Once again, thank you all so much for your reviews! Always nice to know that someone has read what I have been writing and actually liked it.

Without further ado, let the chapter speak for itself.


4. Regret

"I still think you owe me and explanation."

So, it had all come to this.

This was a discussion Youko had never wanted to think about, the one she had feared the most for the past decade. Sei's face drenched in the pouring rain, her wet hair glued to her cheeks and her shoulders trembling… Youko could not stop the image drifting in front of her eyes, and she had to disbelievingly acknowledge that she still remembered everything in that scene as if it had been a picture eternally imprinted inside her head.

The raindrops had been falling almost horizontally, and Sei had been forced to slant her eyes to shield them. The light had illuminated Sei's face from an obscure angle, giving the usually so beautiful features a strangely ominous tinge. Youko could still vividly see how Sei had violently brushed her hair away from her face and the motion had been so full of frustration that only thinking about it constricted Youko's heart.

Yes, Youko definitely owed Sei some answers. But, how could one even begin to say such things aloud?

When Youko reminisced about the year following her graduation from Lillian, it was as if she had been watching an old movie through a foggy window panel. During those dreamy days when they had been living together in a cramped apartment filled with pictures of the Yamayurikai, everything had had a very surreal feel to it. And for the whole time, Youko had just somehow known that it all would be more or less temporary. However, Youko remembered well, and how painstakingly so.

She could remember that during those numerous evenings, when it had seemed that the whole universe had stopped revolving, they would simply sit at the opposite sides of their dining table and stare into each other's eyes and space out from the world. She remembered how every small detail in their lives had felt so special and sometimes even too magical to be true. They had been young, they had heard the promise of the world in their hearts and they had been ready and willing to chase whatever had been in their reach, even if their pursuit had taken them to the edge of the world.

"I'm sorry."

It was all Youko could manage, even though she knew those words could not convey even a fraction of all the feelings she had for Sei. Putting it so bluntly just made it sound abnormally banal and meaningless. When she began to think about it, she had no idea how was one supposed to make amends at all for deeds that had caused so much pain. Certainly no amount of words could have ever been enough. But, she had to say something, however futile it would be.

"I think in the deepest layers of my mind, I never stopped thinking about you", Youko continued, slowly at first, but her voice was becoming more steady with every word she spoke. "In the past, I had these fits when I would push myself to the brink of sanity by working like crazy, and when I was about to break apart, I would bury myself in coverlets and leaf through old photographs."

"And what would you see?"

Youko shook her head softly.

"Innocence, and I don't mean it in the narrow sense. To think that such a place once existed and still exists and we were actually a part of it... It is just so hard to believe, seeing where we are now."

"Well, you were the one who was obsessed with leaving Lillian, transferring so far away just because you didn't want anyone to rely on you", Sei snorted.

Youko flinched at Sei's words, and she saw a fleeting expression of pleasure on Sei's face.

Back then, she had been able to rationalize her choice not to continue in Lillian by the fact that other universities offered better employment prospects. Indeed, who would have opted for Lillian if the alternative was The University of Tokyo?

There was no sense in clinging on to something that would be lost one way or the other anyway, she had told herself, although her heart had protested fiercely. But as years passed, the justification lost more and more of its credibility.

"Do you have any regrets?" Sei asked.

Her voice was calm. To Youko, it sounded too calm, like the silence before a storm.

"If you had asked five years ago, my answer would have been a definite 'no', but to tell the truth, nowadays I am not so sure", Youko replied.

"So you are not completely heartless after all."

Despite Sei's modest words, her voice was trembling.

Youko sighed.

"I am glad if you think that way."

She did not anticipate Sei's palm that was flung towards her face, and this time, the blow reached its target.

Youko felt stinging pain in her cheek, but Sei's saddened, yet empty expression hurt Youko far more than the half-hearted slap.

"Sometimes I just wonder, what was it all for" Sei said sullenly.

Her whole cheerful posture was unravelling so rapidly that Youko was not sure if it ever had even been there. Yet Youko had witnessed Sei's consoling arms and caring eyes just yesterday, and the contrast made it all the more unsettling.

"It's just that it is so incomprehensible, all that meaningless jargon about moving on and stuff", Sei continued. "What was the meaning of us being together if we had to be separated so soon?"

"Was it not you who always answered that question with your usual uncanny insight?" Youko replied.

Sei's eyes flashed threateningly.

"Maybe so, but perhaps I was young and naïve back then", she spat, her voice rising. "Lillian was not supposed to determine our lives, I know, but if by some occasion it did, what was the point in struggling against it?"

Youko shook her head. She did not have the answers, since she had been asking herself the same questions. The way the former Rosa Gigantea was speaking, her demeanour, her desperate expressions, Youko had seen them all before. But in the present, as opposed to the night in that subway tunnel, Youko was not an outsider in the unfolding drama, but a part of it.

