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Prelude
When she wakes, it’s dark. It takes some time for her eyes to adjust. The room is dim, lit only by a few bulbs in wall brackets casting an eerie green light around the room. She appears to be in an antechamber, sitting in a rather uncomfortable but ornate dark wooden chair. In her hand is a ticket, as if she is awaiting her place in a queue.
74, Tendo Maya
These are the only words on the square of paper, scrawled in an elaborate font in what appears to be still-drying ink. She doesn’t rub her finger over the letters to test this. Her heart rate is beginning to rise rapidly, as more of her situation elucidates itself to her still-waking mind. She is sitting in a chair in a room she’s never seen before, the only contents of which are the chair she’s seated in, a lush Turkish rug, a massive painting opposite of her of a storm over an ocean, the waves crashing and lurching, and a door to her left, with a strange black box installed over it. She must have entered through that door - it is the only way in and out of this room, after all - and yet she gets the uncanny feeling that that’s not true: that she’s never passed through the door before, and once she’s called upon to enter it, nothing will quite be the same.
She grips the arms of the wooden chair, bracing herself, her ticket still clutched in her hand. She’s wearing a gray dress, one she may have worn to a play premiere once, but she can’t be sure. It feels familiar, and yet completely foreign. Think Maya, she commands herself. How did you get here?
But it’s blank. It’s all a haze. She should be at her apartment. She should be waking up, going to the theater, getting ready for the debut of her next play. She wonders if she was drugged, if she was kidnapped, if she was brought here for nefarious reasons. Quite honestly, this seems like a reasonable explanation. She can’t think of any other reason to turn up in this eerie chamber, without window or evidence of human life. It would explain the gap in her memory, as well. She bites her lip, looking for a weapon, but her finger again feels the paper tucked within her right hand. If she was taken, held for ransom, or if she was part of a criminal plot, why was she given the queueing paper?
Just as she is pondering this, the black box over the door lights up, fluorescent green pouring into the room with a sharp buzzing noise. The number 74 is shown within the box, presumably her invitation to step through the door.
She stands, timidly stepping towards the only way in or out of this room. She hates the way her chest seizes with dread at the unknown, the mystery that lies beyond the door. But she hates the idea of sitting in the hard-backed chair more, so she walks the last few steps to the dark-stained door, fingers of her left hand crossed in a prayer that this is some sick nightmare and she will wake safe in her apartment once she crosses the threshold.
She stands up straighter, unwilling to allow anyone, even a criminal, to see Tendo Maya showing signs of fear, and turns the handle, opening the door. Instantly, the paper in her hand bursts into flame, dissolving to smoke and ash within her hand. Strangely, this doesn’t cause her any pain or visible injury. She steps through.
On the other side is a bar, the likes of which she’s only imagined, described in novels or seen in the classiest of films. But this bar is more resplendent still. More of a parlour or a speakeasy than a bar, the theme is the same as the prior room: dark wood and deep green walls, but this room is welcoming, and Maya isn’t sure where to look first. From the massive candelabra over the whole room, to the green lighting beneath dozens of bottles behind the bar, to the plush couches in black velvet, the entire room is incredible.
There is only one chair at the bar, but no one is behind the counter. At the far end of the room is a revolving door, dark wood like everything else, but translucent glass. As much as she wants to gaze at the room longer, she needs to leave, she needs to get home. This is wrong and she needs it to end. She dashes for the exit. The door is stuck. She pushes in both directions, but it won’t budge even an inch.
“Why don’t you sit down for a drink?”
She is startled by the appearance of a bartender, a blonde woman with her hair tied back. She’s in neat black pants and a crisp white shirt, tucked in, thin black suspenders over her shoulders. Her red eyes seem to pierce Maya, indicating that the correct action is to take a seat in the open chair at the bar.
Maya keeps her chin up, her shoulders back, but she can feel her pulse in her ears. She’s out of her element. She stays in place, halfway between the revolving door and the bar. “Who are you?” she asks, trying to put a commanding edge in her voice. “Where am I?”
“Please sit,” the woman behind the counter says. “I’ll be happy to answer your questions, but it’s better if you’re sitting, and better with a drink. I’ll make whatever you like.”
She doesn’t seem to have a choice but to sit at the bar and engage with the woman. With a sigh to try to keep her calm demeanor, Maya walks forward, sitting on the single chair pushed up to the bar. Her feet rest on the crossbar of the chair a few inches above the ground and only then does she notice that she’s barefoot. “Where are my shoes?” she asks. It’s a stupid first question, but she doesn’t like the vulnerability she feels without shoes. They should at least give her slippers if she’s to remove her shoes.
The other woman merely shrugs. “No one arrives here with shoes.” She pours water into a crystal goblet, sliding it to Maya on the bar. “I’m Claudine,” she says. “What would you like to drink?”
Maya shakes her head, dismissing this offer, and Claudine settles, leaning against the bar, resting her elbows on the shining bartop and staring at Maya. “What do you want to know then?” Claudine asks.
“Where am I? How did I get here? How do I leave?”
“You sure you don’t want that drink?” Claudine asks, gesturing to the wall behind her. “We’ve got… everything.”
“Yes. Just… answer me. Please. I need to get home.”
“Fine. You’re in Requiem, a waystation for young women who have died. You got here because last night, around 9PM, you were in a fatal car accident. You leave by accepting your death and going through that revolving door.”
Maya feels her mouth going dry at Claudine’s words, and sips the water. She wonders if this is a practical joke. Or a dream she still hasn’t woken up from. But a small part of her- a part she wants to push down deep and never think about- can taste it, the smoke made from the mixture of burning motor oil, gasoline, and…. “Perhaps a plum wine, if you have it.”
“Of course, Tendo-san.”
Claudine pours the wine, even reaching behind the bar to pull a plum from where it was marinating in syrup and plopping it into the glass before serving it. Maya sips it. The sweetness is a cordial against the gasoline flames licking against the back of her throat. She swallows it down hungrily. “I’m not dead,” she asserts.
“Sure,” Claudine says. “You’re not dead.”
Maya finishes the plum wine, standing up from the bar. She moves over to the section of the room with the couches. There’s a bookshelf there, a few objects on each shelf. A clock set to 9:06. It makes her shudder. She wonders if this was the time she- the time they’re pretending she died. The bookshelf has a couple books filled page after page with handwritten names, all girls' names. She sits with one volume on a couch and entertains the possibility that Claudine is right: that dead young women come here, have a drink, sign their name, accept their fate, and go beyond.
