Chapter III: Call it love
He had once been the centre of her world. Everything revolved around him, and everything she had done either to protect him or to make him happy.
His smile made her complete.
At the start, no one could understand her subconscious desire – no – need to be physically close to him, to protect him. Not even her, and least of all him.
But he never minded her; in fact he actually liked the attention. He had taken the time to understand her, treated her not as a robot but as a living thing with feelings of her own. And in the process, he incurred the wrath of the others, not least of all Yukari.
Since the incident, they had become the best of friends, spending free time together and sharing the same room, but she still felt guilty about that time she had broken into his room, and the way she had snatched him away for most of the last month he had been alive. She had taken time he could have chosen to spend with anybody else, and every time they had left the class together after school she could not help but notice the look on Yukari's face that was half jealousy and half sadness. In that time, he had helped her understand her feelings for him and the relationship between them, but most importantly she learnt what meant to live.
She wondered she could call it love but she immediately shook her head. No, she was getting way ahead of herself here. She was just beginning to grasp the complexities of human emotion, and she was farthest away from understanding the most complex one of all – love.
It was inconceivable that love could flourish between a human being and a machine. She could have been acting out of a hidden guilt lasting ten years since the day she sealed Death unto him. She had let him touch her heart, literally, but that perhaps would be as close as it could possibly get.
Yet, she had inherited his most valuable possession – the power of the Wild Card. Proof that maybe they had been more than just friends. And she felt guilty about that too. How it had happened was still a mystery to all of them.
Maybe it was because she had been the closest to him in his last moments, the one who had held him in her lap as he spoke his last words.
Maybe it was because his mark had been burnt onto her Papillion Heart; indelible, permanent proof of their special relationship.
Maybe it was because she had been acting on a subconscious instinct to protect her loved ones. She had watched helplessly as Metis slammed Ken-kun against the wall and proceeded to lift him by the collar before finishing him off. She vaguely remembered catching a glimpse of his face, then a powerful jolt of energy shooting upward through her body, causing her to shoot back to her feet. The next thing she knew Athena had transfigured into Orpheus, and just as quickly she found herself in the Velvet Room.
That had been the day when her dreams had suddenly stopped. They had all coped with his death in different ways.
Some like Junpei and Ken became withdrawn and introverted. The senpais Mitsuru and Akihiko had taken it pretty well, or at least did a great job pretending that they did. Yukari locked herself away and kept everyone awake at night with her incoherent sobs. Nobody blamed her.
As for herself, she had failed in her mission to protect him. It should have been her who had sacrificed herself. She was a mere robot, built for the sole purpose of defeating Shadows, while he had been a human being with a bright future ahead of him. She had tried to lose the humanity they – him included – had given her to avoid the pain of losing him and the thought of never seeing him again. She tried returning to being just an anti-Shadow weapon again. She gradually ate less and ate less, slept less and less until the dreams stopped, and the incident happened.
That day, they transversed the Abyss of Time, witnessed each other's awakenings, destroyed the imposter, fought against one another for ownership of the True Key, and kicked the collective ass of humanity's despair. That day, she rediscovered her humanity. That day, she discovered her answer to life.
So she now lived not for the sake of living, but to keep for promise of protecting him; to stop people yearning for Nyx to return. And she lived for the people he had cared most about, the people who came closest to being his family. And so she was there for Yukari, as she held her in her arms.
"I miss him too."
