Yuuta stood still, his hand pressed against his chest, his mind slow to understand what his body already knew. The pain had come without warning—sharp,陌生, like something tearing from the inside out. But his thoughts were elsewhere, stuck on the pot that had fallen, on the stew soaking into the grass, on the chicken he had spent so long preparing now scattered across the ground like waste.
The earth drank it greedily, feeding the blades of grass that would grow tall and green, grass that would never know it had been watered with food meant for a queen.
He looked at his hand.
Red.
Sticky.
Warm.
Tomato puree, he thought, though even as the words formed in his mind, he knew they were not true. I must have spilled tomato puree on my shirt. But why does it hurt? Why does my chest feel like it is burning from the inside?
His body had not yet caught up to what had happened. The shock was still protecting him, wrapping him in a strange, dreamlike numbness where the edges of the world were soft and the pain was somewhere far away, like a sound heard through water.
But his vision was blurring. The faces around him—the parents, the students, the judges—were smearing into shapes he could not recognize, colors bleeding into one another, voices fading in and out like a radio losing signal.
He saw Erza.
Her face was not cold. Her face was not the mask she wore to keep the world at arm's length. Her face was something else. Something he had never seen before. Something that made his chest hurt more than the bullet ever could.
Horror.
She was looking at him like he was already gone.
Erza's legs were shaking.
She could not feel them.
She could not feel anything except the blood pumping through her veins, hot and fast, carrying a terror she had not felt in centuries.
She had walked through battlefields littered with corpses.
She had stood on mountains of ice and watched armies break against her like waves against a cliff. She had killed without hesitation, without mercy, without regret.
But this—this was different. This was not a battlefield. This was a festival. This was a place where people laughed and ate and celebrated.
And Yuuta was bleeding.
She walked toward him. Her steps were unsteady, like a child learning to walk, like someone who had forgotten how to move.
Her mind was foggy, thick with a fear she did not recognize, did not want to recognize, did not know how to name.
She did not know if this was real or if she was trapped in a nightmare, the kind that dragons did not have, the kind that she had never believed in until now.
He reached out to her. His hand, red with his own blood, stretched toward her face.
"Erza..."
Her name. He said her name. Not my queen. Not your highness. Not any of the titles she had demanded he use. Just her name. Just Erza.
She caught him as his body gave out. His weight fell against her, heavy and warm, and she lowered him to the grass, her hands pressing against his chest, trying to stop the blood that would not stop. It poured through her fingers, hot and thick, staining her dress, her hands, her soul.
Magic,
she thought.
I have magic.
I have power.
I have everything.
She poured her magic into him.
It flowed from her palms, warm and bright, the same magic that had healed him before, the same magic that had saved his life in the field when he had frozen holding her, when she had thrown him into a tree and watched him crumple to the ground. But the wound was deep.
The bullet had torn through his lung, shattered his ribs, done something that even her magic could not fix quickly.
The blood did not stop.
Yuuta's breathing grew shallow.
Each breath was a battle, a war, a losing fight against a tide that was rising faster than he could swim. His lips parted, and a weak sound escaped him.
"It... hurts..."
His voice was small, fragile, the voice of someone who had never learned to complain about pain because no one had ever listened. In the orphanage, when he scraped his knee or burned his hand or fell from the climbing frame, there had been no one to run to. No one to kiss the wound and tell him it would be okay. He had learned to swallow the pain, to hide it, to pretend it did not exist.
He could not pretend now.
"It hurts... a lot..."
Erza's hands tightened around him. Her magic flowed faster, harder, but the wound would not close. The blood would not stop. She pressed her palms against his chest, feeling his heart beat beneath her fingers, weak and irregular, like a bird with a broken wing.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I can't... smile... like I promised..."
The promise.
She remembered. In the field, after the interview, after he had found her ring, he had promised to die smiling.
He had promised not to cry, not to beg, not to make her feel guilty for killing him. He had promised to accept his death with grace, to make it easier for her, to spare her the weight of what she would have to do.
But this was not her killing him. This was not her decision. This was something else. Something she could not control. Something that made the promise meaningless.
"Stop talking." Her voice was sharp, commanding, the voice she used when she needed someone to obey. "I did not give you permission to die."
