation, all are the same.
In a world too civilized to live, there are no princes!
Only everyday gods,
Lost children and everyday gods." "TOUGA!" Yumi screamed, despite herself. She felt power blast out of her.
The Sword of Dios shattered. Akio held only the hilt. Intrigued, he let Touga make the final strike.
Purple rose petals floated away. Touga, grim in victory, put his arm around Yumi defensively. Since he didn't need it any more, the katana disappeared along with the pieces of her Sword of Dios. He held her tightly, and she had the feeling of rightness, of belonging, but she knew it was more the Rose Bride's than her own feeling.
"Why are you doing this? This won't make you happy."
"I've told you before, Touga-sama. I want your happiness more than my own."
He looked at her in consternation. She heard her words, too, and got a look of fear. They were spoken formally, as the Rose Bride to the Engaged. Coming from her, they were completely wrong.
"Yumi, this doesn't make me happy either! I don't want you to be like this!"
"I am not part of your happiness. I am only the Rose Bride." She wasn't controlling her own words. She meant what she said, but they didn't come out the way she wanted. She wanted to raise her voice at him, to tell him to get away, but she was engaged to him now, and had no power to do so.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
"Yumi, stop! This isn't you! Stop it!"
Why? Why did you lose to him!? she shouted in her mind at End Of The World. You have to let them go! You're bound by your word!
Foolish girl, you broke the Sword of Dios. You always want to belong to him, he replied. You seemed to want it so badly I thought you should let you have your choice, even though the Rose Bride isn't supposed to have one. But this isn't over yet. We have another contender.
Kyouichi appeared, having walked up the spiral staircase. He too now had a different uniform, in the same style as Touga's, black jacket and white pants. Holding his katana, he stared in bewilderment. "What happened to this place..." Then he saw Touga and Yumi. Everything stabbed fiercely into his heart, making him want to fight, the only way he could live with himself. "Is she—?"
Akio smiled. "Yes. Mayumiare is the new Rose Bride."
"Mayumiare...?" Then Kyouichi pointed the sword at Touga. "I knew it! 'Stay out of this,' huh? You won't keep me from the power of eternity!"
"She is not the Rose Bride!" said Touga.
"Don't try to play me for a fool any more! This time, I'll have the Power of Dios!"
Touga looked helplessly at Yumi, indicating that she had to prepare for another duel.
"NO! Please, don't fight!" cried Yumi. The searing pain lanced into her, but now that she knew what it was, she fought it. "I will not—allow this—I will not..." She fell, grimacing, into Touga's arms, and shouted, "I will not allow it!"
"Yumi!"
She squeezed her eyes shut against tears of pain. Light flashed behind her eyes. Just as she was about to lose consciousness, it stopped. She stood up weakly, her breath labored.
"What is this?" demanded Kyouichi.
You're far too stubborn to be a Rose Bride, but I'll indulge you for now, said the amused voice of Akio in her head. If you cannot bear to see your favorite lovers locked in battle, there is one other path that might suit you better.
As he said it a long, narrow pathway leading to a huge ornate door appeared between the paulownia trees at one end of the Arena. Now, let your rival sleep.
Yumi knew what he meant. It was the Rose Bride's magic. She left Touga's side and walked over to Kyouichi. Touga said her name nervously, and Kyouichi watched her with his head cocked, waiting to see what she would do.
If she hadn't become the Rose Bride, it might have made her feel sluttish. She stood tall and softly put her lips to Kyouichi's. He got a look of shock before he vanished.
"What!?" yelled Touga.
"Let us see what path the Rose Bride will take," said Akio, and turned to the pathway.
"What's going on? Yumi, what are you doing?"
She stood in front of Touga once more, eyes down and hands clasped in the manner of her station. "We must follow him."
"Why?"
Again she doubled over with pain, making a strangled sound, but soon she recovered.
"That's why," Akio said without turning back. He began walking the narrow path that had no visible means of support.
Touga glared, nearly shaking with anger. His arm around Yumi's waist, they followed. They walked silently through the sky for time out of mind.
Mists parted, revealing that the great door was to the castle, colossal and shining. Touga, holding Yumi to him, gazed up at it in awe, anger and everything else forgotten. Truth, destiny, eternity, revolution—all the power was here.
Akio stood in front of the door, facing them. "Now, give her the Sword of Dios."
Yumi intoned the spell again, and, knowing that it would cause her pain if he disobeyed, Touga drew the sword from her. It floated in the air before she grasped it herself.
"Open the door." Akio moved aside.
Yumi swung the sword but once, and there was a creaking sound as of a huge lock being released, then the doors swung open. Myriad gates clinked and opened behind the doors, and a blinding brightness shone out.
"What's happening?" cried Touga, shielding his eyes. She turned to him, just as mystified.
Let him sleep, Akio commanded.
If you dare harm him... Yumi left the thought unfinished.
The mental voice laughed. I wouldn't dare.
The light began to fade, and she touched Touga's face and kissed him. He vanished, but she knew he was only inside the castle. She walked through the doors, dwarfed by what must be a grand hall, and Akio followed close behind her. The room seemed to have no ceiling, it was so immense. Bluish light, like moonlight, shone from above, and through stained glass windows with the rose motif. Disjointed architectural structures stood oddly around, as if finding themselves there by accident, and chains looped around and criss-crossed from them like a bizarre spiderweb. Caught in the center of the tangle of chains was a person, but Yumi wasn't looking at that. She had dropped the Sword of Dios with a clang and run in dismay to the open coffin full of red roses, where Touga lay.
He was only sleeping, and in fact, he was beautiful like that. It was a morbid beauty, to be sure, but still... She knelt beside him, stroking his hair. Akio stood beside her, holding the Sword of Dios with its residual paulownia flower.
"That scared me," she complained.
"Sorry," Akio said, probably not seriously. "This place has a thing with coffins, if you hadn't noticed."
"Or you do. What is this all about?"
"I'm making you a proposal. You don't have to take it, but I think you'll want to. They're too caught up in the duels; they'll fight for the Rose Bride all over again. You wanted a different path, so I'm offering you one. If you choose this way, he can be yours and yours alone."
"What?" Hope flared in her heart, avaricious hope, more like greed. She narrowed her eyes. "What's the catch? What's in this for you?"
"There's no 'catch.' All I ask for in return is your power."
"My power?"
"Yes. The power that gives you strength when you're angry and lets you cause explosions to defend him. The power that comes from the mystery of your origin. Give that to me, and I can grant all of your dreams."
Yumi exhaled skeptically. "Don't you have plenty of power like that?"
"Tenjou Utena stole most of it. You can restore it."
"I see." Her hand was clutching Touga's, but Akio took her other hand, indicating she should get to her feet. He led her to the tangle of chains. Suspended there was Kyouichi, eyes dark and unaware, no more conscious than a sleepwalker. She stared, her eyebrows drawn.
He held out the sword, hilt toward her. She gasped and backed away.
"No! Are you mad!? I can't—!"
"You won't kill him," said Akio. "This is how it works. You'll erase his past, erase him from everyone's memory. He'll wake up at the other end of the country, never having gone to Ohtori Academy, never having met Touga, as far as anyone knows. Give me your power, and I can even fix it so that Touga's feelings are turned to you."
"So I'll be the one he can't forgive!?" she cried.
"Of course not. We can erase that part as well. No, you'll simply have his love."
The yearning that took hold of her, in a soul that wasn't supposed to feel any more, was enough to make her shudder. In her deepest hidden heart, the most human part of her, that was what she wanted, more than she wanted her next breath. Touga, all to myself. Touga, mine...
If...if he loved her...then that would be his happiness...
But he already had someone. How selfish would she be? How human?
For that pure love, the altruistic longing for another's happiness, that was the stuff of fairy tales. It did not exist by itself. She was no pure- hearted angel, she was human, and human beings could not subsist on that purity any more than on pure water alone. It was, after all, killing her. A human needed to be loved in return.
To feel that infinite bursting joy, and have it be true! To have him turn to her with eyes not ice blue but burning as if full of stars, his voice speaking those words she always tried to deny wanting to hear! To laugh together, or maybe cry; to go to college and live together and perhaps even end up with too-cute children with hair the color of crimson dawn, to look at beautiful things together forever...to be his happiness...
Tears of terrible longing fell down her cheeks.
To escape that numb blackness of her destiny, and into eternal happiness.
