Part 21- Between Yesterday and Diamonds
[Version 1.1]

The longer he lay there, the more unfamiliar the words became, until 
they fell as feathers to the ground, splintering like raindrops on the 
sidewalk against the melody, tripped in the way of his glassy, nearly 
sightless eyes upon the fingerprints that dappled her half-naked body.

To him, there was no room any more.  No music.  No world where the rain 
was real.  Nothing but her and the chill spray of the ocean sinking 
into the skin of his chest.  In the wind that could not be, her hair 
flew from her shoulders and she would not brush it back in place.  Yes, 
and in the summer sky, stars were falling even though neither morning 
nor night was it, and her eyes must see them.

He could almost feel her heartbeats on the air between him and the 
slim, white shoulder she always, always turned to him; away from 
sorrows and towards the endless expanse of water.  The sky colored them 
both, mirrored and mirrors all the way back to place where time still 
felt him, touched him, loved him, spoke with a voice sweet as vanilla 
icing...

Though he dreamed not in the embrace of some immaculate white gondola 
spinning through the vanished brush strokes of a Michael Parks 
painting.  No waves stopped for him, and no clouds.  The stereo skipped 
and skipped and skipped.  And that was it, the same song one more time.

His lips moved with it, and no sound was left in them between one sip 
of his beloved bottle and the next.

If I had money
If I had children
Summer sky
Stars are falling
All along the injured coast

We are standing in the sunlight
The early morning sunlight...

If he had still possessed the strength to raise his head, he would have 
found it still too early for the dawn to bloom- 3:26 AM. Between his 
beloved reverie and his drink, still he could not sleep.  

His beloved ran dry then and he let her fall to the floor.  Clang, 
right on top of the last one as he reached for another, opening it 
blind with his hand still bloody from the top of the last one.  He'd 
cut himself.  He cut himself again, and once more began to drink, 
scarcely aware that the cadence seemed to have changed.  The drums no 
longer tumbled on the skin of something soft, but metal now, and 
someone else's voice.  It crossed him only in the vaguest detail 
perhaps he should get the chord replaced on the CD player... but he 
couldn't leave her, couldn't leave her or her sister in the dark little 
bottles.  But his name, over and over and over, part of the tune.

This is a lonely life
Sorrows everywhere you turn...

Naru, Naru, Naru...

***

"Naru!" Masato shouted yet again over the pounding of his fist upon the 
door.  "I want to talk to you!"

"Then use a phone, you ass!" shouted a gruff voice from across the 
hall. "Some of us are trying to sleep!" 

Fuming, Masato whirled about to glare at the man's cracked door, only 
to have it shut firmly in his face.  

"Yeah, and I'd like to sleep too, but the kid won't let me!"  

Intently then did he regard Naru's own door, sizing up the state of the 
lock.  The metal paint was peeling around the edges, and the slot bore 
the taint of rust within; probably camewith the building.  Masato 
tapped at the base of the door with his toe, and it shivered in the 
warped frame. One solid kick near the knob would get him inside.  
Masato took a step backward, and brought his booted foot up hard; 
the door sprang open with a loud, splintering pop. 

"I warned you!" cried the neighbor again. "I'm gonna call--"

"Shut the hell up!" yelled Masato, and he pressed the sprung door back 
into place, and then turned to survey the scene before him. Naru didn't 
move from his perch upon his couch, and Masato realized why he 
hadn't. With a bitten off curse, he stalked over to the cd player, 
and angrily punched it off. Then he rounded on Naru, but got no 
further than uttering his name before his attention was caught by the 
painting on the wall. 


***

The boy didn't answer at first, didn't look anything more than asleep 
as he lay supine in the arms of his worn and patched couch.  Save that 
his eyes were half-open.  Once or twice the bottle in his hands clanked 
against his teeth as he drank, and that was all the more he moved- it 
was only scarcely he blinked.  Or breathed.

But out of the blue then, he purred in wonderment of something.  Naru 
didn't pull himself up on the couch.  Didn't lifted his head.  Didn't 
brush his scraggly lashes out of the way so he could see better.

He simply flung the bottle at Masato.  It broke on the table in a 
puddle of golden suds, only a few shards even coming close to the elder 
Crasher's body.

"Get out of the way, you stupid fuck! I want to look at momma some 
more."

***

Grumbling under his breath, Masato lunged forward and hauled him 
upright into a sitting position, though he had to hold him up in order 
to keep him that way. 

"You're the stupid fuck, Naru. What the hell are you doing? I know 
you aren't drinking like this over ME! So...what is it? Who is it? 
That Yuuji?" He gave him a little shake. "Are you still mooning 
over that idiot after all this time?" 

***

"'course I'm not mooning over YOU!" the boy spat back.  "I've never 
seen you before in my life! Never heard you or..."

He sniffled a moment, with drowned tears or the onset of a cold.  It 
was hard to tell as filmy-bright as the alcohol made his eyes.  

"Never even smelled you.  I don't know you.  I don't want to know you! 
I'm so sick of you Kritiker bastards coming after me! Can I not have 
one day's peace!? One day! One day is long enough for me to die!"

In the silence that took his lips after his hiccup, Naru simply rolled 
his eyes, and fell limp into the arms of the lover he couldn't quite 
make out, smiling madly, and yet somehow, more content than ever in 
whatever dim and secret designs he had tumbled into. 

"And I haven't a reason to live now.  Masato doesn't really love me.  
My only friend will be killed by them no matter what I do.  Momma 
stopped being real to me a long time ago... and I'm so tired..."

***  

Masato, who had been holding Naru so stiffly during his rambling 
speech, now held the boy to him in a crushing hug. 

"Naru," he said, loosening his hold on him just enough for comfort, 
quite ashamed of himself for getting so angry before. "It's me, 
Masato. I do love you, and I don't want you to die," he said softly, 
his voice cracking on the last word. "You and me, we're supposed to 
be together, don't you know?" 

***

"I..." The boy stammered so much even on that tiny sounds, it sounded 
more that he had gagged softly on a little cry of pain that spoken 
anything in human language.

"But you..."

He could fight for no more then, and it was with wide, stricken eyes he 
gazed back on his companion.  He knew him- there could be no doubt of 
that, for the trembles that now and then troubled his fingers were not 
for fear, but the same cold and haunted recognition his whimpers would 
not give form.

He didn't cry though, not one tear so much as settled in his gaze 
despite his snuffles.

"It... is you.  My Masato came back for me before I died." 

***

"What do you mean, 'before I died'?" asked Masato.  "You haven't done 
something stupid, have you? Like take pills? Naru!"

***

The horrible wonder in his eyes faded back to ordinary, drunken 
puzzlement.  It took another stubborn shake before the boy even seemed 
to recollect just what "stupid" acts could possibly entail.

"Pills? I don't have any pills.  Don't have... anything like that I... 
think.  But I won't last that long.  Nothing I can do anymore.  Nothing 
comes to me I don't deserve.  Except for you."

***

"Aw, Naru," said Masato as he gathered Naru close. "What's turned you 
so morbid?  You aren't going to die, not for a long time.  You've got 
me, Naoko and Chinatsu to look after you.  Don't you know that?"  

***

"I don't know anything.  I'm a stupid little boy." 

His chest jerked a little against his lover's, and his fingers flew to 
his lips.  He coughed, but nothing came of it except a few more 
hiccups.

"A very drunk, stupid little boy."

A resigned shiver left him- one that could not be called a sigh for it 
bore nothing substantial of his breath.  He lifted his head from the 
crook of his lover's shoulder once it had left him.  Their eyes met, 
and his fingers tugged a little on the shaggy crimson which enfolded 
them.

Naru did his best to smile, but in the end, all he managed to do was 
split his lip.  

***

Masato gently dabbed at the blood welling on his lip with his 
pinky. "Now, don't start laughing just because I had a moment of 
vanity. It's not like you never have," he joked. "And you aren't 
stupid. If I have to tell you that every single day, morning and 
night, before you begin to believe it, I will." 

Gently, he plucked the boy's fingers from his own red, 
tousled locks, and caught a glimpse of blood on Naru's palm. 

"Oi, that's some injury," he said.  "How about we go to the bathroom 
and bandage your hand up?" 

***

"Alright." Naru scarcely whispered when he spoke, for he sucked softly 
on his lip while he tried to.  His lover took the little slump in his 
arms as a yes, and drew aside to leave him space enough to rise.

It didn't go well of course.  Masato felt shards crunching under the 
boots he hadn't bothered to remove.  Startled by the sound, he stumbed 
against the coffee table and bruised his shin.  The boy was no more 
certain on his feet than a mermaid faced with suddenly wearing legs, 
and would have fallen for certain between his sticky thoughts and the 
glass that slipped around under his bare toes.  Rough and gentle hands 
lead his wavering steps when he took steps at all.  When they reached 
the bathroom door, he couldn't remember which way the knob turned.

Inside the little tile closet, he moaned in dismay, tried to kick a few 
of the soppy towels out of the way not that it did much good.  They 
smelled still of someone else's shower even in what little recollection 
remained to him.  There was yet rust around all the fixtures, and the 
mirror still sang in the breeze let in through the wet window.

As Masato gaped at the feathery crack in the glass, he heard beside 
him, "It's been there since I moved in.  I just never fixed it.  I 
wasn't home enough to remember."

***

"Damn, kid...How..."  Masato rubbed a hand over his chin as he looked 
around the bathroom, refusing to further vocalize his thoughts; they 
were far too rude to be shaped into audible words, and he knew he'd 
done enough harm already.  

"Never mind, Naru.  Come on," he coaxed, patting the scrap of space 
that lay alongside the 
sink, "climb up here and let me tend that hand."  

Naru wavered over to the basin, and in Masato's steadying arms, 
he perched himself on the counter, and drummed his heels on the 
cabinet door while his lover dug around for first aid supplies.  He 
found a near spent roll of gauze, some antiseptic spray, and a  roll 
of tape in a zip baggie at the back of his sink's only drawer.  
Masato grimaced when he brought them out into the light; the tape was 
yellowing around the edges, and the spray can was rusted along the 
seam, and the bottom rim.  He was almost afraid to use it.  

"Tomorrow, you and I are going out for fresh supplies," he grumbled, 
as he coated his wound with the antiseptic, thankful that it was the 
sort that didn't sting.  "And no arguments."  

Naru shook his head, sending his already tousled locks spilling over 
into his eyes, and he slumped forward to rest his head on Masato's 
shoulder as he began to wind the gauze around his hand.  

"Stay here," he said once he'd finished the task.  "I'm going to get 
you some shoes out of the bedroom before you go back into the living 
room.  I don't want you to cut your feet."  He set him back with a 
pat of his shoulders, leaning him up against the wall before leaving 
the room.  

But as he neared the bedroom, the door of which was wide open, his 
steps slowed, stunned, for Naru's bedroom looked like a disaster 
area.  The ceiling fan lay upon the middle of his bed, along with a 
fair amount of the ceiling itself.  A few wires dangled in loops from 
the gaping hole it had left behind, and dust still swirled lazily 
through the air.  Masato shook about an inch of it from a pair of 
blue tie-dyed sneakers he'd found lying on their sides by the 
bed.      

"What happened in here?" he called to his lover.   

***

Naru's inelegant response came as nothing more than a bubbling "Huh?" 
and with that on his voice, he staggered to the back door of his 
bathroom, only just catching himself on the jamb before topping head 
over heels into a heap of plaster. 

When he saw the mess that had been made of his tiny bed, how many of 
his blue cabochons and their dead flowers that had been scratched, his 
beloved ceiling fan in so many pieces there, his scarf still dusty 
under the blades... he shook his head to try and clear his senses. The 
dust only grew dim with an alcoholic haze.

"I... I don't remember."

It was true. He had no idea. There was only the sad, electric dance of 
knowing his own inevitable mortality more than semi-conscious thought 
alone could cling to. Missing Masato. Being afraid. 

"I just don't. Can you get my bracelets out of the top dresser drawer? 
The ones Chinatsu likes? I don't know what happened to the ones I had 
one before."

And the thought of going without any bangles made him feel more naked 
than the kisses of memory torn from his mind.

***

Setting the shoes he held down on the floor beside Naru, Masato 
opened the drawer the boy had indicated. Inside, in labeled, see-
through plastic containers, lay his collection of wristwear. 
When he'd found a stack of shining rings that looked familiar, he 
handed it off to Naru.

"These?" 

Naru nodded, and took the bracelets from the box to ring his wrists. 
Masato turned to study his debris strewn bed for a long moment, and 
then, with a long sigh, said, "With your apartment as trashed as it 
is, I think you need to stay somewhere else until all this can get 
sorted. Why don't you pack up a few things you might need, or 
want, and come stay with me?"

***

"Aa... alright." He shook his head though, and kept shaking it as if he 
expected it to clear suddenly. "No... it's not alright... it's... I'd 
like that."

Masato had to tug him up from where he slumped before he was of any use 
to himself.  Either way, he could only stumble from tiptoe to tiptoe 
about his room, feeling through the plaster and the thrown clothing 
until he found what he liked, or what seemed familiar.  No, some of it? 
He couldn't even say it was his clothing. 

He had a little bundle of mismatched baubles and soft, worn things by 
then- his pretty black pants and another dress shirt he believed to be 
more or less intact.  A few hats.  And he simply flung them all into 
his laundry basket.

With a an bleakly honest smile then, he caroled, "I'm all ready."

Without anything between them in words, they stepped out of the 
bedroom, and Masato shut the door behind them.  Neither had the space 
in their hearts to look back, to watch their footsteps over the amber 
strewn floor beyond that the boy's lover tied his shoes for him.  

"Bai bai Momma..." he told the painting in his fizzy whisper as he 
laces were fastened.

***

As he tightened the second pair of laces, Masato traced the line of 
Naru's hungry gaze to the sole painting that adorned his lover's 
living room. 

"You sound like a new bride," he said lightly, as he 
lumbered to his feet, sending crumbs of dust from his knees to the 
carpet. 

Naru fixed him with his amber eyes, then looked down at the basket 
that held his belongings. Masato scrunched his fingers through the 
boy's tangled locks. 

"Is that all you want to take?" 

He nodded without lifting his head, but Masato saw him shoot a 
sidelong peek at the painting, and he sighed. His hand fell from its 
perch on Naru's head, and Masato strode over to the painting, and 
took it down. 

"I figure it'll be stolen or destroyed if we leave it here, and I 
know you don't want that to happen, so...we'll take it. But there 
are two conditions to it staying at my house." Masato slipped it 
under his arm, and brought it back over to Naru. 

"You're going to have to slack off on your drinking. No more getting 
trashed like you were tonight. And don't you ever wreck my house like 
you did this apartment." He gently caught Naru's chin between his 
fingers, and added softly, "Got it?"

***

"Anything for you..." Naru answered, and he shrank from his lover just 
enough so he could rub his cheeks over the calluses that lined his 
fingertips.  When he hiccupped a little against him, they both laughed, 
and bid farewell to his shimmering flat at last.

Well, almost.  Naru still had the presence of mind to pop open his 
stereo's CD compartment and lay the disk within upon his heap of 
clothing.  His lover canted him a wistful sort of look.  And with that 
they left the faint, dry warmth of the apartment for the driving rain 
outside. 

It hadn't quieted much at all since he left it, the sound of the tears 
cascading over Tokyo.  Each drop seemed louder than the last, louder 
than water ever could hope to be outside the ocean.  They took the 
elevator down rather than risk the wet steps.  The car had been 
cleaned, its chains oiled so they didn't sway too much on the way down.  
But the rain was even louder in the little metal box.  It almost made 
him feel he would go deaf.

The chill of it woke him somewhat from the tiny bed his senses made in 
his cups, and Naru said in time just before the doors opened, "Thank 
you."

***

They arrived at Masato's apartment some while later, both soggy about 
the ankles, their arms aching faintly from having kept them tightly 
around each other as they'd navigated their way down the puddling 
sidewalks. The picture escaped harm though, and the boy's pleasure over 
finding it whole and dry was evident. Masato left it in his hands, as 
he bent to coax the boy out of his shoes; they wound up along the wall 
beside his own, and the basket containing Naru's clothes in Masato's 
possession. 

It was the last certain move he made, for when he reached the living 
room, the import of his actions struck him. For the first time in a 
long while, he was living with someone again--that was, in the lover 
sense. 

He was also, as he realized by Naru's odd look, rather rudely staring 
at his new roommate. 

"The picture," he said, waving a hand at it, "uh...why don't you leave 
it here, on the sofa? We can take care of it in the morning. You can 
hang any where in here that you like. All right?  I'll just take these 
other things to the bedroom.  And then, if you want anything...Well, I 
can make it for you, or you can help yourself.  Just...make yourself 
at home."

***

In the pattering quiet that followed, Naru found he quite bumped into 
his companion, who had followed him, and in his stocking feet, made 
scarcely a sound.  The boy said absolutely nothing in response- no 
apologies, no reasons give, not even a change of his downcast 
expression.  But he did rub at his eyes a little with his fist. 

His lover started to ask what the matter was, but the words died on his 
tongue.

Naru, between want of dreams and the inimitable, peaceful sadness left 
still in his heart, had lost his tongue.

And then he lost his clothes.  They went flying all over the bedroom as 
he stripped, every shred of them but the silver choker he proved to 
have on beneath his high-collared shirt.  He did not dry his dripping 
hair, did not do more than kick the futon open with his toes.

So naked and wet, he looked to Masato, and murmured at last, "Oyasumi, 
Ashke."

Then he laid down on top of the mattress, closed his eyes, and in the 
time the elder Crasher had to be stunned, began to snore.

***

Masato stood staring down at him for a moment, and then, setting his 
forgotten burden down on the floor by the futon, he left the room for 
his small bathroom, and returned with a towel.  Every inch of Naru's 
naked body that he could reach was unhurriedly caressed by its fluffy 
pink softness.  

And when he'd gotten his guest as dry as he could, he wadded the towel 
up in a lopsided ball, and tossed it over his shoulder, where it draped 
itself over his small, black and white TV set.  Masato's clothes soon 
followed suit, some flying down the same paths as Naru's had.  

The boy didn't stir when he laid himself down on the futon beside him, 
and pulled the blankets he'd left crumpled alongside it over their 
naked bodies.  Masato hitched the covers up to Naru's shoulders, then 
leaned over and pressed a kiss to his damp temple.  

