Incomplete Farewells

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In the end, I paid for Yoru-chan’s funeral.

Perhaps I knew what I was doing at the very start, even before I walked into the funeral home. I had my pocketbook and seal, the two items that I knew were necessary for giving the deceased a proper send-off ⸻ or at least, the one that I could give her.

The attendant’s eyes widened when I told him what I was willing to pay, but I don’t think even he understood what was happening. Despite the redness of my eyes and the dark circles forming beneath, my suit was well-pressed and my makeup flawless. For all the world I appeared to be a businesswoman in mourning and the funerary industry wasn’t typically one to turn down large sums of money, but even still he asked me several times if I was sure about the massive floral arrangements and other embellishments I had happily sprung for.

I was sure, obviously. I had never been more certain of anything.

As my bank account emptied into the coffers of both the funeral home and the temple I felt absolutely nothing, a stark emptiness that crawled around in my hollowed ribcage. There had been an organ there once, some essential thing that had beaten with love or hope or even simply the desire for survival, but it had rotted away long before I learned of Yoru-chan’s passing. Now I felt truly alone in the world, casting off what was left of my material possessions as though that gift might send the departed girl to a happy afterlife.

It was what she deserved, that poor and broken thing.

After her father failed to return my calls nor open the door to his home, I turned instead to her workplace. They offered me lip-service, pretending to care about another set of bones rolled beneath the feet of the exploitative company; their hearts weren’t in it, their slackjawed bodies barely shuffling along as they decomposed into dried-out zombies. Something like pity swelled briefly in my breast, but it was quickly snuffed out by the roaring flame of my anger; to my credit I restrained myself from striking her boss and telling him exactly what I felt of his cruel practices, and I told myself that propriety counted for something.

Two days later her body was fed into a furnace, the last of her corpse burned away to nothing. The tech who handled the affair must’ve felt sorry for me; as silent as the grave, his shaky hands helped me pick her bones from the ash, our chopsticks clattering together as we moved her remains to the most elaborate urn I could afford. I thanked him with a smile, but the gesture only unnerved him; I must’ve seemed to him to be a ghost myself, a dead woman shambling through the motions of her final act.

With no one left in the world that gave a shit about her, I was the only one to attend Yoru-chan’s funeral. The priests outnumbered the mourners five to one, and the conductor of the little ritual gave his all; whether it was out of pity or concern for my pocketbook I’ll never know.

A wall of hundreds of white lilies surrounded her photo, the nicest portrait I could scrape from her social media. She looked almost happy in it, but I could tell that the nothing had already begun to seep into her by that point; it was an easy thing to notice for a wretched woman like me, and I shed my tears for her prolonged and pointless death, the Yoru-chan I knew having rattled through her death-throes years before her living motion finally ceased.

I should’ve been there. I should’ve held her hand. I should’ve given her peace.

Instead I gave her everything that was left inside me, my last emotions and all of my material wealth. It was nothing, and it served no purpose no matter how dearly I wanted it to.

Eventually Saya-chan found me, my cold statue frozen as it fixated on that beautifully-awful photo. Ignoring my ghost she paid her own respects, lines of hot wet streaming down her face; I don’t know what possessed me to have the thought, but in that moment I saw her as something beautiful, an angel came to bless the fallen.

Then, she turned on me.

“You could’ve called,” she snapped, acrimonious tears still lingering in the corners of her eyes, the emerald orbs aflame with anger and sadness.

“I could’ve,” I allowed, my scratchy timbre rough from all the crying.

“Then why didn’t you?” she growled, advancing on me like an angered tigress, claws out.

“What would it have mattered?” I shrugged, arguing merely for the sake of it, autonomic responses dragging out the familiar sibling hostility. “Your girlfriend wouldn’t have let you come anyway.”

I struck the nerve dead-on, needling my sister in the way that only I could. I don’t know if I wanted to hurt her or not; I couldn’t feel anything anymore, the dregs of my soul already craving release. I’m sure that it stung when she struck me, my body aware of the sensation of pain in only the most academic sense.

“... Feel better?” I asked, a red mark throbbing on the side of my face; even this was its own barb, condescension from the elder sister to the younger.

“That’s low, even for you,” she hissed, baring her fangs.

Her fury lay in the fact that I had been correct, and we both knew it. Saya-chan was onto her fifth girlfriend in as many years, my futchy sister devouring femmes like a predator guarding the only watering hole in the savanna. She had to have fucked every girl to ever walk through the doors of her favourite lesbian bar in Marumaru; I could tell because I’d done the same myself, our persistent hunger exacerbated by the inability to think of someone other than ourselves.

Still, it was needlessly cruel; I was a monster by calculated design, while she was a creature moulded by happenstance and neglect. Yoru-chan might’ve been able to fix her, had the two ever occasion to share their feelings; self-centered as I was, I loathed the prospect, pangs of guilt susurrating in my chest as I tried to convince myself that I would’ve been a better lover than my little sister.

