A dull, numbing pain throbbed through my body, each pulse dragging me further away from reality. My limbs felt like lead, my vision reduced to a swirling mess of colors, edges blurred beyond recognition. I was lying on the cold ground, barely able to feel anything but the slow, agonizing ache spreading through me.
I wasn't dead. Not yet.
Voices filtered through the fog in my mind—distant, distorted, but still familiar. One of them was Ayane. The other… him.
"Why did you do this?"
Ayane's voice was shaking. I had never heard her like this before. She wasn't mocking, wasn't cruel. She sounded… lost.
I tried to focus, forcing my heavy eyelids open. Everything was a haze, shifting shadows in the dim light. A blurry figure stood over me, his face indistinguishable. Ayane was there, too. I could barely make out the strands of her dark purple hair, the torn edges of her clothes, the way her shoulders trembled.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" The man's voice was calm, almost amused. "He was about to kill you, Ayane. But now, thanks to me, your revenge is complete."
No. That wasn't right.
I had never planned to kill her. And she—
She had said something before the knife struck me. A single word, too soft for me to catch completely. Stop.
Had she been saying it to me? No… It was him.
"I told you not to interfere."
Her voice was firmer now, though there was something breaking underneath it.
"Even if I were to die, I didn't need your help."
Silence.
My mind struggled to keep up, to understand what was happening. This wasn't how revenge was supposed to look. Ayane wasn't supposed to be standing over me with tears in her eyes, questioning the very person who had led her down this path.
A light touch brushed against my face.
Ayane's fingers.
She was wounded. I could see the faint traces of blood staining her hand as she reached toward me. Her touch was hesitant, almost like she wasn't sure if I was still alive.
And for the first time, I saw it.
The truth buried beneath her hatred. The pain she had been carrying all along.
Ayane had never truly wanted this. All she ever wanted was an answer.
Why had I left her?
I wanted to tell her. I wanted to say something—anything—to stop this. But my body was betraying me, dragging me down into the suffocating dark.
The last thing I saw before my vision faded completely was Ayane's face, blurred by my failing sight, but unmistakably wet with tears.
Then, the world slipped away.