I Can't Lose You Twice
Deep despair had been accumulating. For a long, long time.
"Here, it might be a little hard, but… ah—"
Cold porridge flowed into his slightly parted mouth.
He still could not move his body properly, yet it was such a relief that he had at least reached the point of being able to twitch. Now he could answer her affection in small ways, and even manage the simplest expressions of intent.
Nodding or shaking his head from side to side was still beyond him, but even so, it was good.
Being able to weakly lace his fingers through the hand she held, enough to draw a smile onto her face—that was good. Being able to lift the corner of his mouth at her whispers—that was good too.
Asking about her haggard eyes, or the hair that had grown more unkempt than before, remained impossible. Why she had failed to care for herself, what made her keep looking at him with such sorrowful eyes—he could not ask. A feeling rose along his spine that even if he did ask, he would receive no answer.
Like a cold hand tracing the length of his vertebrae, an unspoken pressure always kept her company. Just as in those days when he had never been able to ask her age—no, a weight far more terrible than those days now crushed him.
And above all else, when he saw those two eyes that, even in sleep, never truly slept, only watched him.
"…You're really breathing."
When he overheard that unconscious murmur. Without even realizing he was awake, she pressed her ear to his chest again and again, or checked the pulse at his wrist. She brought her nose to his neck and kept drawing breath in, then letting it out long and slow—every one of those moments squeezed his heart with terrible force.
If he had known she would suffer like this, he would have been more careful. At the very least he would have tried to dodge that blade.
Her holy power, which he could not feel at all even though she wore the antique priestly robes, her faith—now her depression, visible with perfect clarity and growing stronger by the hour, forced him to keep swallowing pain. He could not blame her. That she had cast aside her own belief and entrusted herself to a god that radiated only an ominous presence—he could not speak a single word against that either.
Watching her, who had missed him so desperately, pathologically check every night whether the sleeping him had died again; watching her cling to him with frantic strength day after day without ever truly sleeping—he was crumbling too.
"…Is there something you're thinking about so deeply?"
Ah—he still had not managed to swallow the cold porridge past his throat. When he forced it down into his stomach, a faint sense of fullness arrived as if something had finally filled him… and then a sharp stomachache began to rise.
It was churning. It was shaking.
Half a year, had she said? The time he had been dead? After that long, his stomach had apparently grown quite sensitive. A sound like a plank sinking with a noisy scream into water—loud enough for her to hear—filled the room.
"…Evan?"
At the sudden pain he frowned a little and his fingers trembled faintly. A reflexive reaction beyond his control. Just as the body flinches to dodge a flying ball, this was the same. At an action he could do nothing about, she froze for an instant.
"Uh, uh… is the porridge… is the porridge bad?"
Clink.
The metal spoon that had been in his mouth only a moment before struck the floor. Why did that sound seem so loud? Why did it seem to come not from the floor, but from her?
The warmth vanished from the eyes staring blankly at him, and tears welled. Weight settled into the hand that had been gently stroking him; she rose from her seat, seized the blanket covering his body, and yanked it straight down.
"No, the stomach… right? It can't be that, right? Please… tell me I'm right…"
She touched him, pressed her ear to listen, muttering all the while, until at last Thea seized his hand tightly—tight enough that the tingling pain made him open his fingertips a fraction.
"There's warmth… and the pulse is good, so what's wrong? Why… why is Evan hurting?"
It was only that his stomach had been startled. Because he had gone so long without eating anything, of course it would be like this. The mouth that wanted to tell her so only managed,
"Uh, uuh,"
something crude and pathetic, more babble than word.
"Yeah, here, I'm here, Evan. Does it hurt? A lot?"
He shook his head. The fierce pain that had struck once was already ebbing. He was so fine, in fact, that he worried he had overreacted. So he tried to offer a small smile to reassure her—
"Liar."
What met him was her gaze, sharp and raised, anger mixed through it.
"You were always kind. Too kind. Kind enough to hide every single thing that was hard for you.
Do you think that makes me happy? Evan? Did you think I never noticed you were lying like that?"
He was flustered. He had not lied at all. Because he was always happy whenever she was near, he could forget the fatigue of his body and simply spend time with her.
"Every time I called, you came running like a shot and let me spoil you. Even when I said you were cute you never made a fuss, and you always showed me the face I loved, that reaction, bright with light… I've already lost you once, Evan.
I've already had to watch you die right in front of me!!"
A roaring cry burst from those faded lips. Her long, thickly grown hair whipped and spread wide to either side. For a moment he was startled by the twigs tangled in it and the strange color that seemed to seep black for some reason—then he was seized.
His collar.
They collided.
Her forehead and his.
Her head pressing down until it hurt, her two golden eyes forced against his, burning. In that moment he could see, just a little, the emotions she had kept locked inside: her sorrow, her fear, her anxiety, her loneliness, her rage.
"So please, please tell me honestly. I'm begging you. You're not so dense that you still don't know you've already become my everything. I cannot forgive not being with you. I will never go back to that time again. I will not tolerate you leaving me anymore. Even if that means people—"
Silence fell.
The breath that had been roughly sweeping across his face stopped. The hands and the head that had been pressing hard went still. Even the light in the eyes that had been pouring tears, wetting his cheeks and the corners of his eyes, went out completely.
"…So just… Evan, if it hurts, if it's hard, if you're exhausted—always tell me right away.
I… I can't lose you twice… I…"
She was trembling. Tears poured again. Was it relief? Or had sorrow completely swallowed her and left her broken? Unable even to wipe them away, she simply collapsed across his body and cried, gasping for air. She could not even breathe freely. Emotion had already devoured everything and filled the space around her with nothing else.
Perhaps she was replaying, over and over, the moment he died—the scene of him apologizing to her while his heart spilled out. And she must already have repeated it countless times. Across half a year.
One year. It is not short. She had said the time they spent together passed far too quickly, yet that was not true. He could still recall with perfect clarity what they had done. The moment she planted the peach tree and asked him, face slightly stiff with seriousness, whether her scent was good or whether the peach scent was better—he still remembered. The time he accidentally spilled water on her feet while watering the flowers, apologized again and again, and froze solid when she told him to pay with his lips—he remembered that clearly too. The time those moments layered hundreds of times over was one year, and they had repeated that fully three times. That long a span.
If she had spent half of it on the grief of losing him, if she had kept replaying the instant of his death and simply let the despairing moments flash before her eyes again and again—had she been in hell for half a year?
"Evan, Evan… please… no… don't leave me alone. You promised. You promised with that mouth that you wouldn't send me away like that, that you wouldn't leave in pain—but you broke the promise. You broke it. You broke it. You died… leaving me…!"
Rip—the sound of stitching tearing rang in his ears. The cloth that was fiercely clawing at his chest, crumpling and screaming, showed no sign of leaving her hands.
"So… not even for a single moment do I believe anymore. Your words are nothing but terrible lies filled with good intentions. That's wrong. Deceiving me and dying like that—I can't forgive it."
To say she had changed—there was still the bright self he had known. And the always-cheerful, sly Thea who had been full of schemes to tease him… the Thea he was most familiar with, the Thea he loved, had welcomed the resurrected him only yesterday, it must have been. Yet the anger he had never once received from her was more terrifying than he could have imagined. Those emotions, those expressions, those words that had always faced outward…
"If you deceive me one more time, then… really, I won't let it go. There will never again be a day I send you out into the outside that hurts you. Know that, Evan."
She drew close, her edge bared.