Editing Maria-sama ga Miteru:Volume3 Chapter8 4

===<noinclude>The last flower of winter, and then. </noinclude>Part 4.===

I cut my hair.

It wasn't easy to cut off my feelings for Shiori, but it hurt to see the long hair that once touched Shiori.

I lopped it all off, so it felt really cold around my neck at first, but I got used to it.  Just like my body, maybe my soul will get used to the cold of having no Shiori.

When the new semester rolled around, onee-sama dragged me off from one place to another, giving me no rest at all working Yamayurikai duties.  I'd slacked off on duties all the way through my second-year second semester, so it was like giving me an extreme, compact course on my job, and it was something I'd brought on myself.  Of course, even if I became Rosa Gigantea next year, as long as Youko was Rosa Chinensis, the Lillian Girls' Academy Yamayurikai would be safe.

I was also forced to completely change how I felt about Youko.

I found out later that it was Youko that ran into Shiori at M Station, and that it was she who chased down Shiori, who was trying to vanish, and forced her to write the letter.  She knew that even if Shiori vanished, I wouldn't believe onee-sama and Youko, so I thought it was a pertinent treatment.  After seeing Shiori off on a bullet train, she returned to M Station and contacted onee-sama.

I never asked where Shiori went.  I simply hoped she was living peacefully.

 

Halfway through February, I'd calmed down enough to re-read Shiori's letter.

And gradually I began to understand how Shiori felt.

For example.

"At the time, I truly wanted to live with you.  But when I saw you sitting on the platform, I was overcome with distress.  If I departed with you, what lay in wait at the end?  I didn't want to hurt you anymore, just because I met you."

When I first read it, I was angered, because I thought Shiori leaving me was the most painful thing she could do.  But that was wrong.

Even if we'd run away together, what could we do, as powerless as we were?  As Shiori said, what lay in wait was probably not a bright and sunny future.

In retrospect, at the end of the road for us was probably death.  At some point, I would probably have chosen to die with Shiori.  And she, too, felt the same.

So I decided to live, to carry out onee-sama's words.

That wounds heal.

That the future liquidates the past.

 

March.

We sent off the third-years.

"Listen, okay?  You're the type to get absorbed by things, so when you find something precious, make yourself take a step back."

That was onee-sama's last bit of advice for me.  Onee-sama was to attend a different university come April, so if anything were to happen, I wouldn't be able to depend on her anymore.

"I behaved like a spoiled child all this time, I don't know how to repay onee-sama…"

I appreciated her, from the bottom of my heart, for taking care of such a bad child.  I felt extremely gracious for everything onee-sama did for me.

"It's okay.  After all, that's what an onee-sama is supposed to do.  If you really want to pay me back, return it to someone else.  –Like, your future sister."

"A sister?  Now?"

I snickered.  Having come this far, it seemed like a ridiculous notion.

"Oh?"

It might be too early to use the phrase, but onee-sama smiled like a cherry blossom.

Unable to wait for the dream-like scenery that would unfold from these trees a month later, I looked up.

 

I knew the blue skies, visible through the naked branches, stretched on forever and ever.

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