1. Tokyo Babylon: Kizuna 
Chapter 3: Secrets 

 
"So... It wasn't really that bad, was it?"

Seishirou, caught up in the barely explainable mood of unconditional cheerfulness that overcame every time he had just played the part of the animal savior, laid the small white towel with which he'd been drying his slender hands after the strict process of hygiene and disinfection that always followed an operation apart, smilefully averting his mischievous brown eyes towards the recovering patient that he had abandoned to lay over a random examination deck of the large operating room.

The white persian just answered him with a low, half-protesting groan before it's small head sunk forward again.

Totally helpless...

Seishirou chuckled in self satisfaction as he slowly, patiently approached it, elegant steps bearing not the slightest hint of hurry, head shaking slightly in mock of a professionally censoring gesture.

There were no reasons for that, after all.

Still stupidized by the effects of the anesthesia, just as he had planned...

He should really congratulate himself and his years of veterinarian practice for the precision of his calculations.

"Well, then. Now we've taken good care of your breathing," he gracefully swept the long shiny alabaster lab coat to one side as he took a sit in front of the slumbering feline, fixing it's soulless stare with the amber intensity of his own, as empty as it's, though filled with a teasing, dangerous curiosity, "Maybe we can finally take a time to work out what's on with that funky reddish eye of yours..."

The cat weakly tossed in it's dizziness as it uselessly tried to escape his touch when Seishirou's skillful, deathly precise hands went to take light hold of it's furred body, almost as if perceiving the true, menacing nature of it's supposed benefactor.

The smile on the handsome face assumed dark, sly strokes.

Perhaps an echo of the hunter's pleasure when witnessing the terror of a trapped prey...

Even when it came to one as insignificant as that.

The slightly throbbing feeling of anticipation was amusing, giving him a pile of good reasons to justify his nonchalance towards that particular patient of his, the one that lead him to promptly dismiss the nosy party of collaborating stuff out of the operation room in order to perform his little unholy ritual on the defenseless being.

He didn't like the cat.

Not only for it's ugliness and snoopiness, something he had grown indifferently accustomed to through all the years he had dealt with sick animals. But perhaps for the simple fact this one beard a mystery that pulled him towards it despite his evident, sincere dislike, something bizarre, that yearned to be clarified and discovered.

A pity, but your shy little master's not here to save you now.

Seishirou morbidly concentrated all of his attention in the cat's fiery, unearthly iris, just as he'd done the day before, but with more focused, attentive strength.

And if my wonderings happen to be correct, you're far too weak to cast your defenses up against me this time...

Slanted brown eyes narrowed in absortness, as he let his questing stare drift into the coiling heat of the small red orb.

A sparkle of frustration hit his mind as he began to sense the same rebound, the same unexplainable feeling of suffocation he had been filled with in all his previous attempts, even still as if it was suddenly gifted with a deeper power now that it sensed his premeditated intrusion.

So the cat's physical state had nothing to do with it after all...

Nevertheless decided to go inside, he dig his sharp stare deeper and deeper into the unblinking pupil, as the burning sensation was gradually increased, raised up until he had the strong, startling impression of an involving fire that was pitilessly working it's way through his still body.

Burning...

He began acknowledging the evident traces of physical pain.

And with it, the disturbing, unpleasant sensations of anger.

Seishirou stood up almost violently, handsome face turned into a darkish mask of fierce disgust, as his right hand flashed forward with the speed of a predator's claw to grab the defenseless creature he had in front of him by the frail, beckoningly breakable neck that appeared barely protected by the soft contact of fresh bandages.

Laying the unknown, destructive power of his own stare into that mismatching ruby.

At that the invisible pyre reached a climax, almost as if anticipating imminent defeat, the barrier about to crack, fustigating him with coiling whips of flame that trespassed flesh and bone, screamed out a last, deathly warning out to him not to proceed any further.

A spell...?

Seishirou's fingers closed tighter around the furry throat, perceiving the tempting contact of the creature's small bones under his palm as it cried out in terrorized alarm.

His thin lips parted to speak out a magical command...

Two soft knocks at the operating room's door, and he was blinking all of his difficultly achieved concentration away in an instant.

At once, it all ended as abruptly as it had started: the heat, the pain, the fire...

Damn.

Seishirou disciplined pushed the throbbing flood of frustration to a hidden corner of his mind, gifting the cat a last, ironically smiling look that promised revenge as he released it from his murderous grip, small fuzzy body shaking frantically with fear facing the sudden liberation of it's dreadfully restricted, just surged breathing passages.

"What an ugly lucky thing you've turned out to be..."

His voice sounded once again cheerfully gentle when speaking out an invitation to come in, at which -no need for speculation- restless-looking, beautiful Midori catapulted inside from the opened door with concerned impulsiveness, just as if he had been waiting there all morning, small ear pressed vehemently against the double door, eyes going bright with relief when the shifting emeralds caught sight of his beloved pet.

"Kizuna!"

But Seishirou's not concentrated stare was heading towards the door again.

Subaru discreetly followed his young cousin, his heavenly face filled with a particular hue of blushing sweetness to go with the usual shy mood that had got Seishirou's heart intrigued ever since they had met again that early morning, and helplessly brought the same sensation back to him when their seeking, somehow longing pupils came to a meeting.

That nervous look, those half escaping, half eager emerald eyes...

A smooth, intensified echo of what he had read there the previous night...

Something that drove him to cast all of his attention away from the extremely miscellaneous place the other teenager occupied in the dimensions of his interest to devour the thankful look those huge, liquid pools dedicated to him that shone a bright as if never existent tears have been just partially dried away from them.

Brilliant though elusive, yielding to a certainty but rebelling against it.

Seishirou suddenly remembered the graceful movement of shiny green fireflies around a Japanese lantern lost somewhere in his blurred childhood, recalled how the vision had fascinated him, unable to explain to himself how they happened to fly so close to the burning radiance, though never daring to give themselves away into the flame they seemed to long for.

Subaru-kun... Are you hiding something from me...?

Or more so...

Are you capable of doing that...?

"Kizuna!!" the green haired boy ran to hug the half-limp form of the cat with infinite joy, iris almost glimmering wet with tears of happiness now that it had all come to an end, and Seishirou was painfully forced to let go of Subaru's stare and fake his best smile of self satisfaction when the young Sumeragi minor turned to face him, "Thank you! Thank you so much, Sakurazuka-sensei!! You have no idea of how much this means to me!"

Oh, I wish I had, believe me...

Seishirou almost felt like picking the nosy boy up from those cute little fluffy bangs of his and put him out the operating room's door so Subaru-kun and him could finally be left alone.

It was remarkable but, despite all his experience at the roll of the death-giver disguised as life-savior, he was supposed to be trained for resisting the joyful charade of thanking and sobbing, though this time his control was escaping him.

An evident consequence of Subaru-kun being concerned in it.

"Well, I did my best, as promised," he raised a slender finger up to the skinny teen as his voice assumed an intentional, tenderly lecturing tone, "Now it's up you, young man: you have to see she does fine during the post operational period. That will surely give you the perfect excuse to pet her as much as you want..."

Midori laughed wholeheartedly, a pure sound that so delightfully resemble the jingle of his absent sister's polite manifestation, but Seishirou's mind wasn't with him anymore, his patience gone to it's limits.

The calid mahogany stare now shifted towards the lovely figure of shyly smiling Subaru-kun, that had surprisingly dared to go stand by his side as his naive cousin played with his recently regained toy, the faint pink blush coloring his fairy tale face assuming a deeper intensity as both their eyes locked on each other.

Allowing pleasantly curious Seishirou to perceive the warm glimmer that enlightened his iris, seconds before he lowered his shy stare to his delicate, pastel-green gloved hands, unable to resist him anymore.

"I knew it would be fine, Seishirou-san..." his soft whisper was the loveliest manifestation of gratefulness Seishirou had ever received, though there was still something missing, "I knew you would save her..."

Those velvety, deliciously curve lips remained parted long before his words had died.

"Subaru-kun," then it was time for him to play the modest soul, as the caring, warm smile never left his handsome face, even as he unconsciously leaned forward to take in all the fresh, faintly flowery scent of that feather-like hair, eyes brightened by the birth of that constantly arising, unknown sensation, "I gave you my word..."

I did it for you...

I did it just to see this look in your precious, boyish features...

Almost as if he perceived his unspoken thoughts, the dreamy pale face was lifted again, and they were suddenly melting into that undeniably shared feeling, the light coming from the liquid depths of Subaru's emerald iris too intense, too blinding until Seishirou's heart almost felt a hint of startlement, as their faces were closer than he had ever thought they would, "Seishirou-san, I..."

And he was taken over again.

Enveloped by that warm, delicious weakness...

A doubtful, honeyed feeling that seemed to be seriously affecting Subaru's evidently desperate efforts to talk to him as well.

And suddenly his whole existence was depending upon what the young Omnyouji would say next.

"I... Mi-chan and I... are going to... pay a little visit to Tokyo Bay tonight, Seishirou-san," Subaru's soft voice sounded as timid as it had ever been, though heightened by a quivering accent of emphasis that let the older man know he had just recoiled from what he was originally about to say as a fearful butterfly that's about to touched by the gentle fingers of a child, "We were wondering if you'd want to come with us..."

The way he forced out the last sentence in record speed...

Charming, though still...

Seishirou primarily didn't find reasons for the half suppressed manifestation of what he faintly recognized as disappointment coming from Midori to both their backs, neither for the censuring gaze flustered Subaru's emerald eyes rushed to give him.

It even though made him wonder what was going on between those two, and the speculation of it being directly related to Subaru's verbal escape, to the cobwebs of slight frustration that showered over his heart the moment the bishounen had spoken, almost as if he had been expecting something else to be said.

What is it, Subaru-kun?

What is it that you're so afraid to tell me...?

"Errmm..." Midori was mirroring Subaru's restlessness by resting the insignificant weight of his body on one slender leg, then on the other, until he finally came out with something: "maybe I should take Kizuna downstairs and do the check out while you..."

"NO!!!"

Subaru's disapproval was vehement enough to make Seishirou echo the green haired sprite's slight flinch, deciding something particularly mysterious was really increasing Subaru's shyness when the idea of being left alone with him had popped up.

He wondered what it could be.

Anxiety? Fear? Was this the same Subaru-kun that had shared his yearning for a moment alone together just the previous night? It seemed as if the changes that had taken place after those events ran much deeper that he had estimated.

"I mean... No," taking a few steps backwards, the scarlet-faced teenager was forced to surrender to his natural need of justifying his own strange attitude, "We should already be in our way... I'm sure you have... a lot of work to do... ne Seishirou-san?" And without attempting so, Subaru was stealing from him the possibility to speak his own mind with his rushing flood of awkward little comments, "We... we can always visit the Bay some other time..."

"Oh, but I'd love to go with you tonight, Subaru-kun! How can I refuse such an invitation?" Seishirou only had the chance to slid in his willing acceptance when the nervous, graceful boy had to make a pause to breath, a tender, soothing smile in his virile lips, "A stroll along the beach is the best thing I need for easing the closure of a hard working day. And if you would really appreciate my company..."

Seishirou surprised himself with his own enthusiasm.

Almost involuntarily he had already formed the mental image of Subaru-kun and him walking side by side along the velvety cloak of darkness that was the night sea, shoeless and carefree of intruding twin's eyes and censoring cousin's severe watchfulness.

Dreamy, dreamy...

Then again his own thoughts forced him down to earth, and he was politely adding: "That is, if your onee-san has nothing against your agenda, Midori-kun..."

That was, if the stern young woman wasn't horrified by the idea of the Sakurazuka monster hanging around a deserted beach with the two defenseless Sumeragi bishounen.

The frustration that evidently was to be arose due to that endangering possibility was much deeper than Seishirou had expected, so he was way pleased to receive the bright eyed youth's reassuring response, "Of course not, Sakurazuka-sensei. Hokuto-chan had a long talk with her this early morning and she finally agreed as long as we don't stay out too late."

He could just chuckle at Midori's childish sincerity, eyes turning again towards the flustering figure of the only one that interested him.

"Eight thirty sounds fine to you, Subaru-kun? I can drive us to the Bay in my car..."

And Subaru was stammering some low phrases of acceptance mixed up with rushed explanations about their forced, immediate need to depart, a flood of apologies rushing through his little rose petal-like tongue to the point that Seishirou admired his ability for not being choked with his own words.

He felt the wicked impulse of leading the events to take a radical turn, asking Midori to fill in some bureaucratic and totally unnecessary forms, making the wishful cousin go downstairs, perhaps offering to escort both youths to the front door...

Though Subaru's agonizing expression of fear and shame made him decide on the contrary.

Despite Midori's evident, supposedly hideous attempts to delay it, both teens were out the door in the blink of an eye, and he was relishing this intimacy to chuckle softly in amusement towards the weirdness of the events.

During all this time we've been together, I've seen the shyness in you govern every gesture, movement, word spoken by your adorable lips.

But I must tell you, Subaru-kun...

This is exaggeration.

Even as he thought the matter was set aside and considered his mind now conveniently entertained with checking the time table displaying the next operations to be performed in what was left of the morning, a breathtaking thought assaulted him, ravaging what he thought was the deepest self tranquility.

Gold-rimmed glassed slid radically down the faultless arch of his nose without Seishirou even noticing it.

Will you ever tell me, Subaru-kun?

I want to know...

Will you ever come to me...?

 

 

"I acted like a stupid chicken!"

Midori's delicate head turned around swiftly, producing a pasture-colored whirlwind of hair around his childishly stern features, as his glimmering glance was focused on his beloved cousin's skinny figure from behind the ethereal barrier of Kizuna's snowy white fur.

Hearing the vehement self-exasperation that aroused that soft voice to that bizarrely unusual level was really a gift to a very few.

Though the young green haired boy was not the one to enjoy it.

Subaru's own emerald eyes were fixed on the three-stories building of the Sakurazuka Veterinarian Clinic now further from them cross the crowded street as he firmly stood at the very edge of the sidewalk, regardless of the cars that hissed swiftly at only inches from him, deep green iris enlightened by the most sincere despise towards his own cowardliness, echoed by the slight frown of self disgust that furrowed his soft brow.

"Stop talking about yourself like that, Su-chan!" Midori's affectionately authoritative tone almost resembled absent Hokuto's as his light steps carried him again by the side of his troubled companion, divesting the dozing form of the downy cat of one of his protecting arms as he came to lay a slender hand on his soul mate's narrow shoulder, pulling him back to a safer spot of the street, "Do you think it's so easy, just standing there and speaking out your feelings?"

Speaking out my feelings...

Subaru badly wished he could accept his loving cousin's excuses, and so make them his own.

The striking realization Midori had brought to him the previous night, with so much ease as if all his heart needed to yield to it's certainty was a soft, gentle voice to whisper the right words in his ear, the same that had got him tossing and turning in his bed, sleepless and haunted with feathered dreams and confused fears concerning the changes his life would suffer now his feelings were undeniable, had been stunning enough to make him believe the need for catharsis would give him the courage to voice out those newly discovered emotions.

I thought it would make me strong...

To think it had been so, all the time... And he: too scared and blinded by shyness to even realize it.

I thought it would make me fearless...

The delicately beautiful lips parted as if to take in the honeyed nervousness that now haunted his innocent heart, caught up in flames of fear and passion each time the vision of a handsome, cheerfully smiling face was brought to him.

My best friend.

He now wondered how could he have ever been so absent to this sensation to never realize by himself that he felt something else...

I trusted Seishirou-san's presence to chase all the confusion away, to give me the certainty that nothing would ever change between us.

But then again, when being charged by all the gentle sweetness of those dark honey eyes, the same that had filled every second of his thoughts since the very moment the veil over his heart had been torn away...

I feared.

It was as if all his strength had been melted to nothing.

"But... he's my best friend... My confident, " his shiny pupils, brilliant with dawning tears of impotence, drifted frantically along the crystal windows of the building as if in a desperate chase for the one he had got standing in front of his stammering figure only minutes ago, and still let the moment pass them by, "I want to... I need to speak to him! If I don't let him know I think I'll just go mad!" he gave a quick demonstration of the verifiability of his precognitions by grabbing the front of his light beige coat with a strength that menaced to rip the delicate cloth to shreds, "But still I can't talk to him! I act like a stinking coward! This is like being scared of the one thing I yearn for!"

