A kiss to say goodbye forever.
When his parents died, Tadashi had thought that grieving over them was the hardest thing in the world, but he was wrong. It was far harder to watch someone else grieve. Especially if they were grieving over you.
He watched his little brother struggle to get out of bed in the morning, he’d seen how Hiro cried himself to sleep and cursed at himself for not stopping him from running into the burning building. He knew how he returned to botfighting and spiraled into depression, but it wasn’t just his little brother that he was keeping sentinel over.
Aunt Cass and Fred and Wasabi and GoGo, they all mourned in their own ways. Cass binged on junk food and spent hours curled on the couch, staring at the walls with Mochi. She even closed The Lucky Cat for a while, though he knew that there was no way she could afford to do so. Fred moped around in his mansion, talked away his guilt to Heathcliff, and Wasabi cleaned even more furiously than usual in some attempt to release pent up emotions. Even GoGo seemed affected, frequenting the gym more often and seeking out a high in adrenaline rushes and harsher workouts. Tadashi knew what they all did, but Honey Lemon worried him the most.
He followed her back home one night. Or, rather, he appeared at her doorstep, not quite intentionally. That was a thing that he noticed about being dead, you sort of just woke up in random places, near whoever you were close to. Tadashi assumed it happened whenever one of his friends or family was feeling especially sad, or when they needed his presence most. Their spirits called out to him and he came. This time, he found her crying at her vanity and it broke his heart.
“Hi, this is Tadashi Hamada. I can’t answer your call right now, so leave a message at the tone and I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
“Hi, this is Tadashi Hamada. I can’t answer you call right now, so leave a message at the tone and I’ll get back to you ASAP.”
The same recording played for a third time and Tadashi realized that she was calling his cell phone, over and over again, just to hear his voice. Every time it began, he could see her breaking just a fraction more. Mascara was smeared down her cheeks, the usual bubbly light was drained from her tear-swollen eyes, and he wanted nothing more than to comfort her.
“Aiko…” Tadashi reached out to touch her shoulder and was surprised when she stiffened, almost as if she could feel or hear him. “Aiko, it’s okay. Please don’t cry over me… Please…”
He wasn’t sure what possessed him to do so, but soon translucent hands were cupping her cheeks and he kissed her forehead. A thumb swiped below her eyelid, though it, as he knew it would, did nothing to remove the tears from her face. He couldn’t touch her or feel the warmth of her skin, not really, and it killed him. How much time had they both wasted? How many more moments could they have shared holding hands or feeling the security of the other’s arms wrapping around them? His eyes wandered to her lips and he wondered how many times could they have—
No. No, he couldn’t think about that. There was no point to dwelling on lost chances. The future was gone now, for the both of them, and they had no time to regret whatever it was he wished that they could have had.
“Things are going to get better for you,” Tadashi urged. “Just hold on, Honey. People need you out there. I need you. The world wouldn’t be the same without your sunshiny smile, okay?”
He pressed his lips to her forehead once more.
“As long as I’m in your heart, this isn’t goodbye.”