"I'm not sure how much I really understand about what happened next," Gar told Robin. "I mean, Rose and Kitaro didn't witness any of it from inside the house, much less inside the story. If it was Raven there instead of me, she probably be able to say 'Oh, this was happening in the spirit realm while that was going on on the physical plane,' but it was me, not her. We three did talk about it afterward, and as best we could tell, I got sucked into things because I was being a cat and at the same time, I was a kid. Just like Toshio and Mar were, because they were sort of stuck together. It seemed like I was part of them. Either that or because there was a place for a cat in the story and I was a cat, I had to be that cat. Anyway, I was seeing both the real world and what was going on with Ms. Kuwano and Kayako at the same time…"

Had Kayako been born when her parents were young and actively trying to have a family, nearly thirty years before, all would very likely have been well, but she was not. They were set in their ways and tired; at their time of life, a baby was an inconvenience and not a joy. Why should they disrupt their comfortable, quiet lives to accommodate this squalling, messy little creature? And so although she was never deprived of any necessity or mistreated in any way, neither did her parents make any effort on her behalf. It was neglect, but it was a benign neglect.

No play dates with other children in the neighborhood, no trips to the park or the museum, the library or the swimming pool. On rare occasions, she would accompany her mother to the store, but not often because she cried and shook with terror at being in a strange place. She was brought up to be quiet and well behaved, and as long as she was quiet and well behaved, they were happy.

It seemed like this playthrough of her life would follow the pattern of all the others, but then when she was four…

A new family moved in next door. Now when she looked out her bedroom window, she could see a few toys on the windowsill of the house opposite. A couple of days later, when she looked, someone looked back. Another little girl! The girl smiled shyly and waved. Kayako didn't know what to do. She dropped down to the floor and hid.

Later that day, her parents summoned her. The new neighbors had come to visit. They had two little girls, Haruko, who was a newborn, and Yukime, who was exactly Kayako's age. "Would it not be ideal if they became playmates?" asked the stranger lady, the girl's mother.

"Oh, I don't know," Kayako's mother hesitated. "The noise and the running around, the mess…"

"There will be no trouble about that," the stranger lady said. "Our Yukie has a medical condition and can't run around very much. She will be quiet and good—and surely if they play outside or at our house, they won't be troublesome."

"In that case…" Their first play date was the next day. Going into a strange house was not so bad, since all the houses on their street were nearly identical. But it smelled different, and the colors were different. The stranger lady led her to the other little girl's room and left her there. The other little girl was lying on the floor drawing a picture with crayons. "Hello, friend," she said, and scooted over to make room. "I'm drawing trees. You draw the sky."

Kayako sat down and looked at the crayons. Draw the sky? Why not something easy? In books the sky was always blue, which was wrong. The sky was sometimes blue and sometimes grey and other times red and orange and pink, even yellow or purple, and when it was about to storm, sort of a dirty greenish yellow. But then she saw that the girl was drawing apples on the trees, and the apples were yellow and green and red, like real apples, not just red like in books. So Kayako took a pink crayon and started drawing the sky.

In the real world, Yukie had sagged to the floor, supported by Slade, who was stripping off her hat and her scarf. Her hair spilled over his arm, and her color had gone paler, bloodless. He touched her face, felt her neck for her pulse. Deathstroke himself was shiny-faced with sweat. Well, it was swelteringly hot in there.

The two little girls grew. Soon it was time to start school, and naturally, being neighbors, they were to go to the same one. There they learned, among other things, that they were strange. Yukie had her weakness to heat, which was to send her to the hospital more than once, and her strange twitchiness, which Kayako never thought anything of until the other children in the school brought it up. Kayako herself simply could not speak in class and would have spent the whole day hiding in the back of the room if she were allowed to. But they were strange together, and that made all the difference. They were friends, Yukie-chan and Kaya-chan.

Time passed. The two of them are in and out of each others' houses so much their parents call them by each others' names. "Kaya—uh, no—Yukie—wait, you are Kayako. Can you find my glasses?" Haruko grew up enough to follow them around and copy them all the time as they played make-believe. Yukie's parents had another baby—a boy, Ichiro. All he does is cry and produce stink, it seems. The two of them take dance classes, which Yukie likes and Kaya doesn't—too many people looking at her. Hobbies—Yukie is better at drawing, Kayako at coming up with stories, and together they make little books, hand drawn and hand written. Silly things, really.

