Tsumiko
Tsumiko’s body laid still and lifeless on the cold, rough asphalt. Her shadow retreated back into the void from whence it came, leaving a scarred, damaged body covered in the shreds of the remaining clothing that did little to protect her decency. The only sign of life was the almost imperceptible movements of her chest from her shallow breathing. Color had drained from her face, leaving it a pallid and corpse like hue stained with dried blood.
However, the girl was far from death. Inside her mind, it was actually rather lively.
Sakura sighed and took in a deep breath. She had the sort of expression that someone whom had just run a marathon at full sprint might have had, as she sat on the familiar cushion in the familiar dining room in the familiar house that she had exiled herself to for the past eight years. She leaned back, resting her palms on the cool hardwood floor that she’d grown so accustomed to. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, the beads of cold sweat streaming down her body, soaking her hair and armpits.
Finally, the exhaustion got to her, and she collapsed onto the floor, sprawling her legs out underneath the kotatsu. Her chest heaving, she stared up at the ceiling.
“Suppressing her for that long... really is exhausting, isn’t it. Just watching from afar as a silent observer suits me better after all...” She reached out towards the paper lamp hanging from the ceiling, grabbing at the air as if to capture it in the palm of her hand.
Sakura giggled. It felt good, laughing. She thought she’d forgotten how to do it. She turned her head before frowning with a grim melancholy at what she saw.
corpse
She gazed longingly at Shirou’s comatose body, slumped over, head resting on a pillow that Sakura had put on a table next to him too many years ago.
The purple-haired woman opened her mouth to speak; she sat up. But then, she shook her head, sighed, and collapsed back down in the other direction, turning her back to her one and only.
“It’s no use... He broke while trying to save me from my foolishness...” Her eyes began to glisten with tears. “Sometimes it feels like he’ll never speak to me again...”
She bit her lip, but still managed to smile before turning over. She stood up and walked over to him, her sight blurry from the water in her eyes, her lower lip trembling, and her hands clenched, as she sat down next to him, and rested her head upon his shoulder for the first time in who knew how many years. For the first time in ages, she wrapped her arms around his and sat next to him.
She could feel the slowly beating heart of her lover. The shallow breathing, signifying life. She knew it was an illusion, she knew that his brain had been shattered by projection before being spread to the winds by her own stupidity. No matter how long she searched, no matter how much she gathered and returned to its home, nothing seemed to change, nothing seemed to work.
Despite all that, and the emotions roiling inside of her, Sakura clutched his arm tightly, sobbing into his shoulder.
“Senpai... I did good today, right?”
“...”
“Right...?”
“...”
Sakura closed her eyes, wishing that she could lay here forever. She heard a door slide open, and her eyes suddenly shot back open. She frowned as she glared at the only person it could be.
Anger filled her eyes, but then she let out another sigh, and looked away from her.
“What are you doing here... You’re not supposed to be here, and you know it...” She weakly protested. She was too tired to force her out right now. She was here to reprimand her, to fight with her and scold her, wasn’t she? Sakura bit her lip and readied herself, she closed her eyes to ready herself for a verbal beating. She heard Rin silently walking over, her shoes clacked against the floor, and she stopped right next to her. She felt all the muscles in her body tense up on preparation.
Then she felt her sister sit down next to her, and wrap her arm around her shoulder and pull herself close to her in a hug. She rested her own head upon Sakura’s.
“Yeah, you did good, Sakura.”
Sakura let out a deep breath, as if she were expelling all her tension. She began to cry tears of joy. “I’m-I’m glad... I just didn’t want her to go through the same thing I did-to make the same mistakes!”
Rin pulled her closer.
“I know. You did good, little sister...”
