the only exception | bakugou katsuki

14 | crescent lights

"Smile."

Says everyone in black as they walked around with sympathetic simpers with fingers curled around their cup of tea, as if there was a way to warm their frigid souls that were already buried seven feet off the ground. Everyone she didn't know of except Shiro and her parents is here, in her house. Everyone else chattered among themselves—whispering, mumbling and any volume of tone that keeps the forlorn atmosphere at ease.

Yuna didn't know who were these people, but they kept coming up to her when she was sitting alone on the stairs—and told her in a feather tone to smile.

"Smile. That way you can be strong for your brother. Your parents. Your family. It's okay to cry sometimes, but remember to smile if things get tough. You'll trick the sadness inside you. So smile."

And so they said when they did smile at the little girl in her raven dress, who was looking up at them with eyes full of wonder, yet full of sadness she couldn't comprehend until she realized that her brother, Rii, was really gone.

She shouldn't have asked him to get a skateboard for her tenth birthday.

"A car crash," the little girl heard a voice from one of the guests who was standing beside the stairs. "Apparently, their son was on the way home in his car but a drunk driver hit him."

A sigh resonates. "Man, what a piece of shit. And he happens to live instead of Rii? I hope that bastard gets jailed for life."

"Poor girl.. To lose her brother at such a young age. She must be devastated."

Yuna turned away from the conversation, only to have tears on the urge of overflowing the dam, but as everyone said—she should smile.

Smile. Smile when you're sad.

And she did, even though it hurts.

__________

The habit of forgetting how important someone is to you until you see them again in person, making you wish your day would begin with a 'previously on' recap of your life's various plot arcs and end with 'to be continued' after those will-they-won't-they cliffhanger episodes that air just before the show goes back into months of repeats.

"Nii-san."

Kneeling there was Yuna—smudged with dirt after falling on the way here, scraped her knees leaving harsh red marks, but she didn't pay much attention when she was finally there in front of her brother's grave, staring at it—wishing she could just speak to him, look at his gaze for assurance. Reassurance.

"Nii-san.." She says again, this time, only for her expression to morph into an anguish frown that she hated so much. "What should I do, Rii? Mum and dad are fighting again. I don't know what happened but ever since you were gone, things changed."

Smile. Come on, smile.

"I wish you were here, Rii. It's my fault you didn't get home. If it weren't for me, we would've been happy—they wouldn't be fighting because of me!"

A sob left her quivering lips, tears betraying her when all this time she had been holding on—holding on to nothing when she finally realized, to realize that her strongest anchor was her brother. Now she had no one to rely on, to hold on to but herself—painfully realizing the only person she could rely on was herself.

Smile.

A voice in her head tells her. Her voice. Her conscious. The only person she could rely on. To cry to.