‘You know, a good friend of mine,’ said a voice, far too familiar for comfort, ‘has a habit of telling people that this is a place they find when they’re ready to die. I’d ask if that was why you were here, but...’
The voice trailed off with what sounded almost like it could have been a wistful sort of smile.
Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Dec 28, 2016 16:55:02 GMT -5
BRUISED
It was raining. Just a light drizzle, nothing so dramatic as a full-blown storm—rare in Rukongai, rarer still in Seireitei—but the lush grass in the neatly tended garden drank greedily of what it was given and Hazuki’s hair was getting wetter by the minute, flattening it to her skin and the soaked cotton of her uniform.
She hated rain. It reminded her of the last night she had seen her father, and though this particular shower certainly couldn’t compare to the torrential downpour from years ago (perhaps it had seemed like much because she had been so small?), it did more than just dampen her skin, hair and robes—it dampened her spirit. The fact that just moments ago she had left Hanabi Enyo behind in sullen silence, offering a selection of parting words as cheerful as anything one might find inscribed on the walls of a charnel house, had hardly helped. Hazuki wasn’t one for cheer. She had been, once. Not anymore.
How she came to find herself here, she couldn’t quite say. Neither could she quite say what here even was; a garden of some sort, tidily groomed and yet somehow wild, as if whoever cared for it let the plants themselves have as much say in things as he did. From a tree hung a swing. There was a koi pond.
There was also a bench, wrought iron and oiled wood: an elegant piece that looked at once both out of place and perfectly at home in this strange place. On it sat a man, the sight of which made Hazuki’s blood run cold in her veins. Damp black hair, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to just beneath the elbows, dark pants above bare feet. Next to him on the bench she spotted a pair of shoes, black and shiny, neatly set aside with dark socks kept in them as if for safekeeping. He was reading something, and hadn’t looked up, but Hazuki knew the voice had been his. She had heard it before. She had spent the better part of what felt like a year chasing the man it belonged to, and for eight years before that she had found herself wondering if he had been real at all or just the product of an overactive imagination. Almost a decade of uncertainty and now there he sat, calm as a summer day.
Picture a girl, twelve years old, watching her father disappear into the darkness of a rainstorm. Picture that same girl seeing him just one last time after that, a brief and fleeting moment that she is later convinced could not have happened because by the time she saw him he was already dead. Imagine he tells her he—no, the words he used were your father—loves her very much, and then he’s gone, forever.
‘You,’ she choked out, her voice stronger than she felt, but still not half as angry, or half as bitter.
Now, at last, the man looked up. He fixed her with a piercing gaze—as if he was peering through her skin into her very soul—and then gently he closed his book, the cover of which Hazuki recognized immediately, setting it down on his lap. She didn’t have the presence of mind to notice that this man gave off no aura, that he occupied space just a little differently than she did. She was preoccupied.
‘You usually have your sword out by now, Hazuki,’ he said, matter-of-factly, his fingers drumming lightly on the cover of the book once or twice as if he were contemplating something.
Hazuki blinked, as if remembering the correct emotional response to her situation (the shock and agitation preventing her from considering how she even found herself in it in the first place), and her icy blood instantly boiled over, giving her no time to ponder the curious way the man had phrased his observation. She saw only red as she closed the distance between them with a snarl; the rasping sound of steel being drawn mingling with the bestial growl that escaped her lips. For a few short moments, it drowned out the soft patter of raindrops hitting the grass, the trees, the pond. Her blade flashed in the dull grey light of the overcast sky, arced whistling toward the man’s neck and was unceremoniously swatted away by the same hand that had been resting on the cover of the book just moments ago.
There was something on the man’s features—up close like this, it was difficult to miss—but it wasn’t annoyance, as one might expect after such effortless denial. Whatever it was, it looked a great deal more like concern than anything else. Hazuki didn’t stop to reflect on it, but swung again, and again, and again, rain flicking off the tips of her hair and blade alike as she chopped savagely at the man in front of her, both hands viselike on the pink hilt of her Zanpakutō. He barely moved in response, her blade deflected at every turn no matter how sharp, how heavy, or how quick it was. She would have continued, but the man seemed to have had enough. He rose, explosively, to his feet in a fluidly violent movement that lifted Hazuki off her feet. It seemed, almost, to leave her hanging in the air for a brief second, stretching on and on until he spun on the spot, driving an elbow into her ribs and sending her tumbling through the rain. She smacked forcefully into the side of—of a gravestone, and wheezing in pain, rolled onto all fours to catch her breath. The sweet smell of the guelder rose that grew behind the grave beckoned, and she glanced up to read the name inscribed on the polished slab:
Kasumi Suzumei
She was still gripping her Zanpakutō—old habits died hard—and as her shoulders slumped at the sight of the altogether-too-familiar name, she noticed the fingers of her off-hand were bleeding. In her anger she had managed to slice through her saya as she had drawn the sword; a painful, clumsy mistake and one that Kasumi, ironically, would have slapped her for. Or would she? Here, in this... Timeline, she had died instead of becoming Captain-Commander, died instead of becoming Hazuki’s mentor. Hazuki rose shakily to her feet, leaving a thin smear of blood on Kasumi’s headstone as she reached out with her cut fingers to steady herself. Some small part of her couldn’t help but wonder what this Kasumi Suzumei had been like.
