"You're too old for this…" he muttered to himself, "Get it together!" although it did not stop him from his desperate internet searches. The only resource that remained available.

Presently, he worked for Onodera publishing, as a man who was 25 years old and jaded. Plenty of things had changed throughout the years, not limited to trivialities such as his appearance and shoe size. Other things remained the same, however, such as his prearranged engagement with An, though they did not often converse anymore.

In the search bar of a computer, which he operated at the sacred grounds of an internet cafe, he input his request with unadulterated helplessness.

"I can't die. Please help."

Some results yielded irrelevant blogs that just happened to confuse the serve due to the key words. Most presented him with suicide hotlines and various numbers to call in the event of a crisis, but none seemed to tackle immortality. The most success he had was stumbling across a forum.

"I want to die. Please help."

submitted 4 hours ago

"I don't want to die, please send help"

submitted 9 hours ago

"These are my last 30 minutes on earth."

submitted an hour ago

He cursed, shut the computer down and faltered at the sound of his ringing phone. Nao had called him, again. "...Yes?"

"Onodera, hi! How's everything going? It's been awhile since everyone's seen you, so I thought, on behalf of everyone, that we'd invite you to the hot-pot party we're having tonight." he sounded as chipper as ever, and it was that sort of behavior which could have pegged Nao as a masochist.

"Nao…" he sighed, "We saw each other a few hours ago. I was at work, today. So were you."

"That doesn't count!" was the argument he received, "Work is work. You look so dead when you're there anyway, it's just not fun. Are you still bummed because Akikawa received a different editor…?"

The forbidden words. "Nao…!"

It was a heartbreak that he struggled to cope with. He'd been assigned to his favorite author as soon as he entered the literature department, but his father forced a transfer upon undergoing nepotism allegations.

Whether or not it was true, he never held more animosity towards his surname than he had at that moment.

On the other end of the phone, Nao cursed. "Shit, sorry man! I didn't realize it was too soon… Ah- Anyway, about that hot pot."

Onodera hung up the phone. The woman presumably in charge of the cafe swung around in order to ask if he was okay, again. He'd inadvertently become a regular here at some point, and he wondered if she'd gone through the browser's history.

Somewhat resentful of his clumsiness, he offered a slight smile, thanked her, paid her and left. When Nao tried to call his phone again, he silenced it and replied with the excuse that he was boarding the subway… which wasn't a lie.

He climbed on with the other passengers, and the train was unfortunately crowded. Seats were available, but he settled for the grab handle. He watched the window listlessly as the train shut its doors and departed. Then there was a flash of yellow in the window that startled him, but this was merely a trick of the light perpetuated by a poster on the opposite side of train.

He avoided his own reflection, unwilling to face the person responsible for his turmoil.

The walk home was far but his legs had adapted to the exercise. And he no longer flinched when he was killed; often he would merely reflect and accept the fact that he was a freak.

He unlocked the door and did not bother to trigger the lights, as his intention was to sleep immediately while he had the time. That decision resulted in clumsily tripping over several piles of laundry, however, and when he finally reached his bed among the wreckage, the doorbell rang.

In his surprise, he crashed into what must have been a misplaced pair of scissors, because his throat was impaled and within seconds he appeared at the foot of the room, next to the lightswitch. With little alternative, he used them and answered the door.

He received a surprise that solidified his initial concerns.

He was surely, steadily losing his mind.

On the train, at work, in his sleep, those eyes were always in the back of his head somewhere, looming. Now the man responsible was looking down at him without an ounce of amusement on his face.

He rubbed his eyes, at first, and blamed it on the sleepless nights. As a precautionary measure, he slammed the door—

—though he was immediately thwarted by the intruder's foot. Takano's voice was heard, then, dismissing any hopes that Ritsu had of this ordeal being the result of lucidity. "Don't slam the door on me. Who the hell do you think you are?"

Ritsu was left standing there dumbly at the door while Takano pulled off his shoes and looked around. "This place is a dump. You haven't changed at all…"

"What… the hell are you doing here?!" he managed once the confusion had settled. "Don't just barge into my apartment as if I invited you! Get out, I don't want any more trouble from you!" he pushed Takano, but it was as effective as pushing a train.

He wouldn't even pretend to budge. He wrapped his hands around Ritsu's wrists, "Aren't you glad to see me? We've been apart for so long, I was hoping you'd desperately miss me."

