Ohayou! Samurai Champloo is one of my favorite animes, and the ending really, really bothered me. How could they all just leave each other like that?! Sadness :,( I had to make sure they would see each other again, so I'm writing this! Mugen x Fuu forever!

In a shack outside of Nagasaki, a young woman sat in dusky half-darkness, trying to calm a little boy crying for his father.

Arriving on an island in western Japan, a quiet ronin hoped he hadn't lost his chance at a life he now realized he'd wanted for a long time.

In a city whose name he couldn't even remember, a fate-tempting, death-evading former prisoner slumped at a tavern table drinking sake...just as he did most nights. He didn't know why he felt dissatisfied, but he figured it didn't matter.

No one would have guessed that only two years ago, these three were friends without being aware of it; that they had once quarreled, starved, and smuggled their way across Japan; and that each sometimes wondered if they would ever make good on their last promise, to meet again.

Chapter 1

"Fuu-san! Fuu-san? Are you in there?" came an elderly woman's voice with a friendly tap on the door. Fuu sat her son on the futon and got up.

"Ame-san! Welcome," she said to the squat, smiling older woman standing at her threshold. Ame was one of the few people Fuu was happy to see these days. "Come in and I'll make you some tea."

As Fuu poured tea, Ame scooped up the child, bouncing him in her arms. "How is little Jin?" she cooed.

Something in the woman's question made Fuu swallow hard, but she managed to reply cheerfully, "He's growing quickly! He's even started walking a bit."

At least Ame never asked after Hideki, her husband, as the other women did. These days, Fuu rarely knew if he was dead or alive…not that it mattered much to her.

After Ame had left, giving Fuu a bundle of radishes for the day's soup, Fuu swept the floor, weeded the vegetable garden, and fed Jin. Then she dug a cloth bag from a hole under the futon and weighed it in her palm. It was growing lighter by the week; she could only feel a few coins in it by now. Tomorrow she would have to find another job in town.

Fuu laid back and gazed at the ceiling. There were no windows in Hideki's shack, so the blue slits of sky in the roof were glowing. They wavered and melted as Fuu let herself cry.

She was remembering another bright blue sky, two years ago, when she'd carelessly said goodbye to the best friends she'd ever had. How stupid she'd been, to not even realize what she was doing as she waved and walked away without even looking back.

But that was life, and lately she'd learned that life wasn't meant to be happy. I'm lucky to have known Mugen and Jin; that was the best part of my life. It had to end; what more could I have expected? Fuu told herself. When she heard drunken singing at the bottom of the hill, she knew that Hideki was home (for the first time in three days)...and that he'd brought friends. She sighed loudly and scrubbed away her tears, then hid Jin safely in bed.