Not as great, she wanted to believe, her opinion tainted by the other disappointments Hazuki had encountered. But then there was no real way of knowing, was there?
‘She was different from how you remember her,’ said the man quietly, stooping to pick up the book that had fallen from his lap when he had beat back Hazuki’s onslaught, ‘but not as different as you might think.’
‘We’ve met before, you and I,’ she spat as she turned back to the man, willing her legs to stop trembling. She wasn’t sure if it was fear, pain, or apprehension, or a combination of all three. Nor did she notice that he had responded to a thought she had left unspoken. She was preoccupied.
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied, ‘Many times.’
She gripped her sword tighter, clenched her teeth and took a step toward—wait, what?
‘Yes, many times,’ he repeated, a slow and lopsided smile spreading across his lips.
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Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Dec 28, 2016 18:28:05 GMT -5
‘I must say, I admire your guile, Hazuki,’ he said, the same half-smile still plastered on his face like—in Hazuki’s eyes—a leering mask. Her questions, the ones she could angrily shout at him between swings of her sword, anyway, seemed to be falling on deaf ears as they danced through the flowers that seemed a little too vibrant for this light. Hazuki remained on the offensive, though certainly not because of her opponent’s shortcomings. Whatever it was she was doing, she seemed to be doing it wrong because this man—and by now Hazuki had indeed noticed there was something very peculiar about him—gave her the distinct impression that he was toying with her. She was coming at him with the intent to hurt, to maim, to kill (given the circumstances, how could she not?) and yet there was no indication that he was expending any effort whatsoever in deflecting the relentless fury of her blows. She was pouring—almost literally—her heart and soul into breaking this man, and he remained wholly unbroken, unaffected, unperturbed. He was, at least from where Hazuki was standing, far more interested in talking.
‘Not to mention your tenacity. A lesser woman would have given up by now—’ he paused briefly to make a quick half-turn and then he bent at the waist, all while gripping Hazuki’s sword arm tightly, sending her sailing through the air once again, ‘—but not you.’
This was the third—or was it fourth? She had lost track—time she had been dispatched in a tangle of limbs, and she found herself unsure of what the man really meant by that last sentence. Uneasiness nagged at her. Her uniform was sodden and muddy, her hair a complete mess, and her entire body ached. Time and time again the man had exploited openings in her movements that Hazuki hadn’t even known were there, and time and time again he had deliberately—or so she thought—foregone striking a decisive blow, opting instead to sweep her, quite literally, off her feet, expecting—knowing—that she would get back up and try again, each time a little less vigorously than the last.
‘There’s a lot of your mother in you, Hazuki,’ he said, as he pushed a mop of wet hair out of his eyes.
She coughed, a faint hint of Kansai-ben in what slipped out from between gritted teeth in response: ‘I take after my father a lot, too.’ It was an accent identical to that of the man she was addressing.
‘Really?’ he asked, smiling again. ‘I wouldn’t know. Never met him.’
What precious little grip she had left on herself she lost in that instant, and with a cry of animalistic fury she lunged at him with sword outstretched before her like a spear, putting all her weight into what she hoped would be enough to break through the man’s defenses. Somewhere in the middle of her cry she vaguely registered shouting something to the tune of you fucking killed him, you bastard but through the thick haze of pink that swallowed them, the garden, all, and the thunderous detonation of her reiatsu, she couldn’t be quite sure. She bore down on him with all her might, drawing from reserves she didn’t even know she had as her eyes shone that same brilliant pink as it always did, her sword glistening wetly not from the rain but from the bloodlike droplets that encrusted it like liquid jewels and that same sense of unearthly calm that always seemed to follow could do nothing, nothing, in the face of her unbridled rage and loss and—
She jolted to a halt roughly, the tip of her sword firmly lodged in the grip of the man who had killed her father, and as she looked up, her face a picture of what could only be described as fear and surprise, her opponent seemed to be pondering something with a troubled look on his face, blurry and out of focus because of the rain and tears in Hazuki’s eyes.
