The outcome of the case was not satisfactory for Gray, as she learned a lot of things without any explanation. Thanks to the conversation she had with Toru, a lot of information was lost. It could be said to be her fault for staying talking for so long. Although it really wasn't that long.
"So, how are things going between you and Assassin?"
It was almost midnight and Reines' question made Gray uncomfortable, mainly because that Assassin is also in the room, looking out the window into the darkness of the night.
"I think... it's all very normal."
No, it wasn't normal. At least, for a country girl like Gray, her relationship with a boy was beyond extraordinary. While Toru is a hopeless weirdo, that was what attracted Gray in the first place.
"But they already kissed, didn't you feel anything out of the ordinary?"
"I don't think so...", she closed her eyes turning around on the bed. She tried to avoid Reines' gaze as her face turned red at that moment.
Gray remembered the way that kiss tasted, the moment her body heated up and the moment she clung to Toru tightly not to let him leave her side. She hugged herself imagining how Toru's body felt.
'He's bigger than me...stronger..."
Gray is quite short. She had to look Toru up and stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, since the boy himself is pretty average height.
'I think... I think it felt good...'
She opened her eyes for a moment, but as she did so she met Reines' eyes. Gray had no reaction, as she expected Reines to try to get as much information out of her as possible. On the outside this princess may look quite refined and elegant, but inside she is just a woman who seeks satisfaction in the suffering of others. As Gray is now in a rather confusing situation, Reines amuses herself by intervening in that.
"Be honest, Gray - do you like Assassin?"
Unable to confirm those words, but also unable to deny them, her face grew redder and her head had become so hot that it was already steaming.
To Reines the answer was obvious, but to Gray it was still somewhat confusing. How did it feel to be in love? She'd never experienced that. She'd never kissed anyone until recently.
Reines smiled. Gray was very cute when she was embarrassed.
"He must be really looking forward to you kissing him again. He's probably thinking about it right now", was a tease. Reines wanted to know how far Gray could go with Assassin.
Gray hates and fears ghosts, but ironically she had fallen in love with one.
"I don't know... I don't understand anything...", Gray whispered, hiding inside the sheets.
Reines put her elbows on the bed and thought about how beautiful youth could be and all the trouble it could create. While Reines enjoyed Gray's lovesickness, Gray suffered trying to decipher these emotions.
On the other hand, Assassin stared into the darkness between the towers. He closed his eyes; he felt tired. Every time his eyelids closed, he felt himself back in that white void that tortured him so much. He could see himself crying and begging for that hell to end, but no matter how much he asked for forgiveness and help, no one ever came to save him.
Someone pulled him out of that hell when his mind had already broken.
'I gave up at the end of all that hell...', his will was broken and his heart hardened. He no longer cared to suffer any longer. Nothing could hurt him again, as he suffered his own life over and over again inside that place until he finally got used to it.
Every time he saw the darkness, he somehow felt calm.
Those voices still echoed in his mind. The ocean created by the blood of all his victims continues to spread next to his corrupted soul. Someone like that could no longer redeem himself. All that was left for him to do was to wait for eternity for something to alleviate this horrible boredom.
'Gray...', she reminds him of little Hinata. 'No... they are nothing alike...', Hinata ended up hurt by his actions. Hinata's broken and tearful expression was still in her mind, as well as the disappointment in Ino's expression.
He disappointed everyone; he disappointed himself. After finding himself, he lost himself in the abyss again.
That scene of Assassin looking out the window was very common in this life, but this time, inside his mind, the hundreds of souls embrace him and whisper in his ear that word that is slowly becoming engraved in his memory.
[Monster]
There was no better way to describe Toru, at least for the souls who suffered because of him.
'Monster..., uh...,' it was funny, so much so that a small, acidic, expressionless laugh almost came out of him.
From now on his life would be that way. There is nothing that matters, not even the people in this room. Toru feels nothing at the sight of them.
'Stop kidding yourself', he told himself. He didn't want to remain the same naive child who lies to himself and lets himself be abused by others. That was what led him to this situation in the first place. 'Heroic Spirit', hearing that seemed like a joke, but he also understood that he is not in this place because he is not a hero, but because he was known at the end of his life.
He touched his forehead painfully. He watched Gray talk to Reines and whispered, 'It's becoming a habit...'
[Let me help you, Asahi Toru]
Those words were forceful to him.
But.
'There's nothing you can do', that was what he would have liked to say to her, but seeing her he felt his voice was going to crack. 'There is no salvation for me', because he is already dead. His life is already over. What is left of Asahi Toru is only an amalgamation of stories put together to give life to his own existence.
