𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐀 | 𝐬𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐨

𝐞𝐩𝐢𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞

"Giyuu?" Hiroko was shaking now, taking a step towards him, the others staying well back. "Giyuu, tell me they're okay. Please, fuck, please ..."

Still he didn't speak. He didn't do anything. Even as tears pricked his eyes and his breath shallowed, giving an undeniable answer as pearls of salt winded down his cheeks, he still didn't say a word. 

"Tell me they're fucking okay!" Hiroko screamed, her hands shoving him at the shoulders. 

Giyuu let himself fall to the ground, welcoming the pain, because it was a brief release from the senselessness of his being because of what he'd seen, what he'd heard.

What he'd escaped. 

How- how could I have left them? How could I not have done a single fucking thing to save them?  

He'd heard of survivor's guilt, but he'd thoughtlessly never imagined he would be experiencing it then, the unbearable agony of wanting to scream and cry and fall apart and die, but not being able to feel anything. 

Untouchable, like the surface of a pond so still it could be glass, ready to shatter at the slightest impact.

Hiroko dropped to her knees so she was in his eye line, the bottoms of her palms pressed so firmly into her eyes he was sure they would bruise, but all that still couldn't stop her own tears from flowing. "We're all going to make it out but- but-"

Her words cut off in an ugly sob, because there was nothing beautiful about any pain inflicted so deeply that it warranted a physical reaction. Behind her, Asa was on the verge of mirroring her agony, the skin of his palms tainted red from how it had been ripped by the clench of his fists. 

"She saved me," the boy murmured. "They saved me, and I couldn't save them."

Even as the sun began to rise, veiling their whole group in soft golden light, even as the world began anew, the eight of them couldn't. 

Every time Giyuu blinked, each time his eyes closed, he could see the smile of his best friend, hear his voice teasing, "Lighten up, Yuu!". He could see his other friend that he'd only made a week ago, grinning along with Sabito, hear her laugh ringing in his ears.

He just couldn't, he couldn't fucking d-

"Congratulations, everyone."

Everything ended with two words, just as it had started, spoken in the familiar ring of two sugar-sweet voices in perfect unison. 

Giyuu looked outwards, past the last line of trees to see the pavilion they had met in for the beginning of their journey, inhabited only by the small twin girls who had given them their initial instructions. 

"You have passed the Final Selection," they continued. "Almost all of you are still alive - a highly commendable feat."

Though he was never an emotional person, and especially not now, Giyuu was struck by the urge to scream at those two girls, to shake them by the shoulders because how could they be congratulated when they had lost the two members of their family holding them together?

He took a deep breath to calm himself as they continued to speak. 

"There are, of course, further formalities, but we will allow you to rest and recuperate for a day, here at the Fujikasane Mountain."

Giyuu wanted nothing more than to get away from that mountain, and all the awful memories he was sure would haunt him for the rest of his life, but somehow calm washed over him. A wave of serendipity soothing the turbulent ocean that was Tomioka Giyuu. Resolve, a promise, a new start.