Oliver crashed into the first available place to sit in his flat as soon as he got past his door. The span of time it took to get from Prudence’s flat to his seemed to have consumed an entire decade, although the distance was only steps away. Flipping the pages of the book in frenzy, he ultimately gave up finding the spot he was last at. Or perhaps, his curiosity was begging him to just resolve what mattered the most, the fate of his mirror characters. Agreeing with his curiosity, he took a courageous swallow and daringly headed to the final conclusion chapter titled ominously:
Resting soullessly in his shriveling quarters like the many days that had passed, Sen was accompanied once again, by four empty walls around him. They stood out conspicuously, a striking of white, almost pallid, but how could something with such a sickly appearance be able to trap him, he whispered to himself. If anything, he felt like he was helplessly left behind inside a prison of endless dreams. The key to unlock himself so he could return to the real world had gone missing. Instead, all he had in his grip was Keiko’s ring.
The ashen walls must have stolen Sen’s energy. They now had a life of their own and would drift continuously, reacting relentlessly with the permanent film of quivering emotions in front of his eyes with the usual potent chemistry. As if they were mocking him, the combination of the mixture would spark a series of sad visions, a replay of the memories from that day, where the band of specters and priestesses accompanied a weeping Keiko away.
Trapped inside the dream prison, Sen’s heart was twisting achingly over what he could have done differently to change Keiko’s fate, agonizing over every sequence of events, and creeping closer to exhausting all the possible outcomes. Wanting to blame himself for the failure, his mind kept getting stuck on one crucial fact, a rationalization that even though he was a wizard, he was held back by his human flesh and blood, and he was no match against the powers of the specters. He unleashed every spell he ever learned on them in front of Keiko and her parents, but he was outnumbered on all sides. It was a short conflict, and in the end and seemingly without effort, they simply immobilized his tired bruised body to the ground.
Sen had summoned a life altering breath to beg the priestesses to take him too. He could hear himself talk of giving up his life and sacrificing everything. He realized that them taking her away would symbolically mean them taking away all his purpose for living.
The walls were now shining their surfaces to the burning scene where the specters and priestesses were listening to Sen’s pleas behind their stoic emotionless masks. He pondered the reason why they were wearing masks. For a moment, he could see one of the priestesses wiping the corner of where he believed her eye was located. The set of carved holes in her mask had let her down; they failed to hide her quivering soulful pupils swimming inside her whitened eyes.
Seeing this at the time, he recalled the glimmer of hope quickly washing away all the desperation inside him, thinking that maybe he had convinced her, and she could grant his wish. After all, she was the one who apologized to him for having delayed their journey of descent to take Keiko away. It was the first time he heard of priestesses making mistakes, and he could hear himself chuckle hollowly in between swallows of his own blood, but she definitely did admit they made a mistake.
’We underestimated the powers of time. Who would have known… our delay of… merely three short years… could have such devastating effects on two beings?’ he remembered the priestess say with a dimming voice of deep regret as she released a frozen him from her immobilization spell.
’You see, Sen,’ she explained apologetically, watching him sit up from the ground, ‘we live for thousands and thousands of years. It’s no excuse but we might have forgotten about our differing concepts of time… that… what feels like three years for you is like three days for us…
’I had forgotten about the feelings of time and…’ she gazed at his bloodstained chest, ‘the heartbeat of time…
’What could be more cruel? Our error… would mean giving you the opportunity… having you and Keiko to cross paths, meet, fall in love, only to… part ways in the end.’
Sen could see he didn’t have trouble climbing up to his feet from the ground despite all his injuries. It could be the fury inside him that was powering his legs, for his fury was roaring fiercely in tandem with each subsequent word of explanation from the priestess. Surprisingly, he couldn’t feel the pain from any of the visible cuts and bruises all over his body. The only source of torture was seeing Keiko’s broken gaze, standing soundlessly next to the priestess.
