Epilogue

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Izumi

She stared at the sheets around her. They were too lush to be that of the hotel. And the fact that she was on a bed reassured her she wasn't on the plane anymore.

In fact, as she took in the surroundings, she realized exactly where she was:

Her bedroom.

But not the one she had in Italy. No, this was the bedroom of her house she lived in when she was a teenager. She was in Japan.

This bedroom, though, did not look like it had been abandoned for five years. It looked fresh. It had her clothes were hanging in her closet and a couple of books lying open on her desk and a bunch of hair accessories arranged in height order on the vanity.

She noticed her chest was heaving. She seemed a little short of breath. Trying to figure out what was going on, she stepped off her bed.

She walked closer to the vanity, wondering why everything looked just as how she left it five years ago. Even the scrunchie she borrowed from Hikari all those years ago was lying next to one of her hairbrushes.

She picked up the scrunchie and started to examine it. It still had a small strand of her blonde hair in it.

And then she looked in the mirror.

She dropped the scrunchie as she reached out and touched her reflection, pressing her fingers against her seventeen-year-old face.

She ran a finger through her hair. It was shorter when she was seventeen. It fell to her shoulders in layers.

She stared back around the room. There was no suitcase. There was no passport. She didn't look as though she was preparing to leave. And then it sunk in.

Forgetting that she was still only in a nightgown, she ran into the hallway. The calendar on the wall was set on a date five years ago. She quickly ran down the stairs and into the foyer. Then she practically tore the door open and ran through. It was raining. Izumi didn't seem to mind at all. She was seventeen. She had never left.

She looked up at the sky and noticed the cool raindrops against the warm tears on her face. But these were tears of happiness, and they were most definitely welcome.

She practically twirled in the walkway of her mansion, continuously crying. It all seemed too perfect to be true. She pinched herself a hundred times over on all different parts of her body, but she wasn't waking.

But then it all stopped. Izumi stopped her twirling as she noticed a little girl walking on the other side of the sidewalk behind her house's iron gates.

She was young. Around three years old, at most. Her hair fell in feathery, golden blonde layers around her face and well into her back. She walked with a distinctive skip in her step.

No, Izumi thought, panicking. She hesitantly approached the iron gates of her house and gripped one of the bars.

She didn't breathe as she watched the girl. For a second, she wanted to call out her name and ask her what she was doing at such an hour. She should've been with one of her parents. Was Hikari anywhere around?

Just as Izumi was about to speak, another voice rang out.

"Oh, Akiko! Akiko, come back here! How many times do I have to tell you not to run away like that from me? You silly girl…"

Izumi's grip on the iron bars loosened as she watched a woman who was clearly not Hikari reach out and pick up the girl who was clearly not…

Izumi closed her eyes and smiled to herself. She let go of the bar and decided to go back inside.

As she got to her front door, her mother was standing there with a cup of coffee in her hands.

"You were studying late last night, weren't you? You get three hours of sleep and this is what happens to your mentality."

"Actually, mother, the sleep I got last night felt more like five years to me. Can you drive me to school?"

Hikari

As soon as Takeru walked through the doors of the high school, a chestnut brown-and-pink bullet attacked him.

A couple of his fellow basketball teammates let out rowdy whistles as she embraced him, practically crying into his collared shirt.

"H-h-Hikari! W-what's going o-on?" Takeru asked as a blush graced his face. "Is everything alright?"

"Of course, silly," Hikari explained as she looked up. From the way her cherry eyes were filled with tears, Takeru could tell there was something much more profound going on here.

"I just missed you, that's all."

"But you just saw me yesterday," he said, confused.

"It felt like five years, T.K!" she wailed.

"Five years? I guess I can be pretty darn missable."

"T.K.?"

"What?"

"Promise me that if we ever have kids, we're never naming our daughter Izumi?"

o.0

"Ehhh-!?"

"Promise!"

"…But it just seems like such an unusual question-"

"Takeru Takaishi, if you don't promise me-"

"Ok, Hikari, I promise that if we ever have kids, we'll never name our daughter Izumi. Though it is a lovely name, I suppose."

"T.K.!"

"What? Ok. I didn't know it was such a touchy topic."

Takuya

Izumi wasn't on the bus this morning. JP hadn't spoken with her since yesterday.

Takuya was feeling panicked.

After waking up from a dream like that, he needed reassurance. He needed to talk with one person desperately to know that their friendship could possibly evolve into something much more.

But, after seeing her not on the bus, there was only so much he could jump to. She wouldn't leave without telling JP, would she?

"And I was apparently the manager of a restaurant where the two of you worked," Takuya heard Miyako tell Daisuke and Ken as he turned a hallway corner.

"Right, and I was an incredible soup chef. Daisuke could only make rotten fish," Ken responded, laughing.

"My sushi was ten times better than your soup du eww!"

"So you guys are saying we all had the same dream?" Kouji asked as he came beside Daisuke and Ken.

"It looks like it," Kouichi replied as he stepped beside Miyako.

The group of teens standing there looked at each other nervously.

"Has anyone seen Izumi?" Miyako asked.

As if someone had answered his prayers, he saw her. She was leaning against his locker. They all fell quiet as Takuya approached her, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

"Uhh..you weren't answering your phone. I tried to call you a whole bunch. W-w-what I mean is that when I didn't see you on the bus, I was worried, you know? That maybe you were sick… or something."

"Don't worry about it. Hey, I need to talk to you-"

"Izumi, I need to tell you something. I love you. It's not just as a friend. I've never felt this way about anyone before; it's kind of scary… Scary in a good way."

Everyone cheered as Izumi kissed him on the cheek, smiling shyly. "Takky, that's exactly what we need to talk about."

im smiling so hard right now!! its the end of my best and unfortunately last takumi fanfiction!
thanks: Sightbent, agoodcupoftea, co426e, dbzgtfan2004, xoxo Juniebug, Red Page, and Ambiekinz for the reviews! i love you all, yeah? stay cool!

i dont care if you hate the ending! im sorry but i just dont give a sh-hoot. it was planned to all be a dream from the start, you know. sad endings make me angry.
title translation: of 家族忠誠 in 家族忠誠: Her Family:

家族 roughly means "of chuujitsu", which means "of loyalty"
忠誠 means family. so its like.. Of Family Chuujitsu.. do you get it? it means a story of family loyalty. i added the 2nd part for an english translation, i dont want people thinkin this is written in japanese hah. i can speak english.. and latin.. and pig latin.. and japanese.. but i only write fluently in english!