"That… Who are you?!" he pulled away fiercely, "There's no way you're the same person… You look the same as you did then. And it's been 10 years! A-Also, you're not supposed to be here so get out. Go spend the night at a cemetery. Or the red-light district, I don't care! Just… go anywhere but here! All you do is make things-"

Perhaps out of spite, he wrapped his arms around Ritsu's waist and bit his ear. "It's been that long already, huh. I can tell. You've grown nicely."

At this point, his resistance could only be perceived as a tantrum. He thrashed around violently and hit whatever he could- until his leg flew through the window, when Takano had carried him too close. It didn't take long for the anemia to set in apparently, because the blood loss was copious and within a moment, he was seated safely on the floor, several feet away.

The reaper folded his arms, watched him, then whistled. "I've always thought this. But watching it happen up close is still interesting."

"You…!" he shook his fist, until his words sank in. "You… can see it happen?"

"You're still shit when it comes to listening to someone talk, I see." he sighed.

Frustrated, he got to his feet and argued back, "At least I didn't ruin an innocent bystander's life and leave them to suffer! Do you think I can stomach having you in my home after what you did to me?!"

"I told you before, that was all you." he looked sternly at him. His demeanor left little room for argument, but it did not stop Ritsu from trying.

"You… I… Agh!" he messed up his own hair and slumped over, absolutely frazzled. "Whatever… what do you want, this time? If you're going to take my soul, just do it already…"

"You know, you were a lot cuter before." he noted, "And that's not what I came here to do. Actually, this is for you."

In his hand he held a document that was rolled up, sealed by a bow and capped on either side; it looked just like a scroll, actually. Even the contents of it, when he opened it up, were handwritten in elegant calligraphy. "Uh…"

"Just read it." he snapped.

He obeyed, but not at the mercy of Takano. Anyone who was handed a scroll by a supernatural being would read the scroll, he relented.

Halfway down the page, a sinking feeling manifested in his chest and stomach. "This… A-Are you trying to tell me that you're here to stay?! No way! Go somewhere else."

"That's right." he ignored the rude host's protests and held him close, "Until I fix your mistakes, I'm here to stay. However long that takes… It means we're inseparable, you and I."

He was silent for a moment. When he felt arms around his waist again, he threw a tantrum. Threw the scroll down, crumpled and stomped on it for good measure. But it disappeared with a graceful 'poof' and wound up right back in Takano's hands.

"Nice try." he commended. "Geez, no wonder you haven't made any progress…"

The doorbell rang, before Ritsu could throw himself upon the scissors again. He was troubled and it showed on his face. "...Just wait here." he sighed "And don't try anything weird!"

He kept his voice down. If someone heard him talking to himself amid this mess, he'd be institutionalized immediately and nobody would blame the person who admitted him.

The door opened.

Much to his pleasant surprise, it was An, bearing a plastic bag in front of her. "An! U-Uh…"

As much as he wanted to invite her in… the situation was a bit awkward. Not to mention the avalanche in his room that made him seem even more reprehensible

"Ritsu." she smiled "It's good to see you. May I come in?"

He stalled. How else would he think of a decent explanation for his 'way of life'? "Ah, sure! Just… give me a second, okay?"

"Oh, do you have company?" she tried to peek inside but her view was blocked.

"I-I don't! It's just…" as he scrambled for an excuse, the door to the entrance hall opened up and Takano walked in. He panicked; tried to ignore his presence. If there was one person he did not want to involve in his mess…

"What's taking you so long?" he pulled Ritsu close as he slipped his arm around his shoulder.

An watched as he became unnaturally stiff, and then covered her mouth. "Oh! I didn't know you had… 'that' type of company? Ah… Who's your friend?"

He was confused and there were several reasons why.

Takano answered for him, with a way of holding onto him that was ultimately too suggestive for anyone's appreciation. "I'm his neighbor, right now. And we're totally like 'that', so…"

Something switched in his previously blunt demeanor; why, now, did he have to shine like a host as he took An's hand and turned it over? Although he was the type of man to make jokes about being 'strange', he somehow came across as charming, to the point where she had to hide her flustered face from them.

It irked him. Really, really pissed him off but his head swam and so he only stood there.

