𝗘𝗿𝘀𝗮𝘁𝘇 𝗟𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻 | 𝖿𝖺𝗇𝗍𝖺𝗌𝗒

VIII. Erroneous

Takeda Yutaka's POV

It felt arbitrarily wrong to have myself bask in the warmth he provided. I knew for one that it wouldn't be prevalent for long; he was going to leave and getting closer would only accrue the time I'd take to forget him.

A divine vortex. That was what I felt his assuaging warmth had been. I couldn't feel his arms wrap around me, or his breath fanning against my skin. But he had been there. He had been there all around me, creating a sort of duvet that I would crave shelter in.

"Why are-are you helping m-me?" I asked, turning to where I believed his head would be.

My query had been followed by a chuckle, a deep rumble that arose from the pits of his stomach, a genuine sound free of perturb. "I'm here to help, Yutaka. I told you that before."

"But why?"

"Because you need it."

His words seemed like starlight and the wintry boughs had swirled together in some lucid dream. They hit me, at a spot that I never wanted to yield open for anyone. For I knew that would only scare them away. But... He was different. He was accepting.

"The n-nightmare. I don't know what it meant, but-but it felt so real," I uttered as I closed my eyes, and hung my head down.

"Tell me what you feel. Everything you're seeing," his voice echoed. "You can trust me."

My eyes had been cast down, even though all I could still see had been the white, pristine smoke. "I see my mother. And a knife. And-And it hurts so much. It is red; some red liquid. I-I don't kn-"

Even if I'd wanted my voice to remain moribund, I couldn't help the trembles that came as my throat closed in. The tears wouldn't stop; it was as though my eyes had been a dam that had been smashed open. The serenity that had been undisguised in his tone did not serve any other purpose than to let me shatter, yet again.

"Yutaka." His voice held the untold tales of a century, the sudden drop in his timbre that made my heart sway a little.

I felt the warmth around me augment, as my eyelids dropped close. A touch, an unforeseen one, that slid along my face, letting me drop my gaze to oblivion.

However, as the total darkness engulfed me, I felt at peace. For the first time, the darkness did not seem like it had been out there, ready to ravage me at my worst; when I'd given up on everything. The tenebrosity seemed like a compere, rather. Someone who could take all of it in.

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"Show me those serene and relaxed eyes, for they are the door to your own soul. Touch me with those pacific hands and you will be made anew, not as clay, but as if your body were reborn in its most indefectible form. And so, in this love there is a chasmic gratitude, a sense that what is given is sacred and transient, passing in time into the eternal cycles of living."

"Accept yourself. Don't change. Not for others, don't."