12/9/10: Epilogue coming soon. :)

to uncover what was purposefully lost
and we all looked so desparate
showing the guidance that we lack

Meroko didn't bother to turn the light switch on when it got dark out.

Her suitcase felt cold under her fingers, with its fake-snake texture. Her clothing felt restrictive and heavy under her: she'd bundled up, wearing a long sleeved shirt, a sweater, and a coat. Her mother would be angry if she saw that Meroko was dressing inappropriately for the weather. Or worse, just inappropriately.

Meroko bit her lip and glanced around at the room. She'd said goodbye to her teakettle, goodbye to her little table, her pillows and blankets. She realized, again, just how much was here in the first place. More than it looked, surely.

It was strange. Her mother had wanted Moe to come home right away, as soon as possible. But she had insisted she needed time to pack, which seemed laughable, now. Most of it wouldn't fit in her room at home, much less her bags. And how would her mother feel about the teakettle's rusty spot, or her table's creaky legs, or the plain, battered state of her blankets? Meroko realized that what she'd really wanted was to say goodbye. She had been free her, at least. For a while. She closed her eyes, thinking, then opened them again. She bit her lip.

She didn't really know how she would return home. Back to her clean, laundry-scented twin bed for the holidays. And then, she realized hazily, her parents would smooth things over with her college and she would go back there – to a dorm shared with some othefr suburban girl on weekdays. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her coat hood. Fuzuki. How would she face Fuzuki? Or Kimiharu? Would they take up dating again, like nothing had happened? After her parents got her to dye her hair back to black, she would look like she had before – unrecognizable. Her stomach turned. She didn't even want to think about her father, even though he probably wouldn't care at all.

She only knew that she was not cut out for Here. The problems had piled on, and now it was time to run. Let them catch up, if they could. Meroko was forever running, and if she got tired, at least she never got caught.

She felt very empty.

She stared at her door and wondered if she should go and say goodbye. Mechanically, like a wind-up toy, she walked toward the door and stepped out into the hall. The fluorescent lights flickered.

She knocked on his door.

No answer. He must not be in.

Maybe he was still sick, but, no, he should be home by now.

She knocked again.

And again.

And she realized: I want to say goodbye to him, too.

She was about to knock again when it opened to reveal Izumi. He looked better than the last time she'd seen him, certainly, but still disheveled, like he'd slept far too little. He looked too thin. She'd never seen someone get so much thinner so much faster, especially when he was lithe to begin with. He must not have been eating much at all. He was downright bony.

Meroko froze. She forgot everything she wanted to say. There was something palpable between them, something heavy. She remembered that she hadn't gone in to see him during his hospitalization. He probably remembered that he'd just tried to kill himself a little less than a week ago.

"I just wanted to say… goodbye."

She should have turned around them. Turned back into her apartment, and waited that last half-hour for her mother to come and fetch her.

He said nothing. He stared at his feet. Meroko had never seen Izumi so beaten.

"…What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he mumbled, and began to shut the door.

She stuck her foot in.

"I'm serious," she said. She could hear her heart bleeding in her voice. What's wrong with me? Why do I act like this?

There was a long, long pause. Izumi tried to shut the door again, a little violently, but Meroko's foot wedged in the doofrway made that impossible.

"My mother's dead," he said sharply.

She stared at him.

His mouth tightened. "I'm sorry," he said coolly, "I really shouldn't unload this on you."

"Are you okay? I don't mean - I just mean, you can't feel nothing about it."

He sighed. "Are you my therapist, Me-chan?" It sounded less cruel this time. More tired.

"No. But I'll listen."

He held the door open for her, shutting it with a kind of primness that indicated this would be a one-sided visit. She sat down at his kitchen table, twirling a bit of hair nervously. He seated himself across from her and immediately slumped over, putting his forehead in his hands.

Meroko stared at him.

"She's dead," he repeated, quietly, evenly.

She forgot that she'd ever thought he was an asshole or a psycho: the being before her was a child. Just a sad, scared, tired child, and she saw herself in him in all the ways she'd never imagined.

She wanted to help him.

She realized, suddenly, that maybe the best way to do that was by listening. She fiddled with her coat buttons in the silence. I'm picking up his habits, she thought, without any real emotion.

"I just left her. Some son I am. But she found me again when she needed me. You know she left those notes on my door hoping I'd have to see her - how thin her face is -"

When he looked up, she took his hand, held it between her own. He was colder than she was. Cold, cold – always so cold.

He jerked his hand away. It was the only sign of life amidst his listlessness.

"Why?" she finally croaked out, standing on shaky legs. Her chair scraped the ground as she rose. Her voice was hoarse. Why don't you want me? Why do you pull away? Why do you do this to me, over and over again, and why do I let you?

"I…"

His eyes flickered. He looked down at his wrung-together hands.

