Disclaimer: I tried to say I owned Kotarou the other day. Before even the full sentence was out of my lips Mio jumped on me with claws extended, hissing like a cat possessed by the spirit of the Dark Lord himself. I’m still covered in scratches, and I don’t have Kotarou - or any of the other characters, for that matter - in my possession. Drat.

Authors’ Note: So a couple hours ago, I decided to lay down because I had an intense migraine. I laid in bed, as I said I was going to, and started listening to music. But as I lay there, attempting to sleep and failing with a migraine that was only gradually waning, an idea started forming in my head. One that wouldn’t leave me alone, and one that I didn’t want to forget.

The point-of-view was taken because who better to tell the story than the one who always observes everything as it is?

I say that most of my Hands Off! fics are because she’s the only other one in the fandom (it seems), but this one especially is dedicated to Chrissy-chan, otherwise known as SolcieNTalin (whose fics you should all go read), because she loves angst as much as I do. I only hope this fic is half as good as I want it to be.

Before and After

People-watching is something of a hobby of mine.

That might sound strange coming from me, but it’s true nonetheless. It may seem as though I merely walk around Tokyo, superficially looking over the people gathered there, snapping pictures of them as I go, but that isn’t really true. I study the people I photograph, especially if I take pictures of them on more than one occasion. My models are my subjects, and while I may never get to know the majority of them, I still look at them closely. I try to figure out what their hopes and dreams are. Sometimes I flush out stories for them in my head. Photography is my life, and people-watching is my hobby. It’s what I do, especially during school hours since my camera will be confiscated if they see it out of my bag.

Anyway, the point is that I think I’ve gotten pretty good at this people-watching thing over the years. I may not be anywhere near Casanova, who seems to be able to tell exactly what you’re feeling whether you want him to or not, but I still think I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve - a good eye for how people are faring.

But, speaking of Casanova, he’s not doing so well lately.

Actually, that’s the point of all this. Or part of the point. Since I’ve grown so accustomed to trying to gauge moods and discern personalities through expressions and body language, I do it automatically, and it’s even easier when I’m used to the people I’m watching. People like the playboy, Tatsuki, and even Mio. Not that I would need this particular skill to be able to tell what’s going on with them. Anyone who’s even the slightest bit awake around them would be able to tell, but me? Well, I’ve got Before and After photos, and to put it bluntly, the After photos look like pictures of zombies compared to the Before pictures. It’s sad, really. Not sad in that pathetic, pitying way, but sad in that truly heartbreaking way, especially since I’ve actually grown to really like all three of them.

It’s hard to say which one of them is taking it the hardest. They’re all dealing with things in their own way. Mio, at the very least, has an extensive support system. I rarely see her as it is, but as it stands, I never see her alone. She always has at least three people with her at once, and Chiba never leaves her side. Wherever Mio goes, Chiba is sure to follow, but it’s a good thing. Chiba knows better than to be insensitive at a time like this, and Mio needs all the support she can get. I’ll give her credit, she’s strong; after that horrible night when she first heard the news - out in public, no less, over the phone - she hasn’t fallen to pieces once. At least, not that I’ve seen. But that doesn’t mean she’s doing well. Sure, she sometimes forces smiles and laughs, but that’s just it - it’s all forced. And there’s no light in her eyes anymore - eyes that seem to have perpetual bags under them. I’d bet ten rolls of film that she hasn’t slept a wink since she found out.

But Mio’s at least trying to live. It’s hard - sometimes it’s painful for me to see how hard it is for her to be without you - but she’s trying, for her support system, for herself, and for you. The one time I talked to her about it, she said that she knows you wouldn’t want her to give up and die. Then she smiled one of those fake smiles, and I was glad that we were talking face to face so that I would have an excuse not to take a picture of it.

Like I said, at least she’s trying to live. I can’t say as much for Tatsuki.

Think back a moment to the time after your grandfather died, and how Tatsuki reacted. How he purposely got into fights and wouldn’t remain in one place for long, even when he was bleeding and beaten and barely able to move. Think about that, now make it worse. Ten times worse. That is how Tatsuki is reacting to this.

