50. Me % You [Part II]

The light shot up like a leech. It squirmed over the stairs as Yuri chased after it. He steadied himself against the wall as he kept pace. His eyes never wavered from the wriggling light, the tale of which left behind a cooling mist. As he raced up the stairs, Yuri felt the moisture touch him. The smell was familiar, but he could not name it.

The light reached the top of the stairs, and then it diffused: the single worm split into two, then four, eight, then sixteen. With each split, the narrow shape began to round out and get smaller, until Yuri was approaching tiny spheres of light. Yuri reached out for one of them, but at that moment, each of the spheres was whisked underneath the door.

Yuri clutched the door handle, turned it, and swung the door open. He emerged in Olivia's hallway. He looked to the left and saw the orbs dancing in the air. They spun in a swarm that was steadily closing in on itself, even as the entire collection turned the corner and headed in one coordinated direction.

The hallway was humid. The sweat Yuri had worked up while running up the stairs stuck to him. He left the door to the stairs open behind him and headed down the hallway. He stopped once he reached the living room. Yuri looked around, but he did not see the lights any more. He peered into the kitchen, but nothing was out of the ordinary. He then turned toward the front door. He walked to the door and unlocked it. The door opened with an old creak.

Yuri stepped outside and reached behind himself, to close the door behind him, but his hand stopped before it could reach the door knob. He remained motionless and stared at the woman standing in the driveway, facing the charred remains of the house next door. She was holding an umbrella, but no rain was coming down.

The wind bellowed as it bullied the trees and knocked the woman's hair back. Although the sky was cast over with grey clouds, enough light seeped through to let Yuri have a good look at the woman. She stood in such a way that he could see half her face.

The line of her mouth was flat. She had a youthful softness to her skin, which was rather pale in tone. Her eyes were large and brown, and her eyebrows were thin and expressive in their arced curvature. She had a tiny mole under her eye. She had reddish, onion-colored hair that was cut medium-length.

Around her neck was a scarf, and the scarf had an autumn color scheme to it: a brown, pumpkin-orange, and cinnamon red pattern. She was wearing a buttoned-up purple wool coat. One hand was in her pocket, while the other was in a leather glove and held the umbrella. She wore black slacks. She looked about 5 foot 6, in her mid-30s.

The woman turned to face Yuri. She had a mole under the other eye too. She stood with her legs close together. The corners of her lips formed a casual smile.

Yuri took one step down, so his right foot was on the second step leading up to Olivia's door. He hesitated before following with the other foot. He kept his eyes fixed on the woman. He looked down at his feet, continued down the remaining step, and looked back up right away. The woman remained standing toward the end of the driveway.

Yuri felt the wind gust through his hair and shirt and pants. His mouth was cracked open. He blinked hard, and she was still there. He walked toward her and stopped when he was about five feet from her.

She was looking down at the cement driveway. A loose sheet of white paper was blown between them, and after a few seconds of it 'catching,' the wind brushed it away. Yuri watched her continue staring even after the paper was gone. She then looked up at him. Her hand reached up for her face, and she brushed her hair away from her eyes.

"Yuri," she said. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, then opened them. "What happened?"

Yuri kept staring at her. He blinked hard. He glanced toward what had been his house, then back at the front door to Olivia's place right behind him. His attention returned to her. He said, "I don't know."

She was not transparent like the other ghosts. The ghosts were supposed to be gone. His father had given him the peace to move forward—but Yuri had no idea what this was about. He could hardly think.

She made several little nods and looked from him to the house behind him. He could feel it when her gaze went to him or away from him. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be here," she said. She nodded slowly one more time. Her eyes were back on the ground. "Maybe this is rather impulsive of me to even do this, but hopefully you'll pardon me for it and understand why I had to see you like this."

The woman lowered her umbrella. She held out her hand, palm up. "I've been waiting for it to rain," she said. "That's really what I'm waiting for, you know. That's how it all began, so I think that's the way it should be today. Strange how… Even sometimes when you want it to rain, it doesn't."

