OF SEEING SOMEONE ELSE

Evening falls, and Sakura regards her face in the mirror. It’s paler than she remembers, and thinner, but it’s still the face of the girl in her memories – that girl with laughter in her eyes and sunshine in her smile and who isn’t Sakura, who never was because Sakura knows too much now, knows that that happiness and faith was a lie, that everything she has ever believed in were lies.

She traces the outline of her jaw, touches her cheek, her nose, her lips. It’s still the face she remembers. Despite everything that has happened, despite everything she now knows, the memory of happiness and innocence remains, forever there whenever she looks into the mirror. Has she truly not changed, then? Is she not different?

Sakura looks down on the table in front of her. It’s full of flasks and small boxes filled with perfumed powders and liquids; attributes of beauty in this world. She picks up a round box and with slow, hesitating movements brushes ashen-white powder over her skin. The result is otherworldly, almost corpse-like, and Sakura’s fingers quicken as she watches her reflection fixedly. There is a bottle filled with something that looks like ink but doesn’t smell like ink and Sakura paints sorrow around her eyes with it. Her lips she colours red: sinful, bloody red, and the face staring back at her from the mirror is that of a stranger. She likes it.

There is a soft knock on the door and Sakura doesn’t bother to turn around: only one person comes into her room nowadays. She extends a hand and Fay takes it; kisses it gently because that is easier than speaking. They regard each other in the mirror.

“What have you done, Sakura-chan?” Fay asks softly, running a finger across her cheek.

“You don’t like it?”

“I prefer you without.” Fay kneels beside Sakura’s chair, rests his head on her shoulder. “You’re too beautiful for those kind of things.”

“But without it, I’ll be the same,” Sakura whispers.

Fay meets her gaze from beyond the glass. Then he walks over to kneel where he can look her straight in the face, his back against the mirror.

“Sakura-chan,” he says gently, resting a hand on hers, “you are you. No makeup can change that. It comes down to your heart.”

Sakura turns her eyes away. “My heart…” she whispers. “This heart, these memories, they’re not…”

Fay places a finger under her chin. When she meets his gaze, the smile on his lips is gone. “This moment,” he says, and Sakura has never heard such seriousness in his tone, “this touch…” – he kisses her hand once again – “this heart here that knows only you and loves only you, they are real.”

“But I am…”

“My only princess,” Fay says firmly. “From the moment we met, always and forever. You and only you.” He smiles, kindly. “Two people can share the same face and still be different persons. Trust me, I should know.”

Sakura manages a smile. “Thank you, Fay-san,” she says, and they embrace each other, long and hard.

OF NOT SEEING SOMEONE ELSE

In that damned world of Tokyo, the Dimensional Witch said that most myths concerning vampires are nothing but superstitions.

Oh, how Fay wishes that she had lied.

Fay hates most things about himself. He hates his birth, his fate, his selfishness and selflessness and weakness and strength, but he has never hated his own reflection. Fay’s reflection is sunbraided hair and skyfull eyes; it’s gentle smiles and hands that reach for him from the other side of the glass, but most of all, it’s a voice that responds to the name that will never be forgotten, never erased.

Fay has never hated his own reflection, not until now. Now, there is a single feline eye staring back at him from the mirror, a patch of blackness with only emptiness beyond it and an eerie glow around his very features that is not quite human, and this is not the face he remembers and Fay grows his hair out but it’s no use: it’s his own face that he sees in the mirror, and Fay hates himself more than anything.

It’s in the middle of the night and everyone is sleeping except Fay and the person in the mirror. Fay wants to whisper apologies and memories, wants that person to answer like he used to, but he is too afraid that there will only be the echo of his own words and sins and guilt, and so he remains quiet. Fay regards the mirror in silence and his reflection stares back at him with that one eye and oh, how Fay hates it and wants it gone and -

Fay doesn’t flinch at the sharp sound of glass breaking or at the stinging pain in his hand, and he smiles at the sight of crimson trickling down his arm.

It’s in the middle of the night and everyone is sleeping except Fay and Kurogane, and it takes only seconds for the other man to find him and barge into the room and grab his wrist and pierce him with those livid red eyes.            

“What the hell are you doing?” Kurogane demands, and then he sees the blood on Fay’s hand and the floor and the glass, and his eyes narrow.

“Why, Kurogane,” Fay says with an icy smile, “shouldn’t one as perceptive as you be able to see what I’m doing? I’m obviously breaking a mirror.”

“I can see that, idiot,” Kurogane growls, and he lets go of Fay’s arm. “I’m asking what your goddamn problem is. It’s just a reflection.”
Fay laughs coldly and turns his gaze away. "I know that," he says. "And that is exactly my problem."