And why would End Of The World let her do that? "You won't do it," she spat. "You can't. How can I be the Rose Bride then?"
"Let me have your power, and I will, for as you know I am bound by my word. It's true, you will no longer be the Rose Bride. I see now that you cannot play the part, since at the core of your being is love for a duellist." He looked pointedly at the flower stuck on the sword. "No, you'll be...the Paulownia Bride."
"If I am not the Rose Bride, what reason will you have to keep my condition!?"
"Oh, I will. You'll still be significant as the Paulownia Bride. You'll be obliged to carry out anything else I ask of you."
"Like what, give you my firstborn child, Rumplestiltskin?"
He smiled. "I couldn't ask that much of you. You're barren, Mayumiare."
She blushed angrily. How come he knew a thing like that, which she didn't know about herself?
"Well, that could be a temporary condition. Even I can't see the future. But you...can choose it."
She could not believe in this possibility. She'd spent too much time denying it. And she could not believe that good could come of anything done by End Of The World.
This was completely wrong. It was like trying to get rid of a headache by banging her head on the wall and then stopping. Most likely, it wouldn't work too well. How did he come up with such a dumb idea? She just couldn't do it...
She was in Touga's arms suddenly, and he lifted her face and kissed her with passion, that melting mind-numbing kiss that always smothered her rational side—weak to begin with.
This new path, it didn't matter if it was right. It was...her own happiness. Weren't human beings supposed to fight for their own happiness? She should be fighting for nothing more than to be by his side and in his heart, and to hell with everyone else.
His kiss ended and then he stood beside her, holding a bunch of dandelions with their spiky leaves for her. But his eyes were as dull as Kyouichi's; he was still under the spell. Akio had only called him to do that to kill her resistance.
"Believe me," said Akio, "I can do this for you. Your powers are that rich. If I go back on my word, of course, the power will return to you."
She closed her eyes, trying to see where this path would lead. Humanity...would make her inhuman. How? How, if she truly loved him, could she be this selfish?
"Love is selfish, Mayumiare." She opened her eyes, facing her "rival." She took her Sword of Dios.
This wasn't just for herself. This was the only path with a chance of Touga's happiness. He and Kyouichi would never forgive each other. They would go on like that forever, loving and hating all at the same time, fighting and seducing, those two people who hurt each other, to the end of time. No matter how much she begged them, no matter how many times she sold her soul. She was the one with the strength to love him. She would be his happiness.
She held the sword in both hands, aiming it for the one caught in the tangle of chains. She would not be killing him. She would only be setting him free from a destiny he was unable to face.
A destiny...that was not hers.
The moonlit dojo came back again. It was all warped, and cruel...but someday...
Someday...
That was beauty. That was truth. For her to be his happiness would be a lie. Akio would erase it from her memory too, but here, at the crossroads, she knew.
Her destiny was to defend the dream that would kill her.
There was one alternate path—one true path. She turned the sword on herself.
"NO!" Akio stretched his hand toward her, flinging all of his remaining power into wrenching the sword away. But it didn't even waver. It was still her own sword, and she had her own power.
Light sparked along the Sword of Dios and it transformed back into the sword of her heart, the Paulownia Sword. Like a shamed samurai, she plunged it into her body with all her strength. She made a cry at once of pain and triumph.
"You FOOL!" shouted Akio, his voice echoing thunderously in the empty hall. Still he tried to pull her back, to undo what she'd done to herself, though he knew it was no use. As she doubled over, blood beginning to stain her white gown where the blade protruded from her back, bright shapes appeared and unfurled from her shoulder blades. Great radiant wings stretched out with a flurry of shining feathers, lifting her for a moment, her face turned up again and her arms open as though to receive the benefaction of heaven. The castle crumbled around them, falling to insubstantial pieces and leaving them once more in the Arena. Now, towering metal structures held electric lines that crossed and hummed with energy high above, and the bells chimed with deeper reverberations than ever.
The expression on Akio's face changed from furious shock to furious awe. The spell on Touga and Kyouichi broke, and they too stared.
The unseen watchers all bowed in reverence. "A goddess!" the cry rang out. "She is a goddess!" They had to hide their eyes from the blinding brightness of her soul.
"Yumi...?" Touga whispered.
The wings dissolved, the bright feathers floating down and out and away. Yumi too floated slowly to the ground, where she stood for a moment, her face still turned skyward with eyes closed and a look of utter serenity. And the sword through her body.
Touga screamed her name, a harsh sound of raw grief, as he ran to her and she fell into his arms. Kyouichi flinched from the sound of it.
He knew better than to take the sword out of her; it would only leave the wound gaping open; but how he wanted to get rid of it... "Yumi, no... No. Why?" His voice broke. "Yumi, why?"
Kyouichi turned away and started back down the spiral stairs. He couldn't watch someone die, not even an annoying blow-up doll, and especially not in Touga's arms.
Touga fell to his knees, holding her. She tried not to grimace. She hadn't thought it would hurt so much; she'd already been dealing with gut-wrenching agony today. But this was different. This was...death.
Dying, in the arms of the one she loved. She put her hand to his face, gazing on him with final tenderness. He was so beautiful...
"I love you..." She coughed.
"Don't leave. Please." He clutched her hand against his cheek. Tears were gathering in his eyes. "Yumi, please!"
"I'm sorry... Touga, don't. Don't be sad. If it makes you sad, don't remember me at all. We knew it had to be this way. It's alright. I was not born in your world, and I cannot stay..."
"No! That isn't true! You're better at living in this world than anyone I've known!"
"Dandelions don't bloom for very long..."
"Stop it! Don't leave!"
"I won't leave..." She took a shuddering breath, her voice faint. "I might disappear, but truly, I'll never leave you. Because I want you to find again what you lost. It's still there..." She coughed again, convulsing with pain, blood trickling from the corner of her death-pale lips.
"Yumi, no!" He hunched over her, wracked with guilt and grief, his tears falling onto her face. "I love you! I love you!" Koi shiteru—in that moment, it was true. In her last moment he felt all the desperate longing she wanted.
He was...crying?
Weakly, she smiled, a smile of bliss and regret and all her true feelings. With her last strength she pulled his face to hers and kissed his cheek softly with a little lick, tasting his tears. Her vision was fading, seeming to grow at once lighter and darker.
He was so impossibly beautiful. This was how whe would have wanted her last sight with human eyes to be.
A sob broke from him. She put her fingers over his lips, and then her hand fell, and her eyes closed, leaving a sweet look on her face as if she were only dreaming. She felt a vast rushing, like a wave crashing over her head. It bore her away from her body, and the sound of his weeping that pierced into her soul was lost in the great current.
Miteki came to in a hospital cot. Before she opened her eyes, she knew two things:
One, Miki was beside her.
Two, Yumi needed miso soup.
"Oh, Kodama-san! Are you awake?"
"Yes..." The pain in her head was still almost blinding, but the concern on Miki's face did enough to dull it.
"Something exploded in the Tower, and you...you got sick and fainted. It was really strange. There was a huge sound, and all the electricity went off, and people were passing out..."
"Oh...I remember." The feeling of incredible, unstoppable fury with huge words that ripped through her mind. The shock of excruciating agony from her clairvoyant senses that made her fall to the ground, clutching her head, before she lost her lunch and then her consciousness.
"Are you okay now?"
Sitting up, she smiled weakly. "My head hurts, but I'm fine. Did you...did you find me?"
"Juri-sempai saw you. She was afraid you were going to choke. It was so weird, like an earthquake, but not..."
"It wasn't an earthquake. It was Yumi-chan."
Miki's eyes widened. "What? How do you know that?"
"Sometimes, I just know things..."
"Really? Like...ESP?"
"Yeah, like that."
"What did she do?"
"Something we can't understand." Miteki tried to stand, but her sense of balance protested. "She needs my help..."
"Oh, careful!" Miki caught her, and they both blushed.
"I'm okay..."
"No, let me..."
He supported her up and out with his arm around her, and then he even stuck with her long enough to help make the miso soup. It was like the old adage of a blessing rising from a calamity.
"Yumi, please eat. Just a little bit. Please."
It was almost dark out. She had fallen asleep after the bath; now Touga had made some noodles for dinner and was trying to get her to ingest at least one bite. But of course, she was refusing to, staring at the yellow flowers in a glass on the center of the table.
"My dandelions are wilting," she whispered, scarcely audible. It was her first attempt at words for some time.
