Arcade

Chapter 8 -Y/n-

You've never thought about what will happen after you die, you've previously had so many thoughts of ending your life but not once, have you thought about what happens after. You had no one to live for, nothing to live for. Until that fateful night.

As cliché as it sounds, you met him at your lowest, and he carried you and the weight of the world on his shoulders back up. Your past self was slowly burning out, perhaps you had already burnt out. 

Exhaustion, brokenness, the feeling of uselessness, the blurry figure in the mirror you faced every night. It used to be a living nightmare. 

But he built you up from dust, it felt overwhelming at times, and you questions your worth to deserve a man like him, and everytime you felt insure; he'd get worked up and say the sweetest things to remind you. Remind you with the weirdest, humorous jokes and you'd laugh together at both of your silliness. 

You could never thank him enough for that, and the one regret that you had was not being able to support him through the next few rough patches to come in the future. Yes, your relationship went through some strains, maybe a few close to break up incidents- but you and Keigo always worked through them, a stronger, more stable relationship as the outcome.

'Maybe it's better this way, maybe this was meant to be.' You thought. 'He was too good for me anyway- god I hope my death won't leave a massive hole in his chest like he half joked that it would...'

"It's obviously gonna hurt me like a bitch!" You can just hear him retort with the usual playful, half-joking tone of his. "Don't ever leave me kid, if it gets hard, and you want to let go; hold on for me 'kay?"

'I'm sorry I couldn't keep my promise to go stargazing with you. For breaking all these promises and leaving all those rainchecks to rot.'

'Do you wish to go back?'

'Who-'

'It's me, Gemini. You gave me that name, or at least that Chisaki guy did.'

'How are you able to manifest a will of your own- you weren't able to do it before.'

'Through death, a life is born, through pain a lesson is learned.'

'Speaking in riddles?'

'Your death was my failure to protect you. Since the old version of myself was unable to protect you, let's call the 'me' now an updated version.'

'Well, how are you going to be of any use if I'm not alive?'

'You're wrong.'

'What?'

'Your physical body might be dead now, but your soul is still intact. Thanks to the strong will of a living being that misses you dearly.'

'That bird- I told him not to tread over my death in grief!'

'Oh?'

'Is something wrong?'

'It seems like our body is going back through time, and it's being restored.'

'Impossible. We both know my quirk is not for time-loops nor am I alive enough to activate a time travel.'

'An outsider, a little girl it seems...'

'But why would anyone-'

'I'm running out of time, when you wake, don't be alarmed; for I would not be present and will take time in manifesting myself once more.'

'What-?!'

The feeling of floating in an empty matter slowly changed as you felt a calming warmth. Your ears picked up sound, a beeping of a machine? Your body itself refused to listen to your brain telling it to move, the best you could manage to do was to barely twitch your index finger. Which was heavy itself as if something was attached to it.

You could just sense your focus draining from that one movement, and with nothing to focus on- you were drifting away once more.

"Baby bird?" A voice slips through, as you focus on the voice to guide you. "Doctor! Doctor!"

You managed to slightly open your eyes, even though the world was too bright for your eyes to adjust to. It took you a few tries to finally be able to open them fully and once you did, a pair of gorgeous, bright yellow- no, sparkling golden eyes met yours.

"God, baby bird...I'm so glad...I'm so glad you're okay..." The owner of those eyes sobbed, and he genuinely shed tears of relief and joy; for you. "How are you feeling? A-are you hurting anywhere?"

You opened your mouth to speak, to say something to answer his questions-but all you managed to get out was a pathetic, hoarse, and overly strained sound; and in your surprise, your right hand shot up to your throat to feel around it and as your hand made contact with the sensitive skin, the raw pain shot through, immediately warding off your hand.

"Don't move too much, your body is still healing itself." He said.

You nodded 'yes' as an answer, the dull throb in the area of your neck and throat just barely manageable. Everything hurt. But despite the pain and the soreness you felt there was one question prodding in your mind- and you voiced it out.

"Who are you?"