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Say something I'm giving up on you
- A Great Big World

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Nothing

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The first time they see someone get obliterated, they don't know what to do.

Because one minute she was there, singing them a sad song, the next she's gone and her guitar sits on the floor as if it was always there. The crowd is hushed and confused, and without really knowing, everyone in the Battlefront is sure that she's gone.

When everyone leaves; the stage, amps and fans remain and he stands in her place.

Her guitar is gone, taken by Girls Dead Monster. No one will play that guitar, they had told Yuri; it was Iwasawa's. And they went, carrying the instrument reverently – it was the last thing she had touched, the device of her emotions, the gun that set her free.

Where she stood, it looks the same.

Not a single speck of dust or a lone strand of her hair on the ground to validate that she even existed.

But she did.

Like a ghost, she had given them chills and left without warning.

It's still early, he thinks, Girls Dead Monster would still be playing if the teachers hadn't interfered and Iwasawa hadn't –

The cafeteria is so silent it physically hurts. Not a soul in sight, not even the NPCs are roaming. But maybe it's normal…most schools didn't have midnight concerts, sting operations to get food tickets off of unsuspecting students or shell casings on the ground marking where battle had taken place.

This once, the cafeteria looks normal.

But he hates that it feels normal too; like nothing had changed and everyone was simply in their rooms doing homework or relaxing with their friends. As if a person who was admired, idolized and loved, disappearing before a crowd of hundreds, was completely normal – like it was part of some act and she'd show up in class the next day completely normal.

She was obliterated; there was no way she was coming back, and they had nothing to remember her by.

No tombstone to visit no funeral to cry at; nothing; just like when she was alive: there for a moment and then gone the next.

They only had her guitar.

Yui is obliterated too thanks to Hinata, her missing pink exuberance adding to the abrupt silence that was slowly turning the school into an abandoned building: neither haunted nor inhabited, just an empty building.

He likes to think that the footprints she had made on the baseball pitch that day were blown away by the breeze, but he doesn't really know. What he does know though is that Hinata has to be obliterated too if he's to keep his promise to Yui. Neither of them deserve to be without the other.

When a large portion of the Battlefront decides that getting obliterated couldn't be worse than their lives in this limbo existence, they don't leave anything.

No phantom footprints. No chills in their wake. No guitar to carry around in their memory.

They had said goodbye. He blinked. And the room was empty.

He was optimistic that it was for the best, people passed on and there was really nothing to do but accept it.

When his sister died he…he couldn't keep anything of hers, there were the mangas and books he had gotten her, but he had to sell them to pay for her funeral arrangements and after that…For a moment he closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, feeling his chest ache.

The day she passed away he had been at her bedside, completely unaware that soon she would be gone.

He remembered telling her about the things they'd do sometime in the future after she got better, maybe he could get her a bicycle and teach her how to ride, or go on a trip to the ocean – she'd always wanted to see it; play in the sand and stand in the foaming waters of the retreating tide…

Hatsune had told him that she was tired, but didn't want him to leave, and so he kept on talking, hand in hers.

He would work harder to get a nice house so that when she was better, she could live with him. He'd get her more books, and a pet too if she wanted. They could go to annual carnivals and festivals and take walks in the park whenever she wanted. He could show her the mall and buy her pretty dresses and shiny things…

It wasn't until he was woken by a nurse that the silence of the room settled in.

The machine keeping his sister alive wasn't beeping and the doctor and nurse weren't fussing over her or her IV tubes. Instead they stood beside him, telling him quietly that they were sorry…

His panic was palpable; he tightened his grip on her hand and shook her, begging her to say something, anything at all.

For all those things he promised and couldn't fulfill, Hatsune had whispered, ever grateful to him, "Thank you."

Throat constricting so tight unshed tears made his eyes glisten, he wondered if his sister knew that she was going to die in those few hours they had been together. If maybe she didn't send him away because she wanted him to be near for her last moments, to be able to feel someone's touch before she couldn't feel anything anymore…

After graduation, Naoi and Yuri disappear without a trace, not even a teardrop on the floor to say that Naoi, the hypnotist and self-proclaimed God and Yuri, the Battlefront's fearless leader, had cried.