"We could go out and pick fresh ones. We could keep some, and make dandelion salad too. It's really good, much better than noodles for this hot weather anyway. Do you want to try it?"
"Dandelion Bride," she said mistily. "No roses for this one. Dandelion Bride."
He shivered. Did she have to talk like that? "Please, won't you eat a little? You won't sleep well if you're hungry."
She nudged her plastic cup again. He obliged and refilled it with iced barley tea. At least she wasn't making herself go thirsty—this was her fourth glass.
A knock on the door sounded. "Yumi-chan? I brought you miso soup," called her friend's gentle voice.
Yumi got a look of panic and curled up like a pillbug, hiding her face in her knees. Touga went to answer the door, touching her head as he passed, trying to reassure her.
He blocked Miteki's entry, taking the warm container. He wondered again if he should leave Yumi to the care of her best friend, a girl and therefore less of a threat, but realized that he cared too much to leave her to anyone else. "Thank you. She's very sick."
The accusation in her grey eyes disappeared when she saw how pale and distraught he was. "What happened?" she whispered.
He shook his head with pained regret, indicating that it was too dreadful to even speak of in Yumi's own hearing. But Miteki's look was anxious and demanding, and he had to tell her so that she might understand. He took Miteki back out to the hall and closed the door silently. He saw that Miki was there too, waiting out of sight from whoever answered the door, but just as concerned.
Touga couldn't look at them as he said it. It hurt in his soul, as though speaking of it to others would make the nightmare more real. "The Trustee Chairman...he tried to...to violate her."
Miteki's hands flew to her mouth as she made a gasp of utter horror. Miki, equally wide-eyed, moved closer to her as if to protect her from the wickedness of it.
"What—what can we do?" said Miki.
"Nothing. Nothing but try to return her to herself." He turned with sorrow and remorse in his movements. They could see his anger with himself for failing to protect her enough.
"Thank you...for telling me," Miteki managed quietly, since he didn't have to tell her and it had clearly taken some effort for him to do so.
Touga shook his head again, hating to be the bearer of such news, and returned to Yumi's room.
"I didn't believe her..." Miteki murmured. "I didn't believe that the thing she was fighting could be that evil..." She was shaking as they walked away.
Miki took her hand. "Are you like me? ...That you never think of how evil the world can be, and it always shocks you?"
Miteki looked down, blushing. "I ought to be used to it."
Inside, Yumi was still curled up, convinced in even that short a time that he had seized the opportunity to run away from her. There was no reason why he shouldn't. It was better for him, that he should leave her to the darkness. Soon, her creator would come for her and take her back to his world of numbing pleasure and fake stars...
"Yumi, stop!" She had taken the bandage from her hand and was biting on it again. It was proving very difficult to keep her from doing that. Keeping down the worried scolding that came to his lips, Touga dressed the wound once more.
The memory came back of hitting Kyouichi's hand with a kendo stick, and then tying the strip of fabric...he'd done it on purpose for an excuse to touch, to give an apologetic kiss... He'd always been that way. White butterflies hadn't changed so much. It only brought out the cruelty that was in him from the beginning.
Yumi knew it, and she kept insisting on loving him. No part of a person can ever be so stupid as one's heart.
"Here, your friend brought miso soup," he said, and poured it into a bowl for her. It was still steaming. "I bet she knew that's what you really wanted to eat."
She eyed it suspiciously and then sniffed it, as cats do before they deign to eat whatever their fool human has provided them. But she was only ascertaining that it was indeed Teki-chan's unsurpassable miso soup. It was, and it smelled good. Teki-chan's miso soup was not darkness. Perhaps if she ate enough of Teki-chan's miso soup, it would begin to combat the darkness inside her. Teki-chan did not make miso soup for Mayumiare the Rose Bride. Teki-chan made miso soup for Yumi the weird girl who made her think of dandelions.
She ate all of it.
Then she was keeling over with fatigue. Her mind had no energy left to torment her.
Touga moved to put her in bed, but when they got close to it she squeaked and backed away, terrified. Apparently she couldn't stand to be near a bed yet, not even her own, not even to sleep.
It was practically too hot to sleep on a bed anyway. He grabbed her pillow and put it on the sofa, then opened the windows to let in the night air and turned off the lights except for a low lamp. She curled up on her side when she lay down on the sofa, but soon stretched out because it was too hot not to do so. He wanted to hold her, but she was still shying away from him, though it seemed she was unable to move without him leading her. So he sat down on the floor, leaning his back against the sofa, his head near hers.
Her eyes remained disconsolately open. She was so tired, despite the nap before, but somehow not sleepy.
He went to turn off the lamp but instead picked up the library book of ancient poetry sitting beside it. She liked to hear him reading to her, especially these millennium-old things. He opened the book at random and read the poems aloud until they both drifted off.
Sleep was a bad idea. There was no escape in dreams. End Of The World had her on the sofa in the planetarium, but the backdrop of the fake stars was that red which he was not allowed to have.
"I'm dreaming," she told him. "You lost. I'm dreaming, and you aren't here."
"Oh, I am here," he murmured. "I'm in your mind. I've been waiting for you to fall into the dreaming state, to take you in your sleep. It doesn't work quite as good as reality, of course, but it'll do for now. And invading your dreams has its own advantages. He can't save you here." He smiled dangerously, and she realized that she was naked.
She tried to conjure some clothes; she knew she was dreaming, so it should have worked; but it didn't.
"You may be dreaming," he said, "but this is not your dream. It's mine." He drew her close and kissed her, and no matter how she tried to will herself away, into some other shape, nothing helped. "You...are mine."
Touga! she screamed with all of her soul. It should have summoned his dream-form to save her, but all that happened was that the ceiling disappeared to show the night sky, and the stars danced into pictures of him.
Akio laughed. "A light show to protect you? How about one to tease you, then?" He waved his hand toward the sky, and the stars showed Touga and Kyouichi tangled together, that scene from the dojo.
She watched, for even in dreams of star- pictures she was unable to look away, and she could not escape him as he touched her, invading her...arousing her.
She was supposed to destroy him. She knew she had the power, at least enough to get him out of her mind, if she could remember that fury. But the spell of dream lust was too strong. She fell to the dark enchantment...
"In dreams, it's even easier for you to lose yourself. The command of desire can take over your subconscious completely, without any interference from thought or emotion...just as I take over you, Mayumiare..."
It was true. There was no fighting it. She had to come and nothing else mattered. Nothing. He did all sorts of things to her, playing with her, bringing her to the very edge, sensation that was too intense to be purely subconscious imaginings. "Touga—!" she cried, one last attempt, but really it was a cry of pleasure.
"Still crying his name? Hm, no, I can't have that." He looked into her eyes, even though they were squeezed shut, because in dreams that didn't matter. "Say my name, or I won't satisfy you. Say it."
If she were awake there might have been a choice. But here there was none.
"A...ki...o..."
"Good girl."
Finally, he took her. She heard her dream-voice moaning and yelling, wordlessly, at the pleasure that erased everything and seemed to never end. He did not cry out or moan as he came inside her, inside a dream, but only closed his eyes and smiled, almost a laugh.
She woke. Why did she have to wake up? Why couldn't she sleep the eternal sleep after something like that?
She was covered in cold sweat, except for the dampness between her legs, which was another thing entirely. There could not possibly be anything on the planet as disgusting as herself. She felt diseased in every cell of her revolting, treacherous body.
Her sense of balance was gone. She fell off the sofa, onto Touga who was asleep sitting up against it.
"Ow! What the—? Yumi!? Are you okay?"
She gagged. Realizing she was about to be sick, he got her to the bathroom in her dorm, which was more of what they called a water closet, a compact sink and mirror and toilet. She doubled over and retched violently into the latter as he waited outside, eyebrows drawn with worry.
Partially digested miso soup was particularly vile, and the awful taste prompted her gut to reject everything else she'd consumed the previous day. She gargled mouthwash and staggered back out, letting him sit her down on the sofa, only to find in the next few minutes that there was more to come up. Tears and snot ran down her face, and she trembled. It was nearly half an hour before her stomach decided it was done, and by then he had to hold her up. She was sure she was dying. He handed her mouthwash and a towel to wipe her face, and when he let her down on the sofa, she collapsed, shaking and sniffling.
