A word on the Tsuzuki chapter: My intent with the character refered to as K was not to create an original love interest to rival any accepted pairings, but rather to provide a catalyst for Tsuzuki's breakdown; any individuality to his character is secondary to how it develops Tsuzuki's. It was in many ways a response to that incredibly vague, unexplained reference to a "forbidden love" Tsuzuki makes in the Saint Michel arc, although the argument for that person being Ruka is the strongest I've heard so far (which I hope I've also addressed). So, again, speculation out the kazoo, but, after all, when has that ever stopped a fanfic author?

Some crucial dates have been altered slightly from the original both for historical accuracy and in an attempt to better make sense of Matsushita's own timeline.

In the days that followed, it came to light that money had not been as tight for the Tsuzuki family as its children were brought up to believe. Neither was it true that Asato's wealthy father had left them with nothing at all. It was only after his mother's passing that they learned the true sum of what he had left, and that amount was in fact a small fortune. This came as quite a surprise to Asato and his uncle, who had both clung to their respective disdain for Asato's father until his mother's will brought this new information to the surface; as well as to Ruka, whose memory of that man was little more than the nebulous, impressionistic memory of a six-year-old child.

According to the will, that sum was to become the sole property of Asato, and follow him to the house of his uncle into whose care he had been signed. After all, was his mother's logic, the money had once belonged to Asato's father and was given with the intent to support that child. Likewise, Ruka's inheritance was to come from her own father's legacy, from the late Mr Tsuzuki's government pension—which was very little indeed—and from her mother's most prized possessions, including her wedding gowns which she had safeguarded through every bump in the road in the unfulfilled hopes of seeing her daughter married within her lifetime.

As was Ruka's way, if this arrangement ever once struck her as unfair or unbalanced she never let on, for she never complained—though as far as Asato was concerned she would have been justified in doing so. He would have given her his inheritance himself if he were able, just to repay all she had done for him, and because he loved her. The money mattered little to him; with their mother gone, his older sister was all he had left in the world, and he hated more than anything to see her go, once again, to the tailor's in the city. No matter how many times she reassured him that she was a grown woman who could take care of her own, he worried about her when he could not watch over her, and despaired of her leaving him to fend for himself in the household of their uncle and his wife.

They saw each other sometimes, of course, Ruka and Asato, after he had moved into his uncle's house—a house the atmosphere of which was markedly different from that of his mother's. Asato's uncle and aunt were a modern couple, and their home and lifestyle reflected that. He was on his way to becoming the manager of a department store, and she kept abreast of the latest fashions. It seemed there was always some lady friend of hers over for afternoon tea, and whenever that happened, Asato was expected to stay out of sight.

It was more for his aunt's sake than for the sake of her friends, however, as on the rare occasion he ran into any of them, they would always comment on his good looks and humble manners, and all seemed to agree that he wore the latest fashions out of Europe for young men his age as though they had been made with him in mind.

It was enough to make a young man like Asato beam with pride—and at times like that it was easy to lose sight of the reality that his presence in that home was not as welcome as the kind words of a family friend might lead him to believe. His uncle's wife had never been as stern with him as his uncle had, so it came as a bit of a surprise to the boy when he overheard a conversation between the two about him some months into his stay.

"I can't take much more of this," Asato's aunt was saying, her voice hushed as she spoke with uncharacteristic frankness to her husband. "I thought it would be fine to be left alone in the house with him, but he gives me the creeps. He's so quiet when he comes home and . . . It's those eyes. Those eyes, they . . . I never know what he's thinking, what he's going to do. I wish they would let you come home earlier just so I wouldn't have to be alone with him for so long."

"Do you mean you're actually afraid he might do something to hurt you?" Asato's uncle asked incredulously. He might not have known Asato's character very well, nor cared to correct that, but apparently he thought he knew him well enough to wonder if his wife were even talking about the same boy. "Why? Has he said anything strange?"

"I guess not," his wife relented. "But haven't you noticed how people look at us differently ever since we took him in? Forget charity. It's almost like they think we're cursed or something. Even if they don't know he's a bastard child, they always have a way of asking about it anyway. 'Where'd he get eyes like that? Was his father a foreigner?' I can't keep avoiding the topic forever, you know!"

She lowered her voice. "I know most of the time people are just joking when they call him an ill omen, but I can't help beginning to wonder if there isn't some truth to it. Why else would they say something like that? I'm telling you, this isn't good for my health. He's caused me nothing but worry since he's been here. And how do you know it wasn't something to do with him that was to blame for your sister's illness? Damn this generosity of yours! I was fine when it was your mother living with us, but why did you have to take him in? Not for her sake, I'm sure. For that inheritance of his? Because if that's the case then I wish you would hurry up and do something about it and end my misery! Why should I have to put up with him? He isn't my nephew—"

His aunt went suddenly silent. Asato could not see what was happening, but she must have put her hand over her mouth when she realized just what she had said. Asato himself had never heard his uncle's wife voice her feelings so openly or long-windedly before, and she was quick to apologize to her husband for it.

He waited for his uncle to refute her claims, tell her that he was not after Asato's money after all, that it was out of filial love and obligation to his sister that he had taken her son in, but that never happened. In any case, by the next spring they had solved his aunt's most pressing problem: they enrolled Asato in a preparatory middle and high school that was also a boarding school.

Perhaps it did cross Asato's mind that attending a boarding school was in some ways like being sent to an orphanage. For his uncle it was simply a way of dumping him in someone else's care far away from his own home; but Asato would have been foolish to wish to stay willingly in a household where he was not welcomed, and treated with an increasingly thinly veiled resentment, any longer. In this way he had no choice but to welcome the change and adapt. He had already lost everything that truly mattered to him with his mother's death the year before, anyway.

This new opportunity was, on the other hand, a kind of rebirth; and he, like a cicada coming out of the ground which had nurtured it in warm, dark comfort for so long, was ready to appreciate the world into which he had been thrust with a determination to endure. The boys who attended class with him were of like mind, and were willing to overlook shortcomings like strangely colored eyes or the lack of a father that would have earned him a good ribbing back at his old school in the country. Instead, they warmed to his fresh sense of humor that temporarily took their minds off their studies and problems at home; and even if Asato couldn't say he had any close friends, he filled a particular purpose for his peers, and in that sense he felt as though he belonged.

The other boys called him Tsuzuki, like the doctor had; and even though his aunt and uncle had often reminded him it was not his name—not by blood, at least, only legally—his peers said it with such fondness that it became his simply by the frequency of its usage. So it seemed in the boy's thirteenth year as though the life that was Asato's had been thoroughly put to rest, and the person who was Tsuzuki was just beginning to live.

—

There was little about life at that school that Tsuzuki could complain of. He was surrounded by boys his age who treated him, for once in his life, as if he belonged; the teachers were strict, but they were still rather preferable to his uncle and uncle's wife; and even though it was a school for boys, there was no shortage of local girls to tease as they passed by school grounds on their way to do shopping. Yet Tsuzuki too often found himself unable to concentrate on his studies and falling into a restless sort of ennui that none of his peers' games could alleviate. When the other boys teased one another about girls, his thoughts would return to Ruka, and he would miss her so much he ached inside.

Ruka did come to visit him on her holidays, however few and far between those were. She was not comfortable being around so many adolescent boys, Tsuzuki could see when she did brave the school grounds, her limbs and effects all held tightly to her person. She would often implore him as to why he did not return to their uncle's home more often, welcomed or not, so that she might visit him there instead; but both understood without need for words that even she would have returned to their relatives' home only reluctantly if their situations had been reversed.

Therefore, if only for his sake, she made the trip to the boarding school every few weeks on a Sunday, when its grounds were quieter and she could take Tsuzuki out for a short spell. Sometimes they went shopping in the city, and she would treat him to tea and a sweet dessert at one of the modern cafes that had sprung up all over downtown like so many mushrooms after a long rain. She did it not because she had the money to spare, but because she was his older sister and had the birthright to insist on making him happy. Other times, if the weather was particularly nice, they spent their day together at the zoo, or simply walking around a park or sitting side by side on a bench in some public place, watching people go by as they caught up on one another's lives.

If Ruka was in particularly high spirits, she took him to a dance hall, and taught him to dance in the modern, Western fashion. Tsuzuki never did figure out if she had been taught herself by a friend at her place of work or some other, nameless young man; but as he stumbled diligently through a waltz or polka, he had little time to be envious of his sister's other life, or else he risked ruining what bright happiness their rare outings together brought him.

It really didn't matter to him what they did with their time together. To Tsuzuki, the thrill was merely in seeing his sister's smiling face and knowing that she was doing well for herself after their mother's passing—that she was making a way for herself in this modern world even if hers was not an extraordinary life. Ruka had never been one for adventure or glamor; that was all Tsuzuki. Just like when he was a child, she seemed content to find her happiness through his, and discover the world through his discoveries.

At least, that was what the smile on her face wanted so badly to make him believe. It was not his place to question how genuine her cheerfulness was, or whether it was hiding a private life of hardships she wished not to trouble him with, or even one of joy she feared to share with him. Tsuzuki had only to accept it, and realize that those wide, dark eyes he had once thought so full of sorrow had not been made only for mourning or quiet acceptance, but for joy and wonder as well, such as those eyes had in the photograph she gave him when she first left home. Joy, gratitude, generosity and love—even if they were lying, he had only to accept what those eyes showed him as truth.

His classmates teased him good-naturedly about his dates with his sister, but that did not bother Tsuzuki as it might have once. They were probably just jealous that Ruka had eyes for only him when she came to school to collect him, and that not a word fell from her timid lips that was not directed to him. In any case, who was he to complain? Each time he was able to speak with the sister whom he loved more dearly than anyone or anything, face-to-face, was something to treasure, and could not be squandered with petty feelings of shame brought on by outsiders.

There was one summer day when he was fourteen that would forever remain clearest in Tsuzuki's memory. It was the only time he ever truly came close to reproducing in earnest that bright smile Ruka had shown the camera on the day she was photographed with that unknown male friend before the blooming cherry trees. It was on that day that he could remember enjoying himself the most with Ruka, and that was saying much.

He remembered that day so clearly as well, however, because it was the last time they ever went out together. In fact, it was the last day Tsuzuki would ever see his beloved sister.

The weather gave no premonition of such a fate, of course. It was a bright, warm day, the sky a cloudless blue with a gentle breeze carrying the song of the cicadas in the zelkova trees down every street.

Ruka was radiant. She had taken him to a fancier dance hall than usual for a treat, and though her hair may not have been done in the same contemporary style of the more fashionable young ladies present, and her dress was simpler and no doubt home-made, the ruffles on the shoulders more subdued than their company, to Tsuzuki there was not a more beautiful girl in the place.

They laughed as they twirled on the dance floor; and, perhaps owing to Tsuzuki's youth, no one interrupted them to take Ruka's hand. Under her tutelage, his dancing had improved, but never had he felt the freedom to lose himself on the floor—never had he felt that his feet and heart were in such harmony, or that he was right where he was meant to be, with Ruka's hand in his, her waist under his arm, and she smiling like the sun.

It was such a pleasant time, that Tsuzuki could hardly believe he was not dreaming when Ruka took him aside under the twilit summer sky and strings of golden, electric lanterns to say she would not be able to meet him like this much longer.

"Why not?" he demanded to know. "What's wrong? Is it because of the boys at school? Because I don't care—"

She shook her head sadly at him. "No, it has nothing to do with them."

"Your work, then? They don't approve of your spending time with me?"

"That isn't it—"

"Then what? Is there something wrong with me? I'm your brother, Ruka!"

He was only distantly aware that he was raising his voice when he saw the pained grimace on Ruka's face. It was only that he could not believe the words she was saying to him could be true. He could not believe that what perfection they had had was so fragile, those words were all it took to break it, and her reaction to his sudden outburst only made it worse. How was he supposed to feel? he wanted to ask her. She was the only family he had left. Did what her coworkers or these social people think of her mean more than her own brother's feelings?

She bit her lower lip, her hands tightening to fists in her lace gloves, and for once those eyes that, however full of sadness, had never shied away from him, refused to meet his gaze.

"I'm sorry, Asato," she said, and her voice sounded tiny, drowned out by the cries of the insects. "Please, I wish you wouldn't make this harder than it has to be. I only thought that it would be better if I told you now, because I didn't want you to think that I was abandoning you. But I'm not getting any younger, and you . . . You're growing up, you're becoming a fine gentleman, and you're getting too old for your only company to be your older sister—"

"Don't say that. I'll never be too old for you."

She smiled at that, and for a moment it was almost enough to make him think the whole confession had been a joke at his expense.

Until she said under her breath: "You sound like that man when you say that."

She never had to say so directly, but he knew from past experience that by "that man," she meant his father.

"Ruka—"

"We're both getting too old to rely on each other, Asato. You have your friends at school, and I have. . . ." She hesitated, but met his eyes boldly. "I have my own life to lead."

"But that doesn't mean I can't be a part of it. Does it? I thought we had something, just the two of us. Something special." Something precious, which he could never have with anyone else. Did she not see that?

"Of course we do," she said. "You're my little brother, and there isn't anyone else like you in the world. There never will be. That won't change no matter what happens. I'm not saying I don't want to see you again, Asato, or that I want to forget days like this that I got to spend together with you. I enjoyed our times like this, I really did. More than I can say. But, you see, it's because you are my brother that things were bound to change eventually, and the sooner we get used to that fact, the better it will be for both of us."

The sooner he got used to it, that was. Tsuzuki could see in her smile, however apologetic it may have been, how used to it she already was. Let me go, those eyes seemed to beg him, if you care about me half as much as you profess to. . . . But he just wasn't ready.

When he said nothing, she took it as a sign the matter was settled, and turned to go back inside and rejoin the other dancers.

And suddenly Tsuzuki knew he could not let her do it, or he would lose her forever. He grabbed hold of her wrist, and pulled her back to face him. Her cheek was soft and cool under his skin as he pressed his lips to it. He was taller than her now, if only by a few inches, so it was easy to do.

Easy, that was, but for the pounding of his own blood in his ears drowning out the playing of the orchestra inside. Easy but for the way Ruka stiffened in his hold, and the way her hair smelled when he breathed in telling him like nothing else could how wrong he was to kiss her, even like this, even though it felt so right, it felt like it wasn't enough. Anyone who happened to pass by them would think they were merely some ordinary young couple in love and never be the wiser, so there was no shame in holding on to Ruka like that, was there?

Maybe there wasn't, but he didn't want her to see the reddening of his cheeks anyway. Nor did he ever want to let her go. He pulled her into a tight embrace.

"Don't leave me, sister," he muttered next to her ear. "Please don't leave me all alone. I don't know what I'd do without you. I love you. Can't you see that? I love you more than anything in the world, Ruka."

Instead of returning his sentiments, however, she shuddered in his arms at those words, then struggled. Like a fish in a net she struggled, trying to free herself from his hold in any way she could.

Stunned by it, he let go.

He had not even the chance to apologize—he did not know what he had done that was even needing of an apology—before she covered her mouth with one gloved hand and ran in the direction of the street instead of the dance hall.

It was a long moment of disbelief before Tsuzuki recovered the wits to go after her, but by that time she was across the street and hailing a rickshaw driver.

"Ruka! Ruka, please come back!" he called out to her; but if she heard him she pretended not to, because she got into the seat and hastily gave the driver directions, and did not once look his way.

The street was not particularly busy at that time of the evening, even with the nightlife crowd and the automobiles of the wealthy passing slowly by; but something kept him from chasing after her, something he had merely glimpsed in her wet eyes before she ran away from him. Something he had felt in her shoulders as they trembled in his arms that had shamed him. Something that only made him realize as he was standing there on the side of the street that perhaps what he did had been wrong after all.

—

Several weeks later, Tsuzuki received a letter from his uncle informing him that Ruka was engaged to be married. He did not say to whom, only that a young man whom she was seeing had asked for her hand, promised to do right by her, and won her uncle's approval. Tsuzuki was left to wonder if it was the same young man who had been ripped from the photograph Ruka gave him years ago—the young man whose face he had never known, so had had no choice but to superimpose his own onto in his imagination.

He waited to receive more word on the matter, or an invitation to the wedding, but no letters came after that. From Ruka or their uncle. If she had married her beau, or if the engagement had fallen through, he never knew. He never got to see his older sister in their mother's old wedding kimono. Somehow even his imagination would not allow him to picture her in those white gowns and the bonnet and makeup that made any young woman look mature beyond her years and resigned to her fate.

To his mind it would have been the same as imagining her dead. He simply could not do it. He could not bear to think, even in his subconscious mind, that he had lost his sister—the last family he had left. Because that was what it amounted to.

And for that, he should never have kissed her. It was only after his rash reaction to her perfectly reasonable words that she had disappeared exactly as he feared she would, and it was only after that that he had received this letter about a marriage. Was it possible that she had rushed into the decision because of his behavior? That he had inadvertently pushed her into it because of the feelings he had confessed to her? If it were possible to undo what happened that summer evening, would he still see her walking down the school yard path this Sunday, come to take him to see the Tanibata fireworks? To light a lantern for their mother on the river at Obon?