She lays back on the longest sofa. The door she came in is now closed, but that is a dead end anyways. The revolving door is blocked. She really doesn’t think she’s being pranked. She closes her eyes to think out her situation logically and is met with an image of headlights coming at her, the sound of a horn blasting, the smell of burning. She sits up, unable to endure it any longer.
“I can’t be dead. I have things to do!” She marches back to the bar.
Claudine slides her another drink, this one a cocktail that seems to be gin-based, still involving the sweet plums. “Tell me about it,” Claudine says, polishing a glass behind the bar. “What kind of job did you do?”
“I am an actress. On stage.”
For some reason, this seems to surprise Claudine. This is the first thing she’s done this entire encounter that seems to set her off her course, and Maya enjoys it. She’s not enjoying much of anything about this day, but the idea of getting the upper hand against this bartender who has all the cards while she has none is appealing to her. “I am preparing for the lead in a run of The Sun King.”
“Not anymore you’re not,” Claudine reminds her. “Your understudy will have her chance. That is… if they don’t cancel the whole thing.”
Maya sighs, sipping the gin. “Shouldn’t you be telling me to forget about that stuff, to not think about it and ‘accept my death’?”
“Would that work?”
Maya sips her drink again in response. “What about you? Why are you here? Are you real?”
Claudine laughs lightly, putting her glass and towel down and straightening the small apron tied around her waist. “Yes, of course I’m real. I’m dead, just like you. I can’t make the door work either, so I was put in charge of this bar. There’s dozens of waystations like this: cute cafes, fancy restaurants, train platforms and the like, but this one is my responsibility until I can get the door to move.”
Somehow, this confession changes the woman behind the counter. She isn’t an agent of whoever or whatever created this room. She isn’t different intrinsically from Maya. She is also dead. She has also lost out on the prime of her life. And she also can’t move on, a soul stuck in this bar.
Claudine waves her hand flippantly, a soft smile on her face. “I didn’t mean anything with that door comment, by the way. Most people can’t get the door to work for a few hours. It takes a few drinks, settling down, and then they’re on their way. I’m the exception.”
“How long have you been here?”
Claudine turns, and Maya finds herself staring at the curve of her neck as it disappears into that perfect starched white shirt. Claudine runs her fingers along some notches carved under one of the shelves, dozens and dozens, the rough cuts out of place with the clean design of the rest of the room. “...Three years and change,” she says, “Since I started keeping count, at least.”
After four drinks, an unknown amount of time, and sharing more than she ever planned to with Claudine about the theater, her family, and friends, Maya makes her way back to the revolving door. I’m dead. I’m finished. My life is over. There is no more.
The words echo in her mind over and over, and she tries to convince herself of their truth. There will be no more performances on stage. There will be no more rehearsals. No more auditions, even. She nearly laughs, thinking about how her entire life is work, but she loved it, she lived for it. The stage enveloped her, pushed her higher, until she became the stage and the stage became her. No more, she tells herself once more, taking the final step to the door.
Politely, Claudine has moved aside, making herself busy behind the bar where Maya can’t see her. Maya rests her hand on the door, unable to tell if there’s any give against the heavy wood. She sees a car on the wrong side of the median. She feels herself upside down, her consciousness fading against the pitch blackness of the night sky. She pushes with all her might, but there is nothing for it. The door is fixed. Her soul, her being is unsettled. She sinks to the floor, feeling tears fall for the first time as she sits on her knees, facing the door whose glass panels reveal nothing with their translucent treatment. She wonders and fears what is beyond. Perhaps this is why she didn’t write her name in the book - she knew she would fail all along.
Claudine is behind her a moment later, a hand on her shoulder. She does not turn, her tears are her own, her personal sadness. “You can stay,” Claudine says.
“What?” she asks, her voice choked.
“At the bar. Stay here. Work for a while. Until you can go through the door.”
At first she thinks this is a generous offer, but then she wonders what other options she has. It’s not like there’s any other way out of this place. Claudine has been trapped here for years, after all.
Still, she doesn’t shrink away from the hand on her shoulder, nor does she try the revolving door again in desperation. She knows better. It won’t go for her, just as it won’t go for Claudine.
Claudine shows her a spiral staircase behind the wall of alcohol bottles, leading up to living quarters: a sitting room, a small kitchen, a bedroom, and a bathroom. “There’s two beds,” Claudine says. “When I got here… there was someone, and then she… well the door opened for her just a few days after I got stuck.”
“Has anyone else…” Maya doesn’t know how to ask the question, so she just trails off, staring at the two beds, one disheveled, under a painting of women dancing, and the other neatly made, against the opposite wall.
But Claudine just shakes her head. “I like to think I’m good at my job,” she says, with a laugh that doesn’t reach her eyes. “But I think that most people are just ready to rest.” She leads Maya to the kitchen, gesturing to the cabinets and the fridge. “The kitchen is like the bar. The food is just here. If you use something it’ll be replenished next time you come back. Same with the clothes. Clean and hung after you sleep. Perks of being in purgatory I guess.”
Maya takes a bath while Claudine makes a stew for dinner, and then they eat together. Claudine shows where she can find pajamas, as well as clothes she can wear casually and to the bar. Claudine takes her bath after dinner, and then joins Maya in the bedroom, across the room on the other bed. She sits up cross-legged on the bed, so Maya pays attention. “A lot of this job is just waiting around. The sitting room has a lot of books, though I’m nearly through them. Sometimes I go downstairs and drink. But people arrive at all hours. When they do, the light turns on,” Claudine says, pointing to a box over the doorway, identical to the one in the antechamber. “At that point we need to go downstairs and serve them. Once we see them off we can do as we please until the next one comes.”
Maya nods in understanding. Claudine settles back on the bed, clicking off the lamp on the nightstand. “Alright. That’s it then. Good night, Tendo Maya.”
“Good night.” Maya props herself up on several pillows. Laying flat seems to cause the car-accident vertigo, so sleeping half-upright is the only option. There’s no windows, no airflow in this space, and Maya can’t get a sense of time or direction. She wonders how Claudine even knows when it’s time to sleep, or how she determines that years have passed. But somehow, she manages to drift off, fitfully, on the unstable pillow pile she’s made.
She wakes in the morning, or after an indeterminate amount of time has passed, and Claudine has made toast and cut fruit and is brewing coffee in the kitchen. She wonders what would happen if she didn’t eat or drink, since she’s already dead, but she doesn’t test it - she’s hungry after all.
