Survivor

The grave was a small, stone thing. The characters for Otonashi were etched down the front slab. Branching below it were four names, two parents that would have been so proud of their son, a little sister who had passed on far too soon, and his name.

Igarashi removed his hat as he crouched down. With practiced movements, he held the bouquet of flowers out and let it rest gently against the gravestone. He'd been doing it for years, unable to forget the courage and strength that one boy held in his dying body.

Otonashi Yuzuru had wanted to be a doctor. He wanted to save lives and put his life to use. Newspapers regaled Otonashi-san as a hero and the boy deserved it. He deserved his story printed in the papers that told of struggle and salvation and inevitability.

They'd been in that cursed tunnel for seven days. For seven days Otonashi-san had persevered as his body slowly destroyed itself. It hadn't been fair that the last flame of that young man's life had been snuffed out mere moments before the walls echoed with drills and heavy equipment and the rubble began to crumble away.

The boy kept them all alive, gave them the strength to survive and care, and he'd died for it just so they could see the brilliant flash of light again. It was almost like a cruel god was just granting Otonashi-san's wish. Saved lives with his own effort, but was robbed of his own by the most twisted pull of fate's strings that Igarashi could ever think of.

He remembered reading in a small article that the hero from that fateful derailment had saved a life after death as well. He wondered if, up in heaven (as there was no way he was going to believe Otonashi-san was going anywhere else), that Otonashi-san was happy about that. Or maybe he'd been reincarnated and was blissfully unaware of the good he'd done, but was living his life to the degree he'd never had the opportunity to.

"Thank you for your time and sacrifice, Otonashi-san," Igarashi murmured as his eyes locked onto his once companion's name in the cold stone surface. "I wish our friendship could have lasted longer. I wish, every day, that you'd been able to make it out with all of us, too."

"Oh!"

Igarashi turned his head sharply. He hadn't even heard the woman approach. Her face was obscured by a billowing bouquet of white flowers of all different varieties.

She shifted the flowers out of her face and smiled. "I'm sorry if I startled you. I didn't expect anyone to be here, is all."

Igarashi's eyes narrowed as he squinted into the woman's face before they widened suddenly in recognition. He hadn't known the woman's name, but he recognized her face even without the gauntness of starvation, blood, and dirt about it. It was a little harder to remember than he imagined, as she had cut her hair, but he did. She'd been trapped in that godless tunnel just as he and Otonashi-san had.

Standing up to his full height, he gave the woman a bow. "There's no need to apologize. I was just finishing up."

He turned and left. He didn't want to hear what the woman had to say. He'd rather give her the time to pay her respects, anyway, than discuss entrapment and honor and such painful, dark memories.

A/N: EPISODE 9 IS THE SADDEST EPISODE.