Chapter 13

It was mid-afternoon and the sun rendered Seisou in the shades of the sepia photographs Kaho had kept. She ran to the back of the music rooms and shouted Lili's name, not caring who would hear. Lili appeared quickly and she showed him Len's photo, hoping he might give her an explanation and tell her what she should do.

"I'm not sure what's happened Hino Kahoko but something's gone wrong..."

"I know Lili. Why is this happening?"

"You interfered with a landmark. You changed something important," he explained briefly. "This picture is the clue. He's disappearing, Hino Kahoko. It's not like he just wasn't there but...eventually even this picture would disappear too." Lili averted his true blue fairy eyes from Kaho's panicked golden ones.

"It's as if he wasn't alive for it to happen..." Lili finished.

"No," she said, disbelief clouding her eyes with tears. "How could he not exist?"

Chasing after him would have no meaning...because she wouldn't have met him at all. All the memories she had of Len swam in her eyes as the tears clouded her vision. His frown, his smile, his voice, and Ave Maria...

Everything...

"He just can't go away," she said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. "He doesn't know how much he means to me. I love him. I love him so much!" she cried.

If he disappeared...she would disappear too. The person she knew herself to be would be gone...

"He still exists Hino Kahoko. He's still in this picture, which means you still have time to fix what needs fixing before the checkpoint."

The checkpoint, Lili said, was the appointed time for Kaho and Len to leave. Lili didn't make checkpoints, he just had to follow the rules and wait for the right amount of energy to perform the magic.

"If you don't arrive in time for the checkpoint, you would have to wait again," Lili said. He said he didn't know for how long.

"I broke a rule," Kaho said. "I changed the past."

Ruriko and Jun.

If they hadn't been at the train station with Jun, maybe he would have saved Ruriko instead. Kaho imagined that Jun would have gotten Ruriko's bag from the thief, he'd have a hunch about his wallet and check if it was still in his coat, and maybe would have found where the thief had tossed it. He would have noticed that his wallet was missing in time to get his tickets back. He'd attend the Jazz Festival and see Ruriko there and they'd fall in love. Len wouldn't be turning into a ghost and...

"Aren't they meant to meet each other?" Kaho wondered helplessly.

"Maybe it's the timing that matters," Lili said.

She thought of her experience with Len, how drastically different would their story have been if she hadn't heard him play Ave Maria? Would they have had other opportunities or was that moment the first domino that tripped all the others and without it there would be nothing but a missed chance?

"No," she said. She wasn't going to lose him. She kept a hand over her forehead as she tried to steady herself and her reeling emotions.

He's mine and I can't lose him.

"Kahoko..."

She had to make it happen, had to bring Ruriko and Jun together at the Jazz festival. It was the picture of Len's grandparents at the festival that transported Len to the past, so the festival was where she should start. She had completely disappeared in the photo but she felt fine, she felt nothing. Len on the other hand was weak and fading away. And Len's grandfather, who was smiling ridiculously at the camera in the photo, was still healthy in person. His face on the matte photo paper was only starting to fade.

It only means he wasn't there...

"I know what I have to do Lili," Kaho said finally. "I know what I have to do."

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With a ghostly hand and its implications to ponder, Len fell into a rare conversational mood. Kaho sat near him on an ottoman as he lay on the couch in his bedroom, blinking back tiredness. He told her about how nervous he was the day he introduced himself to his grandfather when he masqueraded as a distant cousin. He knew he had to avoid being mistaken for crazy but he now suspected that telling the truth probably would have bought him admission to the Tsukimori mansion because his grandfather would have been amused at the story. He smiled then and she nodded sagely when Len concluded that music types were mostly eccentric. He then asked her if she thought he, Len, fit the mold of "weird" musicians. In Kaho's opinion, the title holder for "weird musician" was Shimizu but before she could make this clever (and evasive) reply he followed up with another question: Did she think herself too normal or too ordinary? Then shaking his head, he said, "Do you know, I think no one can hurt me like you can."

