The Last Sakura

Aki sat on the bench, the warmth of the sun a gentle blanket on his shoulders. The memory of the cold laboratory, of Greed's chilling arrival, was a distant, fading echo.

Here, under the endless shower of pink Sakura petals, only peace existed. Mia was beside him, her hand in his, a quiet, comforting presence. Across the small clearing, Rika lay fast asleep in the soft grass, her tiny chest rising and falling in a steady, peaceful rhythm. For a rare, perfect moment, everything felt safe. Whole.

But Mia was quiet. The tears from her confession still glistened on her cheeks, and a shadow of fear lingered in her beautiful eyes. Aki felt a clumsy, unfamiliar urge to fix it.

He tried to start a conversation. "Hey, Mia."

"Yes, Aki?" she asked, her voice soft.

Aki glanced sideways. Mia was unusually quiet, her eyes fixed on the path ahead, her lips pressed into the faintest line. Normally she would tease him by now or at least comment on something ridiculous. The silence gnawed at him.

He cleared his throat. “You’re awfully silent.”

No answer. Just the faint rustle of her dress brushing against his sleeve.

He tried again, scratching the back of his head. “You know… if you stay this quiet, people might start assuming you’ve stolen my personality. That’d be embarrassing for both of us.”

Mia blinked, finally turning her head, resting her cheek lightly against his shoulder. “You’re quieter than usual too. What are you thinking about, Aki?”

The question caught him off guard. His mouth moved before his brain could stop it.

“…how I want this moment to last forever.”

Mia stopped in her tracks for a second, eyes widening, her cheeks immediately flushing red. “Y-you…”

Realization hit Aki like a blade to the gut. His face heated up, panic flaring in his chest.

“I mean—because it’s peaceful!” he blurted, words tumbling over themselves. “Not because of you or anything, just… you know… the air is nice, the trees are nice, even the grass is doing a decent job today—”

Aki looked away, staring intensely at a particularly interesting patch of grass, his ears burning with embarrassment.

Then, he heard it. A small, suppressed giggle.

He looked back at Mia. She was trying to hide it behind her hand, but her shoulders were shaking. A moment later, she couldn't hold it in anymore. A bright, beautiful laugh, like the sound of bells, filled the quiet air.

"Aki," she said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye. "You were never good at this. Were you?."

He scowled, though it lacked any real heat. "They're not that bad."

"But..." She reached out and squeezed his hand. "Thank you for trying to make me comfortable."

Aki groaned, running a hand through his hair, but the corner of his lips betrayed him, tugging upward despite himself.

She wasn't laughing at the words. She was laughing at "him". At the cold, serious, deadly boy who was trying so hard, so earnestly, to be something else for her. Something soft. Something funny. And in that moment, he felt his heart ache with a feeling so powerful it almost hurt.

Then—"whump!"

A flash of white and a startled squeak. Shika crashed down from the branches of the Sakura tree above, tumbling through the petals and landing in a fluffy, bewildered heap directly in Aki's lap.

Both he and Mia jumped in surprise.

"Shika!" Aki exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

Mia, her own surprise turning to amusement, leaned over. "Is this a friend of yours?"

"Something like that," Aki said, calming her. He looked down at the creature, who was now straightening her fur, looking flustered but determined. "This is Shika. She's... complicated."

"I wasn't sleeping!" Shika's voice insisted in his mind, full of indignation. "I was trying to connect to you! Your mind... it's so bright and warm here, but it feels... thin. Like a soap bubble. I was outside, in the cold, and then I just... fell in."

Aki's blood ran cold.

Shika looked around at the perfect, sun-drenched clearing, her large black eyes wide with a dawning horror.

"This isn't real," she warned, her telepathic voice now sharp with urgency.

"This place... Feels weird... Your body... it’s not here. It's inside a device. A metal shell. They’re feeding signals into you, twisting your senses. This world is stitched from memories and past. Be careful, Aki. It feels wrong."

Mia listened, her smile fading as she processed Shika's frantic, silent words. Her hand, which had been holding Aki's, grew cold. She looked around at the beautiful, sunlit world, at the falling petals, at the sleeping Rika, and a shadow of existential dread fell over her face. She turned pale.

"So..." she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Now...Am I just your A memory? Am I... not real?"

