A/N: Thank you, as always, to Her Excellency, the Magnificent Jade. Thanks also to a friend (you know who you are) who prompted me to finish and post this chapter. I needed the push – sorry to everyone for the wait!

Disclaimer: I do not own Sailor Moon. Or that super-awesome "I need a hero" Tuxedo Mask shirt from Hot Topic. Or zip-lock bags.

Date: 11.11.11

Warnings: Language, situational references.

C

Subject to Change

Season 3

Chapter Four: Motoki

C

"All right, Takegawa-san, that's the last of your motion exercises for the day." Motoki gave the elderly man a smile, tucking his gnarled hand back under the rumpled sheet. Takegawa didn't smile or acknowledge him, just kept staring at the ceiling, air whistling softly in and out of his pale lips. He had been like this for a few days now, and Motoki knew from experience that it meant that soon he would probably be summoned to Takegawa-san's room not to give him his daily arm and leg motion exercises but to clean the signs of death from his body before his family was brought in to see him. This was how it usually happened – the normally cheerful residents who joked with him when he came in to help them dress each morning would begin to be confused when he asked them to lift their right arm so he could help them put on their shirt sleeve, and then they would start to eat less and their eyes would unfocus when he talked to them; and sometimes they would bring themselves to with a "Hmm?" and sometimes they wouldn't even notice him the whole time he was there.

He was sad, because Takegawa had been one of the friendliest patients on his floor, always ready with a toothless smile. He had a way of looking up at Motoki from over his reading glasses just the same way that Toki's dad had always done, and to see him slowly drifting away like this was like watching his father's decline all over again.

"Furuhata."

Motoki looked toward the door, his back immediately straightening at the charge nurse's brusque tone. "Yes, Chiyo-san?"

"You have visitors."

Motoki cringed internally even as he placed the call light next to Takegawa-san's hand, in easy reach should he need it. The nursing aides weren't exactly forbidden to receive visitors during their shifts, but it certainly wasn't encouraged, and Chiyo-san was the strictest charge nurse in the facility. He couldn't afford the demerit; he was finally planning to go back to school this summer, and he needed the money for tuition, he couldn't lose this job –

"Apparently," said Chiyo, "it's urgent." Her flat tone let him know that she hadn't appreciated being told such a thing, and he cringed again, wishing that whoever these visitors were they could have refrained from offending his boss. It couldn't be his mom; she was courteous to a fault, and an hour away by train with Gramps besides. She wouldn't leave Gramps alone to come see Motoki. The more likely candidate was Unazuki; ticking off Motoki's boss sounded like something right up her alley…

"Ah. Okay. Thank you, Chiyo-san," said Motoki, and turned to Takegawa. "Please buzz me if you need anything, Takegawa-san."

He washed his hands quickly and followed Chiyo out into the hall. She strode toward the lobby where patients' families were received, so he assumed his visitors were there. He tried to glance surreptitiously down at his scrubs to make sure no stains were too visible – he hadn't emptied any bedpans or replaced any Chux pads yet today, but a few of his sets of his scrubs did have stains from that sort of thing, stains that wouldn't come out no matter how many times he had washed them, and even if Unazuki was his sister and he had taken this job for her, and for Mom and Gramps, there was a part of him, deep inside, that cringed away from letting her see him like this, smelling like shit and death and the no-tears baby shampoo they used to wash the elderly ladies' hair.

It cringed away from anyone seeing him like this, really. It was why he hadn't tried to stay in touch with his friends – Kobayashi with his radio job, Asanuma with his glitzy art, Darien with his prestigious American college. It was why he never quite got around to answering Kobayashi's "how you doing, man?" e-mails or ever returning the Bretaigne, Brussels, Prague postcards that arrived with Asanuma's carelessly scrawled "Living the life, man! Wish you were here!"

Sometimes Motoki finally slid into in his bed at night, aching at every joint from lifting and wheeling patients all day, so exhausted that there were bright lights behind his eyelids when he blinked but unable to fall asleep, chewed on by a sense of failure so sharp that he could only curl into his pillow and breathe. Slow, shaking breaths, because he had wanted to do so many things, learn so many things, and he had worked so hard, and…this. This was all he could do. Lift patients onto bedpans so they could shit in their beds and play "pedal to the metal" with their gnarled feet and comb thin, straggling hair over and over for patients who were so lonely that they pretended to dislike how their hair or clothes looked each day so that Motoki would stay longer with them to fix it. Who were so lonely that he couldn't hate them. Couldn't hate any of them.