Patient Midori decided the best way to soothe him down was to press their bodies closer in a brotherly embrace, slender fingers of naked alabaster entwining with those so carefully cloaked in green satin, as the perfumed head leaned slightly against his own, menacing to let his fashionable capelline fly away like a scared bird in the strong breeze.

He was right.

"I think it's natural you act like this," the childishly musical voice reached Subaru from closely beside his ear, with all the beatific, relaxing influence of it, and he found himself wondering in amazement the reason for which Midori seemed more experimented in that sort of matters than he was, as he couldn't help but envying him, "You are scared he doesn't feel like you do. You fear he won't give back your affection but..."

The horrorful possibility hit him like pure lightning over a defenseless tree, and Subaru's mood suddenly shifted from the partially regained calm to the desire of throwing himself to the rushing fury of cars that raced in front of them in wild abandon.

So what if it was true??

The watery wells of emotion that were his viridian eyes went wide with deathly apprehension until almost appearing inhuman.

What if Seishirou-san's constant innuendoes had always been as he had considered them to be: nothing but a shared joke with his expertly teasing twin?

Worse still: what if it had been true all the time and now, tired of his constant elusiveness and nonchalance towards his spoken sincerity, Seishirou-san had finally changed his mind about what he felt about him?

Suicide seemed an appealing alternative to facing those possibilities.

"Arigatou gozaimasu, Mi-chan. Now I have a brand new thing to be terrorized by..."

The blush that populated his cousin's beautiful face was such a fierce contrast against the deadly paleness of his own he thought it strange people were not gathering around them to catch glimpse of the funny scene both surely made up.

"But... You don't have to worry about that, Su-chan."

It was the entire self confidence laid on his cousin's next words that caught him by surprise, and lead his emerald eyes to call for a meeting with those whose brilliance matched their own.

Midori just dedicated his half-tender, half-sad, enigmatic smile to him.

"The way he looks at you, the way he speaks your name... That's not the way you look at a best friend, you know... All you need is the right moment to tell him."

It was Subaru's time to fluster now, emerald gaze lowered as he was engulfed once again in a whirlwind of opposing emotions, Midori's hand squeezing his in reassuring attitude, while the shifting green pupils flew to the spot seconds before his cousin's yearning ones had been drawn to, enlighten by conspiratorial enthusiasm.

"Tonight is when we make our move."

 

 

Her steps were as smooth and soundless as the rhythmic tip toe of droplets falling within the silver clepsydra set passively as the lone garment to light up the monotony of the dark, large corridor that seemed to stretch beyond eternity.

She followed in mute consensus, no words ever needed from her discrete, solitaire guide to ask her to do so.

She knew, after all, why she was there, with all the perfectly deducible concecuences of her presence.

And nevertheless, she followed.

Now and then, the amber-orange rays of the dying sun promptly to disappear behind the already starry horizon would filter inside furtively, fooling the premeditated shield of the closed velvet curtains, sending an intense reflection of azure across her swaying hair.

In those fluttering seconds Mitchuru would risk a hopeful glance outside, beholding the reduced view of the city that spread beyond her reach, the tiny, artificial fireflies of streetlight already beginning to turn on along the infinite maze of highways and buildings as if in perfectly gradual coordination.

A sigh would send the ethereal silk of her shirt shivering in slight apprehension.

A few hours more, and it'd be over.

She tried to cast herself away from those thoughts by abandoning the secret contemplation of the outside.

It was not like she preferred out there than being where she was.

After all, out awaited the solitude, the constant, daily martyrdom that she was forced again and again to suffer as an eternal trial to proof her value.

Out also awaited freedom...

No use, she thought, chasing away her own, ridiculous wonderings with an elegant shake of head. Those were things she knew, factors involved in the constant equation that ruled the life of a Sumeragi, facts she had already balanced carefully in the past, and now that her decision had been made, who she was after all, to ask for a turning back...?

Who?

The darkened surface of the conspicuous mirror where she caught sight of herself in her way sent her back that almost offensive questioning.

I am someone who walks the thin line between light and darkness, I am the lone survivor of a long forgotten era, I am the one who's here to learn, to teach, to guide, to submit...

I am a Sumeragi.

Blue-green iris shone resplendent with never-to-be tears despite the shadows by which she was surrounded.

It was worth it, she had reassured it to herself before, when she was alone in her exquisite, regal room at the Sumeragi Building. It was worth the pain, and the suffering, and even the loss of Hokuto-chan's bubbly goodnight smile of tender family love...

The act that would be so perfectly portrayed as betrayal.

So she had thought the previous night, and she still did.

Don't I...?

It was surely not because of that she felt that way.

Felt as if she was walking on a trail of pure, velvety shadow, longing to escape from it's unnamed senselessness, yearning for the light that shone so bright, so promising at the end of it all...

No...

The speed of her pace above the spongy rug increased an imperceptible bit.

She had too many things to be cautious about, too many secrets that should not be discovered, the danger implicit in her very presence at that building too great for the utter meaning of it, and it somehow seemed to justify entirely her in other way unexplainable state of restlessness in that, her damnable yet necessary mission.

Not only that.

The size of the ocean-deep, cobalt pupils diminished considerably as her feminine shoulders acquired a proud posture, head thrown back so that the alabaster face appeared unmasked and imperturbable to the one that so patiently awaited, bathed by the blessing of the twilighting sun.

I am here to see Her...

Her.

The one who had given a glorious meaning to what would have otherwise been a life filled with the dishonor and desperation of an eternal outcast.

Her.

The one who so carefully pulled the strings of the destiny of so many helpless souls as well as hers, the High Priestess of the Sacred Balance, a loving mother as well as a severe leader, a giver, yet a demander, the one that was to be venerated both in Life as in Death.

A Heroine...

A Senshi...

Her steps halted by the influence of her own thoughts, lips trembling as it had suddenly turned almost impossible to hold tears back from rolling freely about her emotional face, spread before her in the false mirror the chiaroscuro of the huge armchair that stood proudly erect outside the enormous terrace projected.

No need for further speculations about who was occupying that place.

Who am I...

"Mitchuru-hime, Lady Sumeragi is waiting for you..." the servant finally spoke, barely daring to lift his eyes from the impeccable carpeted floor when pronouncing that name, when being subdued by the nearly religious devotion the powerful presence of that woman affected.

I am nothing but your very, unworthy reflection...

She let her ballerina-like steps guide her timidly out of the darkness that bathed the now empty hall, as she entered the circle of radiance cast by the rainbow sunset spread over the sky, celadon hair swaying forward as she performed the respectful bow protocol demanded.

"Welcome, my dear child..."

Even when the Twelfth Head of the Sumeragi Clan never turned from her apparently absort contemplation of the twilight to gift her a single glance, Mitchuru could still perceive the penetrating influence of those olive green pupils fixing her with all their serene authority, baring her soul.

A gust of chilly air caused her to shiver as she regained her own, proud pose.

It was now time for her to accept.

To face the price of her decisions.

"Have you met him?"

Mitchuru swallowed hardly and took herself some seemingly endless seconds of mute vacancy before answering, sealing her fate.

"Yes."

The azure-green, slanted mirrors of her eyes shone now stone hard as she spoke, the vehement sound of her serene voice divested of all traces of doubt or even emotion towards her own, merciless words.

This is what I've chosen...

There was a slight though harmonious movement in the thin, aged though endlessly graceful hands that were the only visible portion of the overwhelming beauty of the old Clan's Leaderess, held as they were in the small lap.

Lady Sumeragi was suddenly echoing her time taken to inquire back, as if measuring the striking meaning of her monosyllable answer.

"Are you entirely sure, my dear, that he is who we think he is?" nevertheless, the question came in the end, the sound of the words spoken so perfectly measured in their kindness and calm, inviting Mitchuru to emulate them, "Could it be a matter of mere casualty?"

The unexpected nature of the question was what made the young Mizunoto Omnyouji falter.

Was she really being asked to provide a judgment of her own? Or was she being tested instead, the value of her knowledge, faithfulness to her given word being challenged?

She was sure the all-knowing Mother of the Sumeragi would know this answer, and yet by thinking that way she was suddenly finding senseless all her entire participation in the matter, her efforts and her pain useless once again.

She carried her hands to her back, were she clasped them together soundlessly in a disciplined exercise of self imposed serenity.

This is what I'll proof myself worthy for...

"I am sure, obaa-sama." her voice remained admirably stoic as her delicate, dry lips half spoke, half whispered the next words, "His eyes, his voice, the way he speaks... Even the way he walks, perfectly straight, the way his hands seem to caress everything instead of just touching it. Everything helps giving himself away..."

The next events came as a surprise.

A low sigh could be heard, coming from the depths of the comfortable armchair, a sad and frustrated manifestation, in which fear towards the consequences, uncertainty for the future were evident, and Mitchuru's eyes were going wide in plain disbelief.

Even though Lady Sumeragi's mastery way to blur her moment of heart's weakness by clearing her throat replaced the young woman's astonishment with unspoken admiration.

Perhaps a slight trace of understanding.

It directly concerned, after all, the teenaged Sumeragi Prince.

"And Subaru-san...?"

Mitchuru realized she would have preferred the young Clan's Head to be out of the matter the moment she received the feared interrogation that echoed her private thoughts, a moment of uncertainty coming then again to cloud her apparently achieved calm.

And Mitchuru's aquamarine eyes were lowered to the marble floor.

Which was the way to express it?

How to find the words that would hurt the less, scare the least? How to speak the answer that would put the respected Lady on guard, and yet keep her free from the heart-wrenching reality?

With all the somber parallelisms it would bring about...

Needless to repeat to herself it was not possible.

Mitchuru shook her graceful head softly, in a denial that was more dedicated to her own unsure self that to her awaiting host.

She doesn't want my pity. She needs not of my protection. What she asks from me are facts...

"Infatuated."

It was the softest term she could use.

"He loves the man beyond the boundaries of frienship. And that is evident..."

There was a bit of unnatural tension that was perceptible when the slim hands came together in front of the old woman's invisible face that could give out to her uncomfortable companion the succeeding efforts to push down both pain and anger.

The time Lady Sumeragi took to analyze the situation of her grandson, probably more so the further extensions of that infatuation that spread as vicious tendrils towards the destiny of the entire Family, was the time Mitchuru used to let her gaze drift forward towards the infinite of the now azure-coral sky and surroundings.

She remembered herself, standing at the edge of that firm stone railing, carried away by the fearlessness and unconscious courage her music always cloaked her with, the dawn she had sealed her promise to take part in the conspiracy of well-kept secrets and necessary little lies she was now immerse in.

There is no mystery in who I am...

A deeply melancholic smile curved the perfect shapes of her delicate lips, a smile only bore by those who are wounded beyond healing.

She had wanted to play a majestic serenade to seal her complicity with the Lady.

Yet that night she had only been capable of lavishing sad sounds out of those strings that were her only means of catharsis, as suppressed inside of her as the tide of cement and granite that was Tokyo seemed kept back by the feeble barrier that was the balcony where she stood.

An entire book of memories filled with sacrifices and tears of love. The story of people born just to be shields for other loved beings...

Remaining uncomprehended...

That is what it takes to be me...

The azure iris gleamed, dim and watery.

Somewhere in that huge, suffocated city, two completely innocent teenagers were getting ready for a ride along the coast with whom they thought a dearest friend.

Not very far, an oblivious teenage girl playing to be an adult was carefreely waving them good bye, maybe wondering where her most beloved family friend had gone, musing if she would be back in time for dinner...

Unaware of the most remote possibilities of betrayal.

Unable forever to understand the pain she was and would still be suffering for their sake.

We're pals, Mitchu-chan!!

She remembered her shrilling voice deafening her ear with her chiming laugher, a sound as pure and bright as the pail stars that now filled the sky that came back to her as if in a ghosty mock of her deepest pain.

And so we should have no secrets to each other! That's the basement every eternal friendship must have...!!

Tears were finally heading their way down the beautiful mask of polished serenity that was still her nacreous face.

"Then, darling, we will proceed as planned," the low, almost forgotten sound of Lady Sumeragi's prophetic voice made her cast her thoughts away from her intimate torture, forced her then again to appear as a stone statue, unmoved, "Does Hokuto-san show any traces of suspicion?"

"No..." her voice was caught up in a strangled barrier at the birth of her throat, and all Mitchuru could do was clear it, just as minutes before her Mistress and model had done.

If only Lady Sumeragi knew the current of emotions that was released by the very sound of that name...

"No," she repeated, more surely, "She is too enthusiastic about the idea of the Council."

The muffled hints of a nod then, something Mitchuru thought she could recognize as an evident sign their meeting had finished, and she was allowed to leave.

Leave only now she had been drained away of every bit of hope with the information she had so willingly given, now that her fate had been mercilessly determined.

The same kind of freedom offered to a trapped bird only after cutting it's wings...

"Sayonara, watashi no Ichiban Hime... Lady Sumeragi..."

Mitchuru's steps paused apprehensively as she turned around after performing the appropriate good bye bow, wondering is she would have the strength to face twilight alone.

"I must tell you, my child, I really appreciate the help and strength you grant me with your youth and serenity..."

The sound of that saddened, deep woman's voice made her freeze where she stood.

A distinguished accent of longing then.

"It might be a cruel thought but... I sometimes wish it had been you, my dearest daughter, the one who was the responsible for the entire Clan's Leaderhood..."

Mitchuru turned around in a swirled movement that was almost a dance step, cascades of celadon hair could barely hide the blinding glimmer that lit her wide open blue eyes, her astonished, overjoyed face surrounded by a constellation of crystal tears that were no longer fruit of pain, but of the deepest of emotions.

She fell to her pale knees in front of the gothic armchair.

"Obaa-sama...!"

 

 

"Tokyo's sea is just so calm and beautiful!"

Not again...

Seishirou needed a huge amount of effort to turn his fascinated attention out of the heavenly sight Subaru's lowered, glossy pale face was by his side, protected as the frail young body was by the gentle shelter of his left arm, to dedicate what seemed to be a widely smiling glance to the figure of the other boy that walked a few steps in front of them.

'The other boy', that was an appellative that suited him so entirely well...

He wondered if his true feelings towards that brief sentence were a bit too obvious.

Say, it was such a curious situation Midori-kun put himself into.

He was seemingly aware of his role as the unwanted intruder, yet he nevertheless carried on with the introduction of brief comments and totally unnecessary remarks that kept on breaking the air of romantic intimacy the rest of the landscape that surrounded them only helped to build.

Seishirou mused at the possible implications of this attitude as the green haired Sumeragi minor's delighted eyes seemed to be completely lost into the sincere admiration of the heavy cloak of navy blue that slowly caressed the sandy shore, only a few meters apart from the trail they had chosen, and used that opportunity to let his own, incredibly relaxed glance survey the peacefulness of the area.

Somehow Midori hadn't been so far from reality with his voicing of that thought.

The late evening's sun was more than gone, and a full, silvery moon shone naked of any veil of dark clouds, illuminating the azurine infinity of that starry sky with an alabaster intensity that didn't let daylight be missed.

That, together with the distant, soft aura of the city lights to their right seemed to made up a perfectly balanced atmosphere of detachment and calm.

The night itself was so fresh and gifted with a wonderful scent of wilderness and freedom -amazing, considering they were only a few minutes of driving time from the crowded city center, - the three of them hadn't thought it twice when deciding to leave the forgotten car to their backs and walk the apparently endless, deserted beach.

The setting was perfect, and it seemed strange to him that there weren't any other couples there imitating them.

Probably discouraged by cold...

He should remember to thank eternally helpful Hokuto-chan again when driving the cousins back home for her surely enormous efforts to convince mistrusting Mitchuru to make that date possible.

All faultless, except for a lone, disturbing presence.

Discarding that enervating thought, Seishirou now breath in the salty air of the ocean breeze as he allowed it to playfully disarray his short waved hair, resplendent by the wetness carried along by the occasional wind gusts and darker than the night itself.

Worth enough, to let the Barrow forsaken that evening...

Left alone for a single while in a night like that, and he could surely work out all the mysteries of the universe.

And yet...

Gold brown eyes were slowly averted from the serenity of the obscure horizon to drift over a beauty that went far beyond any nature could possibly define or comprehend.

