The Dragon's Girl | Taiju Shiba | Tokyo Revengers

Epilogue

One Year Later, Christmas Eve:

You never realize how much power a place could hold on you until you get out of it, escape and leave it behind, thinking that the farther you go the better. Hoping that the distance you put between you could erase that hold like a stain of mud over your skin. But then you come back to that place, and you realize that hold wasn't erasable. In fact, it wasn't a stain, it was a scar. Carved and imprinted so deep into your skin, that even if you travelled to the ends of the world, it would still be there, within you.

That's how I felt the second I stepped my foot back in our old hometown for the holidays. When I walked through those same old streets, looked at those same old houses. Replaying in my head the last time I was here. The last things I saw, last words I spoke. How every corner carried a trace of me just like I carried that town still within. I knew, I never left.

Because I could still see it all in my head, I could see the old me still here. The old self I gladly sabotaged and torn apart, fleeing far away from it. To a new city, a new life. Only to come and find out it wasn't gone at all.

I'm not sure if I was only talking about myself alone, here. Because this place did not only remind me of my old life. But it reminded me of him, too. It's like I could still feel him here. His presence, still strong in this place. Still strong in me. Like those sad and empty streets are echoing nothing but his name to me. Over and over, and it tugged at the edges of that old wound. Those small and shattered pieces that were still not put back together yet, they ached.

And it's not like I didn't try to put them back together, to let go. It's not like I moved far away to a city that's seven hours away from my hometown just for the sake of my own self. Part of it was, maybe, but the main part was I tried to get rid of him. Of the traces he left in me. But little did I know, I ended up seeing him everywhere.

I would see him, feel him, in the small cracks he left in my chest. Hear his words in the empty and silent spaces I sit alone in. I would smell him in the cigarette smoke of others. And if by chance, I walk by someone wearing the same kind of his cologne, my knees would still weaken. And I would feel myself start crumbling all over. He would come to my mind, voluntary and involuntary. I would see him in the bikes that pass by me, in the color red that covered half the city this time of year. I never escaped, never moved, and coming back here to this place only confirmed that shameful defeat to me...

My feet stopped, and I tilted my head down and buried my chin into my scarf. I needed a few seconds to breathe in before going up those steps and knocking on that front door. So I leaned over, and sat myself over the damp and too familiar brick fence.

It's been a year since I was here in this house. And despite how painful that thought was, I found myself smiling at it. Because the last time I was here, was my first time with him. That was one of the little times I felt pure happiness with him, and I promised him I won't ever regret those times. But then my smile faded, when I remembered what happened afterwards. That day was too good to be true, and it pained me to think of what I thought as a dream turned out to be a nightmare at the end.

My friendship with Yuzuha and Hakkai almost faded and ended the first three months after that Christmas, after that doomed day. But then things settled, we had time to think things through, and they reached out for me.

It's not like I didn't want to reach out first, but I promised myself to start thinking about me first before anything and anyone else. That doesn't mean I don't love them, I do, but I had to love me more so I can be able to return it.

I never asked about him again, never heard from him and they never brought him up. All I knew, he moved out of town as well. And started his own business somewhere, while still providing his siblings with everything they needed. Including Yuzuha's college money. Which was one she picked for herself, also out of this miserable town. Hakkai was still in school, and still in Toman. I didn't know much about what he's getting himself into these days, but from what Yuzuha's been telling me over the phone, he was doing okay and things in the Shiba family have never been this settled before.