Most of the day is spent reading. Claudine may have read most of the literature, but she has not. Claudine is downstairs ‘cleaning’, but Maya thinks she may be drinking. The box lights up when Maya is about halfway through her second book. A name is written on the box on this side, rather than a number: Tsuyuzaki Mahiru.
Maya changes into her clothes for the bar for the first time: a crisp white shirt under a black vest, black pants and a black leather belt. She buttons the cuffs herself, ties the laces on the shoes she finds in the bottom of the wardrobe, and takes a moment to wonder what the woman who wore this all before her was like.
Then she walks downstairs, to where Claudine is waiting, hair tied back once again, the two of them standing side by side behind the bar for when the newest patron enters. She stands a little straighter - she has a job now, after all.
Maya wonders about this new feeling - anticipation, or excitement, perhaps - not for greeting a dead girl, but for standing beside Claudine, for trying new work, for learning about someone new. It was the same kind of feeling as when she had a new role on stage, the intensity, the fascination was… intoxicating.
Tsuyuzaki Mahiru enters a moment later, and much like Maya, she spends several seconds gazing around at the splendor of Requiem. She’s pretty, with long dark hair, dressed in a green shift dress, with bare feet of course. But unlike Maya, she timidly slips into the seat at the bar with only a wary glance at the revolving door. To Maya, it already looks loose, and she wonders if she could steal Tsuruzaki Mahiru’s chance, slip through the door that this woman has opened. Then she wonders what that even means, and if she even wants to. Going through the door is the goal, but would that lead to endless pleasure, rolling green fields, or just the dissolution of her soul - pure nothingness?
Claudine pours Mahiru the water in the crystal goblet, and Mahiru sips it, seemingly out of breath. “I… there was… a fire?” she asks, seemingly much more astute than Maya was at this phase.
Claudine nods calmly. “There was a fire. In your neighbor’s apartment. In the early hours of the morning. Not a flame in your apartment, but you inhaled too much smoke before you could make it safely outside. This is a waystation before your soul moves on. Can I get you something to drink?”
Mahiru opens her mouth to speak again, her lips seemingly stuck together for a moment. “Um, sure, something sweet, I suppose.”
Maya understands. The appeal of something sweet to wash the taste of the smoke from the mouth and throat. Mahiru’s eyes catch Maya’s but Maya looks away, she can’t bear it. She focuses on Claudine, the way Claudine mixes rum and pineapple and some other ingredients, mixing them in the way Maya has only seen bartenders do in films. “Try this,” Claudine offers.
“Do you know… if anyone else…” Mahiru trails off, as if afraid to finish the sentence. She sips the drink while holding the cup with both hands, as if afraid she might drop it.
Claudine’s features soften, and she grabs onto Mahiru’s hand once she puts the cup down. Maya is struck by the intimacy. She can’t look away from the place where the hands are joined. “You were the only fatality,” Claudine tells her.
This seems to assure her, and she sips the drink again, telling Claudine about her siblings, about her job, about this and that, until the door is practically glowing. “Why don’t you leave your name in the book?” Claudine asks, nodding towards the sofas. “So we know you stopped by and had a drink with us before moving on.”
Mahiru nods, taking out the latest volume of the book as well as the fountain pen from the shelf. She writes her name carefully on the next open line, leaving the book open on the table to dry. The ink shines in the light from the candelabra.
“I thank you for the drink. I think I need to be off, though,” she says, moving to the door.
“Rest well,” Claudine says, nodding after her. Unexpectedly, Maya feels Claudine’s hand in her own, her fingers laced in her own, both of them watching as the door turns and the woman disappears. It is impossible to tell what lies beyond due to the nature of the revolving door, but Maya’s heart still swells, and she grips tighter onto Claudine’s hand until the door stops moving, locking up tightly again.
They fall into much the same routine - cooking, cleaning, sleeping, reading, tending the bar, Claudine drinking, Maya reading, repeating. After about a week, Maya even feels comfortable pouring the water, making simple drinks at the bar, resetting the scene: the book, the pen, the glasses, pushing in the chair.
The time when they sleep is the most difficult. Maya still has to sleep on her precarious arrangement of pillows, and she’s still thrown off by the lack of a defined ‘day’ and ‘night’ and any sort of time to determine when to start and stop sleeping. She wakes one night choking on smoke, her vision filled with licks of flame and broken glass and hearing the distant sounds of sirens that she knows will arrive too late.
It’s Claudine at her side, pushing her hair out of her face, once again placing her hand in Maya’s, quieting her from her panicked breathing with assurances that everything is alright. As she comes back to semi-consciousness she wonders how true that is - she is dead, afterall. But she cannot deny she feels better, and so she holds tightly to Claudine’s hand in hers, just until she can breathe normally again, just until she doesn’t taste the smoke any longer.
She wakes next, hours later, with Claudine cuddled beside her, hand in hers, head resting on her shoulder as she lay atop her pillows. It is the soundest she’s slept since she arrived.
Act 2: The Disruption
A paper, much like the one the patron receives, appears behind the bar. It gives the patron’s name, cause of death, and a few other details that help with the process, all in the inky scrawl befitting to an establishment such as Requiem. Claudine tells Maya to take this one: that she ought to try fully seeing someone off. Her pride tells her she needs to do this, to do it the best, so she accepts. She’s observed enough. She’s confident.
She is not prepared for Tsuruhime Yachiyo.
Yachiyo walks into the bar in a white fuzzy sweater and mini skirt, pink hair curled over one shoulder. She looks around for a mere moment before settling at the bar, barely sparing a glance to the revolving door. “Rum and Coke,” she says, before Maya has a chance to offer her a drink. “I’ve had a hell of a day.”
“My name is Maya. Why don’t you tell me about it,” says Maya, trying to play along as she pours the drink. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a flash of the gaze Yachiyo casts at Claudine, who is off to the side, rearranging some things behind the bar and watching Maya work. Maya feels a ripple of annoyance. She needs to get Yachiyo through that revolving door.
“Well you’ll never believe this, but I died,” Yachiyo says, as if she was telling Maya that she got a flat tire. “I was just going in for a normal medical procedure, and well, I’m not sure what happened because I was out, but here I am.”
Maya slides the drink to her, sticking a lime on the rim. “I do believe you, because something similar happened to me.”
Yachiyo sips the drink, leaning forward to look at Maya, as if seeing her for the first time. “You did, didn’t you?” she says. “But you’re still living, in here,” she adds, pointing to her heart. “Nothing’s really changed.”
