Author's note: This chapter is dedicated to the only two people who reviewed my first chapter, Musubi7 and 0Link0, and to the other three people who were so kind to add this story to their favorites, Buttonpincollector, darkdranzer, monkeygirlnanoda . Thank you so much. It's things like those that author's remember.

I like to replay things over and over. Like songs. Or movies. But mostly songs. I find a song or cd I like, and that's what I'll listen to, over and over. Over and over. Over and over, till its burned in my head. Its weird, like, I know. But is calms me down, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. That's it. It calms me down.

I'm not staying that I'm some sort of hyper-active person who jumps around the room going,"Hiya, can I get something for you? Need me to do anything? I can do everything!" I'm not some annoying over achiever or anything, not like that.

But I get these...emotions, you know. I get so angry, I get so ...out of control sometimes. I get sometimes where all I want to do is scream and shout and bash things up. I throw shit, I smash a bat against a wall, I bruise my knuckles. All to get these fucking feelings out of me.

I have poison in me. It doesn't do anything most of the time, it just kinda feds once in a while. It festers there for a while, like a boil before it grows. It starts feeding, and I go fucking crazy on anything that's near me. It like, takes over my body, and my eyes aren't my own anymore, like there part of that poison's. My eyes see my fist go threw the window, getting bloody, they see how painful it all is, and I'm like, yeah, that's good. Hurts, fuck yeah, it hurts. My hand doesn't matter, my bloody fingers and cut up skin doesn't matter. Nothing matter when the poison is in me.

I don't matter.

I wonder sometimes if zombies feel like this. Zombies, you know, the night-crawlers-flesh-eaters of innocence. If they feel any kind of pain, even though they are dead. Because if that's true, then I'm a zombie.

Kinda.

"Man, what the fuck happened to this town?" Asked Kurogane.

I'm walking with him, down to the river. Why? Fuck me if I know.

So, he wakes up this morning, says all the beer is gone (he called the beer "saki" again, whatever the hell that is), and wanted some more. I said we didn't have anymore. He said get up and threw my coat at my face. I said, fuck off shitface, and he then picked me up and dragged me outside. The fucker.

And here we are. Great story, Torin. Yeah, I know.

God, it is so cold. I don't know what time it is. I don't think I have ever actually gotten up this early, like ever. At least, I have never gotten up this early when it was this cold out. It feels like my pants are about to be permanently frozen to my bare legs.

"That," I pointed to the factory.

That damn factory is always awake. Unlike the rest of the town, which seems to have fallen into this eternal shithole that it can't climb out of, the factory never sleeps. It lies awake like some dragon, watching the rest of the town from its high perch up on a friggin hill. For some stupid reason or another, not that I would care either way, the builders of the factory decided it would be an awesome idea to build the giant concrete monstrosity up where everyone could see it. Pretentious, yeah, but hey, this factory was the town's last god damn hope and they knew and we knew it and they knew that we knew it, so they got to do whatever the hell they wanted.

'We were desperate for jobs,' my dad told me once. 'Economy's down the tubes, housing is a joke, what else we got to lose?' Damn. If he only knew that within a few years, his wife would leave him, his son would tell him to fuck off, and he would be broke on his ass addicted to games and shit, maybe things would be different. If only he had known about everything, maybe he would have done things differently, like not start drinking and shouting, or cheating with gambling and buddies when he should have been home.

Haha, yeah right.

"What is that?" Kurogane had this really creepy habit of licking his lips. I noticed it this morning when he first stepped outside in the snow. He reminded me of a big dog. A mean dog. It was like this dude was really an animal, tracking and smelling what was in the air and doing all this other weird shit, all stuck inside a big guy.

"I dunno." I lead the way down my street. There is nothing out right now. Everything is blanketed by a new layer of fresh snow. It look so perfect, it had not yet been mushed up by some four-wheel drive jeep or something. Just white snow, thick and clumpy.