Even a nature as restrictedly logical as his.

The deep honey pupils dilated under the sight of the nacar-white skin that shone as pure and perfect as smoothened silk under the influence of moonlight, soft cheeks slightly colored sheer red under both the beating of the cold and the surely exacerbating certainty of being that close to him, his greatly stronger body shielding his from the coldness of the season, so near he could perceive the heartstopping shivers of his fragile frame underneath the warmth of his elegant trench coat, where he so lovingly kept him as his untouchable treasure, refusing to let him be caressed by the night.

Completely at his will...

Seishirou could hear his own breath quickening as the little Sumeragi's emerald eyes barely dared to lift themselves from beneath the jealous protection of his long eyelashes to give him a furtive glance.

Again.

And yet, I doubt I'll ever be able to call the answers to all my questions about my feelings for you mine, Sumeragi Subaru-kun...

A gentle, maybe far too affectionate smile curved his lips, letting the flustered boy know he had been caught in the act.

Or perhaps surrendering to the fact it had be him the one who was discovered.

Well, at least not as mine as you are.

Still, the tender, naive expression of shy culpability he received was not enough.

Satisfying, though not completely fulfilling, just as the exciting fact that the lovely teenager had accepted to share the protection of his clothes, freezing as he was in his somehow too feeble garments.

Subaru's deep watery eyes still held that lone secret.

His usual lack of conversation was then again being reduced to nonexistent by the tension that let Seishirou knew there was something extremely vital to be said -which had been the main reason he had invited him to join them that night, -yet not enough courage to do so.

That was as frustrating as his almost childish eagerness about learning what it was.

Don't you trust me, Subaru-kun? After all this time...?

Are you afraid I'll mock you, make fun of your confessions?

That's not me.

At least not the one you think you know...

Then again he was repeating to himself he was incapable of bringing any kind of suffering to that vulnerable, adorable creature as if in a silent, monotone mantra of reminiscent thought.

It was not the self he knew, but the one that had grown to be affected by that unnamed feeling that beautiful youth brought to him by own decision.

Him, in the end.

His large steps over the thick sands were all at once slowing to adapt to the pace of Subaru's shorter ones, the sensation of his silky cheek pressing against the downy surface of his gray wool waistcoat in unconscious seek for warmth sending pleasing, diminutive shivers of electricity across his entire body.

Seishirou found his long fingers closing tighter over the narrow fragility of his silent partner's shoulder.

All I'm sure of is I no longer find enough satisfaction in having you as my plaything, Subaru-kun.

The silly game of this senseless bet is something I got bored of.

Two fingers were absently combing the layered ebony mane of his sweetest prey's soft hair.

He wondered what it would feel like to caress that softness with his lips.

I want you to become something else for me... no, you've already become. Maybe you have always been. Now all I want is to discover what is this wonder you make me feel.

Is there any name for it?

Almost as if perceiving the nature of his thoughts, more probably awaken by the unexpectedness of the caress he was receiving, Subaru's doubtful, though incredibly intense stare was lifted to his face, were Seishirou's abstracted one was all at once lowered to some defined spot of his boyish features.

Lips...

He wondered what got him so obsessed about that particular part of the body that night.

We both feel the same, so I can tell when we look into each other's eyes.

Ahhh, yes...

It seems as if my very soul is being bared by your pure, precious green pupils...

He surrendered to the impulse of pressing a finger against those perfect curves, feeling the wetness, suppressing their soft quiver, silencing the strangled 'Seishirou-san' that was surely about to come out.

The funniest thing of it all is you seem all at once as confused as I am.

Maybe the one that affected him was the younger Omnyouji's problem as well: he didn't know what he was actually feeling. Just a he did, he could just feel the need, the warmth, the tenderness, and still couldn't clasp it.

That anyhow brought about a new kind of hope.

Maybe it'd be Subaru the one to name it for him.

Maybe that was what Subaru was really trying to say!

If only you could tell me...

"This is so different from Osaka's rocky seashore! I have never seen so many periwinkle shells!" Midori's shrillingly enthusiastic voice would be the one to help him dig his own grave.

I'm going to kill your cousin, Subaru-kun. I'm going to kill him...

The now leaf-green eyed youth stared back at them to smile childishly cheerful, almost cloying with naiveté, "I think I'll go pick up some of the cutest so I can take a piece of Tokyo with me once I return home!"

Seishirou's now seemingly par-of-the-course glance enlightened back from behind the shiny crystal of his glasses with the deepest of approvals when Midori's didn't seem at all as a bad idea.

More so, he was about to totally encourage him to do so.

Now that would give him a perfect opportunity to be left alone at least for a short while with...

"I-I'll help you out, Mi-chan!"

His jaw almost dropped as supposedly freezing Subaru-kun escaped the protection of his embrace to go run towards the beach's border, gracefully rushing like a bolt of blue lightning past Midori's not less astonished figure to then knee in seek for the infamous shells a considerable amount of steps further than where Seishirou wanted him.

Honey brown eyes turned void pools of golden steel.

The one thing that held him from running a hand through the diminutive chest of the green haired bishounen he had so defenseless only a few backing steps in front of him was the expression of complete, undisguised frustration that overcame his transparent features, nearly as if in an echo of his own.

Seishirou's caramel brown eyes sparkled, as he wondered if what the boy was experimenting was the anger towards the failure of a move to actually leave the male couple alone.

Taking back all the evidence that had spread before him at the previous night's meeting, he finally decided it was so.

A smile was unpredictably forming in his thin, virile lips.

So, Midori-kun. You also like to play as the matchmaker?

It was an affirmative answer he received when a sigh of weary resignation escaped the minor Sumeragi's frail frame.

"Okay, I think I'll go do it as well..."

Just when Seishirou thought the three of them might end up recollecting the actually unwanted shells, Midori seemed to trip over with a hideous beach stone and fell to his delicate knees over the sharp periwinkles' edges, nearly at his very feet.

A muffled, yet too vehement exclamation let his older companion know he should have hurt himself, Subaru-kun too far away to even notice the little accident.

"Are you all right, Midori-kun?" it was the kindness the situation demanded, and Seishirou gently obliged by softly helping the boy to his feet, practically lifting him up with his strong hands closed over his ridiculously thin arms.

Then something curious happened.

He suddenly realized it was one of the first times he actually made close, affectionate physical contact with Midori since the very first moment they had met, and the boy's reaction was... well, not expected.

At least so entirely different from the one he had acquired when being alone with him at the Clinic.

The alabaster cheeks flustering in a way it only made his delicate features more strikingly alike Subaru's, the teenager forced his way out of Seishirou's gentle and completely unintentional grasp in deathly shyness, only to have his bruised knees to fail him and fall all over again in the older man's arms.

When Midori raised his immensely beautiful face towards him, they were just inches apart, and only then Seishirou could somehow justify his restlessness.

"I-I'm fine, Sakurazuka-sensei..." the boy averted his eyes almost instantaneously, lowering them to his small non-supporting feet, not before noticing the thoughtful intensity of the dark honey stare, "It was only a soft hit. You don't need to worry about me..."

Seishirou was suddenly caught up in strange though totally interesting wonderings.

He had a body in his arms that was almost as soft, delicate and warm as the one he felt so much attraction for, looking into a face whose innocent beauty bore so very little difference with the one that aroused in him such strong, indefinable emotions. Even the rapid rhythm of Midori's heartbeat sounded as the muffled drum he had been feeling against his chest before being forsaken for a handful of sea shells.

He was sure that, if he closed his eyes and concentrated, he would bring to himself the false certainty that it was Subaru-kun the one he was closely embracing.

And yet, his heart remained vacant, devoid of warmth.

Empty of that miraculous, sweetening feeling the other Sumeragi youth always brought to him, the feelinglessness of his soul remaining untouched even by the physical attraction he should have been feeling about having such a sensuous body pressed up against his.

Totally void.

As with anybody.

The barrier step up around his heart unaltered.

Only Subaru-kun.

That somehow managed to bring a smile of acknowledgment to his handsome, extremely content face, as if he had just reconfirmed something he had all the time been sure of.

Satisfied with that bizarre sort of faithfulness.

Only him...

The unexplainable satisfaction in his glittering hazel eyes probably grew too evident, for Midori's cheeks were turning a deeper shade of scarlet every second he remained unconsciously captured in his arms.

Laughing so wholeheartedly he even felt the impulse of the manifestation flowing out spontaneously from him, mind filled with a refreshing touch of strange joy, Seishirou finally let the boy go free, wondering how many endless seconds both have remained like that.

"Ah, Midori-kun," he rushed cheerfully to blur any wrong conclusion the nervous, green-haired boy could have reached thanks to his previous behavior with an attitude of exaggerated, fatherlike affection, "Will I ever see the day when you call me by my personal name?"

Midori blushed cutely, shifting green eyes lowered once again to his now totally self sustaining little feet.

"Seishirou-sama..." he tried out.

Amused, Seishirou innocently reached out and pulled away a single strand of grass-like hair that had fallen over the young sprite's snowy forehead...

And then the sky lit up in coiling flames beside them.

Seishirou ignored the astonished, shrilling manifestation Midori let out as he pushed the boy behind him in an instinctive gesture of protection, all the immovable strength of his defenses raising up at once, the magical influence of his very will triggering a stone-hard wall around them, as each of his over sensitive, hunter's senses were put on guard by the sudden break through of emotional energy he had just perceived.

"Seishirou-san!!! Mi-chan!"

Not far away, Subaru's voice was raised in alarm, confirming he had felt the same as the light steps carried the boy exactly to their side in a matter of seconds, his own, enormous spiritual energy releasing as well as if in an invisible tide of pure light.

A pity Seishirou's attention was now too centered in the lone male figure that raised unharmed in the very center of the unnatural pyre in front of them to regard the much more serious strain layed on his name.

"Stay back, Subaru-kun."

The sixteen year old boy would have surely been surprised by the emotionless serenity of his words.

Though Seishirou chose to ignore these things for now, an arm hold out to protect the slender body from getting any closer.

And he was suddenly acting as a protective, impenetrable shield for both Sumeragi boys.

Stay back...

The slanted brown eyes that were now those of the shadow hunter narrowed even more as beholding the one that had dared threaten him and his, an expression of careful interest gracing the handsome face, strong though harmonious features lit by the orange aura of the unearthly fire.

The man was nearly as tall as he was.

Though the overpowering impression of his almost inhumanly strong body that shone wet by sweat from beneath the slight protection of a small, car oil-stained, sleeveless shirt gave out the idea that his form even dwarfed his, the face of the stranger conveniently cloaked by a darkness that was only detracted intermittently by the swaying dance of the flames that engulfed him without causing the slightest trace of harm, and the steam that had come to fill the crystal barrier of his glasses thanks to the sudden shift of temperature didn't really help.

Seishirou found no need to look at it, though.

He knew that man.

Or, more so, he knew that burning, threateningly powerful energy, unlike anything else he had ever experienced in his life but one thing.

Fire...

An indefinable grin that could be interpreted as a hint of twisted satisfaction appeared in his abstracted face as a disturbing mystery had finally been revealed.

And that gave him the certainty that that person was nothing like an Omnyouji of any kind.

Midori did the rest for him.

"Oh, Gods!!"

The beautiful childish face shone with such a different kind of fear from the one that was natural in such a moment, "Please don't harm them!! I told you I was going to be out tonight!"

Seishirou's imperceptible grin went unnoticed to everyone except his direct opponent. To his side, graceful gloved hands shaping out a half-protective, half-ofensive mitsu-in, Subaru's excited emerald eyes were growing wide with disbelieving surprise, "Mi-chan!! You know this person??"

Midori's terrified pupils held his stare for just a second before turning his entire attention towards the vicious stranger.

An unspoken passion lit the shifting depths of his eyes.

Then their unexpected visitor spoke, the harsh, almost insulting accent of his low-pitched voice sounding so confirming and familiar to Seishirou.

"Then you choose to leave me behind so you can go find shelter in someone else's arms?!" Little golden tongues of flame encircled their way up and down the finger that was pointed up to his tall figure in outraged accusation, "I'm going to teach this intruder what happens to the ones who dare stand between me and my beloved!!"

Ignoring Midori's screamed disagreement, the man took a menacing step towards him, and Subaru was suddenly stepping protectively in front of him, a rarely achieved look of decision in his beautiful face, graced by the dangerous light of the approaching fire, lips half-shaping out the words of an attacking jitsu, and Seishirou suddenly found himself damning the given moment and the given situation.

"Halt, Subaru-kun."

It was priceless to see the astonished, non-understanding look he was gifted with when he came to rest a tender palm over the taut, narrow shoulder, green eyes as huge as pools of transparent radiance reflecting the aura of the dancing flames as the absolute fear the boy was experiencing.

Fear for his sake.

Fear towards the possibility of him being hurt...

Maybe of losing him forever...

Seishirou found it more difficult to remain calm and safely distant when speaking out the next words than he could have ever imagined.

"Please, Subaru-kun, take Midori with you and wait for me in the car. I'm sure me and... erm..." he granted shocked Midori with a most significant, incredibly serene look.

Only then both Subaru and he noticed the young boy's eyes filled with tears.

"Himoto," the usually chiming sound of his voice seemed strangled by the very pronunciation of that simple name, "Hikari Himoto..."

Seishirou's calmly handsome face was nevertheless still smiling, cheerfully reassuring, as he completed, "I'm sure Hikari-san and I will solve out this matter as educated gentlemen."

"But, Seishirou-san!!" the sinister sound of the stranger's husky laugher that came as a clashing contrast against his gentle attitude caused Subaru-kun to panic, green eyes screaming a silent, terrified warning out to him.

To receive the concern and worrisome of those eyes...

It was far too sweet to, even in moments like that, let it pass him by.

Seishirou took a decided step forward and rapidly gifted Subaru's febrile figure with a quick, supporting embrace, taking the opportunity to softly whisper in his exposed ear, "Please trust me, Subaru-kun. Do as I say..."

The boy bathed him in the unbelieving brightness of his emerald pools, until something inside of them finally gave in.

"Please be careful, Seishirou-san..."

Those words said, the boy made a brief gesture with his delicate gloved hand that almost appeared to be a blessing, as, gloved hand in his quivering narrow shoulder, he gently guided paralyzed Midori towards the end of the sand trail.

Seishirou smiled more deeply as he watched them go, light feet leaving almost imperceptible footprints over the sensitive surface.

Subaru's delicate head turned more than once to look behind.

Thinking I wouldn't notice your casting of that protective kekkai, Subaru-kun?

He unconsciously laid a hand over his heart when opening his spiritual perception widely enough to fill the invisible bonds of the powerful though discrete spell around him, spreading a caressing warmth over his self that somehow reminded him of the one that had cast it.

He mused at the deep irony hidden in the moment.

The Thirteenth Head of the Sumeragi Clan, setting up a spell in hopes to protect the life of the Sakurazukamori...

Certainly an event for the record.

It was such a tender move from you, anyway, Subaru-kun...

A vicious sound he could indifferently recognize as his unwanted companion's laugher got him distracted once more.

So when thought the boys were safety far away to watch the scene, he turned to face him with a resigned sigh.

"So, you're the kind of guy that likes to play a double-flame game, ne?"

Such language...

Seishirou was somehow angered by the question, though he had no great difficulties to push that anger down until causing it to conveniently disappear, choosing instead to stick for just a single instant more to his mask of oblivious, kind cheerfulness, knowing the ironic effect would be the best.

"But it seems that you're the one that's more keened on flames that I, my friend!"

That sweet, good-guy voice, together with the sunny smile that was still on his masculine lips finally succeeded to bring about what Seishirou had been expecting.

A complete fiery tide was sent over his apparently defenseless figure by one lone, violent gesture of the rough stranger's arm, lighting up the night with a destructive haze of heat that sent the sands between them up with the burning winds in ethereal curtain, gold turning into black burnt color in the way of the deathly, ignite flow.

The hell on earth...

Seishirou dismissed the coiling stream of fire with a single, disdainful movement of his bare hand, flames turning into a swaying cloud of delicate-looking sakura petals that shivered as they began to fall around his no longer smiling figure.

Gold brown eyes fixed the astonished, half-scared form of the man he had in front of him with a face that was now as empty as the blackness of the night that surrounded them.

"That was not a very clever move..."