With Hinata, the disappearances of everyone he had known in this world finally hits him when his hand is still raised in a high-five he didn't get back…

Unfinished, that's what his existence was made out of, he thinks, remembering the life he had lived – improving his sister's life only to have her die, saving people's lives during that train accident and on the verge of improving his own life when he too dies…He thinks that his is a life unlived, not tragic.

Some have the pleasure of living while others simply exist.

And he was just existing while he was alive…

Here though, he lived.

He had a purpose, he had good memories and even better friends, and he had Kanade.

With everyone gone and the school only harboring NPCs, he asks her if she will stay with him.

Unlike the others he has nothing keeping him from moving on, he had no dream to share, no goal to achieve, it was likely he'd stay here forever. And the thought was lonely, but with her he wouldn't be, this whole time in this strange world he'd landed in, she'd been a reminder of a purpose more far reaching than food, she reminded him of protecting and saving and lov –

"I can't."

It's not an answer he's not ready for.

"But I -"

"I have to go," she says quietly, looking up at him with those gold eyes, usually blank but strangely glassy. When he can do nothing but stare, she continues, "I never told you why I'm here."

"You don't need a reason." I don't have one.

"You. I'm here because of you."

There's a field a few hundred meters away where NPCs are doing track and hanging out on the grandstands. Maybe they know why they're here, or maybe they're just going with whatever is happening before one day they disappear too with no one to notice…

That's the difference between them.

When she tells him that it's his heart beating in her chest, he thinks it's ironic that he was going to add the cheesy "you have my heart" to his declaration of love only to have it taken literally.

"I lived because of you." Her lips quirk. "I was alive here because of you."

"Kanade." He takes a step, and she doesn't resist, instead she reaches up to touch his chest – the chest she stabbed on the first day they met, the chest that lacks a heart to beat because it was in her.

"I'm here because I wanted to thank you."

His hands grasp her shoulders, afraid that she'd disappear before his very eyes with those words alone. It would be the last goodbye before she'd leave him like Iwasawa, Yui, Naoi, Yuri, Hinata, Hatsune...before he'd be alone in this strange plane of existence. But Kanade's still there, solid and real, her hand at his chest and her forehead resting just above it. "Thank you." He wonders if he's being punished, if God was as cruel as Yuri believed.

Arms tighten around her to keep her there, and his chin rests on the crown of her head as he tries to imprison her within himself. "Don't go."

"Thank you."

"Stop Kanade, stop, please stop. Don't…"

She obliges and her arms wrap themselves around him too as she says into his chest, "Please…say it again…"

"Don't go…don't go because…because I love you."

He can almost feel the smile pressed against him and its killing him.

"Again," she pleads, and he shakes his head furiously.

"No..." It's her reason, it's how she'll be obliterated, and he can't let her.

"Please Yuzuru…please…"

His fingers clench, his knuckles are white and she's in his arms trembling, begging him for the three words that would set her free and trap him forever. "Please, say something…"

"You'll be obliterated…and I can't…I can't let you."

"You can," she whispers, "you can because you love me, because having you love me will give me the strength to move on from here."

"What about me?"

"I don't know, but," the small girl draws him tighter to her, "I love you Yuzuru."

Its heaven in hell and every part of him is shattering, but he tells her over and over because there's nothing left to say to her but that.

When Kanade is obliterated she leaves nothing behind.

No faint smell of perfume. No wisp of hair. No trembling good-bye or last declaration against his chest.

When she's obliterated, there's no hand on his heart and no tightening at his chest because when he lands on his knees with only the whispers to mock him, he is nothing.

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Owari

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A/n: This anime haunts me…

Edit: Found out Yuzuru's sister's name is Hatsune, hopefully Wikipedia wasn't lying to me.