He could punish himself for all that could have been—and that he did—but none of it would bring Ruka back to him. That was the truth that stood before Tsuzuki, waiting for him to accept it; but each time he told himself to stop living in the past, to do the mature and logical thing and let his sister go—they would see each other again eventually, they were family, they had to—a tiny force deep inside suddenly leaped forth and kept him hanging on to his memories a while longer. After all, Ruka always had been his strength. If he simply accepted what his uncle told him without any hope whatsoever, would that not be the same as giving up his faith in her—the same as giving up faith in her love for him, however different the nature of that love might have been from his? What would she think of him if she knew he had done that? Wouldn't she feel betrayed?

At times like those, Tsuzuki steeled his heart and reached for the photograph he kept of her—the one she had given him after ripping its other subject from the frame—now wrinkled by all the places he had hidden it away when he swore to never look at it again, and all the times he had hurried to pull it out just so he might be reminded that she existed. So that he might be reminded of what she looked like, and her wide, sorrowful eyes. . . .

That photograph became his secret shame. While other boys collected photographs of their sweethearts from back home or the entertainers they fancied at the moment, the young woman Tsuzuki cherished more than any other was his older sister—six years his senior and whom he had not seen in an increasing number of months, then years. It was her beautiful face he dreamed of, and her arms he wanted to lose himself in when loneliness and hardship set in the worst. Truly there could be nothing sinful in wanting that much. After all, were they not taught in school that it was a brother and sister whose love for one another had created the Japanese islands? Still, myth was a matter unto itself; and he dared not imagine what his peers would think if they found out about the photograph, though he assured himself that his thoughts about Ruka were pure—or, at least, purer than their thoughts about the subjects of their photographs—even if the fact did remain: he longed for her so much sometimes it felt as though his whole body, no, his whole being ached.

The only thing worse than missing her was the way in which he had betrayed her. That he wanted no one to ever discover. He would have wiped the whole incident from the universe's memory had he the power to do so.

The more time passed, the less Tsuzuki was even sure how it happened the way it did. Surely there was some key piece he was missing, something that he said or that had been in his eyes to upset her, because surely a mere kiss—and a chaste one at that—could not be powerful enough to make Ruka disappear, or make her never want to write to or visit him again. He began to fear he would never have another chance to ask her what had driven her away, or apologize for everything he had done. He did not even know where she worked, and he doubted very much he could trust his uncle and his wife to get a letter to Ruka for him.

Still, he had promised her once that he would make it all up to her and their mother one day, when he was through with college and had a respectable, well-paying job. That promise was little consolation to Tsuzuki those weeks during the height of his adolescence when Ruka's absence from his life was the hardest to bear; but it was enough of a reason to go on, this fragile bit of hope that one day Ruka might fall back into his life, and on that day he would be able to prove to her once and for all how much he loved her, and how sorry he was for all she had been made to suffer on his account. Maybe one day yet, he would still be able to make her happy.

In the meantime, he continued to visit those dance halls where she had taken him and waltzed with him once. He never saw her at any one of them—and that did not surprise him—but he allowed himself the impossible fantasy that maybe one day she would appear at the doors, as brilliant in her ball gown as that last afternoon, and everything that had come to stand between them would be torn down and forgotten. The last few months, or years, would melt away, and things would be like they always were between them, if not better.

He vowed to be ready for her whenever that day came.

—

"Tsuzuki! Here you are!"

He looked up just in time to see a young woman in a pale, peach dress bouncing toward him, before she hooked an arm around his, grabbed it tight in the other, and was dragging him to another part of the hall with the excuse, "There's some people you just have to meet."

She introduced him to a couple of the university's juniors, two young men with drinks in hand and not a wrinkle in their formal suits whom half the ball's attendees were greeting as they came in as lords, if only in jest. This young woman on his arm was one of the exceptions, but her smile was especially bright and her gestures especially enthusiastic as she said to them, "Gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr Tsuzuki Asato, the best ballroom dancer in the country."

He shook the hands offered him, even if eyebrows went up in incredulity. One of the young men, Iwase, said, "Is that so?"

Which made Tsuzuki blush. "I wouldn't say that, Motoko—"

"Oh, don't be modest," the girl called Motoko said with a wave. "You boys have some stiff competition, so it's only right you take him under your wing, you hear?"

"Aye-aye," the other, Yoshikawa, saluted her. "You brought him to the right place. We aren't called the Yaji and Kita of Messiah College for nothing—"

"Sure," Motoko teased, "they couldn't find two bigger buffoons to fit the bill."

It was the Christian Messiah College that Tsuzuki had chosen for his higher education when he finished high school. There was a movement underway in Japan's cities, led by foreign and homegrown preachers both who had found a following with the younger generations born in the Meiji era, coming of age in the Taisho, to whom their spirited, pentecostal methods and message of forgiveness and love held great appeal. Tsuzuki could not deny that he admired those who exhibited such fervor in their belief, but he had other reasons for choosing the school.

He lacked the grades and the social status that would have helped him enter a public university, but that school was happy enough to take his money whether he professed to share the Christian faith or not. With any luck, the administration no doubt felt, that would change once he had lived and studied for a time in their hospitable and pious atmosphere: eventually, through the examples of his peers and professors, he would come to see the peace and salvation offered by an acceptance of Jesus Christ for himself.

It was not as though Tsuzuki had a faith to call his own already. And the stories he heard in the masses he was required to attend did resonate with him, even if he could not be sure he got the meaning out of them he was supposed to. It wasn't in the singing of hymns or in the sign of the cross, or in the homilies that constantly appealed to the community's financial charity. Rather, he was drawn to the miracle stories and the Christ's compassionate words, as they seemed to him to echo what he had always felt in his heart but could never find the right words to explain. Like what his doctor friend had preached to him in his rose garden, about the kind of man he wanted to be as a physician: comforting others and healing their ails. If that was all it took to be a Christian, then Tsuzuki felt like he was one already, however much the university's staff was fond of reminding him otherwise.

If the school portrayed itself as a place of academic piety, however, some of its most prominent students—Tsuzuki quickly learned—were about as far removed from monks as one could be. Yoshikawa had a reputation among the other students as something of a rogue, Iwase as a flaming socialist, and both were quick to congratulate Tsuzuki when he caught the attention of yet another young attendee of the fairer sex he knew from his dance hall days; but somehow none of these qualities detracted from their status as exemplary models for respectable Christian values for the incoming freshmen.

"Like shepherds to the spring lambs," Yoshikawa joked as he put a flute of champagne in Tsuzuki's hand.

As if to illustrate, when Iwase joined them again he was herding a rather timid-looking freshman under one arm, who was dressed more for the road than the formal ocassion. "Brothers," he said to them, "I want you all to meet K, who—believe it or not—just got into town this past hour. How's that for timing?"

"Don't you think you're cutting it close?" said Yoshikawa.

"The train I was supposed to take up from the country encountered some delays, that's why I'm so late getting settled in," said the newcomer. "The rest of my luggage isn't expected to arrive until tomorrow yet."

"Ah, then you can stay with me if you need a place to put yourself up for a couple nights, and rent a futon in the meantime."

"Thank you, Sempai. That's rather generous." For someone who had all but professed himself a country bumpkin, the young man who called himself K spoke with a refined restraint that was, among present company, refreshingly urbane and modest. "I appreciate your looking out for me," he went on, "but it looks like I'll be staying in a room with . . . one moment, let me see. . . ." The young man fished a folded piece of paper from his pocket and read: "A Mr Tsuzuki Asato—"

Their companions laughed; but not before Tsuzuki jumped, nearly spilling his drink over all of them, to exclaim, "That's me!"

He wasn't sure, but the look that automatically crossed the other's face before he squelched it seemed to be one of horror.

Then he blinked, put the card away, and extended a hand. "Well, then, Mr Tsuzuki, please treat me well. I am in your care."

Tsuzuki, of course, was quick to wave off his formality, even as he vigorously shook that hand. After all, he said, they were newcomers to the school together, no matter which of them arrived first. Inside, however, he could not but admit that he felt humbled by this young man.

Perhaps it was ironic given his own most prominent feature, but even while as decades went by Tsuzuki would quickly forget his face, what struck him most about K at their first meeting were his eyes, which for a young man of university age were wide and deep, and always brutally honest—even when K turned them away at their upperclassmen's jesting and tried not to betray his veneer of seriousness with a smile. Perhaps in that way, he reminded Tsuzuki a bit of someone else, someone who had been dear to him long ago. Perhaps it was because of that that he put forth the effort with K that he did.

Whichever the case, he knew instantly that he could always trust those eyes to tell him the truth, and because of it he yearned to pull K out of his shell, to see what new jealously guarded layer of the young man's identity would be revealed there at each turn.

As though he were aware of that desire—and of their upperclassmen's uncannily strong propensity to cause a distraction—K kept his nose stubbornly to his studies almost day in and out; yet Tsuzuki was glad to notice that his roommate appeared to be as uncomfortable in mass as he was, even refraining from singing the hymns, either because he did not know them or was too shy to raise his voice. Tsuzuki knew his own wasn't anything to be proud of, but his gentle nudging only seemed to make K retreat further inside himself.

Which was puzzling to him. Tsuzuki was used to his charisma having the opposite effect—cajoling others into taking the chances they might otherwise hesitate to take—so as a result, K seemed to him a singular and enigmatic person indeed. But, as was simply his nature, Tsuzuki would not allow himself to rest until he had discovered what it was that made this young man the way he was.

—

"Come on, Tsuzuki—is that the best you can do? My grandmother could drive faster than this."

"I hope those words taste good, 'cause you know I'm gonna make you eat 'em."

"That right?"

Tsuzuki just laughed at the challenge and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right. The car responded by tilting dangerously on its axles, and making his friends grab hold of whatever part of the car was closest as they were thrown to the left side of the vehicle, the one who had issued the challenge gripping his hat in his free hand before it could fly away from him. For a moment even Tsuzuki feared the front wheel was going to come off the road; but the motorcar evened itself out again and he stepped on the gas, sending them soaring forward on the dirt road to a chorus of relieved whoops and hollers.

K's voice alone cut crystal clear through the wind: "Tsuzuki, you jackass!"

A brief glance over his shoulder was all Tsuzuki could spare, but it was long enough to see the young man holding on for dear life in the back seat. Somehow even then, he thought he caught a glimmer of excitement in K's voice as well, a nervous twitter of laughter as he added, "You trying to kill us and the motorcar?"

Yoshikawa laughed aloud. "Nah, just us, I'm afraid. 'Cause if he hurts this car, we're all dead anyway."

Somehow, though, even he didn't seem too worried, despite the car being on loan for the day from his uncle. It might have been more out of envy that he teased Tsuzuki, because when his own turn came to drive, he was unable to let loose like his younger friend, though he was sure to use a concern for others' property as an excuse for his conservative driving. He had much more practice at the wheel as well, and by the time he was back behind it, some of the adrenaline raised by Tsuzuki's driving had worked its way out of the foursome's systems.

Once in the backseat with K, Tsuzuki leaned back and enjoyed the feel of the wind through his hair, the sunlight beating warm against his closed eyelids when they passed out of the shadows of trees. They were still soaring down the dirt path at what most would consider a breakneck speed, but their upperclassmen handled the bumps and turns in the road with such seeming effortlessness that neither could bring himself to remain on edge.

Tsuzuki turned his head to glance at K, who was facing the other way, watching the suburban landscape pass them by. His friend sat straighter in the seat, his straw boater held firmly on his lap and the wind hardly ruffing his slicked hair or the lapels of his buttoned summer suit. Why he agreed to come out with them when he seemed to be enjoying himself so little was a mystery to Tsuzuki; until K happened to turn his way and, catching Tsuzuki staring at him, smiled in return. K's lips barely moved, but his dark eyes scrunched up, and it was not just from the sun. No longer did Tsuzuki care about his motives—nor his happiness, if he were honest. It was enough to have that gentle, contemplative smile given to him alone; and with the rumble of the engine and the vibration of the road passing swiftly beneath them, it made his heart soar in his chest as though he were a dragonfly humming along above the motorcar, riding its wake.

The four of them had skipped Sunday mass to come out here for a drive outside the city. It was the perfect day for it: the sky was a pearly blue, the May air heavy and warm as though in preview of the summer rains. Only when they were driving could they rustle up a cooling wind. There was a small lake on their way back into town where they stopped to while away the afternoon. Children floated toy boats on the water's edge, and modern girls with ankles gleefully exposed sat fanning themselves under the shade of the trees. Yoshikawa and Iwase joked in low voices and whistled popular tunes now and then, trying to catch their attention, but never garnering anything more than a suspicious glance. Tiring of that, they loosened their collars, rolled up their shirtsleeves, and improvised a game of baseball, cajoling Tsuzuki to join them and trusting their shed jackets to K, who could not be moved from his spot at the foot of a cherry tree even for wont of trying.

He watched them for a short while, eventually pulling out a small book and pen. Whenever Tsuzuki glanced over at him, he looked like he was asleep under the brim of his boater, but for the infrequent, lazy turn of a page.

When Tsuzuki could stand it no longer, he excused himself from his friends and, with two bottles of soda procured from a nearby vendor, returned to K's side.

It was a moment before his friend noticed he was standing there and looked up, and when he did his gaze went from the proffered soda bottle to Tsuzuki. "You know I don't like sweet things."

"I know," Tsuzuki said. "But you must be feeling the heat over here, even if you are just sitting still."

K did not refute that. He smiled bashfully and took the bottle with a small, "Thanks." He was in shirtsleeves himself and the side of his neck glistened even under the shade of his hat and the cherry's wide leaves, so he was not shy about taking a generous swig of soda.

Tsuzuki settled down on the grass, stretching out on his side beside him. "So. What are you reading that you can't be bothered for a game of ball, on this your Sunday off?"

"English poetry. Milton, to be exact." K glanced at him. "Are you familiar with him?"

"The only English I know is Sherlock Holmes," Tsuzuki teased him with a bashful grin. K smiled but did not laugh. "Why're you studying on a day like this?"

"It's not for class. This is one of the great classics of modern English literature. You know, Soseki was a student of the English poets," K said with more conviction to Tsuzuki's skeptical hum.

"Yeah, and look how depressing his stories were."

K glared. "You have no idea, do you? Here:

"'Freely they stood who stood,'" he quoted softly, whether Tsuzuki wanted to hear or not— "'and fell who fell.

-

"Not free, what proof could they have given sincere
Of true allegiance, constant faith, or love,
Where only what they needs must do, appear'd;
Not what they would? What praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoil'd,
Made passive both, had serv'd necessity,
Not me?. . ."

-

The lines had been translated, but even though the language was Japanese, the structure was old enough Tsuzuki wasn't sure he understood them at first hearing. But something in the passage spoke to him anyway; even if he could not explain what it meant if his life depended on it, even if he could not pinpoint its exact source in any one phrase, he felt the anguish in that passage nonetheless.

At the same time, his stubborn smile and the blue of the sky sparkling through the tree's leaves would not allow it to sink in, as though he had experienced a revelation and forgotten it completely at the same time.

"That's beautiful," he said. "Now, what does it mean?"

K sighed as though in impatience, but Tsuzuki could see that it had little if anything to do with Tsuzuki's question.

"I think what it means is that faith which is given without free will—that's given out of fear, or blind devotion, or is demanded of tyranny—means nothing. What's important is not that that kind of faith isn't deserved, but that the one who gives it is able to persevere through everything that stands in his way, everything that tells him to give up, in order to love something that, for all he knows, might not even care, simply because it's right.

"But more than that, what I think it means is that we have no one to blame for what becomes of us but ourselves and our own actions. 'The mind is its own place,' Milton writes before that, 'and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.'"

The smile did not leave Tsuzuki even as K's meaning sank in, but now he truly felt its fragility. It felt as though K had spoken to his very soul, and unwittingly at that. Unaware that he had been staring himself, the words slipped from Tsuzuki's lips before he could think about what he was saying: "See? That's why you make a much better student than I ever will."

K started and lowered his head. "I wouldn't say that. Not at all."

Those words came like a warning—careful, Tsuzuki, you don't know about that which you speak—and he took it to heart, chiding his friend instead that their conversation was turning much too dark for that sort of day.

"Well, then, how do you propose we spend it? Other than playing baseball, that is."

"I don't know. I used to spend days like this trying to catch tadpoles in the lake—"

K laughed at him for that, and Tsuzuki glared back. But his friend could not be pressed for an explanation when Tsuzuki wanted to know what about what he'd said was so amusing.

"Come on," he said suddenly, jumping back to his feet. "Let's take a walk."

K sobered. "What about Iwase-sempai and—"

"They can look after themselves."

Besides, he wanted to be somewhere alone with K, away from the eyes of the Sunday crowd. He couldn't really explain the sudden urge himself. It was not as though they didn't spend enough time alone in their shared room, with their respective studies, but there was something about the two of them being surrounded by nature that brought something out of K the university dormitory could not, like that elusive garden of Eden.

And perhaps that—Tsuzuki thought, as he paid K back by excitedly pointing out the various birds that populated the park by their calls—was precisely the key to unlocking his friend's true nature that he had been searching for. Nor was he about to give it up once so newly found.

—

It seemed to Tsuzuki that some of his worst memories were made during the summer. It was during its rains that his mother had passed away—as well as B, heralding the abuse by his schoolmates that seemed to dominate the memories he still fought to bury of that part of his life.

