Written for the LJ-community 30 shards.
Character(s): Souta
Summary: Bits and pieces of a forgotten character's struggle to accept his sister's life and death.
Shard: #21 - Hope
Title: Crying
Author: Ziggimaguagua
Word count: 150
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365 days after his sister is reported missing she is declared dead.
It is all formalities, he knows, but that doesn't stop him from crying. He tries not to, he's a big boy, nine years old, but when Mama starts he can't hold it back. They both cry when they leave that terrible office with the apologetic ladies to go to the undertaker where they cry again.
They have a tombstone made for her and they place it at the cemetery beside her ancestors, and they all cry, all the gathered Higurashis, all the friends from school, all the neighbours.
At the brief, closed ceremony, held at the well, her real grave, as Jii-san says a final prayer for her soul to reach the afterlife unharmed and at peace, he feels the last bit of hope he had flutter and disappear and the tears stop.
They don't matter anymore.