Recappy From the Last Chappy:He averted his eyes with a mixed look of shame—that she figured it out so quickly—and remorse—just a little, for kidnapping her first kiss. Moreover, it sounded rather foolish when spoken aloud. ". . . Sorry."
She scratched the back of her head. "I'm not sentimental about my first kiss," she admitted—though in the back of her mind she wondered if it was due to her "half-heart" and added, "but . . . I don't need a second one any time soon. . . . Okay?" She smiled.
"Mm."
This isn't going into Jiminy's journal.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Stirrings
"Yeah, right. You're making that up, Sora," I sneered, crossing my arms. The heat from the campfire warmed my skin, and the light gave it an orange tint. The four of us sat around the fire on the beach of the Main Island in front of the fence separating the sands from the residences. It was dark, so the lamps were lit.
Sora's cheeks puffed up and he scooted to the edge of the log he sat on. He was bringing his hands to his chest, trying to convince me. "No, it's true, Riku! Everybody says so! And you'll only see her at sunset."
Sharing a log with him and wearing his jacket draped over her shoulders—I'd tease him about that later—Kairi chuckled. The marshmallow at the end of the long metal fork she held hovered over the flames. "Alright, what are you two fighting over now?"
It was almost three years ago, not long after Naruto was added to our group. He had just shown up on the beach one day, just like Kairi, but with one difference: he still had all his memories of his old world. He was sitting on the log across from Sora and Kairi, holding the bag of marshmallows in one hand and the fork in the other.
"You heard the story, right Kairi? About the ghost girl that appears at sunset?" Sora asked, turning to her.
I leaned back. "This is the first time I've heard about it."
Naruto's face paled, but he acted cool. "Ghost?" He gave a knuckleheaded grin and scratched the back of his head; he almost would've had us fooled, but the fire's light made the nervous sweat at his temple glisten. "Ghosts don't exist! . . . Right?"
When she regarded him cluelessly, he gave a minuscule sigh, closed his eyes, and faced the fire. "Well, Selphie told me about it." The flickering flame cast shadows on his face, setting a grim tone for his tale as he opened his eyes. For some reason, he spoke in a whisper.
"Okay. You know that kid, the one they say left the islands for good one day? He used to think of these islands like a prison, surrounded by water. He wanted to get out of here, really badly. But there was one thing that made him stay for just awhile: a girl.
"They were young and in love, maybe a little older than us—they might've barely turned adults. They spent every day together. But when he asked her to come with him . . . she said no."
No? Why in the world would someone turn down the chance to leave? Psh, this story was fake. I knew it as soon as he said that. Had to be. . . . I shifted on the log.
"She wanted to stay. She loved peaceful island life, and wanted to settle—she really wanted to with him." Like he felt some sympathy for the lovers—sap that he is—he looked at the fire with sad eyes. "He left the islands one day without saying goodbye.
"She was distraught. She didn't want to believe he was gone for good, her heart wouldn't give up hope. Every sunset she was at the water's edge, crying, just waiting for him . . . but he never came back. Then one day the tide came in too high, and a strong current swept her out to open sea. She drowned."
Abruptly, he glanced from under his brow and let the fire play at the shadows around his face. His voice became quiet, almost eerie, and totally somber. "They say that at sunset . . . you can still see her ghost at the shore, still waiting. . . ."
I saw Naruto shudder out of the corner of my eye. Kairi was quiet, too. She was hesitant, and almost half-hearted, when she said, "Hehe . . . that does sound like the kind of romantic story Selphie would think up."
The blonde laughed nervously and said, "Yeah! And g-ghosts? Get real! Ha ha . . . what kind of ghost would come out at sunset—even if it was real!"
"But it's true!" Sora insisted. "Tidus saw her!"
"You're going to believe something 'cause Tidus says he saw it?" I spoke. I uncrossed my arms and picked up the stick laying next to me. It was long and thick in terms of sticks, but I only needed one hand. "He probably wasn't getting enough oxygen to his head practicing for blitzball. Seeing things." I used the stick to shift one of the small logs in the fire, stabilize the structure. Embers took to the air. I was serious. "Anyway, there's no way that's true. Who in their right mind would want to stay here?"
