AN:

"It's been a week since then… don't you think it'll be fine if you leave the room for something other than to come sleep in our bed?" Hime asked looking at me with those bright golden amber eyes of hers, she was right though I had been waiting for them to wake up.

"Yeah… you're right Hime… I'll leave them be for now." I stood up with a grunt, stretching and clicking my back and neck from being stiffly sat in a chair waiting all day. "How's Takumi doing right now then?" I asked following Himeno out of the room into the hallway.

"He's at his friends' right now, he left half an hour ago." She replied stepping into the kitchen as I stopped leaning against the wall. "He was going to say goodbye but stopped himself because he didn't want to bother you while you were waiting for them to wake." Himeno's hands moved with practiced efficiency as she made sandwiches for us and tea.

"Taka shouldn't have to feel that way about it, I would have been more than happy to see him off if not take him to his friends' house." I felt like I had said that more to myself than as a response to my wife.

"You may feel that way, but you aren't showing it very well when you stay cooped up in that room all day waiting for Chimon to wake up, I understand that you feel like you should be there to talk to him because of what Kazumi said-" Himeno walked over cupping my face with her cool hands, her eyes met mine and for a moment her our lips touched in a brief kiss, then she pulled back staring at me. "Don't put all of this on yourself Jun, that's a weight that no one can carry or hold right now… I mean Kumi won't speak at all and s-she's like a shell-" I pulled her into a hug as tears began to form, I had almost forgotten about what happened to Kumi.

Kumi had woken up when Kyousuke and I found them, she was missing her leg and asked us if she had died… after that, we had to tell her that Kazumi had died and Chimon was experiencing some kind of genjutsu related trauma and shock. It was- difficult to watch how her expression changed from worried to broken as her world was shattered around her, Kumi stopped talking and just, in general, doing anything beyond eating and drinking when handed it. Watching the way she did things so hollowly and autonomously was probably one of the most painful things I've ever had the displeasure of seeing, even now she was in the other guest room we had and was just sort of staring into space out the window watching as the world turned.

It was depressing to watch, she no longer reacted in a somewhat energetic fashion, she no longer wore a bright smile, her green eyes no longer held a bright gleam in them. Her eyes were dead – they looked as though they had lost colour and were dulled like a light. Kyousuke had tried to break her out of this funk, but nothing worked, it was the same with Shirou and her partner, everything they could think of wouldn't break it. She was a shell, just like Hime said.

"I'm… s-sorry" I said softly under my breath into her ear, letting one another go she wiped the water from her eyes and a pained smile rose, Hime was strong, I know that she is. But even this is enough to break that, she had been friends with Kumi longer than I and on top of that, it was like seeing a sibling get hurt.

"It's fine…" her voice trailed off. "I can handle myself- l-let's have lunch and worry about this later." We went and sat on a large grey couch that was in the living room and slowly made our way through what she had made for us.

Not long after I cleaned up the dishes I saw Himeno off, she had to go to work in the rice fields we both worked in, we had been taking working in shifts initially if not at the same time, but with what happened to the Shimizu's I had been home all week while she was out working for us. I walked around the outside of the house to where there was a faucet and a bucket next to one another, with them was also some gardening tools, I filled the bucket with water and went over to the flower bed that lined the outside of our wooden house. While I was watering the flowers, I noticed mold growing on the tiles of the roof and made sure to write it down in a small notebook I carried with me for this sort of thing.

I spent the rest of the day around the house doing chores and normally boring work, like cleaning the roof tiles, checking the stone base of the house to make sure it wasn't crumbling, cleaning rooms- that meaning new sheets and headrest pillows, dusting and opening curtains so the sunlight could breathe some life into them. I paused for a while when I stood outside the room Kumi was in and then the room Chimon was in before I went into to them.

By the time it was late afternoon Taka had returned home and I swept him up into a hug until he wheezed out a plea for me to stop, Himeno came home an hour or two after Taka and did the same thing I did to him, though she didn't wait for him to plea before putting him down. He was ten going on eleven years old now, it felt like only a week ago Himeno was jumping for joy when we found out the news that she was pregnant, that had been a good day for us.

When he finally woke up Himeno was the person that was in the guest room at the time, she had been in the middle of moving him back onto the bed after switching out the sheets. I wasn't home at the time it happened, but Taka was there in my place to help his mother with Chimon and helped keep the pale boy in the bed for his own good seeing as he had been in a coma for a week and a half, so he had next to no strength and only confusion to go off of when he had woken to being tucked into bed by a woman he didn't recognize at first.

I arrived at home maybe half an hour later to Taka standing guard in the room while Hime was filling Chimon up with as much food as she could force down his gullet, the boy looked to me like I was some kind of deity when I stepped into the room and saw the scene.

"You're awake Chimon!" I said walking over to my wife who was sitting next to him with several empty dishes that had crumbs littering them.

"What's going on? Why am I here?" the boy- no my nephew asked looking to me, I guess that Hime hadn't told him.