Maybe it was this, or mostly the empty sound of his serenely, devoid of intonation voice the one that caused the man named so fittingly Himoto to take an apprehensive step backwards, beholding the handsome man before him with a now totally different, fearful look, the cloak of flames that surrounded him diminishing in their intensity as if they were directly proportional to the huge man's rage.

Almost as if he desired to help him out with his groping conclusions, Seishirou smiled him a grin that would surely haunt his darkest nightmares ever since that night.

"You are the one," Himoto's efforts to keep his harsh voice from trembling out of the shaking emotion that now filled his heart were so evidently entertaining to him.

"The Guardian of the Sakura Barrow..."

Not a trace of alarm was triggered in his opponent by his recognition.

Maybe just a diminishing glint of morbid satisfaction.

"Oh!" Seishirou affected a mockingly smiling face of admiration, "So it seems the Sumeragi Clan has taken care of educating it's minor inheritor's lover about that as well," he took one slender hand to cup his chin in meditating gesture as he spoke his deductions out loud, "Or maybe it was Midori-kun himself the one from whom you learnt my real name? Tell me," the stranger was forced to retrieve another step when Seishirou walked so casually towards him, the remaining flutter of the last sakura petals dancing around his graceful figure. He took his damaged glasses away, letting his counterpart appreciate the real glint in his predator's eyes, as well as to protect the sensitive crystals from being steamed any further, "How do you make this interesting trick with the fire? I may be willing to learn..."

Closer to this stranger's humongous figure, the intensity of the fiery shield that he guarded himself with less blinding, Seishirou took his time to analyze the man's face in mute fascination for the first time in the night.

He was young, though evidently only a year or so younger than him if not of the same age, and his features were possibly the hardest, most rough display of sorrowful anger he had ever witnessed, expressive as it was to the point of annoyance, the powerful head crowed by close cropped, crispy jet black hair that affected reflections of blue.

The fire that cascaded and dwelled inside his azure blue eyes strong enough to reveal the most passionate soul.

Seishirou's brow furrowed slightly.

There was something about that man, he realized, that held him so intently from totally understanding what his harsh face reflected.

And that, he didn't like.

Maybe the evidence of his complete surrender to let feelings govern him...

"You have no right to interfere!" the loud sound of the man in question's demanding voice made him break out of his reverie, as anger and hate so deep seemed to have given his oponent the strength to resist the evident fear he felt towards his revealed nature, "I own Midori as much as you own the other boy!" very perceptive, Seishirou was about to say, "Dare try to touch him once again and I will have to fight you, Guardian! You haven't got the slightest right to interfere! He's my dearest, my soul..."

He paused for just a passing second before completing, facing Seishirou's amused impatience.

"My otouto..."

Gold brown eyes only gave out a brief glint of surprise, dark eyebrows raising elegantly as if to acknowledged the existence of that imperceptible glimmer, to then resume his casual, dark mood of faked sympathy.

He nevertheless congratulated himself on having learnt such an interesting little secret.

"Oh, Himoto-san, you don't know me! I love to interfere!" he shot back with a playful smile, then rushed to add, seeing the face of the man growing more and more despiseful, flames reborning in their increased intensity around him, "But don't worry: I'm not the least interested in your Midori-kun. He's actually one of the most annoying boys I've ever met," he enjoyed the furious expression that came to light up the supernatural fire that illuminated the night hell-like for just an instant by that confession before completing his speech, "I don't even want to kill you. Let's say I choose my preys a bit more..." he searched for the right word, "selectively. Besides, that would hurt Midori-kun, and so Subaru-kun would be sad, and then I... Well, you understand," he quickly summed up with a dismissing gesture of his hand, wondering about the impulse that had lead him to go that way.

It seemed even in such an attention-capturing opportunity he was drawn again and again towards the subject of his new found feelings.

Gods, could he really be that childish??

"Midori is mine!!" the enraged roar he received even caused him to close an eye in annoyance towards his opponent's lack of good manners.

The blue haired stranger's face was drenched with sweat, partially born out of the logical heat the flames around him surely brought about, half due to the deathly fury and hate that lit his rude features.

As much hate as Seishirou had ever witnessed in a living human being.

"The goddamn Sumeragis have no right to take him away from me!! Not the way they stole away all I held dear!! They'll all burn in hell before I allow that!"

A slender hand was raised up languidly in distinguished, irrefutable request for silence.

"Do to your sweet little otouto whatever it suits you to do."

He finally discarded that consuming train of thought on behalf of the demanding seriousness of the present situation, "All I want is that you stay a proper distance away from my Subaru-kun. He's a Prince, and is really not accustomed to have such barbarians like you close to him. He could get impressed, and then my reactions would be... uncivilized."

There was no better word to describe it.

Though a growing lack of interest in the long gone boring situation was beginning to take over.

Blame it on the need to return to Subaru-kun and ease his soul.

Content with his depicting of the situation, he lazily turned around and started walking his way back to the abandoned Honda in which the two surely overwhelmed youths awaited for a carbonized Seishirou to arrive, "Dewa, matta..."

The enraged man was able to keep himself in mute, scared respect only a few steps slowed by the influence of the thick sand before snarling out in mindless challenge, voice raised up to thunder level.

"And how would you react, cerberus, if I chose to lay hands on your own prey?"

Seishirou came to a death stop above the deserted beach's stairs that lead back on towards the pavement, halting as radically as surely his opponent's heart had done to his back.

And something inside him knew it hadn't exactly been the ignored insult on the unmeasured sentence that had caused him to do so.

When he half turned around just a single second over his shoulder towards the place where Hikari Himoto stood, as frozen as a corpse, surely taking back by now all the impulsive stupidity of his reaction, the caramel brown eyes appeared unaffected, though his voice was the coldest and most deathly warning the man had ever received.

"You dare touch Subaru-kun," he calmly spoke, while resuming his pace out of the lonely sea shore, black trench coat flying about him in the cold ocean wind that promptly dispersed the passive flurry of pink sakura petals.

"And then you will know me for real..."

 

 

Barely protected inside the false solidity of Seishirou's glossy black Honda Prelude, Subaru's painfully throbbing heart was threatening to carry him into taquicardic hystery.

The beautifully expressive emerald eyes filled with a terror that surpassed any other of his now seemingly stupid childhood fears, both glimmering pupils searched the night in frantic desperation, alabaster face pressed up against the securely closed window crystal with enough strength to send it into shatters, in seek for any little trace of orange fire he could perceive in the dim blue of the shadowed sky.

Searched for Seishirou-san.

Looked for even the slightest sign that might drive him to rush back to that deserted beach and into the arms of his beloved friend, willing to die by his side, to give his life away protecting him rather than feeling that torturing guilt he was experiencing.

If something happens to him...

Oh, Gods! If something really happens to him before I'm able to tell him...

Seishirou's unconscious, self trusting attitude was unlike anything he had ever known before in the collected, reasonable veterinarian, and it went totally beyond his logic or understanding.

Almost as bizarre and incredible as the way in which things had ended up in that which had for a moment seemed to be the perfect evening...

The delicate head shook rapidly in veritable anguish, the layered dark silk of his hair disarraying over his pale forehead, sweaty with deathly nervousness, as he allowed his mournful, innocent face to be caressed by tears he couldn't even perceive.

Oh, hadn't it been so, he would have spoilt it after all...

He was already in the process by resisting Midori's every single attempt to let him have a second of privacy to open his restless heart to the one he wanted to learn how deep his until then supposedly feelings of intimate friendship really ran.

I'm beginning to fear I'll never get to tell you...

Perhaps I don't even know the words to say it.

Both his slender gloved hands clasped together loudly as they squeezed each other in a fierce grip of both pain and angry frustration.

A prayer of love was mutely chanted to the blackened heaven from inside that car.

I've let so many chances pass me by...

And even when I feel you next to me, when I feel the warmth of your strong body encouraging me, giving the confidence I need to tell you so...

I fear.

Why?

But that man...

The huge liquid green eyes turned glassy and abstracted, staring now at an undefined point of the wide, starlit skies.

Could he really call him that?

The immense hate, the infinite, tortured sadness that exuded his brutal figure, engulfed by that fire that made him so much alike the evil youma that appeared in the long forgotten tale books of his early childhood years in Kyoto...

Legends to scare little children like what he once was to sleep, stories about creatures made out of fire that came out from hell in the misty night to fulfill their hateful purposes...

As much hate as Subaru didn't imagine possible for a human heart to tolerate.

And with it, all that negative emotional charge, welled and mastered into the flames he seemed to command at his will, poisoning his soul as the pitiless price for granting him that unexplainable power...

Madness.

He had scared him so...

As much as he thought he could fear anything else, the stabbing sensation increased by the bitter compassion witnessing the bare, devastated soul of that surely miserable human being bathed him with.

How could he have ever left defenseless Seishirou-san alone with a person like that?

Catapulting up from the comfortable backsit, a delicate, frantic gloved hand had already reached out to cast the door's lock open, when a strangled sob coming from his right caught him in his way, and he was flustering feverishly in self reproach as he reaccommodated himself closer to the devastated figure that sat with the beautiful face hidden into the cradle of both pitifully thin arms folded over his knees beside him.

He couldn't explain to himself what had driven him to abandon Midori to such a forgotten place inside his confused heart.

Now he tenderly pushed the weak, familiarly soft body against his in a tender, comforting hug, so similar to what Seishirou-san used to give him, seeking both the purpose of easing his dearest cousin's restlessness as trying to do so with his own.

Maybe it had been because he couldn't bear to see him that way: his joyful, childishly oblivious soul, so empty of any kind of knowledge of what evil could possibly be, shadowed by the influence of such a bitter, cruel torment...

Maybe the selfish, egoistic desire to keep his own mind from resigning to the fact so many mysteries had been painfully revealed that night.

"It's him, right, Mi-chan?" he didn't recognize the sound of his own voice as he forced himself to pronounce those dreadful words, struggling to catch his breath and make his accent turn as sweet as it could, immerse as he was in such antagonizing feelings, "The one you love... The man you talked about when we were alone in my bedroom..."

Midori's shudders and whimpers of pain were the only answer he got, yet the only one he needed, as the young boy buried his reddish face inside his neck, surrendering to the offer of comprehensive warmth Subaru's embrace represented.

A loving pair of skinny arms closed over him to shield him out of the wrenching reality.

Licking salty tears out of his lips, the affected Head of the Sumeragi shoved himself mentally to continue, "This is why you talked about... about the loneliness," his weak, whispering voice broke the second he had to speak out that simple word, influenced by the terrible, tangent meaning it had suddenly assumed for both of them, "This is why you said you envied me... because you knew you couldn't stay by the side of the person you love..."

Gaining out of despair a strength he would otherwise never have, Subaru gently laid his hands on the sides of his sobbing cousin's delicate head, gloved fingers welcomed by the tangled swirls of leaf-green hair that came to wrap themselves around them, as his wet, inquiring green eyes looked into shrunk pupils that had turned totally blue.

"The person you love," he muttered, curve lips as trembling as those of the one he tenderly interrogated, impossible to tell which face shone more heavenly beautiful out of the crude suffering they were going through, "... is that man...?"

Midori's watery eyes held his for just a second before the ghost of a nod was being diverted by the sound of the front door being externally unlocked and opened.

"Seishirou-san!!!!"

Subaru practically threw himself to apparently unharmed Seishirou's gently welcoming arms out of the infinite relief and happiness that came to bathe his until then desperate heart the moment he saw the tall figure accommodating himself over the comfortable driver's sit.

Life had never been so sweet and rewarding that in that lone moment.

"Oh, Gods!!" voice broken into a moan, tears of joy showered down his alabaster face as he couldn't think of anything else but to press himself harder against that masculinely perfumed chest, hands clenched to his warm clothes with a vehemence that threatened to tear them apart, as all he could perceive with his five main senses was the contact of those strong arms closed up around his wildly heaving back, as tightly as he could have wanted them, "I was so afraid to lose you...!"

The affection they shared, the passion unspoken...

It only made his enraptured heart beat more intently with all the pleasure he was suddenly getting out of the unchained emotions that he felt.

Only then he came to partially understand the sweetly mysterious ways love walked.

The world was a confuse myriad of dancing colors once he lifted his crushed eyelashes to bare his reddish eyes once again, driven by Seishirou's gentle but firm hands' movement that laid both of them slightly apart, the gold-brown iris granting him a discreet though vehement look that was to remind him of Midori's presence.

A sense of culpability made a prey out of Subaru, as he saw the reason for Seishirou-san's caring though totally serious face.

The older man gifted his crying cousin with a soft, sympathetic glance borning out of his entire, immensely handsome features.

"Your onii-sama is gone, Midori-kun."

Subaru's still wet emerald eyes flashed widely into the shadows with deathly surprise.

 

 

"What's this?! What happened??"

It was almost surreal to stare at Mitchuru Sumeragi's face as the three of them mutely stepped into the large resting room.

To see that ethereal, beautiful mask of perfectly polished stoicism break to pieces under the influence of worrisome and fear, allowing a distorted grin of despair to come out, the musical, collected voice raised up to nearly hysterical shrilling.

To think of that only helped driving his opinion about emotions lower, but it somehow gave her a touch of humanity after all...

Seishirou somberly realized all this as the young woman's sharp glance passed like a dagger of blue steel from his extremely serious figure to the pitiful display of paranoiac whimpering that was Midori-kun, whom in spite of the unspoken accusations he kept protected by his huge, gentle palm over the weak shoulder.

To his right, Subaru was holding the boy's trembling hand, still imbued in shocked silence.

Even static Hokuto-chan stood up frantically from her conformable sit on one of the large sofas, staring at her young male cousin's moistured face in openly concerned astonishment.

Her liquid green eyes turned to meet his own like a viridian flash, painted lips muttering their names soundlessly, heart somehow calming a bit when seeing both Subaru and him were unharmed, to then turn her full attention towards convulsing Midori.

"Onee-san!!!" the sixteen year old boy got rid of Seishirou's touch to practically dive into his elder sister's arms, tears turned into crystal waterfalls that bathed the reddish shade of his desolated face, as he pressed his cheek feverishly against the soft breast, "Make it stop...! I can't do it!! I can't live like this anymore!!!"

And to those sobbing words, the break of a crystal binding.

The girl's alabaster arms closed around him protectively, as the classical face went suddenly blank in what appeared to be certain, terrorized understanding, her expression remaining as frozen even when Hokuto's gentle, delicate hands came to stroke her overwhelmed brother's soft hair.

The thoughtful glint in Seishirou's gold brown eyes shifted as he acknowledged the evidence of what was implicit in those unblinking azure pupils: the birth of a realization, of a certainty that was far too terrorizing, far too awful for even her unbreakable will to stand against it.

A so much feared, long held secret that was about to be revealed...

And so, there'll be nothing new for us to tell her.

He suddenly found himself unconsciously taking a protecting step towards mute Subaru's narrow back.

"Mi-chan, what is it??" Hokuto's feminine voice sounded as firm as loving, her normally teasing, cheerfully green iris glimmering now with the most absolutely serious concern, such an unusual vision, "We can't help you if you don't..."

"MY NII-SAN!!!"

The tormented boy's high, acute scream broke through the expectant, thick atmosphere of the room as the most mournful, agonizing manifestation Subaru had ever heard, and he almost felt like sheltering his painful ears under the gloved protection of his small hands, as if like that he could chase all the horrible certainty of that moment away.

Hoping so badly it could all be that simple...

"What???"

Hokuto's astonished voice almost sounded low beat by Midori's contralto shrill, the beautiful, girlish face that was a mirror of his own bathed with wide-eyed, pure and open surprise, "What do you mean, your nii-san...??"

Subaru's lips parted in shared pain as he witnessed how Mitchuru's perfect nails dig intently in the bare, helpless skin of Midori's pale arms, as the young woman paid no attention to Hokuto's surprised demandings, her expression turned once again into immovable, stern stone.

"Hush, Midori..."

Be silent.

Hold back the pain that's been there for so many years...

Subaru's own emerald eyes shivered wide open in recriminating disbelief, graceful gloved fingers squeezing his hat's soft fabric with impotent, half-suppressed horror.

How could her voice sound so cold...?

