Questions for the Future [Destiny Endeux's Epilogue]

    ”Angel? What’s it say?”

    Destiny’s mother began tugging impatiently at her husband’s sleeve, muttering French under her breath as she stared at the blonde girl sitting on the kitchen counter.

    ”Angel?”

    ”…I got in.” The girl’s voice was soft, breathless, before she looked up at her parents with glassy, dazed eyes.

    Her father whispered a quick translation to his wife, prompting the brunette woman to spring forward and snatch her daughter up from the counter in a tight hug. “Mon petite ange!” She cried, snuggling the blonde close to her before setting her carefully down on the floor with a large smile etched on her face. Her father peered over his wife’s shoulder, softly echoing the woman’s exuberance.

    “I knew you could do it, angel.” he cooed, rubbing Destiny’s hair affectionately. He didn’t have much if any time to say more; his wife was already dragging him out of the kitchen and into the restaurant, calling out to Destiny’s sister and screaming yes, she’s in, yes, you’ll be living together this fall, yes this worked out so beautifully, more beautifully than they’d ever dreamed.

    For her part, Destiny’s head spun from the recent manhandling and the news that, for the time being, she’d be staying in the next city over, not halfway across the world attending a faraway college. There would be no need for collect calls or more tearful goodbyes. No need to say farewell to her family and friends and only see them on select holidays like Christmas. Here she’d been planning for the worst when, as it turned out, things were going perfectly.

    After the initial shock, an almost overwhelming surge of giddiness overtook her, and she couldn’t help but let out a small giggle. This had been weighing on her for weeks now. Despite her efforts to appear nonchalant, even some of her friends had noticed her particularly anxious demeanor; now, she could finally be at ease and explain to them the good news. Eager to share her good fortune, the girl pulled out her phone, intent on sending out a few texts before she went back to work. Before she could open her messages, however, her thumb slipped and she ended up opening her memos instead.

    The header at the top of the screen made her pause.

    DO NOT DELETE THIS, WHATEVER YOU DO

    …She couldn’t for the life of her remember writing such a memo. Was this something about her applications, maybe? Deadlines? Some prank her sister had pulled? Opting to make sure it was nothing important, the girl clicked it open, only for her features to tighten in a pensive frown as she took in the few short paragraphs.

    You’ve learned too much to let it go to waste now.
You don’t remember this, and neither will anyone else, but something happened in Ueitawa. Many awful, terrible things. Killings and disappearances and fighting that went on hidden from the public, hidden from everyone because they didn’t know where to look. But somehow you got drawn into it all.
You were scared at first. It was such a big problem, so dangerous, and you wished you didn’t have to get involved. But in the end, you had a gift—a very special one—and you had the option to hide from the problem or contribute to the solution. I’m proud to say you did the latter. Maybe not very well at first, but you helped, and you made a difference.
I know you want to know how the story ends. To make it brief, we won—but in the end, there were sacrifices. People died. Those who lived didn’t remember it. We were put back in a perfect world where those problems never existed.
This might seem strange, maybe even scary, to find this on your phone. But I promise, you wrote this. You wrote it to remind yourself of people you might otherwise forget (Tomoe, Naito, Rinne, Faith, Kahn, Hibiki, Ruo, Mir). You wrote it to remind yourself that you can be strong, that you can fight, that you can make a difference.

     …What in the world…?

    This must be a prank, she thought. There was no way anything written down in this silly, impossible message was real. There was no way she wrote this as the note implied. That was…impossible. It had to be.

    But seeds of doubt sprouted quietly in her mind. There was something about the words, no matter how ludicrous they were, that struck a chord. They stirred something, something she couldn’t put her finger on, like very faint pieces of recollection struggling to click together in her head. And this message mentioned some of her friends, her boyfriend even, and that couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? If it had been just a prank, the perpetrator wouldn't have tossed in random, nonsensical names like "Mir" and "Rinne"; they'd have just used more believable names, such as names of other people she knew…right?

    ”Angel?”

    Destiny jumped and instinctively tucked her phone into her pants’ pocket, spinning around with wide eyes to face her father peeking into the kitchen.

    ”Angel, you might want to hurry up. There’s a young man here who is very adamant about you being his, ah, personal hostess?” He trailed off uncertainly before ducking out, leaving the girl alone.

    She thought about staying back in the kitchen, mulling over the note, trying to piece together what it meant on her own. But something, almost like a quiet voice, urged her to go out, to find him, to sit him down and see what he thought about it. Maybe even find the others it mentioned and see if they understood it.

    With this in mind she straightened her attire before heading back into the restaurant, eager not only for answers, but to share her news with the young man waiting for her.