'I think I'm tired...', standing in front of the window, he closed his eyes and his body faded away.
Projecting himself onto other people isn't right, but in the back of his twisted mind, he thought he could stop Gray from following the same path. In the end he's just being selfish by wanting to achieve through someone else something he could never achieve in his own life.
[I wish I could kill my memories.]
Just a slave to the past.
***
The next day, in the afternoon, this group found themselves back in London. Reines took her leave because she had to discuss this with the family elders, just as Flat and Svin wanted to continue training their magecrafts. Waver himself was already busy with a lot of Clock Tower business, so after making sure his daughter was healthy, he left to settle all those matters.
This left Gray and Toru alone in the same house.
Gray was still puzzled by what Toru said last night in the tower. She couldn't see Toru's expression, let alone feel what he felt. If this was Toru's way of hiding himself, she could come to understand.
She is usually a bit cruel when describing people inside her mind and Toru was no exception.
'He seems to be very cowardly...', if Gray analyzed Toru's behaviors, that was the conclusion she could come to.
Toru happens to be a very evasive person. He never talks about himself and when he does he somehow feels like a riddle.
'Despite being very intelligent, he often does things that don't make sense.'
As she headed for the library, she stopped a few feet from the door. Add hasn't said anything for quite a while now. She's unaware of the cause, and that scares her a little.
"Do you think Assassin is in there?"
Add didn't answer. Gray was silent for a while and then continued. Opening the door she found Toru. After so much in such a short time, she forgot that Toru also likes to read.
For a moment Gray felt embarrassed, but after thinking of Toru as a mystery, she went in search of some books on Japanese history. She wanted to focus on the Edo era, which was the rise of the ninjas.
As Toru was standing next to a bookshelf with the book in one hand, Gray sat down next to the table and began to read quietly.
After a few minutes of searching and finding nothing, Toru suddenly said to him, "If you're looking for something about me, you're not going to find anything."
"Huh? Why, aren't you a historical character?"
As a reader, she was a little excited to find out if Toru had books dealing with him, but the latter left her confused.
"You don't need to know anything about me. There's nothing about me in the history books of this World. You're never going to find anything."
That didn't make sense to Gray.
"But..."
"If you are interested in knowing anything about me, well, I was born in a small village and was the heir of the Asahi clan. I died during a war. No one knew me."
It was all true except for the last. In the Shinobi World Asahi Toru was known as a villain who redeemed himself by trying to save humanity from Uchiha Madara. Although many disagree with this treatment towards the late Asahi Toru, others who were close to him agree.
"Just that?"
"There is nothing more I can say. It is exactly as I said."
"I understand..."
Toru saw the disappointment in Gray's look. This girl was expecting an epic story of ninjas at war, but in the end she only got a super summary of that. She didn't give up, though. It's not that Gray doesn't trust Toru's word, but she kept looking to see if she would discover anything.
In the end it was a waste of time that ended with Gray resting her forehead on the table.
Toru closed the book in his hand. He sat down next to Gray and looked at her from across the table.
"Hm...?"
"Why do you want to know so much about me, what are you looking to gain from that? We've talked about this before, but I sense your intentions have changed."
That came as quite a surprise. Gray straightened her back and thought about what to say.
"It's complicated... You do so many strange things that it makes me want to know why you do what you do."
"That's a very vague reason..."
"There's something else, but I don't know how to put it into words. You're a hero, no matter how good or bad your actions have been. You don't look at me with admiration, but you don't look down on me either. A lot of people keep saying I'm pretty, but that's something that makes me very angry."
"Because that face doesn't belong to you."
Gray smiled bitterly. This face had made her suffer from a loneliness and sadness that wouldn't let her live.
Suddenly, her tone of voice became a little sad. Fuzzy memories of her life flashed before her eyes with a sad ending to her own story.
It was her own emotions that defeated her. It was the pain in her heart that made her say the following:
"Someday I won't be here anymore. Gray will disappear..."
"..."
"I keep telling myself that I should enjoy the time I have left, but every time I think about it, I feel like I don't deserve any of what I have..."
"..."
"Many people smile when they see me... I wish I smiled like that too. I want to be normal too..."
Gray's expression turned grim, an expression marked by the darkness of the hood.
"But in the end all I can think about is how I'm going to die..."
...
There was a child who saw her face change in front of the mirror.
...
"Why do they treat me like I'm a hero?"
...
Everyone began to treat her as if they had already had Arthur Pendragon back.
...