"You what?"

"I love you," he said. The words didn't feel real. She checked. No. They definitely weren't.

"No," she said, "No you don't." If you did, a harsh voice whispered, if you did, you wouldn't be so cruel to me.

"I do. I love you." She looked up, tears held in place by newfound astonishment. He was looking up at her. His eyes. Yellow and cat-like, and...

Not blank.

And Meroko realized, for the first time, she was looking Izumi in the eye. Not the other way around. She - Meroko - was looking Izumi in the eye, and for the first time, those eyes were something other than just glassy. They were sad and tired and hungry, desperate, disgusted, honest, ashamed. The deluge of emotion left Meroko wordless.

He lowered his chin. She noticed what could have been the flash of a quivering lip.

She stood, as if by instinct, and wrapped him up in her arms as best she could standing up. His elbow dug into her side. She didn't care. She didn't care, as long as she could finally make him warm.

Somehow, her head ended resting on his. His was buried in her shoulder.

"All I'm good for is guilt," he said, still even.

She said nothing, just rubbing his back, trying and trying to make it warm.

His arm was around her when they woke up, his head tucked under hers. Meroko didn't give his odd position any thought. She looked at the clock and realized her mother would have come and gone. But that was unimportant. She was needed here.

She tried to make out his room in the dark, tracing the strangely familiar fixtures of his home.

She remembered her mother's note: sleeping in some slum all alone on Christmas. Meroko thought about Izumi's arm draped over her. At least she wasn't alone.

Quietly, she sat up and thought about what had just happened. She felt confused, first off. Confused because, once again, Izumi brought out a weird wheel of emotions in her. Top to bottom, top to bottom. Second, she felt surreal. Third, she felt an overwhelming, permeating sadness.

She held her breath. She could hear something beating against the building – hard, pounding, constant. Against the roof, it was audible as a soft pitter-patter. Sleet-rain.

She smoothed a bit of his hair and stood up, smoothing the rumples out of her still-present coat as she did so.

She went to her room and fished an envelope out from under her bed. There was a note taped on her door. She knew it was from her mother, just as Izumi had so often had notes from his mother taped to his door. She ignored it.

She went back to Izumi and nudged him awake.

"What…?'

She held out the envelope. He opened it, curious but too sleepy to truly be interested.

"… Money?"

"For your mother's funeral," she whispered.

"Meroko," Izumi said, "This… is five hundred dollars."

He sounded like he was torn between laughing and crying again.

"I know it's not much." It was her Takuto-money, her rainy-day money. She couldn't think of a day rainier than today. "But you can use it for whatever you need it for."

Izumi examined it for a moment and then set it on his bedside table. Meroko felt herself smile. He understood. He understood how badly she wanted to help him, even if it was stupid, and he was taking her help.

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome."

She nestled her head in his shoulder. She felt his breath on her neck.

When she shifted her head, he kissed her.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, and she believed him.

He awoke to a sizzing sound, harmonizing with the sound of cold, hard rain drumming the roof.

For a moment, he thought something – his home, maybe, or jus this bed – was burning. But no. That was just the nightmares talking. He didn't know the last time he'd cooked properly, or had someone cook properly for him. Sometimes he still thought the trains were screaming him awake, but it had been years since he'd moved out of there. His mother didn't even live near the tracks anymore.

He turned to stare blearily at his kitchen. The previous night's events slipped back to him, and as they did, a tired ache crept back into his bones.

The kitchen didn't match his mood at all. It was bright, about as brightly lit as it could be without outright waking him up. He could smell, now, and the sweet, warm smell of sausages made his somach turn.

Without meaning to, he coughed, and she turned her head toward him.

She was dressed far more tidily than he'd ever seen her. It was disorienting. She wore a turtleneck, knee-length skirt, tights, and practical heels.

He noticed she wore all black.

His stomach tightened again.

"Hey," she said, smiling, "I made breakfast."

He crept out of bed. The floor felt cold under his feet. He realized his chest hurt where he'd slept on the buttons of his dress shirt. If she thought the sight of his crumpled clothes funny, she didn't say anything about it. He'd gone to work the day before, loathe to acknowledge his suicide attempt. But then he'd realized it was Christmas Eve. He'd nearly laughed at how out-of-it he was - like a sleepwalker, like an insane man.

And then he'd gotten the call about his mother.

Izumi took a seat at his table as Meroko hurried to turn on the rest of his lights. Her heels made neat-sounding clicking noises on his floor whenever she walked across it.

This was all so bizarre – her, fussing over him, his mother's death, the slippery feeling in the pit of his stomach… he focused on the chronic water stains on his wall, tracing their outlines. One looked like a rabbit.

What was she still doing here?