‘No,’ he said contemplatively, a slight frown touching his brow, ‘I think I’d remember doing something like that.’
He yanked hard on Sakurazuki, pulling Hazuki toward him, and quite unlike the other times, he hit her. It was an open-handed blow, but still her head whipped around, a trail of saliva flying from her lips in the instant it took for the rest of her body to catch up and follow suit, then she spun on the spot once, twice, and crumpled into a heap at her opponent’s feet, the rumble of her reiatsu receding almost instantly. For a few painful moments, all she could do was reel in pain, and all she could see was two sets of bare toes. They wiggled once or twice in the wet grass, and then they disappeared from view.
‘Then again,’ came the voice, floating out of the corners of the consciousness she was desperately struggling to hold onto, ‘I’ve probably forgotten more than most people have ever known. Come to think of it,’—something in the way he said it indicated that this was in no way a spontaneous occurrence to him, rather the opposite—‘you’ve forgotten a lot, too, haven’t you?’
A moment’s silence.
‘That was a rhetorical question. Obviously you wouldn’t, uh, well—’ the voice halted, hesitant and very slightly sheepish.
Hazuki groaned and finally mustered the strength to roll over onto her back, the cold rain soothing the welt on her face. Above her, the man floated into view, his head and shoulders upside down as he bent over her.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said, smiling again. ‘What on earth does he mean by that? Let me ask you something, Hazuki. How many times have you read this?’ From nowhere he seemed to produce the book he had been reading earlier, and again Hazuki recognized it. A copy of Heart of Darkness, the edition identical to her own.
I haven’t even started it yet, she thought to herself, groggily.
‘You haven’t even started it yet,’ he echoed, his smile growing a fraction wider. ‘And yet, I know for a fact, you have. Once after you left that message for Jasper all those months ago, once the morning before you met Shun the first time, once after you enlisted Kiri—er, Hanabi’s aid with your little project, and once not long after you earned your captaincy. And those are just the times I can remember off the top of my head!’
This was all too much for her to bear, and she tried to sit up, unwilling to listen to Kyousuke Tsukimiya’s madness any longer.
‘Ah-ah,’ he chided, softly pushing her shoulder back down. ‘Hear me out. You see, you don’t remember any of that, because those are memories I took from you. Each time, I gave you something in return, something I know you remember.’
He sniffed, putting the book away again.
‘Those sure were some nasty bruises, weren’t they? My apologies, but you left me very little choice, just like you’ve left me very little choice this time around. You just don’t give up, and while that’s certainly an admirable trait, it’s also one that’s likely to get you killed one day if you’re not careful.’
With considerable effort, she managed a question—only one, it was all she had the energy for.
‘How did you know about the bruises?’ she croaked. Everything hurt.
He laughed. ‘That’s not all I know,’ he said, still chuckling. ‘Not even half of it.’
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Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Dec 29, 2016 18:29:24 GMT -5
Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled, and the drizzle grew a fraction thicker, soaking Hazuki to the bone as she lay unmoving in the grass, still holding on to her sword as if for dear life. She wanted nothing more to use it, but it was impossibly heavy. Was it Sakurazuki trying to urge caution, or Hazuki’s body giving out? Both possibilities, she could freely admit, worried her.
‘I’ve watched you with keen interest since you first got here, Hazuki,’ said Kyousuke, ‘you and that sword of yours. It was very clever, the way you took advantage of the Gotei’s disarray, but it wasn’t as though Kenshou never suspected something was amiss. He wasn’t dumb, you know. Isn’t dumb.’ He shook his head dismissively, like he was annoyed with himself. ‘You know what I mean. Still, those were some of the best Academy record forgeries I’ve ever seen, so congratulations are certainly in order.’
Hazuki’s mind was reeling, half from what she suspected was a mild concussion and half from what she was hearing. How could he possibly have known that? She had been meticulous to a fault, crafted the perfect identity for herself, and nobody had ever called it into question, not even once. And yet somehow this man, out of nowhere, had seen through it all?