Yuri almost was not breathing. "Yeah," he said, his voice breaking a little. "I think I know what you mean."

She looked at him, then back at her dry hand. "A young woman struggling to find her missing car keys… Was she your type? When you offered your umbrella, did you think more about yourself about the girl?"

"You," Yuri said. "You, of course…"

She nodded. "You have a natural sense of right and wrong," the woman continued. She was looking squarely at him now. "That's a normal thing. A lot of men would be nice like that. That young woman, she… She thought you were just being a gentleman, and yet, she was lonely and flattered. She spent some time with you after, because she thought you might be interesting. And you were."

She held the glare. Yuri would never have remembered to breathe, so it was good that it came as an instinct. "And then this girl falls in love with you," she continued. She turned to look at the road. Two cars drove slowly by, a blue bug followed by a red convertible. "And she could hardly help it. You spent a lot of time with together. Although you had only been dating a couple of months, you had spent almost the entire time together… And in that time, you were starting to show your secret weaknesses and your hidden strengths more and more to the girl…"

She crossed her arms and stuffed her hands under her armpits. "Close to a year went by, and she went on a vacation with some friends to the United States. They toured famous landmarks and historic locations, and you never thought she'd die this way. Maybe the girl didn't think that, either. But sometimes, a person doesn't know how they lost they are until they finally wake up and realize they don't know where they are anymore. Maybe it was something like that… But that's not why I'm here."

Yuri's hands trembled at his side. The woman scratched her right ear with her right shoulder, while keeping her hands warm under her arms. The tail end of her scarf blew with the wind. "She drove in the rain with another girl first, then with you. You never really knew what you meant to her, but you wanted to. You wanted to test those waters. The slow ripple of a puddle… That's the influence you had. You dropped in, and everything reverberated. She loved you."

She swallowed. "You were crazy." She closed her eyes and smiled. Her shoulders lifted with a contained chuckle. "You went on a run with her and ran right off the track, because you all of a sudden wanted to go take a swim in the river. You haven't changed much, either. You spontaneously ran out to meet me here, even though you didn't have the slightest clue why. A man who follows his instincts—she liked that about you. There was something genuine in that."

The woman turned. She closed in the distance between them. Yuri almost recoiled. He worried this might be some sort of trick or trap, but when the woman stopped and made her next move, what she did was reach out and take his hands. His shaking hands, in her warm grasp. She cupped her right hand on top of them and her left hand beneath. He felt the warmth and leather on the backs of his hands.

"You told me how you would hold your own hand at night sometimes," she continued, her voice louder now that they were nearer to each other, "Just to simulate the young woman's touch. You told her your honest thoughts about tennis, and it was funny. Maybe you don't remember that one, but she would always remember it. You had a tough time remembering what you had or had not told her, because you blurted out almost everything that came to your mind when you were with this woman. Later, she noticed you weren't usually that way. You usually kept yourself under lock and key. It was a while, before you finally admitted that to her yourself."

Yuri swallowed hard. He looked down at their hands. He pulled his hands out from her grasp and then took each of her hands individually, her right in his left and her left in his right. He ran his thumb across the knuckles of her left right hand. "You're real," he said softly. He looked up at her scarf. "You're not just a body brought back to life… You're a soul. You're a living soul."

His eyes traced up her neck, to see her smiling. Her eyes were squinted slightly. "Tell me something I don't know," she said. Her smile grew.

Yuri bowed his head. His eyes were half-closed. "This is real," he muttered. "She's real, she's here…"

The woman started to speak again. "A person can be in your life for only a short time, and they can do more in a few months or a couple of years than anyone else you've ever met. Despite what you might have thought, you knew it in your heart: the last year of that woman's life was the happiest she had ever had."