Only himself.

There were only two people in the lobby. A muscled guy with dyed-blue hair, pierced and bandannaed within an inch of his life, lounging on one of the flower-patterned sofas with his arms and legs spread wide, hands drumming the armrest and backrest, and a young girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, perched on the edge of the same sofa, leaning slightly away from the man. They both met Motoki's eyes as he came in, and deep unease filtered into him. He looked around, trying to find some sign of someone else, anyone else, in the lobby, but there was only Chiyo-san beadily watching him, then the pair, them him again. He could tell from her expression that she was eyeing the girl's mussed sweater and pleading expression and wondering if she needed to call children's protective services, and honestly, Motoki was, too, but they were getting up now and coming toward him, and God why did this sort of thing have to happen to him - ?

"Motoki!" The guy was pushing to his feet, striding forward. "How've you been?"

He gripped Motoki's hand, shaking it firmly, as Motoki regarded him blankly. "I…know you?"

If Motoki didn't know better he would have said the man's face fell, as if he was disappointed by this response. "Kentaro Mikai. One of Darien's friends. We met a few times, you know, when you and Ittou came to see him off at the airport?"

Oh. Motoki was remembering better now. "You had…less piercings then."

Kentaro laughed, raking a hand through his hair. "Yeah, well. I've been kind of bored, these past few years." He looked back at Motoki, watching his eyes flick to the girl who had come slowly up behind him and looked like she was half hiding behind Kentaro but gazing intently at Motoki with a fascination not unlike that of the little kids Motoki had held in his lap when he played Santa Claus at their high school Christmas carnivals: half disbelieving and half hopeful. When she realized Motoki was staring back at her, though, she hastily averted her eyes, looking determinedly at Kentaro instead. "Same for you?"

Motoki returned his gaze to Kentaro. He was increasingly unnerved; was this girl in some kind of trouble? She hardly seemed the type to get mixed up in a bad crowd, not that Kentaro had necessarily been part of a bad crowd when Motoki had met him. But he recognized her type from his years working the arcade: shy girls who hovered at the fringes of popular groups, sitting shyly in corners and shadows.

"I…do I know you?" he said, speaking directly to the girl.

Kentaro licked his lips. Glanced behind Motoki. "Actually," he said, "could we talk to you in private?"

Motoki knew, without looking, that Chiyo-san's eyes were glaring holes into the back of his head. "I really don't have time," he began helplessly, half glad for Chiyo's presence so that he had an excuse not to deal with these two.

Kentaro and the girl exchanged a set of meaningful glances that had Motoki suddenly re-evaluating the girl's age. She spoke for the first time, her voice low and clear.

"We can wait."

Motoki swallowed a sigh, eyeing her with even more distrust than he had eyed Kentaro at first. "Okay. My lunch break is at twelve. It's only half an hour, though."

The girl smiled, slightly. "That should suffice."

C

His lunch hour always began with a trip to his locker to unstrap his back brace and grab his sandwich and chips. Motoki sighed as he peeled apart the velcro belt, gingerly rubbing his side and reaching for the bottle of aspirin in the back of his locker.

"Little young to be needing lumbar support, aren't you?"

Motoki jerked around. Kentaro was behind him, leaning against the employee lunch table.

He edged against his locker, surreptitiously patting his back pocket to check that his wallet was still there, and shrugged. The motion aggravated his muscles. He was the only male aide on the floor today, so the other aides had recruited his help in transferring their heavier patients to wheelchairs for their outdoors walks, and while he didn't mind helping, it was beginning to take a toll.

He shrugged. "Just a precaution."

"Has anyone ever told you that you have slight scoliosis?" The girl was suddenly there, too, right beside him, staring fixedly at his back. "All that lifting could aggravate it."

Motoki swallowed once, twice, as though it would return his heart rate to normal. "I'm sorry," he said, as politely as he could, "but what are you doing here?"

The girl took a step back. She looked apologetic now, not analytical, or predatory, as she had before. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and he wondered again how old she was. "We…" But she hesitated there, and though she opened, then closed, her mouth several times, she seemed unable to figure out what to say.

Kentaro gave a slight sigh, a rueful twist of his lips, and came forward, putting a hand atop the girl's head. She let out a long breath, squared her shoulders, and ducked her head from under his hand.

"You don't remember me?" she asked Motoki firmly, fixing her dark eyes on his.