No one knows what to do. No one knows if there is even anything that could be done. To be honest, it’s terrifying. No one wants to get near him for fear of being his next victim. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that Tatsuki’s afraid of himself on some level, and for good reason. His behavior is nothing short of self-destructive. One of these days he’s going to hit concrete and not get back up again, and I’d say a large part of him probably doesn’t care - maybe even wants it. And that’s what’s the most terrifying about it.

I think he blames himself for what happened. He was supposed to protect you, to keep you safe and warm in the life that you’d built for yourself. But he didn’t, and now he has to deal with the pieces that you left behind as well as his own guilt. The problem is that Tatsuki doesn’t seem to be very skilled in handling his grief and guilt. In fact, his solution is to bottle it up and only release it in exploded fits against other street thugs, like a shaken soda can thrown at a pack of lit dynamite. He’s never in class anymore and I don’t have a single After picture of him that doesn’t have his face swollen and bleeding and bruised. I can’t tell you the number of nights I saw him collapse in an alley somewhere, either unconscious or asleep. I’m starting to think that he doesn’t even go home anymore.

But there’s no talking to him. No one can get near him long enough to talk, and I’m afraid that if he catches me watching him he’ll do far worse than rip out my film. I know you’d be outraged at hearing that - Tatsuki would never hurt a girl for no reason, right? Well, that was Before. Before Tatsuki would never do that, but After? There’s no telling what After Tatsuki will do, and I’m not going to take any unnecessary risks. It’s bad enough having to watch him spiral out of control; I’m not going to throw myself into the downward spiral with him.

Especially since there’s someone else to worry about.

Like I said before, Casanova’s not faring so well - and that’s the understatement of the decade. Truth be told, the name Casanova doesn’t even really fit him anymore. He’s stopped flirting with girls - in fact, yesterday I overheard a conversation in the restroom by the cafeteria between several old flames of his that they were fed up with him not returning their calls. I imagine that Before, I would have been somewhat pleased to hear that he was finally giving up his womanizing ways, but After, it does nothing but sadden - and worry - me.

Yes, you heard right. I’m worried about him - possibly even more than I’m worried about Tatsuki or Mio, but that’s only because their reactions were expected. Tatsuki has shown wild, uncontrolled, violent behavior in the past. His method of coping - while extraordinarily unhealthy and worthy of a one-way ticket to a juvenile detention center - is understandable in the sense that he’s done it before. And Mio is a textbook case for grieving girlfriends. The fact that she’s trying so hard to live and be strong is perfectly Mio as well. It’s nothing less than anyone would expect from her. But Yuuto’s behavior is so unlike him - so radically unlike him - that even I couldn’t see it coming, and I saw Tatsuki and Mio’s reactions from miles away.

It’s not that I didn’t expect him to be upset. You were his best friend, despite how much you beat up on him on a daily basis. Of course he’s going to be upset, especially since I suspect he’s put almost as much - if not as much, if not more - blame on his shoulders as Tatsuki decided to shoulder himself. But I didn’t realize how upset he was going to be. I didn’t realize how depressed he was going to allow himself to get, or how unstable he was going to get as a result of it.

He doesn’t flirt anymore. He doesn’t joke or smile or laugh anymore, either. He cries - I’ve seen him cry, and let me tell you that I don’t like to see him cry - or otherwise has a lost sort of expression on his face, like a puppy who was abandoned in the middle of a foreign city with no scent to follow back home. His eyes are usually empty, like Mio’s - but that’s only if I’m lucky enough to actually get a shot of them. Normally, he stares at the ground, rarely lifting his eyes up from it. It’s like he’s a completely different person. He won’t talk to anyone he used to, and to be honest, most of our classmates are starting to give up. There are a few who are good enough friends to keep trying, but most are unsure of what to do and so instead are leaving him to stew in his own grief. Not that that’s helping matters any. In all reality, it’s just making things worse.

But you know, it wouldn’t even be so bad if he was just depressed. But Yuuto’s depressed because he’s grieving and angry on some level, and that makes for instability that could even rival Tatsuki’s, if Yuuto lost control of it more often. So far, I’ve only ever seen him really lose it once, and it was shortly after everyone heard the news.

