Pairing: Mikihisa/Keiko

Words: 3,141

"Will you play me a song?"

Mikihisa ran his hand up and down the neck of his guitar, feeling the smooth strings zip under his fingers. "What?"

The woman in front of him was crying but she still smiled and repeated her question. "Will you play me a song?"

He wasn't entirely sure how to respond. Well…for starters, this was the first time anyone had ever asked him to play. He was used to the irritated glares from the morning commuters who always thought it was much too early for anyone in their right mind to be playing the guitar or the mumbled curses of those who were trying to catch the last train home at the Ikebukuro station and had somehow managed to trip over Mikihisa who was just innocently sitting on the side of the street.

He inwardly snorted. It was never too late or too early to play the guitar. Please.

Interpreting his silence to be hesitation, the woman dug around in her pocket and pulled out a coin. She uncertainly rolled the edges of the small metal piece between her thumb and pointer finger before tossing it into his open guitar case. "I'm Keiko. Today, my fiancé broke up with me today…" She wiped her eyes with her free hand. "So I would…" She let out a resigned sigh. "Really appreciate it."

Mikihisa continued staring at her until he realized she was still waiting. He hastily adjusted the guitar in his lap for her before shaking his head in embarrassment. "Er…sorry. What would you like me to play?" he asked, hopefully in a way that didn't make him sound like an empty headed idiot.

Keiko's body shuddered just barely as she sharply inhaled. She cleared her throat but gave into the heaving sobs she had been holding in. "J-Just…just…anything. Please."

He nodded in understanding, knowing that it didn't matter if he mindlessly plucked out the same note over and over again or played the most technically complex piece ever composed for the guitar. She just needed something to distract her so that she could convince herself that everything was alright in the world for the duration of some bum musician's song.

He remained silent as he let his fingers strum out whatever song immediately popped into his head.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom

Mikihisa never actually asked for any of this. If he had had his way, he probably would've been too busy with his music to even consider the possibility of asking the gods for the ability to see and interact with ghosts and the supernatural realm. He never would've thought of getting mixed up with the Asakura clan and on any other day, if Keiko hadn't been dumped by her fiancé, if he had decided to pack up his guitar and go home early like he had been for the past couple of months (because in all honesty, what were the odds of someone actually asking him to play them a song?), he probably would've been able to have his own way. Wasting the remainder of his days in an old, crappy, rundown apartment that, with all things considered, really never should've gotten the approval of the board of health and sanitation to open. Acting as mediator between George and Michel when they engaged in yet another of their stupid arguments. Playing songs on a guitar that didn't even really sound like a guitar anymore. Ignoring the spirits and ghosts that haunted the city and pretending he didn't see him because it's not like he had any need or desire to tell anyone about his unusual gift. And then dying, forgotten and alone with no wife or children.

Let it be

Mikihisa pressed his hands together. Yeah, that's what he had wanted. It was…simple enough. Was he really willing to turn his back on all of that? On his chance to live an uncluttered, uncomplicated life? Sure, it was ordinary enough, deplorable enough, mundane enough but at least he was certain about it. Going home with Keiko, with someone who could see ghosts like he could, opened up a virtual universe of possibilities, of opportunities, of risks and pitfalls he wasn't even remotely prepared for.

And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me

He sat there, dumbly, as she let the invitation hang in the air.

Let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Keiko quickly learned two things when she was growing up. First, that her parents were liars. And second, that they were disappointed she was a girl.

She was pretty sure that her parents had been lying to her for the better part of her childhood. Whenever she tried telling them that other people couldn't see ghosts (oh, why oh why, couldn't she be like other people?), they would abruptly brush her off and tell her she was being foolish. And for a time, believe it or not, she was okay with that. She was fine with their answer because none of it really, really mattered to her…

Yet.

The spirits were pleasant enough (at least, the ones near the place she had grown up in). They made for nice and sometimes even enjoyable conversation. They told her if the weather outside was particularly nasty or if her parents were angrily waiting for her at home when they found out she was an hour late to dinner. She didn't have any contact with people outside of her parents' huge residence so the ghosts kept her company.

But when she arrived in the middle of Tokyo, wide eyed and unprepared for city life, she realized that not only was she not like other people.

She realized that she wasn't normal.

Keiko didn't reveal her ability to see spirits and interact with the supernatural to anyone but she quickly learned that people who claimed that they could talk to ghosts were ostracized and quietly smothered out of society.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree there will be an answer

Every day on her way to the office where she worked as a receptionist, she passed by a psychiatric hospital that the school kids on her train laughingly called the loony bin. Once a group of patients from the hospital were taking a day trip and stood on the same platform as her. As a couple of the patients became restless and complaining about voices in their heads, businessmen and women disgustingly moved closer to the edge of the waiting area so that they wouldn't have to interact with any of them. A small girl with dark wide eyes raised her finger to point at something behind Keiko. When the girl's nurse quickly slapped her pointing hand down and reprimanded her patient for being rude, Keiko slowly turned around and saw that there was a ghost.

