Welcome to Gaia! ::

She was beginning to wonder if he had left because of her. No, of course that wasn’t true, she thought, flipping through the literature textbook. They were to be married, as soon as he came back. “Three years,” he had said. Then he’d be eighteen and they’d have the happily ever after they’d always wanted. Where the rest of the world was gone, and they could be together. Just him and her. Keiko and Yusuke. Yes, like they’d always wanted…

Like they’d always wanted, or like she’d always wanted. Keiko fidgeted in her seat, taking a huff of anxiety through her headphones. It was times like these, when she was confined to her home in Human World, that she really missed him. And anytime that happened, she would listen to this song. She used to think it was way too overplayed and despised the sappy lyrics. “Love doesn’t work that way!” She would snap at her friends. “Love is complicated and heartbreaking and the stupid boys don’t care about the stupid girl they’re all just stupid and the stupid girl waits around for the stupid boy forever and he never comes.”
But he had come. And he will come, Keiko whispered to herself. But her heart told otherwise.

Really, when had Yusuke EVER been the role model for reliability? All those times that Keiko was drowning in work or stressed out of her mind, he had never been there for her. For goodness sake, she would take time out of her already crammed schedule to make sure that boy didn’t drop out of junior high but he did anyways. He never cared. He just ran off with his little demon friends to save the world from utter peril. He didn’t think about her. He didn’t care about Keiko or all of her problems. No, it was all about Yusuke, Yusuke, Yusuke.

When had he EVER cared for her? All he ended up doing was going off and getting himself killed. He nearly died right before her eyes at the hands of Toguro, right there in front of her. Caused her to have a traumatic breakdown. She STILL had nightmares about him, being beat around like an old rag doll by some big, scary, green monster. She couldn’t deal with all this stress with Entrance Exams coming up. She had to pass junior high, get into a good high school, get a job, seeing as when Yusuke came back he would have no credentials. Keiko buried her face in her hands as the headache and stinging tears came. Oh, how was she supposed to care for her family AND be the breadwinner?

Don’t cry now, Keiko, her mind told herself. Don’t cry now, or you’ll get fined for water damage, it said, thinking back to the textbook But Keiko’s heart could care less about water damage. It ached, and in that acceptance, she buried her face into her arms and sobbed. “Oh, Yusuke!” The brunette wailed, taking the release that had been building up for months upon months in the boy’s absence.

“Yusuke? I don’t know how I’m going to do this, Yusuke. Please, tell me how! None of this makes sense. You ask me to wait for you again. You say we’ll be married. But marriage costs money. Life costs money. Does none of it matter to you? Our happiness? Our marriage? Did you just not care enough to think it all out for once?” Keiko cried into the night, the tears streaming endlessly from her cheeks onto the page.

“I don’t think I can wait anymore, Yusuke.” She murmured, her throat sore from screaming. Keiko sniffled, drying her cheeks with the sleeve of her uniform. “I just can’t. Not if you keep doing this to me. Three years is just too long. I need…I need to keep all my opportunities open. Don’t you understand, Yusuke?” Her lip quivered and tears welled and trickled silently. “We’re not little kids anymore. The world isn’t a big place for us to explore and create anything we want our lives to be. We’re all grown up now and the world has shown itself for what it really is. It’s small and tiny, and opportunities are slim and scarce. Most people are lucky if they can get by. We can’t hold on to things like hope and love and promises. We just…can’t. Yusuke, please, don’t you understand?” The silence of her bedroom was Keiko’s only reply.