"You would have to snore," he said, with a wry quirk of his mouth.  
"Ah...Oyasumi, Naru."  

***
 
"They're all dead."

"What?"

"They're all dead.  You seem surprised.  Is something wrong?"

She stared at him as if through a pane of glass where the sunlight 
riddled it.  The blinds in his office had been left gaping despite her 
presence and she had lost her tongue to the capacious view of the 
city's eyes so spilled around her.  The more she squinted in the 
illumined air, the brighter he seemed to become, and so she covered her 
eyes.  Nothing of the room remained then, just the dull warmth, the 
sounds of cars, someone else's footsteps dwindling away into nothing.

"No, seriously.  Is something the matter? Was their mission one you did 
not want to fail?"

How could he ask her that? She merely uttered his words to them, they 
never would have done for her what they did for him even though 
sometimes she could have sworn they... "How? How did they die?"

"Slowly and painfully."

One of her eyes peered out from between her fingers for a moment to 
find his motionless and gleamy shadow before her.  No, something wasn't 
right.  Something.  "No, I mean... how was it done?"

Some part of her seemed to recognize the words as he spoke; the terror 
of her fantasies.  It had to be that but... it felt more real than the 
sunlight and her feet, as if once upon a time she had already listened.

"Balinese was drowned in perfume by one of Schwartz after being kept in 
their hideout for at least a week.  He had been raped, several times.  
Bombay was impaled on an iron fence at the same location.  Siberian 
suffered a crush wound to his chest and died last night after three 
days in the hospital and Abyssinian committed hara kiri without a 
second."

Sense then.  It trickled through her like water.  "We have heard 
nothing from Schwartz since the Ani Museum incident."

"But our intelligence has been sending us reports that they may still 
be alive."

"But you're not."

"What are you talking about, Kyouko?" Takatori Shuiichi asked her at 
last.  She could see him now, even through the glare of those hundred 
thousand mirrors outside.  He was clearer than he'd ever been to her- 
so crystal certain he almost burned her eyes.

With a grim smile, she reminded him, "And you call me Birman.  I'm 
Birman.  I'm Birman."

"I can call you whatever I want to.  This isn't just your dream."

"Oh, really?"

With hardly any memory of the way, she knew herself awake.  The 
sunlight turned back into the warm ripples of the sheets. The floor 
rolled under the bed and hid there.

And one by one, the raindrops worked their way back into her waking 
recollection as it swirled and swirled and swirled around her.  With 
one swift glance to the pane of their window seen through the eyelet of 
the drapes, she sighed, and sank down into her pillow.

/So it's still raining.  I'm not surprised./

Nor did it trouble her in the end when she realized she was wide awake, 
and that now, at five AM already, sleep would be impossible to reclaim 
no matter how much her lover wanted her to rest.  She kissed her cheek 
as she rose, and tucked the covers close around her naked shoulders 
since she could not hold them any longer.

Her lavender satin robe still fluttered along the back of their 
vanity's single chair, darting out after her as she drew near, almost 
as if it had missed her in the few hours since she had cast it off.  
Its lace once more cuddling her breasts, she pulled the sash tight and 
strode into the living room.  No lights greeted her, nor she them.  
Dawn would come soon enough to her, to Tokyo, and Shuiichi's lonely 
grave.

Kyouko almost smiled at that much and her world began to swing with her 
pulse.

She and Erika didn't have a couch, but rather a porch swing draped in 
pink crushed velvet that hung from their ceiling on little chains of 
brass hearts.  It was there she wiled away the time until the sun rose 
grey behind the laconic clouds.  

A hand, in time, brushed over her hair.

"I had that dream again last night."

***

"I had suspected as much. You were restless, talked a little in your 
sleep." 

Erika took a seat on the bench swing beside her. Draping her pale blue 
satin robe over her legs against the dawn chill of the room, she 
tucked an arm behind her head and leaned back against the padded 
seat. 

"I'm sorry I wasn't the one to give you Kritiker's orders. I can't 
help but think you might not have been so adversely affected by the 
news if you had heard it from me first." 

Kyouko shifted on the bench beside her, murmuring something she 
couldn't quite make out. Erika caught her by the hand, and sat up to 
kiss her lover on the cheek. 

"It's going to be okay, you know."

***

"But 'okay' feels far off from here," she said, and before Erika had an 
instant to leave her, she had caught her gently by the loppy curls of 
red strewn about her shoulders. A trace of her lips against those and 
only then did she let the dimness alone have her once again. 

"I can still see myself in his eyes. Sometimes, even when I hear 
Shuiichi telling me he's dead, there I am with that awful smirk in 
front of all that emptiness. I was so proud of myself, pretending I 
didn't know he was one of ours; that I looked down on him and I said 
`be my dog' with a straight face."

The swing began to stir then, though she had drawn her legs up beside 
her on the couch. Her lover followed her, and so curled beside the arms 
and one another, they swayed on the tiptoes of airy waves, the sighs of 
the chains like a heartbeat for the rain.

"Even if I see them safe tomorrow, I'll never forgive myself for 
enjoying that.  Never.  Not after what's become of him since then.  All 
of them. But Ran? Ran will always haunt me the most."

***

"But you know what, Kyouko?" Manx asked then, catching her lover's eyes 
at last, "Ran would never have gotten to know Ken if you hadn't picked 
him up that night."  

***

A hint of a smile ghosted over Kyouko's lips with a shadow of a few 
stray raindrops on the window.  "I can never think of things like that 
when I get this way.  I don't know what I'd do without you.  No... I 
really don't."

And she didn't want to ever have to; didn't have to say so, not with 
words at least.  She simply curled her fingers around Erika's.

A little mist of champagne adoration ran down the link between them, 
the place that had not cleared her realization of the world until she 
knew it rested peacefully in the other woman's heart.

"If we can find them back home, if they are there, I want to see them 
someday. I want to tell them.  But for now, the rest of our wrongs 
tending to."  She added then, "And maybe... Erika, let's do something 
for the chess pieces. I know they're not ours and Queen told us to 
mind our own business last time.  I don't even dream about them but..."

***

Erika tenderly pressed Kyouko's hand between both of her own. 

::But they were Ran's, too, for awhile, and they're just as lost as 
our kittens, and Queen's too deep in Kritiker's pocket to notice or 
care.  They could all be killed on Friday, and by Monday she'd have a 
new set of boys to toy with, and she wouldn't give a damn at all.::

A smirk played over her lips.  ::So I say we take 'em from her, and 
set them free, too.::  

***

::Then they're ours.::  Amid all her sorrows and her renunciations, 
there had still been a wickedness to her thoughts which ran from them 
like soft, black silk, as white as it might have tasted.  ::I've wanted 
them for awhile now.  Not for pets, but you get the idea.::

Winks here.  Even alone, the words didn't quite come.

"So, when it gets to be a respectable hour of the morning, do we tell 
them, or do we let them wonder? I think Pawn already knows what we are, 
so he might convince the others to trust us, but would that be good for 
them? I wonder."

***

Erika shook her head. "No, I think we should let them wonder.  
Confirmation at this stagemight bring our plan to an end before we've 
even started.  Queen must NOT ever have reason to mistrust us, for we 
would surely lose them then." 

Suddenly, Erika laughed. ::Imagine the look on her face when she 
finally realizes what we've done.::

***

::Now THAT will be a moment I'll always regret not committing to 
film.::

Even as between them then slipped somewhat of an effigy of their most 
contemptuous companion, thoroughly riled, and stained all manner of 
interesting and unlikely colors in her rage.

::I think I like her blue best, matches her hair.::

Together, the two women snickered sadly as they could, for as droll as 
their suppositions might have been, what the musings spawning them 
first arose from still existed, still breathed, still needed them.  In 
some small, perverse way.  

"Then we won't tell them.  We'll go in to work today and act like 
nothing's wrong. I don't think I know any other way to show up 
anymore."

***

"I don't either, Kyouko," said Erika, fluttering her fingertips along 
the back of her girlfriend's nape. 

::But soon, it won't matter anymore. So...::

"Let's get dressed early, and go eat breakfast out. Maybe to that new 
bakery over in Harajuku?" 


***

The perfume of her thoughts brightened considerably at that, lapsing 
from mere smoke to violet candy in her lover's mind, even if outwards 
the melancholy sheen of things unclaimed still shadowed her.

"The one with the... custard tarts?"

Erika nodded.

"Well, I suppose a quick reward for making up our minds wouldn't be too 
awful, would it?"

Though even as she spoke, the answer came to her, and she too the pale 
almost-light of the morning.  Her robe rippled, and the water reflected 
upon it through the window as it sagged into the crooks of her arms.  
The softness of her breasts were bare now, her nipples perked in the 
unexpected morning chill.

"Though, I think we had better shower at once if we'd rather not be 
*late*."

***

"You are positively evil," said Erika, trying hard to suppress a 
grin.  "All right.  We will.  And being women of a conservational 
bend, I think it would be wise if we do it together, don't you?" 

Without pausing to let her girlfriend speak, Erika stood and untied 
the thick belt that held her heavy robe closed.  The fabric parted, 
then fell down her pale, well-toned arms to the floor.  Her full 
breasts bounced gently with the motion of her body, and Erika lingered 
there before her to flick her fingers through her red locks, arms held 
up to give her an even better view of her voluptuous form.  

And then, she winked, and started backing slowly away towards the 
hall.  

"Come on, then, my beauty.  As you said, we don't want to be late."  

***

Kyouko gave no answer, but she bounced from the swing, which stayed 
quite still for her, and hung in the air for an instant on a tiny 
thread of what powers she possessed.  She fell but softly to the ground 
while her robe, in midair, hung trembling.

It was through ever smaller and smaller backward steps towards their 
bath she began to slink, mirroring Erika's calculated slowness. Through 
every movement her hips swayed, and her chest tantalizingly still 
stayed but for the quiet stiffening of the milk chocolate halos of her 
nipples.  These she touched once the other woman's back had bumped 
against the wall, and still holding them herself, swept all at once 
into her presence, until she and her beloved were mouth to mouth, bosom 
to bosom, and netherlips to netherlips, there in the singing, early 
morning of Tokyo.  

Just as suddenly as she had swept so close, she left, and the shower 
not so far beyond sparkled to life.  Their flat had a proper Japanese 
bathroom, all pale lavender tile with all the room open to whatever 
play they could dream of.  The bathtub was full yet, but the water 
there plainly too cool for enjoyment.  

Either way, it was Kyouko between Erika and a soak, or even a relaxing 
rinse, kneeling there under the spray and soaping herself up with a 
peach pouf that kept clinging to her thighs more than it ought to have.  

***

"You tease," said Erika.  "How do you expect me to have a nice, 
long soak when you're tempting me with the sight of your naked 
body?"  

Kyouko canted her head, and offered her a kittenish simper as she 
began to dab the pouf over her inner thighs.  

"I'll take that as your answer," replied Erika coolly.  She whisked 
her hair from her shoulders, and hastily pinned her ruby locks to the 
back of her head.  The water, more on the side of hot than cold, made 
her skin tingle where it hit her when at last she joined her lover 
under the spray.  More to love than for any other reason, as she 
proved when she plucked the pouf from Kyouko's hand, and boldly laved 
her sex with it.  

"Dirty girl.  You need a good washing."  

***
 
"Oh, it's true! I do.  I'm filthy," Kyouko replied in her best and most 
utterly false aristocratic accent.  A cloud of suds brushed away from 
between her lover's legs came and floated through the air between them, 
landing on the last poise of her lips before it shattered with her 
breath.  She leaned forward under the eye of the shower then, and as 
the water coursed through her hair once more, her hand slipped down 
between her legs and thrust.

The last trace of soap on her lips parted into a tiny "oooh" then faded 
at last as she said, "Unbelievably dirty.  I can't believe anyone would 
ever want to play with me like this.  I'd better clean myself up before 
you have a go." 

But Kyouko simply, now untangled from her lover, pattered over to the 
little plastic basket of bath salts they kept, and rooted there a 
moment until whatever she had hidden there was hers again.  The tiles 
squeaked as she slid down against them- her ass resting on the edge of 
the tub now.  Her legs she parted parted so all of her vulva and the 
dusty rose of her slit peered out, the liquid gathered there glimmering 
as she breathed.

The wrapper on the douche she peeled off with her teeth and flung away 
before she thrust the tip of it inside and emptied the liquid there 
into cunt.  Her netherlips twitched with the cold as her juices were 
swept from her, poured from her onto the tile of the shower.

***

"Mmm," purred Erika, as she padded over to the tub. "How very 
considerate of you, my pet. But how uncomfortable that cool fluid must 
have been, gushing over your hot, slick pussy. Looks like I'll have to 
warm you up now." 

Steadying herself upon her lover's knees, she knelt before Kyoko, 
running her hands slowly over her long calves as she leaned in 
towards her sex. 

"Raspberries," whispered she, catching the lingering scent of the 
douche her girlfriend had used. "My favorite." 

Kyoko rasped a quiet chuckle, and Erika zig-zagged nuzzles over the 
silky skin of her inner thighs until she reached the crease where her 
leg met her hip. There, she flicked her tongue lightly over Kyoko's 
flesh, repeating the caress again over the rosy nub buried in the 
topmost heart of her sex. 

"I do like the way you taste."

***

Kyouko drew one of her legs up and draped her knee then over the 
shoulder of her lover.  Erika took the weight of it gladly, and kissed 
her just beneath her knee before once more letting the bud of her lips 
stray to the heat of her companion's open sex.

"The same would go for you, of course, if I could reach you now.  No, 
don't... ohh... don't get up."

The last of her laughter seized into wispy moans though, and from 
these, now and then, a name.  Erika, Erika.  And she began to fight 
against the air for some place within it where she could drift against 
her lover's lips without falling or crushing her mouth too much.  
Erika, Erika and she drew herself up, up away from the edge of their 
bathtub, only to fall, to be pushed and back beneath the spray they 
both went though it was she of them who ended up on her back, legs open 
and invaded by the presence of the name she called, the tongue that 
entered her for a moment before once more nursing at her clit.

***

"It seems I'm not the only one who is impatient..." whispered Erika 
against the pink folds of Kyouko's sex. She descended again, and her 
tongue found the nub hidden within her lover's netherlips; eagerly 
she lapped and prodded, eliciting the most interesting little sighs 
and quivers from her prone lover. 

Those sighs deepened when she lay her fingertips to the outer rim of 
her vagina, and stroked her smooth, wet flesh. The honey-musk scent 
of her lover's arousal enveloped Erika, and she felt her own pussy 
prickle and warm. She knew that if she touched herself, she would be 
almost as damp as Kyouko was. 

"Mmm...you want me," she purred, a sly little half-smile hovering 
over her lips, as she dipped her fingertips inside her. "How can I 
refuse you?" 

Before Kyouko could reply, Erika lunged upwards, and kissed her, 
letting her taste of herself thoroughly before she left her panting 
on the shower floor. 

"Be right back," she said with a tiny wave, even though she only went 
as far as the narrow closet next to shower. Within lay mounds of 
fluffy towels, a selection of bath gels and salts, and a long, open 
plastic basket. From this last, Erika removed one of the sex toys 
they kept on hand, and a small bottle of lube. 

The toy turned out to be a gel-filled dildo--one hot pink in color. 
It bore ridges along the upper most edge, fingertip-shaped ridges 
beneath to rub Erika's own clit, and curved slightly upward. Erika 
strapped it on with practiced fingers, and quickly slicked its 
surface with a dollop of lube. 

The bottle she placed upon the narrow ledge of their bath, and Erika 
knelt between Kyouko's bent legs, and rubbed the tip against her clit 
to tease her before drawing it down to breach the very opening of her 
body. 

"I love to take you like this," she breathed. 

***

"Wicked, wicked Erika," though swiftly any such sentiments were swept 
away with the first creeping of jelly shaft against her weeping slit.  
The liquid smeared across it was tingly cold, the body wielding it so 
warm and yet so light of thoughts, inclined it seemed to hover just 
outside her waiting flesh, only the tip's furthest edge chancing her 
folds.  The swaying of it made her seize inside and start to drip all 
the more.

"And as much as I love it when you take your time..."

As if she dived then under the surface of some unfamiliar pool, Kyouko 
slipped down against the bathroom floor and nudged the tip inside her 
cunt.  The tiny bulb fashioned on the end filled her to the brim, silky 
now and swaying just the tiniest but with Erika's whiles.  It drained 
her tensions, emptied her thoughts.  When the ridges crowning its root 
brushed into her folds it made her start in the most delicious of ways.

"You do work me up just too much to wait sometimes."

***

"That's just the sort of response I was hoping for," replied Erika, 
with a wobble of the ridges upon Kyouko's clit. An answering waver 
of pleasure tickled her as well, even as Kyouko caught her breath. 

She crouched over her like a sphinx, hips pumping slowly between 
Kyouko's legs, pausing only between one thrust and the next to kiss 
her beloved as sweetly as she might. Their breasts brushed together, 
and her breath fell tenderly on Erika's cheek, sending a delicious 
shiver through her. 

"You're so soft to the touch...like silk," she breathed, rubbing 
against Kyouko. "I can't wait to do this to you on some sunny beach--
no one to bother us but the waves and the wind."

***

"And the sand..." Kyouko whispered between her moans and the rustle of 
her skin tight against the slickness of her lover, their toy, the 
bathroom floor.  "Sand everywhere- in our hair, our crotches our 
mouths.  We'll have to spend all evening bathing each other."

The grin that stained her lips scarcely lasted, and she kissed her 
then, kissed her until breath forsook them both and their hips ground 
tight enough to bruise one another's bodies and all at once the 
familiar twinge of her lover's climax and its brink washed over her- 
pure sense, nothing of skin though her skin did answer, drew her near 
and nearer still the glinting heat there, just before her, strewn on 
the shaft she held within herself.  

"Oh Erikaaaaaa!"

Over and over each other they tumbled, laughing and dripping and trying 
so hard not to shiver too much.  

***

After several moments of exchanging lazy kisses and idle afterplay, 
Erika, all breathless and rosy from afterglow, dragged herself out of 
Kyouko's cuddling arms to pull two towels off the rack. Dropping one 
on the floor, Erika shook out the other and began to dry Kyouko 
off. "If that yell of yours didn't wake up the neighbors, then they 
must all be dead," she said with a throaty little laugh. 

