| "Asparagus, I'm sure you wanted to choose death, but you were wrong. You didn't choose death. Death was chosen for you." Manatsu's statement on Asparagus' suicide represents Asparagus' mindset surprisingly well. Nothing was going to change her mind, no matter how close she and Manatsu were to become, or however much Manatsu did or might have attempted to change her mind. In my point of view, this story had one single, inevitable conclusion. Nothing could have possibly changed Asparagus' fate short of brute force (getting institutionalized for example). When Manatsu showed beyond any doubt that she desired to live, Asparagus likely felt betrayed, and alone as a result (though I'm sure she didn't resent Manatsu for it). Perhaps through the few... weeks(?) (it's not clearly stated) they spent at each other's side, she found some peace up to the very end. At the very least, up until the rooftop scene. I am saddened that her mind state was so beyond repair after the rooftop incident that she couldn't prepare a new suicide note with everything she wanted to tell the world before leaving it. This, more than the fact she committed suicide, is what turned a story with a bittersweet end into one with a bitter end, for me. On the rooftop, she was ready to die. She had her suicide note with everything she had to tell. It was all lost after she and Manatsu were rescued in the nick of time. The big loss to me is not her death, but everything she desired to say, to tell, to scream to the world being gone. Her bullies, in particular, escape unscathed because Asparagus could no longer tell the world how badly those girls destroyed her. That is why this story is bitter to me. Not Asparagus' ultimate fate - she couldn't deviate from that path. Not her death, but her final message to the world being lost, *that* is the one true loss. "Death isn't the end. Being forgotten is." And sure, she isn't forgotten, living on in Manatsu (and probably her parents?), but that's still a cruel fate. She killed herself at her most vulnerable state: alone, with a shaken, vulnerable state of mind, and without her suicide note to condemn her inhumane bullies. |
MirinkaiserJun 11, 2021 2:42 PM
| "Death is not the end. Being forgotten is." |