"I… I understand!" she bowed, "I'll see you later, Ritsu! Please take care. This is for you."

She left the bag by his doorstep and took off, and Ritsu couldn't quite recall the last time he'd seen her run so fast.

"You…" he turned towards Takano. They exchanged a pause, before he began brutally assaulting his chest with his fists. Though it was altogether ineffective, it caught his uninvited guest by surprise. "You asshole! Die! How could you say something like that to An?! What are you, a host?!"

He received no response with the exception of a monotonous 'Ow'. Nonetheless, his assault persisted. "And anyway, you said that normal people couldn't see you. So when you started touching me, I…!"

Takano interrupted him, swatting his attacks away in the meanwhile. "I said that ten years ago. You remembered? Even though I said that. You also saw me. If you had read until the end, like a good boy, you would know that my physical body has been returned to me."

As much as he would have loved to continue his ineffectual results, he stopped and his hands dropped to his side. "...What… So, are you telling me that you are… Human?"

"I never said that," he added "Just because you've died before, does it mean you're really dead?"

He feared that this was going to turn into a run-around of unanswerable truths. Just like last time. "Okay, but…"

"I'm here because I have something to amend. That doesn't mean I was given a 'second chance' at life; those chances are one in a million and aren't rewarded to those who throw their gift away. So it's likely that I'll return to my 'civic duties' once your situation is resolved."

"Civic duties…" he vaguely recalled being told that his position intended as repentance in the first place. "That… Wait, why now?! Why couldn't you help me ten years ago?! Do you know how much I've suffered since then…!"

Surely, it could not wholeheartedly be blamed on his unusual circumstances alone. But his curse certainly didn't help and if anything, it was priced with years of isolation, years of believing that he was a freak with no salvation.

"You shouldn't worry too much." Takano assured, wrapping his arms around Ritsu again. This time his hand slipped into the front of his jeans, "It means we can do all sorts of stuff."

He could tell he was being teased. Out of patience and wits, he turned around and smacked him on the upside of his head.

"Ow." that hiss of pain was reassuring, although he was still cheeky. "You had to grow into this type of adult…"

"Stop avoiding my question. Why did you wait so long?!" he shouted. Part of him was stuck on that night, permanently, when he had lost something very important.

"There's no way." he reasoned with himself in the deep, bitter recesses of his mind "I can't work with this person, no matter what! Even if I have to die over and over again for the rest of my life. I don't want to work with this… horrible man!"

Seeing as Takano had delayed, again, his tolerance collapsed. He threw his shoes on and stormed out of the house with a resentful cry of, "Forget it. Ruin someone else's life!"

Though he said that, he could not ensure that his life would have turned out much differently if he had never met Takano. He could not confirm how deeply Takano was involved in the first place.

"If I'm angry… It's just because that asshole won't tell me anything!" he griped until he realized that eyes were on him. Many of them. Because he was in public.

Haitani was by his side, wearing a cast over his left arm. They sat on the bench in front of the P.T. center, evidently waiting for a ride when Haitani suggested, "Why don't we walk home today?"

It was meant with the best intentions, but Ritsu still had to wonder if he was being teased. "...You mean, all the way home? Through the subway, and stuff…? I-I don't know if I can make it that far, sorry."

"Don't sell yourself so short! It's not too far, right? Although I guess it might be tough on you. You said you lived on an incline, right?"

He nodded, as his hands fidgeted uncomfortably. "I-It's just that I haven't walked home since before. And the doctors told me to take it easy until I could handle the anemia, so…"

"Well, the only one who can really hold you back is you." he pointed out "Besides, you hated it when they held your hand in the hospital, right? What's the point in getting released if you don't use it to live a little!"

As optimistic as ever, he pat Ritsu's shoulder and rose to his feet. An easy feat for Haitani, he supposed, who had only wounded his hand. But Ritsu wasn't so sure.

He didn't have that confidence. "I…"

"How about this." he amended, "You don't get to decide anymore. Come with me! It'll be fun."

He pulled on Ritsu's wrist and led him in the direction of what he presumed to be the subway station, but this was his first time exploring the area on foot.

They walked for quite a while, and he was feeling proud of himself. A kilometer or two without a single accident? Those doctors had exaggerated the fragility of his bones, after all. Or at least that was what Haitani asserted before he clumsily dropped to his knees in the middle of an intersection crosswalk.

