A/N: Okay, so it's our break, and I have free time again! Yay! Anyway, I decided to fast-track the story a bit, since I realized that some details I planned to put in weren't essential to the plot—and so you have Chapter 9! :D Oh, I mentioned before that Mikan's mother worked as a wet nurse—wet nurses feed the babies of women who can't do it on their own. Well, read on and I hope you enjoy. I'll meet you guys again at the end. :)

Recap: Mikan, Ruka and Natsume were in Hotaru's place for their own respective reasons. The latter was there for family business purposes, while Mikan was there for a personal matter. (Although it wasn't explicitly stated, she was there to borrow money from Hotaru for her mother.)

Chapter 9: New Beginnings

When bad things happen to you in life, you have only two options. You can be bitter or better. Whatever of the two you choose will pave the path of your future.

Mikan hugged her knees tightly, bracing herself against the cold wind of the cemetery. The past weeks seemed like a blur to her. A nightmare. She already felt as if she aged ten years from juggling part-time jobs and taking care of her mother—but all her efforts had gone to waste.

Her mother was dead.

A wave of nausea hit her as the words echoed in her mind. What did she have to live for now? All her life was patterned after her mother's. When she was a child, she'd always follow her mother to her jobs—she'd watch her mother nurse other people's babies, and when she was older, she'd help take care of those babies herself—if she wasn't at school studying. Whenever her mother went out to do the marketing, she went with her. Whenever her mother stayed home to do chores, she'd be doing the chores as well, the more backbreaking ones her mother couldn't handle anymore. When her mother fell ill, she worked odd jobs so that she'd be able to keep them alive.

Now that she was gone, Mikan felt disoriented as to what she would do next with her wretched life.

She buried her face in her hands, but she couldn't cry. All her tears were used up already, and all that was left was a strange mixture of relief, confusion and anger.

It was odd that she should feel relief, but she did—not because of her mother's death, but her father's. After Mikan had borrowed some money from Hotaru and asked the influential inventor if she could send a doctor to see her mother, she was pleasantly surprised when the doctor sent was Mrs. Hyuuga. The older woman seemed surprised as well, and because she recognized Mikan, decided to treat her mother for free—but the medicine and antibiotics, Mikan had to buy. It was this time that her father started drinking heavily, even more than he usually did, because he couldn't stand watching her mother die and not being able to do anything about it. (Mikan was surprised that despite her father's abusive nature towards her, he did love her mother very much.) So he drank and drank; when he didn't have the money to buy his beer, he gambled their furniture and bought cheaper sorts of booze. He died suddenly one day from another bar fight with someone he owed a lot of money to; he had a heart attack during the middle of the fight, and wasn't able to defend himself when that man beat him to death and threw his body into the nearby river, so as not to get discovered by the authorities.

Mikan couldn't honestly say that she was sad. She was a bit mad at the person who killed her father for taking advantage of him in his time of weakness, but since he died her wounds had finally started healing properly, as they were constantly reopened before when her father beat her. She also had increasing drive and determination each day she woke up, knowing that there was no one to hit her or wait for her to do something wrong when she rolled out of her mat. Her mother, though, didn't seem to take her father's death too well, and requested Mikan to ask people to search for his body so they could bury it properly; but no one could find it anymore, and neither could they find the man that killed him.

Her mother then dropped the subject. Mikan thought she would finally be able to recover properly—both from her father's death and tuberculosis—but she was wrong.

A week later, her mother had called for her. "Mikan, dear, I have a confession to make," she had murmured to her, who had come back that day from collecting garbage with Tsubasa to earn some money to buy food. "I haven't been taking the medications for three days now."

Mikan had been so horrified she paled even more than she was. "Okaa-san—why? Dr. Hyuuga said we could still save you! There's a 50/50 chance…"

"No, you can't," her mother said softly, her voice hoarse. The coughing had ceased a bit but had returned full force that morning. "Because I don't want to be saved anymore, Mikan. I've lived long enough. I've been through enough, and I've only pushed to survive so that your father might take care of you. But he hasn't been doing so, right?" Tears spilled from Mikan's eyes at this, as her mother leaned away to cough. "Now, he's dead. He won't abuse you anymore—I can move on—"

"Stop saying that," Mikan begged. "Please, okaa-san, stay alive for me... You're all I have left! Please, please... Live..."

"I'm not all you have," interjected her mother. "You have a real family out there, Mikan. I—I'm not your real mother. Your mother—the real one—gave you to me because... Because... you were your parents' illegitimate child."

Mikan's eyes widened. "What? How—why?"