Motoki had a brief moment of panic. One always heard those stories about your past coming back to bite you, but he hadn't even enjoyed so much as a kiss since he started working here, and before that he'd always used protection – and he certainly hadn't done it with a girl who looked barely old enough to be in high school. So he thought it safe to venture, "No…? Sorry."

She looked like she was bracing herself against disappointment, biting her lip. "He might not have…anyway," she said lowly, and Motoki wasn't sure if he or Kentaro were meant to hear it, but then she was looking up at him again. "And you only remember Kentaro from the airport? Not anything else?"

Motoki racked his brain, casting a glance at the clock as he did so – 12:13, he had seventeen more minutes for his break. He hoped they'd leave soon. "No. I didn't even know he had friends other than me and Asanuma until we saw Kentaro-san at the airport." He nodded apologetically at Kentaro. "Sorry."

"No apology necessary." Kentaro waved it off, his lips twisted in a sardonic sort of smile. "I know what Darien was like. We were hardly a big happy family of friends that gathered for birthdays and New Year's, were we?"

There was a near bitter tone to his voice. Motoki had long since gotten over that bitterness, though, or had told himself he had. "Look," he said again, "why are you here?"

The girl got a simultaneously pained and determined look on her face. Then she poured out a story about ancient royalty and evil aliens and Senshi and Shittenou who were reincarnated into the present – one of whom, she said, was him, only he didn't remember because his memories, like Kentaro's, Asanuma's, and Darien's, had been taken. And they needed Motoki to come with them to help them convince Darien this story was the truth, and to go after the princess with whom he was supposedly in love.

Motoki listened patiently and with increasing sympathy as she finished her story. He had gotten sadly accustomed to scenarios like this through his patients – there was no shortage of Alzheimer's and dementia patients in the home. And they were earnest, just like this girl was, believing just as sincerely as she clearly did that what they were telling Motoki as he fed them their breakfast or carefully checked their physician-ordered restraints was the truth.

But right below the sympathy was anger. Raging, boiling anger for Kentaro-san, who – if the seeking glances the girl shot him as she spoke and the encouraging nods he made in response were any indication – had apparently humored her in these delusions instead of getting her the medical help she needed. His first instinct had been the right one: Kentaro was a seedy bastard, was using this poor girl, and for some reason, he'd brought her to Motoki. If he had come expecting Motoki's help in the deception, he had another think coming.

Motoki kept all of this off his face, though, instead keeping his expression open and understanding as he looked at the girl. "I see," he said in the same calm, respectful tone he used with his patients. "That's a very interesting story, miss."

Her face fell. The look she gave him was the same one his Alzheimer's patients did when they realized he was humoring them: part dismayed, part betrayed.

"Furuhata-san, I promise it's the truth," she began, sounding as if she was trying to keep her voice calm herself, but Kentaro was palming her shoulder gently, moving around her. He held a hand out to Motoki.

Motoki looked down at it askance, wondering if the jerk expected him to hold it, but then Kentaro's fingers closed into a fist, and craggy brown rock squeezed out from between them like play-dough crushed in his fist, began to spread up to engulf his hand, his wrist, his arm – then, rapidly, his whole body.

Motoki let out a strangled sound. But as quickly as the rock had enveloped Kentaro it disappeared, and Kentaro was standing there in a set of clothing completely different from the brown leather jacket and oil-smudged jeans he had been wearing before. It was something like armor, with plates that looked like they were made of the same craggy brown rock and boots and leather guards, and…and…

"See?" said Kentaro to the girl. "Told you we should've started with the demonstration." He looked at Motoki. "I'm a Shittenou. You're a Shittenou. Do you believe us now?"

Motoki wasn't quite capable of speech. Instead, he found himself looking dumbly down at his hand. It was rough, bits of peeling white skin from all the times he'd washed his hands today, and his thumbnail was mottled purple from when it had gotten jammed in Edo-san's wheelchair brake the day before. He closed it into a fist.

Nothing happened.

Before he could feel a sick swoop of disappointment or a grateful stab of relief, Kentaro's hand closed over his. And he felt it.

A little strange, like a static shock – more surprising than unpleasant. And then he felt a little straighter, a little taller, and the fist he was still looking at was wrapped in something like boxing tape, with heavy gold guards covering his knuckles.

Kentaro released his hand. Motoki looked at the rest of himself, now wearing a beige and green outfit impossibly similar to Kentaro's. And he shivered. He could see the Motoki the girl had described in his head, the one who was a Shittenou and had fought for a prince and been buried by the loss of his memories, and he felt like he was wearing a dead man's clothes, like they had dug up that Motoki's coffin and stripped the corpse of its armor and given it to Motoki to wear.

