Author Games: Brave New World

Quarterfinals: Megumi Hirai

Have you seen the flowers bloom by springtime?

Danu reeked of death and decay. Chains that crept with poison reached over them all, wrapping around their necks like a noose, and then keeping them steady under the ceiling. They were alone. They were isolated from one another, and you could hear the cries as they tear through the curtains holding them in. They started trying to go back.

How will you go back?

Megumi breathed through a scrape in the wall. Living was a buried problem when the virus spread, and they were not able to resurface.

Megumi spat.

Megumi choked.

They were holding her in, just like they did Ben.

You promise you'd come back, aye?

Drafts swayed around white cloth, and as they all opened to the outside Megumi saw through a blurred gaze a single, beautiful strip of moonlight.

Everything else was covered with wild hair and blood and holes and the depths of Megumi's mind — all the things that ruined her obscured anything beautiful as she convulsed, her wrists ripping from the IVs connecting her to machines. Connecting her from life and what could have been yesterday.

Look, this was from my great grandfather.

Look, Megumi.

I think I want you to reach the skies with it.

It was away. Everything else she owned were thrown away to burn to ashes, never rebirthed, never to be seen tomorrow. Everything else, they teared away from her.

Because if the people were tainted, what more of their possessions?

If their minds were already drowning, what more of their thoughts?

Don't lose it.

If springtime could exist there, remember everything, okay?

Don't laugh.

Megumi, I'm serious.

Megumi thought of time as she lay there with sobs as her melody. She thought of all the seconds her life had encountered, and all the seconds that were yet to come and be forgotten. She remembered the things time acquired, because it was never the time that was yearned. It was always the things that had happened.

It was always the things they could see.

He brought her a gift, a cap full of magic as he waited, but Megumi couldn't ever come back now.

He could have waited as all springtimes went and the thousand suns had died, but he never thought of the present. He was always looking for tomorrow, the place Megumi had grown to fear.

You said you wanted to fly?

Nurses came and went, replacing her tubes, checking her blood.

Every time they did, they made the moon appear in front of Megumi.

Megumi couldn't breathe.

You know the flowers are more beautiful when you're beside them, right?

What if he was viewing the same strip of sky as she was, through bloodshot eyes and fragile lungs? What if he was still waiting for her to come back?

What if he wasn't?

"The earth isn't lovely anymore, Vincent."

But I'm here.

That was the thing.

What if all the cries had finally ceased, and what was left were the grinning faces?

What if his yesterday didn't matter anymore — the only place where Megumi existed?

Megumi was dying.

You're there.

But I was somewhere else.

I switched between time but you stuck with tomorrow.

I can't go back.

Springtimes were the time life bloomed.

And Danu reeked of death and decay.

I was somewhere else.

And I won't remember you anymore.