Hello readers!

Oh, my god, I haven't been able to write anything except ESSAYS lately. So many goddamn exams. Ugh. Now I know why people don't generally like May. But I eventually finished this chapter, which is a little longer then usual, so that's good. Also, apologies for the general short-ness of my earlier chapters. Maybe I should rewrite them at some point. (Yeah, like I have time.) Thank you everyone for your reviews! They keep me going!

Enjoy!

"Yua, is it really okay we're sneaking around back here?"

"It's not sneaking." argued Yua, sounding a little defensive, "We're investigating. That's not illegal, is it?"

"Well, technically, you have to be-"

Yua ignored Manami's correction and strolled forcefully forwards. She heard her older sister sigh with a mingle of exasperation and anxiety and hurry after her, her coat rustling as she moved. Yua had decided after her argument with Kujima to do a little probing herself, leading to this. Manami had no idea how Yua had managed to talk her into going to their local stadium and trying to get in through the back doors, but she was regretting agreeing to it more and more. Taking a deep breath, Manami tried again,

"Look, Yua, we can't just barge in here and start interrogating people. It's not as though we have a proper reason to be here-"

"Of COURSE we have a reason!" replied Yua, growing increasingly irritated, "Our sister was involved in this tournament, in case you've forgotten about that. And anyway, if they don't want people in here, they should watch it more carefully."

"Yes," answered Manami, patiently, deciding it wouldn't help if she pointed out to Yua that slipping past security hardly meant it justified them being there, "But people get in accidents all the time, Yua, and our sister having amnesia is hardly a good reason just to come marching in. What are we going to say if we get caught? Why are we even here?"

"Because I think there's something weird going on!" retorted Yua, spinning around to face her sister properly, finally having enough of Manami's questions, "Why has Aina been told she still works at her old job? She hasn't worked there ever since she started becoming a successful Angelic Layer Deus. Why didn't that Kujima guy have those files I wanted on Aina? And why isn't her name on the Kyoto roster?"

"Maybe she's not meant to play Angelic Layer just yet?" suggested Manami, a little hurt by Yua's snappish voice, but also somewhat annoyed, as though her sister assumed she hadn't asked these questions herself already, "In case you've forgotten, she's been involved in head trauma! And why should Mr. Kujima just give you her files, anyway? You don't get to access to private information just because you're her sister, you know!"

"And the roster?" demanded Yua, putting her hands on her hips.

"I don't know!" replied Manami, blushing a bit, "The magazine was talking about the upcoming tournament, maybe Aina's name wasn't on the roster because she's not entering it, so they can't compare her performance at Kyoto to the newest one? It wasn't even the official AL magazine; anyway, they only mentioned it because recently Angelic Layer hasn't been as popular as it has lately. That's what Chishi said."

"W-well, I suppose that might be," Yua muttered, looking a little bit embarrassed. Then she huffed a little defiantly, adding, "I just think it's a little odd that nobody's mentioned the tournament to Aina yet, that's all. And I want to know what happened the day of the accident."

"Kujima could have told her about it and she just hasn't mentioned it to us." suggested Manami, feeling a little relieved that Yua seemed to have forgotten her original purpose of sneaking into the back room of the stadium, "And what makes you think anybody in the last tournament would know? It's not like-"

"Hey! What are you people doing back here? Members of the public aren't allowed!" shouted a voice from behind the siblings, making them jump. They turned to see a security guard, holding a walky-talky and glowering at them. Yua gulped.

"Oh, crap."

Right, left, right.

As Aina's thought dictating her movements, Belladonna swirled in the glowing lights of the MiniLayer, her dress appearing a luminous pink as it flickered around her legs, the bangles on her thin wrists jingling very slightly. Aina had found practising with Belladonna to be a strangely exhilarating thing; like she was briefly connected with the Angel, like they could do anything. However, she had been practising for a while now, and both her eyes and head were beginning to ache.