The only thing separating her from that group was that the patients were braver to speak up when they saw spirits and heard voices.

Let it be

When Mikihisa was younger, the boys in his neighborhood used to go to the local cemetery and kick over memorial tablets and steal the offerings left there. He was often invited since the boys considered him to be their friend but he usually declined, saying that he needed to practice the guitar.

However, once they shrugged and ran off, saying that it was his loss, Mikihisa could barely concentrate on playing and would watch the boys desecrate the tombs from his window. He always wanted to tell them that destroying and disrespecting the deceased like that was hardly fun or cool but he knew that if he spoke up, then they would start on him. The daughter of the groundskeeper was around their age and she would emerge whenever she heard the laughs of the boys to chase them out of the cemetery, screaming that they would upset the ghosts there. The boys would then throw broken bits of memorial tablets and parts of the burial mounds they had managed to dig up at her while pulling her hair, yelling back that there were no such things at ghosts, that the bodies in the ground were only good enough for fertilizer.

It would be only after Mikihisa's eleventh birthday that he finally ventured outside to follow the boys to the cemetery and only after his twelfth birthday that he had to get a new guitar since he broke his old one over the head of the loudest, rudest boy.

For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see

Though her parents tried convincing her that they were happy that she was their daughter, when she began getting older, it became harder and harder for Yohmei and Kino to mask their disappointment that they had failed to produce a son to be the heir of the family.

Once, Keiko had been stupid enough to ask during dinner why she couldn't be the heir of the family, because even if she was a girl, she was still their child…right? Kino had slammed her fist down on the table and stormed out of the room. When Keiko looked to her father for an explanation for her mother's behavior, he simply turned away from her and shook his head, closing his eyes in exasperation.

When she finally reached her twenties and she was about to leave for Tokyo, Kino and Yohmei began reminding her several times a day that she had to find a suitable husband so that she could produce an heir for them. For the first few years she was in the city, she scoured every street, every shop, every office building for a potential man to bring home to her parents so that they would finally be proud of her for once.

She was about to give up all hope when she bumped into a man who would later become her fiancé. She immediately fell for him. He was perfect, he was vibrant and beautiful like the city, kind and bold and a thoroughly modern man. The last bit Keiko was a little unsure about. Sure, she was all for the modern age but she had grown accustomed to rather liking a little tradition in her life. But she was young, in love, and very much wide eyed when he swept her off her feet, promises of happily forever afters and adventure ringing resoundingly in her ears and she mistook his disdain for the traditional old ways of doing things for progressiveness. She was so happy and so proud that she found someone so in the moment who would rather be out in the world living than going through stodgy formality after stodgy formality to honor some deceased relative that he had never met.

Keiko never once gave her relationship a second thought until after they had announced their engagement to all their friends and family and it was the week before she was supposed to bring him home to meet her parents. They had been eating dinner and she began clearing away the plates as her fiancé started reading the newspaper. She hummed to herself as she washed the dishes and heard her fiancé snort derisively after reading that the city was planning on cutting funding to the psychiatric ward, agreeing wholeheartedly and proposing that, hey, why not just level the cemetery so that more office buildings could be built there?

She nearly dropped the plates on the floor but remained silent as she retreated to her room, barely reacting when she found a wandering spirit when she opened the door. The ghost dryly asked her why she was marrying such a disrespectful jerk who didn't care about his ancestors and obviously looked down on the mentally ill. She simply ordered the spirit to leave but it still went on, floating lazily about the room. It wondered out loud how her fiancé would react if he found out that she could see ghosts. She didn't hear footsteps approaching when she calmly said that she had no intention of telling him that she could see and talk to spirits.

Her fiancé opened the door, asking her who she was talking to but then cut himself off. She could…see…spirits?

Only when she was three blocks away from her house and headed in the direction of the Ikebukuro station did she realize that she hadn't brought any money except for a ten yen coin and the only person in sight was a man sitting cross legged with a guitar underneath a street lamp.

And when the night is cloudy there is still a light that shines on me, shine until tomorrow

At first, Mikihisa thought that he had dreamed it. He was still years and years off from knowing who Hao was or what being a shaman entailed but he knew that he was going to end up marrying the woman, Keiko, from his dream.

The only thing was, it wasn't a dream.

He blearily blinked and blindly searched for his glasses on his night table. Except there was no night table. His eyes shot open and he sat straight up to find himself on a couch that wasn't his in a room that wasn't his, undoubtedly in a house that wasn't his.

And then as an afterthought, he found it quite sad that the couch he was on was much more comfortable than his bed back in the apartment.

Mikihisa cautiously stepped down from the couch and realized that he felt much cleaner than he had in a very long, long time (for one thing, he couldn't remember the last time he had felt the real texture of his hair without all those layers of grease and grime) and that he was wearing pajamas that didn't belong to him. He looked around the room, panic beginning to mount within him until his eyes rested on the clothes he had been wearing the day earlier. They had been washed, dried, and pressed neatly and were on a table next to his guitar which looked polished and clean for once.