No, even if he were run over right then and there, he would be fine. But he could not vouch for Haitani, so he struggled to his feet in a panic. Cars began to honk and pedestrians began to stop and stare, likely wondering what his intentions were by doing something so dumbly reckless.

"Up you go." he heard before being lifted onto the back of his friend, who kept moving as if no inconvenience had occurred in the first place.

They crossed the threshold of traffic into safer territories, and Ritsu attempted to climb off his back in spite of being held tight. "L-Let go! You said that you can't do any heavy lifting for a while, right? This will hurt you!"

"It's fine if you're not heavy." he continued walking, and ignored any semblance of protest he received. "It's good to push the boundaries sometimes, anyway! You never know, this might even buff me up a little." he wriggled his fingers in his cast.

Although he wanted desperately to dismount, because people were staring and it made him feel strange, he conceded that too much struggling would only worsen the issue. "I...I guess, but this is really embarrassing!"

"If anyone says it's embarrassing, they can take it up with me." he suggested, though the notion wasn't comforting at all.

"Besides." he added with a smile, "This means I have your back. So when the time comes, you need to have mine. Fair?"

He couldn't imagine how he could possibly 'have his back' in the future. He couldn't support himself on his own two legs.

Still, though. If he had to spend more time like this, in a relationship in which he could depend and be depended upon… He would not mind.

"Ah, Haitani…" he felt himself drifting. "No… Don't do th…"

What he recalled was the unfortunate inevitability of Haitani straining his wrist; it resulted in an extra month of physical therapy, for him, because it was something he'd neglected to mention while carrying him.

"Stupid." he mumbled, "If it hurt, you shoulda said something…"

He jolted awake when he felt something touching his forehead. He reflexively swatted it out of his hand, "That isn't funny-!" only to find that he was not the subject of a practical joke, as he had expected.

Instead, it was merely Takano applying a wet cloth. He was on a couch, which surprised him.

"My couch…?" he felt around, before touching something unusually firm.

"If you're going to feel me up, do it when there's less booze in your system." he suggested "Not that I mind, but I wouldn't want to defile an intoxicated maiden. That seems like the sort of thing you'd 'conveniently forget'."

Unable to follow along, his eyes drifted upwards as he tried to recall the whens and hows of the situation. There was an unsettlingly potent feeling of nostalgia welling up within him.

"If you're too drunk to talk, then just listen." he laid him back down, on his side, and covered him with a blanket. "I won't take it out on you now, but please don't call another man's name when you're with me. It hurts a lot more than you think. For reasons you wouldn't understand."

Groggily, he nodded. With the impulse of a child, he reached out to touch the nearest thing that might be warm, and Takano's flesh was warm. Or perhaps it felt warm because of the booze.

Still, a warmth like that felt so familiar. "Ha…" the more he remembered that night, the more he regretted it, and might just regret it until his true end. "Haitani…"

There were so many things he longed to say, as he cupped his friend's face. Some part of him must have been aware that he wasn't really there, and that it wasn't healthy at all to cling to a relationship with someone from over 10 years ago. But the gentle warmth that surrounded him felt too rewarding to be strange. "Thank you… so much."

When his consciousness returned, it was roughly seven in the morning, as well as a very blissful Saturday with the exception of the slight ache in his head.

"Shit…" his entire body felt heavy. He sat up and the blanket fell off his hips, but the weight on his leg did not disappear.

In a daze for a hot minute, he nearly mistook the silhouette as a pile of laundry. But he touched the top of his head, felt the warmth and ran his fingers through each silky strand in disoriented confirmation. It was indeed a person.

"...Nao..?" he wondered aloud.

"Wrong again." replied the laundry. His world ignited not a moment longer, but before he could apologize, gentle hands were on his face. His chin was cupped and in a split second, he was being kissed again.

"Mmf-!" he gripped his shoulders, hard, and tried to jerk away. The sudden movement did not work out in his favor; he thought he'd lay back and pass out again, but Takano's hands were in his hair, pulling, holding him in place. When the man tried to climb on top of him, he smacked him.

"Wh-What's your problem!" he breathed heavily, whether due to anemia or stress, "You can't… You can't just treat me that way because you feel like it! The way you do things now… and the way you did things ten years ago. None of it makes sense! I don't get it, so stop touching me!"

