#::l

@sumsinecorde

Strange how one could wake up so happy only to have that happiness so completely crushed less than an hour later. 

It shouldn’t be possible. Yet here they were. 

Masaki Kurosaki was many things, but she wasn’t weak. She was stubborn, she was compassionate, she was patient—strong of heart and will alike. So why did she feel as if she were made up of so much broken glass as Ryuken’s words echoed in her ears?

All she’d wanted to do was to be there for him. She understood better than nearly anyone else what he was going through. The pain of it all… So why wouldn’t she reach out? Why wouldn’t she try to comfort him? 

He was her best friend after all. He had been for as long as she could remember. They grew up side by side, their families were friends. No matter how cold he seemed at times, no matter how often he feigned annoyance or disinterest, she always stuck around, always worked to elicit smiles and laughs or at the very least looks of surprise and amusement. He was a sweet boy, Ryuuken, beneath all the posing and aloofness, he was sweet and thoughtful and kind. 

Now, staring at him while he refused to so much as look at her, she couldn’t seem to reconcile that little boy she fell in love with all those years ago with the young man sitting before her. He looked the same—even still bed-ruffled and half tangled in his bedsheets and reeking of weed and sweat and alcohol—just older. Yet somehow his looks were where the resemblance ended. Gone was the sweetness, gone was the kindness. 

No— She couldn’t, shouldn’t judge him so harshly. He just lost his mother. He was just lashing out like before. He was still kind, he was still sweet… He was still her Ryuu-chan. He was just in pain. Shouldn’t she understand that? That she should be patient with him. That she should be her usual stubborn self and refuse to give in to his aloof facade? After all, she would have given anything for someone to show her such kindness when she lost her own parents…

But… 

He could have offered her that kindness. 

He was right there while she mourned and grieved and cried every night in that house all alone. Yet he never did anything… 

Now… now, even when she offered him everything she had to give… He did nothing but try to push her away again like he did yesterday when she first arrived. As if yesterday never happened at all. 

‘ Sometimes you have to know when enough is enough, ’ her mother once told her. 

“ Fine. ” The taste of bile was heavy at the back of her mouth. She felt empty. She felt cold. She felt… used. 

Masaki found herself standing up mechanically, snatching up her clothes and putting them on as she found them. Bra, skirt, blouse… her left shoe. There was no sign of her socks or underwear. Yet there was a rising sense of anger and urgency and a sting at the back of her eyes—she just had to get the hell out of there. 

Spotting her other shoe by the door, she strode across the room to grab her bag from where it sat upon Ryuuken’s desk and hurried to the door. Pausing only long enough to slide on her shoe, she didn’t say another word, didn’t take another glance back at the man who decided to use her and not deign to even look at her afterward. 

‘ Sometimes you have to know when enough is enough, ’ her dead mother’s words echoed in her ears.

Though she had accepted that he was the way he was long ago and that she wouldn’t try to change him... That didn’t mean she had to sit back and take it when he decided to be cruel on purpose. She could only do so much, tolerate so much. If didn’t want her help... If he wanted to just suffer on his own no matter what she tried to do... She couldn’t make him feel better. She couldn’t force him to accept her attempts at comfort.

Masaki Kurosaki was not a weak woman. She was stubborn, she was compassionate, she was patient—strong of heart and will alike. However, her strength had its limits. She had her limits. This fact was made painfully clear to her as she ran down the building’s hallways, away from the man she had loved for years with tears streaming down her face. 

She loved Ryuuken… but she couldn’t do this anymore. 

*peeks in*

It was like a mirage. Seeing her. 

Like a fleeting image of something that could not possibly be there that humans sometimes claimed to see when they were in peril. 

A mirage. A hallucination. A trick of the light. A waking dream. 

Yet somehow it wasn’t. 

Eyes could be fooled by many means and rendered useless by so many more but. Nothing, however, could cloud her presence. Nothing could dream it up or mimic it in any way. 

Nothing in this world was so celestial as her. 

Like a pure white star in the void her light drowned out anything and everything else around them like so many shadows and he felt a tightness in his chest a human might claim was their heart ‘clenching’. He knew better. It was merely the feeling of his lungs straining as his body tried and failed to remember how to breathe. 

Rigid with disbelief he could only stand there watching. Covered in blood from his latest kill and growling at a grey face of all things was not how he imagined he might ever see her again. Of course, he did his best to keep from imagining such things as it only ever seemed to make the gaping emptiness in his being caused by her absence so much worse... Yet it seemed foolish now to think it would go any other way. 

She was an angel. He was a beast. By what other fashion could such an encounter possibly go?

Every fiber of his being was yelling at him to go to her. To swoop her up and hide her away before the puppeteering forces that held her in their grasp could find her and force her away again. Yet he held back for the moment. There was always the very real possibility that she no longer knew him that stayed that very urge. 

No matter how selfish he was, knowing everything she’s been through, he could never do that to her should she not know him. 

@derstolz

Brown eyes flickered closed for a moment as Uryu’s fingers brushed briefly through his hair. A surge of affection swelled in his chest. He hummed. Ichigo had been saying… something… something about his latest story…? He wasn’t sure. Thoughts scattered like dust particles in the air when it came to Uyu. 

Ryuken’s tone gave her pause. For a moment, she could only stand frozen, her hand hanging in the air between them, reaching for him. Then the moment passed. Smile dying on her lips, Masaki’s outstretched hand lowered slightly before falling limply at her side. 

He hadn’t spoken to her like that in years… not since his mother…

At first he thought nothing of Uryu’s hand brushing against his own. It was faint, barely there. They were walking pretty close to each other, so it wasn’t unreasonable that their hands should brush as they did. Just a brush of his boyfriend’s chilled skin against his own, just an innocent coincidence.