Work Text:
The city was bathed in the warm light of sunset, soft as breath. Rose-gold light spilled over rooftops, glided across stained-glass windows, and set the panes aglow, as if, in each one, someone had hidden a tiny flame of hope. Even now, despite the thunder of war tearing at the outskirts of the nation, the capital breathed peace. People strolled the streets with shopping bags; someone was laughing, someone else carried a child on their shoulders. Everything was as it had always been. Strangely, impossibly... it all felt alive.
"I came to say goodbye," Klein said, trying to keep his voice even, steady to stop it from trembling.
He had never liked farewells. If not for Leonard — one of the few still anchoring him to this world, he might have vanished without a word. But without this goodbye, he would have lost not just the remnants of his conscience, but his faith in himself. Of course, he didn’t doubt the poet’s gentle heart. Leonard, loyal and straightforward, had long since walked the path of Darkness, a path infamous for its failing memory. In time, amidst the swirl of duties, he would have forgotten Klein had ever disappeared. He would have completely forgotten that Klein ever existed.
Leonard, whose tousled hair gleamed gold in the setting sun like a halo, raised his brows, as though pricked by something unseen.
"I suppose it’s foolish of me to ask why," he said with a faint smile, already knowing he wouldn’t get an answer. Klein had always had affairs he shared with no one. "Can I at least ask where you’re going?"
"Ah..." Klein looked away. "Just... a little journey."
He smiled gently, gazing out at the carefree street. What if this is the last sunset? What if the curtain has already fallen, and I just haven’t realized it yet? What if this is the last time Leonard smiles at me?
Then the poet’s faith wasn’t strong enough to save me after all, he thought bitterly.
“Oh...” Leonard exhaled softly. He hadn’t expected clarity. “More business, huh, Klein?” He tried to smile, but it faltered beneath the weight of the words. “I’ll miss you. Write… at least once in a while.”
“Yes, of course… I’ll try. I’ll… miss you too.”
A silence fell between them — warm, suspended, thick with a lie dressed as comfort. It was almost nauseating in its sweetness, making it impossible to speak. Klein turned to Leonard, looking into those clear emerald eyes that reflected not just the street behind him… No, at their center, Klein saw himself.
Why is it that someone as deceitful as I… has become the center of such a sincere, luminous person’s heart?
“You need to head to your post, don’t you? I’m sorry for distracting you.”
“Klein…” Leonard’s voice wavered. “Work has never run away from me before. But tell me… will we see each other again?”
Klein looked at him. The sun brushed his cheeks, perhaps it was the light, or perhaps… the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes.
“Of course. Of course we will,” he said quietly. “You know as well as I do — goodbyes are never forever. Last time, well… I died. And still, I came back. And here I am, standing before you.”
But inside, there was only emptiness. Because last time… he had hope. And now, he was saying farewell.
Leonard nodded, pressing his lips together, as though holding back something unspeakable.
“Well then… until we meet again, Klein,” he said, and the words caught in his throat, heavy and dense, like a confession he would never dare voice: I love you… but aloud — never. Not even now.
Their bond? A few shared missions, exchanged gunfire, heavy glances. The scent of cigarettes Klein despised, yet still endured. They weren’t even friends, not really. Just strangers who had walked through fire side by side.
“Yes. Until then,” Klein finally said, and crossed the street slowly, as though each step tore another piece from him. On the other side, he turned.
Leonard still stood there on the cobbled street, bathed in the last light of day. Behind him, the sky burned with gold and purple. And Klein, all at once, knew he wanted to remember him just like this — in this light, in this silence.
He smiled and tipped his top hat.
A carriage rolled past, startling a flock of doves. They took to the sky — white as farewell. And when the rustle of their wings faded, the air was once again filled with the glow of sunset.
Klein was gone.
"I am wretched…" Klein whispered in the half-light of Sefirah Castle, now trembling with the tension of its master. "Even in our final meeting… I couldn’t bring myself to speak the truth."
He sat alone in the shadows, fingers curled tightly around Arrodes. The mirror’s surface trembled like water, as if it too could no longer bear the weight of his silence.
"Forgive me…" he murmured. "Forgive me, my dear poet…"
And in that word — “poet” — there bloomed a tenderness so fragile, so shy, it might have been shame. The kind of tenderness Klein hid behind smirks and sarcasm, behind sharp jabs and deflecting wit. The kind that survives only in those who’ve feared love for far too long.
The image in the mirror wavered, rippling like a pond stirred by an unseen wind. The last echo of the vanishing mirage was the flutter of white wings — a dove, soaring out of reach — and then, again, only Klein’s reflection remained. Pale. Worn. Alone. His eyes were dim, as though a storm of unspoken words gathered behind them.
Arrodes lay silent in his hands, not from fear, but as though in understanding: that any word now might be the one to tip it all into the abyss. Klein’s feelings tangled within him like a nest of threads with no discernible start. Disorientation. Weariness. A nameless pain. And the unbearable truth: he had lost.
"Hmph…" he exhaled faintly, the sound as fragile as the hush in a chapel. He placed the mirror down upon the table with the same solemn care one might lay flowers upon a grave. Then leaned back and tilted his head toward the ceiling, its grey haze stretching into nothingness, as if, perhaps, trying to see through it to the sky… or to the one who once watched him from above.
Slowly, words began to form on the mirror’s surface:
[Are you displeased by what you saw, Great Master?]
Then, a tiny smiley face appeared — wide-eyed, innocent, like a pup asking for forgiveness for a crime it did not commit. But Klein did not see. He saw nothing. He had drifted too far.
He rarely noticed the sorrows of others, unless they intersected with his own. And now… everything inside him had narrowed to a single aching point, each emotion dragging through his veins like shards of glass.
Closing his eyes, he whispered:
"Tell me, Arrodes…" His voice was coarse, as if scraped raw by ash. "Why was it I who said goodbye…?"
He wasn’t expecting an answer. The question wasn’t born of curiosity, it came from grief.
Arrodes stilled, as though weighing the meaning, his surface flickering uncertainly, searching for words that wouldn’t tear further at the wound. Yet, ever the loyal servant, he answered, in his formal, faithful way:
[Did the Great Master not wish to warn Mister Star of his departure?]
But Klein wasn’t listening. Or perhaps he simply could not hear. His voice trembled like the final line in a farewell letter:
"No matter how many times I revisit that memory…" He swallowed hard. Something inside him was splintering. "There’s one thing I still don’t understand…"
Silence. Thick and clinging, like the dusk after sunset. And in it, a gentleness flickered, small, childlike, almost forgotten. A tenderness born not in words, but in the spaces between them. The kind he had guarded behind cynicism, behind smiles and masks of indifference — too delicate to ever be spoken aloud.
He looked up. And for the first time, he said what had lived unspoken within him for so long:
"Why was it I who said goodbye… when you, my dear poet, were the one who died?"
And in the mirror — only his reflection. Alone.
As if there had never been anyone else who once stood behind him, shielding his back.