Kyouko pulled her forward for a kiss. She came away with the towel, 
which she draped over her dripping dark hair. Erika plucked the 
spare from the tiles, and stood up, stretching off her post-sex 
languor. 

"They're going to need money," Erika said, now attempting to wrestle 
her hair into submission with brush and dryer. "Youji's never been 
one to keep any lying around for long. How shall we obtain it? Do 
we go the safe route and see what we can sell of theirs--or shall we 
be more creative in our scheme?" 

She shot Kyouko a wicked smile in the mirror.

***

"Well, from the look of it," Kyouko said as she caressed a few stray 
threads of her bangs back into place, "I'd say you've already got a 
plan that doesn't involve clandestine garage sales."

Erika hummed in wonder at her lover's remark, but otherwise neglected 
commenting on it in favor of combing out her curls.  Not even the tines 
of the comb did much to untie their dainty loops- after one stroke or 
two, her hair would creep again into ringlets and drip tears of shower 
water into its own curves.

Catching a curl for her own, Kyoko nodded.  "And I'm very curious to 
see what it is, even though I won't get to know until after I've 
agreed.  I wouldn't call it a dilemma though."

*** 

Yuuji slept the night where he had fallen, slipping through what shy 
and ticklish dreams the bourbon left him with scarcely time between to 
recall them before they shrank, died, ended, blew away.  Only with 
grave unwillingness did he awaken, neither late nor early in the 
morning.  His juices had since dried on him, and his tears turned to 
sticky trails along his cheeks.

He shook himself as he stood, not for the cold he suddenly felt, but to 
try and remind himself just where he had come and kissed despair so 
soundly.  The room seemed familiar after a few paces around it.  The 
books, the dozing bottle of liquor.

Just not the one rose petal tarrying around his footsteps on the woven 
reeds.  He mistook it for blood at first, and feared for a moment he 
had torn himself open in penance for his memories.  No.  No, it was 
only the trace of some flower... one he knew so well and he just had to 
wonder how...

There was a pile of them by the sliding panel that lead to his 
untouched bedroom.  Had he bought one such bloom and violated it until 
nothing was left? He couldn't remember, but he had Ran's katana bound 
in his hands before he dared part the screen between him and his bed.  

The scent alone nearly sent him wheeling.

The room beyond was drowned in nameless wildflowers.  He could not even 
find the floor beneath them.  No roses, save the stalk of the one that 
had been left in pieces outside.

That though it took him a moment to clearly make out, for it had not 
been simply left, but driven into one the eyes of a little, white 
rabbit.  While three jet black long-ears frolicked at his feet, their 
pale friend lay dead upon his sheets, its entrails draped around the 
room like a garland.

***

It made his flesh crawl along the back of his neck, and Yuuji spun, 
half-expecting someone to be standing there; the rabbits bolted from 
his darting feet, but no one was there.  The tip of the katana he held 
poised before him wavered just the tiniest bit; he waggled the sword 
awkwardly back into its sheathe.  

What did it all mean?  Yuuji looked around at 
the flowers, the dripping, glistening ribbons of intestine that 
someone had hung over the window sill; bile rose in his throat, and the 
katana fell from his hand.  Yuuji fell to his knees and quietly fouled 
the bouquets he huddled upon.  

He'd seen worse, had caused worse scenes of gore than this, 
so of course, it shouldn't have bothered him so...But

"I've got to leave," he murmured, groping for the katana.
"Someone knows?  But how...?"  For he had been 
careful.  Hadn't he?  Yuuji rose to his feet, and turned his back on 
the bed, clutching the sword as if it would rouse his resolve.  

"No.  I won't leave Hiratsuka, not yet.  I just can't stay...here."  

And without releasing his grip on the sword entirely, Yuuji stripped 
out of his robe, and went in search of his belongings.  

***

A scant few minutes later, the lone Crasher, hastily dressed and with 
hair still ruined by sleep, stumbled out into the hallway of his hotel, 
his bag trailing behind him and Ran's katana hidden underneath his 
white trench.  At first, as he trudged down the hall, there was only 
the dull, wet silence of any hotel by early morning.  No footsteps, no 
running water- just a tremble of rain still, and the padding thumps one 
of the escaped rabbits made as it flew before him.

Voices then, damp voices riding towards, sounding like the static that 
cuddles up along often driven puddles.  He knew, someone else knew, 
someone else had been there.

The lobby of the hotel was packed- nearly all the guests awake had 
gathered there and were huddled in little coteries of chance- those who 
hardly even knew one another's names openly weeping on the shoulders of 
strangers.  Shouting.  Some businessmen by the table seemed to be 
drawing up a paper.  It was the staff wailing mostly.  And they were 
wailing, screaming, weeping, bumping their heads against the frigid 
songs of the window pane.  The guests cried too, but not like that, not 
with such half-born ire in their eyes.

And there were police.  Dozens of them, their blue and white uniforms 
painfully brilliant against the muted hues of nightgowns and business 
suits.

When he tried to flee, he found the girl from the check-in counter had 
laid her hand on his arm.  "Please, don't run!" She begged him.  
"You'll just upset everyone all the more.  Oh, kami-sama! How could 
this have happened."

And then she began to sob into the sleeve of his coat.  

***

"Stop," he urged, attempting to prise himself free from her grip as 
gently as he could.  "Calm down, and tell me what happened."  

The girl raised her head from his arm, blinking at him, wide-eyed with 
fright and sniffling.  "It's horrible," she whispered.  "Just...
horrible!"  Her voice rose in a keening wail.  

"What's so horrible?!" he pressed.  But the girl adamantly shook her 
head, and attempted to wrench free of his grip.  He let her go 
without struggle, and she ran across the room and flung herself into 
the arms of a weeping young man clad in chef's whites.  Yuuji turned 
and strolled to the door, half-praying that no one else would follow 
him.  

A crowd had gathered outside, drawn by the lights of the clustered 
police cars.  None of the onlookers tried to stop him directly, but 
he could see their hunger for news in their faces, and so, held the 
gazes of no one.  It wasn't until he reached the straggling borders of 
the growing group that he realized he had been holding his breath.  

Slightly dazed, Yuuji wandered away from his one-time sanctuary, 
glancing behind him at intervals.  Never was anyone there, but 
still, he felt as if someone was following him.  

He bore on for five blocks, at which point, he lucked upon an empty 
cab idling by the curb. The driver was all too happy to have a fare so 
early in the day, even though he secretly thought Yuuji looked ill.  

"Where are you going?" he asked, flicking his rear view so he could 
see Yuuji's pale, shocked face more clearly.  

"I'm not familiar with the city, and I need a place to stay.  Another 
one..."  He glanced back in the direction of the inn, then at the 
black mountains looming in the distance.  "Up there."  

"Where?" the surprised cabbie asked, following Yuuji's line of 
vision; he'd half expected his fare to request a trip to the 
hospital.  "Oh.  The mountains." 

"Yeah.  Any lodging to be had there?"  

The driver snorted, and the car leapt forward from the 
curb.  "Plenty.  People want the view."  He looked back at Yuuji in 
the mirror again.  "None of inns will be very crowded this time of 
year, though.  In the summer, people want the sea, not the 
mountains."  

"Any of them cheap?" he asked, mindful of his budget constraints.  "And 
clean, too?"

"Hmm," the driver scratched at his stubbled chin.  "Yeah, yeah.  I 
know just the place.  It's kind of out of the way, nothing too 
fancy..."

"Anything like that will be fine," Yuuji replied with a nod, allowing 
himself to relax a bit at last now that he'd escaped the situation at 
the onsen.  "Anything at all."  

***

The cabbie sighed and began to whistle as he banked off into the 
streets just as fast as he could go without upsetting his car. 

They drove, the road rising beneath them with the purling hiss of the 
rain left on the pavement and the city creeping bit by bit into a milky 
mist. The roads began to meander here, grow small and unhappy as the 
guardrails rusted. One had to know them almost as well as a climber 
might- not that they were dangerous, but it was so easy to get lost.

As the rain picked up, the drumming of it on his windscreen began to 
trouble him, and after awhile he said, "Believe me, if I could, I'd 
leave the city too for a coupla days. I usedta drive past that girl's 
shop every day, y'know? And I don't remember anything else like that 
ever happening 'round here. So don't get yourself uptight about it. 
Hell, the last night thing that happened was... five years ago about."

Though he paused to scratch his chin then and remarked rather, "Mnn, my 
mistake. He was FROM here, nothin' happened to him here."

***

Yuuji, lost in his morbid thoughts as he was, did not respond 
straight off. When he at last did so, it was in the manner of one 
startled awake. 

"Who was from here?" he asked.  

***

"Damned if I know!" The driver responded, equally nonplussed my his 
passenger's sudden alertness as Yuuji had been by the implications of 
his remark.  He stepped on the gas and then he laughed, a clanking 
hollow sound against the ripping of the rain all around them.

"Sorry, y'startled me's all. And the fact is, I do know. I think I 
do... Fujitsu... no, that's sure not right...! Fujimiya. Yeah, that's 
the name. Some businessman got his ass kicked and his house blown up 
in Tokyo- I heard he was smuggling or skimming or somethin. But that 
lot was never really `from' here if ya get my drift. Or so I've heard. 
I saw the girl ONCE, picked her up to go somewhere. Didn't seem 
remarkable to me in the least."

***

"No, she wasn't," Yuuji murmured half to himself.  "Just a typical kid.  
But then, all I ever saw was a photo of her, once.  And that was an 
accident."

/Wasn't it, Ran?/

"The boy though, he..."  With a tap of his knuckles on the glass, Yuuji 
fell silent.  The trees that now crowded the roadway shone emerald and 
amber for him, but his mind was two years in the past, and he took no 
notice.  

"So...when news came of their deaths, no one mourned them?  It was all 
just fodder for gossip?"  

***

"Wouldn't know, not the kinda gossip I'm usetda.  I COULD give ya a 
lista who was supposedta be sleepin' with who else for the same time 
frame, but that just wouldn't be the same, now, would it?"

Yuuji shook his head, and as they rounded the last of the corners, the 
one that lead to the tiny road shorn through the trees on the inn's 
grounds, the cabbie sighed.

"I didn't hear much about it.  They were an odd bunch, the Fujimiyas 
and that's all I know anymore for sure.  They kept to themselves so 
much they might aswella been on the moon."

***

The driver, if he was truly interested in catching glimpses of the  
Fujimiyas' reticent son, never got a chance to share fully in Yuuji's  
memories, for the blond Knight drifted into silence. And there he  
stayed for the remainder of the trip, gazing out the window at the  
passing world. The further away from the city, the thicker the  
forest grew. The blur of knobby brown trunks lulled his mind into  
quiet, and Yuuji was at last able to put the horror of the morning  
aside. He was asleep before he realized it, his dreams piecemeal:  
Omi having tea with Ran upon a barge in the middle of a rushing  
river, and all he could do was watch them drift past; walking into  
his room at the Koneko and finding a smiling Sugihara lying in bed,  
waiting for him... 
 
The car braked abruptly to a halt, jarring him from his restless  
slumber. Awkwardly he sat up, blinking in the sunlight that now  
enveloped them. The taxi was sitting in the topmost curve of a  
circular drive. Before Yuuji, across a bare, neatly swept courtyard  
stood a rambling, sharp-roofed inn.  
 
"We're here," came the driver's gruff voice, and Yuuji dug the fare 
from his wallet,  handed it over, and then walked around to retrieve 
his bags from the  popped trunk. No sooner had he shut the lid, when 
the taxi crept  away down the drive, leaving him standing there 
rather uncertainly.  
 
"Well," he said to himself, shifting his duffle's strap more securely  
upon his shoulder. "You need a place to stay, and you've got one.  
So..."  
 
And he walked across the courtyard to the pair of creaking wooden  
steps.

***

It was not the remains of the forest that stirred to answer him- he 
heard nothing strange, only the birds still singing their wet songs and 
the bugs trying to dry their wings enough to join in.  No beasts woke 
yet, and no wind louder than a whisper blew.  But with Yuuji out of 
sight, the trees spoke to one another in syrup voices leeched from the 
gaudy streets of Tokyo; swimming with that accent and the neon in the 
blood that bore it.  

"Guess someone didn't like our little present.  And we spent so much 
time fixing it for him."

"Lovely Creiddylad, even if he wants to be ungrateful, I'd hardly say 
the gift was wasted.  Look at the fun we had preparing it for him."

"That's very true.  Do we get to eat the rabbits next time we go 
through the bother of gutting one? I swear, I'll never get the gore 
stains out of my boots."

"Shutup, perv."

"Make me."

"I'd love to."

"Now see here, Feng!"

Some branches broke, and a handful of irate murmurs followed, shot 
through with laughter and the slurp of lusty kisses.  

***

The lovers had slept the night away in the very sport where they'd 
played, wrapped in a blanket that Omi had forgotten in the dryer.  
They'd lain in perfect contentment, but it was not the cooing of 
doves or the scent of awakening roses that stirred them from their 
slumber, but the sun.  It poured its brilliant white light through 
the naked windows in the kitchen, and kissed Youji until he sat up to 
turn his still-closed eyes to the dawn.  

"I don't want to get up," he mumbled.  Omi murmured sleepily against 
his pillow and clutched at his sleeve.  

"...Okay," he yawned, and started to lower himself on the futon, when 
a shadow rose between him and the sunshine.  Youji froze, and, within 
that shadow, found the strength to pry his lids open.  

"Oh.  Sei-chan.  You up already?"  

The little boy, who was still dressed in his pajamas, nodded 
solemnly.  

"'Kay.  You hungry?"  

Again, he nodded, and Youji fought back another yawn.  "All right 
then.  I'll get up, get the coffee going and then I'll make 
you...something."  

Seishirou pattered back over to the table.  Youji 
clambered onto his feet, and headed over to the where the coffeemaker 
sat.  He turned it on and watched it until the water began to stream 
from the reservoir into the pot.  Once he was satisfied that all well, 
he went over to the sliding doorto open the blinds a little wider.  It 
was then that he noticed the folded sheet of paper that lay upon the 
kitchen floor just by the sliding door.  

It read:  

{Would you like to come over for breakfast? I'll wait until noon for 
you.

-Koichirou Nageki}

Youji dropped the note beside his lover's hand, and scooped up his 
son, who had followed him back to their bed.  

"Oi, Omi," said Youji as he jiggled a corner of the futon with his 
foot.  "Come on and get up.  We've got an invitation to breakfast."

***

"Mmmmmmmm, Ken.  's too early.  I wanna go back to sleep." Omi mumbled 
between drowsing and his lover's voice.  He rolled over, smashing the 
innocent note and tugging the sheets with him until he was completely 
lost in them, only a little lump left to betray exactly where he had 
hidden himself.  

"Ken's not here."

As if Seishirou's words alone had shattered the last of the haze crept 
into his thoughts, the boy sat bolt upright then and glanced around the 
unfamiliar kitchen.  The sheets came spiraling down from his naked 
chest and in the effusive brilliance that had burst through the clouds, 
he rubbed his eyes to try and make them see again. 

"Aa wakatta.  I was dreaming, I guess and... hey, what did you just say?"

"Koichirou-san invited us for breakfast if you want to go.  It's after 
ten, and the weather report said it would probably rain some more." 

With a laugh he rose, and embraced his lover and his son, only to 
scuttle away for an instant to double check he had indeed remembered to 
put on his pajama pants, which he had, though they were falling down 
already now the tie had come undone.  And so he took his companions in 
his arms again, and hugged them both.  

"You read my mind, Sei-chan. I didn't know you could tell time!"

"Ah... otousama taught me." By which he meant of course that he had 
helped himself to such knowledge as it lived in Youji's thoughts.

"I always knew he was a good teacher."

"Hai~i!"

"Well, I'll be right back.  Don't think Nageki would wanna see me in my 
skivvies."

He kissed Seishirou on the forehead, and held his hands over his eyes 
as he kissed the boy's father full on the lips with the tiniest hint of 
his tongue.  Sure now of his being awake, he took off after his bags 
and something fit to wear.

Seishirou gave Youji a little shrug.

***

Youji shrugged back.  "Guess I don't have to cook after all, huh?  
Suits me all the same.  Let's go get ourselves dressed more properly 
for our visit."  



Less than fifteen minutes later, they'd succeeded in their quest--
with Youji reckoning aloud that it was some sort of a record for 
him.  From his bags, he'd dug out another pair of jeans and a long-
sleeved red shirt (which he'd left untucked as it fell to his 
hips), and had swept his uncombed hair into a ponytail; his favorite 
pair of black boots completed the ensemble.  The clothes he'd slept 
in, he'd left piled up on the kitchen counter--the kitchen being 
where he'd retired to dress, to spare his family the sight of his 
injuries.  

But all that they'd left behind them for the rainy afternoon that was 
to come.  The clouds were already gathering in the sky, and as they 
emerged from the sliding door, Youji mourned the slow dwindling of 
the sunshine.  

"Maa, maa, I had hoped we could get out for a little while and enjoy 
the fine weather," he said, whisking his fingers through Sei's hair 
in an attempt to tame it into some semblance of neatness.  "Guess 
that can't be helped."  

Smiling, he glanced over at Omi as the trio headed out into the 
yard.  "I guess we'll all be playing with the gundams this 
afternoon."  

***

"Well," Seishirou began softly, "We could go for a walk in the rain.  A 
fun walk! Not worrying about finding anything like yesterday."

He and his father's lover both canted their companion the most 
innocently hopeful looks, and the latter wiggled his eyebrows just a 
little, not to mention quite stumbled on the stepping stones as he 
tried to work his toes the rest of the way into his sneaker.  "Aaa! Yo-
... Akeno-kun, could we? Just for a little while."

"And maybe it won't rain."

"Souuuuuuu da! It sure doesn't smell wet."

Omi had quite lied, for the outside wore the scent of a storm, though 
whether the slippy aroma of the water that hadn't fallen or yet that 
which yearned to catch the breeze, that much none of them could say.

Youji shook his head, and smiled at them both; swept some dust from 
Seishirou's corduroys and let his son squirm far enough away from him 
to pull Omi's floppy hat down before the wind carried it away.