I wake up to the sound of music

"Oh! You're awake. I hope you slept well," came a cheerful voice.

He whirled around to see Keiko in the same receptionist uniform she had been wearing the day prior, holding a tray with food on it. "You're…real."

She smiled a little uncertainly, not sure what to make of his statement.

He shook his head hurriedly. "I'm…I'm sorry. I just thought that everything that happened last night was a dream." His voice grew noticeably more distracted as he realized that there was entirely separate hallway behind Keiko and it seemed endless as doors lined the walls. The size of the entire residence began to dawn on him. "This…This room is bigger than my entire apartment," he said in awe.

She nodded smilingly. "Yes, it is rather large for a house in Tokyo. It gets rather lonely sometimes." She set the tray of food down on the table in front of him. "I hope you don't mind but I made you breakfast." She began transferring all the food from the tray to the table.

"I don't think I can marry you."

She froze, her hand still clamped around the glass of orange juice. "W-What?" she asked, her voice cracking a little.

"You're so nice and so rich and I'm…a bum," he explained, seriousness etched into his face.

She straightened up abruptly. "M-Marry? I'm sorry if you got the wrong idea but we…we just met…" she stuttered.

"Ah, but you see we are going to get married," he said, holding up a finger.

Keiko blinked. "How do you know?" she asked, more intrigued than creeped out.

Mikihisa simply shrugged. "Gut feeling."

Her fiancé had been a very rational man, refusing to say anything unless it was based on facts and figures and numbers. The phrase gut feeling was probably nowhere to be found in his vocabulary.

She knew that the rational thing to do was to tell this stranger who apparently thought they were going to get married to get out of her house (and then change all the locks on her doors) and…and…and, oh gods, what would her parents say if she were insane enough to introduce Mikihisa to them?

But then as the two of them stared at each other, Keiko began to realize something. She had spent her entire life being what her parents wanted her to be: a disappointment to the family, a dutiful daughter, an object to be married off to produce sons. So maybe…this…just this one time…maybe she should just stop worrying and…

…Just let it be.

"Say, how do you feel about cemeteries?"

Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom

"So...everything is alright with the world?" Mikihisa asked for the eleventh time.

"Surprisingly, yes," Keiko responded rather dryly.

"How boring. Ever since the Shaman Fight, everything has been quiet." He studied his wife before speaking again. "Keiko...don't tell me you're still mad."

She simply glared at him.

"Keiko, it was an accident."

She closed her eyes and counted to three. "Yes, I know it was an accident because that's what all the papers said!" she exclaimed, pointing to the various newspaper articles still strewn about and untouched on the table that read: Unidentified Man Dies in Car Crash.

"It's not like I wanted to die!" Mikihisa exclaimed.

"We have a beautiful son who has an equally beautiful wife—"

"Fiancée," Mikihisa mindlessly corrected.

Keiko stared him down. "And you just decide to go and die!" she huffed at her husband's ghost. "On your way home from pachinko! How undignified. I never liked it when you played pachinko. Gambling is so foolish and a waste of money. How could you die in a car crash? Don't tell me you were drinking again!" She narrowed her eyes at him. "Anyways, why are you still hanging around here? Shouldn't you be in the Great Spirit by now with all the others who have died and moved on? Like Faust and Eliza." She sighed. "Faust and Eliza. I always liked them. Such a shame."

"To be honest, I still don't know why I'm here."

She drew her eyebrows together. "What do you mean you don't know?"

He looked away, clearly embarrassed. "I think...I think I'm still in shock that I died in such a lame way." He scratched the back of his head. "A car crash. A car crash! Of all things!"

Keiko turned around so that he couldn't see her smile and laugh a little, her voice carrying away and upwards, above everything and everyone as she let go of her hatred, of her fear and anxiety.

Let it be

A/N: So I was getting super impatient because Takei is probably never ever going to write the next chapter of Flowers, what with Ultimo and Jumbor so I was going through all the SK extras and I came across two chapters that I had never read before. They were called Miki's World and explained how Mikihisa and Keiko met and I absolutely loved them and I loved how Mikihisa idolized John Lennon and how he automatically assumed he was going to marry Keiko and how straightforward she was when talking about her supernatural powers...needless to say, I got super inspired. So...you guys get...this. SURPRISE. Also, I love John Lennon. Obviously I don't own the lyrics.

Anyways, I'm working on the next chapter of Critical Condition and two new one-shots, Whatever Works and Beautiful Hangover. Yeah. Oh and check out some other one-shots I posted recently: Fix You (Yoh/Anna), It's a Girl Thing (Yoh/Anna), and No Matter (Ren/Pirika).

I would really, really, really appreciate it/love you forever if you left a review! Since Miki/Keiko always needs more love (it's sad that they're not popular in the fandom since...WITHOUT THEM, YOH NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN BORN AND SK NEVER WOULD'VE HAPPENED! dun dun duuuuun). So yes, please remember to leave a review! and check out my LJ.

Happy days!