The headaches, Aina had found out, although they usually came as quickly as they left, were frequent and sometimes came at really annoying moments. She had kept quiet about them for the most part, but she decided that she had been practising enough with Belladonna today. With some reluctance, Aina unplugged the MiniLayer and carefully placed Belladonna on her perch on Aina's computer, on the monitor.

As Aina stood up and turned to put away her helmet, her elbow hit something, a large book falling from her and onto the floor, nearly hitting her feet. Sighing, she bent down and picked it up, about to slot it anywhere it would fit, when it flopped open in her hand.

Curious, Aina realised that she was holding a photo album. And from the look of her and sisters, it was a fairly recent one. There were several snapshots of Aina, most of them with her looking vaguely unimpressed at whoever was trying to sneak a photo of her. There was one of Manami with Chishin, the background slightly blurring. A picture of Yua made Aina smile, as her youngest sister was attempting to push the camera out of the way, her opposite hand holding some sort of drink.

However, the smile was quickly wiped off her face as she flicked a little further through the photo album. People and places Aina couldn't remember started to appear, making her feel like she was looking at a photo of a stranger. The more she flipped through the pages, her eyes scanning it for anything, anything she even remotely remembered, the more panicky she felt. When she reached the end of the book, she slammed it shut so suddenly that it fell from her limp grasp and this time really did hit her foot, making her yell with pain. She took a step back from the book as though it might bite, shaking.

Aina suddenly felt so angry that it scared her. Angry at her situation. Angry at anything and everything that was being kept a secret from her. Angry with herself. For what reason, she didn't know.

Suddenly, she felt bile rising in her throat, and she rushed off to the bathroom, retching, just reaching the toilet in time. Aina felt so relieved that nobody was home, at that moment, because she felt so pathetic.

Aina retched again, her throat burning, tears stinging her eyes. Her mouth tasted like vomit, but when she leant over the toilet, all she could do was try not to cry before giving in and slumping back onto the cold tiles. She clutched onto the edge of the bath, her head swimming, like she had suddenly fallen into rapids and was trying to get out.

"You don't care about me! All you care about is your goddamn career!"

Aina heard the voice, loud, angry and clear, in her head. Her head jerked up, the voice startling her. Once again, it was unmistakably her own voice that she had heard. Aina stared around the steadily-darkening bathroom, her tears drying in crooked lines on her face, which she saw in the mirror above the sink, was pale and wan. Her day-old mascara made her look like a racoon.

"Fuck..." murmured Aina, her voice sounding thin and muffled, quiet even in the echoing bathroom. She hung her head, feeling more hot tears slide down her cheeks, dripping onto the floor. She had never felt more helpless in her life.

Slowly, she gripped the edge of the bath, pulling herself up into a sitting position, clutching the side of the bath as though her life depended on it. Her mind was racing, a weird pulsing sensation in her head. She was thinking about why she felt like this. Trying to retrace her feelings.

It wasn't even the accident that bothered her, because that's all it was- an accident.

What was bothering Aina that she didn't really know who she was, anymore. Losing her memory made her feel completely insignificant and out of control. She couldn't remember much of her job, her friends and even her memory on things she liked and didn't like was a little shaky. When people talked to her, Aina felt like she was trapped in a snowglobe- people moving on in the outer world while Aina was stuck in an anonymous world, isolated and lost.

And there was something else. Something she hadn't told anyone, something she had barely even acknowledged herself.

But truthfully, she was sort of scared of finding out what she had forgotten. Because when she did, what if she didn't like what she remembered? What if something horrible had happened to her that nobody would tell her about?

And, the one that was getting to her the most?

What if she didn't like being the person she remembered?

Aina slowly raised her head as she thought this last thought, her throat still burning, but a strange sensation creeping up on her. At first, she couldn't quite place it, and then she realised.

An idea;

Why remember?

Aina slowly brought her sleeve up to her face and wiped off her racoon make-up. She couldn't believe that she hadn't thought of this before; it seems like such an obvious thing to think. She glanced at the sleeve of her yukata, a black smudge on it, like a wet feather.