They found Nageki waiting outside for them, sitting on a towel strewn 
over the damp stoop of his porch.  As curious as it might have been for 
him be home so late into the day, he was dressed as if for a day at the 
office- grey slacks, a faintly iridescent shirt neither green nor blue 
and a white tie.  He had been smoking quite peacefully, but stubbed his 
cigarette out on the railing beside him as soon as he realized his 
guests had arrived.

"Err... nasty habit, please forgive me."

"It's OK!" Omi chuckled.  "Anyway, Ohayo, Koichirou-san!"

***

"Ohayo!" echoed Youji, who sniffed discreetly after the lingering 
smoke from the elder man's spent cigarette.  "And eh...thank you for 
the invite."  He snapped his heels together and bowed smartly to his 
host, who, he found as he straightened up, apparently found him 
amusing.  The smile he wore only broadened when he saw Sei, and as he 
rose, he held a hand out for the little boy to take.  

/Go on, if you want,/ thought Youji to his son.  /'Cause he's lonely, 
isn't he?/

A shimmer of assent wafted down the link they'd formed, and Youji, 
placed a hand over his son's eyes to tease him.  

/Hold his hand, and let him remember Kaze-san, and this afternoon, 
we'll all go for a walk in the rain and jump in every puddle we can 
find./  

Youji dropped his hand from his son's emerald eyes, and, at their 
host's insistence, followed Omi into the house.

***

And memory it was more than dust which followed them now, even at 
Seishirou's soft insistence.  

The Koichirou and Hidaka houses had been built from the same floor 
plan.  Only time and emptiness divided them; that Hiharu's dwelling had 
gone so long unlived in.  It wasn't that the home Nageki had made of 
his share of the neighborhood was crowded, cluttered, but it felt full.

Felt lived in, even though the only shoes not theirs were the beaten, 
grass-stained sneakers and the loafers Nageki toed off.  There were 
hairline scuffs in the varnish of the hallway floor- so many they 
looked like starbursts when the sun gleamed upon them just right.  The 
air smelled faintly of radishes and ginger.

But what got Omi most of all, what left him tarrying just outside the 
kitchen longer than was proper, was the picture of Ken sitting on top 
of one of the end-tables in the living room.  It was his middle school 
graduation photo.  Something that he hadn't found in the locked closet.

Only his remarks of delight brought him out of the summer where that 
picture lived, and he skipped into the kitchen himself.  The table 
there stood on the opposite side of the room Hiharu's did, so it was 
close to the glass doors, which were wide, wide open that morning.  The 
snow white tablecloth atop it rustled in the breeze, bubbling between 
the plates now and then.  

In its center stood a sukiyaki pot filled with bits of hot charcoal and 
a neat, little screen of singed black, itself far from empty.  Skewers 
of whole smelt drenched in miso and pork meatballs warmed gently on its 
surface.  Two plastic grocery store trays flanked it- one of tamago 
slices and another of inari-zushi.  There was instant miso soup at 
every place, along with little bowls of warm daikon and mushroom and 
squid salad with teriyaki sauce.  

Not to mention a big bottle of Blendy cold coffee with lots of Nestle 
non-dairy creamer to go with it.  This seemed to be the only thing 
which didn't please Seishirou, and only because he paid it no mind.

"Is this my chair?" he asked of their host.  He pointed to the seat 
their host had bolstered somewhat with a few layers of floor pillows.  

Nageki smiled and pulled it out for him, "It most certainly is.  I 
can't imagine it'd be much fun for you always having to ask if you can 
have something from the grill." 

"Oh... thank you." And, he, already free of his father's arms, made as 
if to climb all by himself to the top of the soft, little tower.  He'd 
not reached the chair rung before their host hoisted him into the air.  
It made him start, but in the end, the tiny bottle of whole milk which 
appeared at his place charmed him out of his surprise.

"That's all yours.  Please take your seats, I just need to dish the 
rice, and then I'll join you."

***

Youji was in a state of joyous disbelief, for never had he been 
presented with such a splendid spread as the one Koichirou-san had 
set. His mouth was fairly watering, and he had force himself to keep 
still once he'd taken his seat, lest he be rude and serve himself 
before his host had returned. 

Much to Youji's delight, he didn't tarry in the kitchen, and with him 
he brought four bowls heaped with rice: three of shiny green glaze, 
adorned with a single stalk of bamboo on the side; the other made of 
sturdy red plastic, just the right size and shape to fit in a child's 
palm. Seishirou was plainly delighted when Nageki set it before him.

"It was kind of you to invite us over for breakfast, Koichirou-san," 
said Youji, taking his chopsticks in hand. "Sankyuu."

***

"HAI! Arigatou!" caroled Omi and Seishirou, and both promptly burst out 
laughing in tune as well.  

Nageki's expression warmed- just faintly, but warmed still - at the 
sound of their giggles, and as if in thanks, he reached into his 
pockets, and came up with two little packets of shrimp and seaweed rice 
seasoning.  Both boys once more sang in thanks.  "Doitashimashite," 
their host finally told them, and they only cheered all the more.

All together then, as if they had done it as once for as long as they 
could remember, they sang out, "ITADAKIMASU!"

And so, began to eat.  Youji tucked into his rice, and his lover began 
mixing up a cup of very weak coffee while Seishirou quietly read to 
himself the ingredients of his rice seasoning, undeterred by the fact a 
child his age ought not be able to do so.  No one noticed, and as much 
as the contents might have put him off, he decided he might as well 
treat himself.

Koichirou-san then, having turned over a few of the kebabs said, "Aaa, 
I'm so glad you don't mind store bought breakfasts.  I'm not much of a 
cook, you see.  Even less of a host.  You'll have to excuse me if 
anyone comes to the door or I get a phone call.  I work out of the 
house, and so I'm on the clock now."

***

Youji plunked bits of both the squid and the daikon atop his rice, 
before helping himself to one of the skewers which straddled the 
gently smoking pot.  

"If you don't mind my asking, what sort of business are you in, 
Koichirou-san?" 

***

Nageki, once he had taken a sip of his coffee, proved more than happy 
to oblige with an answer.  In fact, the mere thought of doing so 
brightened his expression all the more.  "I make and evaluate purchases 
for a small firm.  Nothing clandestine, but I'll have to wait until any 
of them show up before I can explain well."

"Ah, that's OK," Omi replied, veritably bouncing in his seat with 
curiosity.  "What firm is it?"

"Aikan Muyo."

The young Weiss nibbled one of the fish balls a moment, pondering 
just how it could be he had never heard of the establishment in 
question- it seemed like he would have remembered a business with such 
a name, and something in the way his host spoke- some gleaming on his 
words -made him think it was an operation which HARDLY deserved to be 
called a 'small firm'.  "Aikan Muyo... that's some name!"

"Aaa, it was the name caught my attention when I first tried to find a 
job."

"Have you worked there very long?"

"I've been with the company all my life."

(OOC: Aikan Muyo means "No need for sadness and joy".  Tenchi fans can 
run a search on it for a treat!)

***

Over the rim of his coffee cup, Youji's eyes widened slightly in 
surprise, and he snickered softly as he set the cup down beside his 
bowl of rice.  

"Forgive me, Koichirou-san, but how could you have been working 
there all of your life?"  

***

"Did I say *that*?" Nageki rolled his eyes at himself and did his best 
to detract attention from his self-conscious grin by dabbing at his 
lips with his napkin.  "Well... perhaps Hidaka-san knows what I meant, 
I surely don't."

It took Omi a moment and a poke in the knee from Seishirou's foot to 
remember he was Hidaka-san at the moment.  Their host noticed, but gave 
no sign his peculiar little pause struck him as suspect.  "You mean 
you've never done anything else and you can't picture yourself any 
other way."

"Exactly, thank you."

"Kinda like those mangaka, who when they ask them 'Hey, what would you 
have been if you weren't a mangaka?' and they say 'I can't imagine 
myself being anything else'."

The old man nodded, and though plainly amused, gave no sign besides a 
momentary sparkle in his eye.  "Aa, do they really say that? It seems 
strange someone whose life would depend so much on imagination wouldn't 
be able to come up with at least one thing."

"I know Higuri You said it at least once, I think it was a foreign 
interview though."

"Oh? What does she draw?"

Omi, already so buoyant as his many unexpected treats had made him, 
blurted out, "Shonen ai,", and had no sooner spoken than realized 
billows upon billows of implications it might have for his poor host! 
There was always the slimmest chances of offending someone's taste, but 
Koichirou-san, plainly not put off by such things, lived nonetheless in 
memories so steeped with all the tell-tales of the genre.

/Oh... damnit!/

The tiny ringing them of a spoon on the inside of a tiny cup, "That 
just makes it all the more odd she would say that if you ask me.  She 
should have lots of dreams if that's what she writes."

The relief which flooded through him he swore the others could see as 
plainly as if he had turned purple for an instant.

***

"There is something in what you say," piped Youji from his side of 
the table as he toyed with his rice, "but...don't most people have 
one thing they've always wanted to do?  Something that inspires a 
love so deep it stretches from their heart and roots in their very 
soul.  How can they dream of anything else, when they only want one 
thing?"  

***

Nageki made a bit of a puffling sound- it took his guests a moment to 
realize he was laughing, and then it was the crinkles at the edges of 
his eyes which gave this away to them.  "Very true! In fact, just now, 
you're saying that I... I honestly don't know what else I could have 
been! I am a man of few aspirations I suppose."

"Aww," Omi chimed in,  "There's gotta be something you want..."

"Well, I have said lately I'd like to go back to the country.  I was 
there for awhile but not to sightsee."

"Oh?"

"Oh yes!" And it was only then their host seemed to remember he had 
served himself, and so claimed two inari for his own.  One vanished 
before he spoke again.  "What about you, Hidaka-san?"

"I dunno..."  

Seishirou interrupted before he managed to think of anything.  "You 
have rice on your nose."

"So I do.  Is that what you want to be, Sei?" And smirking now, the 
blue-haired boy stuck a little to the nose of his lover's son.  
"Someone who tells people when they have rice on their nose."

"No.  I want to be... umm..." His feet when smack-smack on the 
underside of the table and only then did he declare.  "I want to be 
a nurse!"

***

His rice laden chopsticks poised just shy of his mouth, Youji turned 
his stunned attention to his beaming little boy. "But Sei. Boys 
can't be nurses." 

No sooner had he said that than some of the happiness Sei held in his 
expression trickled away, and Youji inwardly cursed himself for his 
lack of tact. He popped the bite he'd meant to take into his mouth, 
sipped some tea, then quickly amended his response. "I mean to say, 
boys aren't nurses. In Japan, it's the little girls who want to be 
nurses," he said gently. "You...understand?"

Without raising his eyes, Sei nodded. Youji looked over at Omi, who 
glared at him. Youji sighed heavily, then leaned over and drummed 
his fingertips over Sei's forearm until he got his full attention. 

"Listen, I...I wouldn't mind if you wanted that. It's just...you 
might be teased quite a bit if you set down that path."

***

"I don't mind," Seishirou told his father.  It was as if they had 
spoken only of going for a walk in the impending rain, and the prospect 
of galoshes had been for him a welcome one.  

This puzzled Omi, but before he had a chance to BE puzzled outwardly 
for them, it was Nageki who began to speak rather suddenly.

"Your father does had a point."

With his lips hidden in his milk did Seishirou raised an eyebrow to the 
old man.  

"You don't deserve to be teased, even if what you want to be isn't 
something most little boys think of.  You should start studying as soon 
as you can. That way, no one will be able to make fun of you, because 
you'll know more than them.  If they do anyway, they'll be stupid, and 
they'll never hurt you."

***

"He's right," said Youji. "So...maybe we can get you some first aid 
books, and you can start reading up on it. Hmm? And a toy medical 
kit so you can practice your bandaging. Ken can be your patient!" 

/Just don't take any of that crap to heart, if anyone gets jealous 
and tries to give you a hard time. Okay?/ 

***

::I won't. I'd rather believe you than them anyway.:: Seishirou 
answered in his own little way- he could speak most daintily with the 
syrups of his thoughts that they almost mingled with her words. "I 
could have one? Really? And I can play with you like that?"

"You can play with ALL of us like that," Nageki added from behind his 
coffee, "If Hidaka-san doesn't mind."

Omi most certainly did not. He also had a second helping of fish 
balls. "And I know a little bit about that kinda stuff. I'll teach 
you, and then someday, you can teach me!"

At which both nodded and giggled in their glad enthusiasm. Just as 
their host was about to ask something of them both though (his eye 
had betrayed the question) his phone rang, and he excused himself to 
the living room to answer it.

***

In his host's unexpected absence, Youji nibbled at a bit of his 
salad, then tucked into his miso, hoping to make vast inroads into it 
before it got too cold. 

"I certainly didn't expect to get such a welcome," he said softly, 
glancing at Omi above his soup spoon. "In fact, it's kind of odd 
that he went to such lengths as this for us, friends of Ken's or 
not." He sipped down a mouthful of broth. "I'm beginning to wonder 
if something's up with him; if there's more than just a need to be 
neighborly that's compelling him to seek our company."

***

"Maa! Yo- Akeno-kuuuuuuun!" fussed Omi in response, his mouth quite 
full of meatball while he tried to speak.  "Just because you're not 
used to people being nice to us..." 

"I think Otousama is right."

They nearly jumped from their chairs at the glassy pallor of 
Seishirou's words.  Fragility of the voice aside, they had very much 
the cadence and the steps of a grown-up's intonation; very much the 
thinness of Koichirou-san's diction manifest in another body.  And when 
they turned to him, Youji's son's eyes were looking into the imaginary 
space beyond the kitchen wall rather than either of them.  A sip of 
milk and he had recovered himself, not to mention earned quite a 
moustache which he chose to wipe away himself.  

"Oh? How come?" Omi had to ask, as out of place as it seemed.

"I think he wants to ask us something, but he can't think of how to do 
it.  He's scared."

In the next room of course, what fragments of Nageki's conversation 
came to them surrendered no such thing: "...hai... hai... doko ni... 
oh... I see... how much... heh? USO! I'm sorry, you must be kidding 
me... No? Oh, yes! Yes! Bring it over right away."

Omi just wondered how anyone the world who seemed to enjoy their job so 
much would ever be frightened of anything save being fired.  It made 
him wretchedly jealous for an instant, but that was before Seishirou 
had plopped one of his own sushi rounds onto his plate.

"You like it more than me.  I'll trade you for the little shrimp in 
your rice seasoning!"

"Aaa, you're a shrewd negotiator.  That's good!  You'll be able to 
reason with feisty patients if you have to take care of any."

***

"In that regard," said Youji, "that power of yours will be a definite 
boon." 

Above the clicking of their utensils and the quiet murmurs of their 
idle conversation, the trio heard their host break off the one which 
had driven him from the table. As one, they perked up, awaiting his 
soft-footed return to their company. The man was all smiles when he 
did at last grace them with his presence. 

"I take it everything's okay, Koichirou-san?" 

***

"Aaa, everything is, Fujimiya-san!" Their host quite clapped as he 
offered them that reassurance, an enormous, saintly grin spreading over 
his face as he did so.  Before any of them had a chance to linger on it 
though, he had dropped to a low bow.  "Please forgive me for having to 
absent myself like that."

"Oh, it's fine, it's fine!" Omi reassured, skewer for his meatball 
poking out of his mouth.

"But I will have to leave you again shortly I'm afraid.  Not for too 
long, in fact, if you like, you could perhaps give me a hand..."

"Eee, what kind of a hand?"

"I would need you to look at something and tell me if it is to your 
liking."

Without so much as a confirming glance to any of their companions, all 
three began to cheer wildly.  It was enough to make their host consider 
such favors might be the highlight of every one of their day. Nageki 
contemplated this as he resumed his chair and also his tofu.  "You 
understand," he said, "that it is very hard for me to have guests over 
because of these constant interruptions.  I am grateful to you all for 
suffering them for me."

***

"And we are grateful for your fine company and your generosity," said 
Youji, smiling.  "But...ah, what do you need our opinion on, 
Koichirou-san?  Or is that a secret?"  

***

"A secret for a little while yet.  Mustn't be so impatient, it isn't 
good for your health."  Though that was all the more chiding they got 
from the old man as long as he abided within distance of their senses, 
and it had been the earnest sort: without more that fleeting jest and 
shot with real concern.

::It's a really cool secret anyway.:: Seishirou informed his father, 
but before the returning thread of inquiry had a moment to reach to 
him, the boy had polished off his milk and caroled, "Gochisousama!"

"Oh, done already?"

"Hai!"

"I don't suppose you'd like to go watch a movie in my living room, 
would you?" Nageki asked with his chopsticks still tucked between his 
lips in a smile, for the boy had bounded off his chair already and come 
just close enough he could have ruffled his hair if he wanted to; if 
Akeno hadn't already chosen to take the opportunity himself.  "I have 
all the Sanrio Eiga and most of Studio Ghibli's work, but I'm not..."

"Could I see Faerie Florence?"

The answer to this of course came from neither the old man not the 
child who had asked it, though both looked towards Youji quite 
expectantly.

***

"Well, um...Why not. Sometimes only sad things can make a person 
happy.  Enjoy yourself."

Seishirou beamed at his father, then shared the same with Nageki, 
before he raced away to their host's living room. 
Youji helped himself to a touch more coffee.  

"It was delicious, Koichirou-san. Thank you," said Youji. "There's 
just one thing...Ah, you couldn't spare a cigarette, could you?" he 
asked sheepishly. "I smoked my last one last night, and ah..." He 
made a helpless sort of gesture, to which the old man smiled. 
Graciously, he slipped the pack from his shirt pocket, and lay it and 
a lighter on the table halfway between them. Youji took a smoke with 
trembling fingers, and slid it between his sighing lips. 

"Thank you for being so kind to Sei," he mumbled around the tip of 
the wobbling cigarette as he lit it.

***

"Aaa, you sound as if it's a bother to me, and it isn't at all, I 
assure you, Fujimiya-san," Nageki said to his guest then, nibbling just 
the slightest bit on the end of his last skewer.  "You have a very 
sweet boy.  How old is he?"

"He's four," Omi replied, not wanting his lover to be disturbed enough 
to lose any time with his cigarette.  He had needed it, that much was 
plain.