“I’ve accepted my death,” Maya says firmly. There is no way to deny it, when she can taste it in her mouth every night.
Yachiyo smiles, but it’s a cunning little grin. “Sure, you logically know you’ve died. But that’s not enough, is it?”
Maya is terrified at her astuteness, how quickly she’s gathered the premise without any hints. But before she can ponder it further, Yachiyo grins again, cheekily. “Ah, don’t make that face, you’ll get wrinkles. Don’t worry about me. I’m sure I can go through that door, but I appreciate the company and the free drinks.”
She pushes her glass back, empty, and Maya pours her another. She sips it, sighing in satisfaction. Then, without warning she stands, leaning over the bar, close to Maya’s face, turquoise eyes staring straight at her own with deep curiosity. Maya is taken aback, even moreso when Yachiyo reaches forward and runs her fingers through Maya’s hair, pulling her in even closer. They’re within kissing distance, and Maya’s heart begins to hammer. She wonders if she’s ever been this close to another woman before, outside of a rehearsal space, but her heart knows she hasn’t. This is new, intoxicating. A moment later, Yachiyo moves away, sitting back down, nursing her rum and Coke again. “Ah, I’m sorry,” she says, looking nearly demure for the first time since she entered. “You just reminded me of someone, for a moment there.”
It takes three more drinks and nearly all of Maya’s patience to get Yachiyo through the door, but eventually her name is in the book and she’s on her way, and still Maya’s heart will not still.
“Do you want a drink?” This offer is from Claudine, who hasn’t had much to do all day.
Maya normally refuses, normally goes upstairs, eats supper, sleeps in the bed in the timeless space they occupy, but her senses are heightened, and she cannot forget the feeling of fingers in her hair, of lips inches from hers, and she needs to come down. Tsuruhime Yachiyo is gone. Through the revolving door; beyond the veil, it is all the same. But her message remains, trapped in the inches between them at that crucial moment: perhaps the stage was not enough. The scent, the feeling, the desire for a woman is crawling all over her skin, and she thinks she might shout, or cry. She’s never felt this before. “Sure, I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she says, as casually as she can muster.
Claudine boils water, putting sake in a carafe then placing this in a pot of boiling water. Once the sake is heated through, she pours it into small cups, passing one to Maya. Maya is surprised, she expects a drink to get her drunk quickly, to forget the shock of what happened, but she understands Claudine’s choice as soon as she feels the blossoming of warmth in her chest from the hot sake as she swallows. It’s comforting, slowly disorienting: an embrace of alcohol. They drink about 3 miniature cups worth before Claudine speaks. “You did well.”
“The door was open the whole time.”
“It often is.”
Maya looks at Claudine as she fiddles with the sake, refilling the carafe and ensuring it’s warming well. Pink hair fades to blonde, the turquoise eyes that were across the bar from her earlier are replaced with red. Suddenly, Claudine is no longer just Claudine, the bartender, her roommate, the other soul stuck in this purgatory. In a moment, she was transformed into Claudine, someone Maya wanted to grow closer and closer to, to know more and more. Perhaps it has always been this way, but Maya hasn’t been paying attention.
That night, Maya is unsurprised when she wakes, choking on acrid fumes. This happens most nights, after all. She is surprised when Claudine is there, and she’s slightly embarrassed that she made enough of a fuss to wake Claudine. But Claudine is soft and warm, and her hand is against Maya’s forehead, easing her back into sleep already, and she doesn’t have much more time to think about it as she falls back into slumber.
She wakes with her arms wrapped around Claudine, and she stays perfectly still, trying not to wake her. She studies this position, considering the exact way her arms fit around Claudine, the blonde hair that falls in wild curls across the pillows, Claudine’s face at perfect ease in her sleep. After a while, Claudine wakes, more unsurprised than Maya to be in this position. “Bonjour,” she mumbles.
It is not the first time Maya has heard her speak French. Occasionally, she will curse in French if she spills something behind the bar, or she’ll mumble in French if she comes up to the living quarters particularly drunk. But this French, in such proximity, and with Maya’s new revelations after her encounter with Yachiyo, is different.
“Avez-vous bien dormi?” she tries, with little confidence.
But Claudine grins, and she thinks she’s gotten it well enough at least. Everyone who comes to the bar speaks Japanese. But they can share French, at least. She holds it close, and makes a note to check the study for any books on French to brush up.
A few patrons later, they’re again drinking, tired after seeing off a woman who was upset after leaving behind a lover. By Maya’s guess, it’s been over a month she’s spent in Requiem now, and she feels fairly comfortable with the routines. They’re sipping a grapefruit drink Claudine’s made, and listening to an old American jazz record on the turntable that sits on the bookshelf beside the clock.
Maya’s mind is wandering here and there, but it keeps coming back to one place, something morbid she wonders is taboo, and yet she can’t stop thinking about. “How did it happen for you?” she asks at last, happy at least to let the question escape her mind.
Claudine looks at her with a curious gaze. “Hold on, try this drink I made the other day,” she says, moving around to find the ingredients, a distracted smile on her face.
But Maya reaches out, grabbing her free arm with her hand, stilling her. “Please,” she says.
Perhaps there’s something in Maya’s gaze, because Claudine shakes her head in defeat, picking up her current drink and moving to the sofa. Maya follows, sitting beside her on the black plush velvet, a million questions in her mind from ‘have you had nightmares of your death?’ to ‘are you as conscious as I am of the mere inch our thighs are apart?’
“I was a lawyer,” Claudine says. “Days away from making partner.” She sips her drink. “I put in the work. Hours and hours. 70, 80, 90 hour weeks. For years. I was right there.”
The music stops abruptly, but Claudine doesn’t make a move to change it, she simply bites her lip. “But my body gave out… an ‘overwork’ death, they call it.” She laughs lightly, derisively. “I just needed to last a few more days, and now I’m wasting away down here for… who knows how long? This truly is purgatory, I guess.”
She turns her head away, and Maya reaches out, grabbing onto her hand. As if Claudine might slip away with this confession, and she needs to bind her to this sofa, to her. “What is keeping you here?” Maya asks.
“Same thing keeping you here, and the woman before me. Same reason anyone can’t pass through that door.” Claudine sighs, pitching back the rest of her drink and swallowing it effortlessly. She glances at Maya, as if surprised Maya hasn’t figured it out herself yet. “Regret.” The word hangs heavy in the air between them, papering the walls of Requiem. Claudine puts her glass down on the table and stands, the absence of her hand acute in Maya’s perception. She seems to float past the door, and Maya watches how it seems to bend around her as she passes. She hates the way things are in Requiem, or maybe she’s just drunk. “I’m going to bed. I trust you can clean up?” Claudine asks, turning back.