Kurogane gave me his 'you-shitting-me-right' looks, one eyebrow raised just so above his head, his lower lip in mid-sneer.

"You mean this whole town has gone to hell together holding hands, and none of you even know why?"

"It isn't like we don't care," I snapped back, the tone of my voice way harder than I intended.

Kurogane looked like he wanted to laugh. He looked so mean then, his lip jutting out, that one stupid tooth of his peeking through. "Right. You are all wonderful. What a nice town. What kind brats that piss over their own feet, my, so sweet."

I should have known better than to walk around with Kurogane. What a true asshole he was. In the week I had known him, he was always an ass. No matter what, Kurogane's response to something was cold and cruel, and the only time he said anything kind was when he was being sarcastic. You could hear the bit in his words as they tore up and shredded into small bits and pieces anything kind you had just said before. The snarl in his voice would overwhelm anything in my quiver-filled voice, and soon I just gave up fighting with him.

He was nothing like my brother. Kurogane picked on me like Harlan did, sure, and he gave me a hard time, but Harlan was never such a fucking jerk. Kurogane was the anti-Harlan, the asshole that rode into town only to cause damage and ruin people's homes. He wasn't the savior that I first thought of him, he wasn't much of anything other than a drinker from what I could tell.

And I hated him for that. For not being the person I needed.

But still, there was that small hope that hung on like a thread inside me, that Kurogane, would somehow do something to this place. I don't know what, yet. That the guy I saw with all the scars and cuts on his torso from fighting and winning and losing would turn around and shout at the top of his snarl-filled voice, "FUCK YOU!", and save me from this stupid place.

And yet, the guy that stood in front was me who was still so cool underneath the winter coat and scarf, but so mean.

"You're pretty damn short, you know that?" His arm was stretched out horizontally, parallel with the ground, measuring me up. His elbow rested briefly for a moment on my head before I knocked his arm away.

"Oh, tough man, now? Because I said you're short, and that's what you want to fight about?"

"Fuck off already."

"What the hell does that mean?" I'm sure he was joking, but I wasn't sure at the same time. "Is that a curse? Or a joke? Kami, forget it."

Kami. What the heck is a kami? He said that word a lot, and for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is. I don't dare ask him, for that will just give him another reason to pick on me.

They all talk so different. For a whole week I've been watching them. Half the time it seems like they are just learning new words and the other half of the time its like they are using another set of vocabulary altogether. None of it makes any sense when you hear it, especially when talking to that Fai-dude. He is just on another plane of weirdness, the king freak of the uber-strange and unusual.

"This place is a shithole. It smells, too." he said, sniffing the air.

"It's the factory," I replied, "Ever since that was build, it lets off this steam or whatever, and it gets into the air, in the water." I remembered how old city council members tried and failed for weeks to have the factory set some air standards, fearing that the factory was polluting the area. "But now, no one cares."

"Why?"

"Why bother cleaning up a place that isn't going to get any better?"

Kurogane looked up at the factory, sneering. "What a bunch of pathetic nonsense."

I continued to walk down the path. We were moving behind stores now, past the Rambos territory and onto some other school gang. "No, not nonsense. Just real. People not bullshitting themselves into believing some stupid idealist dream that everyone lives happy ever after."

I turned to look him dead in the eye. "Because that is what gets you killed."

Kurogane didn't reply back in his normal, sarcastic voice. "What do you know about death?" His tone was so serious, for the first time ever since I had known him.

"Everything."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

We had stopped moving, and he was facing me, staring down in my eyes. He was quiet for a full minute, just looking down at me. I wanted to look away, but I wouldn't be the first, afraid of losing face with him.

At last, he turned his nose up to the sky, sniffing. I don't know what he saw in me, and I suddenly, I was afraid. What did he see? What secrets did my eyes give away? Who did he see, the zombie me, or worse, the real me?

