Chapter 10! I'm getting sort of psyched about finishing this fic, so chapters should be coming faster now (around once every 1-3 days)! This one's kinda short, I know, but I wanted to end it where I did, so...yeah...! I'd really, really, really appreciate feedback. And if you don't like it, please tell me WHY, so that I can improve! :) Also tell me if author's notes bother you. I'm sort of addicted to them, so yeah. Hm...predictions on who will end up with who, anyone? And if you don't know, you can review even if you don't have an account! (Sorry, I'm desperate.) Thanks to lavillalover, Alice, and xxasianicexx, as well as (most of all) Tuliharja, for the consistent, helpful reviews. I appreciate all of you!

CHAPTER 10

"So, what makes you say he'll be downtown?" I ask a few minutes later. It's the first time I've dared to speak up—now that I'm thinking sensibly again, I've found out that driving legally is a bit more of a challenge than doing so under my own rules. I have to concentrate on everything at once: speed, direction, lights, other cars, pedestrians, staying in my lane. I just have to hope that no one bothers to look to closely at me, seeing as I hardly look the part of sixteen—Tohru herself once asked if I was going into middle school. It's a bittersweet pang to think of her right now, so I try instead to concentrate on the things before me, which are probably more important, anyway.

"That's where he'd run. Far away from home, somewhere a bit more daring. Where he can… show his Black side. He'll probably have completely reverted to that by now, y'know. Just so that you're prepared for when we find him…"

I swallow as it strikes me that Rin seems to know much more about Haru than I do. It hurts. I want to think that I'm closest to him, more so than her, but it's becoming heartbreakingly evident that that's in no way true. He went to you because he wanted to make her jealous, Momiji. You were just a replacement for her. There was never really anything between you two.

But I refuse to believe the quiet ramblings that a part of my mind ceaselessly intoned. I know that Haru and I have something more than friendship. I just know it. There was something there when I kissed him, just those three times—once on the couch during Halo, once in the boys' room with Tohru, Hana, and Uo outside, and a final time when I tried to persuade him to come home. Each time, there was something more real and intimate about it. I was the one who wanted to go after him in the first place, anyway! Rin just sat there bitching about how awful her life was without him.

Yup. She was horribly depressed with him gone, while you took Tohru to dinner parties.

I grip the steering wheel more tightly and focus on the road ahead. My stomach is starting to churn, and I can't afford to lose my focus now. "Right," I say evenly, desperately hoping that my cool voice disguises my unsettlement. "Do you have anything more specific?"

"I've helped you out en0ugh as it is!" she snarls, turning towards her window and curling up.

"You're not helping me," I remind her. "This isn't for me. It's for Haru."

There's such a long silence that I decide she must be ignoring me, and start to let my mind wander. But then she speaks again.

"I don't have anything more specific."

"Okay. Thank you."

"Right."

This is probably the closest that Rin and I are going to get to friendship. I don't know if she's aware of my relationship with Haru, but I detest her for hers enough to contain plenty of coldness for both of us. Besides, we've just never really worked together. She thinks I'm an overly hyper, childish little kid, and I consider her overly moody and pessimistic. I don't know where Haru finds the energy to love two people who are so different from each other.

So now you're assuming that he loves you?

Of course he does.

He's using you, Momiji, and you know it.

That's not true. Before all else, he was my friend. Friends don't 'use' friends.

This is getting hard. I breathe slowly, trying to concentrate on the driving, only the driving, until I hear Rin mutter a quiet, "Shit."

I follow her gaze to a blinking red light on what I think is the gas meter. "Perfect," I growl. "Now what?"

"Well, the obvious thing to do is find a gas station."

I grit my teeth. "Yes, indeed it is. And at the gas station, we'll get pulled over for me apparently being under sixteen, and then they'll figure out how we're driving a stolen car, and then everything'll come crashing down."

"It's not stolen," she grumbled. "Just borrowed."

"Yeah, that's definitely what Kagura and Satsuki will say."

"Look, Rabbit Kid, if you have a way to drive a car with no gas in it, I'm listening! But seeing as you don't—I think that our only choice is to stop at a station."

I stare at the windshield rather than through it, thinking. This is a puzzle. I've always had a knack for puzzles. So where's the solution? Car needs to keep moving, but we can't afford to stop for gas… there's got to be a way…

"Aha!" I grin. "I've got it."

She rolls her eyes. "Should've figured."

"Okay, this is really, really, really not creative," the Horse groans an hour later, tilting her head back so that it can rest against the window of the city bus we've snuck onto. "Here I thought that you'd have some genius way to make the car move, and instead…"

I shrug. "Works just as well."

"Yeah. Right."

After our realization that the gas was low, I parked the car, then ran over to the nearest pay phone, shoved in a couple of quarters that happened to have been buried in my pocket, and anonymously called Satsuki, 'cleverly' disguising my voice with an attempted Scottish accent. Fail, I know. But she's a ditz enough not to recognize me, and at least she'll know where her car is now. At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

After that, Rin followed me, grumbling, as we slipped oh-so-cleverly onto a bus along with a huge group of school kids. And now, here we are, taking the full tour of downtown with our eyes wide open. Well, mine are, at least. Rin appears to be taking a nap, though I know that her mind is far too chaotic to really rest at the moment.

As the cityscape outside begins to blur into a continuous stream of grayness, my gaze shifts to Rin in an attempt to find out what Haru sees in her. She's pretty, sure, what with her long, dark hair, her translucent creamy eyelids and delicate, exquisite lashes closed over what I know to be midnight black eyes, the pale curve of her throat and sleek shape of her body. But I know that Haru isn't one to judge people by their looks. If he loves her, why? Why? It's another puzzle, but this one not nearly so simple as how to move without fuel. The Rin that I know is crabby, temperamental, cold, and aloof. Even the Ox couldn't love someone made out of characteristics as negative as those. As I watch, her long fingers slowly move along the lines of a looped cross wrapped around her neck. It's made of something silvery—pewter, I think—and, for some reason, the sight of it makes me feel sick to my stomach. I look away, unable to think about these things anymore.

Haru, Tohru, Rin, Yuki, and I. The five of us make up my world right now. I'm at the center, the angsty protagonist whom everyone views as cheery, but whose true emotions are always hidden. Then there's Tohru and Haru, the two other points of my personal love triangle—one the sweet, dependable, sister-like figure, the other the more rebellious, fascinating, bad-boy character that still harbors a loving side. And, finally, Rin and Yuki, the villains, the enemies, who want to steal the love interests from the protagonists. If my life was a perfect story, then I'd somehow defeat the Horse and Rat, then realize whether I'm meant to be with Tohru or Haru with absolute clarity.

But this isn't a fairy tale. This is reality. My reality. And the truth is, Rin and Yuki are people, too. There are five of us, in total. Five can't divide into twos. Someone will be left alone. Unless another comes into the picture, and I know that's not going to happen. I want it to be one of the antagonists who's left out in the cold, I know that I do. But the truth is that I doubt it'll be either of them, really.

In all truth, I'm sure to be the one with nothing, in the end.

But I have to keep on living, keep on trying. For Tohru. For Haru.

And for me.