Yuri felt pressure in his face, around his eye sockets, but his eyes remained dry. He closed his eyelids tightly shut. "But you left me… You went away, forever, and you never… You never explained why, you never let me say goodbye…" He breathed in heavily. "But now you're here, and you're older… You're not just the ghost of the past, you're human, you're a soul, you're still around my age even… You're back… We can…"

He looked up. Her smile was gone. "Yuri," she said. He looked into her brown eyes. "Let me wander in darkness." She pulled her hands away from his. She hid them in her pockets. Yuri straightened his posture. He was looking across at her, down a little because she was shorter than he was. "The person that girl loved was you, but somewhere in the process, the love went away. She stopped feeling, stopped feeling anything. She did not know how to tell you, because she did not know how to tell yourself. I can tell you now, though, and please, believe me… That love was lost in the darkness. I don't know if it's anyone's fault, but that is what happens. Sometimes, terrible things happen, and you'll never understand why. That's… That's life, much as we might wish to change that. But you can't force love."

Yuri shook his head. "But, you were so happy," he choked. He reached up and cradled his head in his hands. "You had your whole life ahead of you, and we were going to be together… We said we'd always love each other, and we meant it… There's no way you would have lied to me. You might have kept some things to yourself, but you never lied to me."

"You thought too highly of her," the woman gently said. "She was not always the nice person you thought she was. Deep down, that young woman was the person who stopped loving you, and she kept up an act, both for your sake and for her own."

"It was true when you said it," Yuri insisted. "I felt so secure, because I knew that no matter what happened, you were someone who was going to always be there for me… No one ever took an interest in me like that before, and no one ever reciprocated these thoughts and feelings like you did. We could sit and simply talk, and it was the most wonderful experience, because I knew the person I was talking to was taking me seriously, and that she loved me all the same… And she was so captivating herself, so endlessly interesting… I wanted to know everything about you, to be there for you like you had been there for me, and when you needed someone the most, I did not even realize it… I wasn't there when—"

"It's not your fault," the woman concluded. "If it's anyone's, it's mine. But what happened, happened. There's no use in chasing what isn't there anymore."

"What if it's worth chasing?" Yuri pleaded. "What if it's the thing worth chasing more than anything else? I don't want to let you be alone like this… I want you to be happy, like you were before!"

The woman shook her head. She reached out and touched his shoulder. "Yuri…" She sighed. "Yuri, things change."

Yuri felt a drop of rain land on his cheek. He looked up at the woman's face and saw the rain touch her. However, when the raindrops landed on her, the rain passed through her. The path of the raindrop left a streak across her face, a little smudge. Yuri took a few steps back.

The rain was sporadic. Drops landed in one spot, then in another, and each went straight through the woman's body and caused a distortion in her appearance.

"Yuri," she said. "I am not going to ask you to forget about that woman you loved." She removed her hands from her pockets. "But I am going to tell you… That woman doesn't exist anymore. That woman would have wanted you to move forward, to be happy. And even, even if somewhere out there the body of that woman is still going about a life, it's not the same person anymore—and you loved the other person, not the new. That doesn't make the new person bad, just different."

The rain was light but coming down in wide streams. The woman was beginning to melt, her arms and even clothes dripping as the rain shot through her. "What I mean is," she continued, gesturing wide with her arms, "That woman you loved would want you to be the happiest and live the fullest you could… She might not be there to talk with you anymore, but she will always be in your heart. And you don't have to worry—you can get close to someone else, and her love will always still be there for you. You don't have to be held hostage by this young woman any longer. Remember her and love her, and let her love you, but honor what she always wanted… And live your life more fully than ever before. You're going to need to keep that open mind, Yuri, that same mind that let you love the woman with the onion-colored hair in the first place…"

The heavy rain came. The woman broke apart faster than ever. Her body began to evaporate into a visible, dense mist. The mist surrounded her and prevented Yuri from seeing the most severe disfigurements that were occurring.

Yuri reached out his hand. "Vidalia!" He shouted. He breathed in heavily. "Vidalia!" He screamed.