And for some reason, I thought again on Harlan. He gave me that kind of look the day he left. I remembered it so clearly, and not so clearly, if that makes any sense. It's like if someone outlined the whole scene in a bright light, and then traced over the lines again and again. He and Harlan looked so similar then, I thought I almost saw my brother.

We made it to the back of the liquor shop in little time. I rang at the back of the shop a few times while Kurogane stood a ways off, looking on in case anyone came. Liquor was another thing the local school gangs had their hand in. If anyone seemed to be buying up too much, they would move in and take care of that person.

But I doubted anyone would come by to pick a fight with Kurogane, remembering his scars. Besides being a giant, he gave off that aura of someone not to be messed with. I did humor the thought of what he would do to someone who got on his wrong side. Probably not good, maybe with lots of broken bones.

When I came back, he grabbed the bag from me. "Hey, I paid for that!"

"Come on, let's walk." He knew exactly where he was going. In the first few days, he had memorized the entire layout of the town. "Always know your territory, the land, the winds. You always want the fight to be one on your territory," he had said once, randomly during dinner.

What was strange then wasn't that I was just blindly following (though I was) , but that I wanted to follow Kurogane, regardless of how mean he was or what an asshole he was. I still wanted to follow him, like a solider follows a general, or a brother follows a brother. Kurogane led me around the town for a few minutes, until we stopped on the same bridge, at the same outlook, where Syaoran and I had been a week before.

"What do you see?" He asked, not looking at me.

I shrugged. I saw the same as before, a pretty place, only this time covered in fresh snow. It was a winter wonderland, boring and white. It was a rhetorical question anyways, so I just stayed silent.

"You want to know how I got my scars?" Hot embarrassment flushed my ears. I wanted to know, so badly. But I wasn't going to ask. Again, I stayed silent.

"I killed people, kid. Lots and lots of them."

My mouth dropped down. He wasn't serious, was he? There wasn't an ounce of sarcasm, only a hint of joy, in his voice.

"I had a job, and I was good at it." He looked at me, that sneer turning into a blood-curding grin. "Kami, I was death. Anyone who came to my front door. Or not. I didn't care, really. Death came easy to me." He turned his palms upward, and it was the first time I noticed his hands. Mangled fingers next to poorly healed broken ones attached to a lump of flesh that was burnt and callused. It was a hand, but a hand that had been broken and abused.

"I've blocked fire-arrows with these hands. People have struck my hands with Katana's, intending to kill me by chopping one off and letting me bleed out. But each time, I killed them. There is so much blood on these hands, so much death." He grinned, remembering. "Most deserved it, so you know. But one day, I had to stop. Death is out of my hands, for now at least."

He paused for a moment, only to break the tab open on a beer he had gotten out of the bag. He had one big gulp, then turned to me.

"Funny, though. Death doesn't need my help to kill people." He looked at me. "It finds other ways to kill people, other than me, I mean. (Though I'm the best)" The beer fizzed as he drank.

Maybe he was a bodyguard. That's it. Sure, right, a bodyguard for someone super important, that's why he is talking to me about killing people. Yeah, that's the reason, right....? Someone uber important, like the president of the country or something.

"Kid, you know what I hate the most?" The sun light glinted off his eyes, turning them blood red.

I was too afraid to ask. My hands started to quiver. From cold or terror, or both, I don't know.

"I hate people who give up. You can always see it in their eyes, when they just consume their death inside themselves, like a meal. They feed on death, feed it to fill the emptiness in life. I hate those people." Red eyes, narrowed at me, made my heart stop beating. "And you're one of them."

The air was so cold, freezing me in my place as the words were flown in my face. Had words been knives, I would have been on the ground in a pool of my own blood. At the same time, my mind shut down, turned off, whatever you want to fucking call it. I had nothing to say to him. There was nothing I could say in my own defense.

It was true. All true.

"Stop looking at me." Those red eyes, I had to get away, unfreeze myself, DO SOMETHING!!