“Of course.”
The next day, Maya is still in bed when the green light glows. She rushes into the white shirt that appears clean and starched in her closet each day, jumping into the pants, slipping on the vest. As she’s tying the shoes, she notices that Claudine hasn’t moved from her bed.
“Claudine, are you coming?” she asks.
“You can do it on your own by now, can’t you?” she says, her voice muffled from the blankets.
And Maya wants to stay. She wants to climb onto the bed she’s never joined, to talk to Claudine about why she’s suddenly so lethargic, or perhaps just lay beside her, but she has a job, and she’s Tendo Maya, and she’s nothing if not the best at the jobs she does. So regretfully, she traipses down the spiral staircase to await today’s guest.
The routine is simple: water, alcoholic beverage, conversation, name in the book, seeing her off. It’s less simple when the woman refuses to accept her death, pitching the water goblet across the room, where it smashes against the wall beside the bookshelf. Maya worries about her bare feet. It takes hours and hours, several drinks, and much cajoling to get her name in the book, but Maya’s first solo bartending job is a success, she supposes.
Afterwards, she pours herself a glass of white wine and lays back on the longest couch, her head barely raised on a velvet cushion. The nightmares still plague her, but she can at least close her eyes and lay back without being hit with vertigo reminding her of her death. That much is fading, at least.
She thinks about regret, the word plastered on the ceiling, at least in her imagination. Her regret is that she never got to premiere her play, that she would never again grace another stage. She turns onto her side, reaching out and sipping the wine. The nagging feeling inside her tells her there’s more, like fingers reaching up and combing through her hair, coaxing out the truth, intimately, with a woman’s soft touch.
It is true that the stage could not embrace her. It is true she lived and died a life devoid of intimacy. And perhaps, just perhaps, she regrets that now.
Claudine is at the table, food prepared, when Maya finishes her wine and goes back upstairs. If she heard the glass shatter earlier, or if she wonders about the delay between the green light turning off and Maya coming back upstairs, she doesn’t say a word.
“You managed well,” she commends, serving Maya a plate and then making up one for herself.
“It went just fine,” Maya says.
“I’m glad. I’ve been doing some thinking. I really feel that I’ve done quite enough work - in my life and in the last three years here. Of course I’ll watch over the bar - it’s my job, after all, but I think I’ll leave the patrons mainly to you.”
Maya wants to protest, to tell Claudine that perhaps there will be no way for her to ever go through the door if she doesn’t keep up with the patrons, at least, but she hasn’t been dwelling in Requiem for over three years, so she doesn’t feel she has the right. And Maya could use the stimulation. Without the green box giving her purpose, she feels the timeless drone in this liminal zone will really end her - dismissing her soul to some meaningless TV static that will blur and occupy this space forever, forgetting her goal to solve her regrets and move beyond.
And perhaps that is the trap. The bar is a subtle devil, lulling them with alcohol, replaying all their regrets, their deaths, showing them again and again and again patrons who are finding rest. They believe they are making progress, and in reality, the lethargy sinks in, the weariness of going round and round and round, and the bar has a hostess for eternity.
“I’ll do it,” Maya says. “But in exchange, every day, we need to do something towards eliminating our regrets.”
Claudine arches a brow, as if asking Maya who she is to be making proposals, but ultimately she nods. “Sure. Maybe then at least one of us can get out of here.”
She counts the time in how many sleeps she’s had, since she has no way to assess if time is even passing. A few sleeps later, she finds herself in the sitting area of the bar, standing before Claudine, a rapt audience, as she is dressed in a double-breasted suit pulled from the back of the wardrobe, her hair pulled back into a bun.
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the lines,” Claudine says, legs crossed on the sofa as she sips some fizzing melon-colored cocktail.
“Of course not. It’s just hard to do a solo performance.”
“I thought you were a Top Star, I’m sure you can do it. How are you going to get through the door?”
At this challenge, Maya’s eyes flash. She decided to perform the play she missed out on to eliminate it from her list of regrets, but had forgotten this impediment. Still, she steels herself, transposing herself from Maya the woman to the Sun King, Louis XIV, wracked with sorrow. She speaks Louis’ soliloquy from the end of Act I, heartbroken over his mother and the Cardinal sending his lover into exile, dooming his chance at love, and about them still impeding his chance to truly seize power. Shackled, powerless, Louis XIV in Act I is a king with nowhere to turn, and Maya had studied hard, ready to put on her show. At least she could show one person, in this strange, false space.
At the end, once she has reinhabited the body of Tendo Maya, Claudine is staring at her differently. As if she didn’t believe in the power of the stage girl Maya until that moment. “What happens, in the end?” she asks, patting the bench beside her.
She’s part French, so Maya has a feeling she knows the history of Louis XIV, but she doesn’t mind. She goes over and sits beside Claudine, suddenly warm in the jacket. She picks up the second drink Claudine has made and sips it, her throat suddenly dry.
“In Act II, Louis XIV seizes power, truly becoming Le Roi Soleil. He builds Versailles, a resplendent and excessive palace, away from the bustle of Paris. He finally meets a woman he falls in love with and is able to marry, though no one will acknowledge their union officially.”
Maya is unable to tell the passing of time, as usual, in Requiem, but she finds her head resting on Claudine’s lap. Claudine is untying Maya’s hair from the bun, combing her long hair out with her fingers. “I’ve been there, you know,” she says, quietly, “Versailles.”
“Oh yeah?” Maya says, her voice nearly a whisper, so as not to break this spell. She can feel the rumble of her own words against Claudine’s thighs.
“Mhmm. It’s a tourist attraction now.” She leans forward, sipping the drink once more. Then, “It’s a bit like this place, in a way.”
Maya turns a bit, so she’s facing straight upward, facing Claudine. She wonders how anything in the real world, the land of the living, is like this horrible waystation. “What about you?” she asks. “Before we sleep, you need to do something to dispel regret.”
Claudine sighs, leaning back into the plush couch, and Maya watches the lace trim on the satin robe she was wearing shift with her movements. “I’ve done enough, listening to you wax poetic,” she says.
Maya shakes her head, laughing a bit. “All you’ve done is drink all day, and listen to records. Come on, something productive.”
Claudine groans, but sits up a little straighter, focusing. “Fine. Let me think.” She appears lost in thought for a bit, and then a blush dusts her cheeks. “No… this really isn’t for me,” she says, making to stand but trapped on the sofa by Maya.