Kentaro looked excited, but the girl looked slightly ill. She watched Motoki with dark, sad eyes, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"We should leave," she said, but Motoki said, involuntarily, "No."

She looked at him, and how could an expression hold both dread and hope?

"We need you, man," Kentaro was saying lowly. "Darien never really listened to anyone but you, you know that."

Motoki almost laughed. Not just at the idea that Darien Shields had ever cared about a thing Motoki thought, or said, but at the idea that…that…

That he had grown so desperately unhappy with his life that he was dreaming up stuff like this, now, to escape it.

There was a sudden, stinging pain on his ear, yanking a yelp from him that seemed to make reality crash down around him again – except reality still included Kentaro in armor before him, and chain mail cold and heavy beneath Motoki's shirt. He reached up to his ear, the shell of which Kentaro had just pinched, hard, between metal-tipped fingertips.

"See?" said the other man. "Not a dream. Now, come on. We're busting this depressing joint."

"Kentaro-san," the girl said quietly.

But Kentaro didn't look at her. Gripped Motoki's arm tighter. "I saw it, Motoki. We were happy. That big happy family of friends I was making fun of? We had that. We had that. With Darien."

Motoki pulled away. "I… Look. Maybe you're right." He rubbed his eyes, felt the rough fabric of bandages covering his fingers. "Maybe that story is true. But I… I can't just take off even if I believe you. I have a family. They need me. They need the money I make here."

Kentaro didn't break eye contact with Motoki. He reached into some pocket on his belt and pulled out a rock, closing his fist around it. When he opened it, it was a crystal the size of a strawberry, glittering in the fluorescent light. He held it out to Motoki. When Motoki tried to step back, he took Motoki's hand, firmly, and pressed the crystal into it, closing Motoki's fingers around it. Then he reached into what looked like thin air and pulled out a checkbook.

Motoki looked at the crystal he was beginning to think was a diamond or something equally valuable, not sure what to do. "I don't…" He was uncomfortable, confused, and a little angry. "Kentaro-san, look –"

"Take that to a pawn shop or a jeweler or something," Mikai interrupted. "Make sure it's the real deal and that I'm not just pulling your leg. Then take this – " He ripped the check out of the book and handed it to Motoki, "to your bank and deposit it. Ask the teller to make sure it doesn't bounce. If it doesn't, and you're interested in working with us, there's fifty thousand more where that came from. We'll be back in two days for your answer."

C

Kentaro-san handed Ami a key card as he came back from the concierge's desk and slipped the other one into his pocket. "Fourth floor," he said as they headed for the elevator, and then, as though reading her mind, "Don't worry, I got two rooms. I'm not going to make you share a bed with me."

Ami wanted to collapse into water and sink into the floor, but there was other people in the elevator, so she couldn't. Instead, she just took out her Mercury computer and studiously absorbed herself in its screen, hoping that her longer hair would hide the flush she could feel burning on her neck. One good thing had come of jumping forward into the future: everyone had palm-size phones and computers, making the Mercury computer much less conspicuous to use. She wished she could have summoned her visor, though; it would have been another thing to hide her face from Kentaro-san.

Mikai, for his part, was paying more attention to the unreadable symbols scrolling across her tiny computer screen than to the pink tips of her ears – although, being an excellent multi-tasker, he noted those, too. He was curious about the Senshi side of this quiet girl, the diamond-hard side that surfaced when she was studying her alien computer and when they had argued, the previous day, over whether to find Motoki and Asanuma.

He had driven them from her mother's hospital to a twenty-four diner, and there the story of all that he had seen in that strange magic mirror came out of Ami in tense fits and starts – chunks of facts following slurries of hesitation and evasion as Mikai gently prodded the truth about Darien, and the girl Serena, and the rest of them, out of her. He had found himself thinking of the way he sometimes had to help his friends throw up when they drank too much, sticking his finger down their throat over and over again until the worst of the booze came out.

Not that what Ami had told him was as unpleasant as booze, per se – it was princes and princesses and magical warriors, all the sorts of things that had his inner otaku practically clawing up the walls with excitement – but there had been a sick, wan cast to her face as she told it, like it burned like acid coming up as much as any alcohol could have.

Plus, she had kept glancing at the diner doors as though planning to escape the instant he looked away.

He'd put his hand flat on tops of hers where it was clenched on the table next to her untouched plate of waffles. She hadn't even buttered them yet, for God's sake, and at that point they'd been there over an hour. "Look. Ami. You can stop planning how to ditch me, okay? I'm coming with you."