"I don't want this... I want to go back to before that..."
...
She closed her eyes. Toru looked at her silently.
"But then I thought of everyone else's happiness in sacrificing myself like this."
...
Gray is going to disappear and only Arthur Pendragon will be left.
...
"I thought about it too much... And every time I thought about it, I started to cry."
There was a child who wept silently; she felt abandoned by the World. She felt that it wasn't worth living just to disappear. Not even her own mother saw her as 'Gray'. The truth was, from the moment she received Add, Gray had died for all those people.
"And every time she cried, all she could think about was dying..."
"..."
"I imagined what the world would be like after my death - would Mom miss me? Would everyone remember Gray?"
...
"I thought... I thought dying is the best thing that could happen to me..."
...
...
There was one boy who was never saved. That boy looked at a girl who was never saved.
...
...
"And if I die right now, what would happen?"
The boy was covered with wounds symbolizing his traumas, and the girl's hands were bruised from working so hard for those who forgot her.
The boy was left alone, but the girl still had time to save herself.
"That's why I didn't want to get close to the others because I knew it would hurt a lot the moment I die..."
She became a lonely girl guarding the graves in that small town.
Thus she lowered her gaze and dug her nails into the table.
"I... I don't want to die, but I have no choice."
"... ..."
"I thought I could live like a normal girl. But I was wrong...", she covered her face with her hand as tears began to fall down her cheeks.
At that moment, Toru put his hand on the table. His eyes were dead as always, but perhaps it was that part of him hiding deep in his heart that made him say something about it.
"You'll be fine...", in a soft soothing voice. "Your face is a delicate matter for you, but I think appearance is only the shell of a human being. You have let others decide your life for you and that has led you to be what you are today. You haven't thought for yourself and that brought you trouble", he looked Gray in the eye. "Death is not a solution...just a brief escape from reality."
What's after death? Toru already knew all too well. Death was only a way to run away from problems.
"With death nothing can be solved", said a person who killed an entire world. "With death... you won't be happy..."
-???-
He is a person who does not know happiness...
"Please..."
His life has always been a constant tragedy. His hands are full of death and sin.
"Please... no more..."
Kneeling in an endless field of white flowers, where there is nothing but a depressing white silence, Asahi Toru is suffering his own story in succession. Every mistake, every trauma and every tragedy, repeating itself over and over again without stopping inside his mind.
Sakura is there, hugging him and crying by his side. She could only do this for him, even though he can't see her or feel her, this is only a memory, a painful memory.
It was the moment when Toru decided he wanted to die; more than dying, he just wanted to erase his own existence completely. No more pain, no more sacrifice. All of that would end with his ultimate death, but that was only a dream as he was locked in this hell.
'This isn't a hero's throne...', Sakura looked up at the white sky....
Up there was someone watching. It was a golden woman glowing to the far reaches of darkness.
'Just like in Toru's first life...'
The Mother of the Nasuverse...
-London-
She's a lost girl who doesn't know what else to do. She was lost in the past and could never look to the future. Now she is left only to mourn in silence, hiding from others how she feels.
The real Gray was nothing more than a girl full of fear and sadness, along with a loneliness that marked her withdrawn personality.
But now, out of nowhere, she was telling Toru all that. She had never had the chance to open her heart like that to a person, she didn't feel confident enough to do so. But with him it was different. Gray knows how Toru feels. Even though she doesn't know his story, she knows his feelings. She knows he feels like she does.
They are both lost and don't know which way to turn. They have found themselves, but they are still lost.
"It will all be the same in the end", with a black glare he found himself sitting across the table from Gray. "I'm not going to give you words of comfort. I don't think they're necessary, at least not for now. The only thing I could tell you is not to say again that everything will be better if you die. That makes me angry."
If Gray continued down the same path she would end up like Toru.
The lost girl and the unsaved soul. They both looked at each other from two completely different stories. Gray looked at Toru from this grim reality, while Toru looked at Gray from the red abyss of his broken emotions.
This was a moment of weakness for both of them. It was a moment when they felt closer to each other. Maybe that was why Gray undoubtedly realized that what she felt for Toru was more than curiosity.
They are alike people, but so different at the same time.
"I wanted to ask you something," Gray said. She wiped her tears with her knuckle and looked up, where Toru was watching her silently.
Gray's sudden proposal made Toru fume.
"If it's something annoying I'll have to refuse."
Gray smiled softly.
There was a time when she felt lonelier than anyone else. This time she could be alone next to someone else....
"Would you like some mana?"
And so began the romance between these two broken people.
To be continued...