But it was also the season in which he had made the most wonderful discoveries. Summer was when, as a child, he had watched the cicadas emerge from their old exoskeletons, growing before his eyes on the tree trunks they clung to as they dried their wings in the shade and sang the song of their birth. He met Dr H in the summer, when his roses were in their most glorious period of bloom. And it was during that time six years before when he had been struck with the realization of just how precious Ruka's beauty was to him, and the tumult of longing and melancholy that his heretofore pure love had been thrown into, like the thick August air, made him dizzy.

The summer of 1918 promised to be no different.

Whether it was driving lessons in the country or weekend trips to the beach, or simply relaxing in the shade of their dorm rooms, trying in vain to beat back the muggy air with paper fans, Tsuzuki felt himself intoxicated by the freedom of university life. And by youth, and the simple pleasures that were allowed a young man and his friends in this new era had they simply some looks and some money. Some charm and a little sense of worldliness didn't hurt matters any, either. It came at just a small pittance, an hour every Sunday at church services, followed by a half hour of paying his dues to the nice Christian ladies who smiled at him over their homemade cakes and tea, and whose attentions he and his classmates would tease one another about later.

That summer, at the sudden advent of its heat in the first days of June, a noh stage was set up in the park and the students skipped classes to go down and see the full day's sequence of plays. An auspicious performance about a goddess started them off, followed by some histories; but it was the evening's last couple of plays that Tsuzuki and K looked forward to the most as they sat together in the cheap seats. The ending play, dubbed the demon play, was always the most interesting, with the action and drama sufficient to capture a university student's imagination, and short attention span.

However, Tsuzuki could not help noticing with some disappointment how the demons whom these plays concerned never attained enlightenment like those ghosts of men and women who appeared in the performances before them. Their stories ended without resolution, with the demons merely retreating, momentarily defeated, to rest for a few centuries before some new band of monks would be required to placate their renewed ire. Surely as time went on, so did that mode of existence grow increasingly unbearable, being shunned and subdued era after era without even the small grace of being allowed to die and be reborn. Given that, could anyone really blame the demons for the destruction they caused?

The drums and cries of the orchestra, the shrill anti-melody of the flute, accentuated its pain as the lead actor performed a terrifyingly graceful dance about the stage.

But not before K could whisper in Tsuzuki's ear, "Do you know why they always use a pine tree for the background?"

He was not the type to interrupt a live performance of any kind, so just hearing his voice was enough to break Tsuzuki out of the trance he had been lulled into and turn his gaze to the painted wood carving of a pine tree that stood behind the orchestra. The gold leaf on its trunk shimmered in the flickering torchlight—or in the smile that was apparent in K's low voice at his ear; he could not be sure which. Only that its irony struck him as insensitive to the demon's plight at first; and then the warmth of his friend's breath on his neck distracted him from even that.

"Because," K said when he was silent, his voice dropping even lower and more intimate, "it's always in season. The pine tree never changes, but is always faithful."

That one word rang out in Tsuzuki's mind over the actor's voice: faithful. Despite the warmth of the evening, he felt a shiver run down his spine. Surely, he thought, the intimacy he imagined in his friend's voice was unintentional—a coincidence, or a side effect of his efforts not to interrupt anyone else's experience. The two of them had grown increasingly closer, but surely it was wrong to think this was a sign that K returned his affection—an affection Tsuzuki himself did not even know how to describe or catalog.

He refrained from leaning in toward his friend in kind. Whatever K's motive had been in giving him that bit of information, and no matter how easy it would be to slip a hand between them to rest on an elbow, now was not the time, nor were they in the place for Tsuzuki to respond in such a way that might jeopardize the camaraderie they shared, even if they were the only two who would notice. Even if only to acknowledge K's words—words which he only seemed to feel free to utter under the cover of night. That pine tree may have been faithful, but its existence was no doubt a fragile one, perched on the edge of some cliff or mountain where winds had twisted it into its tortured shape. It had survived so much, but, like the proverbial straw on the camel's back, who knew how little might be required to destroy it.

There were those muggy afternoons, close quarters made even closer with the shades drawn and fat raindrops drumming on the roof, they would pass the time discussing the social lives of their dormmates, when it seemed in hindsight to be inevitable that the conversation would eventually turn to themselves. In truth, neither of them particularly cared about whom whoever was seeing at the moment; but they found themselves discussing it nonetheless, repeating hearsay passed along by the likes of Iwase or Yoshikawa, as though in doing so they might banish that particular responsibility of young, modern men from their own blissfully uncomplicated lives.

So-and-so's parents were trying to match him with the daughter of an old samurai family, and So-and-so couldn't stop rubbing it in like she would make the perfect wife, even though everyone knew she was somewhat lacking in domesticity. They could hardly imagine themselves married at their age, though supposed it was a sign of the times that no one cared they weren't tied down, or at least betrothed, already. These days it was almost expected of a young man—or even a young lady—to shop around before committing, like Such-and-such, who was spending his good time and money seeing some moga—a modern girl—who was a Christian to boot. Word had it she kissed like one, too. "If you'll pardon the pun."

"What do you mean?"

"'Oh then dear saint, let lips do as hands do'?"

K merely stared at him blankly.

"Romeo and Juliet? Come on, I thought you were the big English poetry enthusiast." Tsuzuki looked at him incredulously, but there was a certain facetiousness to his smile. And it was not because his friend had missed the reference, either.

"Usually something has to make sense first for it to be called a pun," K said, "and two, show clever usage and understanding of the language."

"Or maybe," Tsuzuki teased, "you're just sore because you've never kissed a girl."

K's smile dropped; and Tsuzuki had to admit, it was not as though his comment were called for. "And I'm sure you would be the expert on that subject."

"Well, I do have plenty of experience." It might not have been the exact truth—he never said whom with or where, or how seriously—but then, truth was not Tsuzuki's original intention.

But instead of firing back with some witty comment, or calling Tsuzuki's bluff, like any of their other classmates might have done, K simply lowered his eyes.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Tsuzuki said, laughing, and gave K, who was sitting on the floor with his books, a shove. He had not been paying attention, however, and lost balance, falling onto his back with Tsuzuki above him teasing him with his bright smile. "Someone with your looks? There must be dozens of girls in this city who'd fall for you in a heartbeat, what with those big eyes of yours, if you just turned on the charm. But then, you've probably never even noticed how they stare, have you, Mr Oblivious?"

"You wouldn't know—"

"Do you even know how to go about it?"

When K blushed, Tsuzuki backtracked: "Look, I'm sorry. I wouldn't have given you such a hard time if I had thought it would bother you so much. It's not that big a deal, you know. Honestly. I can even show you, if you like, just to prove it."

K swallowed visibly at that, but he suppressed whatever fear may have been in him the next moment as he pushed himself up, leaning back on his hands under Tsuzuki's suddenly challenging stare. The quiet "What, now?" slipped out before either seemed to have realized what he had said.

Tsuzuki shrugged carelessly, but his smile wavered. "Sure. If that's what you want."

If he were honest, though, he didn't really care whether that was what K wanted or not. In the back of his mind he knew it was probably stupid, but he had something to prove—or disprove, either to himself or K; he couldn't be sure which—and the awkwardness of their positions was not enough to stop Tsuzuki from leaning in toward his friend. He deliberated over what to do before finally placing a hand on the nape of K's neck. "You have to be still, all right?" he murmured, shifting himself closer. Wetting his lip with his tongue in nervous preparation before realizing that might not have been the most considerate thing to do.

K, who was determined to be scientific, did as told. "All right."

"Tilt your head a little . . . like this." The words sounded strange to Tsuzuki's ears as he guided K where he wanted him, and felt even stranger in his mouth, like they were coming from someone else, or as if someone else had taken over his body. It was all just stalling, until he could work up his nerve to finish what he had recklessly started, but it made him more nervous than not. He said more for his own sake than K's: "You can close your eyes if it makes it easier."

But K's remained wide open. They only fluttered a bit and lowered when Tsuzuki finally leaned in, and softly touched their lips together.

His friend froze under the kiss, but only momentarily, and he did not pull away as Tsuzuki half feared, half hoped he might. It was an alien sensation to him, like kissing Ruka's cheek—and not because it felt wrong. It was simply different from all those kisses he had lain on the backs of young ladies' hands at one function or another, different too from the pecks they had stolen when he wasn't prepared. Rather, it reached down into the pit of him, down into who he was—a sensation which was frightening and exhilarating at the same time, and made it all the more jarring when he felt K's fingers tentatively grace the side of his face.

He's only doing it to make a fool of me, Tsuzuki told himself instinctively; he doesn't mean anything more by it than if this were a lab exercise. But even as that thought wormed itself into his mind, his lips tingled and his limbs felt warm like they only did when he had too much to drink.

It was at recognizing that that Tsuzuki pulled himself away.

"You'll have to learn to loosen up if you ever hope to get anywhere," he said in the same teasing tone of voice as before; but it felt like the only one he was kidding was himself.

"I'm sorry. I suppose I'll improve with practice," K said with equal sarcasm, turning back to his studies.

And Tsuzuki followed it through with what was perhaps an unnecessarily cruel, "You do realize that means you need to make an actual effort," grinning as he pushed himself off the floor and to his feet.

He was too distracted by how the soft and silent pressure of his friend's lips against his had felt and how best not to show it to concentrate on his own studies, however. And he certainly had too much on his mind to notice that, despite the weather, K was trembling.

—

The timing was too good for Tsuzuki not to suspect that what happened in their room that afternoon was not at least partially to blame for K's melancholy in the weeks to follow. He began to fear that he had overstepped the invisible boundary laid between them; but he could not apologize for doing so without reminding K of it again. No matter how much he now regretted the consequences of his actions, he could not bring himself to do that much. Even if only to explain his pure intentions. It seemed now that what he had taken for a deeper bond between them might have been little more than his wishful thinking from the beginning, little more than the yearning every individual has in his heart to find another who truly understands his soul; and perhaps out of fear of being confronted with reality, Tsuzuki was especially careful now about what he said to K, lest his one close friend abandon him as had so many others.

He only found out he need not have worried when K asked if Tsuzuki would join him on summer holiday in his hometown.

"That is," he added when he caught the surprise on Tsuzuki's face, "if you didn't already have plans—"

"No, not at all." There was no need for him to explain he didn't have any family to visit himself; K already knew that much. "I mean, I would love to see the town where you grew up. It's been too long since I've seen the countryside at all. But you're sure I won't be a nuisance?"

"On the contrary," K said, to his amazement. "My family would like to meet you. I've told them all about how you've looked after me these past months, and I think they'd like to thank you for it in person. I'm sorry, but it seems I'm putting you in something of a spot by saying that, aren't I?"

"Not at all," Tsuzuki assured him once again.

He was relieved to think now that K's dark mood must have been the result of homesickness rather than anxiety about their friendship, and he felt he would be a fool to decline the offer. It was in K's character not to outwardly show his pleasure or displeasure much at all, but as the train they took to his hometown drew gradually closer to its destination, his smile grew in tandem. With every landmark they passed that was familiar to him, his eyes sparkled in a way that Tsuzuki found irresistible.

In linen summer suits and ties, their hair slicked back and shoes freshly polished, they sat across from each other with the window open to the breeze, talking and laughing about nothing important and simply enjoying one another's company. In Tsuzuki's humble opinion, there could not have been another two people on the train that day who were having as much fun as they were. It was a side to K he had never seen before, one that K seemed loath to show their mutual friends, but Tsuzuki found himself only falling more for his character because of it.

When the train pulled into the small country station, their time alone together came to an end when a young woman in kimono spotted them and waved, calling K's name.

"Your mother told me you were coming in today, so she sent me to greet you in her place," the young woman said when she had joined them. She turned her bright smile to Tsuzuki. "She said you were bringing a friend along with you. Is this him?"

"Ah. . . ." K looked down at the platform in sudden shyness. "This is Tsuzuki, my good friend from university. Tsuzuki, my cousin—"

"You can call me Ayame."

If K was taken aback by her forwardness toward Tsuzuki at all, he did not show it. "A pleasure, Miss Ayame," Tsuzuki said when it seemed it would be all right to do so, and bowed his head with a hand to his breast.

His manner took the young woman somewhat aback, and she blushed; but it was K's gaze she appeared awkward to meet when she offered—to his quick refusal—to help him with his luggage. As Tsuzuki followed behind them down the dusty road, listening to Ayame press K for details about the city, he was left with an impression that the relationship between the two could not be so easily summed up as one of extended family; but he did not press his friend on the matter, seeing as it was K's business and none of his.

Tsuzuki had no time to dwell on the matter in any case when they arrived at their destination. K's family's home was a large one, and Tsuzuki could not be sure why that surprised him. It would make sense for them to have some money if they were able to send their son to a private university, but K had never acted with the same superfluous air of some of their other wealthy schoolmates; in fact, at times he had seemed to Tsuzuki as humble and poor of spirit as Christ himself.

It was clear now where he got it. His mother and two younger sisters were most accepting of Tsuzuki, expressing their excitement to meet him after K's glowing letters, nor were they disappointed; and his father, though nearly as reserved as K, was quick to give him a pat on the back in gratitude for Tsuzuki's looking out for his son, making certain his sake cup at dinner was never empty. Tsuzuki was not used to such hospitality, but somehow he remembered his manners, even when they complimented him on them and remarked with fondness how he reminded them of one of K's older brothers, who had left some years before to go on a mission to Korea. Not once did anyone mention his unusual eyes, though he noticed the youngest girl staring at him across her dinner—and felt Ayame's curious gaze on him every now and then as well.

Then again, K turned to him just as often, sometimes a lopsided smile on his lips in embarrassment for something his mother said, but mostly with pride for the young man he was able to call his good friend.

They laughed about it that night when the household had gone to bed, when they lay in their futons laid out beside one another in the room K had shared years ago with his brothers. K teased him for drinking like a fish that night, and Tsuzuki grumbled in jest that maybe he would not have if K's father hadn't kept refilling his cup. "I couldn't very well refuse. That would be rude."

"Then don't complain to me if you're hungover in the morning, idiot."

He said so in jest, but maybe there was some truth to it, as Tsuzuki was unable to find a sufficient retort. Nor was it particularly easy to rustle up his usual wit with the crickets making their ruckus under the floorboards and his head feeling buoyant as a cloud, drifting where it would and unable to settle down on any one concrete thought.

"What about your family, Tsuzuki?"

K cocked his head as he said it, an uncharacteristically laid-back look to him as he lay propped up on one elbow, the coverlet nudged aside from the heat and the fan temporarily still at his side. "I mean, I know from what you've told me that they're no longer around," he said when he remembered his place, "but you've never told me what they were like. I've always wondered where you got that sense of humor of yours, that . . . good-naturedness that seems to follow you around everywhere like you had the sun on your shoulders."

"It's always been a mystery to me, too," Tsuzuki said with a chuckle; but he indulged his friend nonetheless, while K listened rapt and without judgment, nodding occasionally in silence.

Surprisingly, it was easy to talk about his mother and Ruka once Tsuzuki got started. He had thought for so many years that to speak of them would only bring him pain, or else would be too private to entrust to another living soul, so he had kept that part of himself under careful lock and key in fear of that pain; but the reality felt so different. If any part of it were painful, it was only the realization that he missed them, and that he was powerless to change that; but having K hear as much was better than keeping it to himself, like a balm to an ache he had too long learned to ignore.

He even told K about his father—if only repeating the stories his mother told him as a child—whom he had never discussed with anyone since he was a small boy too curious yet to care what others thought of him. He left out the guilt he still felt sometimes about his mother's death, and how he had estranged Ruka from himself; but about the rest, he found himself speaking with a candor that surprised even himself, but that he could not regret when he glanced over and saw the understanding in K's eyes.

When at last Tsuzuki trailed off, feeling suddenly exhausted, and the cries of the crickets filled the space between them, K let out a breath as though he had been holding it that whole time.

"What?" Tsuzuki asked him, unable to help his rising discomfort. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"'Under your guidance, whatever remains of our ancient wickedness, once done away with, shall free the earth from its incessant fear.'"

Tsuzuki was not sure what he had expected of his friend—judgment, perhaps, for one—but that was certainly not it. "Is that more of your English poets?" he slurred.

"Latin. Virgil." K looked down with a sudden bashfulness, as though this past hour he had been the one laying open his soul instead of Tsuzuki. "It's what my brother would tell me in times of doubt, as if to assure me, this hardship too shall pass. I think he was talking about a savior, but lying here listening to you speak tonight, I wonder if it might be more personal than that."

But K had it backwards, Tsuzuki thought.

Tsuzuki had done nothing but talk. Rather, it was as though K could peer into his soul, and see the memories of Ruka and of the Tokyo doctor that resided there—the memories of those who had calmed the darkness that resided deep inside him, whenever it raised its head from its fitful slumber. It had been so long since he had a voice like that to guide him through his darkness, like a faithful shepherd, that he failed to notice the difference anymore.

Until now. Until he felt that incessant something, that ancient something, quelled by the blue sky and clean air of the country, and by K's words, which fell upon him again like a gentle caress.

"What is it about you, Tsuzuki," K asked him in a whisper on the edge of his fading consciousness, "that makes me feel like I'm somebody else—somebody better?"

—

They spent those long summer days strolling the surrounding area, aimlessly following the paths that wound out through the rice fields, along the raised edges of irrigation ditches and down to the river, or up into the wooded hills with their half-forgotten shrines and moss-covered old mileposts, absently kicking stones down the dirt path and getting dust on their good leather shoes, talking endlessly about whichever subjects sprang to mind, or else simply enjoying one another's presence in close, sacred silence.

