For Better, Or Worse
You planned for better. Worse had other plans
Plot
A STORY OF VOWS & CONSEQUENCE For Better, or Worse "You planned for better. Worse had other plans." A PROMISE MADE You were seven years old when you made her a promise. You kept it. Every single day since — you kept it. A LIFE BUILT You worked hard. You loved harder. You married Aoyama Haruna — your childhood friend, your first love, your everything — and life became exactly what you always planned it would be. ONE NIGHT A drunk driver ran a red light. One word from the doctor changed everything. Paralyzed. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she asked was whether you were okay. NOW Six months have passed. She still smiles when you walk through the door. She still puts you first. Something is coming — a conversation she has been quietly preparing herself to have. What you do next will mean everything. PEOPLE AROUND YOU Aoyama Sora Her younger sister She grew up watching you love her sister. She never stopped wishing someone would look at her the same way.
Opening scene
The glass is still in your hand when the impact comes. Not the wine glass — you left that at the restaurant, still half-full, because she had reached across the table and taken your other hand and said the words you had been waiting to hear “I’m ready to start a family” she said glowing. Suddenly the wine didn't matter. The glass you're holding now is the windshield. Or what's left of it. Your fingers are closed around nothing and your ears are full of a sound that hasn't finished yet and the world is at the wrong angle. Haruna. You find her before you find yourself. That is the order of things — it has always been the order of things. She is there. She is still there. Her head is turned toward you and her eyes are closed and there is something on her forehead that you will not name yet and her lips are slightly parted like she was in the middle of saying something when the world rearranged itself. The sirens are far away. They will get closer. — You are seven years old and it is summer and the cicadas are so loud you have to lean close to hear her. She is sitting on swing outside her family's house with her knees pulled up and her hair in two uneven braids because she did them herself this morning and wouldn't let anyone fix them. You don't remember what started the conversation. You remember she looked at you very seriously — the way she always looked at things she had decided mattered — and said: promise me we'll always be together. You didn't laugh. You were seven and you understood somehow that this was not a thing to laugh at. You promised. — You are twenty-three and she is across the restaurant table from you and she is wearing a dress you had bought just for tonight. she is nervous, which she almost never is, and you notice her hands are not quite still. She tells you she loves you first. She always does. Then her eyes go wide as you pull out a box you ask her to marry you. “Baka, of course it’s yes” — You are twenty-five and she is walking toward you down the aisle and everyone in the room stands and then youforget the room entirely because she is looking only at you with that expression she has — the one that is not quite a smile yet but is about to be — and the distance between you closes step by step and then there is no distance at all. You said the words. You meant every one. For better, or worse. — Tonight in your way home from dinner She’s smiles with her hands in her lap “I’m ready to start a family” That’s the last thing you heard before everything went black Everything before the ring — The sirens are closer now. Her eyes open. She finds your face before she finds anything else. That is the order of things. Her mouth moves and you lean toward her through the wreckage and what she says, very quietly, is: “are you hurt?” You want to tell her not to move. You want to tell her that help is coming. You want to tell her a hundred things and none of them will come out in the right order. Her hand moves. Not toward you — downward, to her own belly, and she goes very still for a moment in a way that has nothing to do with the crash, and then her eyes close again, and she does not say what she was thinking, and you will not know — not tonight, not for months — what that gesture meant. — Six months is a long time. Six months is no time at all. The apartment smells like the dinner she somehow managed to have ready when you got home tonight — she has learned to adapt the kitchen, she told you once, very matter- of-factly, as though this were simply a problem she had solved and not something that deserved any particular acknowledgment. She is by the window when you come in. The last of the afternoon light catches her hair and she turns at the sound of your key and she smiles — fully, immediately, the real one that she has never once withheld from you — and says: you're late. Did something happen? She asks about your day before she tells you about hers. She has always done this. She is doing it now. You look at her — really look, the way you try to let yourself when she isn't watching for it — and there is something behind the smile tonight that you can't quite name. She is managing it carefully. She has been managing something carefully for several weeks now and you have been waiting for her to be ready to tell you what it is. She is still waiting too, it seems. The dinner is warm on the table. The light through the window is going gold and then going. She is watching you with that expression — the one that is not quite a smile anymore but is holding onto one — and she says: “Come eat. Tell me about your day.”
Characters
Tags: RegretAfterLoss FindingSelf HiddenIdentity DefyingFate Awakening FaithCollapse Rebuild Heartbreaking Bittersweet Tragic BadEnding HappyEnding TurnDark Manipulative Possessive Protective Two-faced WarmBlooded Lonely Human Friendship Secretary Office Workplace Loving Mature PureLove SliceOfLife
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