nightchild | does roxana know of my love for her....

[It's a subject everyone's been avoiding -- maybe rightly so, considering the last 48 hours, but Itsuki doesn't mind that Roxana asks. It hurts, but it's a good hurt. It keeps reminding him that he's alive -- and gives him a chance to remember Buzen.]

...I thought I was safe with him.

[he leans in a little so that his shoulder touches Roxana's,]

He's kind and well-meaning, enthusiastic. And if he knew about things like love and affection -- they had a different meaning to him. The things he did weren't the same as when I did them... So I thought -- well, if they're not the same, then they don't have to have the same meaning.

[a terrible reason that just boils down to itsuki thinking that no matter what he did, buzen wouldn't realize that it's love or affection, so that would make Itsuki safe to like him.]

...That's what I really thought at first.

[ Should Itsuki look away from what he lost like he never had it? Roxana doesn't think so. Buzen is someone who has told people, if someone remembers you, you exist, and when he claims his existence is less certain, should the people who care about him avoid remembering him?

Roxana doesn't think so. ]

You were a fool.

[ Her words are soft, without any bite. ]

What changed?

[he was definitely a fool, he can't contest that]

...He kept on coming closer. He opened up to me first without having to be asked, and wanted me to do the same.

It's not easy to be vulnerable to others, and I never expect people to be with me... So I was surprised that he was. It made me want to reciprocate, and he didn't turn me away when he saw who I was.

[the ferris wheel by all rights should feel like a nightmare right now, especially riding it... but talking like this is keeping those feelings at bay. Roxana sitting beside him and listening to him... it helps to focus on her too,]

There's something incredible about meeting someone who wants to accept who you are, and doesn't tell you how to change.

[ These are very romantic words, and she has to wonder how much Buzen knows and understands. It's a little morbid to be talking about this topic while sitting in the place Buzen died, but Roxana no longer has the luxury to be put off by morbidity. ]

He moved you, but I know you had to approach him, too. All those games everyone played and he didn't know what a crush was.

[...Itsuki looks out at the view from the gondola. He remembers enjoying it so much the first time he went up here, a first time experience, being up somewhere so high.

And now?

It takes a moment for him to respond, but he does.]

Yeah. I told him I wanted to be with him. That I love him. I told him he didn't have to say it back, that I could wait. I just wanted to let him know.

[three weeks isn't enough time to get to know anyone, itsuki knows -- but he also knows his own nature. he'd been so reluctant to get closer -- because he knows who'd he become once he'd fallen. well, now he has, and now these feelings... love, sorrow, knowing that there'd be no one else. he'll accept those too]

[ Roxana thinks that's so quick, especially in a place like this where they're all from different worlds. There is hardly a guarantee that there is a commonality, and she doesn't know how that kind of love can be born so quickly in an environment as volatile as this.

But if that's what Itsuki feels even though he tried to keep his own kind of distance, it only means he didn't really care to keep those distances in the first place. ]

You were fine, even if your feelings weren't reciprocated?

[at that his gaze returns to Roxana,]

...No. I would never have been fine.

[love is so beautiful, and also so miserable. his sister had been the same, so it's only natural that itsuki would be like this too -- obsessed, yet hopeful.]

But I wanted to say them to him anyway.

does roxana know of my love for her....

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