Bittersweet

Remember that day, Lara thought, standing in front of a grave as cold as ice. Her soft hair fluttered in the breeze and it pooled around her, almost as if it was a cloud as dark as the ones that stretched high overhead. Exactly a year ago. Lara couldn't even think her message, she started to cry so hard. "Why?" She coughed out, her smaller than average frame trembling violently. "Why'd you do have to do it?" Lara reached her hand out to trace the name on the ugly looking stone, feeling each of the blemishes on the hard surface. Rei. Oh, how she missed him. She missed how he'd laugh as quietly as he could because he didn't want to interrupt, she missed that stable warmth that was always beside her which seemed so natural after all the years. And while he was alive, she had missed all the signs that he was fading away.

"Hey!" A sharp voice stabbed at her, familiar although she didn't know where from. It sound blurred and distant, like as if he was trying to talk underwater. Her pale face with cheeks rosy from the cold started to go numb and her eyelids felt heavy as lead as she thought more and more of what she could have done to keep Rei alive, completely ignoring whatever had called to her. Goodnight. Lara collapsed on the ground, the place where her tears had streaked her face stinging even colder as a snow started to fall down from the heavens.

The person who had seen Lara ran over at once to check if she still had a pulse. Running a hand through his messy hair he sighed in annoyance. Looking around, the boy realized with a shudder that he couldn't do anything, especially in that moment and with his current state as well as Lara's. "Can't be helped, I guess." He laid down beside the shivering girl and watched her, his sleepless nights finally to be filled with company.

And there where she slept, the cold no longer made her shiver, because now Lara felt nothing. The girl who held on for so long was no longer in the realm of the living. How did she know, one might ask. Well, she saw her body buried under the snow, with no more heat coming from the small girl in front of her.

It might come as a shock to some, others might try to enter their bodies again after finding that they were ghosts, but Lara just laughed in disbelief. She walked over quickly, but as she was unused to her ghostly form the movement was awkward and too light for her comfort. When Lara reached her body, snow starting to pile up on her face, she smiled brighter than she could have dreamed of in the past year. "I can see you again at last, Rei."

"You called?" Lara whipped around but since she no longer had any mass, she ended up spinning in a circle and the mystery ghost beside her just laughed as Lara grew more and more embarrassed. "As nice as it is you know me, I don't think I know you."

Lara stood in disbelief. He looked just like Rei had the last time she saw him, just happier and less delicate. He had that intelligent yet mocking smirk which was a sign of confidence that when he was living, he never had. It was as if Rei had lost all burden, as if he was the best version of himself that he could have ever have hoped to be while he was alive. Her immediate thought was to ask for a mirror, but she didn't know if ghosts had mirrors or if that was just rude to ask. She was newly dead, what did she know about ghost etiquette?

"My mistake, I was thinking of someone else." The lie would have made her throat ache had she had one, but as a ghost that would be difficult wouldn't it? Lara didn't even know why she lied. Regardless, she did and she was eager to change the topic. "What brings you to a graveyard of all places? Isn't that a sort of sick joke for a ghost?"

Rei laughed, the same laugh Lara had missed and craved for over a year, but she held whatever emotions that were brought back up deep down, a lot harder when most of your being is literally emotion and thoughts. "Isn't dying in one even sicker?"

She smiled at that. "Good point. I'm Lara Everglow."

"Rei Nakamura. Though I guess you'd know that."

Lara's non-existent heart sped up. "How would I know your last name?"

Rei rolled his eyes and drifted over to where Lara's lifeless body lay. Lara flinched, but with a slight struggle at first, she drifted over to where he stopped. He gestured to the grave where Lara lay and there, it said in it's irritating chiseled letters, Rei Nakamura. "Why would you lie about knowing me?"

"Because..." Lara sighed, defeated. "You didn't remember who I was so there was no point in forcing my memory on you."

Rei walked around her, and Lara stiffened as the boy observed her from head to toe. "Why were you visiting my grave?"

With a shiver, Lara's ghostly form spoke. "Today was your death anniversary, why else?"

Rei stopped in front of her, inches away. He was always on the taller side, and the boy could easily place his arms on her shoulders without strain. With his right arm, Rei tilted Lara's head upwards and close to his own before he asked again. "Why."

Of course Lara had no blood, or else she would have been blushing harder than she ever had in, well, her entire life. Instead she whispered back, "This."

Rei pushed her face even closer, and Lara closed her eyes on instinct. What was happening to her, she didn't know. All that was on her mind at that moment was the fact that her best friend was beside her again, and she was more grateful than she ever had been before that moment. Maybe that was what compelled her to say the truth. The truth she'd held in for over a year.

"I know you were never alive in the first place."