"I can't! I can't! I can't!!" the boy broke once again into despair, clinging vehemently to his sister's slender body in seek for some hint of tender comprehension he could build upon, mind totally lost as it could be seen by his abstracted, glassy stare, "I want my nii-san!! I can't live without him! I need his love...! I want him to love me...!"

At that Hokuto's hugely open green eyes rushed back to her dearest cousin's darkened ones, gleaming in what could be read as the most unacceptant suspiciousness, a deep, questioning frown in her velvety white brow as she had began to put both her cousins' words together.

"You know anything about this, Mitchu-chan...?" the interrogating accent was barely perceived in her quick, almost awkward current of words, emerald pupils glimmering in almost anger as she noticed how her elder cousin seemed to premeditatedly refuse to meet her fulminating stare, "Look at me!" she demanded in a rarely heard, commanding voice, "A brother?! Does Midori have a brother?? Do we have another cousin...?"

Something within Subaru's torn heart would later let him know he was somehow morbidly expecting, though never prepared to hear what was next to be said.

"He is not your cousin!! He is not our brother!!!"

Mitchuru's clear voice was as punishing and despiseful as the slash of whipping waves on the shore's salty rocks, her azure eyes as furiously sparkling as slanted pools of lighting, while the beautiful, until then harmonious face now twisted up in a gesture of pure, humiliated disgust, "He's just an shaming, degrading mistake!! An evil cancer the whole Sumeragi Clan fought all these years to extirpate and that now returns to haunt us as a cursing reminder of my family's greatest dishonor!!"

A loud, disintoned whimper then, from Midori, and Subaru held his breath, his innocent, childish face gone still in a wide eyed expression of totally comprehending horror.

"Mitchu-chan!" on the contrary, Hokuto's face was now bathed in almost scared, denying astonishment, her own heart incapable of recognizing the one she had given her distant friendship to for so long.

What's gotten into you...?

The severe though loving elder cousin that had become her very best model of womanly pride and decision was suddenly gone, leaving her vacant place to that ice-cold, feelingless sculpture.

"Stop it! I love him!! We love each other!" Midori reacted almost violently against his sister's pitiless words, struggling to break free from the painful, banning, forbidding squeeze her embrace had suddenly become, sobbing even louder out of the frustration he felt when the young woman's arms held him tight.

"Why can't we just be left alone?!"

Alone...

Subaru's breath began to come in brief, choked gasps without non of the altered females in the room noticing it.

"Mitchu-chan!!" Hokuto's rescuing intervention seemed needed as Midori was apparently at the verge of hystery, her femininely thin though suddenly immensely strong arms stealing the whimpering, curled up form of her male cousin from Mitchuru's capturing ones, as she gifted the young woman with a yet unbelieving, censuring stare, "How can you say such things about our own blood??"

The stare Mitchuru gave her almost cause her to grow goose bumps, as she was suddenly fighting the impulse to take a resguarding step behind.

"A sickness in our blood, that's what that... being has become for us," the hiss in the beautiful Mizunoto's voice was filled with bitter, disgusted sadness, as the enraged expression on her graceful face was all at once bathed with infinite grief when she condemningly lifted a slender finger to her brother's figure, "Look at him! Behold what the bastard has done to my only brother!!" her voice broke when she caught glimpse of weeping Midori digging inside Hokuto's affectionate embrace in both fear and shame. The azure eyes glimmered away furious tears, "Can't you see it?? He doesn't love him like a brother, but like a lover!!"

An unnatural flash of dim green iris was lost to their vision behind their backs, and so the muffled sounds of exacerbated breathing.

"Mitchuru-chan!!" Hokuto's horrified yell came out almost in the middle of her cousin's horrid, twisted accusation, the sound of her feminine voice giving out all her denying disgust, "I don't understand a word of what you're saying... !!"

Oh, but he understood.

Subaru slowly shook his delicate head, refusing to believe, his vision suddenly distorted by the crystal rivets of tears that rolled through his insensitive cheeks without him even noticing them, as his hands unconsciously let go of the fashionable hat, letting it fall to the carpeted floor to go grab the tight dark fabric around his vulnerable neck.

Understood everything, so very perfectly now...

"My Gods...!" his rose petal lips shaped out the words numbly, as his mind resisted to conceal the certainty of what now clearly spread before him, "She knew about it... They all knew about it..."

The whole Clan, his own family...

They had been hiding that awful secret away, veiling the sickening reality for so long, in sinister, mute complicity...?

Slender fingers began to give strong, desperate pulls at the burning cloth.

Countless years, without even trying, without even fighting to find a fair, benefic solution.

Waited in silence.

As they always did.

Without conceding suffocated Midori a chance to purify himself by crying out his pain.

And his love...

All the silence, the so much feared loneliness...

It all had a reason.

He difficulty tried to draw in a frantic breath.

The man whose fiery eyes he had met at the deserted beach, the one whose hateful, ravaging stare had scared him so deeply...

My blood mate...

A member of his family that had been neglected, thrown away from it's very breast as if he was nothing more than an unwanted, disgusting vermin for a mistake he had not committed.

Midori's brother...

Midori's impossible love.

Subaru fought to tear away the strangling embrace of the turtleneck shirt, pushing without the minimum success to let out his panting breathing, trying to chase suffocation away as he felt an overwhelming nausea envelope his heart and mind.

Useless.

The rest of the discussion that was still taking in place in front of him barely audible now to his humming ears.

Only Midori's words where a distorted echo that resounded inside the dizziness of his head.

Scared of your true feelings... Lonely...

That was the result of the silence.

The punishment for keeping it secret...

I really envy you, Su-chan...

That was his Clan's deed.

Just because you're able to stay by the side of the person you love...

The person he loved...

"His... brother..."

The room was darkening before his smoky-glass green eyes, as Subaru felt his breakable legs were no longer strong enough to support him, his escaping thoughts menacing to carry him into shadow as he felt himself at the verge of faint.

He took a faltering step behind as he fought to breath in a last, gasping inhalation...

Just then a rescuing pair of strong, gentle arms took firm hold of his frail, fainting body from behind, grabbing him as tightly as tenderly, even as their benefic touch pushed him back into a vast, silky soft warmth in which he could rest his weariness, soothe his pain...

A sheltering, manly perfumed darkness where he could somehow find his lacking strength...

As always...

A name instantly came to his mind.

A name his breathless voice was nevertheless incapable of whispering...

Unlike the rest of the persons present in that room, Seishirou's gifted senses had heard the agonizing accent in Subaru-kun's childish voice, perceived his shocked reactions to the surely dreadful facts that had been revealed so abruptly and pitilessly.

And worst of all, understood the certainty that shone so ominously bright into those deep green pools that were his eyes when the elder female had spoken.

The certainty that told him Subaru was neither surprised by what she had said.

Yet not less horrified.

It had occurred to him the young, furious woman shouldn't really know how sensitive and vulnerable her little cousin was, to dare speak in front of him in that stupidly careless way.

Then that sensation had come to him almost as if in a natural consequence.

That disturbing uncomfortability, that emphatic feeling of entire wrongness that had enveloped his not-understanding heart for the very first time, as he could barely acknowledged the odd sensation as the pulsating beating of pain.

Pain...

Anger.

Just as simple as a cause-effect reaction towards witnessing Subaru-kun's deepest suffering.

Unexplainably complying to the sensitive, weak boy's pain as if making it his own.

So intense...

Almost scaring.

And it hurt so much...

The next second before he could tell, he had his arms around that pitifully thin, adorably weak body.

Holding him, but not as the teasing lover he often pretended to be, but in an unconditional offer of affection and shelter, so similar to the way both had embraced in the car...

Only... more passionately.

He was pressing that infinite fragility against the supporting firmness of his suddenly heated chest, feeling the briefness of his little self, the oh, so vulnerable warmth of skin and bone underneath his touch that shivered intently with the choking rhythm of his sobbing.

And it was unbearable to see him cry...

"It's okay... Calm down, Subaru-kun," he paid no attention to the struggling forces within his abstracted mind, the silent scream of the ancestral emptiness that was being raped, intruded inside of him by the startling presence of that new born feeling, as he tenderly pressed his cheek against Subaru's moistured one, soothing words coming out of his lips from an unknown source of sweet inspiration, "It'll be all right... It will all be fine..."

"Seishirou... san..."

Subaru could finally pant out those words as he acknowledged the contact of Seishirou's warm body against his narrow back, the caressing touch of the older man's sweet breathing falling over the sensitive skin of his neck, and he held on to those strong forearms impulsively, his until then deathly pale cheeks colored now by a bright, sheer red as he became slowly aware of what they were doing.

Realized the heat, and the so much needed tenderness.

Seishirou-san... embracing him.

In such a different way from the one in which he used to do it.

Making him feel things no other person had ever brought to him.

Chasing all of the pain and suffering and agony away from his heart and mind by the mere contact of their bodies...

Their bodies... locked together in a familiar, almost intimate communion...

Salty, hot tears filtered inside his parted lips as he realized their closeness, the awakening of a strange, lovely sensation of urgency, of eagerness and need that was triggered as a sudden flood of warmth inside his uncomprehending heart and flowing like a blessed current of fire through every nerve of his taut body that slowly, ultimately began to relax.

And he was all at once aware of every slight shape of his best friend's tall body beneath the heavy barrier of clothing, the way they firmly pressed against his own...

So sweetly...

A loud whimper escaped his aching chest.

Ignoring the presence of the other, totally forgotten people in the room, Subaru passionately threw his frail head back and onto Seishirou's broad shoulder, breathing hard now not only due to his state of near blankness, as all his enraptured heart could listen to was the beating of that need, the stealthy sound of loving arms shifting caressingly over his shivering body, the deep tone of that masculine voice whispering calming words that seemed to heal him from inside, "It'll be all right... It'll be all right..."

Mitchuru's gleaming azure pupils shifted towards where her furiously distracted, barely aware mind faintly remembered she had seen Subaru-kun standing, her attention suddenly forced out of the myriad of punishing feelings such as pain, shame and hate by a broken, apparently spontaneous manifestation to their backs.

She barely assumed Hokuto-chan followed her half-blinded stare.

Then she caught sight of the figure of the young Head of the Clan half engulfed by the vicious contact of that man's strong arms, the expression of nearly obscene ecstasy in Subaru's absorbed face as he allowed those virile hands to caress the thinness of his limbs, the contact of Seishirou Sakurazuka's masculine, attractive lips against the tender skin of his cheek...

Azure eyes flashed wide open in scandalized horror.

Not again...

Or most likely, in fearful deny of the certainty she had been half reluctant, half willing to confirm.

Not now...

Her whole self cried out a wrongness that was not smaller than the one she felt towards her brother's ailing heart.

"Please excuse me..."

The severe, merciless sound of her crystal-clear voice seemed to instantly cause both of them to break out of their rapture, as a play of emerald and gold came to stare questioningly surprised at her.

Almost as if none of them had realized the deep significance in what they had been doing...

Mitchuru charged the intruder with now openly credited, sincere disgust, eyes shinning as hard as polished diamonds echoing the faint trembling of her voice as she went on, "This is a family matter. So could you please leave?"

And for just a fleeing instant, she had the privilege of leaving that man speechless.

"Seishirou-san...!"

Subaru's heart came to a frantic stop as he refused to trust his ears, green iris growing wide in both fear and astonishment as he fixed his female cousin with a look of open disbelief, only reacting when he felt Seishirou's arms being vehemently snatched out of his figure.

"Seishirou-san, don't...!"

He turned to his best friend's usually calid face only to find it bathed with the most serious, darkly handsome expression of stern severity.

Blood froze in his veins as he caught the look in his totally cold, amber brown eyes.

"I understand," Seishirou's voice was paused and collected when he spoke, only filled with a distant hint of polite regret, though it was entirely evident to Subaru's febrile glance the anger that was being held from behind those transparently barricading glasses, "Please excuse my indiscretion."

Those words said, Seishirou bowed and headed to the corridor.

"Seishirou-san!! Wait!!"

Wait...

He thought he distantly heard a backing, angry remark from Hokuto-chan, together with a disgruntled comment of disapproval from Mitchuru, though he did not waste his time on listening.

None of them mattered to him anymore.

On that moment he had only eyes and ears for the man that was disappearing through the door, walking out of the room and out of his life as he felt his body turning around to follow him as if bearing a will of it's own.

He was running his way down the main hall before his own mind could tell, his screamed, desperate words making the tall figure halt before trespassing the big twin door that lead to the elevators.

"SEISHIROU-SAN!!!"

Seishirou barely turned his attractive head over the broad, wide shoulder to grant him a last, interrogating look of his stern brown eyes.

That at least gave him the necessary time to catch up with him in front of the pent's door.

"Seishirou-san, please don't listen to her! Stay...!" Subaru's chest was heaving up and down with both the excitement of his race and the frantic fear that was beginning to grow threatening in him by the mere thought of Seishirou escaping the scene like that: treated as no more than an undesirable guest, green eyes blinking away the reminiscence of tears that still rolled freely down his flustered cheeks, "We all want you to stay! We all need you...! Please don't leave like this!"

Don't...

He begged.

Leave me...

He ached for him to stay by his side and chase all the ghosts and fears away from him, protect him from his own self as he had always proved capable of. Prayed for his familiar warmth to save him from the terrorizing realization of what true loneliness like the one Midori had spoke about really meant.

... Alone.

You, Seishirou-san...

"Don't leave...!"

You're my only landmark, the only fact that makes me different from him...

The only one that can hold me from being lonely...

Seishirou-san...

I also keep a secret...

"I'm sorry, Subaru-kun," his heart nearly broke to shards as it refused to listen to the distant, immovable accent the low-pitched, beautifully masculine voice he knew so well was filled with, almost as if talking to an unimportant, not-mattering stranger, "But your cousin is absolutely right. There's no reason for my presence here. I must apologize to your family for the inconveniences I may have caused given such a delicate situation..."

He had to talk...

Despair exploded within him as the rainstorm of diamond tears in his almost blindingly sparkling green eyes.

To hear him speaking like that...

He had to tell him...

"Seishirou-san, don't go!!"

I'm scared...

Though Seishirou was granting him a mournful, yet distant glance the second he took a step outside the penthouse, letting him catch the last glint in his half lidded, evading brown iris.

I fear...

"Good bye Subaru-kun."

Subaru took feverish hold of the opened door blade as his faltering steps were about to let him fall to his knees, his agonizing, wide-eyed stare fixed on departing Seishirou until the second the promptly coming, merciless elevator's doors were about to close in on his tall, stern figure.

"Seishirou-san, don't leave me!!!!"

He was only able to cry his heart out the second he was left completely alone in the emptiness of the gray corridor.

 

 

"There was no need for that, and it was completely cruel!"

Hokuto's eyes now bore such an entirely different glimmer when fixing her with that accusing, almost despising look of reproach...

Slender, feminine hands softly stroke Midori's layered, ethereal mane as the sobbing boy still laid cradled in her motherly arms, even now she had let herself fall back to the unconditional support of the large couch.

Cruel...

Mitchuru charged her with all the weary, devastated intensity of her somber azure-green pupils, as she faintly allowed her numb knees to give in and lead her to the welcoming contact of soft, feathered cushions.

You know not of what cruelty can be...

The graceful shoulders shrugged in the lone trace of weakness she'd ever allow herself to let out, and the glossy waves of sea colored hair came cascading to her front as a gentle ocean crescent.

You're too young and innocent for that...

And even so...

A single wayward tear was vanished from the bright surface of her iris with a single blink of her eyes.

Even so, no one knows better than I do.

She gave her an unspoken example that was to go forever unnoticed of what cruelty really meant when she forced herself to keep loyal to the pitiless discipline of her education, presenting the younger girl nothing but the apparently serene, stone-cold expression of her beautiful, classic features.

Hiding away the true purpose of her attitude with a mastery that almost lead her to despise herself.

But it was, after all, for everyone's sake.

"Do you wish to take this humiliation any further?" She slowly lied, her harmonious voice reduced to nothing more than a ragged whisper, while she was trying to soothe the wrongness that she felt with the certainty that half the meaning of her words was authentic, "Do you want a Sakurazuka to be the witness of my family's greatest shame?"

And worst...?

That certainly, predictably took Hokuto-chan out of her senses.

