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Suna Rintarou has died.
Again.
He can’t remember the reason for his death—as of the latest—but it happened. He felt the last of his breath leave his body, the final contraction of his heart, the way his eyes dimmed, and how his consciousness slowed down into nothing. Thankfully, he was already too far gone to be aware of the more distasteful aspect of what happens to his body the moment a person dies. He'll probably have to ask in the next life, that is, if they can pierce together the details.
Nonetheless, he knows that he has died and is now dead.
For the most part, it was a brief experience. He thinks of it similarly to doing breathing exercises while swimming—holding his breath, fervently going underwater, and then immediately going back up the moment that his brain realises that it has no air supply. There is a small moment of serenity in between going down and going up that makes it feel like he's floating—muffled sound, the soft movement of water going through his hair, and when the day is just right, there are flashes of warm light, time seems to have stopped, and his senses have become dull. It only ends the moment he is forced to go back up.
The space, or the waiting room to his next life, was like a prolonged moment of holding his breath while underwater. It was peaceful and a little too bright—blinding white light that seemed to have no source. However, even with a warm light source, it still feels empty and cold. Passive. It's like he is just going through that place, and to an extent, he really is just doing that, but for something as big as death, there is also a big expectation. A sort of fanfare that makes it obvious that he has reached the end of his life. More on the celebratory aspect of things; maybe a banner would be nice, or balloons—even a simple note with the word "you died and lived a happy life, congrats!!" would be acceptable.
He just wants a concrete explanation as to where he is, and if he were allowed to make requests, it would also be nice to have a sort of video of the life he just left. To be able to reminisce and look back. A final farewell, but all he gets is nothing; a bright and white space.
For all the times he had been in here, it always felt idle. Momentary, just like the life—and all the other ones—he had lived. Maybe it is different for the people who only get to experience death once; maybe that's where the fanfare and the celebration lie. With the frequency of Suna Rintarou's death, maybe that's why it's just a thing that happens. A never-ending celebration of his death and his rebirth would soil immediately. It might even make him more pissed off.
If asked to choose, maybe the quiet and boring would be preferable. Stuck with a bothersome routine that he has to live—well, die with.
Rintarou finds that there is a sense of enlightenment to it, the act of rebirth, if it wasn’t a specialised form of torture brought by fate to admonish him for a selfish wish. In a way, his wish was granted, even if it came with a lifetime of repentance.
However, even if that were the case, in a world that pushes him down—with no remorse, dangling happiness only for it to be violently taken away—he, in turn, will push back. Call it hubris or naivety, it doesn't matter. He will not allow himself to be swept off. Not to mention, the minuscule time he has in the transition period gives him a space to think and reflect; a state where he carries full knowledge of his situation and is allowed to process. A junky one-man debriefing with whatever being is listening.
One of the things he had come to learn was the extent of the human ability to adapt and live with what they're given—him as the main subject—and was able to arrive at the three truths of his life:
The first one—time is not linear; it is encompassing. Everything is happening all at once and at the same time. He dies, and the world continues without him. As the world continues to move forward, he lives.
A new life does not always mean years into the future, they could be in the most advanced of societies with technologies that his mind can never grasp—a building that builds itself, travelling with a submarine system, fishes that live above water, paper birds taking flight—and the next time he opens his eyes, he has to learn to make sure his horse is in a good mood to gather supplies in the next town.
What he assumes happens is that they get plucked and placed into different pockets of time, maybe a time that was lacking a them, and that's where they are headed. He tries to at least figure out where he’ll be going; it's not like he will remember making an assumption, but it might be fun to think about where his next adventure will be.
However, during his last moment, he lets out a short plea—he hopes that the next one will be peaceful. Rintarou likes those lifetimes the most. With his dying breathe, he pleads that they be allowed to fall into a serene facade that he can live his life fully—grow up, spend time with his family, achieve his dreams, fall in love, maybe reach his potential and figure himself out, and heavy on that because for all the lives he’d lived, it was still hard to grasp who he considers himself to be.