Her hand had grown steadily colder under his, and Mikai'd had the strangest feeling that she was doing it deliberately, so that he would take his hand away. "You don't understand, Kentaro-san. I don't even know where I'm going. Even if I can find where Serena is – "

"She'll still die without Darien," he had finished. The prophecy had been one of the things she had tried to tiptoe around, emphasis on tried. "There's an easy solution to that, Ami."

He hadn't missed the way her eyes flicked furtively to his. They had done so every time he'd said her name, as if it startled her. It reminded him unpleasantly of his mom, of how she'd flinch sometimes when his dad called her, and he didn't like it one bit. He had resolved to keep saying her name, gently, until she didn't react that way every time.

Ami had pulled her frigid hand from under his. "Serena didn't want him to come after her. She didn't want him to have to fight." Then, more quietly: "She didn't want any of us to have to fight."

Mikai had pursed his lips. "And that's very idealistic and well-meaning of her. But she doesn't get to make that decision for him."

"Why, because you think that's your prerogative?" Ami's voice had risen so abruptly that the waitress and lone customer up at the counter had looked up with raised eyebrows. Even Ami herself had looked surprised, wide-eyed and pale. Mikai, however, had found himself grinning, pleased by this outburst for reasons he couldn't quite articulate.

This had only made Ami frown harder. "You don't know what it's like," she'd fumbled, frustrated by the way he was grinning at her, as though she was some amusing child, "to have to – to have to fight – Serena doesn't want us to have to go through that!"

Mikai had stopped grinning. "Funny," he said quietly, watching her. "I was under the impression going off to fight for her was exactly what you were planning to do."

Ami had glared at him. There was nothing endearing about it, the way it had been before when she glowered up at him from beneath her over-large baseball cap. This was icy, this was an alien warrior looking at someone whose throat she saw no reason not to slit.

"It's different," she said lowly. "I owe her."

Mikai cocked a brow, like he wasn't half unnerved and half turned on. "So this is just a payback thing?" He leaned back in the booth, putting his feet up on the bench next to her. "She saved you, you'll save her, and then you'll be even steven and not need to have anything else to do with each other?"

She didn't say anything. It was answer enough for him. After a moment, he set down his two-creams-and-three-sugars coffee and let his feet fall from the bench to the floor. He took his phone out of his pocket.

"Let's break this down into steps, shall we? We need Darien, yes?" He glanced up only briefly, saw her biting her lip, back to uncertain Ami again. "Yes. But there's no way even in frozen hell that you and me are going to be able to convince him that all this – " He gestured vaguely at the air between them as if the story she had told him about Senshi and Shittenou was still floating in the air between them, "is true, on our own. We need reinforcements."

Ami straightened. "No."

"Darien listens to them," Mikai reminded her, not bothering to ask how well she knew the other two men. "Kind of." He tried not to think of how Darien had ignored his texts, turned off his phone. "More than he would to me, anyway."

"She wouldn't want it," Ami had said softly again. But she hadn't tried to stop Mikai as he scrolled down his contacts list to find Furuhata Motoki's old number.

Now, as the elevator let them off on the fourth floor, Kentaro-san went straight into his room, slinging his bag onto the floor. Instead of going to her own, adjacent room, Ami followed him in, hanging back as he flopped onto the bed, sighing. He popped an eye open then and peered at her, eyebrow raised. She could feel the dirty joke coming, but he seemed to push his lips around it, reabsorbing it, and arranged his features to look attentive. "Did you need something, Ami-san?"

She stood awkwardly in the center of the room, unconsciously clenching the hem of her sweater in her fists. "Thank you," she managed finally. "For spending the money to – come here, and for – for Furuhata-san." She didn't know how much he had written the first check for, but if he was offering another fifty thousand as incentive it had to have been a lot.

Kentaro flashed a smile. "You're welcome. But I didn't do it for you, if that makes you feel better," he said. "It's for Dare."

Ami relaxed slightly, hands stopping their death-wringing of her sweater. But there was still a wistful ache inside her, wondering if anyone would ever value her that much. The way Kentaro-san did Darien, the way Lita had Serena. It was Rei who came to Ami's mind, Rei with her fierce, flashing eyes, Rei, who had asked Mercury what she had done with Ami, as though she cared. At least a little bit. Did Rei ever think of her now, wherever she was?