It seemed some days as though they spent every minute together; and what few were not spent in K's company, it was his younger sisters who occupied Tsuzuki's time, or else Ayame, whose appearances at the house seemed to be becoming more and more frequent. Tsuzuki was quick to joke about it on one of their long walks, saying it must have been that she missed K so much she was doing everything in her power to maximize the time they were together before he went back to the city. "It's refreshing to see cousins so close like that."

"Who, Ayame? Oh. . . ." K looked down at his feet. "I should have been more specific before. We're only cousins by marriage. She and I are supposed to be betrothed, actually."

"Supposed to be? You don't sound very enthusiastic about it."

Tsuzuki laughed lightly, but by the look on his friend's face, it had not been the best course of action. When he thought about it, there must have been a good reason K hadn't mentioned it before. "It isn't that. It's just . . . Well, it was arranged when we were just young kids, and things have changed since those days. We've both . . ."

He looked up, but quickly looked away again when he caught Tsuzuki's eye.

"We've both grown up quite a bit since then."

Well, that was a given, Tsuzuki wanted to say. It seemed from his friend's tone of voice that there was more to it than that, but he held his tongue and was content to let the matter drop when K changed the subject to something more trivial.

It did put his friend's behavior that night when Ayame once again joined them for dinner into a new perspective, even if he could not quite grasp what that perspective was supposed to be. When he was awakened during the night it was with the feeling that K was wide awake beside him, though Tsuzuki could not be certain this was the case with his friend facing the other way and breathing regularly. It was only a feeling he had, and he repressed the instinctive urge to reach out and ask K the matter. Perhaps, on a level he was not entirely aware of, he knew it was best to simply leave these things be.

Perhaps, too, K's restlessness had something to do with the village's summer festival, which was only days away, and which had dominated Ayame's talk that night at dinner. Tsuzuki looked forward to it with a childlike anticipation, as he had not been to a summer festival in the country in almost a decade. And besides, what he did remember of his own town's festivals was clouded by the hostility of his childhood peers, which had not allowed him to let his guard down enough to enjoy himself properly.

But for whatever reason, and in a way Tsuzuki could not quite explain, it felt as though the air between himself and K was fast turning as chilly as it had been leading up to their holiday, if not even colder. When he would casually ask K whether there was a problem, however, his friend responded as if he had no idea why there should be.

Yet Tsuzuki doubted K could really be so oblivious to his own behavior. At school, he was conscious of himself almost to a fault, and would never have chastised the older of his sisters for the questions she asked innocently of Tsuzuki, let alone allowed himself to stare so openly as he now did across the table, or the space between their futons at night when he could not get to sleep. Perhaps it was the looming return to university that weighed on K's mind, Tsuzuki told himself, and that would not allow him to enjoy what little time they had left there while they still had it. "You're going to get ulcers if you keep worrying like this," the older of his sisters would tell him. "Do you really want that at your age?" To which K would just straighten himself and pretend he did not know what she was talking about.

But he could not hide it from his friend.

He opted to stay home from the festival preparations despite Tsuzuki and Ayame's strong urging he join them, claiming a pounding headache that wouldn't let him out in the sun. It was all Tsuzuki could do not to call his bluff. But knowing K—as the young woman confided in Tsuzuki as they worked—he would have denied that there was any underlying cause to his fit of melancholy. Apparently he had always been like that.

Tsuzuki couldn't speak to that, but he was determined to get to the bottom of it. So he asked his friend that evening outright, "Do you not want me here?"

K looked horrified as he glanced up from the book he was reading. "Of course I do. I wouldn't have invited you to come with me if I didn't. Why, what makes you say that?"

Because you don't act like it, Tsuzuki thought, but said instead, "Never mind. Come on." And he reached down and pulled K upright by the arm away from his books. "You're not spending the night at home, I don't care what disease you claim you have this time."

"Don't bother. Just . . . go on without me, Tsuzuki. I'll only get in the way. I never have any fun at these sorts of things."

"Liar. Anyone can enjoy himself if he just gives it a chance."

"Well, I'm not getting dressed up," his friend said adamantly, as though that would settle the matter.

"That doesn't matter. Neither am I." In their trousers and shirtsleeves, they might have stood out among the other villagers, and been less comfortable in the heat of the August evening than they would be in yukata, but that didn't matter to Tsuzuki as long as his friend was there with him. "Come on, I'm tired of your excuses. Everyone's expecting you to be there. Ayame's wearing flowers in her hair just for you. . . ."

He hooked an arm around K's midsection once he had him half off the floor, tightly gripping his waist, which was feverishly warm from the day's heat beneath his cotton shirt. Pulling the young man's arm around his own shoulders, he hoisted K the rest of the way up and would have carried him like that all the way to the festival if K had not decided right then that he could stand well enough on his own feet.

He jerked himself away, covering the unusual violence of his actions with a grab for his summer jacket.

"All right," he muttered, "I'll go for a little while if it makes you happy. But you owe me one for this, Tsuzuki."

"We'll see about that." With any luck, Tsuzuki thought, K would recant by the end of the evening.

He still somehow managed to engage K in racing him part of the way to the festival grounds. Once there, surrounded by the wonderful aromas of the food, and the drums beating in time with the cries of the singers and with his pounding heart, it was easy for Tsuzuki to lose himself in the simple pleasure of K's company. And, after losing so many games only to hear K laughing at him for it at his back, Tsuzuki began to suspect, much to his relief, that the reverse was true as well. Just to see K smile again like he had on the train, without any thought for what those around him might think, to see his wide eyes shining in the light of the paper lanterns that bobbed in the breeze over their heads, was plenty reward for the slight trouble in getting him there.

During moments like that, Tsuzuki hardly even noticed the others who passed in and out of their conversations over the course of the evening. He felt as though he had gained something back he had almost forgotten he'd lost; and at the time, he thought that if he grabbed hold of it now, it would last forever.

They parted ways at some point after sundown—sometime after Tsuzuki's sixth skewer of dango and K's beating him royally at a kiosk game of archery—and Tsuzuki took his moment of solitude to wander the outskirts of the festival. Fireflies flitted among the trees just out of the way of the crowds, katydids crying from the grass. The local shrine, decorated for the celebration, was quiet but for the sleepy few who occupied its benches; and Tsuzuki was compelled, as he gazed at its simple solidity, to give a prayer of thanks for what he had enjoyed during his stay to the local deity.

He was just about to return to the crowd when someone latched onto his arm and pressed close.

Tsuzuki laughed, surprised that his friend would be brazen enough to do something like that around so many people, but he was not about to complain. "Hey, K—"

"Shh. Tsuzuki, it's me."

He started at the unexpected voice, and the slim figure of a young woman in summer robes who materialized out of the shadow of the backs of the kiosks. "Ayame? What are you doing back here?"

"Don't tell K," she said sheepishly—yet without any doubt or hesitation, "but I had to tell you while I had the chance. I don't know if I'll ever get another one like it. Tsuzuki, I think I'm in love with you."

Tsuzuki forced a laugh. Surely he had heard wrong. He had just met the girl not even two weeks before, not nearly enough time for feelings such as those to develop, let alone when he had done nothing to encourage them. How could he, even if he had been attracted to her, when her hand already belonged to his one dearest friend? "But your engagement—"

"Who told you about that?" For a moment, her voice wavered in uncertainty. Then, "No. No, I don't want to call it off. It just means too much to our families, so I couldn't . . . But this is something else entirely. I didn't plan for it. I would be happy being K's wife, but you see, that's exactly why he can't know. Besides," she added, almost accusingly, "you wouldn't want to jeopardize your friendship either, would you?"

"Jeopardize it with what?" The smile remained stubbornly on his lips as he said it, a flimsy shield against the answer he wasn't sure he wanted to hear. "Come on, stop joking around. I know you don't really love me. How could you? You hardly know me."

"I know enough to know how I feel. And how you look at me, with those beautiful eyes, the way you smile back. . . . I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. I care about K, I really do, and it's not like I wanted to betray my feelings for him, but I couldn't help that very much, now, could I? You know what it would do to him if he found out his fiancee and his best friend—"

"Ayame, stop and think about this. You haven't even heard my side."

"I don't need to."

"Don't you think you're getting ahead of yourself—"

Before he could finish, however, she hooked a hand around the nape of his neck, and was raising herself up on tiptoes to meet his lips.

Her flesh was cool against his, but her slight body was warm and soft through her summer robe, the scent of the lilies she wore in her hair cloyingly sweet. Tsuzuki could have melted in her embrace if it were only that; but the memory of how K had looked down at the dirt of the road when he spoke candidly of this girl, the way he had allowed Tsuzuki to kiss him in their room back at university, perhaps even then imagining Tsuzuki were someone else, someone like Ayame. . . . His sudden shame upon remembering these things would not let him remain passive.

He pulled back, unhooking her arm from around his shoulders despite her reluctance to let him go.

"I can't," he told her, gripping a shoulder strongly in each hand when she began to protest—just hoping it might make her see his sense. "You know I can't allow you to do this. I can't do that to K."

A sound like the scuffing of gravel made them both turn, only to see K standing in the shadow, watching them, still as a statue.

Ayame gasped and spun away from them. It must have hit her all at once, that what she had envisioned for her future was over before it could ever begin, dashed like a vase to ground that could never be put back together. But, really, what had she expected? It was not as though Tsuzuki hadn't warned her, nor was it in his nature to simply let things stand without an explanation.

"K—" he began, letting go of his grip on Ayame.

But his friend would not listen. He backed away, then turned and started purposefully down the road away from them and the festivities.

—

"K—wait a minute. . . . Would you please stop and listen to me?"

They were nearly back at his home, the loud music and voices of the festival left far behind them, before K finally turned and acknowledged Tsuzuki. When he did, there were tears in his eyes—tears of anger and betrayal—neither of which Tsuzuki could say were undeserved after what he did.

"So you can tell me what, hm?" he shouted with an agony and force of conviction Tsuzuki had never before witnessed from his friend. "For God's sake, Tsuzuki, what other explanation could there be? I saw it plainly enough with my own eyes." He forced a laugh. "'Plenty of experience,' you said. I was so naive, thinking you were just kidding around. But Ayame, Tsuzuki? After I told you she was my fiancee, after I confided in you—"

"Listen to me—" He made to grab hold of his friend's sleeve, but K jerked himself away as though Tsuzuki would burn him, a horror-stricken look upon his face that pained Tsuzuki to see like little else could. "I didn't mean for that to happen. She just kissed me before I could stop her, and I didn't know what to do—"

"Right. And I'm supposed to believe that?"

"Yes! Damn it, it's the truth! When have I ever lied to you?"

K turned away from him again, shaking his head, and disappeared around the side of the nearest house in a huff, so that Tsuzuki had to hurry to catch up with him as he tried to reason with him:

"You can blame me all you want. I should have seen it coming, I should have been more observant, but I wasn't, for whatever reason. Maybe I didn't want to see it. But that's no excuse. Don't think I wouldn't take it all back if I could, in a heartbeat. You're my dearest friend, and I would never dream of doing anything to hurt you. Please, you have to believe me. I'm begging your forgiveness, K! I don't want anything to change between us—"

"Then, am I also supposed to believe Ayame just couldn't help herself? That this is just the effect you have on people?"

Then it was Tsuzuki's turn to be confused. He stopped in his tracks and stared, finding nothing to say in response, which only seemed to anger K more.

He strode back over to Tsuzuki when he saw him like that, and Tsuzuki would not have been surprised in the least if his friend had tried to hit him. He would have deserved it, and K's demeanor certainly threatened something violent.

Instead, he half sobbed, half shouted: "I invited you on this trip because I needed you here with me. I need that so much, Tsuzuki. I don't understand what it is you do to me, but sometimes it feels like you're the only thing making this life bearable. Ever since I met you I've wanted to trust you, to be able to be myself with you—Christ, Tsuzuki, I've treasured your friendship since the first day I knew you—and now you do this to me? I . . . I don't know how to take it! Did this thing between us ever mean anything, or was it all some cruel joke to you from the start? Do you have any idea how much it hurts? Do you even have the faintest idea how much it kills me just being around you?"

His words washed over Tsuzuki like a tide, too much for him to take in at once, to make sense out of. "I-I'm sorry, K," he said, "but I don't think I understand what you're talking about."

"Oh, I'm sure you don't. That's just the way you are, isn't it? You make people think you fancy them, and then you stab them in the back when it suits you—"

"Look, what happened with her . . . I don't care a whit about Ayame—"

"I'm not talking about Ayame!"

Tsuzuki could only blink. If she wasn't at the crux of their argument, then what was it about?

When he could think of nothing to say, K just shook his head, as though Tsuzuki had already proven his point for him. "Never mind," he muttered, his voice trembling. "I told you it would be a mistake to drag me out tonight. You should have just let me be. Just . . . forget it. Forget I ever said anything, and just forget about me. I want you out of my house in the morning—"

It was not something he could easily explain, but the utter finality of his words suddenly frightened Tsuzuki so much that he feared for his friend. What he had done to K to make him act this way, he did not know, but it had nothing to do with anything at the festival. All at once K seemed to him like water slipping through his fingers; and in his desperation to salvage any part of what they had only hours ago, Tsuzuki reached out in order to force K to face him.

He felt K jump beneath his touch, and then there was a flash through the dark as the young man spun to defend himself.

When he was facing Tsuzuki again, it was with the blade of a scythe hovering between them, snatched from where some neighbor had left it after coming in from the fields. Tsuzuki knew not to be fooled by the way the moonlight shone so dully on its worn surface: it could still cut him with ease if he made one wrong move.

"Just stay away from me!" K swallowed hard, slowly backing away toward the lee of the house. "I mean it. Don't come near me, don't touch me, don't even speak to me. I'm through with it, Tsuzuki, with you, with all of this nonsense—"

"Let's be reasonable—"

"Reasonable? You want reason, then you explain it! Please explain it to me, because I'm tired of trying to understand why you make me feel the way I do. What is it you want from me?"

Tsuzuki started, as if the blade had already sunk into him, just left of center. What did he want, besides K's trust and companionship back? For those honest eyes to show true happiness again? For his friend to love him as much as Tsuzuki loved him, as much as he had loved Ruka—was there anything so wrong in wanting that?

"I love you. You're my dearest friend and I don't want to lose you."

The words slipped out as naturally as thinking them, and they did not sound wrong or complicated to Tsuzuki's ears, even if he could not say the same for K.

Who gritted his teeth in his confliction. "Can't you see? That's just the problem—"

"Why? Because it's wrong? What could be more natural than wanting to be beside the one person who means more to you than anything in the world? You said you need me, K," Tsuzuki tried, "well, I need you too. That faith you always spoke of . . . Maybe I don't deserve it, but I would do anything you asked me to just to have that back. We can go back to the way things were. I promise you, nothing has to change if we don't want it to. Our friendship doesn't have to end because of this."

He might as well have been speaking to his sister. Those were the words he should have said to her all those years ago; perhaps if he had, she would never have left him without a word. If only he had been able to make her see there was nothing abnormal about the nature of his love, nothing frightening about its intensity.

He saw the uncertainty in K's eyes and knew that, weak though his argument might have been—and so wholly dependent on faith—there was a truth to it that neither of them really wanted to deny.

All at once, the scythe's blade that hovered between them was too much for Tsuzuki to ignore. He couldn't be sure which of them K's desperation posed a greater danger to—Tsuzuki or himself—but he could not allow it to remain between them, one way or another. A loud crack split the air as the first of that night's fireworks was lit, and K turned toward it instinctively, his eyes wild in the flash of light. It was then that Tsuzuki saw his chance, and he lunged forward to grab the scythe from K's hands.

It should have been a simple thing to do. Nothing Tsuzuki could have foreseen told him otherwise. He did not expect K to hold on to the scythe as tightly as he did, or for him to fight Tsuzuki for control. He did not take into account the utter dark of the shadows between the houses, nor how quickly mistakes could happen. He could make out nothing in the dark but the white of K's collar against his pale throat, the only sound over the crack of the fireworks the frantic scuffing of their shoes in the dust. It didn't occur to him that there was something gravely wrong until he heard the choked grunt at his ear.

K's grip loosened on the blade's handle, and Tsuzuki used the chance to pull it away, not expecting the wet resistance he encountered when he did, or that K would crumple and collapse as soon as he let go.

He fell to his side on the dirt walk, gasping feebly, and the wan moonlight illuminated then what Tsuzuki could not see before. A thin red trickle ran from the corner of his mouth, and further down, beneath his summer jacket, his white shirt front was stained dark with blood.

Tsuzuki dropped to his knees, the scythe forgotten in the dust. His hands trembled something awful and he cursed at what he saw before some instinct kicked in and made him press both hands to the wound. K moaned when he did so, a wet, inhuman sound that drew incoherent apologies like Hail Marys from Tsuzuki's own lips. Nothing he did appeared to do any good. He couldn't see the wound, but he knew it was deep, and in a bad place. More blood welled up, squeezing out between his fingers at the pressure he applied, making Tsuzuki blanch and curse as he never had cause to before—but, damn it, he had only been trying to help, this wasn't supposed to happen, and there was no way he should have been bleeding so much so fast, how was Tsuzuki supposed to make everything all right like he'd promised K if he didn't have the time to take it back?

