"Lina-chan, Lina-chan!" I shouted as I saw her sat down at the usual hill, looking over the city.
"Tsk, you again." She seemed to be displeased by me coming near, but didn't try to fly away or to stop me from approaching, as usual.
I reached the top of the hill and hugged her, "Why do you always do this?" She asked while pushing me away, but not with enough strength to actually force me to let go.
"Because I like hugging you of course!" I said and then gave her my best grin. She just sighed in response, "So, what are you doing right now?" I asked her as I let go of the hug and set next to her.
"Thinking." Such a great response... She surely explained everything with this...
"About what?" I pressed on.
"Lots of things." Come on...
"What things!?" I asked again.
"You can be really bothersome sometimes, you know that?" She replied with another sigh.
"I don't mind this much." I told her with a giggle.
She heaved a heavy breath before giving in, "I was thinking about life... This world... Its future... These kind of things."
I looked up and thought for a bit before replying, "But you know... Is there any point in wondering about those things?" I turned towards her before continuing, "Aren't you just going to live forever? What's the point of worrying about life? Even if you didn't life forever, what is the point anyways? People die, other live. We lose the ones we love and find new people to love, that's just how those things are, isn't it? What's the point of thinking about those things?" I started remembering too many bad things as I talked, I hated thinking about them, I hated remembering them... but I was glad they could live on inside my memories.
I was a bit angry at Lina for making me remember, but was glad to still be able to remember them so clearly, and feeling stupid since I knew it was not her fault...
She ruffled my hair. It wasn't a gentle ruffle at all, it actually got it all disheveled even, and hurt a bit too, but... it didn't feel bad. "Nobody lives forever, Hikari." She told me.
"... Nobody?" I asked her for confirmation.
She nodded, "Nobody."
"... Not even Mama?" She shook her head, "Not even Ophellia Onee-san?" She shook her head again, "... Not even you?" She shook her head one last time... "How? How could you of all people die...? You're invincible, there's just no way..."
She cut me off, "I'm not invincible."
"You're... not?" That had to be a lie.
"I'm not invincible." She repeated.
"Just who... Who could possibly defeat you?" I asked her in disbelief, it really had to be a joke, right? There's no way there's anything stronger than her out there... Not a dragon, not a giant turtle, not Mama, there was just nobody...
"Well, my mom for one." I did not expect that, "And my sickness too." Wait what!? "And perhaps something else as well. It's not like I have explored the whole universe to be sure there isn't anyone else."
I didn't know what to say, it felt like too much... Way too much... Why a sickness again? Why can't anybody resist sicknesses...? "How... How long do you have left...?" I asked her. I didn't want to know the answer, but I was afraid of being kept in the dark too.
"I don't know." She said while ruffling my hair more gently, "Last I checked, I should already be dead, but somehow I'm still alive. It could come in a millennia from now, in a century, in a decade... Or maybe even tomorrow, I don't have a way of knowing.
"But it's coming. I'm not staying forever. I'm not going to be able to stay here forever, to keep this world in this pocket dimension forever, to keep it hidden with those two moons... A time will come when I'll no longer be here, and you'll have to do everything yourselves, without me to support you." I started crying.
"You're really... Going?" I was sobbing, "It's not... a lie?
"You'll abandon... Hikari too?"
She hugged me of her own this time around, it was a first, "Poor child... I cannot change your past, but I'm sure nobody abandoned you... And I'm not going to either.
"It's just that my time is coming, and it will come when it comes. Neither me nor you can stop that." She pulled away from the hug and gently wiped my tears, "So, instead of thinking too much about the inevitable, why not try enjoying the today?" She smiled... That was also a first.
I nodded, "Okay... Please take care of me from now on too, Lina."
...
... There was no response. Of course there wasn't, there never was...
I was quite tired... To revisit those memories... Sometimes I wondered why I bothered with using Time Magic for that... It was fine though. It was a sad memory, but not a bad one.