He wants to experience the full extent of his life without his impending demise plaguing him— a soft and harsh voice at the back of his mind that makes him painfully aware of his limited time. The ongoing realisation that he will have to start the process all over again, and again, and again, until fate has decided that they have had enough and just make him cease to exist.
He never really gave much thought to it, but even if the cycle is torturous, its abrupt end is a more frightening thought. He doesn't really know when it will happen, or if it will even happen; he has to remind himself that his rebirth is not something that is assured. This whole thing did not come with a manual, and even now, he is still figuring things out. Threading on probability and assumptions, he is hoping that even if the start of a cycle is grating, the fact that there is even one is a better alternative than none.
The promise of beginning new beginning and the small glimmer of hope is something that he holds on to.
The second truth is that memories are unreliable.
Not because they are meant to deceive, but they are often too hazy and unhelpful. It's easy to get caught up and end up paralysed. Running on limited time, it is not beneficial if he gets stuck in one place, and so he has to move forward, figure things out along the way.
In a world that runs on different rules and systems, the mechanisms are complex, even for something as seemingly random as his situation. The fact that he does not fully carry the memories and goes insane makes him believe that fate is aware of the mental overload if he carries them all, and that it might also affect the way he acts in his new life. The universe is not purely random, and it seems to be working on these unseen rules that he has to figure out. One of which is the very nature of soulmates. It is not as haphazard as people make it out to be. It is grandiose in the sense that one person is tied to another, but it does not always end with a positive impact. Love is not something that is expected just because a person is someone's soulmate. Rather, it is one of the many possible outcomes. Rintarou had his fair share of witnessing soulmates that crashed and burned, even if they were tied together, and he also met those who had found happiness with people that they were not bound to. He sees the bindings and connection as more of that person making an impact, and no one knows whether it is good or bad. The concept of it stands on a neutral ground. There is still a sense of autonomy, even if meeting that person and their impact is inevitable.
Now, with his case, he is lucky to be loved and to be in love.
A promise they made early on in the cycle; a promise they kept even if the odds continue to stack against them.
In one of his lives, he remembers picking up stories from a foreign land about finicky gods and prideful actors. Often used as a cautionary tale, he finds a sardonic humour in how he can parallel their life to his. Maybe they are a cautionary tale for something he doesn't know, nor will find out.
Maybe it's because the universe found two people who are too in love that it made sense to put them through hardship, just to test their limits and their tenacity, but he knows that is not the case, nor is it true. He sees many people in love in different universes; he witnesses the various ways in which people express their love repeatedly. Same actors but different scenarios. His parent might not be one of them, but he doesn't have to look far because Osamu's other half and his soulmate is a testament that the weavers of fate can demonstrate benevolence.
Maybe at the end of it all was a case of being lucky to have stood out so that they were picked specifically to carry that burden.
Nevertheless, the byzantine nature of their memories makes it so that he can focus on the present. The past and the future are places that are beyond his reach. Furthermore, he could not hold a care for those two as much as he would want to. The future points towards the big event that is his death, and it overpowers everything he can plan for.
The more he tries to think about his past, the more the details become clouded. The only time he can get a clear view of an old life is at night, when he enters the spot where his body is asleep, and his consciousness is slow to follow. Even then, it is still random and not whole. There was no use, and it retracts his attention from the now.
The now is where he finds himself to be the most happy; it is drowns out the noises of the future and the past; it's where he gets to exist; it is where he feels the most alive; every breath he takes doesn't come with the fear that it will be the last; and that every moment is not yet a memory, instead he lives it.
For him, the now is what matters.
The last truth of the universe is that patience is integral, and human relationships are cultivated—it takes effort, time, and commitment.
Reincarnation is more than just being alive in a new timeline. A person goes through a transformation, even if it is subtle. Even if dying is temporary, there are still parts of him that are truly gone. The body Suna Rintarou had when he died will not be the same body he'll have when he lives. There can be a mole on a place he has never seen before, or his eyes could be a shade darker. He knows it still is him—and it is—but there are still aspects of it that aren't.