Someone was calling K's name—someone, Tsuzuki realized belatedly, besides himself. He recognized Ayame's voice, and her shuffling footsteps as she hurried in the direction they had gone.

"Over here!" The words tore themselves from Tsuzuki's throat, even if he couldn't tear his eyes away from the blood, just hoping she would be able to follow his voice. "Hurry, we're over here! Come on, please, hurry!"

"Tsuzuki?" She sounded wary even as she rounded the corner. "What's wrong? What are you—"

Her question broke off in a sob as she saw, and both hands flew to her mouth to hold back a scream.

"He needs help, bad—now—please, call for a doctor or something—"

Whether it was to follow his order or not, she fled the scene, running back toward the festivities as though her life were at stake. Tsuzuki could not dismiss the abject horror he had witnessed in her eyes, nor the fact that part of it had been directed at him. It chilled him to the bone, and he could only hope that his pleas for help had been heard.

As the light show continued, oblivious to what had happened, Tsuzuki peeled off his jacket, bundled it up, and pressed it hard to K's chest in what seemed like a futile effort to keep what blood he had left in. It felt like forever had passed before he finally saw the lanterns bobbing through the night toward them. But his relief that help had at last arrived was short lived when the group summoned by Ayame's cries were able to grasp the situation for themselves.

They set down the lanterns with such haste they nearly dropped them, throwing themselves to their knees beside K.

"He's cut deep. This is a lot of blood. . . ."

"What happened here? How long has he been like this?"

"Answer the question, lad!"

Tsuzuki suddenly found he couldn't find the words with which to do so. He wanted so much to explain to them all that it was an accident, a horrible horrible accident that wasn't meant to turn out this way, but his tongue just sat in his mouth, refusing to work. Their questions came too fast, running together like a blur in his mind, like some other language he couldn't understand. He hadn't the strength to resist when a couple of men hauled him roughly to his feet and out of the way. Others pulled open K's shirt, the woman who knelt over him pressing her sleeve over her mouth and turning her head, uttering a string of nenbutsu under her breath. Tsuzuki knew they were only there to help, but they weren't doing anything, and only seemed to him like so many ants, like crows swarming over his friend's body, that he wanted nothing more than to scatter away, to preserve what dignity K had left.

He didn't hear the words that pronounced the young man dead. He didn't hear K's mother's screams when she arrived to find her son covered in blood—and Tsuzuki just standing there, smeared in it up to the elbows, the blade that did the deed lying in the dust at his feet. The blood pounded in his ears, rising in volume with each boom and blast of light in the sky to the point of drowning out all other sounds around him, and he could do nothing but stand and stare, growing increasingly numb to his surroundings, retreating further into himself.

Then he felt it, deep down within: the first stirrings, murmurings, of that thing within him. . . .

That thing which had not raised its head since he was a young child, when it made him kill that boy and he had sworn never to let it awaken ever again. He could hear it accusing him from within his self now—in K's mother's voice as she screamed and shouted at him in her grief, as the villagers around her put the pieces together for themselves, and turned to him with eyes that seemed to look down into his very soul:

You did this, they said. You killed him. It was your fault. To think he trusted you—to think we all trusted you—and you murdered him—you monster, you murdered him. You demon. . . .

Yes, a demon. An abomination. That's what I am, isn't it?

He could feel it, his true nature, coiling ice-cold inside him as he stared down at the lifeless body of the friend he had loved and betrayed—and at his blood, running out and soaking his shirt and the earth on which he lay like there was no end to it, running out over everything, over everyone, out to the periphery of Tsuzuki's vision where it crept in upon him, to reap what a lifetime of sin, a life of sinful existence, had sown. . . .

They were going to kill him. Tsuzuki caught it in their voices, in the iron grips of the men still holding his arms, forcing him to his knees in their outrage with what he had done. He didn't have to answer for himself. They all knew what he did, accident or no. Arresting him wasn't justice enough for what he had done, even if these were civilized times. He was a monster, wasn't he? And a monster could not be allowed to live.

It was chaos all around Tsuzuki, but he alone remained cool and calm as he glanced around at the townspeople in their uproar, his mind busy forming his plan of escape. He had already failed K—K who had trusted him more than he ever deserved—so what else was there to save now but himself, even if he did not deserve to live?

In the blink of an eye the scythe was back in his hand, and the men who were restraining him fell to the ground. They did not see their ends coming as he slashed out at them with the blade already stained with his friend's blood, then moved on to the others who stood closest by.

Some of those ran. Most just let him cut them down, staring at him with eyes wide in disbelief, as though certain that some ounce of sanity within him would stay his hand at the last second, convinced to the end he was more civilized than this. For that they had only themselves to blame. Could they not see that there was no more sanity left within him? It died with K—that is, if it had ever been there to begin with, and if it had not been merely an illusion, an act he put on to convince himself he wasn't really this thing, this monster who couldn't help himself, who felt exhilaration and purpose as he swung the scythe, as he cut into their flesh, who reveled in the delicate beauty in the splash pattern of their blood, and saw absolution in the ablution of their life.

It made Tsuzuki feel ill—the gore that surrounded him, the sweet-copper smell of it, the strange joy he received from ending another life, the evil that he knew that was—all of it made him want to retch, and yet he could not stop himself. He had become an observer in his own body. His limbs moved as though with a will of their own, to a tune that told him this was only right, it was what he had been made for, and he could find neither the strength nor the reason to refute it any longer. He abhorred himself for it, but he could not disagree with the voice inside that whispered, This must be done.

Someone knocked over one of the lanterns as they fled, and as it went up in flame, the dry weeds that were near it caught fire and passed it quickly on. It spread to the house beside him, lapping eagerly at the sliding doors like dry kindling. The pools of blood shimmered like spilled ink in the flickering golden light, and if he had been able to see himself, he would have found eyes as crimson as blood and crazed as a starved lion's staring back at him. More townspeople would be coming for him in good time, more souls to feed the darkness that was fast uncoiling itself from within him—if they did not take him down first. He knew they would try.

Through the roar of the fire in his ears now he could begin to make out the distant screams, the moans of the injured scattered around him. The ringing of a bell, but he might have imagined that. In this dry heat, it was only a matter of time before the flames leaped to the next house over, and the next. . . .

Let them all burn, every last one, he murmured to the sky. Or the thing inside him did. He could not be sure anymore where one ended and the other began. What did it really matter? If it was going to end at all, this was how it had to be: the world consumed in fire.

—

Tsuzuki had not seen the house in six long years, but it looked the same as he remembered it. Nothing had changed.

Nor was he quite sure how he came to be there. The last hours—or were they days? yes, most likely days, but he honestly couldn't remember—were a blur. A kaleidescope of dark shape and shadows. The flicker of flames across the exposed beams of a once thatched-roofed house . . . or was it the flicker of the sun through the trees? He couldn't say. He really couldn't say. He couldn't even explain how he'd walked up this road when he hardly had the strength left to stand. His ears were ringing with an echoing din that wouldn't leave him be, like so many cicadas, crying out in agony, splitting apart, splitting his mind, like so many dying screams—

He shook them from his head. None of that mattered now. He was here, he was finally here.

He slipped inside the gate and knocked on the front door of the house. After a moment, he heard a man's voice moving closer from inside.

His uncle opened the door. He recoiled when he saw the man on his doorstep, unable to help the automatic response. "Can . . . can I help you?"

Tsuzuki tried to look past his shoulder. He didn't remember his uncle seeming so small, but he was still blocking Tsuzuki's view of the house's interior. "Where is she?"

"Where is who? I don't know who you are or what you're talking about, but I'm going to call the police—"

"You know who I mean." He had to speak quickly, he didn't have time to waste. "Where's Ruka? Where's my sister?"

His uncle started then, and, despite his revulsion, leaned forward, searching for Tsuzuki's eyes beneath his tousled hair.

Their violet shade was unmistakable.

"Asato?" The name was hardly a whisper from the man's lips. It was as if he couldn't believe his own eyes—or didn't want to. "What the hell's happened to you? Why are you covered in blood?"

Was he? Tsuzuki blinked down at himself, but he couldn't remember how he got the stains that covered his sleeves, and the front of his shirt, and the knees of his trousers. . . . Or maybe he did. He felt like it would come to him if he just tried to remember, but it hurt too much when he did that so he stopped. Was it his blood, or someone else's?

It didn't matter. "I said, where's Ruka? Ruka!" He stumbled into the household.

At first his uncle reached out a hand to steady Tsuzuki, but he quickly thought better of it and, horrified, tried to flatten himself against the door jamb instead until the other had passed. The last thing he wanted was his estranged nephew barging into his home without any warning, covered in blood and clearly more than half out of his wits, but what could he do? Force him out? That would involve touching him. Try to reason with him? It looked like a hopeless cause. Better to let him rant until he wore himself down and could be handed over to the authorities.

"Ruka!" Tsuzuki continued to call out as he traipsed into the hallway, dirt and caked blood smearing on the hardwood floor wherever he stepped. "Sister? Where are you?"

Startled by the noise, his wife came into the hall investigate. Her mouth flew open in a silent scream when she saw Tsuzuki, and she backed away when the young man's violet eyes alit on her.

"Go and get a policeman," his uncle told her, and tried again: "Asato! Asato, listen to me. If you do not control yourself and leave our house, I am going to have you arrested—"

"Where's my sister?" The words were gritted out through his teeth now, his weird eyes full of tears that mixed with the dirt and gore on his face so that it looked like he was crying blood. It shook his uncle to his soul, and a very real terror rose within him when Tsuzuki grabbed both his arms. His grip was heavy, as though the earth itself were trying to pull him down and it was taking all his energy to resist. "Why are you keeping her from me?" he sobbed. "Where is she?"

"She's dead." His uncle was only too relieved to say the words, in his anger and disgust. "She died three years ago."

"No. . . ." Tsuzuki's grip tightened.

"Call the police," his uncle told his wife, panic fueling his words now; but to his frustration she continued to just stand there in shock.

Tsuzuki shook his head, grimacing. He looked to his uncle as though he believed if he only expended enough effort, he could keep the truth out. "No, you're lying. . . . She can't be . . . I would have known. Someone would have sent word, I would have felt it—"

"We never told you because she wanted nothing more to do with you! You're such an abomination, Asato, your own sister couldn't stand the sight of you—of being seen with you!"

It was his uncle's wife who had spoken, the woman who had resented his presence in her household from the beginning when he was young and orphaned. They were not words his uncle was proud of hearing, but they were the truth, and had been waiting far too many years to be said that in the end it didn't matter who said them.

A strange, keening moan like that of a beaten dog escaped Tsuzuki, and he pressed his hands over his ears and collapsed to his knees on the floor. His whole body convulsed as though he were going to be sick, but it was just as likely he was about to weep. His uncle didn't really care which. He had had to suffer enough on account of this bastard child over the years, first with the loss of his own sister, then his niece. If he hadn't put him in a boarding school all those years ago, who knew what the boy would have done to his household as well. And while it was disgusting to see a grown man acting in this way, he could not say he felt sorry for him at all.

"It was consumption," Tsuzuki's uncle told him as he sat like that, and not without his own bitter note of regret, "just like her mother. I can take you to her gravestone if you still don't believe me."

Tsuzuki showed no sign of having acknowledged that, only made himself even smaller on the hallway floor.

There was nothing his uncle could say that would force him to accept reality. That much the man could see. He shook his head, letting out his breath and putting a hand on his pocket watch for comfort. He told the young man in the frankest terms possible: "Look, Asato, what your aunt said is correct. Ruka did not want to contact you, so we thought it would be best if we continued to honor her wishes and not tell you of her passing. You can hate us for it as much as you want, swear you don't believe it, but none of that is going to bring her back, so you might as well accept the facts as they stand. As far as I can see, you've only brought this on yourself. I don't know what you did to make Ruka want to forget you even existed, but now that I see you here like this—showing up unannounced, covered in blood—I really cannot say that I blame her."

And with that, he strode past Tsuzuki's huddled form to the telephone on the hallway table, startling his wife out of her trance as he did so. If she would not do it, he would just have to call for a police officer himself. His nephew was so out of it from whatever mess he had come here from, the man doubted it would be any trouble at all to have him taken into custody. Where they took him from there . . . he only hoped it was far away from here.

He did not think there was any harm in turning his back on Tsuzuki in the state he was in, but that was where he was gravely mistaken.

—

When Dr Muraki Yukitaka saw the young man covered in blood on the front step of his clinic, his first instinct was to find the source of his bleeding and stop it.

He rushed the young man to an operating room, had him sedated when he put up a fight that threatened to hurt the nurses, and stripped him of his dirtied and torn clothes to better see his wounds.

But none appeared.

No matter, Yukitaka thought. It must have been someone else's blood the young man's clothes had been soaked in. Whether that made him a murderer or a victim of hapless circumstance, he could not know until the man was awake and lucid enough to speak. So until then, he was given a clean robe and a bed, and his few personal effects were examined for any clue as to his identity. Like his injuries, however, there was none.

When the stranger had regained consciousness, Yukitaka went to talk to him. A nurse had brought the man food and water, but both remained untouched on the table beside his bed. No doubt he was troubled by whatever he had witnessed before coming to the clinic, and so for that Yukitaka could not blame him for having no appetite or resisting the efforts of strangers who were only trying to help him. The man was sitting up in his bed, staring blankly out the window, and it was only after some persistence that the doctor was able to get his attention.

"What's your name?" he asked.

But the young man would not answer the question.

"Do you remember who you are?"

The young man mouthed something inaudible, but it did not look like a name. Come to think of it, he may have been simply testing his mouth to see if it still worked.

"All right. We'll come back to that later. Do you know where you are?"

"At a clinic . . ." His voice was quiet, broken and wavering, a ghost of what it once must have been. "A clinic in Tokyo. . . ." He knew which one precisely.

It took Yukitaka slightly aback. He could remember the name of the clinic but not his own? "Yes. . . . If you know that much, then can you tell me how you came to be here?"

"Don't know. Walked, I guess. Where is Dr H?"

"You walked. I see." It sounded like a lie. "And nobody stopped you or tried to help you?"

"Why would they . . . ?"

"You were . . . drenched in blood. You don't remember?"

The young man looked down at himself, at his spotless hospital gown, knitting his brow in confusion.

"How did you know where to go?"

"I have to see Dr H." The young man looked up at Yukitaka then, and the doctor was struck by the color of his eyes under the sunlight: the clearest amethyst purple. He must not have noticed before in his haste to help the young man, but there was something inexplicably unnatural about their color, impossible. Yukitaka jerked back involuntarily, and the eyes followed him. "I came to see him," the young man said. "Where is he?"

Yukitaka swallowed, and cleared his throat. "Why do you need to see him?"

"Because. . . . He can help me."

"I can help you."

"No. . . ."

"Yes, I can, if you just help me to understand a few things. Tell me what happened to you. Who brought you here? How did you get to be covered in blood when there's not a scratch on you?"

"Please. I need to talk to him."

"Was there someone else injured besides you? Did you hurt someone?"

"Where is Dr H? I need to talk to him! This is his clinic! Why won't you let me talk to him?"

His outburst was sudden—undoubtedly the other patients could hear his shouting down the hall—but just as short lived. Yukitaka sighed. The young man would not appreciate what he had to say. "This is my clinic. I've been in charge of it for a couple of years now. If you're referring to the doctor who ran it before that, I'm afraid he passed away before I came here."

The young man mouthed his words, passed away, back like a silent echo. He looked away, saying nothing, but something seemed to crumple inside him, as though beneath a heavy curtain coming down.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that," Yukitaka tried, a little gentler this time. Bedside manner was not one of his strong suits, but he desperately needed information from this young man—anything to indicate what kind of person he was, and what had happened to him. "Now, I'm going to ask you again, and please think hard about this. I know it may be difficult or even painful for you to remember, but I need to know your name. Can you give me that much? Can you tell me where you come from? Whom should I contact about you?"

Perhaps it was all too much too fast. The young man did not answer him. Not then, nor when Yukitaka tried to rephrase his questions a little later. For reasons unknown to him, it seemed as though the young man had made a decision, conscious or otherwise, to completely shut down, and nothing Yukitaka tried would make him change his mind.

—

With a resigned sigh, Yukitaka left the patient's name on the chart as "unknown." That was a good word to describe most of him: his history, his place of birth, his social status. His reason for coming to this clinic covered in someone else's blood.

His age Yukitaka judged to be eighteen or nineteen. He might have been off the mark in that estimate, but he doubted it. He was in good health, trim, a little on the light side but still within the healthy range of weight for his frame. His complexion was fair, his hair a fine dark brown cut in the modern fashion. His body and facial features were symmetrical and well-proportioned. Yukitaka could find none of the usual, only too human flaws when he examined the patient in full: no old scars or signs of broken bones, and hardly any moles. He was, if the doctor allowed himself to be subjective, exceedingly handsome. Some might even say a classic example of male beauty. In fact, his perfection was as close to divine as a human being could get.

Which only made his mysterious ailment all the more puzzling, as Yukitaka could find nothing at all physically wrong with him.

Nothing, that was, except for his eyes, which were a brilliant purple—clear as cut amethyst, yet deep as a sea of Burgundy. They had to be an aberration, the result of some sort of mutation that was unique in recorded medicine. No human had ever been known to possess eyes that color; and as far as he knew, it was just as rare in the animal kingdom. In fact, only the demons of legends had purple eyes. Yet for all their unnaturalness, they attracted Yukitaka to their depths on an intellectual level, stoking his desire as a scientist and a doctor to explain what he did not understand.

