Ichika Amasawa: One-shots, Snippets, and Drabbles, etc.

A Long Solitude

Awasawa Ichika was alone, walking barefoot on the chilly porcelain floor, very much on purpose.

It was yet another morning of the winter vacations. Her room was freezing as she kept the heater off. The cold pervading there wasn't enough. Here in the bathroom, however, it would do. Cold grounded her, reminded her of the scuffles, bruises, splaying down on the bone chilling surface.

Pale as snow, she was naked.

But that was erstwhile; standing underneath the muted drizzle of the shower.

After drying every inch of her skin, Ichika donned winter garments. A blue parka, gifted to her by Karuizawa.

She shook her head, hair not drenched but sloven still. Her bedroom was even colder now, and light chills coursed through her body, as she put her hair in a ponytail, and a memory drifted to her mind's eye — she stood atop the man double her frame, the surface lustrous with a gleam the same hue of her hair.

The memory had dulled, but the silence remained the same.

She departed, the door closing behind with a click. The sounds of her steps were languid, a whisper following her every breath.

"It is cold", she said out of the dormitory, the chill air passing sharply through her lungs.

Ichika wasn't alone; a plethora of students clad in several colours trotted around. The faces peeked at her. Inoculated discomfort which stuck to her skin.

Snow fell last night. She saw through her glass windows; giggling, she asked her senpai on call, "Would you be Ama-no-Uzume to me and dance to bring me out?"

She wondered, as the conversation waned into silence, how she would have danced till her flesh rotted, glaciers thawed, and the very stars fizzled out — she wasn't with gods; the door of the Iwato had been nowhere in sight.

Would her past self have still struggled against futility? There was no answer. The dead and departed do not speak.

If gods did exist they would die, long after the stars perhaps, but die they would. Ichika took in a steadying breath at the irrefutable fact. Takuya lost the chance to understand that. She could help as much as she could shift the seasons.

Was it alright? His wish twisted. Unanswered.

Something indistinct curled and stretched in Ichika. Burrowed in her. Sadness and indifference at once somehow. She didn't care for him in this instance. He didn't care — wouldn't care if he were here.

She had grieved enough.

The white here was peaceful, untainted by the rot and corruption of the white in that place.

Awasawa Ichika wasn't lonely now however.

A look back: Ayanokōji Kiyotaka stood there. Real and breathing and staring at her, as undeniable as the spinning of the planet.

His was a face lined with apathy. To the White Room she was a discarded object, barely a living person. To him she was a fellow specimen; to be observed, to be picked apart.

It was new once, still felt so at times.

White Room was insufficient in many regards. Yagami Takuya proved the same. Lacking.

In those eyes ('God' they called him) which saw as if his every glance would count all the atoms in the stars and more — Ichika was learning the way Ayanokōji saw.

To see the same yet further than the ignorant in this world of multiple colours. To deem that bleached world as beneath his interest. They held a zeal. One that took place inside a hollow space in her. It was foreign yet familiar.

The long solitude had passed like the melting of winter.

 ———

A/N: The Ame-no-Uzume that Ichika mentions, also known as Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto, is a Japanese goddess of dawn. She saved the world from eternal darkness by concocting a plan where she danced comically and that attracted Amaterasu, the sun goddess, who had hidden in a cave, back into the world.

Thanks for reading.

Words: 595
Published: August 22nd, 2022