—Little did I know, Tidus wasn't hallucinating. He had been holding his breath, but there actually had been a spirit standing at the shore, looking outward. It happened to be sunset. She was young, and despite the soft ocean breeze, her hair and clothes were undisturbed. The water and the shells passed through her ankles, not around. There had been sorrow in her face.
When Tidus screamed, putting the girl's appearance together with the story, she looked at him with a surprised expression and disappeared.
I didn't believe any of it . . . until I talked to the girl Tidus saw myself—
After hearing the story, I felt sometimes like someone was watching me. There was some presence, especially when I was alone. I figured it was all in my head. I kind of wanted it to be her. I guess I was curious; I really wanted to know. Why would someone not leave this place, given the chance?
At the base of a tree on the island where we played as kids and hang out now as teens, inside the secret place, there's a door. It's made of wood, but there aren't any knobs or handles, so there's no way of opening it. The rocks down there have drawings all over them, sketched by kids over the years. Some I'd done myself, just because; pictures of what I imagined to be out there.
Not very long after I'd heard the story, I went to visit the door. I'd had the thought then that the door might've opened to another world, if it would ever open at all. Sometimes I'd look at it and try to find some hidden mechanism that would magically open it, like out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon . . . but none of it worked.
That was the day I met her.
As I stood near the path to the secret place's opening, she was admiring drawings on the rocks, leaning forward a little with her fingers laced below the small of her back. She almost appeared to be real; only a very faint outline of the drawings on the other side of her gave away that she was lightly transparent.
I just stared at her for a few seconds with my mouth open. The last time Sora'd told me about a monster or ghost, it was just the wind howling among the shadows of this very spot. I felt a knot in my stomach, but I wasn't scared—not scared enough to leave, at least. If she really was the girl from Sora's story, there's something I wanted to know from her. I ignored the feeling in my stomach and the moisture on my brow and scowled. "Why didn't you leave with him?"
She jumped and turned partly toward me, staring at me over her shoulder. The tips of her medium-length blonde locks softly touched her face and brushed down passed her shoulders; her bangs parted over her left eye, which stared with the other widely.
My heart rate quickened—from nerves.
"Wh. . . . Ah . . . ?" She raised her arms in front of her defensively. Especially lacking what substance that would've made her opaque, she seemed vulnerable. "How can you . . . see me?"
"You're here, right? If you're real, shouldn't I be able to see you?" I countered.
"Yes, but . . . ," she was still shocked, still regarding me the same way. "After that boy freaked out, I decided I didn't want to be seen by anyone. No one can see me if I don't want them to. . . ." She turned her head. "It worked that way up 'til now, at least. . . ."
I didn't get it at the time. When I think back on it now, I guess that meant some part of her—a dominant one—wanted to be visible, whether it was to me or at least one person. She never showed herself to anyone else, though.
"Are you going to answer my question?" I asked impatiently, resting my fist on my hip.
She looked like she just remembered I'd asked something. "Oh. Um . . . . Well, I don't get the question. Who's 'him,' and where did he go?"
I frowned. "Your lover; he left this world. Aren't you the ghost of the girl from the story? The one that drowned and haunts the island at sunset?"
She tilted her head. "If I were, would I be here? It's not sunset." Looking away, she lowered her eyelids and let her lashes cover her eyes. She shook her head. "Mm-mm. I'm not that kind of ghost. Not the dead kind." She looked at me in the eye. "I'm someone's heart."
Riku navigated the chambers of Monstro—a whale of Jiminy's world—with a complicated expression, something of nostalgia mixed with longing and frustration as he thought back to those times. Longing for the friendships, the ties; not for his home world.
Walking along the upper portion of Chamber 1, which was very close to the mouth of the whale, he was surrounded by purple walls with constantly functioning innards. Something of a world in itself, Monstro had many chambers like this—there were so few differences, and in some ways the anatomy defied what t is typically expected of a living being—it was rather labyrinthine.
He was about to step through a thin blue membrane that would take him to a new portion of the massive mammal when voices drew his attention to the area below. Certain he recognized those voices, he walked toward the edge of the higher platform and looked down. The complexity of his previous expression had simplified to a scowl.
The girl who had replaced Kairi—Hikari, though he was unaware of her name—walked a few feet into the chamber with Sora and his two new best friends close behind. She crossed her arms. "A whale. Stuck . . . in a whale." She sighed and closed her eyes. "Is this for real? This could be a dream. Nightmare? Haven't had one of those yet. Whales don't grow this big. We had some pretty big toads, and slugs, but . . . this would swallow a world, no way could it live in it. . . ."