Her brows rose. I hurt you? She doubted it on instinct but she couldn't ponder his declaration properly—his rare self-conscious smile was distracting her.

He was speaking casually and not in his usual young-master way. "I think there's a scaffolding in my brain with your name on it. 'Hino Kahoko'," he said, pointing a finger at his temple. He smiled again, a few seconds longer than the first, and she thought she was in danger of kissing him.

"Whatever you do," he continued, his eyes locked with hers, "just fits in that Kahoko-shaped area in my mind that causes me to react in an emotional way. Only you can provoke me so I can't help myself. I have to know how you're doing, have to know you're still pushing forward, or else I wouldn't know how to move on."

He said her name in a way that felt as though he had caressed her cheek. "Do you know what I'm saying? I had it in my head that I would see you again someday, and if that wasn't going to happen...I'd be lost."

"Do you understand?" he asked. There was a plea in his voice for her to respond.

"I think I do," she said quietly. "Tsukimori-kun," she said, gathering her courage, "I'm sorry. That time I...when I said that I was wasting time with music..." She swallowed the lump in her throat and willed herself not to shed tears. "You just felt so far away and I didn't want to think that I couldn't catch up to you. It hurt when you said you were disappointed in me..."

She hadn't known before meeting him that someone could make her want to cry so much and confine herself to bed because of the heartache. If he believed no one had the power to hurt him like she could she would be honest with him too and tell him how he had rejected her. But she regretted it after. What she'd done was give an abrupt announcement, as though she kept a grudge against him.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I hurt you. I feel guilty for hurting you so often."

She shook her head and wiped away tears, she couldn't have guessed his feelings either. "I didn't think I had any real effect on you. You have your own well-worn area in my brain too—it's the part that makes my heart constrict when I think you've gone and left me. Because I don't want you to go somewhere where I can't reach you because I had let you down and it was my fault that you lost faith in me."

The words she had just spoken had left her in a rush and her body was shaking too.

"I just...I just..."

She just wanted him. She wanted him to love her and to believe in her. She imagined there was a real mapped area in her mind that had impressions she could feel under her fingers and it made sense there that only thoughts of him fit and lingered. He had the ability to hurt her the most but the well-worn area in her brain came to be not because of the second or third time she had cried because of him. It existed because he inspired her and taught her how to reach for her own sound. He had sacrificed for her, supported her and cared for her. He had done these things for her repeatedly—for a second, third and nth time—and each time thoughts of him fell, as if to dovetail, into the same tracks of happiness and content that she could trace.

"I believe in you more than I believe in anyone else," he said. She heard the smile in his voice as his fingers brushed her jaw. She held his hand and pressed her cheek onto his palm.

Still, she had to account for another emotion. He believed in her and saw her as more than she appeared. With him, she felt constantly on the brink of something better—of something more.

I am more.

She desired this feeling which only he made real.

We could be more...

She wanted to hold him until he felt it too. She loved him and she realized she would do so always because he lit up that place in her mind that he himself had made permanent. When it concerned him, there was one definite thing that encompassed her thoughts, actions and reactions: LOVE.

"I love you," they said in unison.

He promised to live for her. She bit her lip and tightened her hold on the hand that was still solid and said she was going to make sure he'd get better so he could keep his promise. She knelt on the floor and kissed him lightly on the lips. He smiled and returned her kiss.

"Stay with me, Len," she said. She had asked him before to stay by her side and at the time she thought he'd said no because it was inconvenient. But now, no matter what, he had to do it. He had to stay for her—for their future.

He kissed her again. It was a kiss that said they belonged to each other.

"I won't leave you, Kahoko. I won't ever leave you."

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Manga reference:

Chapter 67

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Author's drabble:

With him, it felt as if she was constantly on the brink of something more. She felt as though she was more than she appeared and could have more than she thought to imagine, and she desired this feeling which only he made real.

- A slight variation of a line I used above. Wouldn't it be nice to feel this way because of someone?