Her mother held her hand, beseeching Mikan with her eyes to understand. "My dear, your father had been the president of a bank. His parents wanted him to marry the daughter of their rival bank to merge their companies. But the woman he loved was your mother, and after..." her mother paused, struggling for words and to catch her breath, "...a night of passion, your mother discovered she was pregnant with you. Her status would be scandalized if her parents and your father's parents found out, so she kept her pregnancy as much a secret as she could—you weren't a large baby, fortunately—and she and your father made plans of eloping. But unfortunately, he died in a car accident. Your mother was so unsettled at the loss that when I helped her give birth to you three weeks later, she told me to take care of you and keep you a secret until things cleared out; she told me that I was the only one she could trust—I was the one who nursed her when she was a babe, after all—and then she promised to come back and get you."

Mikan was rendered speechless by all the information. Her biological parents were famous and rich—her real father was dead—her mother abandoned her—she was an illegitimate child, an unwanted, unplanned child... It was all too much. "But it's been 16 years," she managed to utter after minutes of tense silence. "16 years, and she still hasn't returned for me..."

Her 'mother' sighed remorsefully. "I'm sorry," she said, so softly that Mikan almost missed it. "I'm sorry, Mikan. I wanted a child so much." Her mother paused, remembering how all the babies she had given birth to were either stillborn or died a few days after from all the illnesses circulating around their cramped apartment in the city. "When Ms. Yuka gave you to me... She had answered all my prayers. You were a gift, and I couldn't let you go. So when she came back for you a year later, I... I fled. I fled Tokyo and came here to this town to raise you." Her mother inhaled a shaky, rattling breath. "I'm sorry, Mikan. I was selfish."

Mikan withdrew her hand from her mother's, feeling betrayed and hurt. "You still are. You were selfish to keep me, and selfish to just want to die and leave me." Mikan hesitated to call the woman 'mother'. "Why? Why lie to me all this time?" Tears streaming down her eyes uncontrollably, she left the house for the meantime to absorb all the information.

When she returned, her mother had passed away, surrounded with bloodied sheets and discarded pills.

That last image haunted her. She couldn't bear to think of it again; the guilt was just too much. The guilt knowing that she was mad at her 'mother' when she passed away. The guilt of not forgiving and reconciling. The guilt of not being by her side to hear her last words. The woman may not have been her real mother, but at least she cared for her in the best way she could, and at least it made sense now why her 'father' didn't love her at all. To him, she had been a burden, an extra weight to carry, not a daughter and human being.

She felt paralyzed now. She had no foster family, no home—the landlord had taken their home because they hadn't been paying rent—no money, and a lot of debt. If only she could find her real mother—but how? All she knew was her first name, Yuka. And she lived in Tokyo. Right now, Mikan was nowhere near Tokyo—heck, she didn't have any inkling of an idea where that was in Japan—and even if she was able to get there, what were the chances that she would find her biological mother among the millions of faces? Yuka was a very common name, even among the elite.

It was a lost cause. She'd never find her real family.

She had a semblance of a plan, though. Hotaru allowed her to crash in her house for awhile (and even gave Mikan all the skirts and girly blouses she never planned to wear), but she had to find a stable job. That would be near impossible, so perhaps she had to stick with part-time jobs...

"You've been here for two hours."

Mikan's train of thought was halted by this gruff voice she had come to recognize. "Leave me alone."

"Are you hungry?"

"I'm fine."

Natsume hesitated at the gate of the dilapidated cemetery before approaching her. This was his third time to return, and she was still rooted on the same spot in a fetal position.

"My mother wants to talk to you."

"Well, I don't want to talk to her. Leave me alone," she repeated, trying to sound firm, but unfortunately, her voice broke at the end of the sentence. She finally lifted her teary eyes to meet Natsume's jewel-like ones, and he felt a rare compassion for the girl in front of him, who suddenly looked so small. All the optimism and hope he had once seen in her hazel depths were gone, replaced with a profound sadness and brokenness.

"Don't look at me like that," she whispered sharply.

He raised a brow. "What do you mean?"

"You pity me. I don't need your pity."

"I don't pity you," he lied easily. "I was thinking that it's time for you to move on."

Mikan laughed a short, bitter laugh. "Easy for you to say. You're rich, educated, and provided for. You don't need to work a single day in your life and yet, you have everything. You live a perfect life. A torment-free life."

Being rich wasn't always as easy as it looked, but Natsume decided to restrain himself from saying that. She was hurt and confused, that's all—that's why she was saying these things. But what was he thinking, anyway, trying to comfort her? He had always been crap at comforting, because honestly, he'd never cared for anyone enough to comfort them—not that he particularly cared for her, but she was just so pitiful. For the past weeks he'd only seen glimpses of her—in the bakery, by the river, near the trash bins—doing whatever jobs she could, fighting to keep someone alive. But now, she had no one, and he could see that she was lost.