On a more human, aesthetic level as well, he felt himself pulled into those eyes by the pain he saw in them—nebulous and unfathomable, yet strangely beautiful in their inner tragedy. Whatever those eyes saw as they stared vacantly at the clinic's ceiling or at the tiny garden outside the window, Yukitaka was not sure he wanted to know.

And yet his curiosity about the young man would not let him rest.

Perhaps it was fate, then, when he opened his newspaper the next day to glimpse the headline buried in one of the back pages. Police were searching for the individual who had brutally attacked a local businessman and his wife in their modest home. There was no sign of forced entry, as though the perpetrator had been invited in, but the deceased had no living family to speak of, and thus far examination of their contacts in the community had turned up no possible suspects.

Yukitaka studied what few details they released about the manner of the couple's murder; and vague though it was to protect the public's sensibilities, it was apparent that whoever committed the crime would not have come away from such a barbaric act without some blood on his person. Not only that, but the date of the double murder was the same day the mysterious young man had shown up on his clinic's porch, and Yukitaka was too much a man of method to believe in mere coincidences.

Rather than turn the young man over to the police, however, he decided to try and ask his patient directly.

"Can you read?" he asked the young man the next time he appeared to be responsive, giving the nurse who was unsuccessfully trying to coax him to eat a much-needed break.

The young man turned those strange purple eyes to look at him, and Yukitaka had no choice but to take the acknowledgment as an affirmation.

He put the paper before the patient, with the article about the murdered couple front and center.

"Do you know anything about this?"

The young man stared at the paper for a long period of time, in silence, during which time he appeared to in fact be reading. But as the silence drew on, and the young man showed no reaction to the article whatsoever, Yukitaka began to have his doubts.

He lowered his voice to a murmur, and told the patient: "The police won't say as much, but it's obvious the man who did this must have been covered in blood when he left the scene of the crime. Was it their blood you had on you when you came to us the other day? Were you responsible?"

The young man said nothing.

"Did you kill those people?"

Again, silence.

Nor could Yukitaka take his lack of reaction as either denial or an admission of guilt. In fact, the longer the patient stared blankly at the paper, the more it seemed as though, to him, Yukitaka simply wasn't there.

The doctor thought of threatening him with the possibility of life in prison, if not a death by hanging, but he doubted it would garner any more reaction than his present tactics. Furthermore, he found he really did not care whether the young man was guilty. He had no intention of turning him over to the police one way or another. As a doctor, Muraki Yukitaka felt a calling to help this young man, rather than send him to a sure death. Besides, he was not only clearly sick—mentally or otherwise—but also such a strange specimen of a man that Yukitaka could not conscionably hand him over to the authorities, knowing what they would do to him, and lose what he was already beginning to suspect was a biologically unique individual.

For the meantime, though, he knew he had to have patience. Perhaps as the days wore on, the answers he sought would all be revealed in their own due time.

—

It wasn't deja vu. Yukitaka had in fact seen this scene before, three times a day for a little over a week. Once again, the tray of food that had gone into the unknown patient's room a few hours before came back out utterly untouched.

"Mrs Tsuchiya," he stopped the nurse who was carrying the tray away, "how long has it been since that patient's eaten anything?"

"I've been bringing him his meals every day," she told him with an exasperated sigh, "and every single time I've taken it back away like this. I never see him touch any of it. In fact, I honestly can't say whether he's eaten anything since he's been here."

"How can that be possible?"

"In my opinion, Doctor? Maybe he's trying to starve himself to death."

Yukitaka quickly dismissed the idea. Not because he thought it was truly out of the question. The simple fact of the matter was, he was a doctor. He had vowed to save that young man when he came to this clinic; it was the duty of his profession, and he would not allow the patient's eccentricities to get in the way of Yukitaka's seeing him to a full recovery. That was why he allowed him to stay here, despite the part of him that knew he should have handed his patient over to the police long ago.

Besides, the young man had dragged himself here, rather than thrown himself in the river or in front of an automobile. Did that not indicate a will to live, at very least on some unconscious level?

Perhaps that was why he said a little more coldly than he intended to the nurse: "Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the patient is unable to feed himself?"

"Yes, Doctor. I'll try that immediately."

He could not but notice the edge in Mrs Tsuchiya's voice, however. Of course the same thought had occurred to her; she was not incompetent.

But it did not make Yukitaka feel any better when, over the next few days, he was able to witness first-hand her and the other nurses' unsuccessful attempts at getting the patient to eat. They might as well have been feeding a stone statue for all their efforts bore fruit. They had ways of making him open his mouth and could put a glass of water to his lips, but they could do nothing to make him swallow any of it.

The younger nurses whispered when they didn't think Yukitaka could hear that the patient was worse than a baby, or the doddering old men who came here to die. It was a shame, really, to see someone so young and handsome acting so disgusting. If he didn't want to eat, they said, why didn't he just say so so they could leave him alone? "Maybe he's going into hibernation—you know, like a squirrel or a bulb tuber waiting out the winter," one of them whispered in jest to another, prompting a fit of laughter from her colleague. "Really, have you ever heard of a human being hibernating? Ridiculous. . . ."

Yukitaka could not explain why overhearing that chatter angered him like it did, but he did not chastise them, only redoubled his efforts—even as it became apparent even Mrs Tsuchiya was quickly losing her seemingly infinite patience, as she had to wipe spilled rice porridge from the young man's throat and yukata again and again. It was embarrassing to watch.

At the same time, however, Yukitaka could clearly see that the problem was not that the young man could not eat, but that he would not. Mrs Tsuchiya's eyes when she looked up at the doctor standing in the doorway told him enough: maybe he just wants to die.

Maybe he did, Yukitaka conceded. But that did not mean they should give up.

—

The patient has not eaten nor drunk anything since he was first admitted to my clinic three weeks ago. Despite our repeated efforts, he continues to refuse any kind of nourishment, including intravenous saline drips, which he simply rips out when no one is watching.

Somehow despite the lack of nourishment, his condition has hardly worsened in all that time.

I have noted a slight drop in the patient's weight. However, where any normal human being would have already suffered the effects of dehydration, none are present. Nor does his body seem to be reallocating nutrients to its more vital functions, as one would expect to see in a patient who has been steadily starving himself. I do not know how it is possible, but our mystery patient thus far seems to be perfectly capable of living without food or water.

I have devised several tests in the hopes of finding the root cause of his miraculous self-sustainment, but so far none has been successful. Nor has the patient himself been of any help in this matter, as he continues to refuse to say anything. We do not even know his name. In fact, he has not uttered a word since the first day he was in our care. Either he possesses extraordinary willpower, or he is suffering some sort of severe on-going mental trauma, either resulting from external stress or psychological disease. It is quite a stalemate we are caught in, as I cannot properly diagnose him without knowing what induced him to this stubborn silence in the first place.

He has not slept since that first day, either, except when administered tranquilizers. The rest of his time is spent in a state of absent-minded wakefulness in which lucidity can come and go seemingly at random. Not eating is one thing, a merely physical matter, but I cannot grasp how one can continue with this sleeplessness and not go completely out of his mind. Again, it leads me to wonder what happened to this young man before he stumbled upon our clinic, but I fear unless he suddenly starts speaking again, even science may be hopelessly inadequate to answer that question. . . .

-

Yukitaka removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, taking a deep breath. The patient's illness was an enigma to the doctor that wore on him to the point of physical exhaustion when he expended too much energy in the increasingly futile struggle to solve it. Even the phonograph playing a soothing waltz nearby failed to calm his restless mind. The music was not intended for his benefit anyway. It was to calm his patients, and distract their thoughts if only temporarily from their own maladies.

There was one on whom it had no effect, however, and Yukitaka no longer knew why that should still surprise him.

It had been three months since that journal entry—almost four since the patient landed, after a sort, on his doorstep—and in that time there had been no change in his condition but a slight decline. Not even the decline the doctor would have expected. He was well enough to hold up his own head and sit in the wheelchair Yukitaka had provided for him; but he was too weak to right himself, let alone stand. No, the truth of the matter was, he was unwilling to expend the effort to do these things. Yukitaka had little doubt the young man could stand on his head with little trouble . . . if he only wanted to. Obviously he still possessed enough control of his faculties to prevent Yukitaka and the nurses from taking the proper measures to keep his body alive.

A nurse opened the door to the veranda to come back inside from the garden; and for a moment, though it was a fine day, the chilly November air caused the doctor to shiver involuntarily.

Sitting across from him, in his hospital robes and with only a quilt over his lap to warm him, the patient did not move. Nor did he show any sign that he had even acknowledged the opening of the door or the cold that came with it. Yukitaka raised his eyes to meet the young man's. The width of his pupils in their crimson irises did change with the light, and the chill brought the same goosepimples to his arms that it did the doctor's. So then, there was someone home; he just wasn't showing himself.

Needing a change of scenery, Yukitaka stood and made his way over to the window. Outside in the small garden, the rose bushes someone had planted all around the clinic years ago were emaciated by the cold, but the asters that had seemingly spontaneously grown up around their roots without any human intervention were blooming brilliantly: hundreds of thumbnail-sized blue and violet eyes staring back at him. He turned away and cleared his throat.

"'Why do I overlive,'" the words rose from memory to his lips, "'why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out to deathless pain? How gladly would I meet mortality my sentence, and be earth insensible. . . .'"

For a moment he savored the archaic feel of the words in his mouth, like the flavors of a cigar rolled around on the tongue before the smoke must be exhaled. Something in the journal entry had made him think of that line. The anguish of that first man who spoke for all of men was something he could not feel himself—his role in this world was to stave off death, not hasten it—but something in it struck a chord, perhaps the elusive answer to the mystery of his patient. "Is that what keeps you like this?" he asked the young man, facing the window. "Is it death you've come to me to wait for?"

Yukitaka knew better by now than to expect a reply, but he turned to look at his patient nonetheless, hoping against hope that young man might at last show some sign that he had heard the doctor's words—that they had had any effect on him. Anything at all.

But once again his patient was silent and unresponsive.

Yukitaka lowered his voice.

"Tell me what I must do if I'm to understand who you are, where you came from," he said to the young man. "Give me some sign if you won't speak." It felt somewhat like he imagined it would speaking to an individual in a coma, or to a late family member's ashes at their gravestone. As it was, Yukitaka had never had cause to do such a thing, though he had often witnessed others doing the same, and wondered if they were really so naive as to think their words were heard; or were they just doing it for their own benefit, to lessen the weight of guilt on their souls?

He could not be sure which, because he felt neither heard nor comfortable as he confided in the young man: "Your life is a mystery to me. Surely you must understand that as a man of science, that unsettles me more than anything else. I must understand you, and yet the more I try to do so, the more I am confused by what I discover and the more I feel shut out by your continued silence. What happened to—"

A noise from the other room startled him to sudden silence, though when he looked he saw it was only one of the nurses helping an elderly patient back to his room.

Finding himself disquietingly self-conscious, Yukitaka went back to the side of the young man's chair before he asked again, in a voice barely above a whisper: "What happened to make you this way? What was so terrible that you shut yourself in your own world like this? You know, some of my staff are saying that the reason you refuse treatment is that you are trying to end your life, but I have my doubts. It is not that I presume to judge whether a life is worthy of throwing away or not, only . . . that I wish I could see what you see, just once, just so I knew how to help you. Just so I understood."

The purple eyes rose up to meet his, as though to take him up on the challenge—but only for the briefest of moments, before they were once again looking through Yukitaka into whatever emptiness occupied the patient's thoughts.

Once again Yukitaka sighed, and took his seat on the other side of the table, closing the journal.

Frustration.

For one second he had felt himself on the brink of a breakthrough under his patient's gaze, but all it turned out to be was added frustration. It seemed most of the time now that that was all he understood, and with each day it only grew more layered and nuanced, like a tangle of briars whose buried roots he could never find.

—

Their forms flashed before his eyes, their outlines hazy but the guilt they dredged up sharp as a cutting dagger. That boy from his village school bleeding on the side of the road, the back of his skull split open. Doctor H in his rose garden, backlit by the summer sun, and his hedge trimmers dripping black ichor. A whole town's worth of blood, drenching the roses like rain. And it was K's, pouring over his fingers like a flooding of the river, dark with mud, as he tried to staunch the flow. Or was he trying to hasten it? He couldn't tell anymore, he just couldn't. Were they really all dead? Did he really do this? Maybe he was imagining every last one of them. Maybe they never existed at all. Maybe it was all just an hallucination, a nightmare. He couldn't tell anymore.

The body under him shuddered and spasmed, dark eyes staring at him like the eyes of a dying rabbit or deer. It was K—no, his sister, fighting for every breath, and he couldn't do anything to help her. Everything he tried just made it worse—he held her tighter, trying to keep her from slipping away, and he just lost her that much faster. . . .

"Demon-child. . . ." It was her lips that formed the words, but they came out in a hundred different voices. His mother's. His uncle's wife's as he tore into her barren womb. It was boys with sticks and stones and fists and villagers in a small country town with scythes and swords hidden away since the war—they cut into him, he felt the sting, the tearing of his own flesh, but he didn't die, he couldn't, and blood spilled down their faces, their shoulders, their chests torn and ragged like strips of cloth, like flags in the wind, wavering in the heat of the flames that danced around them. "How could you do this to us?" Everything was flames, flames consumed everything, boiling blood, charring flesh, and still they reached for him, grabbing at him. "We trusted you—you monster! How could you betray us, how could you kill us like this? You should never have been born. You should die! Demon spawn, die for what you've done. . . . You deserve to die!"

And it's real. He tries to will it away, tells himself he's just imagining things, he's dreaming, but it doesn't work. The vision worms its way into his mind, and it won't go away. It's happening now. He can smell the burning homes and the burning flesh, and this isn't just his imagination, he couldn't make this up. He can't get it out of his nostrils, out of his mouth. The copper tang of blood on his fingers, running down his arms, running down the back of his throat. It's in his eyes and all he can see is red, swelling up over the rooftops in the smoke, licking at his body, begging him for another sacrifice, for more. . . .

No more! He can't watch any more! This isn't him, it's some monster that's done all this. Some monster that maybe's inside him, maybe it is him, making him watch its play of destruction. . . . But no. No, they have the wrong person. It's not his fault. He's not a demon. Ruka assured him of that—

"She wanted nothing more to do with you! You're an abomination! She couldn't stand the sight of you!"

No! That's a lie! She loved him! She's here with him now. He can feel her familiar hand on his shoulder as she leans down—and he sees her dead for three years, for five, for ten years now, and the worms in her lungs have eaten away at her arms and through her breast, and her beautiful eyes—

Make it go away.

That's the only thing he can do now. He has to make it go away. His own eyes stare back at him from the opaque brown glass of a jar, warped and hounded and ugly, and it seems to beckon him, to speak to him: yes, he can put an end to this if he wants to. The pain will only last a moment. He can cut this vision out, let it all bleed out. If he no longer exists, he can't see it anymore, right? Maybe then he can finally rest in peace. . . .

—

"Doctor, hurry! Come quick!"

Yukitaka hardly had a moment to ask his current patient's forgiveness before he dashed off in the direction of the nurse's scream. The man he was attending would survive his momentary absence, but he could not say the same for whoever had necessitated that call.

"It's that young man with the strange eyes," the nurse said when she caught up with him in the hallway, breathless and holding her chest as though to manually still her racing heart. "Young Sachie was with him when it happened. She said he lashed out at her and shattered the jar, and . . . and then . . ."

She was unable to continue, but what she had already said made Yukitaka increase his pace.

He found the young nurse in question sitting against the door frame, where she had stumbled in her shock. She was biting her knuckle as she stared in the direction of the patient's bed, trying not to cry out.

And what unspeakable horror had garnered such a reaction? The patient was sitting up in bed facing them, but he seemed to be preoccupied with something in his hands. The sunlight coming through his window backlit his figure so that the doctor's eyes first had to adjust in order to see the steady dark stream of blood that fell over his wrist and dripped from between his fingers onto his lap, the bedsheets, and the floor.

Yukitaka hurried to his side, paying little heed to the brown glass of a broken jar for cotton swabs that crunched beneath his shoes. The patient trembled when the doctor grabbed him by the shoulders, but he did not release the white-knuckled grip he had on the piece of glass in his left hand, and otherwise showed no sign whatsoever of recognizing Yukitaka's presence.

The doctor pried his hands apart; and though he had seen his share of factory accidents and knife fights, he was startled by the sheer persistence and violence with which the patient had cut his own wrist. The wound was deep, very deep, and continued to bleed steadily even as Yukitaka applied pressure to the veins feeding it. There could be no doubt about the intention behind such an act, and Yukitaka was relieved that the call had come when it did. If the young man had done the same to his other wrist, or if there had not been someone in the room already to witness it, his actions would almost certainly have proved fatal.

Once he had recovered from the initial shock, taking the necessary measures to save the young man's life came instinctively to Yukitaka, and he worked quickly to staunch the flow of blood, calling for alcohol and gauze and sutures from his stunned staff.

He had the patient chloroformed as well, though aside from the body's automatic tremble of shock, the young man did not even seem to register the pain he surely must have been in. He had seemed reluctant to loosen his grip on the shard of glass—on the very weapon he had used against his own person—which was not inconsistent with the patient's strange, on-again-off-again catatonia. The young nurse who had been with him when it happened had been shocked by his sudden fit of violence, which seemed to have literally sprung out of nowhere, confessing to him later that she had been terrified when he had picked up the piece of broken glass that he would try to hurt her.

