Chapter 233: Empty Eyes

A long time ago, in my past life, I used to wish for something... It was a wish that I thought I would never forget, and it is ironic considering that my memory has always been good, but I have forgotten what I used to wish for.

I no longer remember what I used to wish for in the past and that feeling of having forgotten something is what I've been feeling the whole time I've been in this place.

Although that feeling has a slight variation. I also feel like something has been ripped out of my chest, something I also forgot.

And yet, I think that all that no longer matters....

In this white void lies my punishment for all my sins, where everything has become so dull....

And it doesn't really matter, not even if all of this is making me suffer....

It's not worth fighting for something that I know I'm not going to get....

It's been long enough, and I've already made up my mind that it's never going to happen....

So it's not worth it, because this way I'm fine... everything is fine....

...

"In the moonlight at that window in the middle of the dark night,

the ghost that stopped my heart appears shrouded in mystery."

Suddenly I hear a girl's voice, a soft, sweet and kind voice, but this is obvious to me. I know it's another one of those ghosts bothering me, they tend to do it so often.

But I have thought about it to a certain extent. There is something strange about the words that person mentioned.

In the moonlight at that window in the middle of the dark night,

the ghost that stopped my heart appears shrouded in mystery.

It's as if that voice is telling me a story, and that story is something that somehow provokes that sense of loss so strange in me....

"Elegant and kind; lethal warrior hiding behind the sacred relic.

Listen to me, please...

Hear me call out to you in the depths of that dark house..."

What is this...? I asked myself... Every word makes me feel miserable, as if my brain is trying to tell me something, but that sense of loss prevents me from knowing what it is.

"So, in the middle of that terrifying night, appear in front of my window wrapped in your strange mystery.

Answer my call, oh, protector of balance.....

Return to me as you always do..."

As always, eh... That reminds me of the story I've been seeing the last few years in this place....

I always come back for someone...

I always sacrifice for someone...

I'm always crying for someone...

I'm always suffering to protect someone....

I'm always with someone...

Always, always and always... Over and over and over again without stopping. I'm tired of it, you know? Now you're calling me, should I care about that? The answer is simple... do what you want, really your words don't carry much weight for me.

I've lost everything, so there's nothing that can get my attention anymore. I'm really bored in this place, but that's fine with me, don't you think? So I don't have to deal with my life again. So I don't have to go through a whole stupid story again that I know will break my mind more at some point.

Huh... but no matter what I say, because with your words, this strange, warm light is lifting me into the air. This strange light... so familiar that it makes me want to laugh because I really don't remember a similar feeling, and yet it feels like deja vu....

And now all I can say is that this place is always so cruel, but you have to give it credit. You give me what I deserve. You show me all the people who were important to me, only to kill them in front of my eyes.

You're diabolical, white void, but I've been through this so many times already that in the end...

I'm used to it...

-By Sakura-

He appeared in front of me wrapped in the mystery of this dark room, surrounded by the dense steam that slowly began to settle on the floor. His hood hiding his face next to his battle-worn black cloak, his old red scarf, billowing to the rhythm of the soft steam that was dissipating made me wonder if this was a dream.

If it is a dream, I really don't want to wake up.

I thought this was just like the day we met. That mysterious, sad looking person who appeared at the window of my house wrapped in the dim moonlight. He was a boy much older than me, but despite that I wanted to know more about him, more of what was hidden behind those beautiful multicolored eyes.

I can know more about you, even though it's not really necessary because you are now in front of me.

He then gently raised his right hand, as if to take a breath of air into the palm of his hand. As he did that, the vapor around him dissipated completely. Thus I felt a strong magical presence, heavy and overwhelming, but which deep down could be felt as a gentle caress in my brain, passing through my skull and down my spine, and then spreading through the rest of my body.

I held my breath for a second as I felt all that overwhelming sensation and, as I let the air out of my lungs, I heard a brittle whisper.

He walked over to me and gave me his hand to help me up from the floor, as he did so, he whispered again.

"Are you my Master?"

I opened my eyes in disbelief.

"What do you mean?"

I answered him with another question. It was there that I could see the face that I previously couldn't see because of the darkness and the hood.

A part of his bangs fell in front of his right eye, an eye that glowed dimly in the darkness accompanied by the faint light of a strange rainbow, where an organic X like pupil seemed to want to focus on my face as if it were a digital camera.

I was speechless at the sight of it. The expression on his face was very different from the one I remember. He no longer had his usual expressionless face. His eyes now looked numb along with the rest of the expression on his face that could only be described as sad.

He whispered to me again in his brittle, weak voice that I could barely hear.

"Are you my Master?"

Again I fell silent at his question.

"Don't you remember me...?"

I asked in a whisper and he answered me in kind.

"This is the first time I've seen you..."

The only thing I wanted to say at that moment was that this didn't make sense.

I remained confused for a few seconds, but when I realized that this boy was looking at me as if he had just met me, my gaze darkened and along with all the wonderful memories I had with him, I clenched my fists tightly and closed my eyes.

His soft smile that I could see very few times....

His kindness...

The way he talked to me....

All of that... is it all gone?

With those heavy thoughts, I let out my words in the form of a brittle whisper.

"You abandoned me... you did..."