"Really? I had thought he was a bit small for his age, no offense, but 
just four?  Hmm." Not a sound of pondering that, but a hint of thoughts 
flung elsewhere for the time being.  He presently excused himself, 
leaving the two runaway Weiss to simply admire one another in silence.  
Omi reached over and thumbed Youji's empty hand a moment, not bothering 
to take his fingers back once their host returned.

Nageki said to them, "Actually, I'm not as ingenuous as all that.  I 
have in fact two favors to ask of you, but in return for the first, 
I'll tell you why I must ask it.  It has to do with Ken.  After you've 
heard, well, you're not obliged, but I must ask."

When the old man sat down again, they found he was holding a white 
porcelain ginger jar, its creamy surface painted with a strange garland 
of bellflowers, peaches and amber-red cranes.

***

It was very late in the morning when Masato awakened.  Things still 
felt early though.  Too early for a Crasher to be up at least.  

The rain had slowed enough so that there were only tiptoes of it over 
the window now- the roof and walls fell silent for its steps.  That, 
and almost no one else in the building was still home.  

Masato, once sleep had crept from him without a question left, found 
himself quite alone in a faerie circle of his lover's clothing.  He had 
rolled over the tiny slump which would have betrayed the boy's passing 
to him, and so nothing remained of him in the little bedroom besides 
what he had wore the night before, and a few honey gold threads tangled 
in the terry of the towel the chair wore.  

Though they shortly were joined by a very loud bang from the kitchen 
and a "Bloody hell!".

That being more than enough to coax him out of bed- the equal fear for 
his guest and his apartment.

His worn robe strewn around him now, he stamped into the kitchen by way 
of the living room, finding there that the litho (which he didn't 
recognize at first) had been hung on a pair of pushpins just above the 
couch, where it was neither out of place nor in the way, assuming, of 
course, that the pins were inclined to stay put.  No matter, onto the 
kitchen after the little ruby sunshine scent clinging to the air.

Naru hovered there, just before the stove, now and then prodding 
something on a pan with the corner of a spatula.  There were plates and 
teacups dotting the table, as well as a glass of water and an open 
aspirin bottle.  None of Masato's few cooking supplies seemed to have 
been harmed all that much.

Those simple facts didn't have all that much sway over him, for Naru 
turned around just then.  He had his fingers in his mouth.  His hair 
had been brushed... somewhat.  And he wasn't wearing anything besides a 
pair of ratty jeans and a blue baby-doll top with a little white cat 
emblazoned on the front who happened to be wearing a crown as she 
napped on the words "princess".

"Ohayo gozaimasu, Masato.  I hope I've not put the culinary spirits of 
your house into too much of a tizzy, but I was beastly hungry when I 
awoke and I thought perchance you might be too? There's some hibiscus 
and orange tea in the kettle and I've some sandwiches started.  Do you 
like grilled cheese?"

***

Masato regarded him blankly for a moment before answering. "Ah, 
yeah. I do. I think." 

Naru canted him a curious look, then wrinkled his nose at him, and 
turned back to the sauteing of their breakfast. Masato took in the 
sight of his pert little ass as it looked encased in his worn 
jeans, and then lurched free from the spot he'd rooted himself in 
and took one of the cups his houseguest had already placed on the 
table. 

Behind him, the pan rattled on the stove eye.  As he filled his cup 
with the ruby liquid, Naru settled the newly melted sandwiches onto the 
two plates he'd set out.  

"They look pretty good," Masato remarked as he poured Naru a cup of tea.  
"I wasn't expecting to find breakfast already made.  Hell, I didn't 
even know you could cook...Oh. I forgot something." 

He promptly set the kettle down on the rooster-shaped trivet on the 
center of the table, and leaned in for a good morning sort of kiss. 

"Ohayo, Naru-hana."

***

Naru, silent now, but unabashed as ever, let him have his lips for all 
the sleep-twinged moments he could ever want, smiling under them 
faintly as he dared.  When they had left him, he grinned in earnest.

And then kissed his lover back, lustily, and without lust; with a their 
noses pressed together for a little while before he fled back to his 
worn cushion beside the table.  He wasn't sitting across from him as 
the other times Masato had let him inside for something to eat, but 
half-curled up at his companion's right elbow.

And the elder Crasher couldn't help but notice he wasn't kneeling 
either, but rather sitting with one leg stretched out under the low 
surface, and the other gathered up to his chest.  Like... a portrait 
that melted into a figure study halfway through.

"Well... if you must be so enamored of the truth," he said, having 
waited a moment as if he feared to disturb the steam still rising from 
their cups.  "I've not done well with the truth and you.  I can cook.  
I do loathe it though.  Besides which, very little of what I've any 
idea how to prepare can actually be conjured here.  And I doubt you'd 
find any love for Azuzalir jam even if I smuggled an Azuzalir here 
under my shirt."

A typical oh-well shrug, and he reached over to his plate at last, 
lifting one half of his oozy sandwich to his lips (which were red from 
a bit of tea he had tasted before brewing any properly).  "My stove 
really is suffering in the seven hells though, and I assure you, I'd 
nothing to do with that PARTICULAR explosion."

***

"I suppose it was the chizuu-manchas fault?" Masato asked, bringing a 
cheese-slippery triangle up for a bite. "Really, you should get 
yourself a cat. Or three. That would keep them in line." 

Naru rolled his eyes at him, and Masato nabbed one drooping curl from 
his shoulder, and gave it a gentle tug. 

"Until then, I guess you'll have to make do with my little-used one. 
Just don't blow up my kitchen--small as it is, I kind of like it."

***

"I do too... I mean... I'm especial... I... ah... Yeah, I do.  That's 
what I meant."

For the wondering look Masato offered him in return, he simply raised 
his cup, rather than asking outright for a toast.  Their teas met, and 
a few drops from one of them splashed on the table between their 
plates.  Without so much as looking around for a towel first, Naru 
simply rubbed it up with his finger tips until the crimson juice had 
melted into his skin.

"It's rather cozy in here, and even if you can see ah... see... right 
out into the living room, it feels so sequestered, so alone... in a 
good way.  If there is such a thing.  I guess.  Alone with you I mean, 
not... not just me."

***

"You know, I find it even more appealing, now that I don't have to sit 
in it alone.  And you don't have to be alone anymore, you know. You...
can stay. If you want." Masato wrapped an arm around Naru's waist. 
"Do you want?"

***

"Oh, surely there is nothing else which would ever delight me more than 
you saying I could st-... re-... I could."

For his lover's worried eyes then, Naru smiled all lopsided and gentle 
as a half-asleep caress, only to turn away, his cheeks blushing nearly 
the color of the tea he had once more begun to sip.  He said almost too 
himself, "I just don't know if I can keep up being all bombastic... 
Whatever I try to say to you just keeps coming out all wrong."

For which Masato nearly dropped his sandwich, for his lover's voice 
had, on those words, fallen an octave.

***

"Then don't be bombastic," said Masato.  "If you have something you 
want to say to me, just say it. Softly and simply."

***

"But what I want to be may not be very simple at all," Naru admitted 
with a shrug and a melancholy grin.  "I can speak softly though, I know 
I can."

So it was with his voice a mere whisper half lost in the humming of all 
the building's breathing he said, "You make my heart sing.  You're the 
best thing that's happened to me in seven years.  I love you, and I'm 
sorry... about anything stupid I said last night."

***

A look of pure, quiet wonder crept over Masato's face, and, being so 
touched by Naru's admission, he ducked his head down a little and 
chuckled at himself and the delight he so keenly felt.  

"Yeah," he said, flicking his hair back from his face as he looked up 
again, "drink will do a lot for loosening one's tongue." He brushed his 
cup-warmed fingers over the back of Naru's hand before claiming it as 
his own.  "I guess tea can do that, too.  Because, for some strange 
reason, I have the overwhelming urge to tell you that I..."  

He smiled then.  "I love you, too.  With all my heart."  

***

The boy merely smiled in return.  His eyes were wet as the husks of the 
streetlights outside, dimmer than the reflections of the clouds there 
lying, but he didn't cry, didn't even wipe his eyes.

Naru just dragged his plate and his cup over to the far side of the 
table.  Satisfied he had found them a safe distance at which to hide, 
he plopped himself down right beside his lover's breakfast, reclaimed 
his own, and then began to nibble as if nothing at all could possibly 
be amiss with where he was sitting.

"Then," he said with his mouth full and smacking, "Let's not worry 
about that and reassurance.  That's all I... all I could have ever 
wanted from you.  I'm happy."

And the unshed tears by then had faded into nothing.  

***

"And that's all I wanted from you, Naru. For you to be happy." 

Reaching for his cup again, Masato soundly patted Naru's hip.  "Now...
We have a whole day ahead of us, Naru-hana. What do you want to do 
with it?"

***

"I want to go see Chinatsu!"

Masato's spluttering silence with his lips against his tea served as 
his answer, his saying he hadn't expected his young teammate to declare 
such a thing at all.  His shock sobered Naru somewhat, but the boy only 
closed his eyes to any gentle protests of his form, and nibbled his 
sandwich still smarting with a smile.  And a stray thread of cheese. 

"If she's not too busy I mean.  I just wanted... I... well... a little 
something.  If you think we shouldn't, that we'll be followed, we don't 
have to.  But either way, even if those two, are on our heels all the 
way I... I owe Omi a favor." He winked here, perhaps not certain 
himself as to why.  "I have to find him.  You don't... I wouldn't ask 
you to come with me.  But you can.  I wouldn't say no either."  

***

Masato didn't answer Naru right away, but the boy didn't seem to mind 
his reticence, just sat quietly by and nibbled at his breakfast. As 
if he knew he was merely thinking, and not on the verge of rejecting 
his offer. 

Which he wasn't planning on doing. 

"I'll go with you to find Omi. Those bastards might be lurking nearby, 
waiting to grab you again just for kicks.  And I'll take you to see 
Chika-chan. But we have to be careful. If those idiots are following us 
around, I certainly don't want to lead them straight to her and Naoko. 
All right?" 

Naru popped the last of his sandwich into his mouth, and flung his 
arms around Masato's shoulders, hugging him tight. 

"Okay, then," he said, drawing away from him with a pat to his back. 
Masato scooped up his half-filled cup of tea and the last morsel of 
his sandwich, and rose from the table. "I'll just get dressed," he 
added, waving in the direction of the bedroom, "and 
we'll be on our way to Naoko's."

***

He had driven so far that the last city behind him faded into the glow 
of the horizon.  The only town willing to cling to the valley hung like 
white butterflies in the distant treetops of the hills beside the one 
the wandering road which had carried him, and then left him.  The 
gravel simply stopped as the first rise of the slope.  He reached into 
his pocket and checked the note he bore against the only hint of a sign 
he could find.

Hanging from a weather-worn and soapy-looking monolith with the face of 
a weeping kirin was a placard whose blank ink letters read- Seishin.  

He didn't bother to lock the door of his car- just scooped the ginger 
jar from the front seat, and began to climb footpath, for there was 
one, tucked under a cascade of droopy white flowers with eyes like 
stars sewn upon them.  They closed behind him like a gate: once, twice, 
and last of all once he had passed the fourteenth cottage hidden in the 
brush.

After that, the earth steadying his feet grew dark and loose, and no 
other footprints were found to join his own.  All around him the trees 
turned to gardens for beautiful and parasitic things, and the sunlight 
melted into sticky green.  Cicadas rasped, and hosts of birds he could 
neither see nor name sang the praises of the shade.  Beyond the path 
there was no earth any longer.  Just green.  Just forest.  Just the 
sort of place he had believed with all his heart no longer existed in 
Japan; where ghosts of long-extinct wolves roamed, and the spirits kept 
them like watch dogs.  

It scarcely rose at all, the path, or what there was it, finding no 
hurry he supposed in reaching the place where the crest of the hill 
dozed.  He could not feel the ground reaching for its droopy zenith.  
He felt very little at all.  Just the vibrattos of the woods come 
softly through his veins as the pebbles turned the other way, picked 
up, stumbled and the sunlight seemed to grown no closer.

And then footfalls not his own.

Nageki looked up from the tracks his shoes had left in the 
scintillating dust to find himself face to face with a twelve year old 
boy, one with blue eyes all too familiar in their brilliance.  Had he 
made no sound, the old man would have guessed him to be a ghost, for he 
was pale as death and dressed like an old man of untold years ago: 
haori, tabi, geta and a paper hand fan rolling in his fingers.  

"Have you come to collect me?" he asked with a smile.  No, it didn't 
seem strange any more, that the people of the house he sought would 
feign to know him.  Not at all.

The boy said nothing, just beckoned, and then slipped through the brush 
at the side of another kirin some rushes had nearly over taken.  The 
stream the reeds flanked was eerily silent, the waters slow and thick, 
though clearer than what of the sky remained to him.  He found as he 
stumbled down the bank that while the boy had vanished, he had left 
something easily twenty times his age in his place.

Lying in the sunken vale the path swerved from was a palace.  Nose to 
nose with one of its golden plaster walls, he could not guess the size, 
but the fine lines of the deck, the cinnabar swallows edging the roof, 
the venerable leering eyes he felt all over his body as he approached, 
they all told him he was standing before a palace.  And beyond it? The 
afternoon hung through the treetops vacant and empty as the chill 
center layers of the ocean.  The sky seemed dark, even cloudless where 
it lay beyond.  

He wondered how he could have overlooked it, that void, when he had 
been standing on the ordinary earth below.  Suddenly, he did not want 
to know.  The hands around the ginger jar grew unsteady, wet, and he 
hugged it to his chest as he ascended the porch steps.  Somewhere a 
bamboo rod set to fill with water and frighten the birds away clanged, 
and he realized he heard no feathered things singing anymore.  But 
insects, those were everywhere, circling but never descending upon him, 
stray peridot wheeling on the air.  

Nageki walked, and his footsteps seemed louder than they should have 
been on the planks that ran around the palace.  With one hand, he 
steadied himself on the wall, and found it felt oddly sharp.  Still, 
there was nothing else to hold.  And no doors.  No windows.  Just the 
traces of the slow motion stream.

And then there was no wall, two panels set into it had been parted, the 
black lacquer cranes upon them drawn inside.  He almost tumbled onto 
the tatami which lay beyond, almost spilled his burden, but catching 
himself.

"Come in." Said a voice he did not know.  "Lady Haruko is waiting for 
you."

Barefoot and dumb, he obeyed, finding that the screens at the end of 
the hall parted for him as he drew near, only to close behind him with 
a wooden bang.  The boy was kneeling off to the side, silent and with 
closed eyes.  One lamp of blue glass hung here, and one urn of spring 
flowers too delicate for summer burned in the brightest corner, fresh 
as if no time had come for them.  In the center of the room, a single 
black table rested, and behind it, Lady Haruko.    

He felt he would have knelt before her in a dream where he was master 
of the oceans, warrior of warriors.  Her draperies were flushing gold 
shot with swirls of sakura and bloody feathers; the tell-tale weeds 
that twine up through the snow just before it fades.  Neither silver 
nor gold shown through her hair or the beads tied into it, but 
somewhere in between, and all its curl had gone- she was old after all, 
but he could not say how old.  And her eyes... they were so blue he 
could not look on them too long.

"You are," she said with her varnished lips, "Koichirou Nageki."

"I am."

She sniffed at him, and broke all hope of holding his gaze as she 
turned to her boy, who nodded at some unspoken command, and turned his 
back to them.

"And you are Seishin Haruko, the Lady of the Mountain."

"Lady of the Seishin Clan, no one owns the mountain."

He smiled, victorious and utterly afraid of the idea that he could be.  
"But not all of your family is called Seishin anymore."

"One of many unfortunate results of my being born a girl."

"Your name for the years you were married was Hidaka Haruko."

"In the end, my name will be ash and ink, and so will yours." The 
ginger jar earned from her the vaguest flicker of attention, but no 
more.  She seemed no more able to meet it with her eyes than he to 
dwell in her cerulean gaze.  "For now, I am Seishin-sama.  I am lord 
here since no one else bears suitable blood."

"How did you know I was looking for you?"

"You would come, eventually. Our friends in the village simply informed 
us of your arrival.  The chase is over.  Be glad."

He was.  From the tilt of her wet mouth he could guess how much she 
sensed that in him.  "I am honored that you let me win."  His forehead 
fell to the backs of his trembling palms as he bowed before her, then 
surrendered his burden, pushing the jar across the table rather than 
lift it.  "Your granddaughter's ashes, Seishin-sama."

She laughed, and from the folds of her obi tugged a clamshell case of 
cigarettes and a stalk to hold them in.  The boy lit the end of the fag 
for her and she blew her smoke after his fleeing steps. "And did you 
really think," she asked her cigarette, "That it would be as easy as 
all that?"

"After the year I spent searching for you, I don't believe anything is 
easy anymore."

"Suppose I tell you why you are a fool and it gives me no trouble.  
Would my words be easy?"

There was nothing in him left to be taken aback, only the sense that he 
had been.  He didn't move, didn't change how he breathed- didn't even 
raise his eyes.  "First you must learn that I'm a fool."

"In that case," Haruko told him.  And she bowed.  He did not realize 
she could before that instant; that she could move and breathe air not 
smoke much the way be could. "You are about to witness your first easy 
action in a year.  

"That THING is not my granddaughter.  You had not right to bring it 
here and expect me to do anything about it, fool."

"But Seishin-sama."  Ash from her cigarette sailed without the skating 
of her breath onto his cheeks, like pin pricks worried him.  

"Do you know what that ungrateful, weak-willed little bitch did to our 
household?  Oh, I can more than tell you I can show you, Koichirou-
SAN." Though he thought the iron in her voice had wavered, if only for 
a split second.  Not on his name, but on what she called her daughter.  
"You see, Hiharu, unlike her mother and I, believed that being female 
relieved her of all her responsibilities to us.  She refused to accept 
she could be more than a vessel, no, she would not even be that for us.  
She wanted only for herself.  It was really no surprise when she turned 
up infected with a bastard, but that she would betray one of her own...  
No, when I knew that I wished to know no more."

"Wait a moment," Nageki begged, what do you mean, "One of your own.  
Hiharu didn't...?"

"That is what I mean to show you.  Nui! Come here."

One of the screens on the far side of the room parted, and the cobalt 
figure there bowed almost at once, her face melting into her hands 
before he got a good look at her.  No, he had to wait for her to rise 
for that.  Nui was like the spangle on a well-worn pair of dancing 
shoes: battered by age but still glimmering a little with what had once 
been.  Her thin, ebony hair had once streak of white through the bangs.  
And her eyes held the sticky gleam of old amber.  