Takano kept his distance this time, but there was something sorrowful about the expression he wore, as if he were lonely.

As he'd expected, Takano said nothing. So he continued, "And if you want to mess around like 'that', then go ahead. But do it with girls! O-Or whomever you want, as long as they're not me. After what you did…"

"Everything I did was for you." he interrupted, "You might not be able to get that through your thick little head right now. But you'll come to understand it. Also, you're wrong. It can't be anyone but you."

"Then explain something to me." he demanded. "Explain why you kissed me, back then, and why you never bothered with me until now. I don't expect you to understand. But try to imagine how much it hurt when I returned that night and realized that I would never see you again-!"

For the first time in ten years, he heard Takano raise his voice. For the first time in his life, he thought that Takano looked more wounded, desperate and hurt, than he felt. "Why don't you try to imagine how it feels… to watch the one you love slowly fall for someone else."

"...Huh?"

"Do you truly want to know what would have happened to you if I had stayed the night?" he challenged. His voice lowered and he grew closer to Onodera, drawing his hand closer and closer to his face even as he tried to slip away. "You were so easy to watch. Day in and day out, that's the only part of you that they would let me have, so I watched. It's because of you… that a reaper did what it never should, and fell in love with a human that they could never reach."

Ritsu was almost at a loss for words. But his instinct was to reject every allegation; to think of Takano as anything else, was…

As if predicting his defiance, Takano placed a hand over his mouth and pushed him until he was flat on the couch with his body pinned down. "The night I kissed you, I was already at my limit. Even when I tried to push you away, you just kept pursuing me; you idiot. Had you just left me alone… Things could have worked out differently for you. But if you don't want to hear it," his free hand began to drift among the clothes and the fabric of the couch until it found the zipper on his jeans and pulled.

The body beneath him began to squirm, but he merely watched. When Ritsu was good and uncomfortable, he lowered himself until his lips were touching the nape of his neck. "I would have pinned you down like this, and touched you in the same way that he did."

He jolted at the memory; the day that he'd first found out he was 'strange'... But the idea of anyone else in the world knowing about it, it mortified him.

"Your reaction tells me that I'm right." he released his wrists, seeing as his victim's body was altogether too inebriated to put up sufficient resistance. Then he palmed the front of his jeans and drank up the moans he elicited. "Except I wouldn't have stopped there. I would have pushed you down, kissed you, touched you here." he moved his hand in order to grope his backside, "Made you mine and marked you so no one else would touch you. So you wouldn't want to be touched ever again. That's the kind of person I am, do you understand?"

All at once, he released Ritsu and reclaimed his seat at the end of the couch. "I was the one that was always watching you. And I was the one that suffered every time you got close to someone else. It should have been me, is what I thought…" he sighed. "No, it's what I still think now. So I apologize, but now that I finally have my chance, there's no way I'm letting you go."

He looked away for a long time, burying his head in his knees as he tried to sort himself out.

"No…" tears that he'd been holding back for a long time began to overflow, but he choked them back stubbornly. "You can't just disappear for ten years and say that you've been in...love with-"

It was too much to bear, so he rose from his seat and stormed out. Except he didn't get far; the only true salvation he sought was the separation between himself and that strange man, in the form of the entrance hall's locked door.

The immense stress would have had him pass out, if not for the firm grip he had on the handrail.

What irritated him most was not the rough way in which he was treated, but the fact that his body never seemed to be on the page. When it needed to die, it did not die. When it needed to feel nothing, it felt something. And now, for a man he loathed, his heart was beating rapidly in its chest and it could not be entirely attributed to the booze.

All because he was missing Haitani. All because he had been withdrawn, isolated for so long, he was now selfishly craving someone else's touch.

The doorbell rang and he suffered, knowing full well he was in no condition to answer it. But if he could pass it off as a hangover, then perhaps An would understand. Or at least fetch coffee and perhaps iron supplements for the lightness in his head.

The doorbell rang again, and again, and again. His head was reeling by the seventh 'ding', so he stumbled to his feet and held it open. Or perhaps it was holding him upright.

When he saw Haitani on the other side of the door, smiling back at him with the same confidence he'd always worn, he knew he had to be dreaming. He must have truly died.

"Yo!" he waved. "Did ya miss me?"