He debated with himself whether he should go or stay, but he didn't have to contemplate on that long when her shaky voice addressed him rhetorically. "Have you ever had your whole life fall apart before? Have you ever felt so confused about who you really are? Have you ever felt that your life was built on a foundation of lies?" She glanced up at him again, her eloquent eyes sad.

He couldn't answer her, but he stayed. He couldn't find himself to walk away when she looked at him like that.

"That's happening to me right now," she continued. "My whole life's unravelling at the seams. I can't just force myself to smile and convince myself that everything's okay, and that life goes on, and that tomorrow will be better, because it's—it's n-not..." She didn't want to cry, much less in front of this stoic, handsome guy, but couldn't help it—fat droplets of tears trickled down her cheeks, and no matter how many times she tried to wipe them away, they still kept on coming.

Natsume inwardly cursed. This is what I get for trying to be a good person, he muttered wryly to himself. He had no idea what do when a girl cried. As in, really cried over something substantial—not about a lost Chanel something or a quick breakup. He squatted awkwardly beside her and handed her a crumpled handkerchief.

Mikan, though, took the handkerchief without a second thought. "The only reason why I could smile every morning was because I had a purpose," she started sobbing. "When you have a purpose in life, everything else is bearable, but without one, I'm—I'm better off dead..."

For some reason, Natsume was struck by her words. Maybe because of the truth in them. What was his purpose? What did he live for? Was he really living life, or just going through the motions of it? He frowned slightly. Partying, alcohol and girls couldn't be his purpose. Not even college was his purpose, or fame or success or money—he had all of those. When you had everything, it seemed that there was nothing else to work for.

It was at this moment that he noticed Mikan looking at him expectantly. He furrowed his brow in confusion.

"How do you know your purpose, Natsume? What do you live for?"

It must be the way she asked, because the question scared him. It was something not easily answered, even by the most profound philosophers. But as he looked at her tear-stained face filled with desperate hope for his answer, and her tormented, mesmerizing eyes, he felt obliged to say something. "I—I don't know."

Her face fell. She clutched the handkerchief in her hands tighter, willing herself not to cry again.

Natsume sighed and brushed a curly lock out of her face, his fingers gently brushing against her sharp cheekbones. He didn't miss the blush that diffused on her pale complexion. Smirking, he stood from his squatted position before reluctantly holding a hand out to her. "I don't know, but it's not too late to find out, if you start looking."

Mikan looked at him. He was sincere—she could see it in his captivating red eyes—and he was right. For some reason, she didn't expect someone like him to possess such insight and honesty, but he did, and as he held his hand out to her, she felt like she could trust his words.

She smiled a wan yet brave smile. "You're right."

He gave her a little smirk. "I always am."

The moment their hands touched when she placed her small, frail one in his much larger one, he had an epiphany. He now knew his purpose—for the meantime.

He would protect the owner of the hand he held from experiencing more tragedies than she already had. He had no idea how he was going to do it, or if it was even possible, or even exactly why the idea had imprinted itself on his mind. All he knew was that he was determined to do so.

Mikan relished the warmth and firmness of his hand around hers. Though she barely knew him, and though she didn't know why he bothered to be here, he had unknowingly given her the comfort she needed, and the courage to get back on her feet.

"Thank you," she whispered.

AN: It's so clichéd! -_-" And a bit OOC. Well, hope you liked it though. It's a turn from the previous chapter's light mood. Next chapter—why did Natsume's mother want to see Mikan? :-? Anyway, thanks for the reviews, everyone. You reviewers are the reason why I still post even when I feel like a sucky writer. :)

Credits to all the reviewers of Chapter 9: (my first reviewer for the chapter!), Yuri no Kimi, keraii, FeelTheBeat, purescandalous, Cutenatsumexmikan, microbeateria (haha, I'm glad you've decided to hang on instead of giving up on reading :D), Tear Droplet, wowiezowie, blue09, Night's Warrior (well, er, this chappie answered two of your questions—sorry I had to kill her mother : ehehe), thundra18 (yeah, it is cliché, but I'm glad you still decided to read! God bless you too :D), '-' Bianca trish '-', tamahits, singwithme, Kim Janelle, solitaire28 (aw, thanks so much for that review—I was touched :) ), sonamy4eva22, Snow Blue, GakuenLover, Kuroichibineko, Kam3910 and others I forgot to include...sorry if I forgot o.o

All your reviews are encouraging. :D I'm glad someone's still reading this. :) BTW—Advanced Happy Halloween everyone! :D Enjoy the break, and please don't forget to review if you guys want to suggest or correct me or something. :P Til next time, ~NA12~