“What is it?” Maya asks. “It sounds like you’ve thought of something.”
Now Claudine’s face is even more red, and she’s biting her lips. “No. I mean, I couldn’t ask you…” Clumsily, she sips at her drink, looking back toward the clock set to their last patron’s time of death.
“You need my help? What is it?” asks Maya, sitting up at last, now that she has some slight confidence that Claudine won’t dash off. She supposes it’s fine either way. There’s no way out of this place.
“I… a kiss,” she says at last, almost spitting out the word. “I’ve never had a true, slowed-down, affectionate kiss.” She bites her lips again, seemingly disappointed at the empty drink. “Sure I’ve kissed before but what I mean is…”
“Ok.”
“What?”
“Ok. Let’s kiss.”
If anything, this seems to make Claudine more wary than before, but she doesn’t stand. She stays sitting on the sofa, her ruby eyes locked on to Maya’s, contemplating such a proposal. “Maya, you don’t have to… it’s silly really.”
“I want to as well. I’m the same as you,” Maya says, meeting her gaze, feeling more confident with this admission. “I dedicated myself to my work. I neglected my personal life. And now I regret that, the… coldness with which I treated my life.”
Claudine’s eyes dart between her eyes and her lips, and it takes all of Maya’s self control not to do the same.
“And, like I said, I want to kiss you, Claudine.”
Claudine seems to be surprised by this, and averts her eyes at last. But Maya moves closer, grabbing into her hand. “I’ve wanted to kiss you too,” Claudine says at last, and Maya wonders for how long.
She inches closer, her breath close enough that she is sure Claudine can feel it, and she can smell just a tinge of alcohol from Claudine’s breath. Then Claudine pushes forward a bit more and the gap is closed. Maya closes her eyes, shutting out the fact that she’s in Requiem, that she’s barely a soul anymore, and her kiss mixes with memories of shattered glass, of hanging upside down in a car wreck. It’s melon and soft lips and gasoline and blood, a soft hand on the back of her neck and a seatbelt digging into her shoulder.
She opens her eyes, until it’s just Claudine. She reaches up, tracing the curve of her jaw, running her fingers through perfect blonde waves. Now that she’s started, she doesn’t want to stop. She’s suddenly thankful for the timelessness of this void, where she can sit on this sofa and learn to kiss as she pleases.
The next day, it’s cooking a meal together. Lights-out hour, a few nights later: sleeping in the same bed intentionally, not because of some middle-of-the-night nightmare situation. They learn intimacy awkwardly, stuntedly, together. But to Maya, it feels right. As if perhaps she had to die in order to find a person that she could feel so comfortable with, someone who would embrace all of her, match her at every step, and learn each slow step of a relationship alongside her.
Or perhaps they just had to die to look away from their careers. The strict structure of ‘one trial per day’ is abandoned once they realize that what they were missing is a relationship or at least the components of one, and they grow closer by the day. Sometimes Maya wonders if what they’re doing is a true relationship, or just ‘playing house’, imitating what they’ve seen on television or read in books, and if that will make a difference to the door. She says as much to Claudine as they’re sitting down at the bar after the patron of the day has left, listening to old records.
Claudine considers her question and turns, draping her legs over Maya’s. Even this gesture, which would have shocked her a few weeks ago, is comfortable now - she craves the closeness between them. “I don’t think that’s the right question,” Claudine says. “I don’t think the one you need to convince is the door.”
Maya thinks on this further. Ultimately the way out of this waystation was through the door, but she supposes a door is just a door. It cannot make decisions on its own. For a moment she wonders if Claudine is implying existence of a higher power until, “I need to convince myself.”
Claudine shrugs. “If ‘regret’ keeps it shut, then you need to decide for yourself what will satisfy that regret.” She nuzzles her head into Maya’s shoulder and they sit quietly for a while, listening to the music.
When the track ends, Claudine raises her head up, looking at Maya. “Take a bath with me,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
Claudine smiles, considering for a moment. “Sure, why not? I never took a bath with anyone since childhood.”
They go upstairs, Claudine bringing a bottle of wine, and run the water, filling the bath lower than usual to accommodate them both. Claudine slips in first, dropping her robe and stepping into the water tentatively, testing the temperature. Maya looks at her, stealing glances at Claudine’s back, at her thighs, each curve she misses when Claudine is clothed. Once she’s sitting in the tub, she sees the heave of Claudine’s breast just beneath the waterline, the bend of her knees as she folds them, waiting for Maya to enter.
And Maya does not wait long, slipping off her own robe and joining Claudine, their legs intermingled under the warm water. They pass the wine back and forth, Maya indulging in alcohol on this rare occasion, settling into the warm water.
She wonders if her body is finished changing. She wonders if she’s stuck down here for years, for decades, if she will develop any new wrinkles, if her hair will continue to grow. She says as much to Claudine. She shakes her head. “You're done. Finished. Even if you do try something, like cutting your hair, it all resets after you sleep. Don’t ask me how. Requiem is weird.”
Maya swirls her hand through the bath water, accidentally brushing it against Claudine’s leg. She watches as Claudine bites her lip, and a trill of arousal courses through her. She turns to the side, resting her arms on the edge of the tub for a distraction. She’s not ready. She’s not ready.
That night, laying in bed, she can’t help but notice the heat in her core, the excitement that won’t settle when she thinks of Claudine. She’s still aroused, but more than that, she’s frightened. She lays back on her narrow bed, in her standard issue pajamas, in the bland, dark room, and tries to settle. She’s an adult, she likes Claudine, she probably loves Claudine even, but she’s terrified to think about that, just as she’s terrified to think about sex.
A declaration of love is too explicit, just like the deepest form of intimacy. Maya feels as though crossing those boundaries would be pure pleasure to her soul, and something like that was bound to be followed by the door unlocking. She realizes she is frightened by the fact that she no longer wants to leave.
Maya doesn’t know when she falls asleep. She wakes up alone. She dresses and goes down to the bar, setting up for the day. She passes Claudine in the kitchen upstairs, still working on breakfast. Maya will come up to join her in a few minutes, but first, she’s desperate to try the door, to make sure it’s still locked. It is as firm as always against her hand, an opaque revolving door with no clues to the other side. She slides down the wall against it, calming her rapidly beating heart.
