Ray held Connie's still attached hand as he cried over her torn apart body. I don't know what exactly is going on in his head, but I had a vague idea.
I got up and started to walk over to him. Even if it helped only a little, I had to talk to him.
"I'm so sorry Ray," I said to him. "If there's anything that you need me to do, then please say it."
I made sure to keep a couple of feet away from him. I didn't want him to feel any worse than he already is.
"...a...g-grave..."
"Hmm?" I looked up.
"A...a grave," Ray said. "I want...to bury her. All of her. Connie...doesn't deserve to be...laying on the ground like this."
"Ok. If you want, you can tell us a little about as we give her a proper funeral."
"Yeah...o-ok... NNNGGK!"
As Ray did everything he could to keep himself from bawling his eyes out, I gestured for Xylvia, Leonna, and Dusk to help me out. They nodded their heads and we all got to work.
"We've only been together for two weeks," Ray said as we dug a hole in the ground in the city's cemetery. "But we always laughed with each other. She was always laughing and helping out others. Connie was an angel. But then...she..."
Ray's grip on the shovel tightened so hard that it started to shake.
"It's ok," I quickly said to him. "Don't talk about the bad stuff. Let's only hear about Connie, not the demon."
"Yeah... Y-You're right."
The reason that we were digging with shovels and not using Earth Magic was because it was "disrespectful" to be done with a person's funeral. A funeral needed to be done by hands as a sign of respect for the dead.
"Connie would always tease me," Ray said. "I remember one time she kissed me for the first time and said 'You're so bold Ray' right at my face. My face went so red that I felt like I had come down with a fever. Connie laughed so hard that day. But I got back at her by kissing her for real."
"You're really lucky," I said. "You don't find love like that easily."
"You're right. Although, it looks like you managed to find it twice."
I didn't really know how to reply to that, so I just simply chuckled a little and changed the subject back to Connie.
"Did you meet her family?" I asked Ray.
"No," he said. "Her family died because of this war."
"I see. Did she meet your family?"
"They died because of the war to."
"I'm sorry."
"There's no need for you to keep on apologizing like that. It's not our fault. That damned Devil is the one to blame for this."
"Whoever he is, Devil will die for everything that he's done. That is inevitable."
When we finished digging, Ray carried Connie over to the hole and gently placed her down. We then took our shovels and started refilling the hole.
"How did you two meet?" I asked Ray.
"I always found her up on a tree reading a book," Ray said. "I eventually asked her what she was doing up there. What she said, however, was not what I was expecting."
"What did she say?" Xylvia asked.
"She... She said: 'You did your part, now it's my turn'. Then, she jumped down from the tree and hugged me tightly."
"That's how you met?" I asked, a little shocked.
"It turns out, she was a huge sucker for romance stories. She was always sitting up in a tree because she was waiting for the start of her romance."
"Well, something tells me that she picked the right guy." I said.
"No... If she had picked someone else, she might still have been alive. Even if I never met her in the first place, at least she would be living her romance dream."
I hit a roadblock after he said that. How was I supposed to respond to something like that?
"You're right, maybe she regretted it," Leonna suddenly said. "But maybe she didn't regret it at all."
Leonna walked over to Ray with a gentle smile on her face.
"You may never know what she was thinking when she died, but the least you can do is carry your memories of her with you until you die and meet her again."
As usual, Leonna has a way with her words.
"I...I can carry my memories of her with me to the grave," Ray said. "But...I-I don't know if I can ever stop wondering what she was thinking."
CRUNCH!
"...?"
I looked down to see a folded piece of paper with a small bloodstain on it. The signature read: "To Ray, My Dream Come True."
"Hey Ray," I said. "Did you drop this?"
"What, no I never got a letter." he said.
I handed him the folded piece of paper. When he read the signature, he almost fell to his knees.
"Ray, what's wrong?" I asked him.
"It's...C-Connie..." he said.
A letter from Connie? Was it tucked somewhere in her dress or something?
Ray unfolded the letter and read it to himself, small drips of tears falling out from his eyes.
After about five minutes of complete silence, Ray fell on his knees as he hugged the letter tightly. Streams of tears fell from his eyes and landed on the ground, creating small puddles.
"...I...to Connie... I...I LOVE YOU TO CONNIIIIIE!!!" Ray shouted to the sky.
At that moment, we all ran to him and hugged him tightly. Ray wrapped his arms around us all, holding us as he let out every cry that he could muster out of him.
"I LOVE YOU TO!! I LOVE YOU CONNIE!!!! AAAAAUUUUUHHHH!!!"
As he screamed to the morning sky, we all kept our arms wrapped around him, letting him know that he wasn't alone.
"Come with us Ray," I said to him in a whisper. "We can fix this broken world together."
"...O...ok... I will...I WILL!!! GGGAAAAAAAAUUHHHH!!!!"
He buried his head into our arms, accepting our offer to come with us. And as if it were a sign of hope, I could've sworn that I saw Connie standing above her grave.
"Thank you." I heard her say.
I didn't know what I was supposed to say to her, so I simply nodded and smiled.
And just like that, she disappeared into the morning sun, waving goodbye to the world that gave her a romance dream come true.