𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 (𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐚𝐥𝐥). | 𝙎. 𝙂𝙤𝙟𝙤

6. it's like you never had wings

Moonlight in the aftermath of the disaster was awful on its own.

There was never a funeral. The Higher Ups didn't allow it, and Riko was scattered somewhere innocuous. There was nothing left of her but a blood-stained floor and leaking brain fluids nobody had ever bothered to clean. Kuroi had her memories erased and was sent abroad, Master Tengen remained hidden, and that was the end of it.

Yaga found Satoru and I after the mission sitting silently in Shoko's infirmary, both of us still covered in dried up blood. He rested his hands gravely on our shoulders, a wordless frown twisting his face.

It wasn't like there was anything good he could say. I warned you, maybe. You didn't listen to me. You were both too arrogant, and I told you so.

Or I'm still so sorry.

---

The silence left me alone in my room, curled up on my side as I was nursing an open wound across my chest. The walls were thin, but not thin enough that I could hear Satoru breathing next door. In the static silence of our unlit dorms, the sound of air whistling through my lungs, sharp and unforgiving, was far too loud.

I close my eyes and try to forget about it all, forget about the summer days and beaches so white I have to squint my eyes even in the memory of it, forget about the girl who wanted to live, her contagious laugh, her smile, and those few first and last days of our youth.

I want to sleep, but I just can't, not when I'm somehow still breathing, not when I can't tell if Satoru is even alive in the room next to me –

Not when she was dead, and I was unable to do anything about it. 

Exhaustion weights heavy in my stomach, slumping down against the walls. Something else wedged in there, sharp and metallic, and I thought maybe it's guilt, or regret, or maybe someone older and wiser and stronger would call it what it was: grief.

And I didn't know what to do with it.

It wasn't like a curse.

It wasn't like I could exorcise it.

I shift in my bed, movement tugging at a new scar across my body. My eyes close and my hand reaches, clutching at my heart as I feel the once bitter mouthful of shock and sorrow digest and settle, poisoning my bloodstream.

I laid there for what felt like hours until I fell asleep, but it followed me to my dreams, tainting them, and the darkness behind my eyes becomes Riko's unmoving body, spilled brain on my hands, and the uneven blade covered in Satoru's blood plunging and twisting in my guts. I wake up crying, and before I know it, I'm vomiting all over my bedroom floor.

---

"I saw those fish at the aquarium, and I've never seen anything so b—big and beautiful before."

Riko and I sit in the darkness of our hotel room as my hand alternates between patting her dark hair, and rubbing gentle circles into her back.

"I want to live more." she whispers, face buried into my lap. A sniffle. "I want to go to Okinawa with you and Gojo again, and, and travel the world, and eat more sushi with everyone. I want to learn to sing better, and to have a crush, I don't want to leave Kuroi, I don't...-" Her voice cracks, lips wobbling.

"I don't want to die."

---