Chapter II: Regrets
"Oh my goodness! Congratulations Yukari!"
"I'm so proud of you girl!"
"I knew you could do it!"
Yukari Takeba responded to the compliments with non-committal thankses and unenthusiastic hugs. She ought to be happy, but she could only feel a bitter sadness. It took her all her effort to fake a smile. Happy times are nothing if you have nobody to share them with.
She had topped the level.
So what?
She approached the board and ran her finger over her name.
That's where your name should be…
She had made her pact with others to live a fulfilling life. To live her life the way he would have wanted her to. To move on. That was why she had gone to cram school, why spent nights mugging when she should have been sleeping. And it had paid off.
But what for?
She could not envision a happy future, a blissful life without him in it. She had been living a sham up till now. And she would continue to do so for the rest of her long life.
After he died, she had cried non-stop before finally collapsing in exhaustion. Every time she stopped, she would inevitably think about him, and how she had let him go, and then the crying would start again.
Then she tried forgetting. She moved out of the dorm into a cheap hotel, resorted to going to cram school. She may have continued living this way, if not for March 31st.
The others had been there for her when she had been hit hardest, and they had helped her face her grief and come to terms with it. She had emerged from the Abyss a stronger woman. But like she had said kneeling on the arena floor, there was no way everything could ever be okay. There was no way she could forget all about him, or stop caring.
Some nights she still dreamt that he would come back and she would give herself entirely to him. He was only the second man she had ever truly loved, and now both those men were dead. One in an experiment gone horribly wrong, the other facing the consequences of that experiment.
There would be no others. Yes, she had reconciled with her mom – he had helped her through that, but she would never betray her love like she had. There wouldn't be any shallow boyfriends, cancelled engagements after cancelled engagements, jumping from one man's arms to another.
She wondered if he knew the extent to which she had loved him before he died. True, they had dated. They had shared some memorable moments together. But she told him exactly how she felt. But she never said "I love you."
Of course, she could say that one year had been just too short a time, throwing in the nights they spent fighting in Tartarus, stupid exams and all. But in the end, she knew that she only had herself to blame.
How could she have let him slip away?
Teenage naïveté? Along with the rest, she had stubbornly believed that Nyx could somehow be defeated, that they would somehow pull through the madness unscathed and intact.
And pull through they had, and every day she woke up to a world without him.
Maybe she had been afraid. Afraid of being betrayed. Afraid of being hurt. Afraid to love.
But he was everything a girl could ever wish for. Handsome, mature, strong and independent, smart and understanding. Always listening, and fiercely loyal to the very end. He was perfect.
He had been persistent, flatteringly so, but not to the point of being mulish. And she had resisted, cooking up lame excuses about how archery club kept her really busy, or how someone might start a rumor. When she finally relented and let him in, before she knew it he was gone.
Why is it that we only treasure what we have after it is gone?
The touch of a hand on her shoulder snapped Yukari out of her reverie and spun her around. The palm and fingers were metallic, but she could feel the warmth emanating from within.
"You still miss him, don't you?"
Yukari tried to avoid the incisive blue eyes belonging to the blonde who stood in front of her, but it was no use. There was no hiding anything from Aigis.
Aigis had changed remarkably since the incident. She had done tremendous work on her voice, and apart from occasional minor inflexions she could easily pass of as a living human being, which she was. All the finer movements, mannerisms, idiosyncrasies were there, and in addition she had developed an uncanny ability to read people's minds. Sort of, anyways.
Now the anti-shadow-weapon-turned-human-being proceeded to give Yukari hug not unlike the one she had received at Yakushima. Yukari had to resist the urge to cry.
"I miss him."