"Now tell him."

"Hiharu..." Her voice had so little sound in it, the cicadas outside 
nearly swallowed it.  

"Tell him.

"Hiharu took... the most precious thing I could have ever had from me.  
She... my husband's only child... was hers."

Nageki grinned chilly at her.  "Oh? And just who seduced who?  Hiharu 
was sixteen when that child was born."

With a wave of her hand, Haruko silenced anything else the other woman 
might have said.  "And she would have had the fortitude to resist if 
what you're implying is true.  They are both dead: that wretch Hiharu 
and Nui's beloved who could not love.  Nui was good enough to remarry 
another one of our line, distant though he was, and give us Akihiko."

He felt the boy in the corner twitch more than saw it.  The name had to 
be his own.

"So you LEAVE Ken out of this? If blood is all that matters to you," 
Nageki sighed, "And it sounds as if it is, I would think you would 
welcome him with open arms.  Or at least acknowledge he exists!"

"Why should I?" Haruko spat back.  "The circumstances of his conception 
disgust us all.  And what has he done but make the life he was given a 
sorry one?"

"But Ken! He... he's all alone! He has NOTHING."

"He has you making excuses for him."  The cigarette died in a puff of 
sparks as Haruko wound its tip into the glass tray Akihiko laid out 
for her.  "If you care so much for him, then I guess he's your 
responsibility."

But his heart had already evaporated into nothing in the presence of 
her words, and her eyes oozing into his.  His voice followed.  

"So you're a fool, what of it?"

As evening fell, he found himself at the foot of the hill, sitting 
sideways in his passenger seat with a jar of ashes in his lap.

*** 

"So this is..." Omi began under the trembling patter of the rain.  One 
of his hands had come to rest on the table close to where the ginger 
jar sat, just as the clouds had once more crept over Niigata.  

The old man went on, softly now, doing what he could to end the silence 
that had come threading in. "Hiharu's ashes.  I have kept them since 
that day since I... it isn't my place to decide what's done with them."

***

The lovers' exchanged looks, asking and answering, then together they 
turned once more to pensively regard the urn. Youji, huffing the 
last smoky breath drawn from his spent cigarette, ground the butt in 
the tray Nageki had placed between them. 

"I don't know Ken's mind well enough to be able to advise you. All I 
know for certain is that he would want her to be at peace. So..." 
Youji took a steeling gulp of air. "We can take it, maybe? Because 
one day," he added, looking over at Omi again, "we're going to meet 
up with Ken again. He would want to take care of this matter 
himself." 

***

"Thank you," said the old man, and he bowed as deeply as he could while 
still seated at the table.  "I don't know what else to say to you but... 
thank you."

"Maa, there's no need to say anything," Omi assured him.  He thought a 
moment of chancing his slouched shoulders before they rose, but instead 
found himself reaching across the table to bring the ginger-jar into 
his arms.  Though he did not heft it from the table top he embraced the 
graceful porcelain arcs that formed its sides.  

As Nageki lifted his head, he smiled to see him, as odd as it might be 
for a boy to appear so taken with the dead.

"I know you'll take good care of her."

"The best care ever."

"If there's anything else..." In his colder thoughts, Nageki half 
expected requests for money or booze, but he got no such things.  Then 
again, he seldom expected anything anymore.

"Yes, actually.  You wouldn't happen to know of any good doctors around 
here, would you?"

Under the table, Omi squeezed his lover's fingers.

***

Nageki, as he had sensed what had passed unspoken between them, 
shifted his attention from Omi to Youji. 

"Umm...yeah. It seems I got myself into trouble when we were in 
Tokyo. I...think I better go for an exam."

***

Nageki simply nodded and made a small sound in his throat.  He looked a 
touch sadder than he had even a moment before, but he said not, judged 
not.  "I'll give you my doctor's name."  In considering, he nearly 
stumbled into the counter, but with no disaster to avert,  the two 
lovers sat in silence as he scratched out the name and number.

The door, however, did not.  It chimed, rattled a little with 
footsteps, but Nageki didn't move until he had laid the slip of paper 
at Youji's place as if it was rather a very dainty desert.  On then did 
he answer, and some deft, all-business greetings followed the scritch 
of another pen.  

When he came back, he was carrying a brown-paper bag.

"If you want," he told them, seemingly unaware of his parcel for all 
the care with which he held it, "I could have one of my co-workers 
drive you.  Mia-san owes me a favor."

***

"Hai..." said Youji softly, nodding. "Thank you very much, Koichirou-
san. I'll...make an appointment today. Maybe they can see me 
soon." 

With a sad half-smile, Nageki set the parcel down on the 
table as Youji reached for another cigarette and the lighter.  

"Strange that a paper-bag should be delivered," he said, half-joking, 
hoping to lighten the mood somewhat. "Let me guess--you're a secret 
agent, and that's a prototype of a new weapon, cleverly disguised as 
a sack of tomatoes?"

***

"I wish it were that simple!" Nageki gasped.  His lips crimped a little 
at the edges, but it wasn't so much that  which gave away the mischief 
suddenly brewing in his heart- he wrinkled up his nose like a rabbit.  

"So it's supposed to be disguised as a sack of onions? That'd sure ward 
off spies." Omi nodded sagely at his remark and did his best to resist 
plunging one of his already maimed nails into his mouth.  He had gone 
almost the whole length of the old man's story without biting them, and 
not he wanted to very much, though cradling Youji's hand had quite 
distracted him during the only moments he might have gotten away with 
it.

"Ah, it's not disguised as anything.  At least I hope it isn't."

With that, Nageki sat back down at the table and deftly poured out the 
contents of his paper bag- mostly tissue paper with a few stray packing 
peanuts, though once they had slipped out something from the very 
bottom followed with a bit of a thump, sent a few scraps flying.

It was a tattered blue-velvet box.  Nageki opened it, hummed 
appreciatively, and turned its satin insides towards his guests.

The choker there winked and glittered at them, even in the lacking 
afternoon light- a hundred tiny diamonds set in glistening halos around 
the edges of three enormous emeralds.

***

Youji let out a long, low, smoky whistle. "I can't believe 
someone would have the nerve to pack something like that in a paper 
bag. It could get stolen so easily. It could have gotten lost." 

He took another thoughtful drag at the cigarette. "Is that what you 
are? A jeweler?" he asked.

***

"I am," Nageki said, thoughtfully flicking one of the brilliant charms 
back into place among its field of stars.  "But my area of expertise is 
in appraisals rather than anything having to do with the fashioning of 
jewelry.  I never had the head for that,"

"But you've been..." Omi began, "...you've been handling gems like this 
all your life? This is your dream?" he sounded awed in a way- quietly 
awed that anyone could ever find earth bound heaven in such things.  
That it was these points of lights that caught the old man's heart.

They did though.  The diamonds, each and every one, winked back at them 
from Nageki's smile.

"It is.  I have advised Aikan Muyo as to the values of their estate 
purchases since I was Akeno-san's age.  I've never wanted to do 
anything else.  The Koichirou family- at least what they say was our 
family- has always been given to service and advice, supposedly of 
minor lords.  These are my lord, my only rulers.  I have been looking 
at them for so long and I never tire of them.  I didn't even during the 
months I had to stay home after..." he tugged now on the string that 
held his eyepatch.  "They let me work here after that since I don't 
drive well anymore."

***

"Catering to you in such a manner, that's very kind--or savvy?" he 
asked with a wave of his cigarette. "For you to love your work so 
well, you must be tops in your field to elicit such consideration 
from your employers. It's hardly the norm now for a company to show 
such loyalty to an employee, not in Japan. Not anywhere." 

Youji took another deep drag of his cigarette, tasting a hint of 
scorched filter. Regretfully, he stubbed out the smoldering 
remains. "So what happened, Koichirou-san, to endanger your position 
so?" Youji enquired, hinting at Nageki's patch with a slight tapping 
of a finger at the corner of his own eye.

***

"Oh, this?" Nageki mirrored his guest's gesture somewhat.  In his hands 
the emerald choker clacked and sang.  It's crisp, clear sound startled 
Omi, felt awfully loud to him.  Nageki though simply clucked his tongue 
at himself and laid the glimmering thing back against the velvet of its 
box.

A few smoothing touches to the chain, and he said, "My wife.  She came 
after me with a paring knife and managed to get me in the shoulder."

In keeping with her candor, Nageki unfastened his tie and let it loop 
around the back of his chair.  With the top few buttons of his shirt 
undone, he let the collar slide open and over the three pale slashes 
that rose over the curve and presumably onto his back.

"I managed to get the thing away from her, but I'd been going over the 
flaws in a star ruby, and my glass was on the coffee table.  She took 
it, tripped me, put it against my eye and stepped on it.  If my son 
hadn't called the police... no, I don't see much reason to worry about 
what did or didn't happen."

He shrugged.

***

"Wouldn't make a difference anyway," Youji agreed. "What's done is 
done." 

With a nod, Nageki set his clothes to rights.  
He closed the box the beautiful emerald strand rested in; it went back 
into the sack it had arrived in, pushed to one side on the table whilst 
he began to clear some of the dishes away. 

"Let me help," said Youji, who took up his own and Omi's, stacking them 
together. 

"Your wife--what happened to her?"

***

Over the tiny rush of the water and the bubbles filling up his sink, 
Nageki hummed a moment, and brushed his wrist to his lips.  He was 
thinking, mostly about just how to word what he knew so well, but his 
guests took it as some sign of reluctance.

"If you want to tell us..." Omi said as he gave the Blendy coffee 
bottle a shake to make sure it was empty.  In fact, there wasn't a 
drop left in it.  

"Oh, I don't mind you asking.  I would have told you before, but it's 
better to wait until people ask things like that."  A few of the cold 
rice bowls plopped into the basin before him followed by some of the 
plates.  Youji was standing quite close to him now, and he met his gaze 
with a warm look in his own.

"She was my boss's only daughter.  He asked me to marry her, and she 
was a soft and charming girl.  For a long time.  Hitomi was always a 
little strange but after... I don't even know after what.  It was so 
subtle.  I didn't even realize until she came at me.  She had Minuer's 
disease- her ears rang constantly.  It drove her mad, mostly because it 
distracted her from writing I think.  Nothing they gave her made her 
stop and once day she... tried to make it stop on her own.  I could 
have taken action against the institution for giving her a fountain 
pen but they were just trying to make her happy and she hadn't tried 
to hurt herself for so long."

***

For a moment, Youji's attention wavered; he imagined, in sickeningly  
graphic detail, just what Hitomi might have done to herself with that  
fountain pen. And then, with all the speed of thought, he saw Asuka-- 
how she looked after he had killed her.  
 
Someone touched his elbow, and he blinked, shuttling himself back to  
the present. Both Nageki and Omi were watching him rather worriedly,  
and he became aware that he was grimacing. Shakily, Youji gave them  
a smile, and briskly set the stack of plates into the water. Head  
bowed, he took up a rag to scrub at the plates; his hands were  
trembling slightly, and the bowl he held rattled softly against the  
sink's steel wall.  
 
"Your wife killed herself, then? I'm sorry, Koichirou-san."

***

"Thank you," Negeki said softly.  "But... yes, she did.  She and my son 
are buried together now.  I didn't want to put her in the family shrine 
but after Hiharu came to me as she is now? How could I not?"

Omi nodded, and wet down one of the clean dishtowels with a little 
fresh water from the tap before he took to buffing the last few grains 
of rice from the table top.  "Don't worry about it, Koichirou-san."

When the old man turned over his shoulder, he was almost smiling.  "I 
try not to anymore.  Time leaves scars though I've found.  They don't 
hurt, but..."

"...They're there?"

"Yes."

***

The rain quieted by the time they reached the back steps of the 
boarding house- only a pale mist like the spray of the sea raced over 
them and the glistening stone of the back yard path.  It seemed dim 
though, like the day was ending earlier than July should have wished.  
The clouds, calm as they had fallen, must have been miles thick above 
Tokyo.

Masato had on a hooded poncho, Naru a trench and a wide-brimmed hat.  
Both were swathed in black above their clothing.  It was too dim for 
sunglasses.  Probably no one would have recognized Masato as he was 
just then anyway; Naru without his bangles.

Frankly, the boy hoped Chinatsu would still know his name.  He fancied 
as they waited for Naoko to come to the door that he could hear her 
playing upstairs.  If she was even home from school yet, if she wasn't 
sleeping soundly under the gaze of all the little rain faeries.

They hadn't called first.  There had been nowhere to call from.  A 
quick ring to Reiichi and they told him, loud as they could, they meant 
to meet him at the Yakisoba place down from his house.  He was probably 
still there.  Waiting.  He could wait.  

Naru hoped he could too, but just then the bolts began to sing with the 
passing of someone's hand.  

***

The door opened up to reveal...an empty hall and the jarring bang of 
wood on wood.  Like someone was awkwardly carting furniture over the 
floor--someone who still held onto to the edge of the door.  
Exchanging amused glances with Naru, Masato nudged the door open 
further just in time to see his pig-tailed daughter settle a stool 
along the wall; Chinatsu still wore her blue-and-white sailor suit 
school uniform.  She stumbled backward to the wall, rubbed her head, 
then squealed with delight when she saw who stood on the back porch.  

"Tou-san!  Naru-hana!"  She flung her thin arms around their waists 
in turn, grabbing their hands to drag them inside after she'd dealt 
her hugs.  "Come in!"  

"Is your 'Kaa-san busy?" Masato began, only to be fairly ignored by 
his daughter.  She had released his hand (as he was far too heavy to 
pull with any success), in favor of urging Naru forward to her 
apartment.   A bewildered Naoko met them once they'd reached the 
entryway, having been summoned by her daughter's delighted shrieks.  

"I hadn't thought to see you today," she said.  She was wearing a 
full, green apron printed with yellow and orange ducks over a blue T-
shirt and a pair of black jeans; a white scarf covered her head.  

Masato lingered just outside the threshold.  "We caught you at a bad 
time."  

"You caught me cleaning the kitchen.  I'm grateful for the 
diversion."  She grabbed him by his ponchoed sleeve.  "Come in and 
get dry."  

"Well, ah...We weren't planning on staying.  We only wondered if we 
might borrow Chinatsu for the afternoon."  

"I don't mind," she said brightly, looking from one to the 
other.  "Where are you going?"  

***

Naru hadn't exactly heard her question, or even wanted too really.  If 
he could have lived out the rest of the day staring down into the 
shimmer of those glossy heather eyes he would have, and been glad for 
it beyond all other things.  The owner of said eyes though most 
certainly had other plans.

As if she found his attention unusual, Chinatsu pulled once more on 
his.  She had little power over her own spell though besides her small 
gift of naming it in his mind.  Once he knew he had been enchanted of 
course, there were always those tiny, welcome steps towards the edges 
of the magic.  

His coat came unbuttoned, and with a marked "OOF!" did Naru hoist his 
lover's daughter into his embrace, letting her swing between his 
elbows.

It was only once he had captured his little elf he realized everyone 
else was staring.

"Well, Memsahib..."

Mother and daughter both giggled, and the daughter pulled off his hat, 
claiming it for her own, raindrops and all.  

"...we were perhaps wondering if you would have any objection to our 
removing Chinatsu-chan from the house for a little excursion to the 
land of the cake pixies.  Did you know cake pixies live at the mall 
too?

"Really?" the little girl was giggling so hard he almost dropped her 
for the tickles her breath wrought on him alone.

"Why, enormous hoards of them.  And there's this charming bookstore 
there.  Your tousan tells me you like to read- and this isn't a Book-
off! It has EVERY kind of book!"

***

"Every kind?!" Chinatsu exclaimed. "Fairy tales? Books about 
butterflies, dolls, spaceships and far off places?" 

Naru nodded emphatically, sending his curls bouncing. Glancing over 
at her mother, Chinatsu gently tugged upon the one that had found its 
way into her hand. Before the little girl could speak, Naoko 
answered her. 

"Yes, you may go. Keep her out as long as you like," she added, 
looking from Naru to Masato. "She doesn't have school tomorrow." 

Naru and Chinatsu cheered. Masato clapped his hands around his 
daughter's dangling ankles, and gave them a little shake to tease 
her. "You and me and Naru-hana. We're going to have a good time." 

"May I have ice cream with my cake?" she asked hopefully. 

"We'll all have ice cream with our cake," he said, grinning. 

"Just don't have too much of either," chorused Naoko, who stepped 
forward with Chinatsu's bright red, hooded rain slicker. Naru 
lightly set the little girl down on the floor so she could slip it 
on. 

"Yes, Memsahib," said Masato, and Naoko chuckled again. 

"Already he's rubbing off on you. I was wondering when that would 
happen." 

Masato hitched a shoulder in a shrug, then darted forward to kiss 
Naoko on the cheek. "Don't work too hard." 

"Don't get too wet," she parried, waving the trio off as they 
scurried towards the rear entrance. When they reached the door, 
Masato removed Naru's hat from his daughter's head, and handed it 
back to his lover. Her hood, he drew up over her head, and tucked 
her long pigtails inside her coat. 

"Let's play a game," he said. "We're spies on the run, and the rain 
gear we're wearing are our disguises. You have to keep your hood up 
while you're outside, because you don't dare let anyone get a good 
look at your face. Sound like fun?"

***

Naru had to clap one of his dripping hands over his mouth to stay the 
darkness of his chuckles- they left him though, fled in time with the 
deluge and Chinatsu's laughter.  With no one's eyes he knew upon him, 
he searched the dimming corners of the streets for signs of any others, 
and found none- not even the suspicion of any.  It put him at ease, as 
much as he knew his searched may well have been in vain.  

With father and daughter, he shouted his goodbyes; blew his kiss rather 
than left it as close against Naoko as her former lover, now his own, 
had done.  

/It mustn't even have occurred to her something's really quite amiss.  
I guess... that's for the best.  If she was my daughter?/ And here he 
reached down, looping his arm around Chinatsu's shoulder as if she were 
an old friend of his rather than any child.  /...I couldn't think about 
that either./

The partial embrace though, while it thrilled the little girl, did not 
suit her sensitivities.  At all.  "Hey, you're supposed to hold Tousan 
when you walk, Naru-hana."

