The path ahead is dark, and the path behind—already walked—is darker. My feet drag me forward, chest numb and empty. My hand would caress it often and find nothing but a gaping hole there. I remember little of what came after it… after Yukari pierced me with her twisted blade. Whispers accompany me through the dark path, subdued and perverted, yet distinctively feminine. Concentrating on them yields the silhouette of a voice, and it’s Yukari’s.

She whispers at other people, and they’re cruel whispers. Threats and death; blackmail and torture; thorough abuse of the body—Mr. Anon…? I don’t understand. Love is not meant to be shared that way—, forceful and purely evil.

Yukari whispers continuously and doesn’t stop.

A thousand years of that come and go.

… Evil, sad.

Some, however, are tender, and their hum is like falling Sakura petals.

The dark path unravels to the sound of heavy rain, and my feet sink into mud. Tired eyes gaze towards an oppressed Sakura tree, its blooming flowers smothered in the freezing rain, and widen at the sight of Yukari kneeling by the roots, a corpse of a beloved woman and friend by her side. Whispers had swiftly ceased, replaced by many pained wails that echo and echo and seem to penetrate every component of every cell of everything that surrounds me. An overwhelming sad etched to body, mind, and soul. Tears of mine mix with the rain.

Past the tree, shadows feast on a pale girl’s body, their features grotesque.

Yukari digs and digs; her nails break and her fingers bleed. Her eyes never left the scene of a brunette being dined upon by Youkai, even when those same shadows were smears of blood, The Gap pulsating with wide, bloodshot eyes, forever witnesses of a massacre.

The Gap cannot change the past, the only impossible boundary. The only desirable boundary.

She’s dug a deeper hole from that very day, a thousand years ago—how do I know this…?—, and a perforated heart bleeds to the tune of Yamame’s words about the hole.

You can escape it, but it never closes.

Yukari never escaped hers.

Feet worked beside myself, and the path led me away from those memories—burdens—, no matter how much I ached to hug her. She had killed my heart, but no one should live in perpetual sad…

“… That’s a beautiful thought, child,” eyes blink at the sudden voice that wafts from beyond the darkness, then they broaden. The dark path's gone and before me is my shadow, the sun scorching against my back…

I don’t look like that. I don’t have such long hair; I am not that tall. The shadow that my body casts is another woman’s shadow.

Ruffling happens to my side, and I turn to look at a blue and white kimono with a calming purple obi—the color of Yukari’s eyes, so vibrant—, hair and warm eyes the color of cherry blossoms. Such trees, blooming at their peak and letting pink petals fly with the breeze, besieged the once dark path, now a paved dirt road that stretched on forever. The sky was pure blue…

This woman—I know her. We visited her; she’s visited the HSE; and I saw her in the mud with her throat slit open. “… You,” I whisper, throat rough as if not opened in a millennium.

She giggles, ever so softly. “Yes, me,” she then hands me one of the two loaded bags she had in her arms. They’re filled with… groceries. Fruits, bread, meats, and condiments. “Would you be a kind child and help this Blue Fairy~?” Though she asks, she’d already forced one of them onto my arms. I grumble, then nod, and we’re walking down the path together. Chirping accompanies us for the first moments of silence, her eyes focused ahead…

“… Am I dead?” I confront her, tails low.

“You are,” she nods with no hesitation, and the next second seems to endure for infinity. I have died in Yukari’s hands. My promise with Mr. Anon shattered. I won’t return to Yamame-san… The silence sinks together with my heart, yet it lasts just that: a second. “But you’re not fully dead, are you?” She eyes my shadow, and those pink irises bleed with a sad so great yet so silent it could only be attributed to the dead. “… You have taken something from Yukari…” I stare back at the shadow, fixing my hold of the bag of groceries.

“Y-Yes, I used Toutetsu-san’s power to… consume the Gap,” the thoughts of that moment are blurred: pain had overwhelmed all my senses. Mind, however, rushed for a kinder answer. “I could’ve killed her with Flan’s power, but…” I trail off, eyes prickling with tears. I didn’t want her to die—blood on my hands. Subdued was a preferable outcome. That didn’t make her any less dangerous with that evil blade, her heart harboring infinite pain. “… I don’t think what I did improved things. They won’t be merciful of her, nor will Yukari be merciful of them.” Hana’s rage; Ms. Reimu’s wide eyes, watching as I died in Mr. Anon’s arms—their reunion, and I ruined everything— “I-I only tried to do good… I didn’t want my family to be destroyed.”

Eyes lock on her, my tears flow.

Yukari killed me.

“… Why must I suffer for doing a good thing?”