Published: 4/4/2016

今日 (前編)

today (zenpen)

On my deathbed, I think about my past, and about what might have been. It is what I do; I have always lived my life looking backwards, filling my head with thoughts of realities that never have and never will come to pass. I think about choices, both mine and others', and about what consequences they have not wrought.

I think, and I think, and I think, and Hashirama sits at my side, shoulders round with defeat. He cannot save me. He has tried everything—herbs, teas, medicine, ninjutsu—and he has failed, resoundingly. I am still ill and I am still dying, and there is nothing he can do about it. But even so, he refuses to leave. For two nights now he has been sitting here, and though he laughs and jokes with me as he always has, in the moments between his face is expression enough. When he thinks I am sleeping, I can hear him weeping quite bitterly.

And what bitter tears they are. He has grown to such incredible wisdom over the years, to a sagacity that has long since dwarfed my own, but when Mito comes in and catches him crying, he can only repeat to her, over and over, angry and childlike words: "It's not fair."

Perhaps it is not. We have spent about a decade of peace here in this village of our making, but ten years of precious time together still does not seem like enough. It had been the great desire of our childhoods, after all, to have this time together; after tasting its realization, how could anyone watch a cherished dream slip away without thinking it an injustice? But still, I am not so indignant. My time has been borrowed since the very start. I have been cheating death for my entire life; thirty-four years, really, is not an insubstantial haul.

"Madara," Hashirama says through his teeth, jaw clenched and hands fisted. "He should be here. How can he not be here? He's…" he swallows, unable to finish his sentence. "...He should be here," he repeats instead.

I feel my lips twist wryly. The touch of death gives me cold, clear insight.

"You're projecting guilt, Hashirama," I tell him, though not unkindly. Hashirama wilts all the same.

"It's just…" he stares down at his knees, fingers clenched. For a long time, he is unable to speak. But then finally, with a voice that fears answer, he asks me, "Are you going to die with regrets, Asuna?"

He does not speak the second half of his inquiry: Will it be my fault?

I think my reply might mean more to him than it does to me. But I suppose that, too, is understandable.

"I'll tell you when I die, Hashirama," I laugh. Though it is a weak and sickly laugh, even to my ears, it is a laugh all the same. The creases in Hashirama's face are deep, but they ease just a bit, and the long shadows cast on him by the evening sun lighten.

Though the time is inevitably approaching, it is not here yet—at the very least, it is not today. So together, we wait, and my final sunsets are spent pondering the yesterdays gone by and the tomorrows that will soon cease to come.