For the rest of the day, Haruka and Taro spoke not even a single word to each other. They ate at different times, studied alone, and slept in separate rooms.
On the following day, when the sun rose above the horizon, Memento turned into a beautiful organ. However, there were some people who hated this sunset.
On this day, when the world was dyed orange early in the morning, Haruka, Thanatos, Morgana, Helene, Areus, and even Camilla stood at the main gate of the Gravestone clan in order to tell Taro off.
Taro sat on the ground, waiting for all of them to say goodbye.
Haruka approached him, and Taro was prepared; he was prepared to hear her shouting and screaming at him, and somehow he wanted it. He wanted Haruka to shout at him that he betrayed her, everything else, and the doubts that he would be able to move away from this place.
But Haruka said nothing; the only thing she did was get down on her knees and embrace him with all her love.
Haruka, until yesterday, was still mad at him and gave people the blame for this. She was mad at Hideo and even Thanatos and Morgana. But most of all, she hated herself. She was not able to see him until tonight at 2 a.m., when something happened.
Haruka went down to the living room; she wanted to drink something, and in order to get to the kitchen, she had to walk through the living room. There, in the living room, on some blankets, Taro was sleeping.
She gazed at him in anger and watched him while doing so. She saw Taros left hindleg. It looked even bigger than yesterday, while the other one remained the same.
As she looked at him, her mind brought back memories of the time when she and Taro were both young. She remembered the first snow she and Taro ever saw. Snow was something rare in Shinjuku, and she remembers this day clearly.
Even if only a little bit of snow remained. Haruka still wanted to build a snowman. Her parents had no time, and Taro stood there and helped her roll the snowballs. In the end, the snowman was not bigger than the arm of a child. Rejoiced the two nevertheless.
She remembered the time when she went with Taro every day through the park. They talked, and the people around them thought Haruka was crazy because she talked with her dog about all kinds of things.
When she was in the 2nd grade, her class teacher asked the class who their best friends were. While all called her friends or seatmates with whom they got along well. She only said Taro's name. For the class teacher, this was nothing too unusual at the time. Haruka meant these words seriously, and today she would answer the same with friends.
All the good memories of her and Taro came back, and she asked herself again if she had done something wrong or if there was something she could do about it. She didn't want Taro to leave, but then his leg met her gaze again. The leg that was way too big made it nearly impossible for him to move.
She realized that all that was because he was afraid, and she would also not forgive herself if Taro ended up in a bad physical condition because of her. She forgot about her cup of water and watched her dog one last time. She realized that what he did was the right thing and that Taro had made up his mind and told her what had to be said.
When Haruka remembered why she felt what she felt, she embraced him even tighter.
Taro didn't know why Haruka hugged him, and a tear started to roll down his cheek.
"Taro I am sorry for what I said, and I want you to take your time. Always remember that you did the right thing." Haruka stroked his fur and looked him in the eyes.
"I am thankful for you that you said to me what I needed to hear and not what I wanted to hear." Haruka hugged him, stroked him at all of his favorite places, picked him up, and handed him to Isaiah.
"Isaiah, take good care of him, and you, Taro, take this."
Haruka reached into her pocket, pulled a cell phone out, and handed it to Taro.
"Here, Thanatos gave this to me earlier. Take it with you and text or call me whenever you like. My number is the only one in there, so you can't make a mistake."
Taro grabbed the phone with his dog hands and examined it. He tried to turn it on and looked at the number that was in there.
"Wow, you are a quick learner, I see. Look, I will tell you how you sent me a massage and how you call me."
Haruka bent over and explained to Taro how the phone worked in the slightest detail.
To the people behind Haruka, this looked like a teen trying to explain to her grandma how a phone works. Taro was not this slow, but he still needed some time to figure it out.
As Taro knew how everything worked, he turned the phone off and pressed it against his stomach as if it were a treasure that was not allowed to get lost at any time.
Isaiah watched all that; it was not clearly seeable what he felt while seeing this, but for the others, it looked as if he was a father who was proud of his son.
As both were finished, Isaiah turned around and walked away with Taro in his arms. Haruka watched them walk until they vanished from the horizon.
"Now he really left. I somehow still can't believe this."
Bing.
Haruka noticed her phone making a notification sound in her pocket. She pulled it out and read the massage.
Goodbye, Haruka, until we meet again.
"Yes, I am looking forward to it."
Haruka smiled and spent the rest of the day chatting with Taro.
---
On the next day.
"Grandson, you cleaned your mess; are you now pleased with this outcome?"
Thanatos I. sat at an office table and stared at Thanatos II. with a gaze that could kill every living being if he wanted it too. Thanatos II. was sure that this man was capable of killing someone just with his gaze.
"Do you want to fuck with me? I hate everything that happened about this. I failed; that's it. Why would I be happy about that, and I said that to you from the start? The moment I do something you hate Punish me, please. But now I ask to be punished."
Even though the outcome seemed fine, something still broke Thanatos image with the public.
The opinions were different. Some said that the mission was much too difficult and that if they were not understaffed, he would have gotten a simple one.
Others said that, in the end, he was nothing but a spoiled child. Others said that he was blinded by his talent and didn't train hard enough.
Of course, no one knew what the truth was, and no one knew how Thanatos himself felt about it.
The truth is, he hated himself. If only he had been stronger, he could have simply killed Hideo and prevented this situation. The fact that he and Morgana won was only due to luck.
"But I learned something from it. I learned how it feels when you hate yourself. If you excuse me, I want to go to train now."
Thanatos II. was about to leave when a force hindered him from leaving.
"Wait, grandson, you forgot something. The punishment you asked for."
"For three years, you are prohibited from using any kind of your clan's power. From today on, you speak for me on the same level as the servants do. Second, you have to do a minimum of 4 hours of training in the isolation room per day. Each day, you miss your punishment, which gets longer for a month, and third, you are not allowed to even think of me as your relative."
Thanatos I. made the pressure higher and waited for an answer.
"Of course, the clan leader and I stopped doing that long ago. I stopped doing that the day you showed me your true colors."
Thanatos II. entered this room as the grandson of Thanatos Gravestone I. and left as a man with no grandfather. What would await this man now? Time to think and a hard time.
As Thanatos closed the door behind him, he looked at the ceiling and whispered in silence.
"If you would have shown me this earlier, I would have never choosen this name in the first place."
Thanatos fist met the wall, and soon he walked into his first four hours of isolation training.
"This can't be."