Uncrossing her arms and scratching the nape of her neck, she muttered, "Well, if I hadn't put off changing the thrusters for Firaga-G ones, this probably wouldn't've happened. Like to think those would've had enough force to fight the sucking power of this thing."
Sora, Donald, and Goofy stopped behind her and regarded the other end of the chamber, where a little wooden puppet stood halfway in the next chamber's membrane. Riku reacted to the sight of him. A wooden puppet boy with a heart yet no strings, one with his own will. . . .
The brunette approached the puppet. "What are you doing? Come on, let's go back." He motioned toward the mouth.
Goofy added, "You know, Geppeto's awfully worried about you."
"Pinocchio, stop playing around! This is no time for games!" He, Hikari, Donald, and Goofy turned their backs, intending for the puppet to follow. He sounded irritated; probably because, from what Riku had heard, they had ended up within this beast by accident.
Riku smirked at their misfortune and jumped down from the upper platform between the group and Pinocchio; he landed in a crouch, most of the shock absorbed by Monstro's squishy innards, thus the sound was nil. He rose, turned to them, and taunted, "But Sora, I thought you liked games—," Sora whipped around, "—Or are you too cool to play them, now that you have the Keyblade?"
"Riku?" Everyone else turned to see. "Wh-what are you doing here?"
"Just playing with Pinocchio," the silver-haired teen replied with a one-armed shrug.
A little annoyed, he said, "You know what I mean! What about Kairi? Did you find her?" He was leaning forward with his hands closed, a little hopeful.
Placing his fists on his hips, he teased him. "Maybe. Catch us and maybe I'll tell you what I know."
"Come on!" Sora stomped forward, a little mad. Riku took Pinocchio's hand and ran.
Hikari followed him with an inquiring scowl, bringing up her hand to cover the discomfort in her chest. Her fingers lightly brushed against the cloth of her shirt and fishnet. Her lips parted.
Riku stopped quite a few chambers ahead, deep enough in the maze that it would certainly shake off Sora and his posse for a bit; he felt a little prideful of that. He regretted, withal, that he had lost Pinocchio in the process. He glanced back down the road he had taken and considered retracing his steps part of the way.
Maleficent appeared off to his side, though he had not seen her manifest. With false concern, she inquired, "Why do you still care about the boy?" Her scarlet lips were curled when Riku turned—a faint kindness, perhaps even a mocking smile. "He has all but deserted you for the Keyblade and his new companions, after all."
"I don't care about him," he said with faltering conviction. "I was just messing with him a little."
"Oh, really?" she smirked. "Of course you were." Nonchalantly, she strolled passed him; he followed her with his gaze. In a friendly, warning tone, she added, "Beware the darkness in your heart. The Heartless prey upon it." Magic gathered around her, and her body faded from the area.
As she left, Riku yelled, "Mind your own business!" Then he felt a weak stirring in his chest and raised his hand to cover it. He averted his scowl in shame, his mouth a straight line. He clicked his tongue. "You too. . . ."
The sound of Pinocchio's wooden joints clanking entered the area, bringing the teen to look back. He watched the puppet continue into the bowels. Sora, Donald, Goofy and Hikari ran in shortly after; they stopped upon seeing the teen's posterior.
"Riku!" the Keybearer exclaimed. His frustration was clear, both in his voice and the way he looked at him when he turned. "What's the matter with you? What are you thinking? Do you understand what you're doing?"
With obvious disdain, the addressed teen said, "I could ask you the same thing, Sora. You only seem interested in running around and showing off that Keyblade these days." Sora glanced at the Keyblade with some contrition. "Do you even want to save Kairi?"
His arm fell to his side limply and his grip on the handle loosened but did not fail. He looked down; his spiky hair shielded his eyes. "I do."
Pinocchio's scream came from the bowels.
I wonder about it each night before I sleep. Will I dream again? And if I do, will he be in it? Hair silver as the moon, strong muscles, soothing smile—and eyes that look greener every time I see him. He's one of the reasons why I look forward to going to sleep, but I'm not really sure why that is.
