Hi! What an interesting take on how they met! Never occured to me that Aoshi would initially be against Misao--I loved how you worked that concept out. It'd be great to see how your interludes would connect to your version of what's gonna happen in the main storyline. You must write more! You really -do- give the idea justice. (wink) Keep it up!

Encore! ^_^ Hey R&R my stoys too ^_^ Encore, Encore.

hmm, very good!
a bit of a departure from the more dialogue-reliant style you showed in "Ties," but still the characterizations--especially challenging given that they're all such unusual people in circumstances we can hardly relate to--are very well done.
i'm not sure if you intended the style to come out entirely the way it did, but it seemed a bit too stiff and rushed for me at the beginning--condensing so much tragic and eventful information in concise, impassive sentences. All right, I expect, for a prologue chapter, but as you haven't explicitly defined this fic as such, it comes off--to me, IMVHO--as a bit of a shame that such important events aren't more elaborately narrated. "snapshots" of interactions between principal characters, for example maybe Naoko and her father, at particularly crucial points, spliced in between paragraphs of more sweeping narration, might be advisable.
sorry if i seem to have enjoyed this fic less than i really do have. fact is, you've done a good job with a great idea. bravo! ^.^

Awesome story! You're right, there aren't many fanfics about them that go before the series, and there really should be more. I noticed that too which is why I wrote my oneshot fanfic Where's my Aoshi-sama? which is actually more about how Misao was always obsessed with Aoshi and when she first started to search for him.