The Boy With The Blank Stare: Future

Chapter Thirty One: Your Choice

Saihara's POV:

The sun was bathed in a deep amber. The amber moon shined through the sky, the sky which had been beautifully dyed in rich magenta color, the sky in its endless boundaries had been filled with such a radiant light and rich color that slowly faded to a soft lilac color. Facing that golden sunlight which was beginning to disappear in the surrounding mountainscape was him. He was sitting on a large rock on the cliff-face, his legs dangled off and the trees rustled with the slight breeze. His hair moved with it, almost ethereal. 

He turned to face me, his dark violet eyes staring into my soul yet seeing nothing of the landscape surrounding him.

"O...Ouma..." I mumbled, the shock was still overwhelming me as I took another hesitant step forward as delight filled me yet a nagging feeling kept holding me back. It pleaded with me to truly access the situation I was in, it reminded me that coincidences just didn't exist but I wanted this to be true. I wanted it to be just the pivotal moment that finally everything I had worked for, everything that I had been building towards and hoping and begging every last star in the sky for had finally come true.

But Ouma didn't respond to my voice, he carried a neutral expression as he continued to look forward, it made me wonder if I was too quiet for him to hear me, but judging on that knowing look in his eyes I knew he did. He had heard me loud of clear...and as I slowed down it hit me. He knew I was excited to see him, but he wasn't excited to see me. It finally dawned on me, that while I had been longing for years just to see him again, I had no idea where or what he had been through for all these years. I didn't know what he thought of me if he had forgiven me for what had happened the day I left him behind, and even more, if he felt abandoned because in the end...I didn't find him. 

He had found me.

"Who's there?" a tired and bored voice asked, as he did the unimaginable. He got up from the rock, his hands still tracing the surface of the boulder as he readjusted where he was sitting. He crossed his legs, he was wearing a pair of tight black pants with a slight gray checkered pattern on them. He was wearing a dual-colored black and white sweatshirt, the colors being divided down vertically. The black side, or the right, had the details of dragon scales and the white side was left with similarity to koi fish. His shoes were black platforms, and his hair had grown much longer over the years, it hung down framing his face in loose stands, with most being pulled back in a messy side braid that I suspected he did himself. He had a lollipop in his mouth, as childish as that was as he took it out, I noticed the unnatural complexion he already had the last time I saw him, had only grown. Now his veins seemed to be the only pop of color on his body and his whole frame seemed incredibly weak and malnourished the guilt crushing me as his sullen eyes continued to stare at me waiting for an answer.

"Well? Who did Tokyo's finest send to find me here?" he repeated a slight taste of annoyance in his voice. His voice, a voice I only heard in rare cases didn't have the same raspiness and pain it held before, now it was cold and desolate. The voice had more power behind it, but it still felt like it was being forced despite the natural tone it had, and it unnerved me. I paused, his wording rang all the alarm bells inside my head and fed the paranoia and concerns even more that whoever I was looking at wasn't the same Ouma from two years ago but an entirely new person, one who might not be as innocent in this string of lies and corruption he had been previously. But stubbornly, I chose to believe. I chose to believe in Ouma.

"Shuichi. Shuichi Saihara" I answered him with full honesty and vulnerability, I chose to let him hear the relief in my voice, the relief of seeing him alive, but also the concern and fear for the situation that we had somehow found ourselves in. It was always like that though, our encounters were built not on the simplicity of life interactions, but brief peaks of raw emotional vulnerability or chance encounters. We had drawn each other into our worlds, but just as easily found each other out of orbit, and by the time I tried to reach a hand out he was gone from our solar system.