/mention of suicide, overdose

THE THIRD NIGHT, he dreams.

First, he dreams of the girl in the lake. The one who'd saved him. And drowned him.

Or had she?

They are in a vast field, enclosed by swaying daffodils, underneath a great tree, leaves of maple falling over them in slow death to life reborn. Flames of the candles flicker into the shadows, cast by the dark clouds within the setting, purple-yellow sky. Seated on tall stools, a table separates them; wooden, dark and round; a cake on top.

Thick hair, midnight—an inky black with hints of cobalt, the light that reflects—gathers at her left shoulder as her head tilts. Left elbow propped onto the table, left hand cupping one side of her face. Her eyes, as darkly blue as the ocean waves below a night sky, blink owlishly at the boy. She smiles.

And Kaede thinks, with the light and shadows etched into her features, she's the most beautiful creature he's ever seen.

"Aren't you gonna blow?" she says.

Kaede flinches, his heart skipping a beat. He pulls the red scarf hugging his neck closer, then looks down. The cake rests quietly between them, six candles placed, the fire still beckoning to the atmosphere. A dark-brown coat, with swirls of snow. His favourite, chocolate cake.

He leans forward and blows one out.

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The second dream is a nightmare.

Kaede stands in a field of higanbanas, small body shivering in the cold gusts of wind. The red scarf is all that he has as his feet sink into sludgy snow. A dark backdrop, like the night, with the burning lilies on the gravestone the only source of light.

Akane Akagawa is the name written there.

His mother.

Her life, once vibrant and pure, like the fire kissing the flowers, ended abruptly by an overdose. Suicide.

Rain'd told him that he has never visited her after her death. That he hates her too much or is too guilty to do so, the truth from the two statements something which Kaede never told him.

You hated her, is what he'd said. Because she was a liar and a bystander, a person who was never there for her own son.

The same child now stares at her grave in frozen fear.

A sharp crack sounds.

For the first time, Kaede moves, face turning to the floor.

Ice is cracking beneath him. Below, fathomless depths of darkness. Water.

The fear morphs into terror.

Another crack—this time, longer, with a thousand branches around it.

Cold, dark water.

Multiple new cracks.

The boy is breathing fast now, heart battering madly against his ribcage. Yet he cannot move.

The ice splits. He sees water beneath him. Still, silent, gaping its soundless maw. He remembers something.

He remembers that he's scared of water.

Before he can even blink, the world suddenly plummets, but going upwards. From light to darkness. From cold to colder—much colder. He opens his mouth to scream, to release, but something else enters instead.

Water.

This time, everything fades fast. He glimpses the man's covered face, the one who tried to kill him, flitting past his vision. Then something long—tubes.

Everywhere, around him.

Connecting to something unable-to-be-seen below, then stretching upwards, like a ladder.

In an instant, he clings to them. Clawing and kicking, swimming upwards. The light grows brighter, blinding him. And he reaches a hand out.

It touches solid ice.

He gasps soundlessly, but there's only a wall there, the hole he'd fallen through, now sealed. The tubes are gone now, as a beating noise sounds loudly below him, reverberating throughout him—like a heart's beats. He punches at the transparent ice, seeming thin yet not, screaming yet screaming nothing.

A noise crackles somewhere above him, but in his fading consciousness, he knows it's an illusion.

His eyes begin to close, seeing only one last thing staring down at him.

Dark-blue eyes.