He'd say it is similar to a phantom limb, but instead of one part, it is his whole body. The worst part of knowing that a part of him is missing is that he doesn't know what it is. Instead, he gets a dull sense of wrong and discomfort, and has no clue how to reconcile it. So he will try everything until it all feels tolerable and just right. He will reach it, or at least get close to reaching it. So even if he had lived before, there is still much he has to explore and a whole lot more he doesn't know. It is a matter of figuring out which is which.
The same extends to his relationships, and while he was never the most patient person, he has to be.
For in every universe with an Osamu and a Rintarou, it will take time for that Osamu to be his Osamu.
He can and will exist in a new world, and an Osamu will do the same, but that does not mean that it is his Osamu. He had to learn this the hard way.
There was an instance, early in one of the cycles, where he immediately went towards Osamu. While it was a simple meeting—grey eyes meeting green—in his head, it was their grand reunion. He was expecting a familiar look, mirroring his. Instead, what he got was an expression of confusion. There was no recognition. Rintarou felt his body freeze up. He tried to call out his name and asked if he remembered. All he got was a raised eyebrow, a look of distrust, and an apology. Rintarou froze. He felt tiny, sharp fractals creeping up his body. He was frozen; he found it hard to move. That cold feeling pierced through his heart. His chest is constricting. He is finding it hard to breathe. It was a miracle he was able to mutter out an apology and an excuse that he mistook him for someone else. He did not give time for Osamu to give a reply, as he immediately left.
He ended up crying that night. Once he was in the comfort of his room, he let it all out. The pain of Osamu not recognising him; the pain of having memories with his family that only he knows; the pain of rebuilding all his relationships; the pain of repeatedly dying and having no way out.
Then he was hit with the realisation that he was truly alone. No one to share the pain and the burden with. He was sure he was cursed. Red-hot anger coursed through him, searing him. Yet he couldn't act on his fury, not when he knew deep down he was selfish. Why was it that instead of being happy that maybe Osamu found a way to get out of their cycle, he felt hurt.
Why wasn't he happy for him?
Why was he feeling sad for himself?
The draining sense of loss tired him so much so that he was able to fall into an uncomfortable slumber.
The next day, he tried again. With a shattered heart and clammy hands, he approached Osamu. Carefully and with caution. He decided that maybe even if they won't be together, they can still be friends. That worked; he was able to rebuild a relationship. All was going well, until the nature of a universe with a soulmate mechanism started the process—or maybe they were at the halfway point —and his Osamu finally found his way back to him.
It filled him with such joy that he ended up crying again. It was a hard lesson that he never wanted to live through. While he felt accomplished to have figured out an aspect of how his universes work. The pain he had to endure was too much.
Not to mention, it came with the actualisation of his selfish nature. A loud reminder that might have cursed Osamu to be in this cycle with him. That he was the reason for both of their pain, and yet he could not allow himself to free them, all because he could not bear the thought of being alone.
Hypocritical thought, even though he leaves Osamu alone every time his death arrives.
There are universes where it does take time for them to meet, and those are the times when he can explore himself more and figure things out. Where he can fit into the body that feels right; where he doesn't feel like an outsider watching as things go into place. The times when he gets to be an active participant. Then, when it is time for them to meet, it will already be his Osamu, and things will fall into place. They can continue where they assumed they left off and live a happy life until Rintarou dies.
However, there are times when they are forced to meet early on. Those are the times that Rintarou is set on the idea that the weavers of fate decided to add a new layer of torment, because while he dies every time, and dying often hurts, nothing is as painful as building a new relationship with someone he shares a deep history with. Even with the soulmate mark or bond, a relationship still needs to be cultivated.
When it comes to dying, his consciousness leaves him. He wakes up in the waiting room and gets transported into a new world. When he builds a relationship with an Osamu that isn't his, he has to be conscious and awake for it all. He has to unlearn all the things he used to do and set back up boundaries was able to break down. He has to make sure not to fall into the lull that this is his Osamu, because even if he dons a similar face, he is closer to that of an acquaintance. Rintarou often takes great amounts of self-control and ensures he does not fall into his old habits; even if every inch of his being is telling him to reach out and touch Osamu's hair; to kiss his cheek before he leaves; to hug him from behind because he is in need of energy. He has to stop himself. It is an unfair feeling to know the extent of their relationship and have to limit himself until the time is right.
