A small smile crossed the gentle lips of the bloody ginger girl. Her eyes, filled with such pain, still held comfort. One of her arms shakily reached up to touch the side of the purple haired boy's face, staining it slightly with her own blood. "It's... Okay... Daichi... I'll be... Fine." Her voice was weak, it was to be expected of someone who has been stabbed in the gut.

The boy-Daichi-held her shoulders tighter, shockingly he was the one crying and not the girl who had been stabbed. "Atsuko, you shouldn't have saved me. I should be the one dying."

Atsuko coughed as she shook her head. "No my dear. It's my time. And that's okay. I'll watch over you." She closed her eyes, breathing out a shaky breath before she opened her eyes, their usual piercing green now foggy and dull with pain.

The young man's grip on the dying ginger tightened, not caring if her blood ruined his hoodie or shirt. "But you said we would greet death together... That was your promise."

"And I am sorry that I cannot keep it. But let me go Daichi, darling. And make me a new promise. Please, my love, make me a new promise." Her hand on his face slipped slightly, the young woman growing weaker with every passing moment. She had to say this, to tell the man holding her what she wanted to say. She wasn't ready to go yet, but this was life, she couldn't fight the end of it.

"What's your promise?" Daichi's voice was hushed, shaking as he fought off sobs. Every moment of watching the girl, his best friend, slowly leave this life was an agony for him, he knew it was self-absorbed, but that was his reality. He was losing his closest friend, the person he trusted more than anyone else on this earth, in this cursed mall.

"Promise me," She broke off to look up at him, hand moving so her thumb rested on his trembling bottom lip, a small, pained, smile playing on her own. "Promise me, that you'll never lose your smile." Such a simple request on the surface, but they both knew the deeper meaning behind the simple phrase "never lose your smile." Atsuko coughed, eyes closing for a moment, her breath catching, she stayed still for what felt far too long. There wasn't too much time left.

Daichi held her closer, tears falling to her face. He leaned to her ear. "I'll keep smiling for you, darling."

Silence, the girl didn't stur, her harsh breathing the only sign she was even here. 

"Daichi..." One pain filled, dull emerald eye opened slightly. Atsuko breathed in, and began to sing. It was slow, and filled with pain, pausing every so often as she fought to keep her life in her body. Her haunting melody slipped from her lips, and as Daichi wept she sang. "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you keep me happy, when skies are grey." At the word "grey" her breath caught in her throat, her eye closing slightly as she kept fighting the obviously inevitable. "You'll never know dear, how much I love you." She stopped again, her breathing too shallow to keep forming words, but she had said enough, done enough. She let her hand fall from the young man's face, a smear of her blood left in its place. 

Her breathing ragged as Daichi held her, gently rocking himself, white shirt and grey hoodie bloodied. Her black leotard ripped and bloodied, Daichi held her, keeping her weak form close to his chest. He loved her too much to let her go. She was his best friend, and like everyone he cared for, she too, would leave him in this cursed life, alone. 

He closed his eyes, and sobbed into her form, unaware when her breathing stilled. All he knew was his own pain. His only friend was gone, for good, and nothing could save the poor singer. 

Daichi didn't know how long he knelt there, crying in a pool of his friend's blood, her body tight in his arms. It felt like forever but also no time at all. He finally pulled back, moving her hair from her face, the ginger coils seeming limp now there was no life connected to them. He removed his hoodie and rested it on the ground, in a makeshift pillow. He moved the body and lay her head on the pillow. If it weren't for the blood, or the wound, if you only saw her face, she could be sleeping. Daichi wanted nothing more than for her to just have been sleeping, to laugh and remove the fake blood and hug him, tell him it was okay. 

But that wasn't going to happen, that only happened in those cheesy kids books, or the poems that a girl he could faintly remember wrote. This was reality, and his only friend was dead.

He breathed in, trying to steady himself, the smell of blood too much. She never finished her final song. That hit him too hard, harder than finding her here, already bloody had been. 

She had never finished her song.

Taking a breath, Daichi closed his eyes, one line, one line and her final song would be finished.

"So please, don't take my sunshine." He gulped, unable to say the final word, that would make it real, but it would set her free. No, no more procrastinating, he had to finish this, for Atsuko. "So please, don't take my sunshine away."