‘You didn’t need much prodding after that,’ he continued, straightening up and disappearing off to one side. Hazuki followed him slowly with her eyes, blinking hard to see through the rain. His back was turned as he gazed out across Rukongai in the direction of the thunder. ‘You delivered my note to Jasper, found the transcript I left for you, and it wasn’t long before you had earned your lieutenancy. You certainly put that to good use, didn’t you? And when you had got what you needed from the Fourth, you moved on to the Third, never losing sight of your goal. Like I said: your tenacity is most admirable.’
Get up.
‘But what I never understood, Hazuki, even after all those times our paths crossed, was why?’
Get up. A flash of color in the corner of her eye.
‘Why go to such lengths to find me? Why the constant chase? What—’
White and red, a shrine maiden’s garb. Dark hair, eyes like embers. A short sword in her hand. He hasn’t noticed her.
‘—have I ever done to you?’
From nowhere, a bolt of lightning hits a nearby tree, needless theatricality no doubt the result of the garden’s usual caretaker eager to chime in with something, anything, to add to the scene. A blinding flash, a flurry of movement, and Hazuki is on her feet ready to capitalize on the moment, her pink sword in one hand and in the other the blue, drawn for the first time with a menacing hum. Its short blade is ethereal—both there and not. Lethal in a way her other sword can never hope to be, was never meant to be. She closes on her opponent just as the other girl reaches him, and in that moment, she knows it’s over. Caught between the two of them he can do nothing. She’s won. Her journey has reached its end. The horror, the horror. She even finds the time to smile.
And then the moment passes.
One callused hand wraps around the shrine maiden Zanpakutō spirit’s throat, jolting her to a standstill so rough that the momentum lifts her feet off the ground, and the other whistles through the air as he turns to face Hazuki. This time, it’s a fist. This time, there is no pain. This time, she feels—
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Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Jan 1, 2017 9:56:09 GMT -5
They were arguing. Or at least, they were engaged in something which may have passed for arguing—one small and angry, the other smaller still and perfectly at ease. Whatever it was they were arguing about, Hazuki wasn’t listening—yet somehow she already knew. She stood some distance away, her hand clasped around the ring she wore on the chain around her neck. It had been her mother’s, and it was Hazuki’s most prized possession. The only memory she had, the only proof she carried of the fact that she came from a place very different from the world she found herself in. Her other hand rubbed her face where she had been struck, trying to feel the imprint of the matching ring her assailant had been wearing. That, too, was proof: proof of guilt, damning evidence. When they found her father’s corpse, his sword, wedding ring, and the famous fur-lined haori had all been missing. Out of the three, only the sword had eventually been returned.
Hazuki looked up at the girls in the distance—she had never seen both of them in the same place before—fixing her eyes on the taller of the two. She looked strangely out of place, as if she didn’t quite belong among the upside-down icebergs that stretched up into the darkness above them like mountains. She, like everyone else, was coated in a light dusting of cherry blossom petals, constantly unsettled by her agitated movements. Her very presence seemed to radiate anger, like the heat of a blaze that grew ever hotter as Hazuki approached, the ripples from her footsteps spreading out into the infinite.
Sakurazuki was the first to turn to look at her; a slight pause, tentative, before she eventually said what was on her mind. Hazuki already knew what it would be.
‘You found what you were looking for, Hazuki,’ she murmured, ‘but did you like what you found?’ From anyone else, it may have sounded like a nagging I told you so, but there was something grave and something sad in the way she said it, like the universe had come clanking to this very moment despite her every effort to make sure it wouldn’t.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ insisted the other girl, something sharp and desperate in her tone. ‘You have to—’
‘Why would he pretend to not remember?’ asked Hazuki, interrupting the girl in the shrine maiden’s garb. ‘Why would he lie about that?’ She was wearing a deep frown, her uncertainty as plain as day.
Sakurazuki’s voice was soft as she pointed behind Hazuki, the pink ribbon around her waist caught in an unseen current. ‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’
Her father’s Zanpakutō spirit hissed viciously and Hazuki turned, and as her assailant floated into view she got her first real good look at him: no rain in her eyes, no tears blurring her vision. It was a stunning likeness, but it wasn’t perfect—he looked younger than her father had done and his ear hadn’t been maimed by a stray Cero years and years ago, but the thing that stood out the most was his eyes. Hazuki had her father’s eyes, dull and grey, but this man had eyes like she had never seen before. A vast starscape, like the night sky. In their depths, something twinkled and a star fell. He looked somber.
‘Sorry,’ he said, tapping his cheek gently in the same place he had struck her. ‘I went a little overboard. That’s the first time she’s ever helped, you know, and the first time you ever drew that other sword.’