"Shut up!" His hand whipped out and grabbed my arm, his fist squeezing. It was like a robot's arm or something, the blood circulation in my arm started to go numb.

"Look at yourself, Kid! You've been dieing for a long time now! And you know what? I don't care!"

"SHUT UP!" Had to get away, had to run away, had to find some dark, deep hole and live there until...

"You're alive, kid! Wake up from this self-pity you've dug. You're awake, you're real. You're not dead, you're not in the ground, though I couldn't care less. You're not worth my time, you worm! You damn yourself to your own fate!"

He was going to hit me, I knew was sure of it. Had to run, had to get away, but his hand was still on my arm! And those eyes, those red eyes, I wanted to look away but I couldn't!

" You're alive, but you don't want to be. That's too bad. You're life is wasted on you, then. I have known lesser people who wouldn't do this to themselves. So stop thinking that this whole world is going to stop and take a look at the boy who lost his mommy. It isn't going to happen. Ever! You think you're the only person who has ever lost something? You aren't. And you won't be the last."

"Leave me alone!" I screamed.

A second later my arm was at my side.

I couldn't see him through my tears. There was so much I wanted to do right then, but I didn't. I wanted to hit him, to scream and shut 'Fuck' in his ear so loudly he would go deaf. I wanted to tear off his arm, gauge out his red eyes. My muscles tensed, but I didn't move. I couldn't. Tears were the only thing I did, and soon my face was wet, my nose was dripping, all humiliatingly in front of him.

"Now that's something different," Kurogane stood over me, smiling. "That was the first bit of emotion I've seen from you."

"What?"

"Here," He handed me a case of beer, which I took. "I opened your wounds. Now the rest is up to you." He started to turn away from me, grabbing the bag with the rest of the beer.

"Where are you going?" I shouted after him as he walked up the hill. "Where the hell are you going!"

"Home! Now that you're back from the dead, you have a lot of thinking to do. So do it, then come back. This," he waved the bag, "will be gone. So pick up some more on the way back!"

Then I was alone.

And I stood there, for the next four hours, coming back to life.

I remembered so much suddenly, it was as though a well had opened up these memories. All sorts of emotions and feelings came spouting up. There was so much I had unknowingly hidden below, the anger at Harlan, my father, my mother, even my baby sister. I remembered how difficult things became after Harlan left, then my mother. My dad buying more and more alcohol, and gaming more and more. We lost so much then.

But that wasn't the whole story. Suddenly, I understood some decisions made by my family, made by everyone.

Harlan couldn't stand the town. Never, even as a small kid he was always running around saying that he was going to be president someday. His dreams were so big and wonderful and you couldn't help but smile whenever he came around. But Harlan's dream was so big, it didn't leave much for anyone else. Anything that didn't help him with his dream of becoming a real somebody, then it didn't matter. First it was high school, which he dropped out of. Then after my father had done a punch-hook combo to his face, (god his pretty face) and that was that. Nothing was left in the town for him anymore, so he left.

Mom, she was so beautiful and so smart, but she wanted so much more than my father could give her. She was the brilliant mind, he was slow at times. She was like Harlan, her dreams couldn't be matched in this small town. But there was a problem; she loved me and respected my father. It didn't make it right for her to leave. But after my sister had died, that was the last straw. She couldn't stay in the town any longer, it had kill her daughter and it was killing her. She had to go, so one day she packed up her bags, kissed my cheek when she thought I was sleeping, and left.

My father had gone from one failed son to a tiny coffin to a failed marriage. The truth was, he was a remarkably good man. He had a respectable job before the factory cut him off; he had good morals; his only flaw was oddly his charm as well; his simplicity. My father wanted a good life, wanted to live into old age and wasn't afraid of doing hard work. If only he didn't marry my mother, who didn't appreciate him. He was a good man, just not for her, and neither she for him. But the bottle and friends in the local pub, they were like him. That's why he never came home after that. He wanted to be someplace where people didn't hate him for 'trapping' them or look at him like a loser.