It didn't matter, not really. What mattered was that she was hidden, and safe, with Saturn's reincarnation. Ami told herself this and straightened her spine, meeting Mikai's eyes again.

"I don't think what we're doing to Motoki-san is right."

Kentaro-san's gentle smile faltered. Ami didn't wait for him to argue with her, just continued, quickly, "We're taking advantage of the wretchedness of his current situation. If he comes with us now, it will only be because his life is so dismal. If it wasn't, and you weren't paying him, he would never come."

Kentaro's posture didn't change but it somehow, suddenly, became grim. "That's the point, Ami. What else is he supposed to compare what we're offering him to? This is his life."

"But it's not what it was supposed to be," Ami said. "You saw, in the mirror – he's supposed to be at the arcade, happy – "

"With Darien, and Asanuma, and those girls, yeah," said Kentaro-san, and he was standing up now, gently cupping her elbow. "But not without them. Ami, the only way for him to regain his life as it's supposed to be – " He crooked his other hand into mock quotation marks, "is to come with us and find them."

Ami stared at her other hand. "It just doesn't seem…right, that he should only come because his current life is unhappy."

"For what other reason did you expect him to come?" Kentaro-san's voice was less gentle now. When she darted a glance up at him he was frowning at her like a teacher at a student who was disappointing him. "You know we don't have any memories of our…old lives. Yet you seem to be expecting that we should somehow still remember our feelings and obligations from that time and be drawn back to them. Motoki has no reason to feel a pull to…this Darien. This Darien never saved his life. This Darien never stayed in touch with him after high school, never did anything that would make Motoki feel like he owed it to him to drop everything to come help him out."

He released her, but not without a gentle squeeze to soften his words. "Be realistic, Ami."

Ami's insides were tight. But she managed some mumble of unintelligible comprehension and made her way to the room's door. She seemed almost able still to feel Kentaro-san's big warm hand around her elbow, and when her hand was on the worn knob, she hesitated. Turned back, uncertainly met his watching eyes.

Why did you come? teetered on her tongue. But she swallowed it, like he had swallowed his comment before, and mumbled a good night before letting herself out.

C

They went back at the end of Motoki's shift two days later. He met them in the back parking lot, by the dumpsters. He had the diamond in a plastic zip-lock bag, and under his hazel eyes were dark, non-plastic bags.

"Look," he began, "this – this stuff you're talking about…tracking down Darien and stuff…it's nothing illegal?"

Ami noticed that he looked at her as he talked, as though he trusted her more than he did Kentaro-san.

"No," she said. "But – it is dangerous, Furuhata-san." She didn't look at Kentaro-san. "Chaos might have things guarding him. Waiting for us."

Motoki nodded, gravely, then turned to Kentaro. He held up the bag, slightly, awkwardly. "You said…"

Kentaro-san stepped forward. He had treated several dozen rocks the night before under Ami's directions in how to make the most valuable types of gems with the least flaws in their matrices. He'd written a check, too, for twice the amount he had promised Motoki two days before. He put it all into Motoki's little sandwich bag, and Motoki swallowed, eyes gleaming with simultaneous relief and sadness.

He pushed the bag deep into his scrubs pocket. "Let me take this home," he said, "and tell my charge nurse I'm leaving. Where do you want me to meet you?"

C

It was clichéd, and it was selfish, and cowardly, but it was the only way Motoki could bear to leave his family. What was left of it. He looked again at the note sitting on his desk – goodbye, Mom, don't worry about me, I'll come back, I just need – and then eraser smudges obscuring something that had been crossed out, and just, I love you – weighted down by the bag of diamonds and rubies.

There was a picture of her and him and Unazuki and Dad on the desk, right near the letter, and the battered frame it was in had once held a different photo that was now lying in his desk drawer. It was one of him and Darien and Asanuma. He couldn't remember when it had been taken; they were standing in front of a school bus, and he looked like he might have been a junior in it, all freckled from the summer they'd spent at the beach. There was an empty space between him and Darien, big enough for someone to have stood in, almost as if there could have been someone there, someone who'd vanished, someone that, if they were there, Darien looks like he might have been leaning toward that someone, muttering a sarcastic joke in their ear. And if that's true, maybe that different Darien, the prince one who loved a princess that Kentaro and the girl were talking about, did exist.

Motoki looked at the shy, sparkling grin on his own face, tracing the spots on it where lines now creased his eyes, his mouth. Maybe…maybe that meant a different Motoki had existed as well.

Could still exist.

He slipped the photo into his duffel bag and left the apartment.