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“It will look like they are merely asleep my son, and that they are,” said the father to his son, there were three caskets at the torii.
“But why wont they wake up papa?” asked the son, tugging at his father’s coat, inquisitive as always. He was uncertain, he could not place this strange feeling he had never felt.
“They are with their own kami now,” answered the father, the entire truth was for another age.
The boy did not understand, there were people crying and the boy did not understand why. He was not aware of his own blissful ignorance. Soon he would be running through the garden at his grandmas, running after his childhood friend until grandma Momo softly told them off.
That son had grown up, he was less ignorant, he knew more, but he still felt uncertain, more misplaced than he could remember. He understood the other’s tears, there would be three more kami added to the pantheon.
I do not understand, is that why I cannot cry?
The boy understood, but nothing was clear to him now. He felt tired, as if there had been a large weight that had been placed on him. He would not run at his grandmothers, he would be alone with his childhood friend, playing a game of checkers, probably losing. Ignoring the sounds of his sobbing mother and father.
“King me,”
He would place his checker piece on his friend’s piece, sliding another piece forward to counter her move. A halfhearted attempt as the game dragged on.
The boy cried this time, a closer leaving than he had been prepared for. Two bodies at the torii, and two more kami to join the pantheon. He had been several years behind them, a barrier that separated them farther than the world could. He knew them, closer than the previous, but he felt a deep questioning too.
There was no visit to grandma Momo’s today, today he would sit and be comforted by relatives and people he barely knew, and would probably never get to know any more than he did. He would sit in a chair and be no more connected to himself than those at the torii. Comfort was only present with his friend; they would share secrets, desires, and fears, anything that they didn’t want anyone else to know. A living journal.
He was next to her, holding her hand when she died. Tears flowing from his eyes as she lay, dying in her own pool of blood. The looser her hand became the more the boy clenched it, as if praying at the casket of a long lost friend. He ignored his own pain, a bullet wound to his left collarbone, and below the stomach, mere scratches compared to the pain of losing someone right before your eyes. Her eyes were fogging, a haze rising into her open eyes as she struggled for moment after moment.
“You're still alive? Thought I told ya to come along,”
The boy turned around and found himself at gunpoint for the second time that day, “Enjoying it, the ability to make a choice for somebody else, feels good don't it?” The boy asked, placing his hand against his burning collarbone.
“You don't even know the half of it. To choose whether someone will see the gates of heaven or the news of a high school massacre. Nothing either of you could ever begin to understand,”
The boy swept his hand to disarm Uyo but he didn't even come close. Uyo pulled the trigger and sent a 2-millimeter piece of metal flying through his ribs below his heart at 1500 feet per second. The boy fell to the ground, landing next to her, “See you on the other side buddy,” said Uyo, walking off. There were gunshots in the distance; and a scream, suicide by cop.
“I'm sorry,”
She smiled weakly moving her hand to his “I love you, but I made a promise to someone else, someone I'll see, very soon,” her eyes lost their shine before they shut, never again to be opened to the world of humanity.
Tears swelled up against the boy's eyes and he moved his right hand to her face, moving her hair away from her face and tucking it behind her ear, “Good bye Ryouko,” he sobbed, he didn't have the energy to fight when he was picked up.
The boy was a pallbearer, helping to carry the caskets to the torii. Two more kami, and one more to join them later on. The boy had been to more ceremonies in his life than the other students in his graduating class. It had been raining that day, and one could not distinguish tears from rain.
just a prologue may add more to it later but this is it for now
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