But when I saw him again, face-to-face, I don't know what was going on. I kept my mouth shut because, even though I know him in my dreams, I'm actually inconsequential to him; I know it. He cares about that blonde girl, the one whose role I for some reason play in my dreams. In reality, I'm the chick that tried getting in his way when he kidnapped Alice.
Ah . . . Alice. . . .
He's different from my dreams; it leaves me uneasy, and it irritates me that I don't know why.
. . . I don't care for being dense.
Hikari was the first one to enter the bowels, determined to distract herself from these upsetting thoughts. She entered a circular chamber with a number of pink pods lining the walls and gastric juice pooled on the floor. In the center, a large Heartless was seated on the platform.
The Heartless had two long, turquoise, tentacle arms and a purple-cage-like body large enough that Pinocchio could be seen through the barred stomach. "Get me out of here!" the puppet cried. "It's scary in here!"
Everyone was ready to rush in and take on the Parasite Cage, and most stepped forward with the first motion of their attack or syllable of their spell performed, but the Heartless seemed to have another idea. Its tentacle arms reached for the ceiling, fixed themselves there, and its body lifted itself from the ground, where a hole was. The cage parted like a mouth and let Pinocchio fall into the hole. Riku was the first to jump in after him.
Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Hikari hesitated, torn between following the puppet and staying behind to stop the Parasite Cage, seeing as fighting the Heartless was part of their mission. However, the cage retreated, swung itself down from the ceiling and into the next chamber.
Hikari lowered the kunai she had procured and watched it leave with an uneasy scowl; part of her had been looking forward to the distraction, to releasing some of this frustration spawning from her density. Moreover, Heartless did not usually run away, particularly the large ones. Riku had been way to ready to follow Pinocchio. . . .
Dropping through the hole brought the quartet back to the mouth of Monstro, where they had begun. They landed on Geppetto's—Pinocchio's father's—ship. The water levels dropped.
"Pinocchio! Pinocchio!" pleaded the old clockmaker. The sorrow was apparent in his weathered eyes, and the wearing of gravity on his joints showed more than ever. "Please! Give me back my son!"
Riku stood on a ledge protruding from the wall of the mouth, or inner cheek. Unconscious, in his arm, was Pinocchio. "Sorry, old man, I have some unfinished business with this puppet."
"He's no puppet! Pinocchio is my little boy!"
"He is unusual," he conceded. "Not many puppets have hearts." He hesitated and looked down at the wooden boy. "I'm not sure, but maybe he can help someone who's lost theirs."
Both Sora and Hikari reacted, though their reasons for doing so differed. "Wait a minute. Are you talking about Kairi?" the brunette inquired.
Riku scowled. "What do you care about her?" He carried Pinocchio with him into the throat.
Hikari clicked her tongue and scowled at him, trembling as her feelings tried bubbling toward the surface. Before her upset could become totally evident, she ran to the end of the plank, crouched, and sprang up to the ledge the silver-haired teen had been standing on. Sora and the rest gawked—partly due to the lack of warning and partly due to the nature of the move itself; they knew they would not be able to make a jump like that themselves. While she followed Riku's footsteps, they went toward the towers leading up to the ledge—make-shift staircases. They had to jump into the water.
"What is she thinking?" Sora wondered aloud. What is Riku thinking?
When Hikari entered the stomach—which appeared strikingly similar to the bowels—Pinocchio was seated against the wall, limp and unconscious at a glance. That was the most she gave him when she was running in, stopping a few feet passed the threshold; then her eyes were on Riku's back.
The boy turned and leered back at her, though he seemed minutely surprised by her presence. Why was the replacement the first one to come running? She did not exactly look like the Good Samaritan type—particularly with that purple-shaded, stony-eyed gaze of hers. "What do you want?"
The kunoichi maintained calm exterior, though her shoulders rose and fell as she inhaled and exhaled accented breaths through parted lips. Her cheeks were flushed. "First the innocent criminal, and now the little wooden boy? Keep this up, and Sora's soon bound to discover this hobby of yours, isn't that right?"
He frowned. Innocent criminal? The girl from Wonderland? Abruptly he remembered that he had actually exchanged a few words with this girl prior to now—when he had apprehended Alice. "You. . . . Tch. Why do you insist on getting in the way?"