She wanted the door open. She wanted it open for so long, and now she’s afraid it might fall open to her touch. She wants it to stay shut so she can enjoy her time with Claudine, but she’s afraid her closeness with Claudine is what will open the door. After all, the key to the door is repairing her soul, patching up regrets, and each day in Requiem playing house with Claudine is a day of her life she never got to live out the way she wished - with a partner, with a lover, with someone looking only at her. She takes a deep breath to gather herself, and goes upstairs to breakfast.
A few sleeps later, Maya sees a customer off and she watches as the door closes behind the girl, and then settles back into its locked position. When she turns back around, Claudine has descended the stairs, standing behind Maya at the bar. She’s wearing a black dress, her jacket for working the bar loosely draped over her shoulders. “What are you doing?” Maya asks.
“Are you finished?” Claudine says. “I came to tell you dinner is ready.”
Maya wonders what Claudine is doing cooking in that outfit, but she’s distracted as she watches Claudine pour whiskey in a lowball glass and then perch herself on the bartop itself, her legs dangling down towards Maya. “What’s with the dress?” Maya asks.
Claudine shrugs, sipping the whiskey. “I was bored earlier, so I was trying on this and that in the wardrobe. Come here.” She beckons Maya forward, and Maya has no choice but to walk towards her, coming to rest against the bar, Claudine’s legs on either side of her. Maya’s face is against Claudine’s chest, and instinctively she nuzzles closer, taking in Claudine’s smell, wanting to wrap herself in Claudine after a day of ushering a dead soul to her final destination.
And Claudine takes her in, her arms wrapping around Maya, fingers combing through her hair and tracing gently along her neck and jawline. Maya can feel it, the arousal that has never truly faded, the desire to move ever closer, her greed to have more and more and more of Claudine, and to give herself to Claudine as well. She clenches her jaw, absorbing the truth that she knows why Claudine wore the dress, that Claudine is just as desperate as herself, just as trapped by Requiem’s paradoxes and predicaments. She pushes the jacket back off of Claudine’s shoulders and places her hand on the back of her neck, coaxing her to lean down so Maya can kiss her deeply.
It doesn’t take long for things to advance, for kissing to turn to touching, for touching to turn to sex. Maya finds herself on the bar, underneath Claudine, who is undoing the buttons on her eternally crisp white shirt. She stares up at the ceiling of the emerald green room, of the candelabra overhead, and the shelves and shelves of bottles she can see in her peripheral vision. She did not expect to have sex on the bar itself, but she supposes it makes sense. It is where she met Claudine. It is the core of Requiem. It is the place that leads to the door.
Her attention is brought back to Claudine, and she reaches up to bring Claudine back closer to her. She wants all of Claudine. The dress is removed. The pesky shirt and pants are removed. The undergarments, the final impediments are removed. She can feel every inch of Claudine, and Claudine of her. In a way, like never before, she is baring her soul. Laying on the bar, it feels like a bier, and for the first time in weeks she tastes the acrid smoke-and-motor-oil flavor that used to be so familiar, until it is replaced by Claudine’s lips and Claudine’s taste. Yes, she is dead, yes, her soul isn’t even complete enough to move on, but she forgets all of this at the feel of Claudine’s teeth softly biting against her neck, and Claudine’s fingers gently slipping inside of her.
When she comes, her hips shake and she hears Claudine’s glass smash on the floor. She barely processes it, holding Claudine close to her. She shifts, moving herself away from the stimulation, but then gazes upon Claudine, an empty canvas. She finishes the switch to be on top, barely giving herself a moment to recover. She feels as if she’s finally had a taste of something she’s been missing, and afraid it might be taken away at any moment, she’s desperate to have it as long as possible.
She looks away from the door after it’s over, afraid that she might see it sway. She pretends she can’t see that part of the room. She goes upstairs, trailing behind Claudine, and they huddle together on a narrow bed, cuddling closely as they fall asleep.
When she wakes up, Maya is surprised to find that nothing has changed. Claudine is just beside her, sleeping peacefully, and Maya feels no more drawn to the revolving door than she did the day before. She instinctively moves closer - a tough task on a narrow bed where they already lay so close - and buries her face against Claudine’s chest. If this cannot last forever, she doesn’t want to regret any of it. And each time she makes this realization, it gives her heart a pang of fear that her understanding, her happiness, will be her eventual doom.
When Claudine wakes, she is calm, as if they are not bound by time until the door opens, as if they do not have a job or a duty to the patrons at the bar, as if they have all the time in the world. Maya pretends that it is true.
When the green light does turn on, she notices her shirt is hanging in the closet, but the wrinkles of the day before - of its hasty removal and dropping to the bar floor - remain. She chooses another. And the routine continues as it always has: greeting the guests, preparing the drink, talking about life and death, writing the names in the book, seeing them off, except now Maya can’t bring herself to look at the door.
They eat, they sleep, they have sex again. They sleep and wake and they do as they please. Maya works, Claudine reads. They drink. They play the records. One night Maya notices a stain in the carpet.
“There’s a stain, just there,” she says, pointing it out to Claudine. “I spilled when I was cleaning yesterday, but the room always cleans itself.”
Claudine doesn’t look bothered, just sits back further on the couches in the bar area and sips her gin drink. “So it’s happening to you, too,” she says.
“It’s happening? What’s happening?” Maya leans forward, elbows perched on her still-creased black pants, her gaze switching between Claudine and the stain. “Why is the room not fixing itself?”
But Claudine just leans forward, placing her now-empty glass on the arm of the couch and wrapping her arms around Maya in a sad but comforting way. “You know why,” she says quietly, speaking directly into Maya’s ear.
When she wakes the next day, there’s a crack in the paint in the ceiling above her bed. The next day, her clothes lay where she left them on the floor the night before. After a week, she realizes the alcohol is not being replenished behind the bar, not that they’ll run out for some time. The chandelier upstairs has a bulb burnt out, and the silver has begun to tarnish.
Still, they live their lives as they have been, playing house, working the bar, slipping into bed together at night. When Maya says ‘I love you’, she doesn’t even mean to, it comes out naturally as she settles back into the pillow of the narrow bed that now smells vaguely of dust and mothballs and very much of Claudine. “I love you too,” Claudine replies, already half asleep, a contented smile on her face. The next day there is a chasm going down the center of the bartop.
Act 3: The Succession
Maya had always thought Requiem appeared the same to herself and Claudine, and to all the patrons, but now she’s not so sure. The day that the bar is split, she thinks of the day Claudine suddenly stopped coming to work. Did Requiem start becoming dilapidated for her back then? And if so, did that mean that…
Her thoughts trail off as the green light over the waiting room door glows, indicating that a patron has arrived. She’s unprepared, she’s frazzled this morning, and she’s not ready to face her work when all she wants to do is consider her circumstances and her waning time with Claudine. But the routine in Requiem is set, and Kagura Hikari saunters through.