Her eyes looked wild and glazed. He put a hand to her forehead—though her face had a sickly pallor, she was far too hot. He didn't need a thermometer to know she was in danger. He turned the lights on and began looking for aspirin, though he wasn't sure she'd be able to keep it down. By the time he found it she was sitting at the table pulling apart the wilting dandelions.
"Yumi, you have a bad fever," he said, taking her hand. "You need to lie down."
"Dandelion salad!" she shouted, throwing the little petals at him. She tried to stand and went reeling.
This time he got her to lie down on her bed, from where she was less likely to fall, and held a cold cloth to her face. She didn't seem to recognize him. He got her to take some aspirin, but before it worked she went thoroughly delirious. She chanted all of the kana syllables in order and then started raving, strange names and nonsense.
"Athanynth? Athanynth, I don't like it any more. I can't do it. Lyly'efandwr was right. Even Tur'raskevevry was right. Let's go home. Where's Endrei'anna? Tell her to open the door. Endrei'anna, open the door. Endrei'anna, open the door! Open the door! Endrei'anna! Open the door, Endrei'anna! Open the door!"
Her voice was so urgent, so anguished, but there was nothing he could do for her besides put more cold water on the cloth for her forehead, and hold her hand although she couldn't feel it.
"Yumi? Yumi, can you see us?" cried Athanynth.
"She can't really," said Johriishang. "She's just sick."
"Open the door, Endrei'anna! Open the door!"
"Why can't we take her back!" Tears glowed on Athanynth's face. "Poor Yumi! Look what they've done to her!"
"She accepted all of the risks," said Lyly'efandwr. "But she must not have been one of us to begin with. No being of our race has ever become human with a soul."
"Such strange stories," Johriishang murmured. "The seeking of the gods is so strange. Every story must be different. How do we know that this has never happened before?"
"I know it. It has never happened before, and it will never happen again." Lyly'efandwr looked down at the delirious Yumi. "We have the ability to walk between worlds, not to become part of them."
"This world has to be the strangest," said Athanynth. "One of the goddesses wasn't even human. She was from yet another race of beings. And so is her brother the demon."
"They are of a race even we do not know," Lyly'efandwr agreed. "Anthy-sama has a soul; yet she and her brother could always see us. Even now she could be travelling between worlds to search for her Utena-sama. Maybe Tur'raskevevry and Endrei'anna are trying to help as well as watching."
Johriishang looked at the strewn dandelion petals. "And we didn't even see that Anthy-sama wasn't human. I wonder why that is."
"Because she and her brother are powerful, and they did not want us to see it. They must have the talent of glamour," said Lyly'efandwr. "Morning Star is not a demon, however. He is what they call a Darkling."
"Darklings are humans," Athanynth argued.
"Not always. It is a term for any fallen being."
"Is he the one called Lucifer, like Mayumiare and her friend the oracle said?" Johriishang wondered.
"Don't call her that," Athanynth scolded him. "That's what Morning Star calls her now. Her name is Yumi."
"Lucifer, the first Darkling, from the legend called Paradise Lost..." Lyly'efandwr cocked her head. "It could be. Human legends always have greater meaning than they seem to. Perhaps Yumi will uncover that mystery as well."
"How many more mysteries can she take?" Athanynth whispered.
Fever was a defense mechanism. It was designed to rid the body of infection, but could also do the same for the mind. Yumi woke in the morning with her head utterly clear.
It wasn't that she didn't remember everything. She knew her body had become sick to try and get the darkness out. She knew the darkness inside her remained. But now she could face herself with a grim determination to take things as they came. The illness was gone, and she was starving. The sunlight seemed somehow different, newer.
She remembered fragments of her delirium. Unseen watchers, three of those once her friends, had been there. She couldn't recall their names, or what they looked like to fevered human sight; their voices had come to her as distant nonsense fading in and out. Probably no more than a hallucination. Yet it was so strange to even have thought that she saw them...
Touga was curled up like a kitten on the end of her bed. It didn't look very comfortable, however. He must have been ready to sleep anywhere after her fever went down, not wanting to leave her so that she woke up alone, but wary of frightening her by getting too close.
She wanted to wake him with a touch, to run her fingers through his soft hair, to kiss him. But she did not deserve any such luxury. He was too beautiful for her to touch.
"I'm hungry," she announced instead. She did feel she could put a sushi bar out of business for the day.
"Hnn?" He stirred, stretching, and then the situation came back to him in reverse chronological order. He was taking care of Yumi. Yumi had been sick. Yumi got sick because he hadn't done enough to protect her... He sat up, asking anxiously how she felt.
"Hungry," she repeated, but her voice seemed to have receded far away again, small and quiet.
"Oh, good, that means you're better. I'll make you something..."
"I want to go downtown." She wanted to go to a restaurant and be waited on and eat until they kicked her out.
He touched her forehead, peering into her eyes, which were clear and lucid. To all appearances, she was fine. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. I want to go off campus."
It was probably much healthier for her to walk around, and especially to be wanting to, he thought. And wouldn't it be better for her to get off campus permanently? The place was being so cruel to her... "We'll go downtown, then. But I'll have to clean up first." After he'd begun spending so much time with her, telling her so many things, he had a stash of clothes here. He needed a shower, though, so any girls who had the same idea might get some bonus eye candy.
"I'll wait." She curled up resolutely, hugging her knees. The cicadas were buzzing again, and she could listen to them.
Her army of cicadas.
Her soul was still torn in half. She was not sure of her name. But right now the struggle was deep within her, away from the surface. She was able to think only of how terribly hungry she was and all the expensive food she wanted to eat.
He returned quickly, with only a towel around his waist, trying to grab clothes quickly so he could dress in the water closet and not threaten her. But he was enticing like that, and the crazy girl with funny ears wanted to jump him, like she would have once upon a time.
You mustn't touch him, said the prisoner of the roses. You must not! You will poison him!
The struggle came out. Like the devil and the angel on one's shoulders in corny cartoons.
Just a little. Let me be close to him. Just a little. I can't live without being close to him.
She moved toward him, her eyes big and unreadable. She seemed to be asking him something.
He waited. Was she going to kiss him? How would he know how far to go without hurting her more?
But she paused with her face close to his, just close enough to feel his breath, as close as she dared. She shut her eyes, her hands moving to almost touch him, wanting to so badly.
He froze, having no idea what to do for her.
Then a great shudder went through her and she turned away. He took her hand, trying to let her know that she was not tainted as her mind told her, not too unclean for him.
If anything she was still too pure for him, but she'd never believe it.
Slowly she turned back to him again, and her eyes were just clear, there wasn't any expression that he could see. Carefully, as though seeing how far she could go without the world blowing up, she put her fingertips to his face, touching his eyelids, his lips, and then, almost reluctantly, travelling down to his chest and...
She didn't seem amorous. It was like she wanted to make sure he was real or something. But men were not built to resist this. His towel fell off. If she kept moving downward, he'd have to...
She pressed herself up against him. She wasn't trying to be erotic, but she was succeeding. "Yumi—please—"
No! You cannot touch him! You will pull him into darkness! Walk away from him forever, and let him escape!
That is what End Of The World wants you to think! End Of The World hurt him, and so anything that he plans is what you must fight to the fullest! For him! Disobey, for him!
Her hands wanted to touch him, her lips wanted to kiss him, regardless of how many pieces her soul split into. She brushed his eyes closed gently with her fingers, and put her lips to his so softly, no more than dandelion fluff.
He needed more than that, but he clasped her hands and gave her the same kind of softness, like a first kiss. Except for the part that he was naked and getting hard. If he'd known she would be like this, he would have made the shower cold.
Every moment she touched him was defiance to End Of The World—who would punish her later, surely, but all she had was now.
She wanted to tell Touga to claim her. But she was afraid...afraid of desire...
"Yumi, I need you. Don't...don't do this unless you want me..."
She kissed him with passion for a moment and then broke away. She had no idea what she was doing. He saw her lips move in the word, "Sorry..."
He took a moment to think unsexy thoughts, dressing quickly, and then told her, "No. Don't apologize. Everything's too confused for you to know what you want. But when you see, then I'll try to take you to wherever you want to be. That's what I want you to know."
She clutched at herself. Her voice, as was becoming usual, was barely audible. "Why do you feel that way for me?"
"Because the brightness inside you...is so beautiful."
She turned to him and fell against him, letting him hold her.
Get away! Oh, get away, get away! You will hurt him, you will poison him!
No. This is truth.
Her stomach rumbled. "I want to go...to a really good restaurant."