"I don't mean to. At least, with Alice and Pinocchio, it's not personal." She placed her fists on her hips and leaned forward, shifting her weight slightly to her left leg; the stance struck Riku strange—in a familiar sense, and there was something about her glare. "I want you to stop."
"Stop?"
"Stop this game. Sora's been looking everywhere for you—and Kairi—while you've been off playing with the darkness. And for some reason, you're acting petty." She looked at the floor. "He cares about you both. He talks about you all the time, and has worked hard to keep smiling even when he might be getting discouraged. . . ." Once more she met his gaze; her leer was stone cold. "You're hurting him."
A chill ran down his spine as he stared at this girl's face. For the first time he looked at her and truly saw her, studied her features. She had very pale skin—practically pearlescent—like she had spent much time within shadows, very little in the sun. Conversely, her hair was as black as a Shadow Heartless's flesh. The way her hair framed her physiognomy—soft, per the edge in her expression—reminded him of someone important.
Mentally he conjured the image of the blonde wraith and compared it to the girl. The stance, body shape, shape of their faces, hairstyles, and most of all their eyes—identical? Can't be. . . . "Do I know you from somewhere? Other than Wonderland?"
She straightened, taken aback. The way her lips parted in silent query and her eyelashes fluttered when she blinked were even the same. "Wh. . . . Ah . . . ?"Her cheeks reddened. Mostly from my dreams. . . . "What are you talking about?"
"Tell me your name."
". . . ." For a few long seconds she stared at him; neither wavered. Hikari sustained an outward stillness, despite some foreign happenings within. She was becoming acquainted with the turmoil that had taken to manifesting in her stomach region, but now she felt something odd with her throat. There was an abrupt tightness, like it was sore; mild though it was.
Not wanting to divulge this feeble symptom to him, she did not reach to touch her throat as she wished. She simply swallowed, kept her eyes on him, and opened her mouth to reply, "—Hi—," but then something even more curious than any physical reaction she had experienced to date on this adventure occurred: her cheek felt wet.
Before she could complete even the first syllable of her name, the vision in her left eye became watery and she felt something tread in a single line down her cheek—like a solitary drop of rain catching on the window's glass. She blinked to clear her eyes and lifted one hand to the wet spot; on the back of her closed hand, a single dew of moisture was picked up, and she looked at it with wide eyes.
The tears continued to come, forced to flow when she tried blinking their obscurity away. She stared at the tiny dew on her hand and took a few small steps back, lifting her other hand to tentatively brush the tips of her fingers against those sprinkling. Riku appeared surprised as well.
Hikari's voice projected to a higher pitch as she barely uttered anything around her tightening throat. "Wh-what? How can I be . . . ? It's not possible. . . . Definitely not possible. . . ." She retreated further.
Behind her, Sora, Donald, and Goofy entered the stomach running, Keybearer in the lead. Sounding a little winded, since having taken the scenic route, he called, "Hiki! There you are!"
Riku reacted, but kept his cool, only making a minuscule utterance and broadening his eyes a fraction. It really is her. . . .
Sora approached Hikari and began, "Why did you go so far ahead?—," but stopped when he saw her tears. "Huh? Hey, what's going on? Are you—?"
Instead of allowing him to finish, she grit her teeth, turned on her heel, and ran; her sole words were an involuntary sob.
Thousands of questions were raising themselves in the brunette's over-occupied noggin as he found himself torn in deciding what step to next take. He retreated a little as if to follow Hikari and discern her problem, but then he looked at Pinocchio and Riku, remembering he had promised Geppetto his little boy.
In the end, he faced his sought-after best friend. "Let Pinocchio go, Riku."
Riku directed his gaze from where Hikari's posterior had disappeared to Sora. "A puppet that's lost its heart to the Heartless. . . . Maybe it holds the key to helping Kairi." Taking a step forward, he extended his hand. "How about it, Sora? Let's join forces to save her. We can do it, together."
Little boy blues stared at that hand, calculating, dithering, melancholy. They diverted, and his mouth and brow moved to form a frown. Silently he crouched into his fighting stance and opened his hands for the summoned Keyblade.
"What?" Whether it was a trick of the light or not, the silver-haired teen's eyes were less cyan and more green; his hand fell to his side, and he raised his voice. "You'd rather fight me? Over a puppet that has no heart?"