Throughout it all, the whole town was circling the drain. The 3-Es where always there, the people now together in destroying their lives. No one had turned to help me, neither had I turned to help anyone else. Parents were distant from there kids, kids were distant from their parents. No one talked, no one cared, and together, we were all burying our graves in cold bedrock soil.

My eyes stopped crying, though my cheeks were still red, but from the cold. I saw everything so clearly now. From everything that had happened to me, I had shut myself down and had begun to give up on the world. Nothing could save me, I felt, so why bother being saved?

One day, I had quit my job, gone to the bank to deposit my last check, and walked home only to stumble on some strangers.

And now, I was alive again, thanks to the asshole of the strangers.

I, Torin, was alive in a town of death.

It was a start.

The soup that night tasted warm and salty. The Fai-dude had made it. Not like from a can, like normal people. No, he made the soup. Really made it, with ingredients and chopped up vegetables that he himself chopped. He did the broth, boiled it over a stove, cut up the chicken and cooked that. He put in the spices and herbs that made it taste good. And he also spent the whole time stirring the pot, making sure that nothing would go wrong.

It was the first meal that I had seen anyone actually put care in a long, long while.

And when I looked around the table, I couldn't help but think, "FOR WHAT?"

The people around the table? What had they done to deserve such a meal? What the heck made them so special that they needed the care and preparation? Why did they get such soup when all they had done all week was hang around my house and occasionally go outside for a few hours?

"Searching," was all they ever told me.

"For what?"

"Memories,"

Yeah right, and I'm the fucking pope.

Kurogane and Fai sat on one end, Fai closer to the kitchen (he had muffins in the oven) and Kurogane hunched over his food like a bear. He used his spoon more like a shovel than a eating utensil. He would scoop up eat bit of soup and lower his head to the bowl as he ate. Fai was prone to quick stabs at the meat or vegetable, picking it up and putting it in his mouth. Then, at the end, he would put down his spoon and fork and lift the bowl to his lips and drink the broth.

Weirdoes, the both of them.

To my other side, it was almost as strange.

The girl, Sakura, was hardly awake for mealtimes. She mostly ate or slept on the couch or in the spare guest room. I wondered how she had ever managed to learn how to walk, let alone not get run over by a car.

There was once this porno I saw once with some friends. It was fucking disgusting, I will tell you that, but the thing is that makes it all the more creepy is the girl in the porno had these huge green eyes. Big, clear, water like eyes. Those eyes were completely mesmerizing. That's something all the dude who was groping her kept on saying, "You've got such pretty eyes," he'd say, like he was fucking complimenting her.

See, Sakura has green eyes.

Now, I am not a sicko. But man, when I catch a small glimpse of those eyes, they're that color. That vibrate jump-out green that reminds you of green shit like trees and grass and that Frog puppet. I can't believe it, but it always make me stare like I'm some sort of deer about to get its brains pummeled into a windshield.

Which, I guessed correctly, was likely if I didn't use those brains to figure out she's Syaoran's girl.

Oh, they don't say anything, none of those clowns do, but I can tell.

The looks, the constant hovering of that Syaoran, the way they orient themselves around the other, as though one of them might forget who the hell they are and wander off.

I slurped my soup, keeping my chin down.

"We are leaving soon,"

I almost didn't hear the statement, but when I finally registered what was just said, I looked up in hast. "What?"

Syaoran didn't look up at me, but repeated, "We are leaving soon."

Oh. Right. Well, then, chaps, so long and I hope you've had a merry time here in a town at the end of the world. What's that? No, you don't have to tell me anything, I like a good mystery, especially after I've been kind enough to give four people a place to sleep at night for a week. No questions asked. What? no, please, don't thank me, really, I'm merely a humble teenager.

Yeah fucking right.