He had to laugh. "Then we'll find the best one."
They spent the day downtown, and when they got back after dark Touga thought she looked completely worn out, though she insisted on staying awake to read. She hadn't turned a page for several minutes, and her head was nodding.
"Yumi, aren't you tired?"
She shook her head. "I can't sleep."
"I'm sure you can. We walked around a lot today."
"No, you don't understand." She got a look of total fear. "I can't sleep."
"Nothing will happen," he said, taking her hand. How well he knew... "I'm right here."
"You can't stop it..." She curled up and her voice fell even farther, the whisper of a child's fear of the dark. "He's in my dreams..."
He couldn't keep from enfolding her tightly in his arms, furious with himself. Why couldn't he protect her? Every time he thought he could save her, something worse happened. He tried to shield her from that final secret; from End Of The World; but there was no way to stop the cruelty of her own mind after he failed...
"I wish I knew how to protect you. I want to find the way to protect you. I wish—I wish I could become all the things you need me to be."
Shaking, she looked into his urgent cobalt eyes, slowly brushing the soft crimson away from his face. He meant everything he said to her now.
Now, when it was too late.
She was always seeking her own doom. She wanted her heart broken; why else would she give up an eternal vale of dreams for one who left only tears in his wake? She wanted darkness within her; why else would she step willingly into the planetarium?
How can he protect someone like that? she thought. How can he even try to protect someone who always ends up cursing herself?
There was no way to protect her. But the fact that he wanted to was enough.
Still she had the last shining thread, unbreakable, unending.
So to spite the darkness, to prove that she would not be ruled by it, she kissed him intently, twining her arms around him. The torment would follow later. But later was later.
He was almost startled, though she didn't have to tell him why she was being that way. She wanted belong to him, to know for herself that she was his and only his. He was afraid she'd hate herself for it in the morning, and he wanted her to belong to herself. But if this was what he could do for her...
If he could protect her from candlelit ink-velvet nightmares with a lover's embrace...
If she found her happiness in his arms, he would hold her.
They went to the bed, her bed, where only he had ever been with her, where only he was allowed. Someone hit the stereo controls and Ayumi played very softly.
"...I saw the end of an era with my own eyes.
And in truth, I actually do know
That it's my turn next.
You'll find me, won't you?
I'm betting that you'll find me..."
He made love to her with a tenderness that no one would have expected from him.
She loved him, and the thing about her was she could get rid of everything else and still have herself, there in that one truth. All the darkness of black holes and skies of exploded stars meant nothing beside it. Only this was true.
And she cried quietly in his arms, because at the center of everything she still had that pure, beautiful, bittersweet happiness; and she knew in her heart that this was the last time.
She fell asleep in that power, and no one could invade her dreams. But she woke soon, before dawn, knowing what she had to do.
There was one path forward.
I hate leaving him. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
But I must. This is the path. This is how I must go.
He does not wake. I'm afraid he will. Maybe I'm hoping he will. But he doesn't.
I hate it.
I'm weeping again as I look at him in my bed, his arms still curled around where I should be. And he is beautiful. I kiss his hair, breathing deep his scent, holding the moment in my heart. This is what they call "blissful suffering."
I didn't say it last night, so I leave him a note on my pillow. Flowery high-winded crap can't tell you how I feel. I love you. I feel like collapsing in tears, but I get dressed in my standard-issue uniform. I wipe my eyes and walk outside. The sky is a metallic grey-blue, pale silver in the east, where the morning star gleams.
This is the path. This is how I will free him.
I am no longer afraid of you, Morning Star.
But as it happens, I am not the only one out and about at this hour.
Some things are too coincidental to be called coincidence, I think. That's why they have words like "fate" and "destiny" and "karma."
Kyouichi and Yumi ended up on the bridge at the same time. They couldn't pull off completely ignoring each other, but she waited for him to speak.
"What the hell are you doing?" he said as though the sky would fall if he cared.
She had no need to lie. "Good morning to you, too. I'm going to the Rose Gate. And yourself?"
Neglecting to answer, he looked at her suspiciously. She had a pensive expression, tears on her face. "What's with you? Why are you in that after you were so proud of yourself in that Student Council uniform?"
"That uniform got ripped." Strangely, she could answer his interrogations with complete calm.
"So why do you look like you're on your way to a funeral?"
"It's my own."
He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Finally decided to give up on this life?"
"No, I wouldn't put it that way."
"And how would you put it?"
"An ink-black destiny."
He laughed viciously. "That's a good one. I'll burn some incense for you."
"How kind of you. And what are you doing out so early?"
"Cleaning the dojo, of course. You fool." It should have been obvious, with him in kendo dress.
They walked in silence for a few moments, until Yumi said rather humbly, "If I may, I'd like to ask you a last favor, as I go to meet my fate."
"What's that?" he asked, slightly amused.
"Please forgive him."
He turned and slapped her to the ground.
She got to her knees, eyes downcast, holding her bruised cheek. It struck him that she looked just like Anthy.
But, unlike Anthy, Yumi stood up again.
"You little slut," he spat. "Don't you presume to know what's going on."
"Don't you think I wish I didn't?"
"Exactly what is it you think you know?" Kyouichi narrowed his eyes.
She replied with the song lyrics. "Unable to do anything, unable to forgive, the two people hurting each other..."
"Stupid bitch. You've lost it." He continued walking. "Hurry on to your 'ink-black destiny.' I don't need to hear any more of your babbling."
"But you will, because we happen to be still headed in the same direction."
"Why the hell are you going to the Rose Gate?"
"If you really want to know, you'll have to follow me," she said, without knowing why.
"What, and act as second to your honorable harakiri? No thanks. You're on your own, girly."
"Good. You'd be in danger if you came along."
He didn't look at her, but she could see she was making him curious. "Oh? Why's that?"
"You think I'm going to kill myself. It's like that. But not my body. I'm going to give up my soul."
"What are you talking about?"
She looked up at him as though expecting him to understand. "I'm going to the castle in the sky."
He made a skeptical sound. "You have lost it."
She was quiet as they passed through the main gate, then the entrance lobby. Just before he turned toward the dojo, she said, "If nothing else, please don't forget what I asked you. I'm selling my soul for it." She bowed in farewell.
Why didn't she feel any resentment toward him? Was she really that far gone already? She couldn't really understand her lack of cruelty.
"Not much of a deal," he snapped, wanting to hit her again, but deciding she wasn't even worth the trouble. He walked away. He could hear her singing to herself.
"Unable to do anything, unable to forgive, there will be those people who hurt each other..."
She really was ruthless, he thought. Good riddance.
Yumi walked across campus and into the forest, where it was still black as night. Thick ivy and branches covered the Rose Gate, but the foliage untangled and withdrew on its own as she approached. It looked considerably more ancient than it had during the duels, lending it an even more mysterious grandeur.
She thought of him fast asleep in her bed. This was the only path, and she would walk it for him.
The sun rose behind her. She grasped the handle.
All of the duellists still sleeping woke with a gasp.
Touga sat up. There was no one beside him.
"Yumi?"
He looked around her room. It was utterly silent and empty.
His elbow crumpled paper, and he picked up the note on the pillow. Dread struck into him.
"Yumi, no!—"
The great spiralling staircase was cracked and crumbling. She got into the gondola and it began its slow, rumbling ascent. Strangely, her uniform changed again to the dueling outfit.
When she reached the top she saw that the edges of the Arena had all crumbled away, and pieces were fallen from the stone structures where the unseen watchers would be. The great, wide sky was the grey of dawn. But the gondola kept ascending, farther, and farther, toward the Castle of Eternity.
The eroded Arena dwindled below her. And below that, it seemed that far, far down, perhaps kilometers away, there was a landscape, but not a familiar one. An old one, a magical one, a fairy-tale landscape. Another dimension?
But it changed as her ascent continued. She could see forests disappear for fields, rivers fill in, towns and cities spring up. All of human history was passing before her eyes, far below.
The landscape arrived at the present, and the gondola stopped. The tallest spire of the upsidedown castle was just within her reach, a bright orb at the end.
She stared up at the castle, so close. It was huge, and shining, and silent. It had a strange silence that was almost, somehow, a sound, as though the sound it made was too vast for any ears to comprehend. As though it drew its song back into itself, like light to a black hole.
Not in the deepest recesses of her mind did it occur to her to turn back. Fate compelled her inexorably forward. She stretched both arms up and touched the bright orb.
