AN: Zinnia, what doth thou meanest? They mean(eth) "thinking/ in memory of an absent friend." Pretty good, eh? Eh? Dunno if Riku would know that kinda thing but… 'eeeey.

This is still the flashback. The rest of the story is. Mostly.


-2-

Some people are sensitive. So what I wasn't listening to her. So what I brought up a subject totally irrelevant to hers. Better put me in a straight jacket 'cause that must mean I'm cra-zay.

"Sora's alive," I blurted out after Kairi snapped me out of my 'daydream.'

"What?" her eyes grew wide. I awaited her He-is?-Omigosh!-I'm-so-happy! reaction with An Inevitable Fountain of Tears.

I continued to add to what I thought was her excitement, "He ran into me at the market." For some stupid reason I flipped out my blood-streaked collar. I'd been trying to hide it earlier, right? And it's not like she'd understand what I meant by it. Of all things, it should've made her more confused.

But she wasn't. Her expression became livid. Ever see an enraged pink cancel out a sickly yellow? It's like a swanky chameleon.

"Sora? He's missing!" she exclaimed, like I didn't know that fact. A heavyhearted look fell over her face as she seemed to remember to feel, oh, maybe sad.

Trying to pass that lil' outburst off as nothing, huh? Nice try.

"I saw him." I says to her, to her I says, "I saw him."

"Thanks, Riku. Flowers brighten my day," she said through a professionally phony smile, ushering me off the couch and out the door. Before giving me the final heave-ho she said, "Be careful. A turtleneck doesn't look good on you," then muttered something like she needed rest and blah blah blah.

That wasn't suspicious at all. Nope.

Sure was in a hurry to get me outta the way, wasn't she? It could only mean she knew more than she was willing to show… and we all know that once an idea is planted in the fertile soil of my brain that it must grow. Photosynthesis. So to say, Kairi was the sun and made my suspicions grow. She was in on something.

And, yes, it was kinda embarrassing to be "kicked out" of Kairi's place. Who is she to kick me out? A Pauper doesn't kick the King out from his Kingdom. The indignity.

Well, whatever. Let her have that one victory. One.Guess I might (keyword is "might") have deserved it because I might ("might") have touched a nerve. But you'd think that telling her Sora was alive would make her happy. Excuse me. Just thought it'd give her some hope that, though he'd been missing for a year, he wasn't dead.

But maybe…

Maybe I'd done that corny "tearing a healed wound open" thing. Why, oh, why do I do things like that? I say it's in the genes. I obviously don't grasp how to deal with sensitive things. But you can't blame me. Entirely. She didn't really say much to me during the past year (or ever), thus my lack of sensitivity and giving a damn. Sora's disappearance took out the thread that made Kairi and me friends (though we were coerced into being buddies-in-mourning). I'd be willing to listen to her, you know. I am just that caring.

Haha. What the hell was I doing there anyway… giving her flowers… pshaw… but I knew he woulda appreciated it if I were nice to her, hence my willingness for openness. Openness, not bluntness. If I simply asked if she was ok, you know… "Why do you even have to ask? Don't you already KNOW?" kind of business. Jeez. Next time I try to be nice remind me how it never goes right. If being the nice guy means finishing last then who needs to be nice.

It's not like Kairi was the only one hurt by his disappearance, either. Or was it that only her pain mattered? Wait, what am I saying? Pain isn't some amount to be measured or compared. Pain hurts everyone and I don't think it's picky. It just does what it was created for. So, logically, it depends on the person how much s/he is affected by it.

Now don't I feel smart? Actually, it's more of a special kind of stupid.


I was completely submersed in a dejected (not really) mood by the time I got home. Again. Changed into my good ol' shirt without a collar and decided that, after a hard day's work, there's nothing like a trip to the ocean in the backyard. Again.

Alright, alright, working in a restaurant isn't the stressing-est job in the world but during summer break between semesters of school, working was the thing I put much effort into. Not only do I like money and food to eat, but being busy is paramount. That way the brain can't be bogged down by unnecessarily crappy thoughts. Gotta keep it movin', movin', movin'. I bet light doesn't get lonely because loneliness can't catch up to it… if only light were alive.

