It's a cold night, the kind of night that without proper clothes leaves you vulnerable and weak. The frost stinging at one's nose and fingertips, leaving you raw and shaky. The girl silently making her way through the park knows this very well, having donned nothing more than a nightgown and whatever shoes she had nearby her before she left. Her name was Junko, and she had a dull look in her eyes, empty and hollowed with only a single goal in mind. Tonight she would kill herself. In her hand, grasping tightly was her weapon of choice as though it’d disappear the second her grip loosened.
She took her time moving, as if savoring what she could as it lasted. Underfoot the snow fallen from previous days crunched softly. The zooming of vehicles mumbled in her ears. Along her path were trees draped with glittering flakes, she always loved the way winter looked, she'd surely miss it.
The red bench caught her eye. That was the place she always imagined they'd find her body on come dawn. Maybe then they would care. Care enough for her to realize they cared all along. For her to realize- forget it. She'd thought of this night for a very long time, she’d made her decision. She’d made her bed and she’d lie in it.
Her stomach was uneasy, to the point she couldn't hold it down, and upon sitting, she had to lean to the side and hurl. She pondered whether it was from nerves- or from forcing oneself to eat food she hated, and having it catch up to her now that she'd made her decision and had a chance to think on non-deathly matters.
She re-adjusted her attention onto the metal in her hand; she'd instinctively moved her hands into the proper position to handle it. Taking a deep breath, she began to shakily raise it towards her, moving her pointer downwards too.
He stepped into her vision finally, allowing himself to make noise this time. His soul on the inside of his flesh was scratching at his inner walls to tell him to stop. He wasn't versed in people, especially not those who walked the finite storied stairway steps of life. He would surely mess something up, embarrass himself, in fact he'd thought of millions of scenarios where that'd happen. He was a reaper named Idia. And he was here for her soul.
Normally, you don't interact with reapers. As death is solemn, cold, and unforgiving. And in cases of self-ending, there is no afterlife. Just the ebb into nothingness for eternity. But he's newer to the job- hellishly socially awkward on top of that too. But, he throws caution to the wind, for a soul he'll never see again, a voice who'll probably only judge him once- that is, if she proves his low self-esteem riddled fears right. All because he found her to be pretty.
So, he interacts. He sits beside her and listens to her. Her tears fall, face all flushed. As she breathes, pale billows come out of her mouth, a thing he's unused to, as the dead are what he's far more accustomed with. The only thing he knows about it is how to mimic it.
Snow starts to fall around them. Her head becomes a resting place as it falls. Some even make their home on her eyelashes and nose, and the bench, although occupied on the other end, accumulates it as well. Though, not a flake is to be seen on him.
She tells him things. All about her life- why she hates living. Everything- sorrows relating to others, and sorrows relating to oneself. Words riddled with deep-set anger and honest despair fall out like a waterfall. The hands holding her weapon of choice shake. Whether as a result from the cold, or from crying, or from fear she tells not. He simply nods along. Sometimes, inputting his own thoughts and worries. From incompetence over himself, his job, how he dislikes the fate placed upon him by blood, and all the like. It eases her, afterall, nobody likes someone who only talks about themselves and learns not of any other.
He reluctantly, yet resolutely tells her of the reality that awaits her if her end is of her own hands. Nothingness. Truly an end, not the beginning of a new chapter in the realm of under. She sighs, says she supposes that makes sense, and laughs. A worn smile graces her frostbitten face. His heart aches. Though logic is true, it isn't always what the heart enjoys. And, now that he's made himself known to her, it's not as if she could go back to living, even if she decided it's a fate she desired again.
She laughs, it's the same laugh as before, sweet, but bitter. So utterly bitter. What a fate she's locked herself into. He can't help but agree. Unfortunate indeed.
The fate of blankness has a small loophole, and it is for him to take her life himself, he shares, albeit reluctantly and partially by accident due to letting himself speak a bit too unguardedly for too long. though one must add, that's an intense crime unforgiven by all in the world of hell. One he'd have to take to the grave as an unspoken secret, however that works for someone whose dead but hasn't ever died. Quite the opposite of the lady beside him whose alive but has never truly lived.
You could do that, she asks, curiosity in her tone with a lining of a few other things he's unused to trying to tell apart from a life of socially awkward induced solitude. Well, yes he could, though if caught though he'd lose his- well everything he has. His title, his worth and anything else.
Though, he never asked to be in the reaper lineage, and he'd often pondered a reality unshackled by it. She doesn't beg, rather instead asks politely. It pulls at his heart- far harder than any of his dating sims routes ever had. She takes the long bout of silence as denial and pushes no farther. She sighs. Well, she supposes it's time. She does not elaborate. They both know the context all too well. She tells him how kind he was, how he was odd, so odd- but it held a rather high amount of charm, and she laments him not having been a soul tied to the living, as she and him would have gotten along very well. Maybe a little too well if she be far too honest.
Her hands tremble, and he turns his head away as he cannot bear to watch as he takes it into his own hands instead. He lowers his hood, hair alight like flames dancing delicately, casting a blue glow on all that surrounds. A handsome face he had. One she'd remember for all eternity if she could. Her breath hitches, quite unfortunate as she'll soon lose the sensation of breathing altogether.
She'll descend, but not alone. She won't be alone in forward’s time, and now a secret lies in her heart, which now beats only near him, connected to the tale she's never to tell to another ghost. Locked between them.
Of how the memory she held most dear was that of which ended covered in liquid crimson.