He smiled. It was a weak smile, a broken smile, the smile of someone who was already leaving, already fading, already becoming something other than what he had been.
"At least," he said, "I get to die... in your arms..."
No, she thought. No, you do not. You do not get to die. You do not get to leave. You do not get to say things like that and then disappear. You do not get to make me feel things and then leave me alone with them.
"My Queen..."
Her vision blurred. The tears came without permission, without warning, without any of the control she had spent centuries building. She had not cried since she was a child, since her mother died, since she learned that tears were weakness and weakness was death. But she was crying now, and she could not stop.
"Shut up," she said. Her voice cracked, splintered, broke. "Idoit Mortal... shut up..."
But he continued. His voice was fading, growing softer, thinner, like a thread being pulled from a tapestry, like smoke rising from a fire that had already burned out.
"I... I wanted to say this... For So lo..long..."
His fingers twitched against her hand, barely moving, barely alive.
"I am... sorry... for everything...I am... sorry for assaulting you..."
Sorry.
He was sorry.
He had always been sorry.
He had been carrying this guilt for five years, this weight that was never his to carry, this sin that was not a sin at all. He had been apologizing since the moment she appeared in his apartment, since the moment she told him what he had done, since the moment she made him believe that he was a monster.
"No." Erza's voice was sharp, cutting through the fog of her own shock. "It is not your fault, you dummy. Can you not stay quiet while I heal you?"
She had finally caught up to reality.
The numbness was fading, replaced by a desperate clarity, a frantic focus. Her hands pressed harder against his chest, her magic flowing faster, warmer, brighter. She would not let him go. She could not let him go.
But Yuuta was already somewhere else.
His body was failing. He could feel it in the way his breath came shorter, in the way his heart stuttered in his chest, in the way the world around him grew dimmer with each passing second.
He had read about this once, in a book he had found in the orphanage library, a book about death and dying and the five stages that came before the end.
Shock.
When the body could not process what had happened, when the mind retreated into a fog of confusion and denial.
He had felt that first—the strange numbness, the inability to understand why his chest hurt, why his hand was red, why Erza was crying.
Reality.
When the brain finally caught up, when the fog lifted and the truth became clear. He was dying. He had been shot. He would not see the sun rise again.
Regret.
When the mind searched for everything that would be left undone, every promise unfilled, every word unsaid. He thought of Elena. He thought of the school, the uniform, the friends she would make. He thought of the years he would not see, the moments he would miss, the father he had wanted to be.
Repentance.
When the dying sought forgiveness for the wrongs they had done, when they reached out to the ones they had hurt and asked to be absolved. He had so much to apologize for. So much he had done wrong. So much he had left unfinished.
Acceptance.
When the struggle ended. When the dying stopped fighting and let go.
He was there now. At the edge. Looking down.
"I am sorry," he said, his voice barely a whisper, "if I ever treated you wrong."
Erza's tears fell onto his face, warm and salt. "You did not," she said. "You never did. Now stop talking and let me—"
He coughed. Blood spilled from his lips, running down his chin, dripping onto the grass. His body was shutting down. There was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could do.
"I hope..." His voice was fading, growing softer, thinner, like a thread being pulled from a tapestry. "You... remember me... my queen."
Remember him.
How could she forget him? He had held her hand on a bench at the zoo, both of them blushing like children. He had danced with her in a hall full of strangers, his feet clumsy, his heart pounding, his smile bright. He had crawled through a field for her ring, bleeding, breaking, refusing to stop even when his hands were raw and his knees were gone. He had called her his family. He had made her feel things she had never felt before, things she did not have names for, things that terrified her more than any enemy ever had.
"I love you..."
The words were barely a whisper.
"Erza."
A pause. A breath.
"I hope... I find you... in my next life..."
Love. He loved her. He had loved her since the beginning, perhaps, since the moment she appeared in his apartment with ice in her eyes and death in her voice. He had loved her through the threats and the insults and the days when she had treated him like dirt beneath her feet. He had loved her enough to search all night for her ring. He had loved her enough to promise to die smiling, so that she would not feel guilty for killing him.
She should have been happy. She should have felt joy, warmth, something. He had said the words she had never expected to hear, the words she had told herself she did not want, the words that should have meant something.
She felt nothing.
Only cold.
Only emptiness.