"Stop talking like that, for God's sake!! You're speaking about our best friend!" her shrilling voice was the messager of all the throbbing demands on her not understanding heart, as the beautiful, delicately girlish features appeared bathed by an expression of still shocked anger, "Just in case you haven't noticed I know not of what you're talkin' about! So please be kind enough to start explaining your nasty words to me before I end up hating you for what you said to Midori and Seishirou!"

Something was indeed altered within the shattered depths of her heart when receiving that awkward verbal assault.

That irreflexive threatening.

Hokuto-chan... hating her...

Please don't...

Mitchuru's musicians' hands came to tighten their grip on each other when trying to imagine what that would be like.

It's the last thing I want to go with this punishment...

Though her distant, almost bizarre expression remained untouched even as her half-lidded glance had to confront the gleaming gaze of those stormy green pupils.

"I'll tell you..."

Just then the high, loud sound of a door being violently slammed to it's closed position caused the three of them to flinch in alarm facing such an unexpected interruption.

Seconds later Subaru returned to the resting room, or at least who appeared to be Subaru in body, for the expression that filled that usually timid, respectfully beautiful face made him totally unrecognizable for any of them.

Even Hokuto's eyes were bathed with a startled, unbelieving glimmer, "Su-chan...?"

Subaru's accusing, slender index was pointed out at her as completely astonished Mitchuru received the full impact of the deathly glance on those expressive, furiously sparkling green iris, the possessed boy coming to stand right in front of her helpless figure.

"You didn't have slightest right to treat him like that."

Subaru's childish voice was as severe and authoritative as she had ever thought it could be, a clear revelation of the inner struggle to control himself, his face the most reproaching, sincere display of sorrowful anger she had ever laid eyes upon, as it took a certainly huge effort from Mitchuru not to let out her surprise.

She only partially succeeded.

"Please, Subaru-kun! Open your eyes to reality!" her decision was to stick to the usual severity of her attitude, raising her tone a bit to reassure the vehemence of her censuring words, trusting the seriousness of her arguments to be enough to make that childish youth submit to her will just as Midori had always done, "There are certainly more important things to be worried about than your teenage crush on that man..."

"That man is closer to me than any other member of my family has ever been!" the young Omnyouji spitted out the words in a perfect mix of fury and pain, mind completely lost to his rapture as the impulsive glint on his viridian eyes was half blurred by the crystal veil of desperate tears, "He loves, he understands me, he takes care of me...! He's the best friend I've ever had!! Just who do you think you are to push him out of my own home as if he was nothing but a complete stranger?!!"

Wow...

Far to her left, Hokuto's eyes widened in absolutely open surprise and -she needed to admit it- a hint of admiration.

After all this time...

Painted, delicately curve lips parted in a gesture that could nearly be read as a twisted sort of smile, as deep within her heart she was almost morbidly enjoying the sudden breakthrough her submissive twin was experiencing for the very first time in his life due to Mitchuru's underestimation of his feelings.

And it seems all he needed was a serious timing...

She was only partially aware of both Midori's shared thoughts as the boy had abandoned the shelter of her embrace to behold the scene in mute emotion and Mitchuru's obviously evident astonishment given the young woman's no more serene expression.

"Subaru-kun! The man is a Sakurazuka!!"

Mitchuru found certain difficulties to rebuild her defenses facing the open, uncontrolled passion in Subaru's unnaturally screaming voice, her own emphasizing almost unconsciously the absolutely sinful wrongness given out by those lone two words.

No more...

Her disciplined heart had surely been taken aback as she had come to confirm what she had been only suspecting ever since she had firstly met the male couple together.

Not him...

That certainty only added on to the horror Midori's sick emotions had brought to her, and she was no longer doing anything to hold back her real feelings, "Think about what that means to you! You're almost a man now! You're the Head of the Clan...!"

"I don't care the less about the Clan!!!"

Or anything else...

Subaru took a deep breath as every other sound in the room seemed to be obliged to silence beneath the commanding power of his voice.

Waited in suffocated expectation.

Waited for him to finally admit it.

"Seishirou-san..."

Frustrated tears twinkled like tiny constellations against the alabaster of his cheeks as he cried the real passion of his feelings out, no longer able to hide what kept on pounding at every second in the deepest of his sweetly tortured heart.

"Seishirou-san is more important to me than any of you, nameless members of the Clan could ever be, and I love him! Yes, you're hearing me: I love him!! Now I understand I've been loving him for so long..."

At that, all the fierce vehemence broke down, leaving him empty: just as the sobbing, vulnerable boy he had always been, as Subaru's enraged reaction faded away into a sea of tears.

Almost as knowing it was no longer needed now the emotional catharsis had finally been achieved.

And just as Mitchuru was left apparently paralyzed by his ultimate confession, Midori was suddenly breaking free of his pitiful state of sorrowful, ashamed silence.

"Su-chan, don't cry!"

The beautiful boy rushed to his most beloved cousin's side only to wrap his skinny arms around the equally frail, shuddering figure.

Understanding another one who loves an impossible love.

The young woman could only stare at both of them, at Subaru instinctively burying his weeping face in Midori's warm, leaf green mane, "Please, Su-chan...! Please don't cry..."

Both wayward teens were sobbing in each other's arms when not less shocked Hokuto came to rest her soothing palms on each weak, narrow shoulder, that face that was always a more outrageous mirror of her male brother's gifted with a weird expression of nearly smiling nervousness.

Emerald eyes sparkled in sincere confusion as she didn't decided on whether being overjoyed with Subaru's final admission of his feelings or still annoyed for the last events as she partly was.

"Easy there, easy," her shivering pupils dedicated a passing glance of worrisome to her mute female cousin before totally betraying the shadow of a kinky smile, "Wow, Su-chan... I never thought you had it in you...! I think Sei-chan could really use some eavesdropping from time to time..."

But just as Subaru was beginning to mutter an inarticulate answer and she was carefully leading both affected boys to the shelter of the couch, it was time for Mitchuru to speak her own thoughts, the beautiful, classical face gifted with an insecure and preciously regretful expression that was the most evident trace of humanity Hokuto had ever witnessed from her.

"Please forgive me Subaru-kun. I," Mitchuru's voice cut off as the ocean-like iris glint in a pure self recrimination neither of the others could completely finish to understand.

Or at least notice so...

The young Mizunoto's elegant hands joint before her lap in an abstract gesture, eyes refusing to meet the ones that stared so intently at her, "I didn't have the slightest idea that he actually meant that much to you. I must beg for your forgiveness..."

But Subaru was shaking the beautiful, sorrowful head in a sympathetic, tender hint of comprehension that finished breaking his elder cousin's heart to pieces.

Why, obaa-sama...?

Why me?

Why do I always have to be the martyr...?

"No, Mitchuru-san. It was all my fault, " the lovely white cheeks flustered almost imperceptibly beneath the already blushing influence of his tears, "I didn't mean to talk to you like that. It was so selfish from me, considering what we're all going through..."

The once again weak voice broke off into a sob.

"But still, Seishirou-san's gone..."

"There, there. You know he knows better than that," Hokuto pushed her twin's frail body against hers with loving, tender strength, "The most probable thing is he'll give you a call in the morning to set down this matter and sound as cheerful as ever," her pixie face dedicated an affectionate, complying wink to her lately weeping brother, "And you certainly have something way important to say to him, don't you?"

Subaru's stare was lowered and lost in what appeared to be a kind of fearful expectation, but there was unfortunately no time for that, as Hokuto wondered.

The second next her still intrigued emerald eyes came to lay claim on Mitchuru's somber expression once again, without conceding her a second of break, "Now Mitchuru-chan. You were about to explain this whole brother stuff to us, am I right?"

The young woman's regal head leaned slightly forward in what could be understood as a resigned nod.

She certainly knew she wouldn't be able to escape this time.

As if it could solve anything...

"Obaa-sama told me it happened a few years before I was born..."

The musical voice sounded as nostalgically low as the humming sound of crushing sea waves, as the aquamarine eyes were lost in the absort contemplation of her violinist hands, "Your father, late Sumeragi Seimei-sama, had just been married to our mother's younger sister, Umimoto Mitsuaki, and so gave our family the everlasting honor of being added to the ancestral Sumeragi Clan..."

A pause then, as both her alabaster palms came together in front of her shapely mouth in a meditating, ashamed gesture of indirect recrimination.

"Our parents had been until then married for two years. Two years... and already our father no longer felt love for his wife..." the azure eyes were raised to the impeccable white ceiling as a distant, bitter smile became evident in her thin lips, "Obaa-sama told me she was a low-class woman from Kyoto's outskirts. Beautiful, outrageous, but still nothing but a woman from the streets. It's curious how obaa-sama doesn't seem to remember anything about her apart from her red hair, like fire. A person like that had nothing to do against our mother's beauty..."

Both twins exchanged a silent glance, each pair of huge green pupils now solely darkened by the seriousness of the matter.

"And so what happened...?"

Subaru faintly dared to lift his head at Hokuto-chan's question, as he was tightly holding Midori's hand at the edge of the sofa, able to tell for his young male cousin's quick breath and lowered eyes that such story didn't bear a happy ending.

Mitchuru was absently playing with one of her celadon colored locks as she went on, the expression on her face giving out traces of year lasting efforts to tame the fury she felt whenever recalling those events.

"So he had to make a decision. A decision between discipline and dishonor. Between right and wrong. He had to choose between being a high Sumeragi or a nameless traitor to his own principles and kind, " a heavy sigh escaped from that feminine chest, eyes gleaming in barely hidden despise, "Unfortunately, he was a weak and unthankful man. So he chose wrong."

Hokuto's emerald eyes went wide in scandalized surprise, "He betrayed your mother??"

"Not only that..."

Mitchuru's iris were as hard as polished blue marble when she came to meet her cousin's ones.

"He dared keep this vile relationship secret until far after our birth, even knowing this woman already carried his child... With that, he betrayed the whole Clan."

The nacreous, slender fingers ruffled through the thickness of her already slightly disarrayed bluish hair as the young, beautiful Mizunoto's eyes remained down in absolutely open shame, "Us, the Umimoto family, that are no more than a minor branch welcomed inside the high breast of the royal Sumeragi Clan only by marriage... and he still dared to betray that..."

Hokuto regretted her impulsive comment just the second she witnessed her cousin's distress, aware of the way totally unguilty Mitchuru seemed to carry the whole, ancestral burden of her father's dishonor over her tired shoulders.

A shiver ran through her thin spine.

Humiliated by an error she hadn't committed...

Suffering for another person's shame...

All at once she painfully reminded her of Subaru.

"My father's horrid sin only came to the light a few years later. I remember I was still under Lady Sumeragi's Omnyoudo training at the Osaka mansion, Midori being less more than a little baby," the azure iris briefly passed over her younger brother's silent figure, without expecting the desolated boy to return that glance, then went on, "Obaa-sama was merciful enough to forgive his insult under the condition he never was to see that woman again..."

A suffocated pause then, as a deep breath was carried to her burning lungs in a shiver.

"Then, it happened... The night my father secretly traveled to Kyoto to say good bye to her, the woman's house was caught up in a mysterious fire," the feminine lips were twisted up in a dry, bitter grin, "He shouldn't have cared but... Midori was there... That woman seemed to have developed great affection towards him and so my father took him with him..."

The boy's slight frame was shaken by a broken, muffled whimper as he was breaking into sad, silent tears again, moving even closer to equally anguished Subaru as both seemed to comfort each other by the lone certainty of their presence.

Hokuto's hugely open eyes were partially veiled by the velvety pink shadow of her painted eyelids in discrete gesture of horror.

Mitchuru's voice was dry and monotone when whispering out her next words.

"Our father managed to save Midori, but they all perished in the flames: him, his vile lover, and their son..."

"Oh, Gosh!"

Hokuto-chan's overwhelmed mutter was silenced under the choking sound of Midori's weeping while she began noticing with sincere startlement how Subaru surprisingly remained silent and still as a mother-of-pearl statue, and the younger Sumeragi girl mused if she really wanted her cousin to go on.

Should we better not know...?

For the sake of everybody...

"This is... I can't believe it!" a purple-nailed hand was raised up to her silky fringe to removed the ebony strands of hair that kept on persistently sticking to her sweating skin, expressive, normally outrageous green eyes still wide in display of her absolute cluelessness. Then she turned again to her silent female cousin, "And you have been keeping this away from us for... what, the sixteen years of our lives??"

Mitchuru's eyes had until then remain as bright aquamarine steel, only softening a bit now out of respect when she confronted the silent, static figure of somber Subaru.

"I'm so sorry, in the name of the whole Family, that this was never told to you under better circumstances, Subaru-kun," the soft and vehement accent in her voice would have let the shocked boy know she really meant it, had he been listening, "As the Thirteenth Head of the Clan, you should have known... But for such a long time we thought he had died in that fire...!"

She let them know by the sinister emphasis of her voice how much she really wished it had been so.

Hokuto almost felt tempted to rush to the young, perturbed woman's side and wrap her comprehensive arms around her as she saw how the classically beautiful face was filled with a devastating mix of horror and grief, her no longer serene voice breaking.

All her false stoicism gone, Mitchuru looked like a trapped mermaid: weak and helpless without the one thing that supported her.

She would have surely done so, hadn't her young heart been still so full of inner doubts and reproaches itself.

Damn... can I really be this hard...?

"I only wonder how he managed to survive that hell..." Mitchuru lifted her weary head back again from the nearly defeated pose it had moments before acquired, azure-green eyes lit once again by all the fierce anger from which she apparently gained the strength to continue, "But he seems to have acquired the demonic power to control fire. Oh, he's been after Midori ever since I have a memory, sick with the same infectious, sinful feelings of incestuous lust he had passed on to my brother. Until now the Clan's power had been able to hold him back, but..."

Her face was turned into an almost sly mask of intrigue when voicing out the next words, "If only I knew how did he always managed to know where he was..."

"Kizuna..."

The whole room was forced to fall into astonished silence by the mere sound of that name, since all the eyes, even Subaru's that had until then been absently fixed in an abstract point of the wall, turned to behold mostly uncomprehending, partially unbelieving about the simple explanation Midori had given to that enigma.

The young boy's eyes were nearly black, shadowed by clouds of sorrowful resignation.

"No..."

Mitchuru rose to her feet, the expression that twisted the usually calm beauty of her feminine, adult features letting out all the surprised horror that she felt, "No, it can't be...!"

Subaru's glassy emerald eyes glimmered even wider.

"Kizuna means bond, ne? And that's what she is: a bond between my nii-san and I," Midori's childish face almost appeared eerie and demential as the traces of a bitter smile curved the sweetness of his parted lips, darkened green eyes passing from the figure of his shocked elder sister to then again face the void, "My nii-san gave her to me, and told me that if I looked very deep inside the red eye he had given her, I could always talk to him, even when we were miles apart," his voice turned once again into the heart breaking, though more understandable sobbing, as he folded his arms in his small lap as if he was cradling the little fuzzy form of the absent cat, incredible to realize he still had tears left to cry, "He said no one else could look into that eye but me... She was our most precious secret..."

Hokuto did have to stand up when Mitchuru almost seemed to faint, barely getting by her cousin's side to grasp he slender hand in time to hold her back from losing consciousness out of the shock that she felt, "Mitchu-chan!!"

"My good Gods...!" the young woman's face was nearly as white as the fine silk of her elegant shirt, "And I always thought he had found that animal in the streets... There was always something about it... though I could never know..."

She paused for a second, glancing at Hokuto's concerned cute face as if it was the very first time she looked at her.

Then a deep breath, and the young Mizunoto seemed to restore the amount of mind order that was necessary to force herself to rebuild her severeness and strength back to what it was, "Lady Sumeragi must know about this..." It was as if the sudden memory of a matter of deeper importance had abruptly come to her mind, and neither Hokuto nor the other, mute watchers of the scene could understand the wrenching grief that subtly filled her voice as she spoke the next words, azure eyes fixed in the female Sumeragi twin that was still by her side, faithful, "Maybe we should have a chance to discuss it at... at the Council. For now that hellish creature stays caged in my room, and apart from Midori's hands! At least until I work out how that monster has managed to give a breath of fire to it's blind eye..."

Those words said, she crossed the short distance that separated her from the large sofa where her younger brother rested with three elegant, the least faltering steps, leaving Hokuto open-mouthed to her back.

But...

Some link between the two girls seemed to be cut the moment Mitchuru's musician fingers let go of Hokuto's trembling ones.