Masato, a few steps above them, quite froze, and they bumped into him, 
nearly went sprawling one-two-three into the puddles at their feet.  

"Aa," he parried once certain of his breath again, "But I missed you so 
very much while we were apart, and I have been with Tousan, surely, for 
most of those hours."

"Really?"

"Oh yes."  But even as he winked upon his lover, the boy stooped and 
drew Chinatu's hood back just enough that he could reach the middle of 
her forehead with his lips.

***

"So it's only fair that Naru-hana walk about with you instead of me. 
Besides," Masato said, "people would notice us for sure if he held 
onto me like that, and our cover would be blown." 

"Yeah, I suppose so..." said the little girl. 

"And we wouldn't be good spies if we were so careless, would we?" 

Chinatsu shook her head adamantly, nearly dislodging her hood 
entirely. Naru caught the edge and pulled it forward, so her face 
was hidden again. Still, however, he felt the weight of her baleful 
eyes upon him--as if she thought he had paid her Naru a huge insult 
by not walking with him. 

So, he did the only thing he could do when confronted with such a 
challenge. He surveyed the few straggling pedestrians on the street, 
then shrugged, grabbed Naru around the waist, and soundly kissed 
him. 

Chinatsu cheered.

***

"Oh! You saucy thing!" Naru yelped once his lips once more belonged to 
him.  It only made the little girl at his side all the more determined 
to laugh, which she did, bright and crystal so that the sound sailed 
high over the wet streets.  He heard her as if she was much older; she 
had a worldly laugh.

Hushing each other once the thrill had lessened, they all broke for the 
car and into it piled.  He was in the back with Chinatsu.  She had 
pulled him with her on the way in leaving him to wink at her father in 
the rear view.  

"I knew it!" She caroled.  "I knew you'd come visit me again.  Ka-chan 
told me not to get my hopes up, but I just COULDN'T listen.  I felt 
kinda bad, but here you are! And you and Tou-san make such a cute 
couple."

"Oh, I'm hopelessly flattered to hear that, my chibi Memsahib!"

"Well..." and here beneath her slicker, her shoulders wobbled back and 
forth, for she simply couldn't contain her curiosity.  "What's a 
memsahib anyway?"

"Aaa, it is what servants in the India of last century called their 
English mistresses.  I happen to think it's a very pretty word, and 
heaven's above, if you don't have the aristocratic bearing for it, 
m'dear."

He'd made her blush, just a little.  He hadn't meant to, but when her 
cheeks lit up the soft cherry of her touched spirit, he almost found 
himself wishing he could think of something just enough to charm her 
into showing it again.  "But we're both Japanese!"

"Well actually I..." In the end, she quite got to see his.  "Yes.  
That's true.  Silly of me, but I am a silly boy!"

***

"Yeah," agreed Masato, briefly catching his eye in the rearview as he 
wheeled the car out into traffic. "Naru is a silly boy. One who 
happens to be flirting with MY daughter." 

***

"Mou! Masato! I am NOT flirting!" Naru complained, crossing his arms as 
he took the time to give the back of his lover's seat a firm little 
kick with the sole of his shoe.  "I am simply trying to be gentlemanly 
to Chinatsu-chan, irregardless of just how unfashionable being a 
gentleman may well be."

It was the little girl who caught him though, long before her father 
even had the chance.  "You're smiling."

"Am I now?"

Against his arm, she nodded, having decided apparently, that smirking 
amid his fits, he still made a better rest than the back of the seat.

"Yes, you are, Naru-hana.  And if there aren't any gentlemen anymore, 
would you teach me how to be one? Would you?"

"Why, I do believe you're smiling as well!  You do learn with 
exceptional alacrity.  I don't know if I'd have much at all to teach if 
that's the case."

***

"Wonderful!" caroled Masato as he spun the car around a corner.  "My 
daughter wants to a gentleman, and my boyfriend likes to wear 
chandelier earrings and feather boas--oi!"  Naru had kicked the back 
of his seat again, a little bit harder than before.  

Peals of laughter rang out from the back seat, and Masato leveled 
Naru his best attempt at a grim look in the rear view.  "Go on and 
laugh.  Your time is coming, kid."  

***

"Is it now? Various acquaintances of mine have been intimating such 
things for accursed eons now and I dare say not a one of those 
celestial threats has shown the meanest modicum of truth."

"Eh?" Chinatsu asked them then. "What's a modicum?"

"A very little bit, especially of intangible qualities. You can have 
a modicum of beauty, a modicum of peace... your father is presently 
getting to have a bit more than a modicum of bilious thoughts, so we 
had better be nice to him for the rest of the trip."

"I can do that!" And when they reached the next wet ruby of a light, 
the little girl reached into the gulf between the two front seats, 
and snatched up her father's hand to give it a wet, smacking kiss.

***

"Trying to get on my good side by showering me with 
kisses, eh? Ha! That's the just the sort of thing he would do." 

Chinatsu giggled, and with one last playful bite of a knuckle, she 
let her father go. In the space between the seats, just moments 
before the light changed, Naru's golden head loomed over the seats. 
He kissed Masato on the cheek before the elder man had time to 
react. He, too, was smiling softly, in the way of lovers sharing a 
private joke. Masato tousled his dangling, silky locks, and mourned 
the fact that the light had just flickered to green. 

"Go on, kid, and get back in your seat," he said softly, dealing him 
one last pat to his cheek before the boy fell back into place 
alongside his jolly little companion. 

A song came up on the radio, one that Chinatsu apparently knew, and 
she began to sing, Naru along with her. And thus, they passed three 
blocks, and were halfway into a brand new song by the time they had 
arrived at the mall. 

"We're here," he announced over the music as he pulled the car into 
the first space he found, perhaps pointlessly--for Chinatsu had 
forsaken her singing for cheering the moment the wheels touched the 
parking lot. "Where do you want to go first?"

***

"The bookstore!" sang both of Masato's halfway-disembarked passengers.  
Through the rain they clapped and whistled, dancing with their feet 
still halfway on the runners of his car.  He had to shoo Naru off with 
a wave of his hand before the boy let the inside of the car get too 
wet, and his daughter had already leapt off ahead of them by then.  
They had to run to catch her.

Shortly with Chinatsu back in their possession, they swept off to glass 
gates of the mall.  Behind the glinting panels all the lamps that lined 
the skylight were wide awake warm yellow where the facades of the 
stores had not gotten into them.  A roar of voices swept beneath them, 
and the squeals of wet footsteps crested over the gallons of water 
choosing to follow them.  From the puddle of the entryway they skated 
off and joined the crowd, hand in hand in hand.  

No one gave them a second look.  Summer or not, coats hung everywhere 
upon the shoppers, leaving wet insect trails behind to be swept up and 
ruined by footprints.  The smell of wet hair mingled with teriyaki 
drifted all around them, tinged with perfume here and there, 
cigarettes, the peculiar little non-smell of the synthetic stone that 
held them up above the other floors.

The bookstore traced all five levels of the mall, a white and blue 
pillar of neon squiggles pushed through one corner of hallway.  All the 
other scents of the place gave way long before they crossed onto its 
grounds, melting into paper and coffee.  

***

Bookstores were alien territory to Masato, but even so, he found them 
intriguing. People might chatter freely beyond their thresholds, 
heedless of the tone and volume of their voices. But once they 
crossed into those compact worlds of dreams and ideas, their chatter 
slowed, their voices grew soft. For awhile, they could lose 
themselves in other times and places. 

It was no different for them. Masato noticed with some amusement how 
quiet Chinatsu had become. She whispered now when she spoke, if she 
spoke at all. 

"Naru-hana," she said at last, once the shock of difference had worn 
off, "let's go look at the manga." 

"Yes, Naru-hana, go look at the manga," echoed Masato. "See if you 
can't find anything...*interesting* for us to read tonight." He 
winked at his young lover, and received a playful nudge in the ribs 
before they parted ways. Masato watched them bounce away to sections 
hitherto unexplored, before he set off at a leisurely, aimless drift 
around the tables and freestanding shelves. He knew not what to look 
for, but guessed that something would eventually grab his attention. 

And it did. And it only took five minutes and a shuffle through a 
gaggle of departing teenagers to spot it. It was sitting atop of a 
neat pile of its paperback siblings; out of all the others, it was 
the title that snared him. 

"Bara no Namae? Hmm..." Masato flipped it over for a glance at the 
blurb on the back, then opened it to peruse the first page; his 
standard procedure for judging a book worth his time--when he did 
bother with them at all. 

Masato found this one to be worth his time--at least however much of 
it they spent in the bookstore. He shut it, and meandered further in 
towards the direction of the strong, luring coffee aroma that came to 
him from somewhere above.

***

Naru and Chinatsu had raced hand-in-hand to the back of the bookstore 
in search of the brightly colored spines and smiling girls who heralded 
the manga section.  Once there, Naru found much to his surprise that he 
was quite in the company of a Watase Yuu fan, albeit one who had to 
climb up on her tip toes to reach the most delicious of what shojo 
morsels the store had to offer.

"My heavens, aren't you a little young for those?" He asked, though 
disbelieving of course that Chinatsu could be too much of something for 
anything the world had to offer her. 

"Well, why do you say that?" she asked, fanning through the pages of an 
Alice 19th until one of the characters she especially liked had lit 
upon her vision.  

"Hmm, you know, I haven't the faintest."

"Have you read them?"  And with that, she raised the tiny volume and 
held it up so he could see what she was looking at.  Namely, a very 
cheesecake shot of the male lead.  Her grin presently informed him that 
she had thought he would like it more than she did.

"Not that one.  I like Nuriko in Fushigi Yuugi though, and I have read 
every single one of those."

"That's so cute!" To stay her happy shouts, Chinatsu clapped a hand 
over her mouth.  "I like Nuriko too, and you do kinda remind me of him 
but... Nuriko dies.  And that made me sad."

"Me too," Naru admitted, and his gaze strayed from hers only long 
enough to collect all the volumes after the one of Alice 19th she was 
holding. "Don't worry, I have plenty of money and..."

A quick glance over his shoulder, and Naru stooped down behind the 
racks and racks of CLAMP hiding the two of them from the rest of the 
store.  Out of his coat pocket he tugged a little, rattling 
handkerchief.  "This is for you.  I know it's not exactly fixed 
properly or any such thing but I wanted you to have them.  Just don't 
tell your father that I gave them to you."

Underneath the sloppy knot lay Naru's clunky, Lucite bracelets.  

***

Her expression one of utter joy, Chinatsu took the packet of brightly 
colored bracelets from Naru's hand, and held it to her chest as if 
the handkerchief held a baby bird, and not bands which sparkled and 
winked and chimed with tiny embedded bells.  "Ohhhh!" she 
breathed. "Naru-hana..."  

She glomped him at once, snuggling her head in the hollow of his 
stomach.  "Thank you, thank you!  They're ever so pretty.  And I 
won't let Daddy know I have them, but..."  She tilted her head back 
beneath the cradling hand he had placed upon it, and fixed her now 
puzzled dark eyes to his.  

"Why don't you want him to know?  I really don't think he'd mind a 
bit."
     
***

"Oh, I certainly don't either," Naru said, so softly now it was only 
the vibrations of her body clasped to his own that made sense of the 
words.  "But every little girl deserves at least one secret, ne?"

Against him, Chinatsu nodded somewhat hesitantly, and he, more taken 
with her than he ever could be with books, set the manga he had offered 
her aside and held her to him now, one hand stealing over her shoulders 
in lazy little circles, and the other pressed against the back of her 
head.  One of his fingers lit upon her pulse and stayed there as his 
thumb traced the silken down of her hair.  

"And think of how happy you'll be with your very own treasure.  You 
are... you are happy then? For that is all I ever wanted to make you, 
Chinatsu."

***

"I'm happy because you're here," Chinatsu replied fumbling with her 
new bracelets.  "I'm happy because Daddy's with us.  I don't get to 
see him much.  I don't get to see you."  

Her chin began to tremble, and, clutching the bundle he'd given her, 
she threw both arms around his waist, and buried her face in the 
folds of his shirt.  "You're going away, aren't you?  Because you 
gave me your bangles.  Because you want...to buy me things.  That's 
what Daddy always does when I do get to see him, and then..."  She 
sniffed, and held him even tighter.  "And then I don't see him again 
for weeks and weeks."  

The hand stroking her hair stilled, and Chinatsu turned her 
sorrowful, tear-stained face to Naru's again.  "Please don't leave 
me, Naru-hana."  

***

It was all Naru could do to stay his own cold and sticky tears as he 
looked into those of his lover's daughter.  They were like dew on her, 
gleaming with a newness he couldn't place... like she wasn't used to 
crying, or she didn't like for people to see her when she did.

/And that may well be for the best.  I think your sadness could wound 
the hearts of gods and stay the minds of men.  I think your tears could 
make both moons of Terra weep stars into the sky until night shone 
brighter than the day./

But he simply fell to his knees, letting his coat ride up a little in 
the tightness of her embrace.  When he had settled at last, he closed 
his eyes, and laid his forehead to Chinatsu's as he clutched her just 
as close as he could.

"Don't cry, my dearest.  Don't cry.  It is true, no matter how much in 
the world I might wish to keep you at my side as... the very best of my 
friends that I have ever had, I must go.  But this is the last time.  
For myself, and for your father.  Afterwards I... I won't ever leave 
you again.  You'll be mine forever and ever and ever, no matter what." 

A promise he sealed with a pair of kisses pressed onto her flushing 
cheeks.

***

Sniffing the tiniest bit, Chinatsu held Naru long and hard, before 
pulling away to impart a single, reluctant nod. She kissed him as 
well, in the same manner as he had done her, and with one last 
squeeze of his shoulders, she let him go. Though promises really 
meant nothing to her anymore, she had heard so many of them from her 
well-meaning father, she took his hand when he offered it. The 
manga, she refused. 

"I just want one--the book with that cute picture of Kyou in it," she 
said, as she reached for the pile he had set aside; he had placed the 
one she had first chosen atop it. "You've given me enough for 
today." 

Chinatsu gave him a wavering little smile, and slipped the bracelets 
into one pocket of her slicker. And then, she took his hand tight in 
her own. 

"Now...we have to find you something to read."

***

"Well... I like shoujo comics too." Naru sniffled a little through his 
admission, for he was trying very, very hard to resist what temptation 
there was to blow his nose into his sleeve.  His lover's daughter... 
her hand snuggled so well up against his own; wasn't much smaller just 
finer of bone and so very, very smooth. 

Either way, Chinatsu didn't react with any surprise, just nodded, and 
after her eyes had stolen around their corner of the store, dragged him 
straight over to the Boy's Pierce tankubon.  

Naru's nose promptly caught alight.  "Whatever gave you the idea I read 
such thing?"

To start off with, she pointed to the two boys gracing the cover of one 
book, and the little pink tangle their tongues had made.

***

"I saw that kiss, you know," she said. "You both touched tongues 
just like that."

At that, the blushing Naru attempted drag her away, but she slipped 
free of his hand, as wily as a fish. The Boy's Pierce fell into her 
possession, and she opened it, intending to show him another, even 
racier set of drawings to tease him further. But just as she found a 
part where one long-haired bishonen was piercing the cock of his 
bound lover, Naru snatched the tank out of her hand, and shuffled it 
away behind volume 4 of Cantarella; even though Cantarella was too 
small to fully hide the Boy's Pierce from anyone's view. 

"Aw, it's not like I haven't seen them before," protested 
Chinatsu. "Mama has a couple of them stored in a box in her closet--
some BeBoy Zips, too. I've seen them."

***

"Really?" Naru piped up, and at her nod, his expression lightened 
somewhat despite it still being unusually pink.  "Why, my darling 
Chinatsu..."

/That's splendid blackmail material./ For as much as he adored his 
lover's family, it is never a bad idea to have at least a little dirt 
on all one's acquaintances, beloved though they may be.  Daisy had 
always said so, but just what she had done with the collected foibles 
of his second mother and both fathers he never did find out.  

"...what a naughty girl you are! After my own heart.  I shouldn't say 
so, but as you said, you've seen them before."

It wasn't just Cantarella that found its way into his hand then, but 
the Boy's Pierce as well.  "So, what else does my Chibi Mademoiselle 
suggest for this evening? I shall be needed a bit to read on my trip 
after all."

***

In the end, Naru wandered away with an XX, chosen because the shota 
uke reminded Chinatsu of Naru; Stinger; Boy's Anima; Trans; and two 
volumes of Angel Sanctuary. The store's two copies of Zettai Reido, 
Chinatsu had shunned; the covers were too violent for her taste. So 
she was surprised to find them amongst the pile she had collected for 
her companion--though she said nothing about them to Naru. 

And neither did Masato when at last they did join him at the little 
round table he had staked out for himself. An empty cup sat before 
him, and he was engrossed in the book he'd found. Strangely, he 
thought, for he had never cared much for history or monks, or even 
mysteries--he had far too many of the latter in his life to want to 
read about them. 

It was the shy touch of Chinatsu's hand on his own which roused him 
from his reading, and he bestowed a smile on both his book-laden 
daughter and lover. "Oh, so there you two are. I thought you had 
slipped off to the ice cream store without me." 

***

"Oh no!" Naru laughed a little as he kicked one of the chairs out from 
under the table so he could offer it to his young companion.  "It is 
only that your daughter has exquisitely discriminating tastes when it 
comes to manga, and she was merely doing me the favor of exercising 
those gifts on my behalf.   That and... oh my, what is it your Tousan 
has found for himself?  It does look MENACING."

As he had ended up seated on Masato's side which didn't face the title 
of the book, Chinatsu also indulged him by tipping her head down 
against the table's surface so she could read the tiny, auburn 
characters off to him.  "Bara no Namae by... Umuberuto Eko."

"Oh, I have heard of that! It was one of the books we had the option to 
read in one of my late night lit classes.  I hear it's supposed to be 
just as thick as treacle, language wise, but do we really expect 
anything less from the Italians?  They gave us Petrarch, didn't they? 
Though, then again, it really depends on the translator with him."

"Petrarch is... a poet, right?" Chinatsu inquired.

"An exceptional, hopelessly in love poet."

***

Masato marked his place with his coffee receipt, and set the book atop 
Naru's stack.  "Oh, yeah, he was the one who fell in love at first 
sight, wasn't he?  But she never gave him her heart, even though he 
dedicated poem after poem to her.   And her name was...Laura!  Or 
something like that."    

