Send me “Don’t chase the rabbit” and your muse will be shown a random memory from my muse’s past.
When Kouen kneels by Hakuryuu’s bed to overlook the small, shivering form of a boy just barely alive, he wishes, desperately and repeatedly, that he could do something more. But this is all he can manage now, and though his armor is still stained with the blood and ichor of foreign men far removed from their borders, he thinks that he’s never been more useless in his entire life.
Perhaps if he’d been faster, Hakuryuu would not be balancing so precariously on the edge between life and death. Perhaps if he’d been stronger, he could’ve returned sooner and saved Hakuyuu and Hakuren’s lives. But he’d been neither fast enough nor strong enough, and this is all that Kouen has to return to.
“...Forgive me,” he pleads in a whisper, but the words go unheard. The dead do not linger, and Hakuryuu remains asleep.