Bungou Stray Dogs ~ One-shots

[Dazai xR] Broken memories

What does your voice sound like again?

Is it high or low? Hoarse, clear?

That's one of the things that hurts me the most right now. Hearing you speak, just being able to listen to the timbre of your voice, I realize now how much I loved that, more than anything else in the world.

Like always, we don't realize the value of something until it is painfully taken away.

Honestly, I couldn't see myself keep going without you by my side, and I didn't even realize it. You had always been there, since our childhood, supporting me, and trying to show me the good sides of this life that was not very lenient with me.

When I was with you, I almost wanted to go on, to hold on, to fight to live the way I wanted to. With you, it seemed to me that everything was now possible, that everything was within my reach.

That happiness was reaching out to me. Happiness, I now realize, was you in person.

From the moment you closed your eyes, from the moment your voice was extinguished, the light and those sweet feelings of hope and courage were forever silenced, plunged into oblivion and silence. Every day, I feel the loss of your presence. I feel remorse in my every step, in my every gesture.

Do I have the right to happiness, I who did not succeed in saving you as I should have? Since that tragic day, I walk on this lonely road, without even knowing where I am going, without even knowing if there is really an end to this suffering I feel.

The desire to give up, it assails me much more often than I want to admit. But then, before I completely sink, I think back to you and your voice, which told me that, whatever happens, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

With all the hardships I've endured, I should have become stronger a long time ago, right? As long as my heart continues to beat, as long as my voice continues to resonate, is that a sign that I am still alive? That every time I wake up the next day, I have done the impossible once again for someone who seeks eternal rest as a deliverance?

Will I ever be able to see your smile again, hear your voice one more time? These questions keep spinning in my mind, over and over again, even as death, looking like a saving angel, continues to hover my existence.

If you had never crossed my path, would you still be here today? Would you have found someone who would have loved you as you deserved, who would have given you all the happiness you needed, instead of wearing yourself out trying to save someone like me?

I don't deserve to be, and I never deserved to have someone as perfect as you by my side.

Your hand, even wrapped in the warmth of mine, remains frozen no matter what. Your eyes, in spite of there peated calls that my voice tries to emit, remain closed, contemplating again and again a world whose entrance is forbidden to me, the key thrown for far too long in the middle of these abandoned dreams, of these broken dreams.

At least until I decide to give it all up myself, to give up this life in which you are no longer. If only I could have arrived in time that day, I would never have let such people condemn you to the funeral sleep in which you have been lying all this time.

Just how many years has it been since I last heard the sound of your voice? One, two, three, four years?

I know perfectly well that the last thing you would want is to see me dead inside, after all the efforts you have spent to open my eyes to this life without pity, but radiant in some aspects.

Without you by my side, I can't find those good things you used to tell me about. Without you... I am nothing.

I continue to walk along this long winding road, contemplating the last pieces of our broken dreams scattered here and there, patiently waiting for your return to this faded world.