Chapter 15: Cherry Blossoms / Epilogue

Sakura flowers rained down from the heavens above them in droves, like little floating pink umbrellas. They littered the ground in a carpet of rose-colored petals, and it gave Yumi the strange sensation that the cherry blossom trees were congratulating them, throwing sweet-smelling confetti on their heads.

In the distance, she could just barely see Maria-sama gazing at the students who walked past. Today, Yumi thought, that statue seemed to have a smile on her face. Then again, it may have just been the celebratory mood that gave her that impression, the relief that came with the first few days of the new term.

"So you made it through your first year unscathed," a smooth voice murmured from below. As was often the case, Sei seemed to read her mind—or perhaps it was that she was now well-practiced at deciphering Yumi's many expressions with an exacting precision.

Yumi looked down at her lap and smiled and continued to pick cherry blossom petals out of Sei's hair. It was futile though—the flowers kept coming, one after the other, a bittersweet gift from the garden that surrounded them. They were lazing about directly underneath a tree, Yumi's back against the rough bark of the trunk, Sei lying in a carefree heap on a bed of grass and cherry petals with her head in Yumi's lap. The sun was bathing them in patches of white light that filtered through the branches.

Yumi picked up a nearby cherry blossom from the ground and deliberately placed it on Sei's nose. "I wouldn't say I'm unscathed, exactly," Yumi replied in a joking tone, "but yes, you're right, I made it. You made it, too." She chuckled a little when she saw that Sei was too lazy to lift her arm and brush the petal off her face, and instead was attempting to blow it off unsuccessfully.

But then Yumi's smile faded a bit. "You're a fourth year university student now," Yumi mumbled.

She still wasn't quite sure how she felt about it. The last couple of weeks of wrapping up the term and frying her brain with exams had indeed been a challenge, especially after all of the distractions and drama that had preceded it, but none of those things had been as uncomfortable as considering the reality that Sei would be leaving Lillian in less than a year—and for good.

"I don't know what I'll do when you're not here anymore, Sei-sama." This sensation of dread in her chest was very familiar. She remembered vividly that she had faced it years before, when Sei's graduation from Lillian Academy was imminent. While she had been relieved at the time to learn that Sei would be continuing her schooling just on the other side of the fence, now she felt like they had only been delaying the inevitable.

Sei seemed to realize what she was thinking before she even said it. She lifted a hand and pressed it to the side of Yumi's face. "Hey, I still have a whole year left. And even after that, I'll still be around town. I'm not moving abroad or anything."

"Your English is good. You could live anywhere you want."

"Right now, I want to live here—and anything other than right now isn't real, anyway. It would just be pointless speculation."

Sei lifted her head from Yumi's lap and shifted her weight onto her elbow. She was still stretched out lazily, but her face had moved a little closer and she had rolled into a very bright patch of sunlight that fell through a space in the branches.

Yumi was mildly astonished to find that she could see the ghost of a few freckles on Sei's face. She had never seen them before—but then a gust of wind picked up all of a sudden and blew the branches around and shifted the light, so after a moment they seemed to disappear like a mirage. She found it so strange that after years of staring at that face, she still did not seem to know it all that well.

But every new mystery and every new discovery that she made about Satou Sei was precious to her, in part because she wasn't sure how long they would be able to sit like this together. Yumi's breath hitched. She looked down at Sei, a flood of emotion filling her chest, a flood of gratitude.

She's right, Yumi thought. Right now, we're here, sitting together. Right now, I have a beautiful woman who endlessly delights me and endlessly frustrates me.

Some part of her could still hardly believe it. Only months before, she would never have suspected even for a second that the thread of life would have pulled them in that direction. For awhile, she had fought the urge to even define what they had—and she still thought that there was no way she could begin to label it—but the rest of the world slowly caught onto them and seemed hell-bent on definitions anyway. A few times now, in random hallways, she had overheard someone referring to her as "Satou-san's girlfriend." Sei herself had not corrected any of them. Yumi, similarly, had quietly submitted to the title with amusement.

She wasn't sure what it meant to be Satou Sei's girlfriend, but she was perfectly content making it up as she went along. This seemed to be Sei's strategy, too.

For awhile longer, they sat underneath the bath of cherry blossoms in silence, enjoying the presence of the moment, allowing themselves to do what typical lovers did. A few girls who passed by gave them knowing smiles, a kind of congratulations, Yumi thought.

There was one figure, though, that Yumi noticed at the corner of her eye. At first, she hardly paid any attention, preferring to concentrate on running her fingers down the silky threads of Sei's hair, but when she realized that the figure in the distance wasn't moving, she looked up.

Down the row of cherry blossoms, many meters away, far enough that she could only just make out her face, stood the short, skinny frame of a rather cute girl. She was wearing a flower in her ear-length hair and most of her body was swallowed up by a blue sweater that seemed too big for her. Her pink skirt matched the color of the blossoms.

She was standing awkwardly against the trunk of a sakura tree—not leaning, exactly, only pressing lightly against it, as if she were anticipating that she might need the support in some undefined future. Her hands were clasped bashfully in front of her. She was staring straight at Yumi.

"It looks like you have a visitor," Yumi whispered. She gave Sei a tentative smile. This, too, was something she wasn't quite sure how to feel about. She liked the girl—she really did—but there were only so many times that she was willing to watch her mess with Sei's emotions, even if unintentionally.