All this while juggling the fact that his time is also limited. They only have a small window to be fully together. It feels like he is being cheated out of time spent together.
While the same goes for his family, and that's another heartbreak he has to deal with, it is different when there is an expectation of recognition from the one other person with whom he shares the experience. The only other person who understands what he is going through.
In a universe where even if they are tied to one person, it is not always a guarantee that they'll be with them, or choose to be with them. He knows that his Osamu will be with him, but it takes time, and he'd rather have a good relationship than none at all. This is the part he hates the most, and that is why he prefers ones where they meet a bit later. Even if time has been stolen from them, it doesn't feel as such because he doesn't have to face it, and he has things to distract himself. Nonetheless, he has learned to navigate the world even with that ache in his chest.
So Rintarou waits until the moment is correct. He befriends Osamu, interacts with him and builds a relationship. It takes time for the recognition to settle, but it is fine. He still gets to spend moments and have fun with Osamu.
All in all, he considers it a daedal experience—the mechanisms that are in play, even if they are working against them, work together in harmony. A new life with hazy memories from the past; he knows enough to carry a familiarity, but not too much that he isn't able to make this new life different.
He allows himself to be in awe, even if it comes with the pit in his stomach that creeps all over him; the feeling of tiny ants crawling under his skin, and he wants to rip them all out to feel comfortable in his body again.
They say acceptance is the final stage of grief, and while there is part of him that accepts it, he doesn't allow himself to fully—and passively—accede to it. Instead, he finds himself flipping between bargaining and acceptance. Bargaining is harder, but sometimes he finds the strength to figure out the game and free themselves from it. As long as he has that drive, and maybe one day can live one final life and then let it be done forever.
Even if he is swayed by his greed to be with Osamu, and is reminded by the ugly feeling of selfishness.
There are days when he feels okay and strong enough to find a way to set Osamu free, and there are other times when the hideous side of himself reigns and he wishes for it to continue.
But whenever he brings up the courage to discuss—even if he is scared that Osamu will agree— all that Osamu gives him is his warm smile and assurance that he is fine with him as long as they are together. The guilt eats him, the buzzing under his skin becomes assaultive, but his lover's calming presence washes over him and makes him at ease.
Osamu Miya truly did not deserve to have him as a soulmate; and Suna Rintarou allows himself to live in his selfish dream.
A (often) painful death, and then he enters a liminal space. In all the lives he has lived, he prefers the one he has access to cameras. It was an object he never realised he was drawn to until it was pointed out by Osamu. He thinks it's because living in a world that is temporary makes him want to remember it in his memory. Capture a moment and make it exist forever; a letter left behind; a message, a promise that in the next life, they'll meet.
In one of his lives, he thinks he was a painter. He'd get a vision of colours, the smell of oil paint and varnish; the sound of wood hammered together; the feeling of stretched fabric.
In this new life, he has access to a phone and will make sure to make use of the camera features. He finds himself having heaps of folders with pictures of the various people in his life.
In one of his lives, he finds himself an advisor to the—his beloved— king, ensuring that the plans they have for the kingdom will lead it to flourish. He is also tasked with overseeing their defence against possible conquerors and war-mongering nations.
In this new life, he plays volleyball and has grown to like it. He enjoys playing as the middle blocker and trying to analyse the play of his opponents. It brings him satisfaction when he successfully reads their play and blocks them. There is also joy in aggravating the players.
In one of his lives, he was introduced to the soulmate mechanisms of red strings, and he had a fleeting thought about whether it extends beyond this life and into the future.
In this new life, when he reached the age of 11, he was introduced to how soulmates worked—a mark on his skin, and a mark on theirs. Not everyone will have theirs at the same time, but it won't hurt not to try. He knows who is waiting on the other end.
In one of his lives, he is used to waiting for a letter from the cook in the nearby town. The post is always delayed, but it doesn't bother him because what is important is that the letter gets to him.
In this new life, he sends out a message on his skin, a simple question. He gets no reply.
In all of his lives, he waits.
In this new life, he continues to wait.