The question hung in the air, a terrible, fragile thing. Aki looked at her, at the genuine fear and pain in her eyes, and his heart fractured. He wanted to lie. He wanted to say, "Of course you're real. This is all real." But he couldn't. He owed her the truth, even here, in a world built on the past.

He hesitated, the words catching in his throat. Finally, he answered, his voice thick with a pain that mirrored her own.

"I don't know, Mia," he said, his honesty a brutal, painful thing.

"I know this place... this feeling... is a memory. This has all happened before, in the real world. This perfect day. My mind... I think it's replaying it. Using it as a shield to protect me from... something else." He looked at her, his eyes pleading for her to understand.

"Maybe you're just memory. Maybe you're just my heart refusing to let go... But real or not," he finished, his voice cracking, "you matter to me. More than anything."

Mia stared at him, her eyes searching his. She saw the truth there. The painful truth. And she also saw the unwavering devotion. A faint blush touched her cheeks, a single point of color in her pale face. She didn't pull away. She leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Okay," she whispered, a sense of quiet resolve in her voice.

"As long as I'm with you, it's enough. Memory or not." She looked up at him, her gaze intense. "Promise me you won't let go, Aki. Not of me. Not of this."

"I promise," he said, the words a solemn vow.

At that moment, Rika stirred in Mia's lap. She sat up, rubbing her sleepy eyes. Her gaze fell upon the small, white creature sitting in Aki's lap. Her face lit up with a squeal of pure, childish delight.

"A bunny-cat!" she exclaimed.

"I am NOT a bunny or a cat!" Shika protested in Aki's mind.

Rika, oblivious, lunged playfully. "Come here! I want to take you!"

Shika yelped and leaped from Aki's lap, and the chase was on. Rika ran in gleeful circles around the bench, her innocent laughter filling the dream-world. Shika darted back and forth, her telepathic voice a stream of frantic complaints that only Aki could hear.

"Aki, help! The small one is relentless! She smells of sunshine and has no respect for personal space!"

Aki watched them, a sad, warm smile on his face. He felt Mia lean her full weight against him, her hand finding his again.

For a while, it felt almost like family.

Almost normal.

But it was a past. And the past that he would never counter.

The air changed.

A subtle shift, at first. A sudden, unnatural chill in the warm air. The gentle breeze that had been rustling the leaves died completely, leaving the world in a strange, heavy silence.

Shika, in the middle of dodging another one of Rika's playful lunges, froze. Her ears flattened against her head, and her fur bristled.

"Aki..." her telepathic voice was a low, fearful hiss. "Something’s wrong. The signals... They're... rewriting this memory. Corrupting it!"

Aki looked up.

The Sakura petals, which had been falling in a gentle, constant shower, stopped. For a moment, they hung suspended in the still air. Then, with a slow, sickening grace, they began to drift upward, rising back towards the branches they had fallen from, an impossible, unnatural sight.

The warm sunlight dimmed, the vibrant greens of the grass and the brilliant pinks of the blossoms draining away into pale, washed-out shades, as if the life was being bled from the world itself.

Then the sky began to tear.

Jagged, black cracks spread across the perfect blue canopy, like a pane of shattered glass. From those rifts, a dark, viscous crimson glow began to bleed through, dripping like blood across the heavens.

Mia gripped his arm, her knuckles white, her eyes wide with a terror that mirrored his own. "Aki, what's happening?"

Rika stopped laughing. She stood perfectly still, her playful chase forgotten, her small face tilted up in silent, confused horror at the bleeding sky.

Shika turned to Aki, her voice grim.

"This world can't hold," she warned. "They're trying to break you from the inside.

And somewhere beyond the bleeding sky, faint but heavy, a whisper stirred. It was not a sound, but a feeling, a thought that was not his own, slithering into the cracks of his reality.

First, a desperate echo of his own consciousness, a final, fading plea.

"…find… the missing piece… what you have…"

Then, another voice. Deeper. Colder. A voice he knew from the deepest, darkest corners of his nightmares. Greed. It was not a full sentence. It was a monologue of pure, chilling evil, wrapping around Aki's consciousness like a serpent.

"Such a beautiful memory. So full of hope. So fragile. Let me show you how easily it breaks. And you… must learn to obey your master."