"Excuse us, but we should now leave."

The now perfectly expressionless, young Sumeragi minor silently extended a hand to the faded figure of Midori, which the depressed teenager went to grasp with condemned abandon, being lifted from the coach with the same ease Mitchuru would have picked up a ragged doll, no resistance ever presented.

Only after her mind actually credited both her cousins' short steps carrying themselves towards the illuminated corridor, after her frantic emerald eyes went to charge static, nearly catatonic Subaru with a glance that asked him if he was really planning to sit there and do nothing about it, Hokuto Sumeragi realized she'll have to do something for herself.

"Wait!!" she thought the astonished doubt depicted by the shrilling sound of her voice drove it so high she would be able to shatter the room's crystals, as her slender, skinny figure was partially heading after the mute couple, "What the hell do you mean, you're leaving?! Give us a chance to talk about this, for god's sake, let us HELP!!"

It was as if the entire world had gone mad around her: Midori's naturally enthusiastic soul in such a pitiful state of auto-compassive resignation, Mitchuru facing her with that expression of total emptiness...

Someone should have to put things back in order there, and should better do it now!

"You can't give us the happy news you have an illegitimate brother and leave like this!!" tears of impotence where almost blossoming at the birth of her rimmed eyelashes, the beautiful pixie face lit up with the deepest fury she thought she could ever feel, "Let me at least know the goddamn guy's name, lemme ease it a bit on you!! Let at least Midori stay here and talk it along with Subaru... Subaru!!!" fear filled her outrageous heart when her penetrating scream didn't seemed to achieve anything close to a possible reaction from her beloved twin, divided as she was in two by both equally dramatic situations.

"I appreciate your intentions, Hokuto-chan," and the only thing she needed to end up getting overboard was that stoic, serene accent in Mitchuru's half-trembling voice now that she knew it was unreal, "But this is a matter I believe I'm able to handle by myself..."

By-your-self?!

She was about to obey her prime impulse and run after the somber figures of her conflictive cousins through the main corridor, when the thought of Subaru having detached his mind from the world of the living caught her equally worried.

And Hokuto's slender, curvy feminine body was caught up in a turning back, turning front sort of bizarre dance that almost made her laugh.

"Oh, dang!! If only I didn't have so many goddamn things to be mad about!!"

Decision made, she hurried to the door without noticing the shadowy shape of a huge bird of prey that soared to abandon it's unnoticed perch at the darkened, large terrace balcony and lost itself among the artificially bright Tokyo night.

 

 

A black and greasy column of smoke lifted up from the car's wrenched tubeways, engulfing his humongous body the second he adjusted the loosening piece to it's former place with the aid of a huge pincer.

Nearly the entire, heavy structure of the car that covered his upper body quivered, threatened to be reduced to jingling pieces by his convulsive, violent cough, and he fought to control himself, push back the damnable fury in which he was lost, knowing he'd have to pay for all the damages if the car happened to be caught up in flames by 'accident'.

Ahhh, yeah.

Such a beautiful morning to be torturing himself with the images of a bad evening...

The least he needed now was another bad luck strike, as he knew how things would turn out if he didn't take the precautions of not angering himself with the memories of the previous night any further.

It seemed funny but, even as he had that weird ability of his since he had a memory, he was still not totally able to control it, as ironic as it would seem.

Yet, could any man call himself capable of controlling his own emotions...?

His love...

A bitter, crooked smile came to his blackened lips as it occurred him so.

Love, that was the only thing that kept him tied to that senseless world, that held him back from turning those unexplainable powers of his against himself and put an end to all the meaningless torture that his existence had always been...

And yet love, -his love- impossible as it seemed for two persons in their given condition, was the one thing for which he suffered.

Stupidly ironic.

A sigh escaped from his already calming chest as he forced himself to relax as much as he could, spitting out to one side the remaining traces of the vile taste breathing the burnt, oily smoke had brought to his mouth.

Only then he noticed a pair of faultless, glossy black shoes standing right in front of his work place as if patiently waiting for him to finish what he was doing, seemingly as fine and expensive as the pearl gray suit that fell slightly over them.

He frowned in slightly disgusted surprise.

Another client at that hour in the morning?

Probably some lazy gentleman whose sportive car had suffered a minor missfunction which he was too sissy to take care of, so he disdainfully thought with a wicked grin as he slipped himself forward and out from beneath the car he was actually working on.

It was easy money after all...

His eyes took a little time to get accustomed to the hurting brilliance that cascaded inside the comfortably dark garage from it's large metallic door that laid up and open a only few steps away from where he laid.

Then he found himself looking up directly at a stunningly handsome, cloyingly cheerful smilly face from which a pair of honey-colored eyes glanced back at him with a warm glint of kindness from behind gold-rimmed glasses.

Dark azure eyes went wide with almost startled surprise.

"I'm sorry to bother you sir, but my car has suffered a little technical problem that exceeds me. Could you please take a moment to look at it?"

Not entirely the face, but the evidently false obliviousness of that voice was what made Himoto's mind trigger up in half-angry, half-scared recognizement.

"How the heck did you manage to find me??" he thundered out in fierce demand, raising himself up the rolling board where he had been laying just seconds ago so he could face his unexpected visitor in a more dignified, sitting possition.

Even though he'd never dared to stand up.

Seishirou Sakurazuka flashed him a dazzling smile.

"Oh, you have no idea how very resourceful I am," he joked in what seemed to be a totally casual attitude, then glanced back at Himoto with such a playful smile, so unlike the one who was supposed to be an emotionless assassin, "But do not worry: I'm not planning to let it become a habit. I'm just here to talk about your daisukina Midori-kun..."

He permitted himself such an act of bravery as snarling out it mocking despise, arms coming around his muscled knees as he took some brief moments to analyze the man that stood right next to him in the play of light and darkness cast by the intruding sunshine, gifted as he was with more serenity than he had had the night before.

Had that man not been what he was, and he could have broken his cocky neck by a single crack of fingers.

"And what news can you give me about my own little brother, Guardian?" feeling a taste for suicidal tendencies that morning, he snatched away the soft-skinned hand that gently offered him an immaculately white handkerchief, making him realize how black-stained his face might have been.

He chose to use his own, shaggy piece of cloth to cleanse himself up carelessly as he awaited the man's response.

"Not much," the look in those enviably calm brown eyes was suddenly abstracted, losing themselves for a brief second into the contemplation of the outside's clearness to then turn once again to his crouched figure. Had he been standing, Himoto thought, and he wouldn't seem as tall and overpowering as he now did, "Only the reality that with your possessive and excessively passionate attitude you're surely leading the poor innocent child to a madhouse," the perfectly neat, raven eyebrows were slightly raised as if with that ridiculously delicate gesture he could grant verifiability to his wacko suppositions, "You know your love for him isn't how it should be. As you're conscious to the fact that by encouraging your forbidden relationship you only risk to have him even deeperly hurt," for just a moment the handsome face was left devoid of expression, just as it had been that previous night at Tokyo Bay, "Even more than the Sumeragi Clan had ever hurt you..."

It could have been the poisonous combination of that man's entire speech, the way he dared provide his despiseable opinion towards matters he, in his inhumanly void nature could never understand, bittersweet, torturing feelings he could never know what it was to experience, but Himoto would later understand it was the ultimate mention of the disgusting breed of traitors that was the lone responsible for both his and Midori's suffering the one thing that had triggered the until then carefully tamed fury in him.

"How can you speak so surely?" it was a hateful hiss at first, heat rising up from his suddenly exacerbated body dangerously, to then let all his harshly powerful voice cry out the hate and frustration that had been there since the beginning of his life, "Never in your goddamn life as a butchin' killer you could understand the least of what I've been through, all the horror I've seen!! You could never speak with the least part of comprehension about what that fuckin' Sumeragi Clan, that frigid cold bitch that holds Midori away from me have made me suffer!!"

His rage was nearly strong enough to make the whole garage blow up into a huge pyre facing his opponent's indifferently handsome face, arms clad up in a long black raincoat rising up a bit in casual gesture of sincerity.

"I do know," he declared as if in an unimportant remark, "I can't help being peeky sometimes. Besides," the sweetness of the smile he dedicated to him almost made his stomach revolve with nausea, "I feel I owe you a little favor since that first night we met at the gates of the Sumeragi Building..."

Himoto couldn't help but letting out a puzzled face, to which his counterpart reacted letting his smile turn into a darkish, infectiously evil grin that nearly made his boiling blood freeze, "Don't think I didn't notice. It was you the one I actually walked into. No one else's contact would leave such an awfully persistent mark in the skin..."

As he mutely watched him lift a slender, powerful hand up to his shoulder, Himoto could imagine the brownish alveolus of burnt epidermis that spread over the broad muscles, nearly invisible by now for sure, as his mind took him back to the one moment the other reminded him of, only to nearly fall from the stool in horrified surprise.

The elegantly dressed guy with the cigarette???

He rolled his eyes backwards in gesture of angry astonishment.

Darn, he hadn't realized how long were the reaches of his bad luck.

He should start paying more attention to whom he chose to stumble upon.

The Sakurazukamori let out an educated, musical laugher of amusement up to his right, "And well, if with your last remark you were actually referring to you icy half sister, then I must tell you she's a headache I have to suffer myself..."

It was almost funny to perceive a strained accent of anger spontaneously filling the dark hunter's baritone voice, and Himoto couldn't help but betraying a sarcastically crooked smile.

"Is the favor you talked about getting her out of my way, Guardian?" he joked, though he might admit to himself he really cradled a faint glint of hope towards the idea, "Do you also hire yourself as a paid killer?"

There was that crystalline laugher again, even more wholehearted, as the raven haired man made a dismissing gesture with his slender hand, "Gods, no! I'd be rich by now if I happened to be interested in such business!" then again, his shadowy face assumed a deep seriousness, so out of the blue as if that man who was supposed to be devoid of feelings had the power to mimic them all at will, "I only wanted to remind you about the damage you're causing to your brother/beloved with your insane game..."

That comment caused Himoto to be bathed with fiery anger once more, though this time quite anticipating it.

"He really cares about you, you know?" the Sakurazukamori spoke the words as if they should sound as any novelty to him, "He even game me your last name when he came to ask me to operate his ugly precious cat..."

There his eyes couldn't do anything but going wide in hilarious surprise.

"You??" he ventured in mockingly laughing, nervous voice, "The Vet??"

The golden-eyed man affected a faked look of hurt dignity, "One has to do something for a living, don't you think?"

Himoto limited himself to chuckle as he brushed his bulky hands against the half torn, smoke-dirt covered surface of his jeans in disdainful gesture of indifference, willing to let his unwanted guest know the meeting was over.

"Go stick your snoopy nose in your own blood-spillin' business, Assassin" he recommended as he finally stood up, large pincer in hand as if it could turn out to to be a useful weapon against the being that was present by his side, almost at his same level, "Leave me and my otouto alone..."

The lone reaction he summoned from the tall, handsome, ebony-haired man was a slight shrug of shoulders, as a long fingered hand reached up to arrange the elegant frames of his glasses over the arch of his straight nose.

"Do whatever you want," the sincere lack of interest evident in that voice caused Himoto to ask himself why had he gone through all the trouble of getting there if he didn't give a damn, to which the man promptly answered, "Just keep my warning in mind. I have already fulfilled my obligations towards the one I care about..."

A spark of jealousy was so terribly triggered by that last remark Himoto Hikari had to hold himself back from surrendering to his impulsiveness and charging the whole, significant weight of his muscular body against the calmly departing figure.

"I thought you said you were not interested in Midori..." he let out in a vicious whisper.

The Sakurazukamori slightly turned from his way at this comment, amber-hazel eyes depicting a bit of smoothened impatience, "I thought I had made that clear..."

A second passed by before the man finally smiled, turning fully around to face him and speak his explanation.

"The thing is, if anything happens to Midori, Subaru-kun's heart would surely be broken. And that's the last thing I'll ever allow to happen."

Himoto spit his unbelieving attitude out.

"And weren't you supposed to be feelingless...?"

Letting out a sincerely resigned, intrigued sigh of what could be so perfectly recognized as longing, something that got his listener utterly surprised, his visitor's caramel eyes were once again melting into nothingness as he turned around to leave.

"That, my friend, is something I'm no longer feeling sure about myself..."

 

 

"Hora! So how do I look like?? And please be honest!!"

Hokuto turned hopefully around in a graceful, model-like movement, giving her slender back to the tall standing mirror only after she felt entirely satisfied with the reflection it gave back to her to go face the absent figure of her twin brother for ultimate approval, still half accommodating the heavy garments of her lately acquired and most difficultly achieved night suit.

There were two different kinds of hope in those apparently oblivious, playfully cheerful green eyes, framed by black-silver eye shadows.

One betrayed the reasons for which she had spent hours a day getting those clothes made, the other, more subtly hidden behind the seemingly superficial worrisome of the previous one, remained burning in the emerald depths of those pupils as if in a mute prayer.

And partially that was what she was doing... praying.

She was thankful the dress was designed to call for attention: depicting the perfect symbolism of Ying-Yang, half her body clad in white, silvery silk while the other was graced with the velvety black colors of the night, the sun and the moon mixing up in everything that asked for an outrageous shape, including the hat that crowned her proudly beautiful head as well as myriad of other accessories.

She was the perfect incarnation of the eclipse.

One point for Kenzo, ten points for me!

But unlike she was sure the whole army of Sumeragi women would turn around to behold her masterpiece with greedy envy in their eyes the moment she walked into the ballroom, her heart fell to her stilleto-heeled shoed feet when the dreamy green eyes that mirrored hers both in color and in brightness took just a brief moment to avert their longing, melancholic glance from the sad contemplation of the terrace to be cast absently onto her.

Subaru checked slowly every piece of her outrageous custom, nearly as if indifferently, heavenly face bathed in almost expressionless mournfulness, to then give out a quivering sigh.

"You look beautiful..."

Oh, really...?

She crushed her make-up covered eyelids hardly shut, echoing the previous, pathetic manifestation of her twin soul a bit more loudly.

She would have surely preferred him to say she looked awful and achieve a bit more vivid reaction.

When Subaru had somehow overcome a bit of the partial catatonia the whirlwind of shocking events that had taken place the previous night had driven his extremely sensitive self into, she thought the rest was up to her to help him accept the way the things had been set up.

As always...

Knowing there was little both could do to change those conditions.

Specially given Mitchu-chan's stubbornness...

She couldn't hold back a grin to come curve her carefully painted, full lips, only a shadow of worrisome coming to her distracted mind facing the possibilities of facial silvery rouge stains.

Maybe that feeling of half anger, half sincere disappointment was partially her own fault.

Maybe she had thought the girl to be perfect, so beautiful and untouched in her ethereal serenity, a beloved figure of adoration, flawless beyond the possibilities of a normal human being.

My heroine...

She couldn't deny she had felt a bit of relief among the current of opposing emotions that closed in on her the moment the young woman had let out her first hints of humanity.

She shook her remarkably heavier head slowly.

But it was not that.

Not even the recurrent, despiseful though persistent recrimination of why did it all have to happen on her perfect night could distract her from that certainty.

A glance at Subaru and everyone could tell so, more still she: the one who had shared every thought with him ever since both swam together in the warm senselessness of the uterus.

She did so now, silk-clad arms folded reflexively while she looked at him as if to reconfirm the theory she had worked out since the skinny boy had open eyes to the world that past morning.

Those eyes...

Hers narrowed slightly as her face betrayed a shadow of deep worrisome, sure her inner focused male reflection would never see it.

There has never been such a look in those eyes before, as much as I can remember...

And she had a bloody good memory.

Oh, she didn't want to think a single moment the whole awful thing about Midori's ailing love, the certainty that the Clan he was supposed to lead had done nothing about it was not a very important part in his state of totally miserable grief.

He had plenty of reasons for feeling so.

Yet...

Su-chan...

You should understand you're not alone in this: I feel as much pain about this whole horrid stuff as you can possibly imagine...

But someone has to be strong for both of us.

And destiny has always decided it has to be me.

Only that her suffering was more likely to be traduced into mindless anger, so she mused as she contemplated mutely the way her twin had resumed his silent meditations, shimmering emerald iris facing the rugged floor now, as if trying to work out secret patterns drew invisibly over it's impeccable surface.