A horrid, agonizing shock went into her. She screamed. She felt a transformation, and then the pain left. She opened her eyes in a room the size of a cathedral with immensely tall windows, and she knew, without looking, that she wore the dress of a Rose Bride.
Yumi's dress had a slightly different design, however—a more alluring one, as she was no timid and modest Himemiya Anthy. It was dazzling white with black and red trim, the top more ornate and more provocative, the skirt open in the front to show the sheer, sparkling red underskirt. Her tiara was carved with those same filigree designs, flower buds and snowflakes, as the blade of the sword which Touga had drawn from her.
She knew she was inside the castle. This place seemed to have even less substance than the Arena. It felt like a dream, but different, since this was not the inside of her own mind.
The footsteps came.
Ohtori Akio, in full regalia, bowed to her, the courtly bow of a fairy-tale prince. "So you've come."
"Did it hurt?" she asked. "Did it hurt, when Anthy left you?"
She meant the words to sting, but if they did, he showed no sign of it. "Of course," he said simply.
"She left because you destroyed the one she loved." Here, in the castle, it came back to her. She could remember Tenjou Utena now.
"I didn't destroy Tenjou Utena. I don't even know what happened to her." He got his amused look. "And what might your point be?"
"My point is, I have one condition. I know creatures like you are bound by a promise."
He smiled. "Very well. You've proven yourself a force to be reckoned with. Tell me your condition."
"Touga and Kyouichi. Let them go. Free them, and never go near him again. Don't try to play literal-word games with me either; you know what I mean."
He wouldn't tell her that it was not his power that kept them hating each other. She'd have to see that for herself. Anyway the important part was the part she'd blown up the Tower for. "Yes, I understand. And you, Mayumiare, are bound by your destiny as the new Rose Bride."
"Swear it."
"To your condition, I swear." He held out his hand as though asking her to dance.
She had no fear left in her, though she felt a trickle of revulsion as she gave him her hand. "Then I am the Rose Bride."
"Done."
Her ring snapped into pieces like plastic and fell, clinking on the polished stone floor.
Churchbells pealed wildly. Rose petals of every imaginable color swirled about like elegant confetti. He pulled her into that romantic embrace and, as he kissed her, a numbing ink-black tranquillity descended over her soul.
It was the tranquillity of his possession. End Of The World had her soul, and she would never have to feel anything again.
Touga burst into the dojo and grabbed a katana from a display rack.
"What the hell?" Kyouichi exclaimed, busy cleaning. He knew it was something to do with that annoying blow-up doll.
Touga didn't even look at him, but said as he nearly ran with the sword, "Stay out of it."
Oh? Touga was telling him to stay out of it? Well that just meant he'd have to get into it, now didn't it.
Yumi had told him to stay away because he'd be in danger. Touga seemed to be saying the same. Conclusion: Kyouichi had to see what was going on.
He liked to clean the dojo at sunrise. No one else came around; no one could intrude on the only place he found a semblance of peace. But it could wait. The dojo would still be here tomorrow. Once interrupted, he was unable to get back into that peace.
He took another katana, unsheathing it a little to check the blade. It looked passable. He thought of taking the short sword as well, though, since Yumi had sounded like she'd need it.
An enormous white rosebud appeared in the center of the Arena. Slowly its petals unfolded, and the bells rang out, and all of the shimmering watchers joined their voices in a huge, tuneless, wordless song. The rose blossomed, and out of the center stepped Akio and Yumi, End Of The World and the Rose Bride, small as pixies against it.
The Arena was transformed. Around it, beautiful structures of bright stone towered and laced and interlocked, covered with carvings and vines, and with watchers who perched on every ledge, singing. At the edges, paulownia trees thrived in full bloom, and the Arena itself was no longer drab grey stone but a glowing ivory color. It was, more than ever, a place of enchantment.
"The phoenix is said to roost in paulownia trees," Akio remarked.
"Never again," snapped the new Rose Bride.
He laughed. "Yes, of course. That era is over." He took Yumi in his arms as if to carry her over the bridal threshold. There was an elaborate arch with vines of red and white roses through which he walked out of the great rose, and then arch and flower dematerialized.
"Unhand her." The point of a katana touched Akio's throat.
He set Yumi down and faced Touga, to whom the new Arena had given a new uniform. It was black, flamboyant and militaristic, with red trim and white cuffs and white cords and plenty of brass ornaments. His hair seemed even deeper red; his expression was angry and valiant.
Seeing him, so terribly handsome like that, she had the very cliché feeling of falling in love all over again. But she was far away from him now. She could not be near him, only gaze from afar. She did not want him to see her this way. The Rose Bride wanted to hide in the arms of Akio, who would calm the shame and agony of leaving the one she loved to sell her soul.
"Is this a challenge, Seitokaichou?" asked Akio.
"I'll pay you no such attention. The duels are over. Go back to where you came from."
Akio laughed, the loud contemptuous laugh of a villain. "Would that I could. What do you think I've been trying to do?"
Touga withdrew the sword and seized Yumi protectively. "Yumi, what are you doing here?"
She pushed away, shaking her head, unable to meet his eyes. "I am Mayumiare, the Rose Bride."
His eyes grew almost fearful. "What?"
"You heard her," said Akio, placing his arm around her. "If you would have her, then fight for her."
"I won't 'have' her. But I will keep her away from you." Touga took stance, wishing he had it in him to just kill Akio.
"Touga, don't!" cried Yumi. "Just leave! Please, get away!"
"Now, Mayumiare," Akio told her, "if he wishes to duel for you, it's your duty to prepare us."
"You won't fight him with my sword," she said, and immediately doubled over with a sickening agony, the same she'd felt when she tried to take the ring from her finger that time. Akio caught her, amused.
"Yumi!" Touga yelled.
"You'll get used to that," said Akio. "The Rose Bride can't disobey me, you see. Anyway, of course, the Sword of Dios is inside you now. Prepare us."
When her defiance left, so did the pain, like shock therapy. She walked to a point between the two duellists, and two roses appeared between her hands. Eyes downcast, she attached the red rose to Touga's chest. It hurt to be near him. He shouldn't want anything to do with her.
He caught her hand, trying to look into her eyes, but she flinched as though struck and walked away.
Ssh, poor Mayumiare, Akio murmured into her mind, numbing her soul. I'll make it go away. I'll make it stop hurting.
Yes. This was who she belonged to. Her place was in the dark of a planetarium, where anything that hurt her had no more substance than fake stars. She attached the purple rose to Akio's chest.
"Rose of the noble castle, Power of Dios that sleeps within me, heed your master and come forth..."
The light gathered between her hands, at her solar plexus, and Akio caught her around the waist and took the Sword of Dios. "Give me the power to revolutionize the world!"
At least, it was almost the Sword of Dios. It was just like the Sword of Dios, except that where the guard should have been, a paulownia flower was obstinately stuck. Very curious.
"Hmm." He looked at the sword and flicked the flower with his other hand, trying to see if it would come off. It sparked at him, like a jolt of static electricity, as Yumi cried out and clutched her head. He tried it again and she cried out louder.
"Stop it!" shouted Touga, though he didn't understand what was hurting her.
Akio saw that he could get rid of the flower design and make it the true Sword of Dios, but it would kill this Rose Bride and put her power out of his reach. He couldn't very well remove the core of her being and expect her to live, after all.
He turned to his challenger. "So take the Rose Bride, if you can."
"She is not the Rose Bride!" Touga charged.
Once again she could hear the strange music clearly, the lyrics of the watchers who sang during the duels. But the style was different for the new Rose Bride, perhaps more romantic and less enigmatic. "Ah, build your skyscrapers higher!
It's Sisyphus and his rock; all will tumble down.
Ah, build your computers faster!
It's Icarus and his wings; all will melt and crash.
What drives civilization? Is it the end of innocence?"
They fought, and it occurred to Yumi that this must be what every girl dreamed of, to have handsome princes sword-fighting over her. To be a princess in a rose garden, in a shining castle. So strange that a dream in the hearts of all girls would in truth be the darkest destiny, which one had to sell her soul to meet.
And this was her destiny, to watch the one she loved fighting the one who possessed her now, in this beautiful place of magic, this dimension of dark sorcery. She found herself hoping that Touga would lose. If she was to belong to him it must be by choice, not by duty. And how could he and the one he loved reconcile with another Rose Bride between them? "The glittering cities full of
Everyday gods.