"I made breakfast," she said, startling him. Had he said that out loud? He glanced oer at her, where she busied herself with the sausages again. "I made pancakes, too," she said. He looked over at the counter. Sure enough, she'd piled a high stack on a paper plate. "And there's orange juice – oh, it's still in the bag-"

"I'll get it," he said, and she looked quickly back at her sausages. He nearly snorted when he saw that she'd practically covered the table in flour. The messy bowl sat on his counter. She hadn't even bothered to put it in the sink. Obviously Meroko didn't know the meaning of clean.

Even the bag had bits of flour in it. There was a tabloid in it, too, one she'd apparently forgotten.

Izumi scanned the cover. His eyes stayed fixed. His jaw clenched.

Takuto Kira.

But when he looked closer he felt his jaw easing, his heart unclenching. Buried in his cold indifference, he found a stab of pity. The bones of Takuto Kira's face stuck out sharply, even for a rock singer. His blue eyes looked large in a shrunken skull. Hadn't he only been in a coma for a couple of weeks? Maybe it was something else.

TAKUTO KIRA'S MIRACULOUS RECOVERY – MYSTERIOUS BREAKUP WITH MODEL FIANCEE

For a brief, jealous moment, he wondered if this accounted for Meroko's cheerfulness, but – no. So he was alive – but diminished. Izumi let the tabloid go. It was too hard, too much like looking in a mirror.

He looked up and caught Meroko's eye. She held it. For a split second, Izumi could understand why Takuto had broken up with his model girlfriend: obviously there was no woman more beautiful, more desirable, more anything. Then he realized his was being stupid. What was more, he was being sentimental.

Shaking the thought out of his head, he took the orange juice to the table and poured them both a glass, hers fuller than his. When he sat back down he realized that the room had gone quiet, despite the sizzling sausages and the drum of the rain. He turned to find her staring at him.

"What?"

"Well… aren't you going to eat anything?"

His stomach churned at the thought of food. "No." She doesn't understand, he thought, and for a moment everything felt unreal and pointless.

"But you're so skinny," she said, in a voice so quiet he could barely hear it over the sausages and the rain. Unthinkingly, he reached for his stomach. He could feel ribs.

"That's what I mean," she said.

He willed himself to get up, taking the plate she'd set on the table with him.

"It's just hard," he said, not daring to look at her.

To her credit, she didn't disagree.

He took as little as he could get away with, then sat back down. He even took the pancake bowl. Concious of his dignity, he scraped it with a fork instead of with his fingers.

Meroko sat across from him, sipping some orange juice. Moe. Her dirtbag ex had called her Moe. Somehow, he couldn't quite see her as anything but Meroko, but he supposed she could have been a different person, in a different time. He noticed the odd contrast between her modest, black clothing and her artificially pink hair.

Maybe they were the same person. Maybe the only difference was that Moe had grown up and odd.

She stared at the batter bowl. "How…?"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"What."

"Okay, I just wondered – how you can eat it like that?"

He smiled wanly down at the bowl. "It's an acquired taste," he said. His mother had always made her pancakes raw in the middle, gooey and heavy (if they weren't burnt). She'd been a terrible cook, even when they were just box pancakes.

His mother.

After a long moment, he pushed the bowl away and looked up at Meroko again. She looked worriedly back.

"I might say you're too skinny," he said. "You should have some of your own cooking. I won't be able to eat this all."

She laughed nervously, but her face flushed with appreciation. He'd meant it – she looked too-thin, fragile, breakable, which until that moment had always seemed part of her appeal. "Thanks. Maybe I will."

There was another quiet, and she grew somber. Izumi, for his part, occupied himself with chewing his pancakes very slowly. They tasted sickeningly sweet, especially so early in the morning. Most of the time he just made himself a semi-bitter cup of coffee. It wasn't like he could taste much in the mornings, anyway.

"What are you going to do?"

"With…?"

She nodded. He stared down again, at his half-eaten pancakes, suddenly fuller than before.

"She'd want to be buried."

"Oh," she said, "I was… expecting cremation. Today." That would account for all the black. "Sorry. I… I didn't think."

"It was my father. Who was Japanese." His words came out stilted. He was glad, though, that she didn't ask more about his father. He didn't remember exactly what he'd told her before his hospitalization, but he knew he didn't want anyone – even her, with whom he'd already passed the point of no return – to know any more. Talking about his mother was bad enough. There really wasn't much about his father to talk about in the first place.

At least with his mother he remembered the stupid pancakes.

The rain drummed. He tried to fill the silence with another bite of pancake, but it felt thick in his mouth, and the knot in his throat made it hard to swallow.

He felt her hand enveloping his.

This time, he didn't pull away.

When Izumi left to go to the store, he paused to stare at his door. No yellow note this time. Instead, someone had hung a wreathe – the real kind, with the nice smell - decorated with a red ribbon.

He smiled.

He'd forgotten that it was Christmas.