And that was what made it easier for her to bear with pain enough to have the spirit to cheer up her brother.

Still, it was not because of that.

Her light steps slowly took her to sit on the puffy covers of her pink bed beside thoughtful Subaru, the eternally kinky expression that constantly lit up her face now turned into a serious, bittersweet smile of total, almost adult understanding.

Her twin never turned to look at her.

Oh, Subaru... I've longed for this moment, and you know it.

I've even had dreams about the three of us walking carefreely in the sun, defying the whole world, and you and Sei-chan kissing and hugging in the sunlight...

It almost made me feel jealous...

She wrapped both her exotically adorned arms around the thin body that occurred to her so fragile and weak in those moments, blushed cheek pressing against alabaster white cheek as her own eyes were suddenly lost into her deepest thoughts, almost emulating the absent glimmer of Subaru's.

But now I finally have you where I wanted you to be...

I'm stupidly regretting I'm no longer able to help you...

Not with that...

Only he could do that.

She felt she could slap Seishirou's cutely smiling face way hard for what he was making her beloved brother go through.

How could it be he had not been even capable of dropping a line in whole damn day?? He had forsaken Subaru to his newly discovered emotion in such a mindlessly cruel, egoistic way! She had nearly lost the counting of the calls her desperate twin had given him in hopes he could throw some clear water over the previous night's theme, to the point it had almost turned her mad enough with anger to throw the communicator out the window when everything they got was the impersonally gentle tone of his voice mail message.

So manly of you, Sei-chan...

I really thought you were different...

Well, it was true he had been so nastily shoved out their door in a way the poor thing could have never imagined, but it was still not enough of a reason to make himself wanted like that.

As the best friends they were, she had even felt tempted to pay him a mind-opening visit (something from which he would have not come out without a swollen eye or something), but Mitchuru had been so insisting about the last make overs for tonight's Council she had robbed her from anything else apart from them.

Now both sat there unsure of this whole matter's destiny.

"Su-chan, you know he will do something about it," perhaps it was the passionate need to free his innocent heart from the wrenching pains love always brought about, perhaps due to the feeling of urgency the fact she was leaving in minutes inspired, but she finally chose to talk, repeating all over again the same things she had been telling him all along that awful, thankfully brief day, "He cares about you so much... You can tell by just looking at him!"

He loves you...

She smiled a comforting smile that was the echo of the sweet satisfaction she felt when the pale, slightly more boyish face was turned to her as if she was in front of a mystic mirror where she was finally able to find the other part of her soul.

An undeniable glimmer of hope lit up those eyes until almost making them blinding.

Yeah!

"You know he's not the kind of guy to leave a matter unfinished. He'll do something about it!" she was encouraged to repeat, a bit more firmly and almost lecturing in the intensity of her glance, backing up her words with the strong squeeze she gave those narrow shoulders, as rounded and delicate as hers.

Then her pupils shimmered brightly with the birth of an idea.

"Why don't you go talk to Mi-chan, and maybe spend the night with him," she was careful enough to soften her tone significantly as she spoke those words, whispering them as if in a secret plea, "He's alone downstairs at the other other pent, so maybe it'll be nice if you two..."

But Subaru was slowly shaking his head, and his impulsive twin almost let out a manifestation of self reproach for having brought that subject up the moment the young Omnyouji's eyes then again darkened.

Fine, at least he talked.

"Midori wants to be alone, just as he always did in the past," the unearthly beauty of his face as it was bathed by the pastel light of her room once he lifted his head to survey at the navy blue sky outside the terrace almost let Hokuto-chan herself out of breath.

She wondered if she could look as beautiful when she was sad as he did.

That would be the perfect picture for Sei-chan to witness.

"He doesn't want my company, and even if he did," his shy, slightly more masculine voice strained a bit unusually as if a veil of anger was slowly being laid over his previous sadness, "Mine is not the affection that he needs now..."

Hokuto could grasp the insinuation with bare hands.

"I know!"

She decided to break through the barrier of the absolutely different ways both were facing the whole matter by embracing her twin close to her breast, cradling his delicate, nearly weightless head there as if he was some kind of restless baby, the passion in her feminine voice blurring the impression a little, still worth the strangled 'Hokuto-chan' she received, "I can't even understand Mitchuru-chan's distant attitude myself sometimes! And she's the closest idea I've ever known of a best female friend...!"

She could listen to Subaru's soft manifestation of tender concern, and that let her suppose her voice had surely faltered when speaking out those words.

Nevertheless, she went on.

"But I just want to leave this building with the certainty you'll be as fine as you can with all those things filling your head... Su-chan," she laid both hands on his infinitely cute face as she made him look directly into her shiny green eyes, that would surely let him know the importance of that wish, "I have to be on my way in a few minutes! Please tell me you'll be in peace!"

Subaru slowly rose from his crouched position against her equally thin body, the sweetness of his precious features bathed in what was the deepest combination of pain and a slight trace of fear.

The emerald eyes were abstracted.

"I'll be... completely alone..."

His voice was lowered as if what he had just said held a secret meaning to his own heart, something Hokuto could not understand, and therefore brought a disturbing feeling of total impotence.

The doorbell rang before she was able to feel more miserable.

"Probably Mitchu-chan forgot her car keys," she muttered out of barely moving lips, heading her way to the corridor as if her twin's ultimate declaration had turned her into a zombie.

At least so she felt.

"It's okay, I'll go."

Her head flashed around at Subaru's totally unexpected voiced offer, face giving out a confused expression that depicted both gladness, cluelessness and hope, as her twin was on his feet by her side.

A sad though extremely tender and loving smile lit up the beauty of his pure face as he caught sight of her before disappearing into the corridor as a vision from an early morning's daydream.

"I also want you to be fine, nee-san..."

Hokuto could just fall back into the sea of pink that was her bed, letting out a moan which she was not sure could be considered as a result of thankfulness.

Subaru felt as if he floated in a thick mist while he walked towards the seemingly bigger front door, the steps he took towards it apparently supported by a floor that all at once had turned incorporeal.

He could just begin to imagine against his will what would that night mean to him.

Loneliness...

His heart was filled with an abstract fear, the kind one feels only towards the completely unknown, every time he recalled Midori's crude words about being lonely, as something deep inside of him kept on reminding him he would perfectly understand the utter meanings of the word that night.

Seishirou-san, gone...

Hokuto-chan, absent...

Emerald eyes flashed with the already borning tears of frightened anguish that began to well under his lower eyelids, wetting his long eyelashes.

All of his saviors abandoned him.

And still after all he'd been through, he had also failed Midori: even in the moment he thought his heart would burst out of the passion and the fear he had felt when his beloved best friend had walked out the door he was now about to reach, even then he had not been able to scream out what he felt...

The love that he felt...

The need he had experienced...

Well, it's too late now to even think about that... don't you think, Mi-chan...?

A bitter smile curve up his moistured, rosebud-like, trembling lips.

At least you had the courage of letting your love rule your world.

You always proofed braver than me...

Yet a last effort had to be made, and he found himself possessing the strength to hold back the tears that throbbed to freak free, promising the means of break through he yearned for, but didn't think he deserved.

Coward...

His gloved hand closed over the right doorknob of the twin-bladed entrance so hardly it even hurt.

He could feel the beating coldness of the unalterable metal against his fingers even beneath the soft cloth that shielded him.

At least he'd force himself to hide those tears from Hokuto-chan's motherly eyes before she was gone too. He didn't have the right to involve her on the suffering he had brought about himself on his own.

Just for all the times she had been by his side when he needed her, he promised himself to be strong for her on that, his first lonely night.

And Midori's...

It's funny now to think everyone says we're so much alike...

You love an impossible, and so do I.

And perhaps we even lost our beloveds forever in the same night...

Can either of us do anything about it, but understand each other so perfectly as we do?

A somehow comforting feeling of strange, passive resignation cloaked his heart as he slowly cast the door blade opened.

I'll soon be as lonely as you probably are.

Perhaps as forsaken to any hope of happiness as you are now, alone in that room...

It's not true we are alike.

We're just the same.

But just the instant he lifted his glassy iris all thoughts of anguish, fear or frustration were chased away by the sight of a cheerful, caring pair of gold-brown eyes that stared glittering at him from the perfect frame of an incredibly handsome, warmly smiling face.

He froze for an unbelieving instant during which the tall man in the doorway surveyed the inside of the penthouse, soft brow frowning with a teasingly doubtful expression on the masculine features.

"Am I still welcome in here, Subaru-kun?"

Showers of tears exploded in the emerald eyes he had before him as the tiny shards of a breaking window.

"SEI-SHI-ROU-SAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It resulted certainly difficult in the state of pleased deafness that joyful, soprano shrilling had left Seishirou to flash one hand against the door frame for support so both of them wouldn't collapse onto the cool outer hall's floor by the strength with which Subaru threw himself into his arms.

My Gods...

His free hand just went to clench the elastic cloth of the turtleneck catsuit covering the frail body that now shivered with convulsive sobs of happiness against his, supporting all his nearly insignificant weight as his small feet had long abandoned the floor.

Subaru-kun...

Oh, my Subaru-kun...

He could have never imagined, in his almost absolute ignorance towards how feelings worked, the wave of emotion that came to crush over his virgin heart facing the little Sumeragi's exhilaration would be so enormous.

Delicious...

He felt as weak as the boy he was now supposed to be providing tender consolation to.

No, he told to himself as the scent of Subaru's strawberry perfumed hair sweetly intoxicated his rapid breathing.

Weaker...

Seishirou would have closed his eyes out of the pleasure, the relief that he felt for the lone certainty he was protecting that whipping body against his own, hadn't it been for the sound of furiously rushing steps against the carpeted corridor's floor.

And the sight of a walking Ying-Yang symbol who froze on the spot right before them the moment she caught sight of their embracing figures.

A smiled triggered in his lips at once.

Hokuto took her clasped hands to her mouth, and her face performed the richest parade of emotion Seishirou had ever witnessed.

For a brief second he astonishedly expected to see her break into tears for the first time in the life they have shared, then such a passionate fury lit up that girlish pixie face that even made him wonder if he would be able to escape the scene with Subaru-kun in his arms in one piece, after which it also blurred, leaving behind only an emotional, sweetened expression of infinite gratefulness that arose in his heart something he didn't think he was ready to confront.

"It was about time, don't you think??!"

The strangled quiver of her playful voice, together with the feeling of Subaru's body still crying himself out against his heated chest...

The amber eyes gleamed with the evidence of his pleased confusion.

He was defenseless.

Too strong...

He even wondered if he could have prevented this when he made the decision of going there.

Subaru-kun, Hokuto-chan...

I've come here only to give myself away to emotion.

"Seishirou... san..."

Just then Subaru's voice came to back him up with the sweetness and brokeness of his frail, whipping tone, and he thought the shades of red spread over his slightly swollen, tear-wet cheeks only helped making him more impossibly beautiful.

And mine...

Blinding emerald eyes sparkled out at him, filled with the perfect mirror of the unnamed feeling he now experienced just before the weak head fell back against the warm protection of his chest, a muffled whimper ultimately coming out to let itself be heard, "You came...!"

Fortunately, that put him in a way he somehow dominated.

The art of easing Subaru-kun's heart.

"Of course I did," he surprised himself with the soft tenderness of his own whisper, allowing him back to his feet as his slender fingers went to hold the over-sensitive velvet of his cheeks, shivering under their wetness as he gently made the boy tilt his face up to look at him again, the emotion it shone with menacing to finish taking his heart over, "Do you think I'd let such a silly thing as last night's to come up between us, Subaru-kun...?"

There was a hidden meaning in his words that was as evident to Subaru as it was to him.

And his fingertips were slowly brushing away the shimmering paths of his precious tears, tempted to learn back the same pathways with his now dry lips.

"Seishirou-san..."

Subaru-kun was leaning against him, half lidded eyes doted with an emeraude shade of longing he had never perceived there before, the emotion growing inside of him as their bodies remained together so strong he would then doubt what would have happened if Hokuto-chan hadn't come to stand right by their side, filling the delicious tension of the moment with her now totally regained, sunny attitude.

"Well, well, how should we call this scene?! 'The Lover Returns'??" the teasingly beautiful face acquired a faked, jokingly meditating gesture, the green lagoons of her pupils glittering with enthusiasm as she dedicated them a joyful wink, her glance so significant as to the way both were embracing each other it made Subaru-kun blush, and step away a little.

Her expression then betrayed that same feeling of gratefulness just before she turned entirely to him, glance shinning with mischief, "You know Sei-chan, you came just in time to know about what you missed! I bet you'd have found the little discussion Subaru had with Mitchu-chan after you left so really interesting! I think I should have recorded it for you!"

"Hokuto-chan!!" the way Subaru's already pinkish face turned pure bright scarlet let him confirm the verifiability of Hokuto's affirmation.

Seishirou's mahogany eyes blinked twice to the sound of the Sumeragi girl's outrageous laugher, wondering if he had come out with the idea of sending his Shikigami to explore a bit too late so the best part of the conversation had been missing.

If one could turn back time...

"Geeesh, but look at the time!!" a quick glance to a weirdly new, sun-shaped wristwatch brought a new expression of eagerness to Hokuto-chan's happily relieved face, as she echoed his thoughts, "I think I'd better be on my way and wait for Mitchu-chan at the building's entrance!"

That was music to his ears.

A deep satisfaction bathed Seishirou from inside as he really admired the way in which Subaru's crazy reflection knew how to be discreet sometimes.

She was half reaching for the door, as he gently following her with the youngest Sumeragi twin stick right by his side as he planned both would stay for the rest of the night, when some last minute recommendations seemed to cross Hokuto's distracted mind and she lectured him with a black velvet-gloved finger, an expression of faked seriousness in her face, "Almost forgot! I've left some little thing for Subaru's dinner at the refrigerator, but guess that now you're here to accompany him you'll be able to cook a more proper meal, Sakurazuka Seishirou-chan..."

Seishirou could only chuckle warmly as her eyes let him know what would happen to him if he didn't, and it occurred to him that nothing else could made that moment more perfect.

It was such a right thing, being just the three of them again...

He could almost touch the abstract emotion that made him so grateful about the idea.

Could this ever be close to what is called family...?

"I'm completely sure we'll be more than fine, Hokuto-chan," he assured, putting his strong arm around Subaru's narrow shoulders and pushing the little body against his in confident attitude, allowing himself to give the lovely smiling boy a brief though warm look of complicity, enjoying his blush as much as he had ever thought he would.

Hokuto raised her feminine hands in a solemn gesture that indicated them she was absolutely beyond the matter, stopping only half the way to wave them good bye from the main door.

"Bye, lovebirds!!" a last, totally suggestive wink was shamelessly flashed back at them with her last phrase, "Just don't bother to be good boys while you spend the night together!"

Seishirou kept silently smiling just a brief second before the door was closed, to then turn around to bathe his younger companion with a smile that was far too warm to hold further implications from being aroused, gold-brown eyes gleaming intently behind his impeccable glasses.

"So... We're finally alone, Subaru-kun..."

Subaru just lowered his bright gaze as he couldn't do anything but shyly return the smile.

 

 

Nii-san...

I come to you...

It was a fiery red, heavenly dream he was lost into.

Unable to discern what was wrong or right.

Concepts such as 'good', or 'evil' had turned as useless, broken and abstract as the cage that laid destroyed at his floating feet...

He was a child lost into the night.

Ki-zu-na

He called through the flames his bond of flesh and blood opened to him and let him inside, called for those flames that were part of him to come now and engulf him forever, lavish him away of the solitaire nightmare he was living in that darkened, empty room.

Called for a name he knew would be his salvation.

Kizuna...

Fiery winds were lifting him up higher above the senseless floor, as his emerald pupils turned orange-green and dilated as the coiling flames that flowered wildly from Kizuna's shiny red eye assumed the mirror of a human form...

...he loved.

"Onii-chan..."

The embracing heat made his tears of happiness evaporate into a sigh of vapor as he caressed the burning cheek of that harshly beautiful face with his palm, never being harmed even as those huge, muscled arms that were made of golden fire closed around his pleading body.

"Midori..."

"Take me, nii-san..."

Clothes were burnt to ashes in a blink of an eye as ghostly, flame-like kisses devoured his lips.

Take me within you...


 

End of Chapter 3 - Go to Next Chapter