Shigure was reviewing Shimakaze's memory, a function that was available to them and allowed them to share knowledge quickly by transferring and relieving each other's memories.
She was now coming up on a small clearing that had well maintained plots of land as the various erected tombstones barely peeked out at the end of the road, much like what she had seen on her own trek into the forest as Shimakaze likely cut to the important part in order to keep things short and in focus.
But Shimakaze noticed a white-jacket-and-cap-wearing woman at the graveyard and was sitting on the grass and doing something, the Shimakaze-Class destroyer breaking out into a run to meet her Admiral at the tombstone of Amatsukaze, clearly a new addition as her tombstone didn't possess the wear and tear as well as the minute cracks that plagued the other tombstones.
Admiral Haru noticed the fast destroyer approaching her, raising her left index finger to her mouth as she turned to face the approaching Shimakaze while still seated.
Shimakaze, barely panting even after finishing the fast run in order to reach Admiral Haru, whispered to the Admiral while respecting her wishes to try and keep her volume low.
"Admiral, what're you doing here?"
Admiral Haru took off her jacket and officer's cap to fan herself even though it was still early in the day, revealing a white tank top and black exercise bra.
The Admiral removed her Admiral's blazer to use as a makeshift picnic blanket for Shimakaze to sit on, setting it down and patting it as an invitation, causing Shimakaze to visibly cringe at how little Admiral Haru cared about everything else in trying to make things more comfortable for her girls.
After some hesitation, Shimakaze reluctantly sat down on her commander's blazer that was now strewn on the grass surface, Haru smiling down at the fact that her ship girl wouldn't get her miniskirt dirty.
Admiral Haru then piped up with an answer to Shimakaze's question, remarking.
"I come here sometimes to pay my respects to the ship girls who died in the line of duty. I feel that I can't leave them behind just because they're gone, you know?"
Jabbing her thumb at the white lilies resting in front of the individual tombstones, she noted.
"I also come here to replace those every now and then. Makes me feel as if I can still do something for them…"
Admiral Haru looked away, her eyes becoming distant and morose as she remembered them, but Shimakaze tried to speak up in her favor.
"B-But, it's not your fault! You can't guarantee our safety out there on the battlefield, even after you've accounted for every factor. No amount of preparation can stop a cannon round from carving a hole into our heads, instantly sinking us."
Shimakaze cringed at her own gruesome description of a ship girl sinking, but Admiral Haru shook her head tiredly, her red hair somewhat of a mess as her bangs covered her depressed golden eyes, remarking.
"Yeah, but as a leader who's responsible for you all, I still feel that it's partially my fault that I caused Amatsukaze to sink…"
Shimakaze clenched her fists, gritting her teeth and trying to calm herself down before trying to clear something up with the Admiral.
"It's not your fault that Amatsukaze sank. It was mine."
Admiral Haru shot Shimakaze a glance, and Shimakaze lowered her gaze as she started to feel as though she didn't deserve to meet her Admiral's gaze, an uncomfortable lump starting to form in her throat.
"I-I…"
Shimakaze was struggling to get the words out to try and explain things to her Admiral, and she couldn't simply share her memory file with the Admiral as she was a human, which meant that she had to verbally communicate to her what happened between them.
"You know that Amatsukaze and I often race together, both on land and on sea, right?"
Admiral Haru nodded, as Shimakaze continued talking about what happened before the fateful sortie.
"Well, this one time before a sortie, we raced, and being a fast ship girl, I always won against Amatsukaze. But I recently felt that she had been holding back against me the entire time, and I pressured her to try and go all-out against me. A-And the thing was that…"
Shimakaze was conflicted as she tried to admit the next statement.
"I lost."
Admiral Haru raised an eyebrow at that, but was silent as she listened to Shimakaze continue on, Shimakaze starting to feel uneasy and regretful over the next course of action that she took after she lost.
"I, umm… Back then, I had never lost before and couldn't handle the thought of losing, and I didn't take the loss very well as I shouted at her and accused her of being a cheater. A-And I know that I shouldn't have done that, bu-but…"
Shimakaze was trying her best to hold in her tears as Shimakaze's sight blurred, Admiral Haru shifting on the spot in order to sit next to Shimakaze as she put an arm over Shimakaze's slouching shoulders.
Shimakaze was trying her best not to sob as she continued.
"I kept on trying to have a rematch with her, but she tried not to make the situation worse and declined every time. It was until that time when Yukikaze wasn't feeling well, and Amatsukaze was chosen to be the replacement in the sortie where she sank."
Admiral Haru interrupted Shimakaze at this point and pointed out.
"See, there's the problem. If I had chosen anyone else for the job, maybe a heavy cruiser or even a light cruiser to do the job instead of Amatsukaze, then you wouldn't have been left alone. And just like how you blame yourself for Amatsukaze's death, I feel that having played a role in Amatsukaze's death, I should also have the right to blame myself."
Now full-on hugging a crying Shimakaze, she whispered.
"And if you want me to stop blaming myself, I can only say this. That's only going to happen when you stop blaming yourself. I'm not leaving you alone in this cycle of self-condemnation and self-loathing."
Shimakaze, still valiantly trying to muffle her sobs, now had tears streaming down her cheeks as she continued.
"Th-The Abyssals got the jump on us, as you probably know from the After-Action Report… I was trying to go faster than I usually did in order to prove to Amatsukaze that I was stronger and faster than her, and I think I must have tripped as my boat slipper hit a wave at the wrong angle, because I fell flat on my face. As I was trying to get up, there were three torpedoes headed right for me, and before I could try to dodge, Amatsukaze used her extreme-speed to position herself in front of me and took the two torpedoes, as I curled up in a fetal position to avoid the third."