Hazuki clenched her fists to keep herself from shouting. Instead, her voice was low, dangerous, her eyes filled with hate and malice. ‘You killed my father,’ she said, answering the question he had posed earlier.
‘I told you,’ he replied, taking a step toward her through the falling cherry blossom petals, ‘I would have remembered doing something like that.’
‘You murdered him. You crushed his windpipe with your bare hands, stole his sword, his haori, even his wedding ring’—she jabbed a finger accusatorially at his left hand, her voice steadily rising—‘and then you walked all the way back to his home where you met me. You’re telling me none of that sounds familiar to you?’
Tsukimiya stared at her blankly. ‘I think you have me mistaken for someone else, Hazuki.’
‘Then where were you eight years ago?’ she asked, her voice like ice.
He paused. ‘I was— Well, I was—’ he frowned, deep in thought. It seemed to trouble him that he couldn’t remember. ‘I... Well, that hardly matters, does it?’
‘Enough!’ shrieked the taller Zanpakutō spirit from behind Hazuki.
‘Kannaduki—’ started the golden-haired girl, trying to calm her down, but she would have none of it.
‘We’ve come a long way to watch you die, to repay you for what you did. To take from you what you took from us!’
‘Ah, I see now,’ he said, putting his hands into his pockets as his shoulders slumped. ‘Yes, of course.’
A silence settled over them. Brief, but heavy.
‘You think killing me will somehow make you feel better,’ said Tsukimiya, his voice soft and understanding. ‘You’ll finish what it is you came here to finish, and then you’ll... Do what, exactly? Return home and find your parents there waiting for you? Live happily ever after? Tell me, Hazuki, whose idea was it to come here in the first place?’
Hazuki didn’t reply, but she was unable to keep her eyes from darting to Kannaduki. Tsukimiya followed her gaze, locking his starry eyes on the fiery little spirit.
‘And has coming here somehow changed the past? Will it change the past? Will going through with this change who you are? Change what you’ve done?’
‘Shut up!’ shouted Kannaduki, the embers in her eyes flaring violently.
‘You feed off her regret, off her sorrow—’ he continued, eyes still on Kannaduki.
‘—like a parasite,’ interrupted Sakurazuki, stepping forward. ‘Only making it worse. You deepen it, plunging her into a pit of despair, of loathing, of hatred. To spur her forward to satisfy your deranged bloodlust, never considering what is best for her.’
Kannaduki opened her mouth as if to speak, but Sakurazuki would have none of it.
‘You choke her, keep her trapped in this place’—she raised one delicate hand to gesture at their surroundings—‘suppressing her true nature to further your own agenda. Using her. Forcing her to wallow in her bitterness and isolate her from others.’
‘No,’ said Hazuki, hesitantly. ‘I chose this.’
‘Did you? I wasn’t aware of you ever being given a choice. You were lured here with promises of fulfillment, of revenge, of satisfaction. The chance to tie up loose ends. Closure. All of them lies.’
‘They weren’t—’ began Kannaduki, but she was cut short by the blonde.
There is no nation of you, there is no nation of me Our only nation lives in lucid dreams Lucid dreams, I’m livin’ in lucid dreams I’m livin’ on shortwave streams tonight
Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Jan 1, 2017 11:26:58 GMT -5
Hazuki took a step back in shock, her mouth open in horror.
‘You told me he was ambushed! You said he was caught unaware, off-guard, murdered in cold blood! You told me he killed him,’ she wailed, pointing at Tsukimiya, who had remained silent the entire time, ‘in cold blood. And now you’re telling me that’s not what happened at all? That it was self-defense? That all he wanted to do was leave?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘You didn’t what? Think I would ever find out? You didn’t think my mother would be unable to bring herself to kill him? Didn’t expect to have to use me to get this far? All this time, it was you pushing me to do those things in Rukongai. It was you that turned me into— Into this!’
‘Your father—’
‘Never expected me to avenge him!’ Hazuki exploded. ‘He knew the risks and he took them gladly knowing that I would be free to forge my own path, to make my own choices!’
The falling petals swirled in hidden eddies, a reflection of the Shinigami whose mind this was. Angry and betrayed, Hazuki glared at what may as well have been the root of all evil as far as she was concerned. Her very own Judas, the frigid water around them altogether too reminiscent of Cocytus itself. Her breaths were labored, as if there was a heavy weight on her chest, and Sakurazuki stepped to her side, touching her arm lightly. It soothed her, but it wasn’t enough to ease her breathing. Whatever was happening, Kannaduki seemed to understand, and she didn’t like it.