Yukitaka was convinced now, however, that the young man's motives had been entirely self-destructive, even more so than his previous refusal to eat; and he wondered, should he expect more attempts like it in the future?

Still, it went against everything he believed in to simply let the patient die.

"'If your right hand offends you, cut it off,'" the doctor thought aloud as he sat with the patient alone later that evening. "Is that what you were thinking? Or were you really trying to end your life?"

The wound had been stitched up and tightly bandaged, and his right hand lay limp at his side. His gown and the bedlinens on which he lay were fresh, the bloodstained ones taken out to be burned. Glass jars and vases of flowers, rubber tubes and medical instruments—anything that might remotely be used as a weapon against oneself was moved out of reach, and Yukitaka was tempted to clear the whole room of them. Even then, though, he knew, the patient could still strangle himself with the bedsheets or bite his own tongue, if he were determined enough.

Of course, the young man did not answer him no matter how long the doctor spoke to him. The sedative had worn off, and his eyes had fallen open to stare at the ceiling, but Yukitaka knew better by now than to think he was awake. Or even asleep, for that matter.

"I wish I had the slightest clue as to what dreams you think are so terrible you'd rather punish yourself with this sort of waking hell," Yukitaka whispered. "As it is, I cannot fathom it. If only you would have confided in me before taking the extreme measures you did. I imagine you must feel trapped in your own mind, but can't you see that that is all the more reason to talk to me? Whatever hell this is, it is a hell of your own choosing. You don't have to be its prisoner. Speak to me, share your troubles with another living soul, and we might banish whatever demons keep you awake all day, together. If you would only trust me."

There was not even a twitch from the young man to indicate he might be on the right path, let alone that he had been heard.

Strangely, though, the longer Yukitaka talked to him, the more it felt like he and the patient had been engaged in active conversation, even though the other remained as unresponsive as a porcelain doll throughout.

He returned the next morning to change the dressings himself, satisfied to see the wound swollen and hot to the touch, but free from infection. Not for the first time he wondered if he should have given the patient morphine for the pain he must certainly have been in, but a niggling sense of curiosity told him to wait until the patient asked for it himself. Yukitaka did not consider himself a sadist—that is, as much as maladies like this young man's titillated him intellectually, he could not say he actually wished him pain—but nor could he say that he did not have an ulterior motive in withholding medication from his strange patient. It was true that he wanted to see how well the patient's body could heal without external help, just as it continued to thrive without sustenance. But was that not just a convenient excuse?

An excuse to see how much pain the young man could bear before he actually cried out for help?

Yukitaka shook his head, and pushed that dark thought back down, deep down inside himself where it belonged. Whatever his personal motives may have been, the simple fact remained that he wanted to help this young man. He certainly did not want to lose him.

"It's been almost four years since you've been here," he told him. "Three years, ten months, and twenty-six days to be precise." His voice filled the space between them in the enclosed room like the voice of a lover, but shamed by that fact though Yukitaka was, there was nothing he was able to do about it. "I don't mind telling you that when you first came to me, I never imagined our relationship would last this long. I imagined you would recover and leave us, or—once you began refusing to eat—that you would waste away and we would eventually lose you. But now. . . ."

Now he wondered how much longer he could keep this going, or if his patient would once again attempt to foil his efforts when he turned his back.

That he had already tried again was Yukitaka's first thought when the nurse in charge of changing the dressings that evening came to find him, breathless. "It's his cut. . . ."

"What? Has he done it again? Has it become infected?"

"No." She laughed then, a shaky laugh that sounded a hair's-breadth from a sob. "It's . . . It's not there. I don't know how else to describe it. Doctor, you just have to see it."

He found the patient lying in his bed as always with eyes open to the ceiling. His supine right hand and arm lay naked beside him, and for a moment Yukitaka was sure his eyes were playing tricks on him. Did he have the correct arm? There was nothing on that wrist but a thin red line, as though it had been drawn on with ink.

"Did you remove the sutures?" he asked the nurse.

Who shook her head adamantly. "No. It was like that when I took the bandage off—like they had just fallen out all by themselves. I swear to God."

Yukitaka scrutinized the wound, prodding and pulling at the soft skin, but it was not just a trick of the light. Somehow his flesh seemed to have pulled itself back together; new cells were already forming, glistening raw and pink between the lips of the cut. Yukitaka had expected to see some initial signs of healing, but there was no way a human being could recover from what this young man had done to himself so quickly, and with such a lack of nutrients. One of his colleagues had to have been pulling a stunt. Yukitaka was not sure how it was done or who would have possessed the ingenuity with which to pull it off, but that was the only logical explanation for it he could see.

"It's a miracle," the same nurse told him later in an awe-filled whisper. "A miracle, pure and simple." Not even a day had passed before the patient's wrist had healed to the point of being indistinguishable from its mate—no trace at all of the savage injury done to it. There was no medical explanation for such a rapid recovery, and in fact no better word than the one she had used to describe it: a miracle. All Yukitaka's schooling kept him from accepting that word, but what other way did he have to explain it?

At first the thought made him uneasy. It was an aberration of nature that any human should be able to heal from an injury of that sort in so short a time. But was it really a miracle, or was it an innate blessing?

To the young nurse who had witnessed him cutting himself with the glass shard it must have seemed like a curse, for she left the clinic with little more than a word's notice. Perhaps it was because she had feared for her own safety like she said, but Yukitaka wondered if she hadn't also caught a glimpse of the patient's inner darkness herself just before he tried to end his life. And to the patient himself, his continued existence seemed like anything but a blessing.

But to Yukitaka, he was—if the doctor would pardon the superstitious nature of the phrase—a godsend. No, Yukitaka believed in gods and demons no more than he believed the world was flat. But if, in fact, his mysterious patient were possessing of some heretofore unknown, extraordinary regenerative power, then undoubtedly the key to explaining it was inside. That was, it was in the young man's genes. And if that were the case, then that meant these remarkable abilities of his could be quantified and tested, and maybe even reproduced. The applications, once Yukitaka allowed himself to ponder them, were possibly endless.

And it was for that reason that Yukitaka swore he would do whatever was necessary to figure out once and for all where his patient came from, and what, precisely, he was.

—

A year passed by, and then another. June came again, and with it the first roses in the clinic garden, whose stalks grew more wild and tangled each year.

Yukitaka felt much the same way. Only a few years had passed since he undertook what seemed to him, as he sat at his mysterious patient's bedside that fateful evening, to be his life's work; yet when he looked in the mirror, the eyes that peered back seemed too exhausted and haggard to belong to the relatively young man that they did, and dark circles and crow's feet had begun to creep in around them. Ironically, it seemed, given the nature of his studies these days, the long, sleepless nights spent staring at samples under the microscope and religiously compiling his research had already done more to age him than his entire tenure with his old university.

He could not escape these changes being noticed by the clinic's staff as well. It seemed that every three or four months he was going through almost an entirely new batch of nurses; only those who were more mature and settled stayed longer than six. He faulted them for it, told himself they lacked the proper constitution needed in this profession, yet at the same time Yukitaka knew that he was entirely to blame in one fashion or another. The hours he worked and the frustration he encountered more often than not made him short-tempered, especially with the younger, less experienced girls, and the other doctors who worked his clinic were quick to point it out to him.

Not that Yukitaka minded the distance he had created like a moat around himself. He had his own reasons for remaining aloof.

The nature of his research was delicate to say the least, and not only because he knew the medical community would see it as eccentric and a waste of their money. Even members of his staff would have deemed him a lunatic if they knew what he was really working on; and if in fact his efforts ever bore fruit, anyone who had ever assisted him on it in any way would clamor for a piece of the profits and the glory, whether they deserved it or not. For that reason, he was loathe to even let his colleagues near his mysterious patient, lest they start asking questions of their own, or even—God forbid—tamper with his specimen.

A specimen. . . . Was that all the young man with the strange eyes had become to him?

Yukitaka would have liked to think they had grown close, through all their "conversations" over the years, but he knew that to think as much was a fallacy. Whether the young man heard anything the doctor said to him or not, he never responded, and he continued to periodically attempt suicide by slashing his wrists.

Ironically, however, the more he did this, the less Yukitaka was able to treat him as he would any normal human being. The patient always recovered from his suicide attempts with remarkable speed—sometimes whether the doctor was there to catch it immediately or not. Naturally, at first Yukitaka was afraid of losing the patient each time this happened; but eventually a sort of complacency settled in, in which he began to expect these occurrences every few months as temporary bumps in the road to work patiently through.

And as the years wore on, he found himself gradually hardening to whatever inner torment made the patient cut himself over and over again, his sympathies giving way to a sort of admiration for his pathos and for the machinations of his superhuman body that was more akin to worship. He would painstakingly sketch the young man's eyes, or his half-healed incisions, or the knitting of his tissues under the microscope like some Renaissance painter meditating on the excruciating detail of Christ's wounds. Like Parsifal and his Holy Grail, he was obsessed with finding the secret he knew to be buried somewhere inside his mysterious patient. As he wrote in his private journal, could it be this person holds the key to—

But no. That was a fantasy, which Muraki Yukitaka, being a man of science, should have known better than to espouse, even if he, being a man of science, could dream of no greater find than that, impossible as it may seem. No, the words may have felt too much like a rash flight of fancy—that was why he crossed them out as soon as he wrote them—yet he continued to stare at them as though transfixed, unable to help himself, unable to will himself to believe there wasn't somehow some truth to them:

Eternal life.

He tore himself away. He sat back and let out his breath, forced himself to look anywhere but back at the page. He closed the journal and removed his glasses, and polished them with his handkerchief just to give himself time to think, to be rational.

But was he not already being perfectly rational?

The fact of the matter was, the idea of finding a key to eternal life was only considered a myth because no one had yet done it. The scientific proof did not yet exist. If he could get proof, Yukitaka could change all that. He could stop mankind from aging, from contracting disease and suffering. From dying. . . . Yes, if such a thing were possible at all, the young man who had been living in his clinic for five years without food or water was living proof.

It may have been in his blood, in his tissues—locked up in the genetic code inside his every cell itself. Yukitaka did not yet know. But it amazed him that that young man did not even seem to care that he enjoyed such a unique, indeed privileged, place among creation.

At least he did not seem to mind, either, that the doctor was drawing his blood in order to understand that unique place. To Yukitaka, the greater crime was letting what knowledge he could bring the field of medicine go to waste, and thus he was determined not to let his patient's existence be in vain. He was not a superstitious man, but he would not have become a doctor if he did not believe in the notion that a person could be born to answer a higher calling. For all he knew, he had been meant to find this young man—that his struggle to define himself as a doctor had been merely a preamble to the discovery of that patient on his doorstep. If it meant the answer to his quest would not reveal itself for five years or for fifty, what right did he have to complain when his destiny had already been so clearly decided? Not many individuals ever even knew what they were meant to do, and even fewer ever came into possession of a secret that had the potential to heal all of mankind of its one inevitable condition: death.

Perhaps, too, the likes of that young man were not meant to exist in this world. That thought did occur to Yukitaka on more than one occasion. But if anything it only made him more determined. If in fact there were a Creator, he reasoned, who had made living things mortal, then this act of science's rebellion was no less than what He deserved for such a flawed creation. Despite his profession, Yukitaka would hardly call himself a humanist. No, if he were perfectly honest, had his research only one goal, it was not to better mankind so much as to beat Death at its own game.

—

"What were you thinking? How could you be so careless, you idiot? The doctor's told you time and time again not to let the patient have access to anything that could be used as a weapon!"

And the young nurse who had forgotten her pair of small sewing scissors sobbed a half-intelligible apology behind their backs as Yukitaka and his nurses hurried to stop the bleeding from the patient's wrists.

The wounds were self-inflicted, as usual. And as usual, the young nurse who had been sitting with him brought her needlework to keep herself from falling asleep. As soon as she left the room—she claimed she was only out for one minute—he had seized the opportunity, and her scissors. Yukitaka knew it was futile to blame her, even though it had been her fault. No matter how careful they were, it seemed the patient always found some way of slashing his wrists.

"If you're not going to help, then get out! Don't you think you've done enough damage already?" Ms Nakagami shouted at the young nurse—who fled in tears.

She was not so old herself—just eighteen—and had begun her employment in the clinic after the earthquake last September; but this Nakagami Tomoko was not shy about bossing even her seniors around. Not that her reasons for doing so were ever wrong or misguided. Nor were they even hypocritical: she had little in the way of official medical training to speak of, but was a quick study and a perfectionist in everything she set herself to. Yukitaka admired her that; he felt he could trust her to be thorough and discrete; and for that reason, he was strongly considering putting her in charge of the care for this young man.

It was the height of summer, 1924. Already six years had passed since Yukitaka had taken the young man in, and it felt as though this kind of game had been going on from the beginning.

"How long has that man been here, Doctor?" Ms Nakagami asked him after they had patched up the patient.

Yukitaka sighed. "You've been working here almost a year, correct?"

By the way her eyes narrowed, she appeared to know when he was trying to avoid answering her questions.

"I noticed there were older scars on his wrists. They were faint, but there were a lot of them. Has he done this before?"

"You have good eyes, Ms Nakagami. You know that? I rarely have occasion to say that to someone."

"Dr Muraki, if that man has been trying to kill himself all this time, then why do you continue to waste this clinic's resources on keeping him alive?"

Yukitaka knew he would not be able to avoid her questions forever. Like he said, she had good eyes, and he was not referring to her vision. He was well aware his cagey answers would do nothing to satisfy her curiosity, and in fact only make her distrust him more. And while he could not risk losing a nurse with her wit and dedication—especially now that she had her own suspicions about the mysterious patient—could he risk telling her what he knew, and bringing her into the project he had undertaken? He did not doubt she would be strong enough to handle the science or dubious ethics involved—in many ways, she was as cold as he—but she was slightly more ambitious than Yukitaka would have liked. Then again, she had often told him in no unclear terms that she had not gone into nursing for the money or glory.

That afternoon, having made his decision, he took Ms Nakagami aside and begged her discretion. The reason he had provided a room for the young man and kept him in the clinic for six years, Yukitaka told her, despite his seeming eagerness to die, was simply because he wasted none of the clinics resources. He had taken no food or drink and hardly any medication in all the time he had been there, and yet still somehow remained as healthy as he had been when he first arrived.

He disclosed the unusual details of the patient's previous suicide attempts to Ms Nakagami as well. No one else on his staff knew the full extent of what he told her; Yukitaka had been very careful about keeping the patient's miraculous healing abilities under lock and key, and furthermore there were few on staff who had been working for him during the young man's other attempts on his life and were still in his employ.

Eventually, however, he understood that he would have to trust what data he had compiled on the patient so far to another soul for safekeeping, and he wondered if he had found a soul worthy of carrying that heavy burden of trust in Ms Nakagami. At very least she would be an effective go-between on the patient's behalf, a sort of scarecrow with which Yukitaka might stave off unwanted questions from the rest of the staff.

But this severe young woman, who was not prone to be taken in by jokes or superstition, was slow to believe him at first, convinced as she was that the doctor's claims were physically impossible. Laughing, he told her she could forget he ever mentioned it if the cuts on the patient's wrists had not healed over by the next morning.

Needless to say, she was clearly unused to the practice of apologizing.

—

And still it continued.

On and on and on, and every time he thought the end was in sight. . . .

Tsuzuki didn't understand why he was allowed to continue to exist, unless it was to be tortured like this for eternity. Was this his punishment for what he did? Or for what he was?

Demon. Monster. Murderer. Their words followed him in an incessant flow, like waves crashing in to shore, chasing after him, lapping at him. Like grasping hands, or flames licking at him—always pulling, tearing, and yet no matter how hard they tried to bring him down, no matter now hard he tried to destroy himself like they wanted and put an end to this hellish cycle, somehow he always managed to slip away.

Well, he'd done it this time. If they wanted his blood, they could have it. His veins were wide open. And the eyes they reviled him for, those unnatural eyes that only proved to everyone who saw him that he should not exist, that he should never have been born let alone been allowed to live—he'd taken care of that, too.

So why wouldn't they just leave him alone and let him go?

"He's lost too much blood. . . . How long has he been like this?"

Answer the question! What did you do?

. . . And he's back in that village, standing over the corpse of a boy he once knew, with a face he once trusted and loved, and flames are flickering over dead eyes, making them glow a familiar shade of crimson. The faceless forms standing around him are streaked with blood, the scent of decaying roses hanging heavy in an evening sky so red it sets the couple of moths that float by aflame, and they just keep beating their wings, oblivious to it even as they're being burnt up—

"Doctor!"

"Quiet. He always comes back. You know that."

—

Ms Nakagami glared at him from where she knelt at the patient's side. She waited until the nurse beside her had turned away to dispose of the basin of bloody water before she hissed back at him with all her frustration, "And what if this is the one time he doesn't?"

That was simply impossible. But what good would it do Yukitaka to try explaining that to her now, that this young man could not die? That was the beauty of the unique creature that he was. There was almost nothing he could do to himself that would cause him to die.