Sen watched a stern looking creature with a ghostly white umbrella step ahead of the priestess, seemingly wanting to silence her rueful voice, but she was not deterred from speaking the truth. Her mask managed to smile wanly, ‘Sen, we were all… watching you and Angel Ame the entire time… We were all… touched… with what we saw… the two of you… what you shared together... everything you did…
’Your sidewalk strolls under the rain… side by side…’
It was a moment for Oliver to stop reading so he could let the nostalgia sweep over. He was now the sole audience of his very own rain shower strolls with Yuriko. Distantly, he could even hear real echoes of spindrifts splashing on the roads, much like the ones they encountered when they strolled together during those rainy days, tireless seas of fireworks that kept on unleashing. However, he didn’t know his bedroom window was open, and the spindrift sounds he was hearing now were simply from cars traveling on wet roads outside.
In time, the reddened veins started to prick Oliver’s eyes, reminding him he ought to blink soon, even if it meant having to spill out what was held under those mottled eyelids. Sitting on the pile of dated newspapers at the edge of his doorway that Prudence carefully organized for him since last summer, he couldn’t believe he was using the pile as a stool, but then again, there were things in this world more unbelievable than this. For a moment that contained too many heartbeats to count, he took a heavy breath and blinked. He quietly waited for his eyes to settle down before continuing:
’As soon as we saw you propose marriage,’ the priestess reminisced somberly, ‘we knew we had to stop you. It is only now that we realized… how late we have been, and the consequences of our mistake.’
’Priestess, your delay of three years is not a mistake. I am thankful for your poor time management skills. I am not angry at you. In truth, I’m grateful,’ said Keiko lethargically. Her voice sounded dusty, like it was being used for the first time. Nevertheless, shockwaves from her words could be felt in the heads of everyone present, with Sen bearing the brunt of the impact.
Sen remembered Keiko gazing at him deeply with glimmers of wisdom that calmed his anger. She was attempting to communicate with him, but he would not back away from his stubborn stand; he refused to accept Keiko’s underlying hidden message. He understood Keiko’s reasons, but he couldn’t agree with her. Three years was too short for him. In fact, any amount of time less than infinity would still be too short for him. What they shared was not supposed to end like this. Unlike Keiko, he could not accept this ending.
’Every snowflake has a purpose. Even mistakes have their purposes,’ Keiko tried again, but Sen shook his head in defiance.
The priestess was grateful for Keiko’s understanding, and she could hear herself plead to the other caretakers, but she knew she was only prolonging the inevitable, for they were beginning to fizzle away, including herself.
Without thinking, Sen leaped towards Keiko, wanting to hold her, but to his horror, she was also disintegrating in front of his eyes.
’Sen…’ he could hear Keiko’s faint voice singing from a pair of clouds of sparkling dust of what used to be her lyrical eyes. It was happening. She was leaving, and her eyes were the first to leave him.
Everything was flashing blindingly in distraction, as each of the beings took turns dismantling into the air. The impact from the group’s departure appeared to have seized time by surprise, and it came to a screeching mysterious halt, evidently in order to let them catch up. Seizing the opportunity, Sen reached for Keiko’s hand, attempting to pull her back, but he was reaching into nothingness. Like a layer of smoke in front of an unforgiving wind gust, Keiko’s body would be swept into a scattering of fragmented sparkles. Just as her lips were about to open, his heart skipped a beat before stopping itself along the lines of time, in response to her stilled angelic face, an imprint that would vanish before any lasting words could be produced.
A trail of fragmented glimmers from Keiko knitted melodiously through Sen’s brown hair, and then to his hand, bathing him ever so gently up his arm as he followed them with his trembling eyes. The glittery residuals finally circled to a stop once they reached his chest where they massaged at his heart, and he would watch her last sparkle linger longingly in his chest before fading away to reveal the engagement ring he gave her, slowly succumbing to gravity as it floated to the ground.