‘Stop,’ she said, an urgency in her voice as she stepped toward Hazuki, whose breaths were becoming increasingly ragged and painful. ‘Make her stop,’ she repeated, taking another step as she gave Sakurazuki a pleading glance, something panicked in her eyes.
Sakurazuki merely shook her head, never leaving Hazuki’s side as the Shinigami fell to her knees gasping for air, clutching the mirror-like surface beneath her. The ripples warped her reflection and for a few seconds she imagined she was looking not at herself, but at her mother. She coughed and a bubble escaped her lips, racing toward the image of herself she was hunched over. Another cough, another bubble, and then she was falling, head first, through the surface as Kannaduki begged her to stop. Gravity twisted as she fell and the world inverted, the sensation making her head spin. She closed her eyes as she broke the surface, and when she opened them again, blinking water out of her eyes, she was lying down, coughing up frigid icewater in painful hacking bursts. She wheezed painfully, clutching at her chest, and was vaguely aware of her Zanpakutō spirit kneeling at her side, pushing strands of her sodden hair out of her face with soothing words of reassurance.
Trembling, she rolled onto all fours, looking up at her surroundings. No longer were they a cold blue, no longer were the hulking masses of icebergs floating upside-down in the distance. The sight that greeted her now was a warm paradise: red water as far as the eye could see, with lush greenery sprouting out of its surface like a mangrove forest, forming innumerable nooks and crannies in a maze-like landscape that stretched on forever. All around them, the cherry blossom petals still fell like snowflakes, settling on the glass-like surface of the water. She marveled at it, but her awe was interrupted by a choking sound behind her. She turned to see Kannaduki gasping for air, a madness in her eyes as she hauled herself bodily toward the pair of them. Beyond her stood Tsukimiya, gazing down at the dark-haired, parasitic Zanpakutō spirit in her death throes.
She reached Hazuki at last, her lips losing color and the glow of her eyes rapidly fading, and stretched out one hand, her eyes pleading.
Lies. She had told her nothing but lies.
With thinly veiled disgust, she slapped Kannaduki’s hand away and rose to her feet to coldly watch the spirit choke and die at her feet. She lay face down in the water, hair splayed out across its surface, and Sakurazuki’s hand wormed its way into Hazuki’s. Together they stood, hand in hand, watching, as the body sunk into the crimson depths, her hold on Hazuki released at last.
‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Hazuki. ‘For everything.’ It was just the two of them now. Tsukimiya was gone.
‘Don’t apologize, Hazuki,’ said Sakurazuki, her voice light and hopeful. ‘You’re a willful young girl. You want things your way. There’s nothing wrong with that.’
‘I should have listened.’
‘Maybe. In the end, though, you learned something. I just want what’s best for you,’ she echoed her own words from weeks ago. ‘I always will.’
Hazuki squeezed her hand gently. ‘I see that now. Thanks for sticking with me.’
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Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Jan 1, 2017 11:27:11 GMT -5
It was sunny when she came to, and she drew a long, tired sigh as she shielded her eyes from the light. She was lying on something hard, and she sat up, her face aching monstrously. This was the bench he had been sitting on when she had first arrived, and she cast her eyes around to see where he had gotten off to. She spotted him almost immediately, ankle-deep in the koi pond, wading around as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
‘Ah, you’re up,’ he said, cheerfully.
She remained silent, and he looked over at her, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.
‘It’s okay for you to hate me, Hazuki. Whatever it is I did, I’m sure you’re justified in your hatred. There’s no shame in it. All I ask is that if you’re going to hate me, do it honestly. On your terms, not someone else’s.’
Hazuki got to her feet slowly, her off-hand falling to her sword—just one, now, as it had always been meant to be.
‘Who are you, really?’ she asked.
‘Does it matter?’
She was quiet for a moment. She pondered how she would ever return home now, and more importantly, if she even wanted to. She couldn’t change the past. She couldn’t bring her parents back. All she could do now was honor their memory by being the best version of herself she could be.
There is no nation of you, there is no nation of me Our only nation lives in lucid dreams Lucid dreams, I’m livin’ in lucid dreams I’m livin’ on shortwave streams tonight
Post by Hazuki Tsukimiya on Jan 15, 2017 22:17:44 GMT -5
There is no nation of you, there is no nation of me Our only nation lives in lucid dreams Lucid dreams, I’m livin’ in lucid dreams I’m livin’ on shortwave streams tonight
Welcome!
Welcome to Bleach Gotei, an alternate universe Bleach RP!