Cry for this psychosomatic revolution:
Capitalism, agnosticism, all are the same.
Neon lights shine brighter than stars." It hurt. Every time the swords clashed, it hurt. She couldn't tell if it was because her sword was being used against him, or because the Rose Bride always felt it when the Sword of Dios struck something.
Her sword should not be fighting him. But he had to lose. He must lose and walk away.
There was no telling who would win. Touga fought with anger, however, and Akio fought with none.
Why did he have to fight? Shouldn't there be some new generation of duellists, people she didn't care about? This was too dramatic. It was beautiful to watch, and terrifying.
He still did not know that he was fighting the man who had violated him... "Hail your new prophets!
Your salarymen and office ladies,
Your tech support and pop idols.
Heed the exhortation!
Beauty is the be-all; bed is the end-all.
Dreams are poison; love is a myth.
This is the reborn truth." So that she wouldn't think too deeply, she made herself become caught up in watching them, like an opera, like a swashbuckler movie—watching like one of the unseen audience she began as. Every one of Touga's movements was so elegant, so refined with skill, even through his anger. He never faltered, a black and red blur, too perfect to be real. The Shining Prince.
And Akio was just as elegant, with his grace born of darkness, fighting effortlessly with the devil's luck. "Do you really want to be engaged to her?" he taunted. "She won't stop being the Rose Bride if you win her, you know. You should have learned that from Utena and the last Rose Bride."
"Of course she won't stop being the Rose Bride," Touga retorted, "because she never started."
"Oh, but she did. I'm not sure she appreciates your denial, either. She did it for you. She wants you to leave her for the one you love."
Stricken, Touga faltered then, just for that moment. Akio smiled as he saw the opening, and lunged. "The glittering cities full of
Everyday gods.
Cry for this post-modernist destiny:
Seduction, salvation, all are the same.
In a world too civilized to live, there are no princes!
Only everyday gods,
Lost children and everyday gods." "TOUGA!" Yumi screamed, despite herself. She felt power blast out of her.
The Sword of Dios shattered. Akio held only the hilt. Intrigued, he let Touga make the final strike.
Purple rose petals floated away. Touga, grim in victory, put his arm around Yumi defensively. Since he didn't need it any more, the katana disappeared along with the pieces of her Sword of Dios. He held her tightly, and she had the feeling of rightness, of belonging, but she knew it was more the Rose Bride's than her own feeling.
"Why are you doing this? This won't make you happy."
"I've told you before, Touga-sama. I want your happiness more than my own."
He looked at her in consternation. She heard her words, too, and got a look of fear. They were spoken formally, as the Rose Bride to the Engaged. Coming from her, they were completely wrong.
"Yumi, this doesn't make me happy either! I don't want you to be like this!"
"I am not part of your happiness. I am only the Rose Bride." She wasn't controlling her own words. She meant what she said, but they didn't come out the way she wanted. She wanted to raise her voice at him, to tell him to get away, but she was engaged to him now, and had no power to do so.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
"Yumi, stop! This isn't you! Stop it!"
Why? Why did you lose to him!? she shouted in her mind at End Of The World. You have to let them go! You're bound by your word!
Foolish girl, you broke the Sword of Dios. You always want to belong to him, he replied. You seemed to want it so badly I thought you should let you have your choice, even though the Rose Bride isn't supposed to have one. But this isn't over yet. We have another contender.
Kyouichi appeared, having walked up the spiral staircase. He too now had a different uniform, in the same style as Touga's, black jacket and white pants. Holding his katana, he stared in bewilderment. "What happened to this place..." Then he saw Touga and Yumi. Everything stabbed fiercely into his heart, making him want to fight, the only way he could live with himself. "Is she—?"
Akio smiled. "Yes. Mayumiare is the new Rose Bride."
"Mayumiare...?" Then Kyouichi pointed the sword at Touga. "I knew it! 'Stay out of this,' huh? You won't keep me from the power of eternity!"
"She is not the Rose Bride!" said Touga.
"Don't try to play me for a fool any more! This time, I'll have the Power of Dios!"
Touga looked helplessly at Yumi, indicating that she had to prepare for another duel.
"NO! Please, don't fight!" cried Yumi. The searing pain lanced into her, but now that she knew what it was, she fought it. "I will not—allow this—I will not..." She fell, grimacing, into Touga's arms, and shouted, "I will not allow it!"
"Yumi!"
She squeezed her eyes shut against tears of pain. Light flashed behind her eyes. Just as she was about to lose consciousness, it stopped. She stood up weakly, her breath labored.
"What is this?" demanded Kyouichi.
You're far too stubborn to be a Rose Bride, but I'll indulge you for now, said the amused voice of Akio in her head. If you cannot bear to see your favorite lovers locked in battle, there is one other path that might suit you better.
As he said it a long, narrow pathway leading to a huge ornate door appeared between the paulownia trees at one end of the Arena. Now, let your rival sleep.
Yumi knew what he meant. It was the Rose Bride's magic. She left Touga's side and walked over to Kyouichi. Touga said her name nervously, and Kyouichi watched her with his head cocked, waiting to see what she would do.
If she hadn't become the Rose Bride, it might have made her feel sluttish. She stood tall and softly put her lips to Kyouichi's. He got a look of shock before he vanished.
"What!?" yelled Touga.
"Let us see what path the Rose Bride will take," said Akio, and turned to the pathway.
"What's going on? Yumi, what are you doing?"
She stood in front of Touga once more, eyes down and hands clasped in the manner of her station. "We must follow him."
"Why?"
Again she doubled over with pain, making a strangled sound, but soon she recovered.
"That's why," Akio said without turning back. He began walking the narrow path that had no visible means of support.
Touga glared, nearly shaking with anger. His arm around Yumi's waist, they followed. They walked silently through the sky for time out of mind.
Mists parted, revealing that the great door was to the castle, colossal and shining. Touga, holding Yumi to him, gazed up at it in awe, anger and everything else forgotten. Truth, destiny, eternity, revolution—all the power was here.
Akio stood in front of the door, facing them. "Now, give her the Sword of Dios."
Yumi intoned the spell again, and, knowing that it would cause her pain if he disobeyed, Touga drew the sword from her. It floated in the air before she grasped it herself.
"Open the door." Akio moved aside.
Yumi swung the sword but once, and there was a creaking sound as of a huge lock being released, then the doors swung open. Myriad gates clinked and opened behind the doors, and a blinding brightness shone out.
"What's happening?" cried Touga, shielding his eyes. She turned to him, just as mystified.
Let him sleep, Akio commanded.
If you dare harm him... Yumi left the thought unfinished.
The mental voice laughed. I wouldn't dare.
The light began to fade, and she touched Touga's face and kissed him. He vanished, but she knew he was only inside the castle. She walked through the doors, dwarfed by what must be a grand hall, and Akio followed close behind her. The room seemed to have no ceiling, it was so immense. Bluish light, like moonlight, shone from above, and through stained glass windows with the rose motif. Disjointed architectural structures stood oddly around, as if finding themselves there by accident, and chains looped around and criss-crossed from them like a bizarre spiderweb. Caught in the center of the tangle of chains was a person, but Yumi wasn't looking at that. She had dropped the Sword of Dios with a clang and run in dismay to the open coffin full of red roses, where Touga lay.
He was only sleeping, and in fact, he was beautiful like that. It was a morbid beauty, to be sure, but still... She knelt beside him, stroking his hair. Akio stood beside her, holding the Sword of Dios with its residual paulownia flower.
"That scared me," she complained.
"Sorry," Akio said, probably not seriously. "This place has a thing with coffins, if you hadn't noticed."
"Or you do. What is this all about?"
"I'm making you a proposal. You don't have to take it, but I think you'll want to. They're too caught up in the duels; they'll fight for the Rose Bride all over again. You wanted a different path, so I'm offering you one. If you choose this way, he can be yours and yours alone."
"What?" Hope flared in her heart, avaricious hope, more like greed. She narrowed her eyes. "What's the catch? What's in this for you?"
"There's no 'catch.' All I ask for in return is your power."
"My power?"
"Yes. The power that gives you strength when you're angry and lets you cause explosions to defend him. The power that comes from the mystery of your origin. Give that to me, and I can grant all of your dreams."
Yumi exhaled skeptically. "Don't you have plenty of power like that?"
"Tenjou Utena stole most of it. You can restore it."