It is not perfect. People make fun of them, Yukie's parents speak to her like she is dirt. Kayako's can't be bothered. When Yukie gets the measles, she has to go to the hospital because of the fever. For a while they fear she may have brain damage. Kayako throws up and gets faint whenever she is asked to stand up and read in front of the class. But they are friends.

The years keep coming. They turn twelve. Yukie and Kaya reach the stage when they are technically no longer children. No one told Kayako that meant bleeding every month, so when it happens, she starts screaming, convinced she is dying. Luckily it is over the summer when they're staying at Yukie's grandmother's. Calm and practical and kind, she explains matters to both girls—about what the blood means, that now she can become a mother, and how that can happen.

They discuss it afterward, and are in perfect agreement. Their own bodies are gross, boys and their bodies are even worse, and they are never going to do that.

Except three years later, Yukie does, with Ryuuji down the street. "It didn't really hurt," she shrugs. "Just a little smear of blood—and it was over so fast. I thought everything would be different, afterwards, but it isn't. I'm still the same. I'm still myself. I suppose I'll have to keep going out with him for a while, but I wish I hadn't bothered."

This less than ringing endorsement strengthens Kayako's resolve to wait. High school goes by. Yukie keeps on with dance and with martial arts, Kaya learns to play the koto and takes flower arranging. She has a talent for ikebana, which leads her to think of perhaps becoming a professional, someday.

Graduation! They will go on to college together. First, though, Yukie is going to a Jian Wu competition in Okinawa for a week, and it is there that something happens which nearly ends their friendship forever. Not because either of them want it to end, but because Kaya's parents almost forbid her to see Yukie again.

On the last night of the competition, Yukie did not return to the ryokan where the team was staying. In the morning, the chaperones track her to a hotel, where she spent the night with an American serviceman, a man over ten years older than herself, married and a father. The chaperones called the police and tried to have him charged with rape, but Yukie protested, vowing to everyone involved that she was of age, she suggested it, and she led him to believe she was older, anyway.

"His name is Wilson Slade. We met the first night of the competition," Yukie explained. "He'd never seen a Jian Wu match before, and he asked me a few questions. We wound up talking for hours—and he came back the next night. We talked some more, and he watched me compete. I just liked him so much! I knew he was married—he told me his wife was one of his martial arts instructors. When the last night came, I asked myself—what would be worse, doing nothing, saying nothing, not taking the chance and always wondering—or taking it, and knowing?"

"So you took the chance," Kaya stated.

"I did. I'm glad I did, too," She flashes a sudden, wicked smile. "I don't feel like a virgin anymore, I can tell you that!" Her smile disappears. "But now it hurts. I miss him like I'm missing part of myself—and I will probably never see him again."

But she does. He comes to meet her family and apologize for the scandal, saying that he was already separated from his wife, and they are going to be divorced soon. He will not try to see Yukie alone again until he is free, but he is serious about her. He knows going to college is important to her, but once she's graduated, if she still feels the same, they will get married.

Her parents clearly wish their daughter had never laid eyes on him, but an almost engagement goes a long way toward soothing their feelings. No one expects that wedding day will ever come.

College: A great deal of work, but they are there for each other. Shiro, the ancient black cat who had been part of her life forever, finally dies, and together she and Yukie find a box, line it with his favorite blanket, put in his favorite toys, and bury him in the backyard. Both of them cry. Foul of breath and creaky as he had become, he was still her first and oldest friend. Six months later, Kayako's parents die in a car crash—her elderly father, now suffering from episodes of confusion and dementia, stepped on the gas when he should have stepped on the brakes.

Kayako cried, but after the funeral, admitted to Yukie, "I grieved more whole-heartedly for Shiro than for the people who gave me life."

"Why not? Shiro actually sought you out and enjoyed spending time with you," Yukie pointed out. "…I would cry whole-heartedly if you died, Kaya-chan."

"And I, you."

Another graduation day, and this time, there is someone besides friends and family waiting for Yukie after the ceremony. An enormous American with prematurely white hair, missing an eye—the infamous Wilson Slade, who returned for her as he said he would. She is too Japanese to fling herself into his arms in front of everyone, but from the way she looks at him and he at her, they still feel the same way about each other. He is included in the celebration afterward, where they learn he has left the army and is now in business for himself as a security consultant. He would be traveling a lot, but there was no reason why Japan could not be his base of operations. That way Yukie would still be close to her family and friends.

In the real world, in which only seconds had passed, the real Slade tore open Yukie's coat, felt her heart, and began CPR, swearing a blue streak between forcing breaths of air into her lungs.

"Wait a moment," Robin sat up. "But you said Kitaro said—."