Only the weight of his body in her arms, growing heavier, growing still.
His eyes closed. His face was smiling. He was not breathing. He had accepted death without knowing why he had been killed, without knowing who had pulled the trigger, without knowing that he had been targeted not for who he was, but for what they believed he carried.
Erza watched him. Watched the rise and fall of his chest stop. Watched the color drain from his face. Watched the smile that had infuriated her, that had charmed her, that had made her want to hit him and hold him at the same time—watched it freeze on his lips.
"Mortal?"
She blinked. The world around her was silent, frozen, waiting. Her grip tightened around him, her fingers pressing into his blood-soaked shirt.
"Morr..."
No response.
"YUUTA."
Her voice cracked. Her hands shook. She shook him gently, then harder, then desperately, the way someone shakes a sleeping friend who will not wake, the way someone shakes a lover who has drifted too far into a dream from which there is no return.
"Yuuta!"
She laughed. It was a soft, shaky laugh, the laugh of someone who had lost her mind and did not care, the laugh of someone who was standing on the edge of an abyss and looking down into darkness.
"I see," she said. "So this is your revenge. You are angry because I embarrassed you in front of Sister Mary, right?"
She shook him again, lightly, playfully, the way she might have shaken him if he were still alive, if he were still breathing, if he were still here to complain about her treatment of him.
"Alright. I understand. You win."
She smiled. It was a fragile smile, the kind that broke as soon as it was made, the kind that looked like it hurt, the kind that came from a place so deep inside her that she had not known it existed.
"Now wake up."
Silence.
"Yuuta?"
Nothing.
Her hands loosened. Her body felt light, too light, as if something inside her had disappeared, had been taken, had been stolen. She looked at the ground, at the spilled stew, at the food he had made for her, the food she had mocked, the food she had planned to eat while pretending not to care.
She picked it up.
The stew was cold now, mixed with grass and dirt and his blood. She brought it to her lips.
She took a bite.
"...Disgusting," she whispered.
Another bite.
"You pathetic mortal. How can you cook something like this?"
She waited.
For a complaint. For a retort. For that stupid, annoying voice that always had something to say about everything, that always found a way to make her feel things she did not want to feel, that always smiled when she called him names and made her want to hit him and hold him at the same time.
Nothing came.
"Yuuta..."
Her voice broke. Tears spilled down her face, hot and fast, falling onto his still chest, mixing with the blood that would not stop, that had stopped, that had stopped because his heart was no longer pumping it.
"Yuuta..."
Her shoulders shook. Her breath came in uneven gasps. Her hands pressed against his chest, feeling for a heartbeat that was not there, would never be there again.
"Yuuta, wake up!"
Her voice rose, cracked, shattered like glass dropped on stone.
"YOU CANNOT LEAVE ME LIKE THIS!"
The words tore from her throat, raw and desperate, the kind of sound that came from somewhere deeper than the lungs, somewhere that had been sealed shut for centuries and was now broken open.
"I have already decided your punishment," she said, weeping now, her voice trembling, each word a struggle, each syllable a battle against the grief that was swallowing her whole. She held his hand above her, pressing his cold fingers against her cheek, against her tears, against the warmth that was fading from his skin.
"I have decided that you will not die. So do not die Please."
Her voice broke. It was the first time she had cried for this long, the first time she had let herself weep without shame, without restraint, without the cold mask she had worn for centuries. The tears fell freely, hot and fast, soaking his shirt, mixing with the blood that had already dried.
The sky above her was dark. It had been afternoon when the bullet hit, bright and warm, the kind of day that belonged to festivals and laughter and the joy of cooking. But now the light was gone, swallowed by thick black clouds that had gathered from nowhere, that had formed in response to her grief, to her rage, to the power that was leaking from her like blood from a wound.
She did not notice. She did not care.
The ring fell.
It slipped from Yuuta's finger, silver and bright, and hit the ground with a soft sound that should have been lost in the chaos, that should have been swallowed by the wind and the snow and the screaming. But Erza heard it. The sound cut through everything, sharp and clear, a bell tolling for something that had ended.
Her mother's voice echoed in her mind, words spoken centuries ago, in a palace of ice and fire, in a time when she had believed in love.
The ring will stay until death parts you.
Death had parted them.
To be continue