Disclaimer: I don't own HYD or any of its characters

"I'M WHAT?" He yelled.

"Dead."

"No!"

"Come on," the little boy brought his hand to his head, "I hate this part." He pulled Doumyouji's arm until he was eye level. "You saw the accident or the wreckage anyway. Your body was mangled beyond recognition. You are stone cold dead and burnt to a crisp."

"You little." Doumyouji swung at the little boy, but he vanished and reappeared behind him.

"I'm a lot less alive than you." The little boy said walking away. "Are you coming?"

"Who… are… you?" Doumyouji asked dumbfounded by the events taking place.

"I thought that we'd gone through this… it doesn't matter who I am." The little boy stopped and extended his arm again. "I'm just trying to get you to where you need to be."

"And where's that?"

"Questions, questions, questions. Can't you dead people ever just follow along?"

"No I can't just follow along. I have a dinner date with my family; I need to get back to them."

"I don't think that's gonna happen," he paused and smiled, "unless you know Whoopie Goldberg."

"I'm not a ghost and yes I know the comparison. Tsukushi has made me watch that movie like a million times."

"Yeah, yeah." The little boy waved behind him. "Let's go I don't have an entire afterlife."

The little boy stood next to a big staircase that extended past Doumyouji's line of sight.

"What the hell is this?" He stood gawking at the gold and white entrance.

"Duh, it's the stairway to heaven?" The little boy looked at his companion as if he were retarded.

"I'm not going to heaven."

"Would you prefer the alternative?" As the words escaped his mouth a black and red elevator appeared with a ding beside them.

"OH HELL NO!" Doumyouji moved the little boy as a shield for the elevator. "What's your problem, I'm not dead."

"Ugh!" The little boy grunted. "What can I do to prove to you that you're dead?" He pulled out a gun and shot Doumyouji before he could react. "Did that hurt?"

"No." He said surprised that the bullet didn't even wound him.

"That's because you're DEAD." The little boy yelled.

"I've seen movies like this before." Doumyouji said walking away. "You can show me the darker part of my life. I'll become a better man and then I'll go back home to my family."

"I'm sorry, boss man, this isn't a movie. You were already a good man. You were a good father and a good husband, but these are just the cards that were dealt."

"So this is it?"

"Pretty much."

"There has to be someone else. You have to have a supervisor or something."

"I do," the little boy looked up, "but he's a little busy."

Doumyouji felt defeated, which was the second time today that he felt this foreign feeling. His heart hurt and he felt like the time Tsukushi had left him in the rain, but this time it was him that was leaving her. "I promised her." He whispered. "I promised I would never leave her again."

The little boy lowered his eyes at the heap of a man before him. He really hated his job, no one wanted to die. Suddenly it hit him. "That's it." He started and Doumyouji looked up at him expectantly. "Do you wish you were never born?"

"What?"

"Do you wish you were never born? Because if you do then you're not my problem, you're someone else's." He looked at his cohort and smiled with a wink.

"That's right." Doumyouji stood up. "I wish I were never born."

The little boy disappeared and a little girl stood next to him. "Why?"

He looked at the little girl next to him and smiled. She was beautiful. She had chestnut brown hair just like Tsukushi's but it was in pigtails that reached her shoulders. Her eyes were big and full of laughter and life; he could barely believe that she was a guide through death.

"Would you like to know what it would have been like if you were never born?"

"If that will bring me back to life, then I'll look at anything."

"If you're dead, you're dead. I can't change that." She looked down, almost as if she were going to cry. "I'm sorry if you thought that that was gonna happen."

"Then why…?" He stopped short.

"That was Michael, he was an arch angel a long time ago, but he got demoted after he started a war or something. Now he's a guide and he hates it, so he usually pawns unsuspecting hard cases on me." She turned around and opened a door that had appeared behind her.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Grace and I'm going to do this as fast as possible since you really don't want to see this." She grabbed his hand and tugged hard. "So keep up."

The room they stood in seemed familiar, like something from a distant memory. "Where are we?" He asked looking around.

"This is your sister's room." Grace picked up a doll and stood cradling it as she started walking away.

They walked down the hallway and there at the grand piano sat a miniature Tsubaki playing a piece from Mozart.

"But she hated playing the piano."

"So did you, but you learned didn't you?"

"Yeah, but she never did, she played the harp instead."

"Since your mom didn't have you to worry about you she had nothing but time to make sure that the Doumyouji heir could play a respectable instrument. Without you that burden fell on your sister's shoulders."

"She was too strong willed to let our mother walk all over her."

The door opened and Doumyouji Kaede walked in. Tsubaki jumped off the piano chair and stood at attention.

"Ohayougozaimasu Okaasama."

"How long have you been practicing?" The woman asked without looking at her child.

"Three hours."

"It doesn't sound as if you've improved one bit." She walked over to the piano and on the platform sat a cup of tea and a few cookies. Without hesitating she swung her hand back and threw the petite child to the floor.

"That bitch." Tsukasa jumped as if he were going to charge at his mother. Grace held him back.

"How many times have I told you that you are not to eat in this room?"

Tsubaki grabbed her cheek as she fought the tears flowing from her eyes. "Too many times Okaasama."