"That she was protected? He did, but he admitted that was in the ordinary way. He had no idea what could happen if somebody laid themselves open."

He and Yukie married, and left on their honeymoon. Alone for the first time in years, this Kayako had more courage and more social skills, and used them to get a job in a bookstore while she studied to become a ikebana professional, the traditional art of flower arranging. While she was there, a man came in, Saeki Takeo. A professional illustrator, he was there to find a copy of a magazine his work had appeared in. He did not miss the fact that Kayako was both pretty and still a little shy. A few days later, he came back, and asked her out.

She accepted. Why shouldn't she? Despite the frequent letters from Yukie, she was lonely. She could be brave, too. She could be daring. A few dates later, when one night, he said, "I want you, Kaya," she went with him to a hotel. It was…not a bad experience, but clearly it was nothing like what Yukie and Slade-san had.

By the time Yukie returned, several things happened. First of all, due to some scandal involving Haruko, the Kuwano family wanted to move. Second, Takeo asked Kayako to marry him. She had no desire to move—the house had been paid for long ago, and she knew it as well as she did herself.

As a result of the scandal, which was apparently much worse than Yukie being caught with Slade in a hotel back at the age of eighteen, the Kuwanos decided to give their eldest daughter and her husband the house as a belated wedding present, and move to Kyoto.

So the best friends went back to being neighbors, as it had been for so many years, only where they once played house, they were now the ladies of their respective houses. Kayako quit her job in the bookstore, because Takeo did not like for his wife to be working there where any man might walk in off the street and see her. Yukie did not go to work either, for a very different reason: she was pregnant, and too ill for several months.

Soon Kayako was too. Yukie's baby was a girl, who she named Rose Naomi, and Kayako's was a boy, Takeo. Together they faced the challenges of motherhood.

Life was good.

Except it was sometimes rather dull, especially once the children started school. To fill the time, Yukie and Kayako went back to doing what they did as children: making handmade books, this time with stories for their children. Yukie did the paintings, Kaya the stories. One of the books, the one which explained what it meant to be of mixed race, was so good they took it to a copy shop and made one for each child in their offspring's classes. A copy found its way into the hands of a major publisher of children's literature. They liked it so much they made an offer. It was a very good offer, and after talking it over, they decided to take it.

Then disaster: Takeo lost his job. On returning home, he found the contract on the table, and he read it.

His wife—his wife was being offered more for one tiny little book than he earned in a year, with options for several more. And her friend next door, that Yukie, she thought that her poor pathetic attempts at art, her little daubings, made her as good as a professional? She was in on it too. They were being paid the same.

It was an act of betrayal. He began his retaliation by ripping up the contract and then doing the same to the house. Every photograph of Kayako went the same way. All the books, every page torn out. The dishes, smashed on the floor. When he heard Kayako return home, he lay in wait.

The comic look on her face when she saw his expression, his lifted hand, almost made him laugh.

Then he backhanded her across the mouth. A man had to rule in his own house. She began to scream.

That did not stop him. What stopped him was the bitch from next door. They had keys to each others' houses, and had from their youngest days. He was only getting warmed up when she threw the door open, saw what was going on, and slammed him upside the head with a baseball bat.

"No!" she roared. "You don't get to hurt her. You don't get to hurt her anymore! You! Will! Never! Hurt! Her! Again!" Each of those statements was punctuated with another blow from the bat—his left wrist, his ribs, his shoulder, the right knee. Again, the ribs, and he felt them break.

How had he forgotten she was a martial artist? He went down after the next blow to the head, unconscious.

Yukie dropped the bat and went to her friend. "It's all right. He won't hurt you anymore. He can't hurt you anymore." Carefully she gathered Kayako into her arms. "Toshio, where have you got to? There you are. It's all right. It's all right."

"Then it got really bright in the spirit realm," Gar told Robin. "Like looking at the sun bright. Then Kayako, Toshio and Mar—not me, I mean, but spirit-Mar— were gone. In the real world, Yukie suddenly gasped and started breathing again. And it wasn't hot in there anymore. In fact, it started snowing through the hole in the roof."

"So she succeeded," Tim said.

"Yeah. Kayako—what she wanted was to show everybody what it was like to be good and not make trouble your whole life, then get beaten and murdered while you screamed for help, and nobody did anything. That was what she did. What she needed, though, was not just for somebody to rescue her, but for somebody to care."

A/N: The past/present tense confusion in the flashback is intentional. My thanks to my 'Guest' for my hundredth review, woo-hoo!