"I see." Her hand was clutching Touga's, but Akio took her other hand, indicating she should get to her feet. He led her to the tangle of chains. Suspended there was Kyouichi, eyes dark and unaware, no more conscious than a sleepwalker. She stared, her eyebrows drawn.
He held out the sword, hilt toward her. She gasped and backed away.
"No! Are you mad!? I can't—!"
"You won't kill him," said Akio. "This is how it works. You'll erase his past, erase him from everyone's memory. He'll wake up at the other end of the country, never having gone to Ohtori Academy, never having met Touga, as far as anyone knows. Give me your power, and I can even fix it so that Touga's feelings are turned to you."
"So I'll be the one he can't forgive!?" she cried.
"Of course not. We can erase that part as well. No, you'll simply have his love."
The yearning that took hold of her, in a soul that wasn't supposed to feel any more, was enough to make her shudder. In her deepest hidden heart, the most human part of her, that was what she wanted, more than she wanted her next breath. Touga, all to myself. Touga, mine...
If...if he loved her...then that would be his happiness...
But he already had someone. How selfish would she be? How human?
For that pure love, the altruistic longing for another's happiness, that was the stuff of fairy tales. It did not exist by itself. She was no pure- hearted angel, she was human, and human beings could not subsist on that purity any more than on pure water alone. It was, after all, killing her. A human needed to be loved in return.
To feel that infinite bursting joy, and have it be true! To have him turn to her with eyes not ice blue but burning as if full of stars, his voice speaking those words she always tried to deny wanting to hear! To laugh together, or maybe cry; to go to college and live together and perhaps even end up with too-cute children with hair the color of crimson dawn, to look at beautiful things together forever...to be his happiness...
Tears of terrible longing fell down her cheeks.
To escape that numb blackness of her destiny, and into eternal happiness.
And why would End Of The World let her do that? "You won't do it," she spat. "You can't. How can I be the Rose Bride then?"
"Let me have your power, and I will, for as you know I am bound by my word. It's true, you will no longer be the Rose Bride. I see now that you cannot play the part, since at the core of your being is love for a duellist." He looked pointedly at the flower stuck on the sword. "No, you'll be...the Paulownia Bride."
"If I am not the Rose Bride, what reason will you have to keep my condition!?"
"Oh, I will. You'll still be significant as the Paulownia Bride. You'll be obliged to carry out anything else I ask of you."
"Like what, give you my firstborn child, Rumplestiltskin?"
He smiled. "I couldn't ask that much of you. You're barren, Mayumiare."
She blushed angrily. How come he knew a thing like that, which she didn't know about herself?
"Well, that could be a temporary condition. Even I can't see the future. But you...can choose it."
She could not believe in this possibility. She'd spent too much time denying it. And she could not believe that good could come of anything done by End Of The World.
This was completely wrong. It was like trying to get rid of a headache by banging her head on the wall and then stopping. Most likely, it wouldn't work too well. How did he come up with such a dumb idea? She just couldn't do it...
She was in Touga's arms suddenly, and he lifted her face and kissed her with passion, that melting mind-numbing kiss that always smothered her rational side—weak to begin with.
This new path, it didn't matter if it was right. It was...her own happiness. Weren't human beings supposed to fight for their own happiness? She should be fighting for nothing more than to be by his side and in his heart, and to hell with everyone else.
His kiss ended and then he stood beside her, holding a bunch of dandelions with their spiky leaves for her. But his eyes were as dull as Kyouichi's; he was still under the spell. Akio had only called him to do that to kill her resistance.
"Believe me," said Akio, "I can do this for you. Your powers are that rich. If I go back on my word, of course, the power will return to you."
She closed her eyes, trying to see where this path would lead. Humanity...would make her inhuman. How? How, if she truly loved him, could she be this selfish?
"Love is selfish, Mayumiare." She opened her eyes, facing her "rival." She took her Sword of Dios.
This wasn't just for herself. This was the only path with a chance of Touga's happiness. He and Kyouichi would never forgive each other. They would go on like that forever, loving and hating all at the same time, fighting and seducing, those two people who hurt each other, to the end of time. No matter how much she begged them, no matter how many times she sold her soul. She was the one with the strength to love him. She would be his happiness.
She held the sword in both hands, aiming it for the one caught in the tangle of chains. She would not be killing him. She would only be setting him free from a destiny he was unable to face.
A destiny...that was not hers.
The moonlit dojo came back again. It was all warped, and cruel...but someday...
Someday...
That was beauty. That was truth. For her to be his happiness would be a lie. Akio would erase it from her memory too, but here, at the crossroads, she knew.
Her destiny was to defend the dream that would kill her.
There was one alternate path—one true path. She turned the sword on herself.
"NO!" Akio stretched his hand toward her, flinging all of his remaining power into wrenching the sword away. But it didn't even waver. It was still her own sword, and she had her own power.
Light sparked along the Sword of Dios and it transformed back into the sword of her heart, the Paulownia Sword. Like a shamed samurai, she plunged it into her body with all her strength. She made a cry at once of pain and triumph.
"You FOOL!" shouted Akio, his voice echoing thunderously in the empty hall. Still he tried to pull her back, to undo what she'd done to herself, though he knew it was no use. As she doubled over, blood beginning to stain her white gown where the blade protruded from her back, bright shapes appeared and unfurled from her shoulder blades. Great radiant wings stretched out with a flurry of shining feathers, lifting her for a moment, her face turned up again and her arms open as though to receive the benefaction of heaven. The castle crumbled around them, falling to insubstantial pieces and leaving them once more in the Arena. Now, towering metal structures held electric lines that crossed and hummed with energy high above, and the bells chimed with deeper reverberations than ever.
The expression on Akio's face changed from furious shock to furious awe. The spell on Touga and Kyouichi broke, and they too stared.
The unseen watchers all bowed in reverence. "A goddess!" the cry rang out. "She is a goddess!" They had to hide their eyes from the blinding brightness of her soul.
"Yumi...?" Touga whispered.
The wings dissolved, the bright feathers floating down and out and away. Yumi too floated slowly to the ground, where she stood for a moment, her face still turned skyward with eyes closed and a look of utter serenity. And the sword through her body.
Touga screamed her name, a harsh sound of raw grief, as he ran to her and she fell into his arms. Kyouichi flinched from the sound of it.
He knew better than to take the sword out of her; it would only leave the wound gaping open; but how he wanted to get rid of it... "Yumi, no... No. Why?" His voice broke. "Yumi, why?"
Kyouichi turned away and started back down the spiral stairs. He couldn't watch someone die, not even an annoying blow-up doll, and especially not in Touga's arms.
Touga fell to his knees, holding her. She tried not to grimace. She hadn't thought it would hurt so much; she'd already been dealing with gut-wrenching agony today. But this was different. This was...death.
Dying, in the arms of the one she loved. She put her hand to his face, gazing on him with final tenderness. He was so beautiful...
"I love you..." She coughed.
"Don't leave. Please." He clutched her hand against his cheek. Tears were gathering in his eyes. "Yumi, please!"
"I'm sorry... Touga, don't. Don't be sad. If it makes you sad, don't remember me at all. We knew it had to be this way. It's alright. I was not born in your world, and I cannot stay..."
"No! That isn't true! You're better at living in this world than anyone I've known!"
"Dandelions don't bloom for very long..."
"Stop it! Don't leave!"
"I won't leave..." She took a shuddering breath, her voice faint. "I might disappear, but truly, I'll never leave you. Because I want you to find again what you lost. It's still there..." She coughed again, convulsing with pain, blood trickling from the corner of her death-pale lips.
"Yumi, no!" He hunched over her, wracked with guilt and grief, his tears falling onto her face. "I love you! I love you!" Koi shiteru—in that moment, it was true. In her last moment he felt all the desperate longing she wanted.
He was...crying?
Weakly, she smiled, a smile of bliss and regret and all her true feelings. With her last strength she pulled his face to hers and kissed his cheek softly with a little lick, tasting his tears. Her vision was fading, seeming to grow at once lighter and darker.
He was so impossibly beautiful. This was how whe would have wanted her last sight with human eyes to be.
A sob broke from him. She put her fingers over his lips, and then her hand fell, and her eyes closed, leaving a sweet look on her face as if she were only dreaming. She felt a vast rushing, like a wave crashing over her head. It bore her away from her body, and the sound of his weeping that pierced into her soul was lost in the great current.