"And these," she started as she threw the cookies at the child on the floor, "you don't need to be eating cookies you fat pig."

Tsukasa bit his bottom lip, his whole body brimming with rage. "I was there. She didn't judge Tsubaki because I was there. That's why my sister protected me the way she did, because she knew what it would have been like."

"The two of you shared her wrath, but without you she bore it alone."

Grace walked through another door and when Doumyouji had followed they stood in a western style living room.

"Are you coming home tonight?"

Doumyouji spun around to see Tsubaki on the phone. Years had past and she looked old. Her once vibrant eyes seemed faded and lackluster. She had noticeably deeper wrinkles and her hair was up in a sloppy bun.

"But you promised to come home, the children miss you." She looked like she wanted to be shouting into the phone, but her voice remained placid.

"She looks so old." He was shocked to hear himself say it.

"A bad marriage will do that even to the most beautiful of women."

Doumyouji picked up a picture frame and examined its contents. "This isn't her husband."

"It is now. Since you weren't there to be the heir to the company Kaede had to make sure she bartered your sister off to the right man." She pointed to the man in the picture. "He was the head of some conglomerate travel something, and your mother needed his shareholdings."

"But if she's miserable why doesn't she leave?"

"Because she isn't the fiery woman that you grew up with. She's been battered and beaten down by your mother, years before she ever got married. To those who care to even look, like Tama and her children, she's just a shell. Not even breathing."

He grunted with dissatisfaction. "This would never happen, Tsubaki would never allow it."

"You don't have to believe it if you don't want to."

Grace walked away again and this time when he walked through the door he immediately recognized the bare white walls and the furniture deprived bedroom. "This is Rui's room."

It didn't take long to find Rui sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. He had his legs brought up to his chest and a lost faraway stare in his eyes.

"What's wrong with him?"

"You never met him." Was her only reply.

"But okay, if I never met him then why aren't Akira and Sojiro here with him?"

"Because you never met them either." She looked at her escort and he looked as if his heart were broken looking at the shell of a man before him. "When Rui couldn't keep up socially in Eitoku Academy his parents hired tutors and home schooled him."

"But that's ridiculous, he had no social interaction."

"Yeah, but kids like Sojiro and Akira didn't pick on him anymore and his peers didn't openly call him a freak." She walked over to him and petted his hair. "Remember, you were the one that punched Sojiro in the face for calling Rui weird, without you to push past his defenses no ever even tried to get to know him."

"I don't want to be here anymore." He turned to walk away and Grace followed into the next room.

"Where are we?" He looked around at all of the books.

"I know this seems alien to you, but this is the library in Eitoku." She pulled him down a few of the stacks until the stood face to face with Tsukushi and Kazuya.

"She was so beautiful then."

"Yes and she blended right into the background." Grace seemed bored with the sight.

"She's laughing." He watched as she happily studied with Kazuya stupidly trying to keep up. "She looks so peaceful."

"She was peaceful and happy until she met you. You were the one that brought heartache and confusion into her life. She was content being poor, but you and your friends were the ones that couldn't believe that poor people could be blissful too."

He looked down at his feet ashamed of what she told him.

"Without you and the F4 she wasn't a threat to anyone. No one picked on her or challenged her, because she was just another kid. She had her problems from time to time, but she scrapped by never stepping on anyone's toes and reverting back to her chameleon-like hiding skills when needed."

"So she would have been better off if I had never been born?"

"I never said that." She said pushing open the emergency doors. "I just said you made her high school life harder."

The next room was brighter than he could bare and he had to shield his face from the intensity of the light.

Tsukushi lay on a bed half naked and crying. "Kill me." She whispered as a man was standing up from the bed.

"You know I can't do that." He said absently as he put his badge back on.

"You could help me." She whispered with tears flowing down he cheeks.

He looked over his shoulder at the woman on the bed, as he left the room he put a gun on the dresser on top of some money and mumbled an "Arigatou" as he walked out.

"What the hell is this?"

"Tsukushi might have been different, but her father wasn't. He still couldn't keep a job, he was still stupid, and he was still a disappointment to his family. That night when the thugs came to collect on their money Tsukushi didn't have anyone to borrow the money from. So when they killed her father, they took her as their payment."

Doumyouji let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Tsukushi…"

"They made her a prostitute because what could her mother do to stop them. She's been working off her father's debt with no chance of ever finishing. The interest keeps adding on and she has to pay them for room and board, but to them she's a real cash cow."

"Shut up!" At first it came out as a whisper.

Tsukushi got up from the bed and cocked the gun.

"She didn't finish school, so even if she gets away from these guys, which she won't, she's got nothing to offer the world."

"SHUT UP!" He yelled this time.

The loud sound of the gun going off shook Doumyouji's body, but the thump of her body hitting the floor made him look away.

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" He pulled at the door but it remained locked. "I'M SICK OF THIS CRAZY MAKE BELIEVE WORLD." He started banging on the door, but he slowly slid down to the floor which was quickly being covered with blood. "I was a part of their lives. I was there to help her. She didn't turn out like this. She loves me. We have two beautiful children and one on the way. We ARE happy."

"No Doumyouji-sama," she laid her hand on his shoulder and opened the door, "you were happy."