She was disappearing in her own mist, and the rain fell harder and harder. "You're going to be happy again," she said, just before her voice could be lost in the heavy rain. Yuri ran toward her and extended his hand into the mist, but nothing reached out to grab hold of his hand—all he felt was the cool touch of the mist on his skin.

The mist dissipated into the air. Yuri brought his hand to his chest, as though he was afraid of what he had just felt and wanted to reclaim the hand. Yuri looked up at the sky. The clouds were a deeper grey than earlier. The rain fell in large drops on his face.

Yuri fell to his knees. He kept looking up. The rain hit him hard on his cheek, on his lips, on the bridge of his nose, on his closed eyelids, on his forehead. "Vidalia," he whimpered. "Vidalia, Vidalia, Vidalia…"

He placed his hands on the driveway. The cement was cold and wet. He bowed his head. He felt the pressure return to his face, and this time, it overflowed. His face was still wet from the chilly drops of rain, but now actual tears were streaming down his face. They were the warm tears he had not shed in close to twenty five years.

Yuri mumbled through his tears, "Why Vidalia, why did you come back just to leave me?" He tightened his left hand into a fist and slammed it on the concrete. He lifted his head up and cracked open his eyes. Through his blurry vision, he could see an umbrella being offered to him.

He blinked hard and tried to open his eyes more. He straightened himself out while still on his knees and reached out with his right hand for the umbrella. As the person holding the umbrella closed in, he felt an arm wrap around him. Yuri rose weakly to his feet, while the other person held the umbrella over the both of them. He used his wet hand to wipe his eyes, and then he looked at the person who was holding the umbrella and had her arm around him.

"Natalie," he pronounced. She looked at him and gave a smile.

"We've got to get you inside," she said. "Your suit is completely soaked. You look like a wreck… No offense."

Yuri smiled. He then suddenly turned and wrapped his arms around her. With his head behind her, he whispered, "Thank you, thank you so much, for being here, for doing this…"

He felt her patting on his back. "No… problem?" She responded cautiously. "Are you… are you feeling okay?"

He released the hold of his arms and returned to his proper stature. He cleared his throat. "I'm here," he said.

Natalie looked at him and nodded unsurely. "That's a first step," she said. She turned and urged Yuri to walk with her back to the door. They could hear the loud rapping of the rain against the umbrella over their heads.

She stopped at the door and folded in the umbrella. They were under protection now. She looked up at Yuri and, after a few seconds exclaimed, "Oh! Yomotsu wanted me to pass something on to you!"

Yuri raised his brow with interest. "Oh." He chuckled. "After what I just went through, I can't even begin to imagine what this must be about. Go on, I'm listening."

Natalie nodded. "I'm not sure what exactly he meant by this," she explained with a confused look on her face, "But he told me to ask you, whenever I saw you next, whether or not you remember touch."

Yomotsu Hirasaka,

I think it goes without saying how appreciated your efforts were in solving the Kira case and bringing Light Yagami to justice, but I feel the need to state the obvious. Your efforts were absolutely remarkable. Your valor is an inspiration to us all.

I imagine you have a lot on your mind, so I will keep this message brief and to the point: I can think of no one more suited to join The League than you. Our victory over Kira has increased the world's awareness of our organization, and this has both helped and hurt us. Our numbers are rapidly increasing, but we no longer can act as a secret force for justice.

In these changing times, I would like your guidance. Perhaps no one else in the world has the clarity of vision for what the right course of action might be other than you. On the back of this paper I have included additional contact information for Aru Akise. If you should ever need us, at any time, contact him. Should the day come where you decide to join us, he will be your first contact.

Once again, thank you. I look forward to meeting you in person.

L

To the 12th / Yomotsu Hirasaka

I am so, so happy to hear about your recovery! I wish we could have stayed in America long enough to see you up and at it again, but my dad wouldn't let us (don't tell him I'm writing you, either—he probably wouldn't like that either!). I'm a huge, HUGE fan of yours, and I just want you to know that you ROCK! Justice is AWESOME!

