(no subject)
Immediately after this.
Toki no jubaku ni torawareta kata.
The one ensnared by the curse of time.
He is crumpled in one corner of the elevator, sprawled as inelegantly as a rag doll that had been flung aside and instantly forgotten by a child tired of its play.
hollow hollow hollow hollow
The pain has returned -- somehow, he had expected it would. In his left shoulder, in his head, and a brilliant blossom of pain deep within his chest. But he cannot bring himself to move, to shift his position in an attempt to ease the pain.
'Sempai...you're going to lose now.'
now I know
And so he had. Lost now -- lost again. How many times had he lost to her? Defeated by the damned Rose Bride, by that mad slip of a girl who had fought in her champion's
that every dream begins with you
(Tokiko's?)
and ends in time
stead. And ultimately, he now knew, defeated by the very thing that he had once sought for himself -- for her.
now I know
He had been trapped for so long, first by himself and then by another -- but perhaps always, always by himself -- that he could no longer remember what it had been like before.
that maybe I am too alive
What had it been like before?
if I could speak with tongues of flame
A young woman, grown old before her time with the demands of care and worry. But with a smile that could light up a room, and a determination to see things through, and a gentleness that shone with a timeless radiance, even when her eyes glittered with tears.
I'd burn forever with your name
A boy, so fragile, delicate as a butterfly's wing. He had not hid the pain he was in as well as he thought he did. And yet he was as stubborn as his sister, fighting for as long as he could because he knew that it meant so much to her, to the sister who was everything to him.
and take it with me through all time
And a man, far younger than he pretended to be. Arrogant with the arrogance of those who do not recognise that logic may be taken for coolness and rationality may be seen as deliberate rudeness. Brilliant, though -- terrifically brilliant. And with a hidden passion for life that he had never known existed until....
I would remember who you are
...until now.
in every life I'd touch your heart
There was nothing left for him here -- in this shell, in this coffin of his own devising. Beyond it was...something unknown. He had not wanted to know because it was so much easier to remain where he was, to work within the confines and matrices that were most familiar to him. But with nothing left for him here, with memories and illusions all mixed up together...
in every dream....
...and so perhaps it was best to wipe the slate clean and start afresh.
A new set of equations to master. A new set of problems to solve.
Or perhaps this time the answer would be 'none of the above'.
The signet ring on his finger, a delicately stylised rose crest, crumbles into nothingness.
and the fire and the rose are one
And the man who had been known as Professor Nemuro, or Mikage Souji, or any number of a hundred other names once upon a time, is no longer there.
'From now on, the path before you is not prepared.
You graduate...now.'