For Unyielding Wish.

All my life, I'd been chasing this one woman.

No, this isn't some stupid love story where the guy and his childhood friend promises to get married when they become older, and then spend the rest of their life hunting each other down, only to find that they were close to where they'd been, and then get married to live happily ever after. Those kinds of things probably never happen, anyways.

The person I've been after was someone who always disappeared. One minute, she'd be there, and the next, gone from sight and the memories of everyone else – except me. Why me? Why'd she always leave me, curiosity nearly killing me as I looked for her, asking around only to receive strange looks and questions of my health and sanity?

. . .

I was a kid when I first saw her, and it was an odd childhood experience. There I was in the street, seven years old and biking around the street in the townhouse system with my friend, and out of one of the small, postage stamp-sized gardens, there was a lady. I couldn't see her face clearly enough from the distance, but with her long, vibrant pink hair and simple clothes and just that general aura of holiness all around her, I thought she was an angel.

(I still do, but that's not the point.)

And I wanted to get a better look at this angel I found on earth, because she was even dressed in a light flowing dress made out of some kind of white fabric that was waving in the wind, and she was looking right at me, like she was tempting me to come and have a better look, to see if she was really an angel.

I'd always been one for dares, even if they were really stupid. I rolled my bike closer and closer until I was off the street entirely with my bike – the most important thing I owed at the time – next to me, and about three yards from the lady when the car, screaming and screeching, swung right around the corner. As I watched in that fascinated horror one gets when one's near an incident of large, possibly devastating scale like this, the car swerved and smashed into the wall, running over the place I'd been a few moments ago.

The driver died. My friend and I didn't.

Our parents came running out at the sound, screamed, checked if we were alright, and then frantically called for some kind of help.

The lady was gone.

. . .

I never gave the lady a second thought, and it would have stayed that way during my life if I didn't meet her again. I was twelve this time, and on a trip to a resort with my family. A few people there suggested a snowboard for me, and I'd been seriously considering it, because you just can't look manly enough in skies when the lady at the equipment rental counter told me that they were out of snowboards my size.

Well, I nearly threw a tantrum there, and probably would have until they gave me one in a larger size, except the woman working at the counter was really pretty. Pink haired, blue eyed, and a gorgeous face. If I'd been older, I'd have tried to flirt with her or something. As it was, all I could do was try and take it like a man, and try to impress her with my good listening skills.

(It was the first and only time I tried that with a member of the female gender. I learned from my mistakes.)

Good thing I did. The snowboard class somehow ended up falling all over each other, and more than one kid ended up with broken legs or ankles. The most I suffered was a few snickers from the snowboarding kids at my choice of rented equipment before they fell and broke bones.

. . .

I began to make the connection with the lady and what bad luck – or what could have been bad luck – I had after my almost-car accident at age seventeen, one year after sweet sixteen. Despite me wearing my hair long and going around, occasionally smoking with a few of the kids who did that stuff, my parents still trusted me enough to lend me their car. In return for that trust, I decided to cart a few beers to my friend's – the word 'friend' used a bit loosely here – house, despite the fact that we were both underage. Didn't matter. He and I knew where to get them.

Driving in the dark, I nearly missed the white-clothed figure. Nearly. It was still a fabric bright enough to catch a sight of, and my hitchhiker was waiting on the side of the road, hoping to find a ride.

My first thought when I saw her in the distance was disbelief. Who the heck was crazy enough to be in this part of town at this time? Well, I was, at the time, but that was a bit different. Picking up booze didn't count. And she was a woman, too, and from the looks of her, she was the gentle kind, the one that didn't like hurting even a fly. She didn't belong here.

My second thought was that she was some kind of a murderer, or ghost. Those thoughts were dismissed as fast as I could chase them away. Wasn't I too old for this kind of crap?

My third thought let me slow to a roll, eventually stopping in front of her. It wasn't raining, but she still looked cold and downright miserable. "Hey," I called, rolling down the passenger window. "Do you need a ride?"

(I guess I could have made my face a bit more assuring and friendly, in the I'm-not-going-to-rape-you kind of expression, but it wouldn't have really mattered. She wasn't a normal person, though I didn't know then.)

At my question, she blinked in surprise, and looked down hesitantly at the car door. "Yes," she murmured, just loud enough for me to catch it.

She had a nice voice. An angelic voice, you could have called it. "Well, get in," I told her, unlocking the door. "Where to?"

Strapping the seat belt on, she gave me her address, not quite meeting my eyes. Maybe she didn't want to be recognized. I could understand that. If I had recognized her, I would have wondered why she hadn't aged at all in the ten years I'd first seen her.