After that lovely statement, the rest of the dinner went by without anything else being said. Sakura fell asleep by the end of the meal, and Syaoran carried her away. Kurogane left to get another beer, and I just sat at the table while Fai fluttered around, cleaning.

I can't believe these people. After all that I've done, all that has happened, or hasn't happened, this week, and they just tell me that they're leaving, no, wait. Not tell, fucking announce that they leaving, and.....what now? That's it? So long, Torin, thanks for being a chump. You didn't think that you were getting anything out of this arrangement, did you? Ha-ha, loser.

Well, actually, I don't know why my fists are clench up in anger. I can't help it.

What the heck has this whole week meant if they were going to leave without saying anything more then when they first arrived?

And I can't help but wonder, is it me? Am I why they are going?

"You've been awfully quite," said Fai. He held a dirty rag to a dish. I don't understand why he doesn't just use the dishwasher.

"So?"

Fai shrugged. "Generally one's silence is really a call for just the opposite,"

"Or it could just mean that I like silence,"

"Right, of course you do. And I'm sure you would make a fine monk," he moved in closer to me, "However, monks generally are not known to show so much emotion on the outside, so if you do become one, I'd suggest that is one thing you'd want to work on,"

"What the fuck?"

"Nevermind, you'd be a horrible monk," he smiled at me, like that was a joke.

He wasn't going to go away. Well, no, actually, he was leaving, and that was just as bad. He was just wasn't leaving right this moment, which is what I really wanted him to do.

"Leave me alone," I said to him and stood up.

"No."

That stopped me in my tracks. "What? You can't just say no to what I said. That wasn't a question. It was a statement."

"No, it wasn't. It was a sad loaded statement, and the fact that you're not leaving right now says more then your words do."

"I'm not leaving because this is my house!" Suddenly, I felt my face get hot. "If you want to go, why don't you just blow off now. Go on!" I advanced toward him, sticking my finger toward the kitchen door. "Go on then, go fuck off,"

Fai sighed.

It was amazing that while I was standing up and red faced shouting, Fai just stood there. The fucker, he even had a tiny curve to his lips, like what I was saying was somehow funny to him. But then again, his eyes weren't amused. They were sad pools of blueish stuff that stared back at me.

"I'm sorry we're doing this to you, Torin. It really isn't what you think,"

"You have no idea what I'm thinking,"

"That we're just abandoning you," The words stung but I didn't let it show. It meant nothing then. They were leaving. What did I matter? Why did I want to matter so much?

I'm alive, I wanted to say. I'm alive for the first time in years, and you guys are just leaving me behind, like ever other fucker who ever mattered a shit to me. My mother, my father, …Harlan. Didn't they see anything of worth that they wanted to take with?

But the words might as well have been concrete blocks, for I couldn't heave them out of my throat.

"Torin," Fai said. His smile had disappeared, and now there was only a straight face looking at me, full of something that I couldn't quite understand. Wisdom, maybe? Truth? Bullshit?

"You have given us more than we can or will ever be able to thank you for."

I felt tears in my eyes. Thanks?

Fai seemed to let his upper body fall, his shoulders slump down, the mask of clowns removed.

"I know how you feel, Torin. The pain of loneliness is something I have…experienced. It is a deep, penetrating feeling that takes over all other happiness in your life until all you are is old and weak. I saw the pain in your eyes the moment we meet,"

"We are all simple creatures, with black marks on our backs to remind us of our pain. The pain of being alone in life, alone in your own sorrows and joy, alone till there is no more enjoyment in life. That which ties us together also is cut,"

"Which is why I need you to understand, Torin," I had never seen him look like this. I'm a dude, you know, but the way he looked at me just then, it was weird. Pretty, almost. "I need you to understand that we are not cutting the strings. We are trying to save others from the pain of loneliness, from the fear of life without anyone who matters,"

At last, I found my voice, though the rest of my words came out scratchy and garbled. "I don't even know who you are. Why me?"

