Soul Spark

12-32 - Decision

Sakuto looked around. He carefully observed both sides, before taking a step back and pacing around a little bit. The simplicity of the predicament crushed him with its complexity.

He tried to speak up, to ask Soulkuto a question, but the latter interrupted him, as if predicting his next words.

“It doesn’t matter to me what you choose.” Soulkuto said. “All I care about is that your decision comes directly from your soul. I’m the same as you, so whatever you truly want, is also what I truly want.”

“And I’m guessing there’s no more talking or regretting anything.” Sakuto said.

“Yes. Although, you’re not the type to regret things anyways.” Soukuto gave him a light smile, before regaining his serious, even worried expression.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Sakuto said. He looked down at the pure gray ground, with hints of color scattered through it like rays of deflected light.

“Take as much time as you need, Sakuto.” Soulkuto said. A gray rock was manifested under him, on which he sat down.

Sakuto took a deep breath.

“...”

“This is it...”

“Light, dark, gray, color, all of them...all working in unison to make me miserable.”

“To constantly give me fulfillment, give me warmth, and then take it all away. I’ve been here already, I’ve thought about all of this. I even made this decision once.”

“But now...things are different.”

He looked deeper into the colors lingering in the gray. Every color helped him remember a vibrant memory that he shared. They didn’t fill him with happiness, they injected him with the opposite. Overwhelming, crushing grief, over the death of a person whose passing he never thought would become reality.

“Back then, you were there, waiting for me. Available to talk to. Easy to be understood by. You were one of the people who, back then, stopped me from giving up. I thought that if I took the easy way out, I’d make you sad.”

“Not the case anymore, though. I don’t know if you’re watching me, or if you’re gone completely, honestly, I have no clue on what happens when someone dies. And it bothers me even more...”

“If you’re watching me, I don’t want to disappoint you. You’re the person who I want to disappoint the least. You already put so much effort in to try and keep me together.”

“No, I have to be realistic. I’m dealing with my life.”

“I know Oskar wouldn’t want me to give up, but at the same time, he understood why I wanted to. It’s completely justifiable for a person not to want to be in pain anymore. On paper, I just have to deal with his passing, right? I have to grieve for him, and eventually...”

“No.”

“There’s no way I’ll forget him. No. That’s...”

“He’s not the only one either. All the people that left me, all the people that I had to kill or I watched die...there’s no way I’d ever forget them. I’d rather just hope that the afterlife exists, and just give up on this shitty life so I can spend time with them again. I don’t want to ever forget them.”

“...”

“But...”

“Why am I acting like accepting someone’s death is the same as forgetting about them?”

He looked up, seeing more of the colorful gray. His expression now looked slightly more hopeful.

“They died, and...I’ve dealt with death a lot. I’ve killed, and I’ve seen people close to me get killed, and...I’ve even technically died myself. It’s just what happens. And, even if it happened to my closest friend, it’s still the same phenomena that happened to those other people, and to everyone who lives or has ever lived.”

“As long as I hold onto the memories I’ve shared with them, the things I learnt from them...they’ll never be forgotten. They’ll stay with me.”

“Oskar...”

“If you were right here, in front of me...if you had a way to talk to me, what would you say? You cared about me, so you wouldn’t want your death to affect me to the point of hitting the deepest points of the abyss, right?”

“I remember, we had this conversation once where I asked you about what you would do if one day I died, way before either of us were part of the soulful mess. When you said that you didn’t know if you could handle it or not, I told you to not let it get to you that much. I told you to just remember me.”

“Since you cared about me too, I trust that you’d say something like that, right?”

“And I know that it got to me, it got to me to the point where I’m struggling to pick which way to go, but still...I think...”

“I can keep it under control.”

“Because that’s what you’d do for me if I was the one to go. You’d be down, but...you’d come back up.”

“So thank you...”

“Thank you for being a part of my life. The life that I thought was going to be unbearable...was made not only tolerable, but also, at times, fun.”

“I won’t let it drown me, man. I’ll...I’ll remember you...I promise.”

“This...this was the poison, right? Me not being able to get over your death. I feel like...I feel like I managed to deal with it. It’s not there filling my soul anymore, it’s not trying to kill me.”

“Instead, there’s...”

“...”

“Emptiness.”

The hopeful expression faded away. He sighed.

“You wouldn’t want me to just live for the sake of staying alive, you’d want me to live and be happy.”

“But given the current situation...I don’t fucking know what to do.”

“I can’t just live for myself when there’s nothing left. I can’t do that. If I go out there, I’ll go insane and take my own life in just a few days...maybe even hours.”

“As it stands right now, I don’t see a reason to go back.”

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“...”

“There’s only one possibility out there.”

“Either Ichika is alive, or she’s not.”

“I know that I felt her presence when the event happened, but as of right now...wouldn’t she just think that I died?”

“And I really doubt she’d be able to handle my death, on top of everything else that happened...”

“So there’s a chance...”

“Fuck.”

“Even thinking about this hurts.”

He looked worried, even a little anxious.

“It’s all up to chance.”

“There’s only chances and assumptions. All of which have a chance to have awful conclusions.”

He took another deep breath, continuing to stare at the color.

“So how am I going to bring myself to take it, if I know it might bury me?”

“I assume that this whole thing is my absolute last bit of willpower. If I get crushed again, I don’t know if I’ll have the courtesy of making a decision like this. I think everything will be much simpler.”

“But...”

“What about my purpose then? The purpose has to be something I know for sure, or at least something I can make myself believe in. I can’t live for the sake of living, I can’t believe in the fact that life will just get better and I’ll hit every chance.”

