Introduction
Hello.
He used to think that hellos were so very different from goodbyes. Used to. Now, he knows that hellos aren't that different at all. Maybe they're opposites. But they're not different.
Hellos are said at the start of a friendship, a meeting, a partnership, a relationship. Goodbyes are said when they end, or when a part of them ends. Beginnings are just another name for endings.
He thinks that if the metaphor of a piece of string is used, comprehension is more easily achieved. A piece of string has two tips—if one is labeled "start", then the other is labeled "finish", correct? But the two tips are precisely alike. There is no differing which is which save for the labels. So if one were to switch them, then the "finish" becomes the "start" and vice versa.
They're the same. It just depends where you start and where you finish.
Where you begin and where you end.
When you say hello and when you say goodbye.
So when he first meets Kurogane, and he introduces himself to the scowling, growling, bristling ninja—
My name is very long. So you can call me Fai. And the black one over there…what's your name?
I am not black! I'm Kurogane!
He knows with absolute certainty that there's going to be a goodbye somewhere at the end of that string. But another thing he's learned about hellos and goodbyes is that even though you can always be sure to see and grasp the beginning of the string—the hello—you can't always see the other end.
The goodbye.
So for now, he's just going to continue with the introductions—he still has to meet Sakura, after all—and wait and watch. And when the time does come for the goodbye—
Goodbye.
A/N: I thought it was about time that I joined in and started something like this. One of my favorite artists on Deviant Art is doing this Clamp 100 Themes thing, and I checked out the themes, and I loved them, AND her art helps me write, so I thought what the hell not, since I'm already suffering from KuroFai withdrawal anyway, what with being stuck in Compelled and all it's angsty glory for the time being. Who knows, this might help me finish the Secrets stuff faster.