View source for I Brought You Something (Kazuo Saitou)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2024/07/08
|Location=Dorms
|Synopsis=There's somebody Kazuo should really let know about recent events.  Okay, sort of.
|Cast of Characters=58
}}
The shelf on the wall of Kazuo's dorm room needed tending again. He replaced the little dish of rice in front of the mirror, then took down the dying iris flower and set a folded-paper sunflower in a little nest of leaves to take its place on a temporary basis. The slice of milk bread came down, too, replaced by a peach - one he'd gone and bought, rather than just taken from the cafeteria. He considered the dish of salt and the tiny bottle of water; they seemed all right. He should probably ask someone whether they should be changed out, but it wasn't something his mother did, and trying to ask his grandfather risked far too many questions.

"I'll get you a real flower as soon as I can," he said to the mirror, instead. "But I need to clean the vase properly first. I hope you understand."

He breathed in, slowly, carefully, measuring it in his heartbeats without thinking about it.  Breathed out, likewise measured.  Considered that he ''could'' breathe, could taste the air.  Looked up (up, even for him) to the mirror again.

"He's doing all right," Kazuo said quietly. "I brought you something --"

This time, what he placed on the shelf was a simple little frame, holding an image screencapped from a particular stream.

"-- they're officially engaged now. I hope you approve.  I hope you can be happy that he's happy."

He bowed his head toward the mirror, toward the symbol of the ages-dead queen, toward the reminder of all the other dead.  Perhaps she was alive again somewhere, too.  Perhaps they all were; the Earth held so many more people than it had.  Perhaps not, and she was listening.  Perhaps not, and she was not.

Not a wasted effort, the keeping of this tiny soul-house, even then.

Kazuo seated himself on the floor, back straight and hands loose, and drew another slow and measured breath, and reached within himself.  Anger, bright and righteous and untainted, served him when he needed to purify energies in a hurry.  But he'd learned that grief, for him close kin to anger, would do as well.

He sifted through the energies he carried, searching steadily and levelly for any lingering hint of corruption. Regardless of what he'd said aloud, he hadn't really consumed a youma - only the curse that was trying to give one birth. But that curse was Beryl's. He trusted nothing of hers now; he'd avoided risking any kind of fight since, in case there was some trace that he hadn't found, that might take root in him if he tried to ''use'' that energy.

Nothing.  He hadn't found anything in days of looking.  And he'd caught the edge of Sailor Moon's Escalation at the beginning, that burned away the darkness faster and more surely than anything he could do.

It might be safe, in an emergency.  It might.