Kara no Kyoukai:Chapter-final

Void Shrine (Garan-no-Dou)

I think of the time when my consciousness has fallen into dreaming and settled down.

SHIKI who has disappeared. A self who was another person. What did he disappear in exchange for, what did he sacrifice his life to protect?

Going through Ryougi Shiki's memories, I realised what.

Probably --- SHIKI protected his dream. His dream that he would live happily.

Was that dream that class friend? Or was that young man the person he wanted to be as a man? That's something I can no longer find out.

SHIKI disappeared so he wouldn't lose him and Shiki.

Leaving me, with this deep solitude.

◇

The morning sunlight enters the room.

At that warmth, my eyes, which have recovered their sight, open.

I'm sleeping in the bed. That incident last night would have been settled well by the sorceress. No, that kind of thing is unimportant. Rather than things like that, let's think of him for now.

Still in that prone position, I lay there without even moving my head and breathed in the morning air.

How long has it been since I woke to the morning sunlight?

Thin but strong. The bright light colors over the darkness in my heart.

This strange life I have just taken hold of and --- The other me that will not return, they melt together and disappear into the light. The existence of Ryougi SHIKI and his dreams... are disappearing.

If I could cry, I wanted to shed tears for him. But my eyes are dry. I've decided to cry only once, and it's not right to cry about this.

Now that I can no longer go back, I'll never regret it again.

Like this darkness, opening up in front of the morning sunlight.

To disappear cleanly like this, it's what he would have wanted.

◇

"Hello, Shiki."

A voice from next to me.

I just twist my head to the side.

Standing there is the friend I knew a long time ago. The black-rimmed glasses, even his unstyled black hair, he really hasn't changed.

"Do you, know me... ?"

His voice is strangely shaky.

... Ahhh, I already knew. That you were always waiting for Shiki, and that only you were always there, protecting me.

"Kokutou Mikiya. Sounds like a French poet."

At my mumbling voice, he smiles brightly. Like when we met at school after just one day, that brightly.

How much effort was hidden in that simple smile, I can't know.

Only --- it seems he remembers that promise as well.

"It's great that the weather is nice today. Perfect to get out of hospital."

With tears brimming in his eyes, he speaks as naturally as he can.

To the empty me, that was warmer than anything. A smiling face over a crying face, that's what this friend chose.

To acknowledge isolation rather than be isolated, that's what SHIKI chose.

--- Although I haven't chosen either side yet.

"... Ahhh. Are there things that don't disappear?"

His smiling face that seems to become one with the soft sunlight, I just blankly gazed upon it.

Until I was sick of it.

--- I know that the hole punched in my chest can't be filled with things like that, but right now, I don't want to do anything else. Because...

... His soft, smiling face.
That was the same face as the one in my memories.

/Void Shrine(Garan-no-Dou)

/End

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