Somewhere inside I knew it all wore me down. I was definitely no kind of light. No amount of depthless friendships or crazily full schedules or OT could make me move fast enough long enough to keep loneliness away. Nothing could free the part of me that's pinned under the weight of dried-out memories… the part of me that's hanging onto the feeling of the past…

Hey, that'd make a good song.

Just hanging onto that feeling, la la laa… la…

Yes, that's a low point. I couldn't even fake being cheered up by my own attempt at cheering me up. It's enough to drive you nuts in a fruity kind of way.

Staring out at the ocean, my mind thankfully switched gears. Enough about me. Seriously, standing on shore reminded of a movie I saw once. In it a lady walked right into the foamy waves, drowning herself. That image stuck with me for so long probably because it was so possible yet not. Seeing that sort of thing makes you kinda wonder what it feels like and reminds you that, taking into account that the world is a big place with a long past, someone's already done it.

But I've gotten water up my nose before and got to thinking that drowning would not be good for me or my health. I didn't want to die—I had to work the next day. The scarier thing was that while I was thinking about drowning, I'd actually been walking into the ocean. There must be a time when the mind separates from the body because I was up to my waist by the time I realized what I was doing.

Stupid brain, trying to drown me without my permission. Oughtta punish it. Note: buy lots of hard liquor, gold paint, and MDMA a.k.a. E.

Then, like a kick in the head, I realized why I was in the water.

The ocean is vast, right? A good place to hide something, to take something away, to swallow something whole. It's part of the horizon, beyond which millions of possibilities lie. I wasn't trying to kill myself, oh no, but rather, I was searching for someone to reappear after being taken away… over the horizon, the possibility that maybe… All I'd been doing for the last year was wait for a return from far away, but now I could turn the waiting into searching. I'd seen a reason to.

Of all the possibilities, Sora could be alive. I saw him. Heck, maybe he'd just been on a long vacation, living it up on some other tropical island with Kairi and me nowhere near his thoughts. As long as he wasn't dead I was fine with him being an ass, because he couldn't really be dead. Could he? Anything but that.

It's funny how needy a human can be. "I want you alive", "I want you to think of me." If such weakness were a person I'd stab it a few times to teach it a lesson, maybe gouge an eye for good measure. So with me realizing how full of emptiness I'd been, I felt sort of lost—lost while right behind my home. Almost amusing, but mostly pathetically sad. More so because my pants were wet and wet pants is not a good feeling.

Then I felt the air change. A huge haze blanketed the sun, covering everything with the shadows of moving clouds. The dull noise of waves on my eardrums festered into something sounding like a voice. It sounded ominous, like her (you know who's) voice when she warned me about not looking good in turtlenecks (what a weirdo). I could feel the electricity and atmospheric stuff change. This is the hallmark of bad luck. I didn't attempt to run because… I'm sorta on an island. Nowhere to run but swim.

'Run but swim'... hmm.

Anyway, I considered myself brave enough to face these sorts of faceless fears. I'm brave, right? Even if no one's got my back?

…Right…?

I turned around and saw a progression of footprints. They were weaving back and forth like a kid's who couldn't take in the scenery quick enough. I traced my way to the body that'd made them and saw the same blue eyes from the market staring back from a distance. Water was splashing the sand in front of him and he just stood there. Staring.

My eyes don't lie—though my brain does at times. Was it or wasn't it him? Could I trust myself or not, knowing that (delirious) hope can skew rationality and reality?

There was some urge in me that made me need to hear this person's voice.

He reached out his hand towards me and I came running. Running, running, running, though I know better than to turn my back to the ocean. You have to be a real stud like me to be able to run in water, too. That scene reminded me of something from long ago but backwards somehow. I didn't wanna actually reach out for his hand because if it were an illusion I'd look pretty stupid sticking my hand into vacant air.

No, he was real. I'd said so earlier and that's what I believed. This was Sora, he wasn't dead, and he was right in front of me, calling me without using his voice.

Now regarding the matter of what to do in this sort of situation. It'd been a year! That's 365 ¼ days. Multiply that by 24 to get the hours, multiply that by 60 to get the minutes and then 60 again to get the seconds. That's a long time! Should I play catch-up? Yell at him for being gone? Bawl because we missed him?