How am I supposed to be that comforting presence to you once again, if I am the reason to your distress?

"People move on, sure, but what if I did not want to do so?" Sei demanded. "Who has the authority to tell me to let go of the time and space I belong in? Who has the authority to tell me to accept the doomed world created by foolish people and their actions? A whole lot of good it did to me, forcing myself to forget and carry on as if nothing had happened, picking up what pieces first Shiori and then you had left me. Not that I had any choice, though. Perhaps... "

She paused to catch her breath, and when she started speaking again, there was a rough edge in her voice. Her words were no longer wrapped in satin, and it pained Youko's ears to listen.

"Perhaps after Shiori I came to believe that there would always be someone behind be who would lift me up and teach me to walk again regardless how many times I fell and broke my legs. But who there could have been to support me after you left?"

"Shimako... Yumi... Sachiko or even Eriko... You could have told them..." Youko stammered.

Sei replied with a dry, bitter laughter.

"For heaven's sake, Youko, you can't possibly believe what you are saying! We were former Roses, almost omnipotent beings! Our role was to console them, not the other way around! And how was I supposed to open my mouth, anyway? Should I have called them and said 'Oh no, that bitch Rosa Chinensis just dumped me, please offer me a shoulder I can cry against' ? A great plan, except for the fact that they would have asked you right away about it and you would have told them a different version of the story. Who do you think they would have believed, me or you? Yes, they might have liked me, but they downright revered you as if you were a queen. And there was no way I would have told Eriko anything, or have you forgotten even that?"

Youko was so shocked by Sei's outburst that she could hardly form a clear and consistent sentence. The pain radiating from Sei was just too much, it made Youko want to curl up in a corner and cry, but she could not just shut her mouth. She wanted to know, even if her questions would only lead to more enraged words being thrown at her.

"What about your Onee-sama?"

"I could not bring myself to call her."

Sei had calmed down somewhat, but it did not make it any easier to listen to her broken voice.

"I wanted her to think that I was doing all right", she continued, staring into her palms. "Or perhaps I just didn't want her to know that we had got separated."

"But isn't it what Onee-sama's are for? To nurture you when you are hurt?"

Sei smiled, looking almost amused, but not quite.

"It seems you still have an uncanny affinity to lecture me", she said. "You actually make it sound as if it was my fault."

Youko shook her head.

"You know as well as I do that I never intended to lay any blame on you", she said. "Because I am the culprit, not anybody else."

"The way you say it makes it sound more like an order than an apology", Sei commented sourly. "I hate your strong will."

Youko nodded.

"At least we still agree on that."

A brief spell of silence ensued, and it gave Youko some respite to see that Sei's face was no longer twisted in agony as it had been just moments ago. The blonde woman was far from her usual self, to be sure, but at least it did not hurt Youko any longer to look at her.

"While you were away, I contemplated whether to bring this up", Sei said. "I was not particularly eager to summon the demons of the past, but I felt that I simply could not go on pretending like nothing ever happened."

"I understand."

"You know, there is a limit to everything. Especially to the amount of pain one is ready to suffer. I don't hold any grudge against you, and neither am I bitter. I might sound cynical, but after everything that has happened I am just neither idealistic nor innocent enough to risk a third end of the world."

"In your place I would not think otherwise."

Although Youko was quick to agree, she was terrified to hear what conclusions Sei would draw. She wanted to cling on to the White Rose with all her might now that she had found her, yet a small voice inside her head kept telling her it was already too late.

"I don't want to be harsh, but to tell the truth, I'm not sure we should be seeing each other."

Youko's heart missed a beat.

She opened her mouth, but there were no words.

After all, she did not know what could she have said.

Because there was nothing else that she could have done, she ended up apologizing once again.

"I don't hold any grudge against you, really. Maybe I never can forgive you, but when enough time passes it becomes irrelevant", Sei sighed. "I just don't want to go through it all over again."

Youko drew a deep breath.

"Will you at least stay for a moment longer to look at the old photos with me?"

Sei smiled, and even if it was hardly a happy one, it was definitely sincere.

"I am glad you are not trying to change my mind."

This time, Youko could smile too.

"Fortunately, I have not yet sunk so low, my dear friend."


More melodrama! I hope you are not getting enough of it already. There will be quite a lot of studying for me to do in the following month(s), so I warn you all that updating might become less frequent. In any case, I will try hard to find time for writing this little fic. I have actually grown quite fond of this :) Somehow I just ended up writing the girls (or women, actually) in a more grittier setting, while trying to maintain as much of the spirit of the original series as possible. It's funny, when I started writing this fic I wanted just to continue my Marimite experience, but somehow I have improvised quite much. The stories live their own lives, once again. Seriously, I really miss Sei... Why did she have to leave so soon? Why could not Marimite have started when Eriko, Youko and Sei entered Lillian? :D

PS. Yamayurikai is a staple like, Maria-sama, so I have not translated it at all.