“Believing in the fact that Ichika didn’t give up, and is still somewhere out there...”

“I...”

“There’s just one thing I can do.”

He silently gasped.

“I can trust her.”

“Ichika...”

“If there’s a chance that you’re still there, you’d trust me to try and get to you too, right?. You’d be waiting for me, and you’d trust me to not leave you alone. You’d trust me to perverse through whatever happens, and join you. You’d trust me to be with you.”

“And because of that, I’ll trust you back. Because that’s how our bond works. We trust each other, we rely on each other...we are the color in each other’s worlds. We spend time together in the mountains, and we help each other not to drown in the abyss. We always know that the other one will be there.”

“So I’ll trust you.”

“I’ll give it a shot. If my soul is crushed again, so be it. But...”

“Something tells me...”

“That I should try.”

He slowly raised his palm.

“Jackal, what was it that you told me? To be a soulful until the end?” He smiled a little before lowering it.

“I’ve made up my mind.” He said.

“Good.” Soulkuto said. “I’m proud of you.”

Sakuto approached him, and after waiting a little bit, extended his hand, offering Soulkuto a handshake. Soulkuto accepted it.

“Thank you.” Sakuto said. “I know where to go now. I guess...this is it.”

“Then go ahead.” Soulkuto smiled. They let go of the handshake, and Sakuto stepped back. Soulkuto’s image started to slowly fade away.

Sakuto took a deep breath, and turned right.

He walked towards the darkness.

The moment the colorful gray faded away, the moment he stepped into it, it felt like it was starting to drown him, trying to devour him whole. It oppressed him, crushed his soul and tried to dim it altogether.

But Sakuto, after getting a taste of it, decided to take another decisive step towards it. His steps were now filled with determination, as he made his way through the void. Seconds later, his body no longer held its shape - it was reduced to his soul. Only the spark itself was left visible, and it continued traveling through the darkness, with no intention of stopping.

Once the tunnel was far gone, and just the void remained, the spark was the only existence within it. The overwhelming darkness connected with the small but powerful light. Through their contrasting natures, they managed to dance together, and a faint pulse was felt throughout the world...

...

Sakuto opened his eyes.

The hollow sun was still in the sky, and the sky itself was still starless and pitch black. Ruins surrounded him, the remnants of the destruction that the fierce warfare caused. He slowly sat up, and a few seconds later, got up.

His body was still heavily injured, but at least it worked properly.

“Right...I at least hoped the sky would be back to normal...”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

“Everything’s the same.”

The wind howled in the empty streets, and Sakuto just...walked. He walked forward, the only thing that gave him a sense of direction was something that he sensed a little further ahead. He limped a little, he still felt incredible exhaustion.

“All of that scenery...yeah, nothing really changed. I’m guessing there’s no such thing as society anymore either...just soulfuls left who will need to survive on their own, with difficulty trying to find one another.”

“Food supplies destroyed, electricity supplies permanently shut down, communication is beyond fucked up and inaccessible, natural resource gains are stopped, functioning stations might cause disasters since no one is there to look after them, and the lack of people...everywhere...”

“It’s just this left.”

He continued walking, the path ahead of him was filled with rubble. Eventually, he entered an area that was mostly flattened. Some bloodied spots were visible on the ground.

“Hah...”

“I’m supposed to try.”

“What if she’s not even there?”

“Well...”

“I doubt it’d happen, but...”

“If it did...”

“I’d probably...”

“Just...”

He saw a figure sitting down in the distance.

He took a closer look, and the figure raised its head. The next thing Sakuto saw was a pair of emerald green eyes.

Ichika looked just as exhausted as he was, in fact, too exhausted both physically and mentally to run up to him. Instead, she just awkwardly stood up, her leg limping a little. Her uniform was covered in blood.

Sakuto approached her too, stopping a few steps away from her. They wanted to smile, but when they looked each other in the eyes, what both of them conveyed perfectly was that they were scared.

“It’s over.” Sakuto said, taking a step towards her. “He did what he planned to do.”

“I know...” Ichika said.

“And...where’s everyone? Where’s Yumichi? Where’s the rest of the Heisei?” Sakuto asked.

“I can sense some very faint presences, but they’re stable. So...I think they’re just too exhausted to move around.” Ichika replied, her hand twitching a little. “And Yumichi, he’s doing okay.”

“That’s...good.” Sakuto said, nodding a little. “That’s good to know.”

They looked at each other more. With their gazes, they told each other what they both thought about their surroundings. They shared a silence, and Sakuto spoke up.

“Ichika...for how long were you willing to wait for me?” Sakuto asked.

“For as much as I was capable of...” Ichika replied.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Ichika said. “I trusted that you wouldn’t leave me.”

Sakuto, too exhausted to stand properly, almost fell on Ichika. Ichika caught him in her arms, it hurt her too, but she embraced him. The howling wind was awfully cold, but at that moment, they felt warm.

And amidst that embrace, Sakuto could feel the exact color that was meant to convince him to exist.

“I trusted that you’d be here too...” Sakuto whispered, before tightening the embrace. Ichika tightened it back, and for a while, neither of them had any intention of releasing each other.

“I’m so happy...that I came here...” Sakuto thought, feeling the weight of his soulmate’s arms around his shoulders. In the broken world he was fated to spend the rest of his life in, this was the only place where he felt not only safe, but fulfilled. He felt alive, and the more he stayed in that embrace, the more he wanted to live.

“It was worth it to try...”

“Despite everything, as long as the color is there, it won’t feel empty. I’ll try to live.”

“I promise.”

The wind howled in an almost empty world...

“I’ll try.”

The end of the main story of Soul Spark.

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