Taiyo ni kazashita
Kokoro ni anata ga iru
Just like that first night, when she had regained her memories, Rei found herself gazing at the brightening skies overhead. She couldn't sleep, having stayed up most of the night finishing the songs for the School Festival, just as she had always planned. Now, after the last note was done, she found herself watching the morning appearing from the darkness of the ground and thinking of Mamoru.
"Endymion," she mouthed to herself quietly as the blackness began to fade and light crept along the horizon with the sun. It had been so hard to find the words to express what she had felt and experienced this past year. Having lived like she never imagined and... died. Rei winced slightly at that particularly painful memory and tried to rub away the gooseflesh that came in the aftermath. It did no one any good to mop about things already passed. She was lucky, she thought, as she flexed her fingers and smiled to herself tiredly when her eyes fell onto the sheets of completed music.
At first and she had almost given up. Nothing was going like she wanted, but then, without realizing it, the memories came. When she had touched that note on the keyboard, all the pains and joys, triumphs and defeats of that half-remembered life spilled into her, more emotions than images, but it had helped. It had brought forth all the things she didn't have a chance to say the first time around. The things she wanted to say now.
The current sheet of music she held in her hands would be the last song she would present at this year's School Festival, and she was trying to think up of the appropriate name to call it.
Rei knew she was nothing like Usagi. Her love was one-sided and that's the way that destiny had written her story. Yet, remembering that day when she had found out who her princess had truly been and the young man who she had thought she loved for the first time, even if she brushed it off later as a crush, it hadn't felt any less painful. When she woken with these powers again, to protect this Earth and those whom she held dear to, was it any wonder that sometimes she wondered too on the what-ifs?
But, Mamoru didn't remember her or Usagi, anymore. She had busied herself with work and school so she would not follow the temptation of following him again when she caught brief glimpses of him on the streets, or to even check up on him from time to time. It was too early still, and also, too late. All she had now was the memory and the knowledge that all that was important to her had been forgotten by him. Usagi must be in so much more pain than me, Rei realized as she leaned her head against the wooden frame of her paper window, feeling the slightly rough wood beneath her fingers. I can understand why she would want him to remember more than anyone else. Even if it was destiny, I wonder if Mamoru-san found that time together with me to be special too? Even if I'm not Usagi-chan...
Rei shook her head and smiled sadly at these thoughts. Lack of sleep is getting to me, she conceded as the sunlight filtered through her window and splashed itself against the sheets of paper. She had finished her songs, and some of them she wrote thinking of Usagi and the others, and the last one was for Mamoru. Even though she remembered, it was a memory that couldn't do her any good now. Even if the feelings seemed too stubborn to fade or allow her the comfort of forgetting, it seemed to insist on haunting her when she least expected.
That time when she went to call home from a pay-phone, she had to stop herself from unconsciously punching in Mamoru's number. And another time, when a boy in another school had asked her to go out and she was half way blurting out that she had a boyfriend before she stopped herself with the realization that it was a lie now. It had been so short an affair in comparison to what was between Usagi and Mamoru, so Rei wondered why it had mattered to her so much.
She had been so happy and so ignorant too, when she didn't remember what had happened when she had first became Sailor Mars.
Sitting in the coming sunlight, Rei paused in her thoughts. Maybe these questions would plague her forever, but she was so tired of denying her own heart for the right thing to do. Just for a little longer, while sleep escaped her and the lazy Sunday promised her even less rest, she looked down at her untitled song and wrote Eternal Melody. In the soft, rustling morning, with the echoing city sounds filtered by the surrounding trees and accompanied by bird song, she hummed it softly under her breath as she watched the sun-rise slowly. The orange orb climbed and reached past the branches overhead, aiming for the tree-tops and the vast expanse of sky.
Suki to ienakute mo
Anata ga kokoro ni iru
She was braver than the girl she was before and it was long past time to say goodbye, she realized.
Rei closed her eyes and felt the sunlight on her cheeks, warm and vibrant, a softer version of the touch of distant flames, less intense than the fire in her shrine. Someday, even this ache will be like that of sunlight on her memories. For now, she treasured the memory of Mamoru as Tuxedo Kamen, as the Prince that was not her own, and the fact that despite all the tragedies that had happened, he was alright. Even if he never remembered the them of another life-time, even if what had happened between them was only important to herself, and even if her happy-ending was not the same as the one he would one day walk, she knew that all that had happened had changed her for the better. This Eien no Melody was a goodbye to the boy who was given a second chance at life, just like she was. And this time, surely, they would do better than the last.
Ne yuki wo arigato
Hora umaretate no power
Subete wo tsusunde kagayaku
Sora ya umi no hiro sa yori mo
Yume wa ha te shinai tte
End.
Translation for the lyrics:
Shaded by the sunlight
In my heart you are here
Even without saying you love me
You are here in my heart
Say, thanks for your bravery
Look, the newly born power
Covering everything, shining brightly
Even more than the spacious sky and the sea
My dreams have no limits
sm_monthly theme: June's Sailormoon R Day 23: Morning