Maya is convinced that Hikari sees Requiem in all its splendor based on the way she gazes around in fascination. Hikari has long black hair and the sharpest icy blue eyes, and she takes in the candelabra, the couches, the bar, and Maya herself before noticing the exit and making a path towards it without a word. And Maya makes the fatal mistake of following Hikari’s path to the door, setting eyes on the revolving door for the first time in weeks, her heart beating with fervor just seeing the dark wood. Of everything, the door itself remains in excellent condition. It does not budge for Hikari, but as she turns away, back to Maya, Maya catches a glimpse of the revolving door swaying, ready, ready for her to step through, as she knows it has been for weeks. Her surroundings are collapsing, she is meant to be here no longer.
Kagura Hikari died in a plane crash, according to the slip of paper Maya has behind the bar. She crumples it and tosses it away, though she knows everything stays now. “What is this place?” Hikari asks. I need to get back to Karen.”
“Sit down, have a drink. Tell me about Karen.”
Hikari doesn’t believe she is dead, and Maya finds herself wishing Claudine were downstairs to help the process along. But at the end of the session, all Maya has come up with is a very drunk Hikari who is fairly certain she is dead, but still unable to get the door to budge.
But it’s so easy, Maya thinks. It’s practically wavering on its hinges. She feels if she walks through, if she slips beyond the veil, she might just… cease to be.
Finally, she brings Hikari upstairs and they have dinner with Claudine. “Your wife is still alive,” Claudine says, summarizing, through bits of food that Maya can no longer taste.
“And I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.” Hikari has not touched her food. She’s all nerves, on the edge of her seat, glancing around the living chambers, and Maya understands. Hikari’s searching for a window, for a clock, for an emergency exit, for any way out of this timeless void that is Death. She knows she’ll find none.
“There is one way in and one way out of Requiem,” Claudine intones. “You have already entered, so all that remains is for you to leave through the revolving door. You may do so when you no longer have regrets. Until then, you may as well make yourself useful.”
Maya expects the sleeping situation to be uncomfortable since there are only two beds, but Hikari curls up on the sofa by the fireplace after dinner. It looks as if she had intended to search for an answer in a book, but it appears her body gave in to sleep from the events of the day. Maya goes back into the bedroom to change into pajamas, and sits on Claudine’s bed, automatically snuggling closer.
“What are we going to do?” she whispers.
Claudine sighs softly, kissing the spot where Maya’s neck meets her shoulder. “Did you know I stopped counting the days? I stopped making notches at 2,221.”
“Is that the day the door opened for you?” Maya asks, her voice dropping further, asking a question she doesn’t want the answer to.
Claudine nods and Maya can only feel the up-and-down motion of her lips against Maya’s shoulder. “The day before I stopped going to work.”
Maya forgets to breathe as she thinks about how many times they’ve slept since then, how many patrons have come and gone. How tasteless the food must be to Claudine, how derelict Requiem must appear. “You’re anchored here… just… for me?”
“I couldn’t go until I knew you could go. And well, selfishly, I like being here with you. But everytime I go down there, it’s practically pulling me through.” Claudine places a finger under Maya’s chin to turn her head and meet her gaze. “Maya. You know it too. We have to go.”
The next day, Hikari doesn’t want to get up. She remains huddled on the sofa by the fire in the living quarters, but Maya tosses a white shirt and black pants at her anyways. “Come on, I’ll show you how to run the bar. I can’t stay much longer, so you better learn quick.”
She isn’t sure if Hikari’s going to come at all, but she comes down the steps a few minutes later, pushing at the revolving door when she enters the parlor for good measure. It doesn’t budge. Maya shows her where everything is, avoiding the chasm at the center of the bar. She explains the process of how to guide people through, and when the green light turns on, Hikari watches Maya serve a young woman a few drinks before she moves on through the door, name in the book.
“Simple enough?” she asks.
“How do you know what to say?” Hikari asks.
“I showed you the little bit of information that comes through,” Maya says. “But otherwise, just think about what puts them at ease. Usually they just want a chat.”
Hikari runs her fingers over the thousands of notches in the wall behind the bar. She grabs a knife and adds one a bit further down. “Ok,” she says, lightly slapping her cheeks. “Until I figure out how to get back to my wife or send a message, I’ll help out here.”
Maya thinks about Hikari as she’s trying to fall asleep. About her regret, about letting go of her bonds from earth. Maya wonders if she could, had she been married to Claudine on earth. But that’s not my regret to contend with, she thinks.
In the middle of the night she is woken by Claudine, who takes her by the hand and leads her downstairs. Maya wants to pull Claudine towards her, to force her back into bed. She does not want to go towards the door. But each stair is rickety and creaks beneath her feet, the paint now peeling off the walls. When they get to the parlor, the eerie green light makes it look water-logged, like she’s in a shipwreck abandoned at the bottom of the ocean.
“I don’t want to go without you,” she says, surprised by how uneasy her voice sounds aloud.
“I won’t leave you,” Claudine says, her voice a little shaky as well. She steps behind the bar and prepares them both drinks, just sake this time, taking her time heating the carafe as Maya watches. “I can’t make anything else,” she confesses. “I’ve lost my taste so long ago.”
She pours the drink into small cups and it’s warm in Maya’s chest like it is every time, and she tries to convince herself that it’s courage, and not alcohol, settling within her. “Hikari will take care of Requiem,” Maya says, mostly to assure herself.
Claudine nods. “It’s not our job anymore.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, Maya.”
Maya leans forward to kiss Claudine, catching a glimpse of ruby red eyes before her vision is blurred by the murky emerald of the bar and the close range of the kiss. But it’s familiar, she’s met her soulmate, and they’re not parting, they’re just moving on together. She thinks of Hikari upstairs, who didn’t get this chance, and feels lucky, for once.
“Ready?” asks Claudine, pulling away just a few inches. She holds tightly to Maya’s arm and buries her head in Maya’s neck, as if she wants as much of them to be touching as possible when they cross over.
“No. Yes. Yes.” Maya turns her head to the side to give Claudine one more kiss among her blonde wavy hair, and they step forward, the door bidding them through. There is a brief moment of darkness as the door closes in its small compartment, and a whoosh as it opens on the other side. It was quiet.