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暖かい
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Chapter Three
▏CARAMEL▕

꧁꧂

☾ STAGE THREE ☾

"I hope you like this tea."

Hakuji slowly bent down to kneel on the tatami mat in front of his lover, a hot cup of tea held carefully in both of his hands.

"I added both honey and lemon to this—hopefully, they help soothe your throat," he added, extending both his hands with the cup towards her.

(Y/N) took it highly appreciatively, but Hakuji made sure that she grasped on to it tightly as her hands were slightly shaking due to sudden weakness.

Her sickness was on-and-off now, but was ultimately getting worse.

One week, she would only have a slight cough. The next week, she'd have a ridiculously high fever. Another night, her body temperature would drop so low that her forehead felt cold against his touch, despite her own self feeling like she was burning.

The longer this went on, the more and more worried Hakuji became.

They were to be wedded soon, but it seemed that her illness might postpone that event.

The likelihood of those events happening were indubitably high, but it did not matter much to Hakuji.

All he wanted, more than anything in the world, was for the love of his life to be okay, and for her to live.

He truly worried for her and her well-being—and he felt utterly useless about it. What was he to do, when his beloved was ill-fated with this cursed sickness, and he had no idea what could be done to help or cure her?

Nothing was working.

No matter how many doctors or medications they faced, (Y/N)'s extreme bodily temperatures always returned in the near future.

At this point, (Y/N) had just kept persuading him to give up.

Hakuji did not like this idea of hers, for it implied that she was accepting defeat in this uphill battle. He did not want to cave in, but even in the back of his mind, he knew his efforts were fruitless. He knew that in the end, they could not win.

And that was when he dreadfully—and also incredibly reluctantly—followed what she told him to do.

He gave up.

No more doctors came by, no more medications—the two lovers just lived together quietly, struggling on their own.

"Thank you," his lover mumbled sweetly, and she finally drank the warm tea he had made just for her.

꧁꧂

"Order Numbers Fifty-Three and Fifty-Four!" Kanroji Mitsuri, who had finally showed up at the coffee shop, called out.

Before (Y/N) could even move to stand, Hakuji quickly declared, "I'll get them for us." He then made his way towards the counter, where he balanced the two drinks back to the table.

The girl sat quietly, various thoughts of confusion constantly swarming her head. After placing the two drinks down at their respective places, Hakuji moved to sit back down at his side of the small, round table across from her. His leg began to bounce quite excitedly as his single, steaming cup of mocha sat in front of him.

"You don't know how long I've been searching for you," he breathed out, and the relief was clear in his voice. "I've even tried looking for you through dating sites."

"Wow."

That was all (Y/N) could mumble out for now. Honestly, how else could she word her astonishment? It was all just too much for her to take in at the moment, and she didn't want to hurt his feelings.

But at the same time, however, she could not help but feel familiar attraction towards him. The feelings were recognizable to her—she felt them in her dream, or rather, her memories.

"I'm sorry," she decided to awkwardly spew out. The rim of Hakuji's cup was already placed at his lips when he hummed at her to continue. "But besides being number neighbors, how exactly do we know each other?"

Hakuji couldn't even take a sip of his mocha as he quickly put it down at her question. His confusion and slight fear instantaneously arose, making (Y/N) more nervous than before at his reaction.

He was lost—she said his name earlier, right? So that surely must mean that she remembers him and their past relationship together. If she didn't, then there was no way she would remember his name, as he had not told her of it during their unplanned phone call.

"What do you mean?" he voiced out.

"We've never met before," the girl explained, causing Hakuji's worry to ruse. "And yet, I feel like I know you? Well, I clearly guessed your name right—which is weird, because I heard it in a dream, but nowhere else."

"Oh, the dream," Hakuji pointed out, letting go of a huge sigh in relief. "You mean our past lives?"

"'Past lives'?" she echoed in bewilderment. "Is that why," she breathed out, before pausing. There was so much information for her to take in, and it was only being given to her now, after years? "Is that why it all felt so real?" she questioned, intonation and volume rising in disbelief.

Hakuji, who leaned forward in shock at the implications, voiced, "Wait." He looked completely perplexed in surprise as his light blue eyes widened. "So you're telling me," he began, trying his best to recount what she just told him, "you weren't aware it was real for these past few years?"

"How could I?" she almost exclaimed. "I had nothing to base it off of."

And she was right about that.

Hakuji inwardly cursed at himself for not finding her sooner.

The moment he himself found out, he had Kyoujurou to talk to. Meaning, the former Flame Hashira confirmed his dream to be true, historical reality. (Y/N), on the other hand, did not have anyone to confirm that. She had died in her past life before she could even fully see a demon or a Demon Slayer yet, after all.

The only person she truly knew from her past life was Hakuji, and he was not there with her up until now.

"Sorry for throwing such a huge bomb of information at you so suddenly," Hakuji sighed apologetically, head turning down in regret. He picked up his cup of mocha, which was cooled down a little, and finally took a sip from it, hoping to temporarily hide his face from her. When his lips released the rim of the cup, he added, "But everything you said did indeed happen. We were are reincarnations of our past life."

"'Reincarnations'," she echoed thoughtfully.

Well, she wasn't freaking out about the new situation, much to Hakuji's relief. He hoped that she would quickly accept this information as facts and go along with it, for in the end, there were little to no points available of denying it.

Then, his heart suddenly fluttered. (Y/N) looked up at him, smiling—and it was the same smile that made him melt all those years ago whenever he saw her. That smile of hers could always brighten up his day, which led him to sadness when her past illness took it away from his sight.

But now, he finally got to see it again.

He felt like he was going to fall in love with her all over again.

Actually, he was already in love.

"Then," she began a bit quietly, her fingertips tapping on the ceramic of her cup. "I'm glad that we're meeting again, Hakuji," she smiled at him. "And I'm actually healthy, in this life."

He let out a grin of both relief and pure, unadulterated happiness.

"You are?" he eagerly asked, to which she nodded at in response. "Thank goodness," he spoke through a wide smile. If he was being honest, he did have a small, twitching fear at the back of his mind about (Y/N)'s illness possibly traveling over to this life; But it seemed that he had nothing to worry about. "Does this mean we finally get to be happy together?"

Hakuji was just so elated, that (Y/N) thought he almost looked like an adorable puppy or a kid that had just received a gift on Christmas.

It was truly a miracle to her; why a part of her just felt so lost and empty her whole life now made sense.

She felt completed with her lost memories back to her. And, she felt completed with her long lost love finally here in front of her in the modern era.

"Yes," she said to him.

And with another smile of pure, untainted joy and love, she continued.

"We can finally be happy."

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