I sent a small prayer to the gods while looking at Lina's grave, and then started going down the hill. That giant turtle soup won't make itself after all, so I better get going.
So... About this story... There's a lot to say, and at the same time I don't know what exactly to say... I guess I should start from Lina.
Lina is short for Aca18ina. I used to use Aca-chan, but she was bothered by it and said that I should use Lina instead if I had to add a suffix to it. So Lina-chan it wass.
Lina's character was sometimes Ally, sometimes Luna, and sometimes Allyuna, depending on which personalities were present, so Hikari would probably refer to her as Ly-chan, Luna-chan or Yuna-chan, but... Neither of those seemed right, for me she is Lina, so I decided she'd be Lina for Hikari too.
Lina was a special member of AG. Everyone that played the first month has vivid memories of her, everyone that joined afterwards knows little to nothing of her. I was the one exception as someone that joined in the second month, yet backread a lot, so I read a lot of the things that Lina did and said... Still, she was someone that left the game a few hours before I joined, so we never had a chance to interact IC, though we did interact in other games and the like.
She was special because she basically shaped the game to the form it lived for most of its lifetime. The game was made on a whim with basically no plans whatsoever with nobody really knowing what they were doing... At that point Lina kinda hijacked the game from the GM's hands and took the rails on her own. She changed the systems a lot, created plotlines, built a lot of the world, had major impacts on the game's raids, and even on the characters of other people. It's hard to not be amazed at what she did when looking as an outsider.
From inside though... Well, she was quite rude, didn't respect people's wishes much, made a raid a lot harder than it needed to be by giving insane buffs to the final boss, messed with a character's concept entirely on a whim, made a character go blind due to OOC reasons... There were a lot of messes that Lina was involved in... But it was undeniable that she had a gigantic influence on the early days of the game and that the game would have ended up much different if it wasn't for her involvement, for better or for worse.
The thing is though... I don't think Lina ever had bad intentions with anything she did. Sure, she was rude, but I also think she was very kind. I think she was always doing what she thought was the best for the game, for its players... And for herself.
You see, Lina had a limited time... Lina was told she'd die as a teen, and she was on her 20s... She wanted things to move fast, because her time was counted... She wanted to enjoy the most that she could of what she had left... She wanted to make the game the best it could in the shortest time possible, because she might not be around to see something slow come to fruition... And she wanted people to not get too close to her, because then they wouldn't be hurt when she was gone.
I had the pleasure of playing other games with Lina and just interacting with her in general, and I always enjoyed the time with her. No matter how bad her mood was or how rude she was being, I just enjoyed her company. She was nice, she was fun, she was thoughtful and she always put her utmost into the things she did, I really liked a lot about her... I also had the opportunity to talk to her brother that took over her account after she passed away. Which was how I learned about it occurring, though I was already aware that her health was not great before that point.
Her brother shared my view on her... She was kind. She didn't want to make close bonds because she didn't want to hurt people when she passed away... He really thought of her as a very nice and kind person... He also talked about other things that made her kind that I agreed with, but quite frankly, I don't remember them. It's been a few too many years since.
What I can say though, is that I miss her. I liked her, she was a friend, a friend I cared for... Not a friend that was close enough to the point I could share personal things with, but a friend I liked and enjoyed spending my time with. She was special, and it was a shame that she had to go as young as she did.
This story was a goodbye in a way. A way of sending my feelings to her long after she has already been gone... And also a way of interacting with her character, like how I had always wished to, yet never had the opportunity to. I don't think I depicted her character right at all, this was more of a impersonation of my view of her put into her character than what Allyuna would actually behave like... But that's fine, this is not a roleplay chapter, this is my story, and I'll depict the characters in the way I deem it right... And this time, Hikari wasn't interacting with Allyuna, but with Lina, so it's fine if the personality was the one I consider the closest to Lina's true feelings, than what Allyuna was actually like.
So... Goodbye, Lina. I really hope you're resting in peace now, and that you can continue to rest for as long as you desire.
