For disclaimers, please see part I.

Author's Notes:
Well, lah-dee-dah. Another update for a story I'd actually scratched off as being over and done with. What can I say? I wanted to see where it goes, so I'll probably keep updating this one, if sporadically. And fair warning, there's a chance it'll shift styles a lot. This chapter, for instance, is entirely in first-person POV.

Hopefully it won't end up as a mass of confusion. No matter what, thank you for reading.

Aftermath; part II

I have no clue where to start. Scratch that. I have no clue, period. I don't even know why I'm writing this to begin with.

Or, no. That's not true. I've heard of brainstorming, mostly in regards to schoolwork or projects of any kind. Tossing out random ideas, writing down whatever until you get to something that makes sense. So I guess that's why I'm doing this.

Talking to Mai didn't help. I still have no idea what the hell I'm gonna do. So here I am, I guess. Jotting down whatever pops into my head can't make things any worse, at least.

I guess I should write about the problem itself if I want to get anywhere with it. Otherwise I'm just wasting both ink and time.

Time. That's something I have a lot of now. The Carnival's over, the First District is gone, Searrs seems to have gone into hiding – hopefully for another few hundred years. I found all the truth I wanted. More than I wanted, really, but yeah, it's over. All I have left now is school. Hell if I'm gonna be held back a year.

So I have a lot of time on my hands. And yet, I don't. Because she's hurting, and I can't help but feel that if I don't figure out a way to stop that, I'm gonna end up losing her.

Shizuru.

I can't believe I didn't notice how she felt. Yeah, she's the damn queen of pretense, but she's also my best friend. Shouldn't I know if she was in love with me? Shouldn't there be some signs to pick up on?

Maybe I wasn't looking for them. Maybe she hid it too well. Maybe I did see it, but just ignored it.

I don't like that last option. She's my most important person. My precious thing. So I really hate the thought that I knew how she felt on some level. Knew that she was hurting from having to hide it. And didn't care enough to at least acknowledge it.

There's no excuse for purposely ignoring her like that. I really hope that wasn't what I did.

The thing is that I can see it now. That extra warmth in her eyes. That extra joy in her smile that she saves for me alone. But I can also see that she's not showing it any more openly than she did before. I think it's because now I know it's there – I know what to look for, and what it is when I find it.

I see the hurt too, even though she's trying even harder to hide that. And it pisses me off that I'm the one hurting her. If anyone else hurt Shizuru, I'd beat the crap out of them. But how do I beat up myself?

I know what it'll take to make her happy. Mai helped me figure that out, at least. Self-absorbed as it sounds, Shizuru won't be truly happy unless I can love her in the way she loves me. I do love her, but it's not a romantic love. At least I don't think it is. I have no clue what that kind of love feels like. Not that I haven't tried to figure it out.

Mai and Tate feel that kind of love for each other. Mai and Kanzaki do too, but I think that's in a slightly different way. Shiho loves Tate. Yukino loves Suzushiro. Midori loves her professor. Takeda and Shizuru both love me.

But even if they all 'love' someone, it's a different feeling for all of them. I tried talking to some of them about it – about what it feels like. I've never been so embarrassed in my life, and it didn't do me one bit of good, either.

Yukino, at least, was helpful. She doesn't talk much, but she's sharp, and she's spent a lot of time watching the people around her, so even if she doesn't have a lot of first-hand experience, she makes up for it in insight.

She told me that love comes in all shapes and sizes, from the superficial affection you feel for someone you admire from afar, like a pop star or a famous athlete, to the deepest kind of romantic love that's so strong, so all-consuming that you have no hope of knowing what it feels like until you experience it yourself. The kind of love that, for better or worse, will last a lifetime.

She looked sad when she said that, and I can't help but feel sorry for her. Because Suzushiro has no clue, and Yukino is too worried about her reaction to really tell her.

That's why I went to her, I guess. Because what she's going through with Suzushiro is what Shizuru was going through with me. And I just can't make myself ask Shizuru for that kind of advice. Not yet. Yukino was the next best thing if I was to get something resembling Shizuru's side of things.

So there are a lot of different kinds of love. Friendly love, family love, romantic love and physical love. Well, the last one is probably better called lust. I guess that's what Takeda feels for me. I sure never talked to him enough to give him the chance to develop any other kind. A good thing, because I think it would make me feel worse about beating him up. I have no problem whacking him one for being a pervert, but I think I'd feel a little bad if I thought he was actually in love with me, and not just in lust.

I managed to dredge up the the will to ask Yukino what kind of love she thought Shizuru felt for me. I don't know which one of us stuttered more. Eventually, she explained that it was probably a mix. She thinks Shizuru feels a lot of affection for me as a friend, but that she's also in love with me romantically, as a person. And that there's probably a good dose of physical desire mixed in, too.

Crap. Either my head's gonna explode, or I can turn off my desk lamp. My face is red enough to light up the room right now.

But yeah, I didn't know that was possible. I figured that most people have friends, and they have lovers. And to anyone, a person is either one or the other. But what Yukino said makes sense. If you really want to build a lasting relationship with someone, you have to not just love them, you have to like them, too. Friendship can grow into love over time, and what starts out as simple attraction – physical love – can grow into romantic love or friendship, or a combination of both.

I need a break. My hand hurts.

Alright, here we go again.

Another thing I asked Yukino was how you know when you're in love. That turned out to be useless, because it's hard to explain, she said. It's different to everyone. What made her realize how she felt about Suzushiro might be totally opposite from anything I'd feel. I ended up muttering something about why it had to be so damn complicated. I knew she heard me, but her reply still surprised me a little.

"How much time have you given to love, Kuga-san? Have you ever watched a romantic movie just for the sake of watching it? Seen a happy couple go by and done anything but dismiss them? Have you ever allowed yourself to feel attraction just to feel it? If you don't make it easy on love, why should love make it easy on you?"

And I guess she's got a point there. I can break into secure buildings and take down a grown man in five seconds or less, but when it comes to love, I'm clueless. Helpless. Completely.

It sucks. Being helpless sucks. I swore I'd never be helpless, and here I am. Totally helpless, and because of that, hurting my best friend more than I think I even realize.

So I guess this is another battle to get through. I just can't fight this one with bullets. My target here is love and understanding it, and my weapon... well, my weapon is research.

I get to spend my free time watching sappy chick-flicks and going people-watching. Fun.

Dammit, Shizuru. You'd better appreciate this. I'm doing this for you. And for me. So I guess I'm doing it for us.

Whatever that 'us' might end up being.