Astonished, Naru slowly nodded.  

"What?  I did pay attention during English class!" Masato exclaimed.  
"When I bothered to go that is."  

Looking somewhat pleased with himself, Masato halved the tower of books 
Naru had chosen, and picked up a copy of Trans.  He opened a page at 
random, and came across a threesome involving an unwilling uke and 
fruit as sex toys.  Masato's brows rose.  

"Well, I can see why you wanted this one," he joked, setting it back on 
the stack.  "And I can see why you like Bara no Namae so much, so...Why 
don't we see if we can't find a volume of Petrarch, too?"  

***

Naru squealed so loudly that Chinatsu was momentarily taken aback, as 
were just about all the patrons in the nearby vicinity.  Once their 
whispers had died down, he slumped down in his chair far enough as to 
not be outright visible, but otherwise gave no indication he was in the 
least bit ashamed of his outburst.  

"Oh, Masato, would you? Oh joy! Oh happy, happy day!"  He went on, but 
in the end, his lover simply tucked their pile of books under one arm 
and Naru under the other before heading off to the foreign literature 
collection.  Chinatsu came skipping after, now and then pushing their 
mound of comics back up before they could fall from his grasp.  It was 
only after they had reached the shelves that he let Naru go, and Naru, 
drawn like a drowsy northern traveler towards lights amid the snow, 
found an enormous, blue-bound volume of Petrarch at once, with where 
the poems had been written first in Renaissance Italian, second in 
English, and last in Japanese.  

Soul of my soul, how often you return
Bearing in your small hands the gift of peace
Like perfume: Death has cancelled his dark lease
Upon those eyes, renewed then, bade them burn!
Ah, God be praised that your bliss does not spurn
My blackness, but with radiant increase
Of light illumines grief until it sees
Again your lonely hounds, your lovely urn!
Look you, how here, where so long I had lifted
A joyous voice, I pour laments instead
For you! --Ah no, for my dead dreams thick-drifted
As summers grave! ...One solace is not dead:
By many a sign I feel you near and keen--
Your step, your voice, look -- that robe of cherished green!

When he had finished, the boy sighed and leaned back against the shelf, 
clutching the book as if it were a stuffed bear.

***

"I had no idea you felt so strongly about Petrarch--or that you could 
read aloud so well. Guess I know what to buy your for your birthday, 
eh? Guess I'll be putting a bookcase in the living room, too." 

Masato met the boy's melting gaze and held it until he was too close to 
see him properly. It was then that their lips touched, and Masato drew 
him close as if they were the only two people in the bookstore. 

Even though they weren't, as Chinatsu proved with the encircling of 
her thin arms around their respective waists. 

***

Naru kissed him back; kissed him back with everything he had, and made 
sure while he did it that Chinatsu's not-so-innocent eyes stayed 
pressed to the rippling folds of his poncho.  He bit him, caressed him 
inside and out- drank him down and purred and licked him clean when 
they had finished.

And then he pulled his lover's little girl into the midst of their 
embrace.

"If you want to," he said gently.  "I can't honestly claim to mind.  
I'll do my best to fill it."

Chinatsu sang to this, sadness chiming on her words despite her words, 
"I will too!"

"Then it's settled.  As much as these things can be settled.  Now, who 
wants some cake and ice cream?"

***

That afternoon found Queen once more at the company, though she was not 
there to see to typing letters and arranging meetings for her 
employer. She was there on more private, pressing business--work of 
the sort that demanded several pairs of eyes witness her entrance 
into her office. No one must suspect she was doing anything 
other than playing at her public position. 

Sweeping into the room, she locked the door behind her, then turned 
to face the dimly lit room; the curtains were drawn against the 
spectacular view of the city, and all lamps had been extinguished 
save for one: a low-watt bulb set in a frosted rose globe upon the 
credenza. Beside the lamp, lounged a lanky boy in his late teens who 
was amusing himself by tossing a teardrop-shaped, blue crystal 
paperweight from hand-to-hand. He was clad in black from his T-shirt 
to his canvas slip-ons, and his hair was a shade of purple so violent 
as as to make ones eyes smart. 

"Aodake," Queen admonished, "That is my favorite paperweight." 

The ball landed with another satisfying splat into his cupped hand, 
and the boy looked up at her, brown eyes gleaming quietly in the shy 
glow of the globe. "Good afternoon to you, too, Queen," he said. 

"It's too early to tell if it's a good one or not." She rocked away 
from the door, swaying provocatively on her black patent stilettoes as 
she made her way to the desk. "Wait until you hear what I've got to 
say." 

Aodake set the paperweight down on the credenza top and promptly 
unfolded himself to the floor, face alight with expectation as he 
crossed over to the desk in her wake. "What's happened?" 

"Two members of Weiss have left Tokyo, and so has Knight," she said, 
handing a thin file to him. "Our sources indicate that all three are 
on the run."

"And Kritiker isn't happy about it." 

"No, they aren't. Which is where you come in." 

Aodake looked up sharply; Omi's smiling baby face gazed up at him 
from a photograph. "A job?" 

"Yes. You and I are to go to Hiratsuka and intercept Knight.  King 
wants him dealt with first.  The Weiss can wait.  Do you accept?"  

Aodake answered her with a nod, thinking how silly her question was. 
As if he wouldn't grab a chance at earning some money! 

"Very well."  Queen opened her purse, and produced a train ticket to 
Hiratsuka, which she slid across the desk towards him. "It leaves in 
an hour, you have enough time to gather what you need. I will be 
waiting for you on the platform. Don't be late." 

"Got it." Aodake slid the folder back to her, taking the 
ticket in its stead. "I'll be there." 

"Good. And Aodake? Don't tell anyone you are leaving."  

He gave her a look of disgust--as if he'd be so stupid as to do 
something like that?!--and walked over to the side door, the one 
which led down a private corridor to the elevator Takatori kept for 
his own personal use.

***

The sky bore twinges of deep twilight by the time Masato and Naru 
arrived back at the apartment. The books they had bought were now 
stacked upon Masato's rocking coffee table, and Naru was stretched 
out on the lumpy sofa with his head pillowed in his lover's lap. 
Along with two empty Asahi bottles, a pair of takeaway cartons from 
the Indian restaurant down the street sat on the floor by Masato's 
feet, their curried contents having been disposed of a good hour 
before. A game show flickered soundlessly on the TV, unwatched by 
either one, for Naru was reading and Masato was merely lounging, his 
head tipped to the back of the sofa, his fingers playing in Naru's 
long blond locks. 

"Today was good, wasn't it?" 

Naru murmured in assent, and a page whispered like velvet against 
another. 

Masato's lids opened just a slice; the wall opposite was lit up soft 
blue-white from the glow of the set. "Heh. I haven't been in a 
bookstore in a loooong time. Took you to get me into one. I 
guess...it's changes all around, huh?" 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the book drop from the perch it 
held upon Naru's chest. Masato rolled his head to the side, and 
found Naru gazing up at him, smiling in his usual sad way. 

"Read me another poem," Masato rumbled, half-smiling in 
return. "Read me two, and I'll carry you to bed."

***

"As tempting as that is," Naru said, his voice once more the fragile, 
drippy tenor it had taken in the early afternoon when they first woke, 
"The tandoori's kinda gotten to me.  I need a drink."

His lover cocked an eyebrow at that, and a disapproving grumble rubbed 
against the ear Naru had pressed yet to his belly.

"No, not that kind.  And I'll read to you soon as I get back."

It took him almost a full minute to heft himself out of Masato's lap 
and the rough clouds of the sofa where the outlines of his body had 
already begun to cling.  The hand that strayed over him as he yawned 
and stretched and wiggled his toes assured that.  Once he managed to 
get to his wobbling feet he bent and kissed his lover with the tingling 
spice still clinging to lips.

"Want anything from the soda machine while I'm down there?"

***

"Mm, no. Well...yeah," he amended quickly. "Get me a coffee, 
black. I'm sleepy and the night's young yet. Can't have that." 

Naru swung away from him, and padded briskly towards the foyer. 
Before he could make it out the front door, however, Masato called to 
him again. 

"Oi, hold up," he said, just seconds before his rumpled form loomed 
upon the threshold separating the living room from the foyer. "Take 
this." Masato held out a 2x4 to Naru, shaking it as if it were too 
hot for him to hold anymore when the boy hesitated. 

"Rough neighborhood, you know. 'S not good to walk around with out 
some kind of protection." 

Naru looked askance at him at that--what good was a board, really?--
but tucked the plank under his arm anyway. With a touch of his 
fingers to his forehead, he swept out the door. Masato lingered 
there for a moment to watch him, before he cursed himself for a 
fool. He shut the door then, and lumbered back into the living room, 
fingering his jaw as was his habit. Instead of smooth flesh or his 
carefully cultivated beard, he felt only a day's stubble--such as 
would leave red marks on Naru's skin--and a scowl etched its way into 
his features. 

"Damn Rei and his whims," he grumbled, stomping off to the bathroom 
to shave.

***

The coffee machine stood in the tiny shaded overhang, the sort of which 
opened up almost all such buildings in Tokyo.  One lamp fizzed above 
the worn tiles, its glass dim with the prints of careless moths.  One 
had gotten itself into the soda machine and was pounding its wings on 
the clear frame that kept it caught in the world of cold Pocari Sweat.  

Now and then a car passed, now and then J-rock or footsteps drifted 
down from the upper floors with a little spray from the unhappily full 
gutters.  He heard at least one person squeal their tires at the 
traffic light down the street.  For the city at least, it was quiet.

And then the payphone beside him rang.  

As he fed one more coin into the slot, he turned and gave the chirping 
receiver a sidelong look for he half expected someone to stride out of 
the shadows and answer it.  No one did though.  With his cocoa claimed 
at last, he began counting out the coins for Masato's coffee, which he 
was having a bit of a time doing with all the insect shadows darting 
over his hand.  

As he flicked a silver button that he'd mistaken at first for a hundred 
yen coin, he decided all at once that he'd rather not be caught with a 
2x4 the just outside a building where no one knew him.  His coins rang 
back into his pocket and he picked up the receiver, hoping no one else 
had been bothered by it yet.

"Hi, this is a payphone.  You have the wrong number."

"Ave-Maria-sama, Naru-san."

It was a woman's voice chiming silver petals of the language that it 
spoke with.  Naru dropped the board, almost dropped the phone.  There 
was something familiar about whoever it was on the other end besides 
the Bienseance Bokokugo he hadn't heard in so many years, though those 
scarcely familiar sounds alone made his heart tremble in his chest with 
a ghostly sort of music.

"Qui da yo?" he scarcely breathed his own words and felt himself 
shrinking into the metal case where the phone lay.  

"Why, I'm a friend of your mother's," she slipped into Japanese as 
easily as rainwater leaving a rooftop.  "I bet you don't remember me 
though."

"What's to remember? I don't even know who..."

"...oh, it's not important, my dear little lad."

"Is too! And how...?"

"Did I know you'd pick up if I called you here? I have known that since 
I first laid eyes on you.  It's written in the stars."

He still had no idea whose voice he was hearing, but the fearful wonder 
began to wane into a being mute and overwhelmed.  So she wasn't 
watching him.  They were still getting away, he and Masato.  "W-what do 
you want?"

"To do Daisy's little boy a favor.  You see, I also know where some of 
your friends are, and they could use your help.  I want to save you 
some time in getting to them.  Omi and Youji are in Niigata, the house 
where Hidaka Ken used to live.  I'm sure you'll be able to find it.  
And Yuuji- if you still want anything to do with Yuuji -has gone to 
Hiratsuka."

"Does Kritiker know?" That he scarcely whispered.

"Oh, I think Kritiker is the least of your worries.  Anyway, just in 
case you don't believe me? When you get back upstairs, Masato will 
kiss you full on the mouth.  He'll have just shaved, and he'll tell you 
something about himself you don't know.  I think you'll enjoy hearing 
it."

He thanked her gently in his first tongue, and tried to say he was 
sorry even if the sounds his throat made tumbled wildly.  

"Oh, don't thank me," the woman said.  "It's the least I can do for 
someone whose most fond wish is going to come true so very soon.  Well, 
maybe second most fond.  If I could bring you back to Terra, I would."

She blew him a kiss through the line before she hung up; left him 
standing with his hand clamped cold and shaking around the rim of the 
payphone.  

***

"And what good will any of THAT do?" Ren Luminia asked her mother.  Her 
lover in the corner of the room began to snicker, and on realizing it 
was him and not one of his servants, she picked a bottle of ink from 
the top of the desk she was sitting atop and hurled it at his head.  He 
managed to duck the bottle, but its shards and the raven liquid there 
leaked all over him.

"Sorry, my dearest, but I thought you were joking.  Hasn't Kelvena 
discussed any of this with you?"

Kelvena just smiled, and thoughtfully fumbled with the rotary dial on 
his telephone.  "I have.  But she, like Naru, must have forgotten." 

***

When Naru returned, he found Masato standing before his TV, twitching 
the silvered rods of its antenna in hopes of bringing the rolling 
picture to a halt. Upon hearing the floor's creak under Naru's 
weight, the older man half-turned to face him, his expression 
lightening with a hesitant smile. 

"There you are. I was beginning to wonder if Chinatsu's pixies had 
come to spirit you away after all." 

Naru gave him a weak smile, but curiously, he didn't move any further 
into the room. His reluctance garnered him a wondering sort of look 
from his lover, who, with a resigned shrug, switched the set off. 

"Eh...it wasn't working anyway," Masato sighed, sliding an arm around 
his waist.  The drink can Naru held brushed against Masato's stomach, 
warming his skin through his shirt, and he instantly drew back, 
remembering suddenly just why he'd left the apartment in the first 
place. 

"Aw, no coffee? The vendors must have forgotten to refill the 
machine," said Masato. "No matter. Least you got what you wanted. 
I could make some later." He grinned rather saucily. "MUCH later," 
he added, rubbing his cheeks with the back of a hand. "As you can 
see, I've shaved again. And...that's not the only place I'm bare." 

***

The flutter that had raced through Naru's heart took flight from his 
body, and in the vacuum where the joy it bore had once lived, a dark 
and ambery ache settled instead.  He gasped, and when Masato drew from 
the shiver of his lips at last, he found Naru's eyes were wide, 
painfully aware of something besides the calm of their room.

"It's not that," he whispered.  "It's... someone called me.  She talked 
to me in Terran.  She said she knew where Omi and Youji were.  Yuuji 
too."

***

"What?!" Masato exclaimed. "How...how could someone from your Terra 
know where they are? How the fuck did anyone know where you were, 
even?!" 

***

"I don't know!" Naru wailed, and his voice cracked suddenly.  Though 
his eyes never left his lover's it was as if he had gone blind he 
groped the careless creases in Masato's shirt.

"She said she was a friend of momma's, and momma could read people's 
minds so maybe... maybe that's how, maybe she's a 43- no she has to be! 
But I don't know what she wanted with us I..."

He did, but he choked it down until the truth lay broken and gory in 
his heart.  Masato didn't need to know.

"She told me everything you just did and I... I want to go! I want to 
go now! We need to find them!"

***

"Naru..." Masato whispered, covering the boy's clutching hands with  
his own. It wasn't like him to be this desperate and upset, and he  
found it disturbing. "What did she tell you? Are...are they in  
trouble? Is Yuuji..."  
 
With a keening little moan, Naru began to tug insistently at the  
handfuls of shirt to which he clung, as if that alone could impel  
Masato into moving. He held him so tightly, Masato felt a few  
threads rip along his shoulders.  
 
"All right, Naru! All right!" he cried, wrenching free of  
him. "We'll go! Get in the bedroom and pack a bag with a change or  
two of clothes--for me, too!" he yelled after Naru's retreating form;  
his feet slapped hard against the boards as he ran down the hall.  
Masato stood there for a moment, taking the chance to catch his  
breath and collect his thoughts.  
 
"Damn it. Damn every fucking thing!" he shouted, lurching off  
to his cabinet to gather his pike, his gun, and all the ammo he could  
find.

***

Naru's bag was already more or less packed.  All he had to do was fling 
the contents of his laundry basket into one of his lover's suitcases. A 
few of his lover's shirts he lovingly rolled and tucked in beside his 
jeans.  He put his toothbrush beside his own and a razor, though he 
forgot the foam to go with it.

Masato was loading his pistol when Naru found him again.  He stood 
between the bedroom and the living room, silent in the shadow of 
Returning Home and the naked clouds there captured.

"We're going to Niigata.  Omi and Youji are there.  We'll call Reiichi 
from the station and send him after Yuuji.  Where's my coat?"

***

The gun's chamber closed with a throaty little click as Masato 
pressed it home. He slid his weapon into the underarm holster he'd 
shrugged on during Naru's absence; his faded black denim 
jacket hid it from view. "It's hanging on the rack behind the front 
door." 

Naru scrambled away to claim it, leaving the bag on the floor. 
Masato opened it, and slipped his pike within the curl of one of his 
shirts; its holster, he buried between the layers of Naru's clothes 
before shutting the case up again. 

"There's that..." he said, standing up and making a quick scan of the 
room whilst Naru twitched impatiently behind him. Had he forgotten 
anything? Yes, yes he had. Masato walked back over to the cabinet, 
and pulled out a grey metal strongbox. Inside lay an untidy bundle 
of bills and countless yen coins. The bills he folded up and shoved 
into his pocket, along with a handful of coins. The rest, he left 
where it lay. 

"We might need it, never know," he said, clicking the cabinet's lock 
into place. "It's best to be prepared." 

With that, he took up the bag Naru had packed, and strode towards the 
door, apartment keys jangling in his hand. 

***

Naru had nodded, even though he was already halfway sacrificed to 
dizziness and the movement, more than any others he had suffered, gave 
him the feeling that the room might slip out from under him if it 
hadn't already.  He hitched his bag up over his shoulder as he turned, 
stepped, followed the sound of the door creaking open.

In the faint light, or what was left of it, he could just make out the 
clouds, the feathery glow of the wings about the boat, the gentle curve 
of the bare woman and her robes where they fluttered around her arms 
and ankles.

Then the light switch clacked off.  His lover whistled somewhere in the 
singing night beyond.  The musty brightness of the air in Tokyo 
embraced him and his eyes left Returning Home for the last time.

****