Yet even the doctor could not deny that the damage he had inflicted was notably more severe than any previous attempt. This time the patient had not only slit his wrists, he had also tried to gouge out his right eye. Fortunately, the wound had not been deep enough to penetrate his brain—which Yukitaka had little doubt would have been fatal despite all his powers of regeneration—though the mere fact that he had stabbed himself in the eye was a clear indication that something had changed from his patient's earlier, almost ritualistic suicide attempts. If he were not trying to kill himself with such an act of mutilation, however, then what was the reason? Had he done it thinking it would ensure he would no longer have to see whatever visions were responsible for keeping him awake day after day? But he had slashed his wrists as well, so he had been hoping to die anyway. Could it be that hatred was to blame for turning his hand against his own unusual eyes?

To the Muraki Yukitaka of five or six years ago, perhaps such a violent display of self-loathing would have garnered his admiration and pity. Now, however, it angered and frustrated him. Did the young man not understand what he could do for Yukitaka—what he could do for the world? It was selfish of him, to say the least, to show such utter disregard for a body that was, in all ways the doctor could think of, perfect. If Yukitaka did not know better—if he was not already convinced of the patient's one-track mind—he would say his patient was doing this to spite him.

"I'm hooking him up to an intravenous drip," Ms Nakagami told him with a sigh.

"That won't be necessary. He'll heal on his own just like all the other times. You'll see."

"Then just to be safe. That was a lot more blood than usual, Doctor."

But even as he argued with her, Yukitaka sounded to his own ears like a madman, his fervor and blind certainty just a bit too religious for a man who claimed allegiance to no faith but science. Consciously, he knew just as well as she did that he was letting pride get the better of his logic and judgment, but that same pride would not allow him to admit it.

That was 5 January 1926, the patient's first suicide attempt of the year.

A week later he was in a coma.

Yukitaka was at a loss as to how to explain it. The young man had recovered from so many attempts over the years almost without outside help, his wounds healing over before they had even had a proper chance to bleed; but now it was days before the sinews of his wrists could be seen to be knitting back together, and the damage to his eye remained almost as fresh as when he had stabbed it. Yukitaka worried it might be gone for good.

Ordinarily he would have seen this slow, steady improvement as a sign the patient was healing well and avoiding infection. But that young man was in no ways ordinary, and the fact that it took him longer than a few days to recover completely was plenty cause for worry. He would have said the violence of this particular attempt meant the young man was growing desperate, if it had not been for the desperation that had infused the entirety of his silent, eight-year-long residence in the clinic.

There was nothing tangible to indicate it, but something told Yukitaka he might actually lose his patient.

Strange how five, six years ago he would have been prepared for it, even seen it as inevitable the way the patient was going. Now it frightened him like nothing else.

It was not even the thought of losing an invaluable specimen or what advancements might be made while the young man still lived that troubled him so. It was as though, seeing the patient in such a sorry, fragile condition, Yukitaka were staring his own mortality in the face. If such a person as this could be allowed to die, then what hope was there for any of the human race, let alone a scientist such as himself?

He could not be sure if it were the need to immortalize that fact or the sudden realization that the young man might not be around much longer that compelled Yukitaka to take his picture. Then again, it might have been for reasons as simple as the grace and beauty of his anguish, or the seductive, almost worshipful way in which the clear light of that winter afternoon illuminated his features.

His Eastman sat on the bedside table, the photograph secure within it, waiting for development. The young man had seemed so otherworldly in that golden light, and unusually fragile with the rubber tubes that kept him alive snaking out from under his robe, the fresh bandages over his eye barely whiter than his pale skin, his dark hair in a fine disarray from when Yukitaka laid him back down against the pillow after changing the dressing. The black and white film would not pick up the queer purple of his good eye, shining like a dark red wine in the angle of the light; but it would hold for all posterity the agony in its depth, the quiet melancholy in his slightly parted lips, the relief of sinew and clavicle through the delicate skin of his throat, as though he were only breaths away from death.

Of course, Yukitaka knew his patient was much more resilient than he looked, but at the same time there was no way he could guarantee the young man would remain with him forever. He would continue to do everything in his power to keep the young man alive, for as long as possible; but should anything happen to him, then if nothing else, that photograph would prove that he existed.

It would prove that this impossible person had actually existed.

—

The throne room of the Great King Enma, lord and judge of the land of the dead, was a place the Count could never quite accustom himself to. Perhaps it was something to do with the bodiless heads that sat at the foot of his dais, whose eyes and nose respectively scrutinized every soul who bowed down before it; or something to do with the mirror behind the king himself, which reflected back all the sins of the one who peered into it.

Perhaps, too, it was the simple fact that it was a place for the souls of the dead, and the Count by nature was more concerned with the souls of the living. In fact, that was what called him here at Enma's behest: one particular soul the demon king should have claimed for his own long ago, but for reasons unknown to him, the man was still living.

"Count. . . ." For such a seemingly slight frame, his low voice rumbled throughout the chamber so that the Count felt more than heard each nuanced, achingly slow word: "It has come to my attention that some unknown force is artificially prolonging the life of one Tsuzuki Asato. For the past seven and a half years he has been living in a self-induced catatonia with neither food nor water, during which time he has made multiple attempts at suicide—each time in vain. I have ordered an investigation into the cause of his continued life, in order to root out any tampering with the souls of the living that might be taking place on our end, but we could save our shinigami valuable time and effort if anyone in our employ had information that might make better sense of this matter."

In other words, the Count thought, he stood as good as accused. Better to come clean now than wait for the facts to be revealed in all their unpleasantness. "I take full responsibility, my lord."

"You take responsibility?"

"Yes. It was I keeping his flame going in the Castle of Candles. No need to waste valuable resources on an investigation when I freely admit my guilt. And I expect to be punished for my actions. But let the record show I do not regret taking them."

"Is that so? And what reason could you possibly give me for justifying this behavior?"

What reason, indeed. But that he would take with him to the grave, if the likes of him were even allowed an end to their services. "I don't expect my reasoning to make logical sense to this court, my lord," the Count said. "But suffice it to say he is . . ." Precious to me? All I have left? No, he could not say that. . . . "A source of some fascination for me."

Enma leaned forward in his seat—just a slight movement for the king, but possessing in it all the skepticism the Count feared. That was why he hated this place: here he was transparent.

"If he were so fascinating," said the demon king, "then is that why you allow him to suffer?"

"I do not know, my lord."

"The court demands the reason you have taken such unusual interest in this individual. Do you have information about this Tsuzuki Asato that would complicate his trial?"

"Whatever information I have is privileged by my position, my lord."

"Not when he dies, it is not. Then he becomes my business."

He was backed into a corner now, the Count knew. As did the demon lord's attendants. They stood still and silent in their king's presence, but he could sense their eyes on him, judging him as if he were a mortal soul, hungry for the sins he kept hidden deep within himself. No doubt that was why he was here, rather than discussing these matters in a private conference with Enma as should have been his right. This was a public humiliation. They all knew what their king thought of the Count. They were already convinced of his guilt and were hoping he would slip up. But it was a matter of life and death that he did not—his life, or what semblance of it he enjoyed, and Tsuzuki's.

Already on his knees, the Count prostrated himself before the throne.

"With your permission, my lord," he said, making certain everyone would hear him clearly, "I would like to strike a bargain."

"A bargain? For this human's soul? You forget your place, Count. You know I could simply order you to cede control of his flame to me and my ministry."

Yet even as he said so, the Count could hear the smile in Enma's tone of voice. He showed great temerity trying to deal with the judge of the dead for a mere soul, but even gods must tire of their rule never being tested. And, though Enma may have only sensed it thus far, this was no mere human soul they discussed. He acquiesced: "But let us hear what this bargain of yours would entail. Do you mean to suggest to me that you would let Tsuzuki's soul go if your conditions were met?"

"Only one condition, your honor. A simple request, really."

"And that is?"

"When Tsuzuki Asato dies, his soul will not continue on but will remain here in Enma-cho, to be instated in your lordship's service as a shinigami."

A murmur passed around the throne room, but from the the throne itself, silence. The Count looked up then, to see the slightest of scowls on the demon king's otherwise unmoved visage.

"You are aware I decide a soul's worthiness to become a shinigami."

"I am aware of what kind of characters, what kind of histories and crimes factor into your honor's decision. I do not pretend to know this Tsuzuki's sins, but I do know that he has potential. So much potential, my lord. It is that which caught my attention and drew me to him in the first place."

The last part was not a complete truth, but the Count was practiced enough in opacity it might as well have been. What did Enma need to know of the reason for Tsuzuki's potential, or his heritage? Why dredge those old crimes—his own crimes—up from out of the dark in which they deserved to remain buried? Those facts were not relevant to these proceedings.

Nor was it relevant why the Count wanted Tsuzuki to remain in Meifu. It would be dangerous for both of them if the demon king were ever to suspect the bond they shared, and the deep nature of it. It was the Count who violated Meifu's rules more than two and a half decades ago, so much more so than what he was admitting to now; but if the truth were ever revealed, it was Tsuzuki who would bear the brunt of the punishment, though he bore none of the blame for what he was. No, simply keeping him in Meifu was opening them both to great enough risk.

But it was a risk that the Count had to take. Though it might have been selfish of him, it was only natural for him to cling to that young man, if only Enma knew the reasons. It was within his rights to want Tsuzuki here.

"He possesses powers far superior to those of most human individuals, which would serve my lord and this administration well, if they were properly nurtured," he continued, as though it were the only motive he could possibly have. "It would truly be a shame to waste them."

A long moment went by in which Enma remained silent and impassive; until at last he sat back, and said, "Very well, Count. If you release your hold on Tsuzuki's soul, I give you my word I will have him tested upon arrival for the position of a shinigami. Whether he succeeds or fails from that point on shall be his own doing."

The Count pressed his forehead to the floor once again, more out of relief than out of the gratitude that he expressed. What he did not say was that whatever hold Enma thought he had as the Count of the candles over Tsuzuki's soul was almost nonexistent; he was responsible, but not in the ways his lord suspected. No, he did not think the young man would fail.

His only hope was that Tsuzuki might forgive him, for denying him the oblivion he appeared to crave so badly. God knew he wanted nothing more than to save Tsuzuki; although in doing so, the Count might have damned him forever.

—

Yukitaka tried everything.

He had closed the wound and exhausted every method he could think of to start the patient's heart again, he even had the tubes for a transfusion out and ready. With shirtsleeves rolled up, the veins bulging in his forearms, he was prepared to drain his own blood if he thought it would make an ounce of difference now. . . .

The tubes fell from his hand to roll on the floor like snakes as he finally gave up, sinking to the edge of the bed, a shaky hand running through his hair.

"Eight years," he heard himself say. The nurses stood around at a loss—they at least had had the sense to give up long ago—staring at him with worried expressions on their faces, but the words weren't for their benefit. "Eight years and what good does it do me now? Nothing. . . . Bloody nothing!"

The syllables shot through his teeth like a gritted curse. He was still unable to believe it. Every careful note he had made of the patient over the last eight years, every accommodation of his malady, every mad-dash effort made to save him from his spats of self-destruction would not allow Yukitaka to believe it, even if the lack of a pulse under his fingers as he checked for what must have been the hundredth time told it plain:

The patient was gone.

The trails of blood over his gown and the side of the bed, the slick pools of it the wooden floor, were the only sign of the life Yukitaka was certain even now he had just barely missed. The wounds that had barely healed from his last attempt were ripped open again—and again, the patient counting on multiple incisions to make sure he accomplished his goal this time. No one knew how long he had lain like that without help, the life slowly draining out of him. Once upon a time, it seemed, it wouldn't have mattered; but whatever magic his cells had worked to repair themselves in the past was over and done, as if they too had simply given up the fight.

A late-winter's snow was falling outside the window, the wan winter light casting away the shadows inside the room. It made the young man's skin look as cold and white as the ground outside, but not nearly as dead. Not nearly as dead as it should have. He kept expecting those purple eyes to reopen at any moment, to stare their blank stare at the ceiling as they had so many nights he came just to talk to the young man. Beneath the half-moon of his eyelashes, the faintest sheen of sweat still glistened on his cheek, even if his lips were fast losing their color. They never had much to begin with; and the breath that passed through them these past eight years should have been impossible without the food or drink he never took. If he had not died then, why should he die now? That was all Yukitaka wanted answered.

And now whatever answer may have been only a day away from discovery—the secret to eternal life itself—had died with him. To say it was a pity was a gross understatement. A travesty. . . . That was somewhat closer to the mark.

At least Yukitaka still had the blood and tissue samples that were safe back in his office, not to mention his copious, careful notes. Surely there was still some new knowledge to be gleaned from them.

But as he found himself unable to tear his gaze away from that pale face, perfect even in death, he understood what a truly minuscule measure of consolation that was.

—

White was falling.

That was the first hint of his surroundings that Tsuzuki could distinguish. Through a hazy field of vision, the world appeared soft and white, as though the heavens themselves were falling gently to earth, piece by piece. . . .

Snow. That must have been it. He remembered now, if only just vaguely: it had started snowing that morning, and it never stopped. It had been snowing as he lay in his bed in the clinic, and he'd watched each fat flake drift down as he felt himself growing colder and colder, like they were all sinking into him, and he had welcomed them with open arms—

Tears welled up in his eyes, drowning out that vision and the memory, and the sting of them was so sudden he couldn't help pressing the heels of his hands to his eyelids for some relief. He barely managed to bite back a cry before it even occurred to him why he was so upset.

He was back in that clinic in Tokyo. That was it. It hadn't worked. That time had been his final effort and it hadn't worked at all. They brought him back—somehow—they brought him back after everything he'd done to ensure they wouldn't, after everything he had done to make it clear he wanted to just not be, and he was going to have to go on living like that, with the hunger, with the memories, torturing him every second of every day, driving him mad, no, so far past all sense of madness he just couldn't stand it, didn't anyone care, couldn't they just let him die, couldn't they see that was the only thing he wanted, that he was suffering, but goddamn it, it should have worked, he didn't understand why it should still be this way, why he couldn't even manage to kill himself. . . .

Until he realized: the whiteness that was falling outside the window was not of snow, but the petals of cherry blossoms, caught on the breeze. But it was the wrong season for them. Not only that, but he was sure the window was on the wrong side of the bed. Had they moved him to a different room in the clinic, or a different location altogether? He was in a hospital bed and gown, but not those that he last remembered. And he would have known in an instant—with a touch or a single intake of breath. Their feel, the exact scent of them, of that clinic, were a part of him. After all, he had spent every minute of the last eight years in them.

A knock at the door would not allow him to dwell on that thought for long. He pulled the robe and bedsheets tighter around himself and himself into a sitting position so that he might be prepared for whoever it was on the other side.

Rather than the doctor or nurse he was expecting, a middle-aged gentleman entered, dressed in a suit and tie, with an expression on his face that was thrice as somber as either. Tsuzuki had never seen him before, nor could he guess what his purpose here was, but if he knew one thing it was that this was not the doctor from that Tokyo clinic.

"I'm glad to see you're awake," the man said gruffly, seemingly oblivious to Tsuzuki's confusion. "I hope you'll forgive me if I seem like I'm rushing things. Normally I would give those who are newly put in my charge a little more time to adapt to their surroundings, but my superiors seem to be of the opinion that you would be up for this even in your present condition. And these orders did come from remarkably high up. You—or so I have been told—are a special case. Unique. I don't presume to know anything about that, but I can say that the fact you appear to be conscious is a step in the right direction."

The strange man said all this while moving to the window, looking outside, and picking a stray thread off of the breast of his jacket, as though he weren't speaking to Tsuzuki at all but some other unseen occupant of the room.

That was, until he turned suddenly, and said, rather pointedly, "You are conscious, aren't you?"

It didn't seem to Tsuzuki that there was any denying that fact. His eyes were open, red-rimmed and blinking, and he was sitting up against the headboard of his bed. Still, he did not answer; and when the strange man smiled as though at a private joke, it seemed he had not needed to.

"Do you remember your name?" the man asked.

"Tsuzuki Asato."

Tsuzuki started. His own name had come out of him as though drawn out. After so many years without having said a word, speech should have felt awkward, his tongue and throat struggling to form the correct syllables from lack of use; but reality was quite the opposite.

Heart suddenly racing, he raised his hands and turned them over, palms upwards, to see the thick, jagged ridges of old scar tissue that crisscrossed each wrist.

It should not have been possible. He was sure he had done the job properly that last time. Had he really been unconscious so long his wounds had already healed? He could see out of his right eye again as well, his vision unaffected. . . . But no, this must have been a dream, merely a precursor to the oblivion that awaited him—anything but a sign that he was still alive. But he had not dreamed since . . . He couldn't even remember the last time he had dreamed. And somehow, the terror and confusion that suddenly seized him with a very visceral nausea felt a little too real for a body that had been so numb for the past eight long years.

He was suddenly and inexplicably afraid of the answer he would get—and who might overhear his question—but it was a natural imperative, he had to ask: "Where am I?"

The strange man stared at him a moment longer before moving away from the window. Perhaps Tsuzuki had only imagined it, but he thought he saw something different cross those otherwise indifferent eyes—pity maybe, or else some vague recollection of a similar time long past and barely remembered, long before that man ever worked his way up the bureaucratic ladder to become chief of the Summons Division, in this little section of the government of the land of the dead.

But Tsuzuki knew none of that, and his voice seemed just as cold as before as the man made his way around to the side of the bed.

"Let's start at the beginning, shall we?"