Starting Life From Another Choice Than Zero

A Maiden's Love, Part 1

Water in a serene stagnation, circling the wooden rims of a bucket it resided in. A glow of warm orange reflected back in its fluid shimmer of dusk. A finger then hovered inches away from submersion in its depths. The water replicated back the erratic movement, the feeble sways of motion before the finger plunged within. The ripples of contact gradually grew across the circumference of the bucket until it settled back to stillness once more.

The finger remained immersed, despite the high temperatures that pervaded every inch of skin. She did not feel it. A simple measure of temperature and yet Rem remained benumbed to sensation.

More and more, progressively across each agonizing day, she had found her basic senses faltering. She could see, yet only through murky glints. She could hear, yet everything sounded a muffled distant echo. Smell, yet only the strongest of scents. Touch, yet only feel the slightest of sensation.

Emotions... the water glimmered back her reflection... finding none on her face.

When was the last time she smiled? Rem couldn't remember of any time recent. Her eyes were heavy, her skin a sickly white and her lips... wouldn't smile.

She sighed, stood... and walked. Her heels clacking on the stone-tiled floor of the kitchen, muffled as it made its way to the carpeted hallway of the mansion, in her hands, a tray of tea she held, wobbling slightly.

Like the gloom that plagued her, fatigue too was an ever haunting constant.

"Don't fall..." Rem whispered to herself, mustering, scraping the energy to keep forging onwards.

A step.

"Don't fall."

Two steps.

"Don't fall."

Three.

"Rem."

Rem immediately froze in place. Footsteps drew near her and she turned back to face them, knowing already whom they belonged to, as it stopped short a fair distance away from her.

Ram stared at her sister, feeble as can be. Now there was no hiding it. The dark circles around her eyes, the sweat glistening on her forehead, the shiver, and sway as she strained to steady herself upright. Ram could see it all.

No veiling, no masking this time.

Silence was her gaze, empty was her expression. Ram looked ready to speak, a yearning to say something, but no words would come.

Rem took a breath. "What is it?"

That jolted Ram to her sense, snapping so suddenly from a daze that she averted her eyes.

"The bathroom door squeaks, once in a while," she spoke, still looking away. "Once you're done with serving tea... just don't forget."

"Yes."

Again the same longing to speak out trembled Ram's lips, her eyes quivering as if pained. Her pink meeting her blue. Then she stalked away out of sight, leaving Rem alone in the deserted corridor.

Rem continued her way with little thought to the encounter. Tea needed serving. But deep within herself, she knew definitively what was left unsaid between her words, what Ram really wanted to say.

Ram needn't have to bother.

"I'm fine, Nee-sama. I'm fine." Rem whispered in the quiet.

But the tea spilling over the side of the teacup told otherwise. She wasn't.

Soon, she somehow managed her way to her destination without incident, fronting her was a closed wooden door. With respect, she rapped the timbered surface with her knuckles gently and proclaimed softly after, "Tea, Emilia-sama."