He looked at me without understanding what I was referring to.

"You abandoned me..."

I said again. This time he whispered back a little louder.

"I can't abandon something I never had anything to do with."

A response so cold it froze my heart.

That made me angry, so I yelled at him:

"What does that mean, I was nothing, that's how you see things!"

Under his hood, he sighed. Before answering me he took off his hood and held out his hand.

"My name is Asahi Toru. Asahi is spelled as ' sunrise sun or rising sun' and Toru is spelled as 'transparent', may I know your name?"

Listening to Toru's whispers, I remembered a similar scene, only that time he told me to just call him Assassin because that's what you were, an assassin....

I really thought you were someone very strange at that time, but you were the first person I wasn't afraid to talk to. Now, after so many years, you hold out your hand to me and introduce yourself with your name when it took Rin and I a lot to get you to tell us that name you were hiding so much?

"Sakura..."

I answered hesitantly, trying to keep the tears from falling down my face. Does it hurt to know that you don't remember me? Yes... it hurts too much because it's like you really abandoned me that night. And yet, even though I let out my anger and yell at you, you still speak in faint, sad whispers, as if you're holding back the urge to cry and scream.

Who are you Asahi Toru? I realize that in the past I didn't go too deep into that. I fell in love with that cool and mysterious guy, but I never knew what you were hiding deep in your heart.

In the end I ended up telling him:

"Sakura Velvet"

My first name and the last name of the father who took care of me when I needed him the most.

He looked at me for a long second before nodding his head. He turned around facing the wall and, in a cold and depressing tone, whispered my name....

"Sakura-sama..."

What, "sama"?

No... no...

Don't call me that...

"There's still three or four more months until the war."

Toru's body was enveloped in faint black particles as it itself vanished into the air as dust.

"My service won't be needed until then."

What do you mean by that? I wondered in confusion.

As Toru's dull, slow voice faded away along with his body, I pounced on him and hugged him with all my strength.

"We'll see each other in the war. There's no need for me to be next to you."

"Wait, no!"

When I wanted to refute what he had told me before, he vanished in my arms and I stopped listening to him.

I stood hugging myself for a long fifteen seconds, thinking about what had just happened.

Confused, my eyes dulled, I fell to my knees staring into nothingness.

"Don't go..."

I would have wanted to tell him that at that moment I got on that plane, but it was too late, for I didn't know that the day I would see him again, he would no longer be the same person....

"Don't leave me alone..."

I don't want to be alone... I don't want everyone to abandon me and leave me with nothing.

Even you, whom I loved the most, have abandoned me too....

That's what it's all about, isn't it? Everything will always be this way?

Everyone will always leave my side....

Everyone will always leave me...

***

The Servant looked at the girl who was kneeling on the ground. She suffers and he could tell that, however, he cared little about that. Still in his ghost form, he walked through the walls and out into the hallway on the other side of the door. There he materialized his body again.

He touched his ear and realized that the earring in his left ear was a silver and copper replica. With that in mind, he bent down, touched his ankles and took out the daggers. They were in perfect condition, which puzzled him and made him sigh wearily.

He returned the daggers to their place and touched his neck, but realized that his mother's engagement ring was gone.

"I don't understand..."

He said to himself. Still, he closed his eyes and erased the emotions that were arising at that moment.

Then he dematerialized again to walk around the house and memorize the place where he was.

-Later...-

After taking a bath and calming down about what happened a couple of hours ago, Sakura laid down on the bed and snuggled inside the sheets. She closed her eyes to think about what she should do.

'I summoned him... I can feel him close to me...'

And it wasn't mere superstition. Toru really was there. He is in a corner of the room, sitting quietly, looking at the dim light of the night lamp on the small table next to the bed of the girl who summoned him. That was the reason Sakura could sense that he was near.

'Father... I... how am I going to explain this to you?'

Being Waver's wish to participate in the Holy Grail War, she didn't know how to tell him that she was now chosen to fight in the war.

Thinking about it, she could only bury her face in her pillow thinking of any excuse that comes to her mind.

Toru is a Servant that Waver himself met during the war. What would be his reaction to seeing that his own daughter summoned that Heroic Spirit?

"¿...?"

A gentle breeze of wind blew past her. Sakura looked towards the lamp beside her bed and felt Toru's presence even closer.

"Toru..."

It seemed that, although she couldn't see him, Toru was looking at a framed photo that was next to the lamp. In that photo were Waver and Melvin together with Sakura and Reines.

Sakura looked at the photo and remembered the day it was taken. It was six years ago, when Melvin came to visit Waver and by chance brought a camera to take some pictures with his "best friend". To his bad luck, Reines was also there. That day was quite strange and lively because that photo is the product of that strange day.

"Thank you..."

She said, for had it not been for him, she would be suffering in that gloomy house right now. If it wasn't for him, these last ten years would not have been like they were....

So she laid her head back on the pillow and slowly closed her eyes.

Toru watched her sleep with her empty eyes wondering....

'Why do I feel like this?'

A heartbreaking feeling in the bottom of his heart. That same feeling he had to feel at the Throne of Heroes these past ten years.

In the end, under his disembodied hood, his empty eyes closed waiting patiently for time to move forward....

'I guess it doesn't matter...'

To be continued...