They had not seen or heard from Alice for weeks. This hadn't seemed to bother Sei at all, though. It appeared that she had let go of her expectations completely, had undergone some kind of transformation that she never explained. Yumi had been partly surprised, and partly not surprised at all to learn that Sei had proposed to Alice at the omiai. It was one of those crazy things that Sei had done on a whim that nonetheless made total sense.

And yet, from what she could see, Alice had not had the good sense to say yes. Perhaps Yumi only saw it that way because she herself couldn't imagine ever saying no to a marriage proposal from Satou Sei. If Sei had looked up and asked her that very minute, she would not have hesitated—she would have immediately accepted, doubts and all. She was more sure about it than she had been when Sachiko held up her rosary in front of Maria-sama so many years before.

"Mm?" Sei asked. But then she noticed the far-off direction of Yumi's gaze and she turned around to match it. To Yumi's surprise, a brief chuckle burst through Sei. "Ah, so there she is." She said this very flatly, as if she were expecting Alice to show up at some point, as if the girl had been very late for some important meeting.

"Did you have a date?" Yumi asked her.

"Oh, no, no. Not at all. I just figured we'd run into her eventually. Call it fate."

"You're too sure of yourself."

"Always."

Yumi gave her a wry smile and poked her in the shoulder. "What are you going to do, then? Talk to her? Ignore her?"

"Oh that's up to her," Sei said, laying her head back down on Yumi's lap. "There's only so much I can do. If she has come to me with her answer, then I'll hear it—but that's just it, she'll have to come to me now."

Yumi felt herself let go of some tension she hadn't realized she was holding in her body. Something about Sei's ever-present nonchalant attitude could relax her in seconds. She looked back down at Sei's face, studying the lines, letting her gaze wander from those bright and mischievous eyes to that insufferable smirk.

Not long after, Yumi thought to look up again, and sure enough, the girl had reappeared only a few trees away. She could see her face more clearly now. It was clouded with uncertainty, with nervous apprehension.

Yumi thought to herself that this was quite enough. She gave Sei a look, but Sei seemed to already know.

Without turning to face her or even moving at all, Sei called out, "You're wearing my sweater, Alice. It makes you look like a sad little blue bunny rabbit. Have you come all the way here to return it?"

Alice blushed.

Finally, Sei seemed to muster up the compassion to turn around. She shifted onto the front of her body and propped herself up on her folded elbows. "Come here."

Alice wordlessly took a few steps forward, then stopped. She was still at an uncomfortable speaking distance, but close enough that she couldn't easily hide from them anymore. This appeared to satisfy Sei enough that she rolled onto her feet, an array of moist petals sticking to the back of her shirt.

Yumi watched as Sei walked the last few paces forward and came to stand underneath one of the other nearby cherry blossom trees with Alice. For some strange reason, Yumi suddenly recalled something that her Onee-sama had told her weeks before: Relationships rarely happened between only two people at a time. The barriers were an illusion.

Sei could not simply walk underneath a neighboring sakura and leave Yumi behind, just as Sei could not sit unwaveringly underneath the tree with Yumi and ignore Alice's presence. All three of them were wandering openly in a vast garden, forever connected, always affecting each other.

Sei stood in front of Alice, her lanky figure hovering over the younger girl, shielding her a bit from the petals. Nonetheless, the cherry blossoms rained lightly on the both of them.

"I haven't come to return anything," Alice whispered, though Yumi was close enough to hear her clearly. "I don't want to give any of it back."

Sei stared at her with an enigmatic look that even Yumi could not decipher at first. "Then I take it you've decided," Sei said after a moment.

When Alice nodded, Sei took her hand. She led her down the last bit of the path until they were sharing the same shelter as Yumi. Yumi looked up to see Sei smiling down at her, her upper body framed by the sky and the branches above. She extended a hand towards Yumi as well. Without question or even a second of consideration, Yumi took it.

The initial jolt was jarring—it always was when it came to Sei—but Yumi was able to keep up the pace easily this time. She allowed Sei to pull her up and she tightened her grip on Sei's hand as the inevitable whistling of the wind began to play in her ears.

The world became a blur as they ran. Sei dashed through the maze of trees, weaved through thickets of bushes, stomped all over the cherry blossoms like she had lost all sense of respect—or perhaps she simply respected the petals too much to treat them with too much caution. They nearly slipped several times, but they kept running and Yumi's heart kept beating faster as she watched the lean muscles of Sei's back flexing with the effort and joy of freedom, with the balanced tension that came from pulling hard with both her hands.

Yumi looked to her left and found that someone else was running beside her. A bewildered girl in a blue sweater was similarly holding onto Sei's arm for dear life. Yumi laughed.

She had no idea where they were going, none at all. But deep inside, she knew that it hardly mattered. She would follow Satou Sei anywhere.

END of Metamorphosis

A/N:

Whooo! So I finished the story in a caffeine-fueled rage over the past few days. If you care for that sort of thing, stay tuned for entirely unnecessary author's notes that I will add to the end of the story, explaining a few things like what inspired the story, why I chose Sei/Yumi and Sei/Alice as pairings to explore, what some of the references to the Marimite novels are, and a bit more about the themes that are heavily explored in this story.

Thanks for going on this journey with me! As always, let me know what you think!