"Fate. That is the answer. Nothing in this world is without fate or coincidence. It is something that connects us all, till the end." He looked up, into the lights, "My own hope for me is to continue living so that others will never feel the same pain that you and I have had. I can not stop, and I never will."

"You didn't answer me,"

"No. Because all you need to know is that fate brought us together, that fate has other plans for you then to let you simply wallow away in an old home, waiting for death. And that whatever change has been brought about isn't only because of our presence, is it because there is something in you that refuses to quit. That refuses this town, that lives on even through all you've been through."

"But Kurogane--"

"Didn't do anything other than relight the fire within. You're the one who has the strength, Torin. You can escape this tower, this prison. And you don't need us to do it,"

Fai stood up and walked away, leaving me alone. But just before he was completely out of earshot, I heard his voice.

"When we're gone, Torin, you will have to move on. And you will,"

Endings.

It's a funny thing when something has to come to an end. That final close of the door as the four people whose last names I never even bothered to remember walked away later in the week. The end of whatever make-shift family they had they took with them. The sound of the door was one of the loudest noises that my heart had ever heard.

No matter how much I wanted to let it drag out, in the end, it was just me, standing and waving goodbye as they walked down the street. Syaoran walked ahead, Fai and Kurogane side by side, and Sakura.

Sakura. God, those eyes. She was so beautiful as she walked away.

Walked away.

But for once, there wasn't anger in my heart.

I watched them until they finally disappeared and then I went inside my house and gather up some clothes in a bag. It was, as Fai knew, time to move on. The end had come for me in this house, in this town. The end of my own suffering, the end of my sad pit of loneliness. There was nothing left for me to do other than to go away.

Perhaps someday I will come back, for nostaliga, or not. The people I leave here will maybe wonder about me, think about me once in a while if they ever walk past this old, plain house. But then they would move on as well, onto other things of more importance.

'Yeah right'

I wrote to my dad a note, telling him where I was going and if he ever wanted to contact me, he could. But I don't think he's as ready. I left the note on the kitchen counter and then walked out the door, and I never looked back, once.

You were right, Fai.

Over 10 years has passed since then and I have not seen any of them. Well, expect the times my mind plays tricks on me. And I never got the chance to thank them for all that they had shown me.

Syaoran and Sakura had shown me love, compassion, and trust. Kurogane had shown me strength and opened my eyes up to my death so that I could live again.

And Fai. Oh, Fai. He knew the words I had to hear, in order to move on with my life after they had disappeared.

For that, I can not ever let them down. I am, and will always be, forever grateful. For all that they have done, returning my innocence to my jaded self. For they made me see my life as something worth saving, a life worth living.

Now, to tie up some loose ends.

The factory that the town had lived on for so many years exploded in a freak accident the day after I left. It left a giant crater the size of a basketball court and though there were a few people injured, no one died. The giant smoke could be seen for days for miles around. Authorities came in, clean up, and left the town with questions that never were answered. Instead, a new factory moved right in, but from what I hear, this one is better then the last, and though the town is still struggling, it is better then before.

My father passed away a few years later from a heart attack. He never managed to escape the beast he drank himself into. The last time I saw him, we laid flowers on my sister's grave.

My brother Harlan ended up as a teacher and he has never forgiven himself for how he left me, even when I told him the past is past. Harlan helped me find a job and a place to stay, but for the first few years our relationship was rocky. It still is, but I at least know that he is working on it and doing better.

As for myself, I have gotten myself a girl with green eyes. She loves me, she sees a the whole person that I am, my successes and my failures. My life has another person in it, to whom I am forever grateful. The fire within me burns still.

And so, that is my ending. That is all that I have to say.

Thank you.

Torin Uzoma.

Disclaimer: I do not own Tsubasa characters.

Author's note: Thank you for reading this story. After so long, I can finally end this story. It's been a long time, and I am glad for how this turn out. Cheers.