My own personal style took care of that impediment of not knowing what to do, "It's you, right? I'm not dreaming?" I was hoping for an answer, hoping more that it'd be in a voice I recognized.

"Who'd you think I was? Santa Clause?"

That would've made more sense but that didn't matter. He spoke! He was real all right and it was Sora for sure.

"That's you?" I said, louder. It was all enough for my mind to fall into awe-induced blankness.

"Riku, what can I say? I'm here."

"Were you…? Where were you!" I was happy though it might've seemed like I was getting angry. I call it 'relieved wrath'. "You didn't call or anything, ya moron! Where the hell were you!"

What, had he been going out of his way to avoid me?

"Not exactly here, but not really anywhere else either."

Ermm…

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean, so I'm not gonna ask. I can't believe… I have to— you're alive, I have to tell everyone!"

"Why. Who cares," he shrugged.

"Just come with me." I didn't picture myself being able to get this irate if I found him. I also didn't picture him being so dumb about it.

I had to show someone that I found him, didn't I? Well, not if he had anything to say about it. He was like deadweight and refused to follow. I grabbed his arm and pulled hard.

"Hey, that'll fall off. I told you, I'm here."

"I know you're here! Not everyone else that thinks you're missing does!"

His eyebrows nearly met at the middle of his forehead, looking like he was thinking too hard. Then he looked sad. Why? Maybe felt bad for deceiving us. Or not. Was his disappearance some ploy? How the hell was I supposed know. It seemed both unlikely but not impossible for him to be capable of playing games like that.

"Sora. You don't seem to be able to understand. You were missing for a long time!"

"Not missing, just not here."

I didn't like this cryptic Sora. What happened to being blunt? To the you're-looking-kinda-chubby-there-Kairi-what's-the-new-diet kind of behavior? (That might be an exaggeration, though.)

He pulled some super-judo foot action and suddenly I was tripped up (I was off guard. Really.). My arms and legs were sprawled out like I was making a snow angel in the sand. A sand angel to be precise. What was happening? I tried to get up. He was pinning me down pretty well.

"I was the one searching for you, Riku." (Crap, man. Nothing good was gonna come out of that situation, I knew that much.) "Help me. I need you but you can't ask why. You can't tell anyone."

I decided at that moment that I was dealing with some type of evil-clone thing. The person holding me down could've been someone else's spiky-headed Sora but not ours. Who on this island would know how to do that? Make an evil clone, I mean.

"Sora… you in trouble? Get off… can't…"

He didn't seem to hear. He just kept his arms fast around me. There isn't a word efficient enough to describe how utterly strange, uncomfortable, and awkward that was.

Despite the insanely high amount of discomfort, I managed to miss the feeling of something pricking the skin on my neck. I only noticed it when I tried to push him off. That brought pain, oh my, right in my neck.

"What're you doing…!"

Soon it felt as if the skin of my body was sinking, settling on my deflated innards. Or maybe that feeling was an overreaction brought on by panic. Who knows. And if I didn't say it before, this was all as normal as a straight circle. It was like he was latched onto my neck.

Haha, just like a vampire thing.

Ha—vampire.

Actually, that word's funny. Vampire. If you say it enough times it doesn't sound like a word anymore.

I became more lightheaded as more time passed. Everything became funnier, too. Sora was alive! Kairi was sick! I was dying! I couldn't stop laughing, except for the fact that I couldn't physically do it. So I laughed inside my head, where most laughing occurs anyway.

When he finally moved back, I saw him use a blurry arm to wipe his blurry, blurry mouth. I heard a small voice say something and then he disappeared. I think that voice was me, "why". I felt some slow stuff dribbling down my neck and for Christ's sake, were tears burning my eyes? Nope, it was sand. Sand in my eye. Sand in my eye and all over my wet clothes and in my hair. Frick.

Joke's on him though. I was still alive. Aren't vampires supposed to kill people? Again Sora proved he's worse than I am at everything. If I were a vampire I'd do the job right. I'd kill me good and take away the curse of the morning after.

But I wasn't a vampire—yet.

Maybe I'd never be.

Maybe Sora was.

Or maybe he wasn't.


AN: Thanks for r&r! Ganboro!