I was dreaming about the past. A dream of the time my mother passed away when I was a little girl.
I tottered through a large park in search of someone. I wasn’t tall enough to look across the entire park, so I walked around the medium-sized park searching.
I sluggishly trudged ahead, my feet unable to stop as some confusing sense of purpose to apologize kept me going. Before long, I spotted the person I was looking for and quietly approached them. The young man, whose hair couldn’t be called short because it grew just long enough to be tied behind his head, sat on a park bench with his head down in deep thought.
“Mister.” His head jerked up at the sound of my voice. His eyes widened. “I’m sorry for breaking my promise with you, Mister. I came here today to tell you that.”
I made him promise to make a flower crown together for Mommy’s birthday, but I’m the one who didn’t show up. Is he angry? I worried and gingerly looked up to get an idea of how angry he might be only to be greeted with his gentle eyes.
“Are you okay?”
Those words informed me he knew of my circumstances, so I thoughtfully considered the best way to answer him.
I shouldn’t continue making adults pity me for this any more than they already do. I don’t want to be thought of as a poor little girl. Most of all, the last thing I can do for my dead Mommy is show how well I’m doing, I thought.
“You know everything, don’t you, Mister? …Mommy turned into a star watching over me from the skies, so I have to happily live her share too!”
“Is that so?” he muttered and gently patted me on the head with his big hand. “I cried when my mother died…I think. I let my feelings take control and took it out on my surroundings. You’re amazing for keeping it in.”
“Yeah.”
I felt more attached to him after hearing his mommy died too. How did he overcome the overwhelming pain gnawing at the hole formed in my heart? How did he endure the overflowing emotions that surged with every flashback?
How can I endure it?
“But is there really any point in being amazing at a time like this?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You can cry, you know?”
“Mm-hm.”
He told me I can cry. But all the adults around me had praised me for not crying. Torn about what I should do, my young eyes easily filled with tears at his words.
“I can’t. I feel like if I cry, I’ll really never see Mommy again.”
Not only did he open the floodgate to my tears, but he also opened the door to the feelings I had buried in the depths of my childish mind.
I understood I would never see Mommy again when I watched the smoke billow from the incense burned at her funeral. I was sure I did. But a piece of me wondered if it had just been a nightmare, and if the moment I cried would be the moment I acknowledged her death was real, so I didn’t want to cry.
His large hand stroked the top of my head again. His conflicted yet gentle expression broke the dam stopping me from crying completely.
I had already shed silent tears over Mommy’s death, but this was the first time I sobbed aloud.
“I haven’t forgotten her, and I’m still sad when I remember, but time will dull most of the pain,” he said, answering my question about the secret to not being sad over loss.
I sat beside him on the bench and looked up at his face with a smile—it was then I realized his eyes were different colors.
“They’re red? Your eyes?”
“…!”
Wanting to see the eyes he suddenly hid, I edged toward him on the bench. Every five inches I scooted closer, he would scoot back another five.
He was clearly panicking in front of me, and I leaned forward with excitement over his panic. I caught a glimpse of the shimmering red glow hidden between the cracks in his fingers. Rather than being the red of flames, they held a slight pink tinge. The first thing to cross my mind was the gem I read about in the library the other day.
“They’re so pretty! Your eyes are pretty, Mister!”
“…Huh?”
Spurred on by a desire to see the brilliant red glow again, I desperately tried to catch another glimpse of his eyes through his hands. He resisted by trying to push me away.
“Quit it.”
“They’re like jewels! Your eyes are jewels! Like rubies!” I said what I thought. He froze with a strange look on his face. He stared at me like he was staring at a strange object. Confused, I tilted my head.
The scenery suddenly blurred on me. Everything surrounding me changed and I grew in an instant. The me who should have been sitting on a bench was being held by someone. And I, or rather we, were flying through the sky. Not in the metaphorical sense—this was reality.
Black wings made of mist jutted out of the back of the man who held me in his warm embrace. The surroundings were too dark to make out his face, but he looked just like the man I met as a child.
His hair was shorter than the Mister I met, and he gave off a more mature image, but his ruby-like eyes were the same.
“Your eyes are so pretty. They stand out somewhat, but they are like rubies,” I commented on them like it was a trivial matter because I remembered nothing of our past. He blinked several times and made the same strange face as the man I called Mister.
Both his and Mister’s face overlapped.
Oh, they really were the same person. The moment that dawned on me, my eyes were seared by a blinding light.
I slowly opened my eyes. The first thing to enter my vision was the ceiling I had become familiar with over the past few months.
“Azusa?” someone nervously called my name.
I turned my head in the direction of the voice—my eyes met with those of the man who had just been flying through the sky with me in his arms. My dazed mind couldn’t differentiate between dream and reality yet.
“Mister?”
He grimaced in an amusingly exaggerated way before stiffening.
✦ ✦ ✦
Normal POV
“MISTER?”
Her words were like a paralysis spell for Kouya. The last time Azusa called him that was thirteen years ago and she shouldn’t have any memory of that time.
“…Did you remember something?” he asked, patting the top of her head as she lay in bed. Her eyes widened.
“What? You really are the Mister from that time, Kouya?”
“……”
“Really? How? Did I meet you when I was little? Wait a minute—that happened more than thirteen years ago, right? Your appearance hasn’t changed at all, has it?”
“……”
“…Kouya?”
“…Those are all reasonable questions and I want to answer them for you, but first…”
Azusa instinctively squeaked at the dark aura coming from Kouya.
This means he’s angry. He’s totally enraged! She considered what could make him so angry and instantly came to the answer. Right, I got in the way of Kouya trying to kill Youta!
She clearly remembered up to the point where she got in the way of Kouya and Youta and nothing else. She guessed someone knocked her out. Nothing hurt, so she safely assumed she didn’t get injured.
“I-I’m so sorry for getting in your way. But I was desperate at the time…”
“……”
“But I still didn’t want you to kill Youta or to watch you hurt yourself that way…”
“……”
“Ah! That’s right! What happened to Youta? Is he all right?! You didn’t kill him, did you? Is he in one piece? Are you unharmed too?”
“…Enough. Don’t talk.”
“Eh?”
He lifted her off the bed, pulling her into a hug. The arms wrapped around her back squeezed her so tightly it hurt. She was more confused than ever. What happened to turn what she thought was going to be an angry lecture into a loving embrace? She could hear his heart beat faster than usual.
“You’re alive, right?”
“Yes, I am alive.”
“Do you hurt anywhere? Is anything different?”
“I’m fine. The same as usual.”
“Your body is hot. Do you have a fever?”
“…No, I think you are imagining that part, Kouya,” she answered from his arms. The last question was the only one she didn’t answer honestly. He slowly let go. And then…
“The next time you do something that dangerous I’m going to tie you to a chair and not let you take a step outside ever again. Got it?” he lectured her with his fiercest face yet.