Familiar

All of a sudden, this situation had become way too familiar to properly handle, much less in the state I was in.

Araki snapped out of his spiral of tears, limping towards both of us using the Muramasa’s sheathe as a temporary crutch.

“Every body has its limits. Too bad she’s finding that out the hard way right now.” He gently shook Matsumoto, getting no reaction from her. The shaking intensified, yet there was still no response.

The sound of helicopter blades arose in the distance. Maybe an evacuation team was coming? It was still way too far for them to arrive on time, though.

I felt the warmth inside me shifting from gentle and hugging into a more intense heat, almost burning from within. My arms slowly regained motion capabilities, and I immediately used them to embrace Matsumoto as hard as I could. It couldn’t happen again. Not twice in one week. Not even twice in one decade.

The heat within me kept increasing without any way to release it. As my grip around Matsumoto tightened, I heard her whispering gibberish into my ears, broken up by a single comprehensible Sentence: “Help me.”

As soon as those words rung through my ears, I blacked out.

I awoke inside a dark, muddy field, a few pieces of debris occasionally poking through the otherwise homogenous mass. In the center of the field, the little girl with her summer dress stood waiting, her hands desperately reaching out for me.

No matter how hard I tried reaching her, with every step I took towards her the homogonous, mushy mass only rose higher. Until I could get her, she would have surely drowned. As I looked around, desperately reaching for clues, the sky itself began collapsing above us.

Billions of small shards descended onto the ground, each one as sharp as a knife, piercing directly through the skin. To my right, I could make out a branch possibly long enough to reach her.

After the first shards submerged into the mushy ground, she began screaming and yelping, desperately yearning to be held. My fingertips could barely touch the branch as the ground around me slowly continued rising.

In a desperate attempt, I threw my entire weight into reaching the branch, only pushing it even further away than before.

The longer I struggled to reach for the branch, the more the situation worsened. In one last push, I finally managed to grab a hold of the branch. I began pulling on it to free it from the ground below, but it didn’t budge after pulling as hard as I could muster.

I glanced back at the girl crying, only to see that she had devolved into a vegetative state, pierced by the shards of the sky, an endless river of tears springing from the small bundle of desperation and loneliness she had become.

Purely out of instinct, I began yelling.

“Takako! Wake up!”

The ground still continued rising, now accelerating even further.

“Please Takako, you are needed. Somebody out there needs you to be you. The way you are. It’s not your fault that you’re broken. Please listen. None of this is your fault.”

The little girl slowly opened her eyes back up, staring at me with tears still uncontrollably flowing out of them.

“You’re not entirely alone out there Takako, so please come back. I won’t ask you to pull yourself together, because I think I know just how you feel right now, buried deep in endless despair. But nobody was there to help you back then, while I had all the support I could have ever wanted. I promise, Takako, that I’ll be that person for you. So please, don’t die. Please.

You deserve to live, Takako.

So go out there and do it! Live!”

The last words were swallowed up by the endless, soft mass rising above my head.

If she doesn’t make it, will I die too? Is this the sweet release she promised to give me? I’ll finally see Yuri again, at last.

But…

I can’t let it end like this. She needs help. I know it. I’m the only one who actually knows right now. I can’t possibly allow someone else to plunge into the endless abyss alongside me if I could have stopped it. She just needs something to live for.

I blindly pushed through the black mass, slowly but surely being able to move. Slowly, diligently, I forced myself through the mushy substance, toward the only direction that felt instinctively correct. I felt the immeasurable weight slowly trying to crush me, yet still persevered. She had to be here somewhere, I was sure.

My hands desperately tried grasping anything solid around me, while I was still pushing forward. It felt like an eternity had already passed, and my airways slowly filled with the black mass around me.

Finally, my arm grabbed something. Almost reflexively, I pulled her towards me, pushing her against me as good as I could, given the current environment we were in. Slowly, I felt the pressure put on me releasing. The substance began sinking back into the ground.

The barren wasteland that was left behind was nothing if not depressing, but at least I was able to breathe again. I knelt down before Takako, wiping the tears off her face and the snot off her nose. I brushed my hand over her forehead and gave it a gentle kiss. “If there’s nothing else, at least live for me.” I whispered into her ear, firmly embracing her small figure.

She simply nodded along, tears of relief rolling down her small face.

I was suddenly ripped away from the wastelands of Matsumoto’s mind, as she was prepared on a stretcher for medical evacuation. The entire front of her white dress was completely soaked in blood.

“I have no idea what just happened, but I think you deserve a break, kid.” Araki chuckled, gently pushing my shoulder.

I just fell on my back, unable to move from sudden exhaustion, yet still fulfilled. I was so relieved after actually helping someone else.

I’m sorry, Yuri, but I couldn’t let her die on my behalf. I couldn’t help but feel compassion for her. I love you. We’ll see each other soon, I’m sure.