Like a crisp delicate careful single drop of water, it was the sound that rippled at his feet as the ring fell out of his grip and hit the ground. The sound managed to awaken the blank pasty walls of the dream prison to reemerge, and they slowly returned to Sen’s view.
He realized all he had from that night was the ghostly white umbrella and a trail of memories. The umbrella, which was leaning on the wall now, matched the ashen colors perfectly. Keiko’s father was kind enough to let him have it. It was something that was left behind, probably from the stern looking creature, in the confusion of their hasty departure.
’I’m sorry… for having kept the two of you… apart… thinking you were… the one sent… to take her away, when in fact, you’re the one sent to protect her…’ Sen could still hear Keiko’s father apologize despairingly, his voice strained from the loss of his daughter.
’Sen… I’m… truly sorry...’
Once again, the rain was the only exception to his silence inside the dream prison, but tonight, the tapping sounds were excessively melancholic. It could be his imagination, but Sen could somehow sense Keiko’s sparkles around him, spraying through the open window. Without considering the possibility of being enchanted by illusions, he grabbed the white umbrella and sprinted outside, wanting to follow them.
’Keiko! Keiko!’ he roared in the rain, running madly in circles, hoping she was nearby. He did open the umbrella, but it was as if it had no cover, for the rain was piercing through it and soaking his body, seeping all the way past his clothes and to his heart, because the rain was bleeding down in bricks and mortars, sheets and pellets.
It was unclear what took place afterwards because everyone stayed in their houses to hide from the powerful storm, which apparently escalated passionately without mercy. They made a wise decision, for the storm was so destructive its tentacles seemingly distorted the speed of time. Neighboring villagers saw a gigantic light searing through the horizons, followed by a thundering blast of sound, ripping through the mountain. The ones that were brave enough to poke their eyes through their windows from their houses could feel the radiating heat. They swore they saw the horizons being cracked in two. Others who lingered intensely and fearlessly by their window, watching their crops turn to a crisp, claimed to have witnessed a faint shadow of two people, one holding another by the arms, under a white umbrella, ascending timelessly into the clouds.
After that stormy night, it was the last time they heard of the foreign young man named Sen. As villagers were cleaning up the neighborhoods the next few days, they reportedly uncovered a curious looking wooden staff in the fields abandoned not far away. Keiko’s father understood who the item belonged to. Perhaps Sen got his wish, Keiko’s father thought sorrowfully but wishfully.
’Perhaps Sen was finally with Keiko again… in her world together… somewhere in the skies.’
Epilogue - Indeed, every snowflake has a purpose. For Keiko, she firmly believed that what the priestess did was not a mistake, because it accidentally provided an opportunity to allow two people to cross paths and truly love. It was an error for which Keiko did not require the priestess to apologize for. In fact, she was grateful, for letting her experience love, even if it was for such a seemingly brief period of time.
The final word of the novel has now been grinded into Oliver’s stomach, and he could close the book. He couldn’t deny that the sadness he abandoned last winter has fully returned, but he still managed to chuckle, as the memory of him once teasing Ginny for her reading romance novels to supplement her stormy relationship with Harry, came for an unexpected visit in his mind.
Even though the book was closed, the surreal imagination ignited in his head by the story was still openly working in overdrive. Staring at the cover illustration, it was as if the girl standing under the archway was beginning to move; she was seemingly calling him to join her in her world. A gust of wind blew eerily by his bedroom window, sparking the wind chime and rain chains to speak flowingly through the air, communicating words to his feet and giving them the needed cue to stand.
The rain was still tumbling outside, and now accompanied by flashes of lightning powerful enough to illuminate his flat at regular intervals. Like a hollow zombie, Oliver gathered his ghostly white umbrella he mysteriously found in Japan. He could see his feet walking numbly to the door, heading in a mindless recreation of perhaps wanting to be like Sen, running out into the rain to join Keiko’s world. But just as he opened the door, his footsteps were immediately halted. Someone was standing by his doorway. It was Prudence.