"Heart or no heart, at least he still has a conscience."
He scowled. "Conscience?"
"You might not hear it, but right now it's loud and clear. And it's telling me you're on the wrong side!"
"Then you leave me no choice."
Meanwhile, Jiminy was running the distance between himself and the wooden boy he, as a conscience, had been charged with. Despite the professional relationship, there was a genuine compassion and concern in Jiminy's voice as he called his name, thus proving a friendship. "Pinocchio! Pinocchio!" He was near tears.
Only able to provide a listless response, the puppet opened his eyes part of the way; he tried to raise his head, but only succeeded by about an inch. "Jiminy . . . I'm not gonna make it," he said with a small cough and closed his eyes, letting his head fall. The cricket touched his leg.
Then, there was light—small rays of hope—collecting on the puppet's face. Pinocchio lifted his head with ease when his nose grew, and grinned. "Oh! I guess I'm okay!"
Riku narrowed his eyes at them and clicked his tongue. At the same time as when he opened a corridor of darkness, a giant slew of Heartless appeared between him and his—former—friend. He disappeared into the portal, and it closed behind him.
Donald and Goofy drew their weapons, backs against Sora's, while Pinocchio scurried toward the exit along the perimeter. One by one, they extinguished the Heartless; the strongest being only moderately difficult. They took simply a few minutes to dispose of them, exerting a marginal portion of their stamina. When they finished, the chamber was empty.
Sora lowered his Keyblade and stared at the floor, absolutely crestfallen. "Riku . . . how could this happen?" He closed his eyes and thought back to old times on the islands, before Naruto or even Kairi had appeared. They had grown up together. His dad used to row them out to the island on which they played when they were too young to do it themselves. They explored the Secret Place together when he thought he'd heard a monster inside.
Additional memories flashed through his head like pictures in a photo album. Full of smiling, silly, or sometimes perturbed or surprised faces; bursting with won or lost challenges, the toy swords they carried around up until the day Destiny Islands was destroyed.
Then he tried excluding Riku from the image. Like a match was lit to the corner of each photo, memories were consumed by flame. Every face was charred.
"Come on, Sora!" Donald called from the doorway with Goofy. "We have to go find Hiki now!"
"Gawrsh, she seemed pretty upset."
The brunette looked their way and nodded; he dismissed the Keyblade. "Let's go find her."
Could it be true that his and Riku's friendship was reduced to ashes?
End of Chapter Twenty-Eight
Next Time in When Darkness Turns to Light! Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Tale of Two Hiki's
Sora retracted his hand and took his foot out of his mouth, embarrassed and rather confused. He tried not to let her rejection—so soon after Riku's—get to him, but his tone was certainly not of his norm. "What's the matter with you?"
She bit her lip to cease its quiver and averted her eyes to the ceiling. "I don't know, I . . . I don't understand. I haven't cried . . . in three years. I shouldn't have any of these feelings." Once more she regarded him with nigh resentment. "It's all your fault. Since I met you, my emotions have been returning—and there's no reason for them to be back like this!"
Fun fact: the idea of Hiki crying in the presence of Riku was inspired one time when I was listening to Cryin' by Metallica (though it was being performed by Adam Lambert.) Since then, whenever I think of that scene, and as I was writing it, that song popped into my head. I was cryin' when I met you, now I tryin' to forget you. . . .
The tale in the beginning of the chapter, about the two lovers, is not actually from Kingdom Hearts or Naruto and probably won't play any significant role later on. However, it was based off of the story in Birth by Sleep about the "kid who got off the islands a long time," in reference to a youthful Master Xehanort. Again, it probably won't play a part later, especially since at the moment I do not plan to have a separate series for a WDTL prequel. My best ideas for it are simple references or meetings in the Chain of Memories crossover-sequel, Road to Dawn.
A lot of the scenes in this chapter do come from the actual visit to Monstro in Kingdom Hearts, but as always I tried adding to it, my own twists and flairs to make it more interesting and pertinent. Yaaaaaaaaay.
Sorry if the Parasite Cage scene was unsatisfying. I was definitely not in the mood to write a fight scene just then. Totally brought on MAJOR writer's block. I will attempt incorporating it later, I think. Originally meant for the Monstro chapters to number only to two, but a third chapter is definite.
Thanks for reading, God bless! Please, leave a review!