Yuuto had gone to meet up with Mio in Shibuya, because in the wake of the news, they were all trying to cling to whoever they could to try and find some shreds of comfort. Yuuto had gone to meet Mio, and when he got there, he saw that she wasn’t alone. I’d seen the guy approach, but I had no idea who he was; only that he looked like a street thug, and Mio was upset - even more upset than she was initially. I supposed he knew you, because he mentioned your name several times - along with calling you a rat, among other things - and kept mentioning your death as a reason for Mio to take him back. It was then that I began snapping pictures. I knew it wasn’t truly the right time, but I sensed action, and the photographer in me was not willing to let that pass, even though the action didn’t truly stir until Yuuto got there.

It took one insult of your name in Yuuto’s presence to get him to snap. Just one, and I could have sworn he was Tatsuki instead of Yuuto as he pounced upon that thug, demanding to know how dare he even say your name, much less be around Mio, who still didn’t want anything to do with him, if he hadn’t gotten the hint yet. It was hard to tell whether he was strangling the thug or punching him or both, and most of the pictures I snapped were blurry despite how hastily I raised the shutter speed. By the time Yuuto was pulled off the thug his knuckles were bleeding and the thug was still lying on the ground, badly beaten. Yuuto warned him to never speak your name again, and to also never go near Mio again unless he wanted a repeat of what had just happened. As far as I’m aware, the thug took the threat to heart. After that, Yuuto returned to his state of depression, seeming to only bristle when it seemed someone was about to insult your memory again.

He’s really going to pieces without you. Everyone is, actually. You were like the center of their world, their own little personal sun. It was most obvious with Tatsuki, whose every move seemed to revolve around you, whether it was protecting you from some new threat or avoiding you for his own personal, brooding reasons, but it was true for the others, too. To my knowledge, Mio still isn’t dating, and she probably won’t for a long, long time. Even if she does, I have the strangest feeling that her story would end up being one of those tragic love tales in which she settles until her death as an old woman, waiting to be reunited with you in the afterlife. I don’t have many pictures of her, but even in the Before pictures, her smile was always brightest when she was around you. Her forced smiles in the After pictures are almost grimaces. They can’t compare.

And Yuuto? Truth be told, the fact that you were his own personal sun was about as obvious as Tatsuki’s. You can’t tell me you didn’t notice how often his actions revolved around your own. He was always paying attention to you - always watching out for you. In class, he’d glance over at you out of the corner of his eyes every now and then, as if checking to make sure you were all right. He’d continuously hug you and jump on you and make jokes with you, even though it resulted in pain on his end, just to try and perk you up if he noticed you were feeling low. Afterward, he’d seriously listen to whatever problem you had, and go out of his way to solve it. You were his best friend, and he spent so much time concentrating on you that I almost think he’s forgotten how to live his own life. He spent so much time helping you that he forgot how to help himself, and now he can’t. None of them can.

Mio’s trying to live, a planet who lost the gravitational pull of her sun, but is trying to find a new gravitational pull elsewhere. Tatsuki has given up completely and is trying to become a supernova, exploding in the depths of space without caring about who gets hurt by the debris of his life in the process. And Yuuto, having lost your gravitational pull, is just drifting in space. He doesn’t have the support system Mio has and so he can’t find another gravitation ring to fit into. He’s just lost, drifting in space without a set path.

They’re all drifting apart. They’re all falling apart, little by little, because they don’t have you to keep them together anymore. And you want to know the worst part? They aren’t the only ones. I hate taking pictures of them like this. I feel like I’m sucking out what remains of their souls every time I take a photograph. For the first time in my life, I feel guilty for pursuing my passion, and every time I’m wandering the streets of Tokyo and I see Tatsuki picking another fight, or Mio faking smiles or Yuuto looking depressed, I want to put down the camera and go home. I was never as close to you as they were, always observing you from afar and taking your picture when you didn’t know it, but your death has affected even me. Surviving in the After is hard on all of us - even those of us who were just comets that happened to zoom into your gravitational field, never quite escaping, but never important or close enough to be considered actual planets.

I guess that if there’s one thing I want you to get from all of this - one thing that I want you to know - it’s this: Oohira Kotarou, you are missed. You are missed, and you will be missed until that other, less important sun above us decides to burn out in the same way you did. And if you don’t believe that, then you can take a look at my Before and After photos yourself. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, but these? Words can’t begin to describe these. And I think that if you took a look, you’d see exactly what I mean.