Dad tells me that you haven't been fighting crime these days, but I know you've got to have a good reason! You're probably on some top secret mission that even we can't know about, right? Don't worry, you can tell me! ;) Anyway, dad won't quit talking about how you should join The League already, and honestly, I agree with him!

You're easily the best hero, and you've got a loyal fan in Sternbild rooting for your big come back! GO GO 12th GO!

XOXO

Kaede Kaburagi

To Mr. Yomotsu Hirasaka,

Thank you for your generous donation to Mother's Orphanage. Contributions such as yours are what secure bright futures for our children. I am grateful for your letter, which I have shared with many with the staff at Mother's Orphanage. Your story is an inspiration to all of us.

In conjunction with your letter, I received communication with a Ms. Olivia Walkins. She mentioned additional details about your story and gave us some advice on how we could be of assistance. While this is an unusual situation, in appreciation for your support, we would like to return the favor and help you, Mr. Yomotsu Hirasaka.

We are going to continue our research and help you in every way we can. This process might take some time, but I will send you another letter in the mail as soon as I have an update for you. We will be keeping in touch.

Best regards,

Uedshita Kamado

Mother's Orphanage

Sakurami City

Yomotsu Hirasaka,

I have to thank you for eliminating Kira. I have been waiting for his defeat for some time. Now I can finish this. You put me behind bars, and now I am going to put you under the earth. I can't wait to hear how you scream for mercy once I corner you. I've read something interesting in the news: everyone knows about your Justice Diary and how it was destroyed to kill Kira. That's very convenient for me. You see, not everyone has lost their Diaries. I will be seeing you soon.

3

Yomotsu,

I know already showered you with thanks before you left, but thanks again for that surprise visit on Saturday! I can't get over how you didn't even tell me you were in Japan! You were really being sneaky, weren't you? I can't be too mad at you, though, because everyone loved you being here. I loved you being here! That was just the kind of boost everyone here needed.

The success of the Sacred Eye Cult has been phenomenal this past year, but I know that if you had been around the entire time, we could have attracted maybe even double the followers! I'm not trying to guilt trip you (maybe a little :P), but Saturday was such a blast, and I really can hardly wait until the next time you're able to come and visit us again.

I'm running out of room on this scroll, though, so… Write back when you can! Don't be a stranger!

-Tsubaki

Yomotsu, I haven't been able to reach your phone, so I hope that all is well with you. I know it can't possibly be, given all the circumstances, but I hope you are as strong right now as I know you can be. Even if you're not, though, I could not wait any longer to contact you. The situation here is starting to progressively get worse, and I need your help.

Someone is on my trail. Lately, a serial killer has been chasing me. I have reason to believe he has some sort of future telling power, possibly a Diary like yours. He keeps catching up with me, and I am only narrowly escaping each time. He claims he wants revenge against you, and that is why he's after me—obviously, this isn't something that bodes too well for me.

I hear the voice of Olivia. Natalie has been helping me escape, but he keeps closing in. She appears to be unreadable, because our pursuer has not yet been able to account for her strategies. I might be dead right now if it were not for her help. Even still, this will not end until you are involved. I do not want to drag you into this, but clearly this is something only the 12th can help.

I want you to be my partner again. Please, contact me—you still have my phone number. I know you are not a member of The League, but even if you help us as a free agent, you will receive our full support against this challenger. Many lives are at stake, mine included.

I know we have fallen out of communication, but I don't want that. Please, call me. No matter what happens, I will remain on your side if you remain true to yourself. What would the 12th do at a time like this? The 12th would rock. The 12th would be awesome. The 12th would kick butt. And I know that Yomotsu would do the same thing. I ask you not as Lunatic, but as Yuri Petrov—help me out here. We need to have each other's backs. After everything that happened, face it—in the end, sometimes the whole world falls apart, and when we are in danger or we have lost the simple things that we always wanted, sometimes all we have is each other—and sometimes, all the world has is just us boys.