Seething at each other, we both gave in to the pointlessness of the argument; as one we turned back to Yoru-chan and her brilliant smile, marred though it was by years of solitary pain.

“... I miss her,” Saya-chan sighed eventually, a tortured breath hissing between her teeth.

“I do too,” I returned automatically, the words reflecting my true feelings and yet still said purely for the sake of what was expected.

“I should’ve been there for her,” she snarled, her anger turning inward as she tread the same line that I already walked. “I should’ve done something.”

“And yet,” I murmured, the sound of my voice carrying through the room on wings of silence, “we didn’t.”

“... I know,” she grumbled, clenching her hands into tight fists.

“We as good as killed her.”

“... I know.”

The nothing stretched between us, prying apart our ribs, burrowing deep into our core. Neither of us spoke for minutes, writhing in wretched stillness as we contemplated our awful failures and the death of something that had once been so innocent. Careless caretakers both, we had ruined something truly beautiful and only after its erasure did we now feel remorse.

It sickened me; I’m sure Saya-chan had to feel the same.

“I wish I had told her how I felt,” my sister growled, her tears falling anew. “Maybe it wouldn’t have turned out like this if I’d just confessed.”

The fundamental difference between us became obvious, illuminated in that artless phrase. While my sister longed for a future that could’ve been, I was far too selfish and realistic to imagine anything resembling hope; I knew that the only thing left to possess was a stark finality, and I craved it with every fiber of my miserable being.

Painted lips curled into a wicked smile, I suppressed the urge to laugh.

“I wish I had gone with her,” I chuckled, my true self slipping out between my lips. “She shouldn’t have died alone.”

I was right of course, and Saya-chan hated me for it. Still, those were the last words we had to offer each other, vain wishes cast into the vast nothing of Yoru-chan’s wake. Loathing each other, my sister and I parted for the very last time.

Dying didn’t hurt as much as I’d expected it might; rather than comfort me, it instead infuriated my sensibilities. I’d found the coldest river I could, clutching the rock tightly as I jumped, and yet it felt like a thin mockery of what Yoru-chan had suffered.

A lonely woman to the end, I died with her name on my lips.

 

---

 

Bolting upright in my bed, I awoke in a cold sweat. It had to have been the hundredth time I’d experienced that nightmare, the worn tape playing out on repeat nearly every night.

I had never been one for prophetic dreams, but the certainty that the vision could be some awful truth had gripped me even in my youth, when my parents had sent me away to boarding school to keep their alpha daughters from snapping at each other. Separated from Yoru-chan, my fondness for her only grew until it became a consuming desire; I had already failed her in one lifetime, and I vowed not to do so again.

Perhaps I could call that feeling “love,” and I wanted desperately to believe that’s what it was. Recalling all the painful details I’d gleaned in that other apartment, I had fashioned myself into the kind of partner that I thought she would need: a masculine protector draped in feminine coverings, I resolved to become the husband that she lacked the moment I spied the woman lurking behind the eyes of that teenage girl.

Sitting in my bed, alone, I was gripped by the desire to see my wife again.

Seizing my phone from beside my pillow, I hastily tapped through a number of menus; purchasing train tickets and hotel accommodations, I crafted a romantic getaway I was sure would entice her. Golden Week would be upon us soon, leaving Yoru with a substantial amount of free time; seeking to monopolise it, I told myself that I could seduce her ⸻ that I could make up for how I’d failed her.

Heedless of the early hour, I dialed her number.

“Sweetheart?” I tried as I heard the line pick up.

“Mn?” the voice on the other end hummed, the blessed angel still wrapped-up in blankets and dreams. “Is that you, Daddy?”

Fangs itching with a dire thirst, I smiled and nodded. “It’s me,” I purred, delighted to hear the name my wife had gifted me. “I have a present for you.”

“For me?” she echoed sleepily.

“For us,” I sighed, enraptured by the sweet sound of her soft soprano. “I booked a room at an inn.”

“Oh, Saya must’ve told you,” she mumbled, her brain baffled by the early-morning fog.

“... Told me what?” I growled, brows furrowing in disappointed irritation; again my sister had out-maneuvered me, capitalising on the charity I’d showed on Reika-chan’s birthday.

“The Traditional Games Club is having an outing on Golden Week,” she murmured, fighting off the urge to drift back into unconsciousness. “We’re going to a hot spring.”

“In Marumaru South?” I tried, wary of the coincidence.

“So she did tell you,” the mewling kitten grinned, her smile audible through the phone. “I’m glad you can come too.”

As her words drifted off into quiet, even breathing, I laid myself back on the mattress; listening to the sound of my lover’s rest, I grappled with the possessive determination that blazed within my chest, wreathed by the scent of citrus.