Why was she trying to hard to try and be someone she didn't know? Why not be a new person?

Aina smiled, if a little shakily.

Why not, indeed?

"Oh. my. GOD!"

"Please don't yell, Chikaze. I get headaches pretty easily nowadays." Aina reminded her.

Chikaze Taki and Midori Jutami, two of Aina's oldest friends, were currently gawking at Aina, who had just entered the cafe where she had arranged to meet up with them. Aina couldn't help but smile a little smugly at their reaction.

"But you look frickin' AMAZING!" announced Chikaze loudly, bouncing a little in her seat, her artfully messy blue hair barely moving out of its style. Chikaze always said exactly what she thought, exactly when she thought it, which usually made her seem either blunt or overly enthusiastic, but Aina knew that she meant it. Chikaze was somebody who could just naturally keep the conversation flowing.

"Yeah, it's hot," agreed Midori, smiling slightly in approval. Midori was, as usual, looking cool and chic, her pale green hair twisted up in a messy bun near the back of her head, tendrils of it escaping in sleek tendrils around her face.

Midori, by contrast to Chikaze, was usually aloof and introverted, although she had just as much confidence as Chikaze had. At times, it made her seem a little cold to other people, but she just did things subtly. It was something Aina loved about her two friends; they never held anything back from her, and they also never made her feel awkward and out-of-place. It was a nice change from Manami's overbearing concern and Yua's maddening nonchalance, or at least for Aina it was.

"What made you decide to do it?" Chikaze asked Aina now, rapidly stirring her coffee. Chikaze liked her coffee extremely bitter, so it was really nothing more then an amber-black whirlpool in her cup.

"I don't really know," shrugged Aina, sitting down between them and slinging her jacket behind her. "I just felt like a change. My old look was getting boring."

"I hate it when that happens," noted Midori in her melodious drawl, leaning back in her chair, her aquamarine vest-top glinting in the bright lights of the Cafe, "Because then you just start obsessing over getting new clothes that you can't afford."

"Oh, I know," sighed Chikaze, wistfully, "Like, I saw this totally sweet pair of electric blue boots yesterday, but they were so expensive..."

Aina smiled a little and flicked her hair behind her shoulders. Since she had pulled herself together in the bathroom, the thought about changing herself had persisted, and it wouldn't go away. So Aina, on a complete whim, had gone through her cupboard and thrown out quite a few of her old clothes, then headed straight down to a Hair Salon's and told them, straight out;

"Make me completely different."And so they did. Gone was Aina's soft-mauve hair, her too-long fringe and pastel-coloured yukata. When she had emerged from the Salon, she had become a honey-blonde, and been given a blunt fringe which made her eyes stand out. The wispy strands had been chopped off, the hairdresser managing to persuade Aina into buying a strange gel-like product that made her hair seem thicker, messier.

"You know, you look kinda like this girl I saw who was modelling some eye-shadow or somethin'..." mused Chikaze, thoughtfully. "What was her name? Don't remember. Hey, Aina, what do you wanna eat?"

"What I always have," replied Aina, with a mysterious smile. Chikaze blinked for a moment, and then burst out laughing.

Manami sighed to herself as she arrived home to an empty house. After spending an awkwardly twenty minutes trying to come up with a suitable reason for why she and Yua had been poking around the back room of the stadium, the security guard, clearly unimpressed, had told them to leave. Manami had been horribly embarrassed, but Yua had reacted as though it had nothing to do with them, defiant that she'd get back in somehow. Manami had bid her sister goodbye as soon as possible and taken a cab home; otherwise she would have quite cheerfully strangled her.

Just as Manami finished making herself a smoothie, the phone rang. Sighing again, she padded over to the phone, not really paying attention to the number that flashed up.

"Hello?" Manami inquired, hoping that it was somebody asking if she had double-glazing or something so she could get off the phone, pronto.

"Manami."

Manami's eyes widened as she heard the voice on the phone, a deep male voice. She was so surprised that it took her a second to fully register who was calling her.

"D-daddy?"