p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;" align="center"Chapter Seven/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;" align="center"What Kind of Day Has It Been (Part 1)/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Hey squirt, you're on in five minutes." Takuto knocked on the door to Mitsuki's dressing room, passing along the message from the stage hand who was so busy doing last minute adjustments he had asked Takuto to leave his post and go and check on her./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"When no answer came, Takuto figured she had heard him and turned to walk away, except the silence was odd, he expected at least some sort of reply or acknowledgement. Takuto placed his hand on the door again and twisted the door knob. "Please be decent." He mumbled to himself and opened the door, much to his surprise the room was empty, Mitsuki's clothes she had worn to the concert hall lay neatly folded on the table, a empty coat hanger swayed idly across the room./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Guess she had to go to the..." Takuto's voice caught in his throat as he noticed the teddy bear, the one he had given Mitsuki lay discarded on the floor. "Kato, is Mitsuki with her parents?" He asked into his microphone as he ran down the hallway, his heart racing./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""No, is something wrong?" Kato replied as Takuto threw open the door to the woman's restroom, it was empty./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""MITSUKI!" He screamed his voice vibrating down the hallway./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Kato, Mitsuki is missing, she is missing!"/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"16 hours earlier./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"For anyone who has laid in bed, yet remained awake all night, the first morning rays of dawn are a disheartening sight, the dark room slowly being bathed in light, the birds beginning to chirp as they wake from their evening slumber, all of it reminders that the entire night was spent with out a single second of sleep./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Takuto lay on his bed, his eyes barely even noticing the dawn rays that were filtering through his window shades. In his minds eye he continued to replay the events at the mall, trying to remember who he had seen close to the Teddy Bear store, as the days past between the event, the memories began to blur as Takuto received only a few hours of sleep each night, and now, the day of the concert, not a single minute of sleep at all. He continued to tell himself there was something there, some clue he over looked, only if he could just remember./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Breakfast is ready!" Hikari called out, snapping Takuto out of his trance. Hikari had laid out a simple breakfast of rice, tea, and a few pieces of sausage she had gotten at the store. "So.. I have some news." She spoke up as Takuto sat down to eat./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"When Takuto didn't respond, she continued. "You know that job I was in the running for in Hiroshima?" She asked, as Takuto looked up at her, the cobwebs slowly leaving his brain and allowing him to concentrate on something else than the events that transpired several days ago./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Well... I got the job!" Her voice rose in excitement as she ran over and threw her arms around Takuto, nearly knocking him out of the chair. "We're going to live in Hiroshima!"/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""We?" He coughed up a bit of rice, taken aback by the sudden turn of events./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Yes, we, we talked about this months ago, getting out of here and starting over in a new city." She explained as Takuto struggled to remember the conversation. So much had happened over the time span of the last month and a half that it seemed like a eternity since he was a janitor, and not Mitsuki's body guard./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""I can't." He shook his head in frustration. "I have a job, I have responsabilities to Mitsuki, I can't just pick up and leave that!"/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Hikari rolled her eyes, still angered that he was hung up about that little girl. "Takuto listen, she's twelve, she will get a new body guard and in a week she would have forgotten all about you, this is our life, our future."/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""I need to go to work." Takuto pushed the food away and rose, the one good thing about being up all night is that he had never changed out of his outfit from yesterday./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Takuto? TAKUTO!" Hikari's voice rose in shock and then anger as he headed for the door. "Takuto do not walk away from me, do you hear me?" She asked, her body and voice shaking in anger at his inability to drop some little meaningless job./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Takuto gave her a half wave from behind and continued to walk out the door./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"The rest of the morning did not turn out any easier, while he had not received any more emails, the police seemed to be dragging their feet due to the many loose ends the investigation had been turning up. By the time Takuto entered the office, Kato was already in deep discussion with two police detectives who had finally gotten a hold of the mall video tapes./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Any luck?" He asked, a slight hope in his voice that the morning would slowly be turning around./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Kato glanced back at him from the television screen as the tape looped again, showing Takuto and Mitsuki on the bench talking, and then Mitsuki pulling him into the store. "Sixty people just in the immediate area, about forty we have no hope of identifying, and that doesn't count the people that could have seen you two from the second level." The detective ticked off./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""What was she doing there, it was one of the hottest days of the summer, the mall was packed, it was a security nightmare." Kato shook his head in frustration, as all the anger from the morning's events, the feelings of helplessness he had felt over the last few days finally came pouring out./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""And what was I supposed to do? Keep her locked up in her room?" He asked incredulously/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""Yes, you keep her where she is safe." Kato shot back, only causing Takuto's temper to rise, none of them understood Mitsuki, not a single one of them./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""She is a little girl! Not a prisoner!" Takuto's voice began to rise as the two detectives paused the video tapes./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""She is some one who is being hunted." Kato's words struck Takuto like a ton of bricks, his mouth instantly went dry. "You are her body guard, not her best friend, if you can't understand that maybe you should never have taken the job in the first place."/p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Kato moved to start the tape back again as Takuto collapsed back in his chair, what ever else was said he couldn't hear. It could have been minutes, or hours, he just sat there and tried to soak it all in. He had endangered Mitsuki's life because he was her friend, not just at the mall, but everywhere he seemed to take her seemed to be filled with dangers, she could have fallen from the tire swing and cracked her head open, she could have been shot at from the road at the school. He had placed her happiness above her safety./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Takuto looked over at the bear sitting on the nightstand that passed for a desk in the tiny office. Had he let her become too close? The flip of the lights in the room blinded him for a second but brought him out of his trail of thought. He never should have become a body guard, he never should have risked Mitsuki's life for such selfish reasons./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Takuto rose and slowly left the room, he knew what he had to do, he knew that he had to go with Hikari, make a new life with her in Hiroshima. "Oh! Takuto!" Mitsuki called from her room as he passed it, the bag that contained his bear and now Mitsuki's clutched in his hands./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""How do I look?" She asked, her face beaming as bright as the sun as she spun around in the glittering white dress. "I was thinking if it was okay, after the concert was finished tonight, we maybe could try dancing for a bit before I have to take the dress back?" She asked, her eyes full of hope./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"Takuto closed his eyes and shook his head. "Mitsuki, I-I can't do this anymore, I.." He struggled to fine the words, how to phrase that he had put her life in danger so many times. "I just can't." He turned and ran for the exit, dropping the bag containing the two bears at Mitsuki's doorway./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"His lungs ached, his muscles screamed, and he just continued to run, he had to make it back to his apartment, had to tell Hikari that he was sorry, that he wanted to leave. Yet all he could picture in his mind was Mitsuki smiling, how their friendship had grown, and the joy and happiness it had brought to both of them./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;""I'm sorry.." He whispered more to Mitsuki than to anyone else, even though she couldn't hear him. As he reached his apartment he wiped away the tears and fumbled for his keys. After a few tries with the wrong key, he finally was able to get the door unlocked./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"The apartment was barren, what little they had, even their television, was gone. In the few hours he had been gone Hikari had packed up everything and stuffed it into the rental car and left. Takuto stumbled into the apartment, finally collapsing to his knees in the middle of the room./p
p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 115%;"All of it, his friendship, his fiancé, his life, it was all gone./p