Author: Continuing from the previously short chapter, another short chapter. Insert range of funny faces made by author. Apologies for lack of updates.


9. Moment

"Subaru-kun, how could you? It's not like you to do shoddy work! That urn didn't get to my shop directly and now that the ceramist got exorcised, that teasing vase decided to take a side trip and visit a Shinto shrine! Did you know I had to hire my friend at the "anything goes" store to get his assistants (who are clueless as mine is) to get it back?

For that, I am deducting the value of that wish! Might I add you have to use it or else?

- Ichihara Yuuko

P.S. I hope you're feeling better... colds are no fun..."

Subaru made an odd face, eyes narrowed in disbelief. She was so childish, it was hard to believe she was older than him. He continued to walk, letting his facial features rearrange themselves back into his usual blank expression.

Anyways, that is what the crumpled note said now in rather spindly script remiscent of a butterfly. Subaru knew that she did not like people owing her anything (especially for White Day, he had learned the hard way never to accept anything from her) and that she did not like to owe people anything. It was the nature of her business after all...

He looked at the paper for a second, considering whether he should stuff it back into his pocket. Well, he wasn't having any luck on his own. Probably because of her odd nature. He wasn't too certain why he was even looking for Kioku, but he had nothing better to do.

"Why not?"

He pulled out the note and attached an ofuda to it. He tossed it into the air; it suddenly burst into flames. Oddly enough,the note floated back down, completely unsinged by the fire. The handwriting had rearranged itself.

"Wish granted - Yuuko"

The ofuda became a bird and took flight. Subaru sighed. So she was far away? The only thing that didn't bother him was that it had finally stopped raining.


"I've found you."

The ghost looked at curiously at the thin figure dressed all in black and shook her head. A week had passed since Subaru had gotten sick.

"So you have."

"Is this where you died?"

She didn't answer and stared at the water in the Sumida River from sitting on the bridge. Subaru struggled to push the last memory of Seishirou from his mind; this place overlooking the river reminded too much of the Rainbow Bridge all those years ago.

"I don't know, maybe. It seems very familiar to me... like the Sakura tree..."

"How old were you, anyways?"

Subaru wondered why he had become so curious about anything since Kioku had appeared.

"I was twenty-five years old."

So she remembered one thing about herself.

"I died two years ago."

Seishirou died two years ago. And she remembered two things about herself. It hit Subaru now that if she had lived, she would be his age exactly.

"You should move on soon," Subaru remarked, shaking those thoughts from his mind.

"Such a callous person..."

Kioku stood too close to the edge and fell. Subaru stared at her for a moment, descending with all the grace of a broken angel. His eyes widened for a moment he jumped and grabbed the ghost's wrist.

"How foolish..." she remarked, "... I'm dead, remember?"

That was a fact Subaru was aware of, along with the fact that he was now falling from the bridge. He closed his eyes.

'Was any one soul any more significant than another?' he thought.

"How do you know that nobody cares about you?" Kioku stared at Subaru, "Someone can't be an anonymous person to everyone."

Subaru looked mildly surprised. It took a moment or two to answer, considering he was more concerned with getting back up onto a more level area of the bridge to stand on. Once he found stable footing, he realized that he was no longer holding Kioku's wrist. She was sitting on the bridge next to where he stood, staring at the water. The brilliance of the sun setting turned them into black silhouettes.

"Can I stay with you a little longer?"

"Why?"

"Sakurazuka Seishirou killed me..." Kioku said in a hollow voice, "but he didn't bury me beneath the Sakura. I told him I was the last person he would kill."

This was rather unexpected, Subaru thought. The empty look in her eyes... they looked familiar. Like Seishirou's perhaps? Or like his own...?

"He told me that there was someone like me... he killed me because I reminded him of that person."

Subaru's eyes were wide. But he could have sworn he closed them... He lit a cigarette and exhaled. She watched the smoke from his mouth float in the rain-cleansed air.

"My answer's still the same," he said, "Whatever you wish."

It was the most sincere look Kioku had ever seen on Subaru's face. And it was the closest she ever come to smiling.


Author: That High Moon Urn from xxxHOLIC vol 5 is the same vase retrieved in Legal Drug vol...2?