Her address led me on a little detour from my destination, but it wasn't by much. "Alright, then," I said, and drove through the darkness, my headlights parting it for a short while, long enough for me to see the path. At the cross section where I'd come back later, I turned, and made my way to this one old house. It wasn't a haunted mansion, but that was only because it wasn't a mansion. Run down, old, and dirty, it didn't look like a place where a woman in white could live without getting too dirty. "Is this the place?"

She nodded, and unstrapped herself. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." I watched until she slipped inside the worn, old house, and then turned around, making my way back to the cross-section.

At the place where two streets came together and four different choices waited, I found a large crash. Two logging trucks, three automobiles, and one taxi, somehow all together in the night, had found themselves running into each other and smashing their bodies of malleable metals and shattering glass until the result was a wreck that could make people sick at the very sight.

I know I was sick when I saw it, more so when I learned that I could have been in the middle of it all if I hadn't taken a detour and continued to my friend's house.

Back at home, I phoned my friend, told him that I couldn't go because of this huge car crash, and then hung up, realizing for the first time that I'd seen the woman before. More than once.

The next day, I drove out to her house, but all that was there was a clearing, the remnants of a burnt house from a few years ago. I knew it was a few years ago because I asked the neighbors, all of them, and all of them gave me the same answer.

I didn't sleep for a few nights.

. . .

Twenty two. Partying at some bar. Seeing her, running out to find her, chasing her for a good thirty minutes only to see her disappear in front of my eyes.

There was a fire at the place, sometime after I left. No one died, but people were hurt from inhaling smoke.

. . .

Twenty six. I was about to go and screw around with a prostitute when she appeared in the red light district. I left the girl to chase her, but only ended up getting to my car after a few hours of hard running.

Turned out, the girl was in cahoots with a few muggers who went after her customers for some money. Whether they lived or not really just depended on luck, though the lot of them got caught after this one guy died on the night I left to try and catch the pink-haired woman.

. . .

Twenty seven. Business man. Her appearing in the meeting as one Megurine Luka shocked me long enough for some other person to volunteer to go to another country for the business trip.

No one remembered her, though they certainly remembered me asking around like a frenzied man. My fellow worker smiled at me, asked if I was working too hard nowadays, and what a shame it was that I couldn't go and have some fun in a different country.

There was an earthquake there. Our associate died.

. . .

I only saw her a few times in my life, mind, but each and every time, she left quite an impact on me as she led me on and away, making me want to find her, to ask her just who she was. What she was. Why she did what she did to save me from all that bad luck and give me another chance to live. How she did all that.

I guess it wasn't to be, though, because I never encountered such bad luck again. I must not have, anyways, because she never came to me again, to protect me or get me away from the place of danger.

I should be thankful that I don't see her and nearly get myself killed . . . but I still want to see her again. Her, the woman that I could only call 'Megurine Luka' because that had been the only name I knew her as. The woman that had saved my life more than once.

. . .

Kamui Gakupo closed the diary where he'd been recording his thoughts, and turned in his seat, trying to get a more comfortable position. He was too old for this. Actually, he was too old for anything, except to really stay somewhat still and sleep.

The buzzer in his room rang. "Mr. Kamui?" the nurse's voice asked over the device built into the wall. "You have a visitor. Should I let her in?"

Gakupo frowned. Who would that be? He was a single child, his parents had been dead for a long time, and he had never married. "Let her in."

In the short time he had, Gakupo placed the diary inside his drawers and shoved a few papers into order. Unlike most of the seniors in the retirement home, he was capable of doing quite a lot.

His nurse opened the door with a cheerful smile. "Hello, Mr. Kamui!" she chirped. "Your guest is here!"

Behind her blond hair, a flash of familiar, vibrant pink came into view. He frowned and squinted, trying to make his old eyes see without mistake to confirm what his old heart was hoping.

It was. She was here, and just as young as she'd been in all the times he'd seen her. "Hello, Gakupo," the woman he only knew as Megurine Luka smiled down at him serenely. "It's been a long time, hasn't it?"

He coughed, but when he spoke, it was filled with strength and youth like it hadn't been for decades. "It has."

I don't know, I was in a writing mood, but - god forbid - not any of my incomplete stories. So I just asked my auntie if she wanted a fic, and wrote this out in a few hours.

I still have an itch, though . . . It's an odd feeling. Must. write. fanfiction.

Anyways, Auntie Wishie gave me a storyline of 'some kind of myth'. Read about an urban legend where a taxi driver picks up a mysterious passenger who leads the driver to death, mostly by driving off a cliff, and somehow came up with the concept of a guardian angel. I'm weird. Sorry, auntie, if it's not as romantic as you would have liked . . .