Shimakaze was starting to shiver from the fright of simply remembering the sight of her cousin ship after using herself as a human shield.
But she continued, trying to explain everything to her Admiral as Admiral Haru cringed at the thought of a child desperately throwing herself so selflessly in front of certain death to protect a sibling from harm.
"A-A… And when I dared to look up, I saw that Amatsukaze… She didn't have her legs anymore… The explosion of the torpedo blew off everything below her knees, and she was looking at me with a look, as if she was glad. A-and she said to me… "
Shimakaze broke down in tears at this point, now letting out her grief and guilt pour out of her as she sobbed hysterically into her gloved palms, Admiral Haru using her arm slung over Shimakaze's shoulder to hug her tighter.
"She told me, 'You're not hurt… That's great.' An Abyssal then surfaced behind her, the Ri-Class heavy cruiser pointing all her cannons at us… Amatsukaze somehow used her body weight to throw herself in front of me again, this time the cannons blowing off one of her arms.
My Rensouhou-chan all did their best to try and fend off their Ri-Class as they emptied their cannons, but to no avail. The blood flowing from Amatsukaze's limbs were like geysers, spraying on my uniform as she tried to use her body to shield me against the incoming Abyssals that had surfaced and were headed in our direction. I had to retreat as more and more Abyssals gathered around Amatsukaze and emptied their cannons into her body. And the worst thing was…"
Shimakaze's tears didn't stop flowing, but she was now sobbing less as she reached the end of sadness, and was strafing dangerously close into despair as she remembered the most haunting detail about that moment.
"And the entire time they did that, they used their weaker cannons, like the Small Caliber 5 Inch Dual Guns to amputate her last limb and weaken her as they immediately dragged her down into the depths as they submerged. But looking back on the memory, I was sure that they did their best not to kill her, as if they wanted to capture her alive, and amputating her simply made transporting her easier. She was conscious the entire time, screaming for me to get away from the Abyssals clustering around her, and even after we were a safe distance away, she was still screaming in pain from the point-blank cannon fire. And I… I DID NOTHING TO STOP THEM! I RAN LIKE A COWARD!"
Shimakaze cried into her Admiral's shoulders as she sobbed hysterically, Admiral Haru now speechless and unsure of how to try and help her girls this time.
Shigure shuddered upon reviewing the memory, and tried her best to look Shimakaze in the eye.
Shimakaze looked away from her, visibly disgusted at herself as she commented on her cowardly ways whilst staring at Amatsukaze's tombstone with dead, grieving eyes and stated.
"I was a coward, and my speed was only useful in helping me run away like one, despite my best efforts. And I wanted the Admiral to punish me, to suspend me or even scrap me… But she didn't do any of that, which infuriated me even more at the time. I kept thinking that I deserved any punishment that the Admiral meted out, but she didn't do any of that as she told me that punishing myself mentally was torturous enough. Everyone wasn't sure of how to try and comfort me because I didn't have siblings to rely on, and slowly, I pretended to recover in order to try and get everyone off of my back, and it worked for the most part. I knew that everyone meant well, but everyone had sister ships to share their sorrows with, and that's something I'll never be able to empathize with, being the lone ship girl of my class. But Admiral Haru could only offer her shoulder to cry on, which was what I really needed at that time. If it wasn't for her, I think I might have turned out even worse than how I am right now…"
Shigure looked at the flowers, applauding the Admiral for taking the time out of her schedule to come here and replace these flowers in order to show her sincerity, since the white lilies were a healthy color and didn't look as if they were going to wilt anytime soon.
But something else that Shigure noted were the deep footprints on the grass and the dirt path that connected the clearing to the main road of the hill, and how they led to Sakawa and Lebe's tombstones.
Estimating the weight and the amount of pressure that had to be exerted in order to leave footprints that sank into the dirt and couldn't be easily washed away by the rain and seasons, Shigure deduced that those footprints were likely left by battleships, who had the highest weight displacement and figured that Nagato and Bismarck would be the ones to visit the two graves, since they were closely related to them due to their pasts or nationalities respectively.
But back to the present.
Having had an epiphany regarding what she was really living and fighting for, she now understood why Amatsukaze was so driven to protect Shimakaze despite their last race leaving them on bitter terms, and had allowed the Shimakaze-Class destroyer to safely escape at the cost of her own life.
It was almost admirable in a sense, Shigure closing her eyes and lowering her head out of respect for all the ship girls present as she raised her arms in order to bring her palms together and pray for them, hoping that whatever afterlife they ended up in was a better world than their current one.
And eventually, Shimakaze followed suit, raising her arms and bringing her hands together as she slowly closed her eyes and lowered her head respectfully, Shigure feeling her heart break a little as she heard the destroyer try to hold back a sob.
After about ten seconds of silence save for the barely-perceptible rustling of the trees and the passive chirping of the crickets that helped to fill the silence between them and hung over the graveyard like a miasma, they both opened their eyes and lowered their arms to stand before the tombstones, Shigure now at a loss as to what she was supposed to do in order to help Shimakaze from here on out.
But she heard something being uttered by the silent destroyer beside her.
"Don't..."
Shigure gave the Shimakaze-Class destroyer an an aside glance, wondering what she was talking about as she hadn't finished her sentence, and took it upon herself to ask for some clarification.
"I'm sorry. Don't what, Shimakaze-san?"
The scantily-clad destroyer was looking at the tombstone of the sunk Amatsukaze, her expression unusually sullen and brooding as she requested in a meek voice.
"... Don't die. Don't sink. Please."
Shigure's eyes widened upon hearing that, before narrowing in realization as she smiled and answered in a similarly quiet voice in order not to disturb the tranquil atmosphere that permeated the graveyard, her voice firm yet gentle as she reassured the grieving destroyer.
"Of course."