"Your Aunts and I found you unconscious nearly dead, with your mother missing a leg and brought you two back here." I answered easily, I had a fair amount of time to build up responses to anything he might ask.

"Wait- Mother is here?! Also, what do you mean us two? Where is my Sister- what happened to Kazumi?" the boy said frantically.

"Your sister is dead," I stated flatly watching the poor boys face contort with horror and pain, the two had always been close, closer than anyone else I knew like them, I can't imagine what it was like hearing those words from me.

"I- no- that's- you can't be right! She's got to be alive!" he continued to get louder, his hands gripped onto my kimono as he pulled himself closer to my face. "You've just gotta go looking for her, I'm sure she's around- probably just walking around the house or something! Yeah, that's it!" his voice came out broken as tears formed.

"I'll tell you something Chimon, your sister came to me about a month or so ago, when she did she detailed to me that she was dying… that she had been for a while but she had gotten to the point where she could tell it was soon that she would die. Kazumi told Hime and I all about what she was experiencing and about how she wanted us to help- while we had never expected her to send an Uchiha hawk to our house saying that you were all in danger of being killed, I plan to do everything in my power in the name of the promise I made her." That girl had come to us, explained everything, not cried but rather accepted death and all she wanted was for her family to be safe.

"so- that's why she sent the hawk before we left-" Chimon cut himself off as he wiped away the tears.

I reached out to my nephew and gave the boy a hug, he needed one right now, this was a lot to take in and honestly I didn't really want to explain the rest of what happened to him so after a moment when he pulled back I told him to stay in bed and I'd be back, so I went off to find the letter that Kazumi had sent us and the letter to her brother she gave us a month ago. When I came back he was wiping tears from his eyes and had a slightly angry look beginning to form.

"Alright, here you go this is the letter she sent us before all this happened and after that, I have something else for you." taking the scroll from me he read over it with a passive expression that seemingly slowly lost its emotion like he was regressing and becoming like that father of his.

He was quiet for a few minutes reading the short letter she sent me and Kyousuke, my niece's letter had maybe ten words maybe a few sentences, all it really said was 'Uncle Jun please I need your help, Mum might be dead and we have to fight an Uchiha, bring help.' not her exact words but still that was essentially what she had said.

"How- I… alright… whats- where's that other thing?" he asked eyes holding a lot less emotion, I felt bad and I wanted him to slow down be he wanted to push through this then I guess I'd let him. I hadn't read the scroll yet that she had left for him so I got in a position to read it as well, after all, she had sealed it and told us when to give it to her brother.

'Hey, not so little brother,

I know it's been a while since we last saw one another. You might be angry, you might be upset, but most importantly you might have gone back to what you were like as a kid, you might have thought things would be easier if you didn't feel. Don't think that, it's bad for your health to regress like that, after all, Mum's going to need your help until you and Chikara finally marry or maybe you find someone else.

You may be wondering why it is that I made this letter for you and left it with Jun and Himeno, that's because I've been expecting to die for the last while, at the time of writing this it's about a month from when grandma is meant to diagnose me finally, the thing is though, I'm dying and I've known it for a while I've just been hiding it where I could and what you and Mum would see was only a tenth of what I was feeling and experiencing on my own. Don't be annoyed that this was the case, but just know that I hated worrying you two, especially Mum. She lost two partners to war after having their children, we have no idea what kind of weight she's been carrying for years and what that does to her, I know it's easier for her when she sees me because I'm so alike her, but you- you look like Fuugetsu in all but eyes, I have very vague memories of what he looked like but you fit that.

Don't ever think that I did what I did because I didn't love you. Chimon Shimizu, you are one of the best things in my life, though I never said it Chikara was already a sister in my eyes after you two started being together and Mum felt the same, she saw her as a daughter. Life is difficult and death is hard to accept, you may think if I loved you I wouldn't have left so easily or would have tried to prevent my death, but that's just because you're mad that I left you alone, you're mad that I won't be there for you anymore.

I'm not sure if you're reading this out loud but I imagine our Uncle is still in the room with you or is reading it or he might end up reading it later, but I just want him to know that I love him, Himeno and Takumi, that I'm glad Mum had such good friends in her life and that I want Jun to remember what I asked of them when I was there.

Moving on though… see what I did there? because that's what you should do, I'm not asking for you to forget about me, I'd never ask that after all I'll need someone to remember me by, but I'm asking you to realize that this was my choice to keep things from you and I want you to respect that. This probably just sounds like a bunch of ramblings that make no sense, but that's just how I am right now, I'm preparing to see the other side, I'm waiting to see the river of the dead and hopefully meet our Fathers.

One last thing before I sign off this letter and take it Jun and Hime to hold onto for me, watch out for our Aunt, dad's sister that is. she's an Uchiha and I can tell you that as someone with a Sharingan… it does things to you and so if she's alive then she may come after Mum

In loving memory from your super amazing, mega-awesome Sister that will love you until time stops and the world dies- Kazumi Shimizu.

'

Below that was what looked like her names Kanji written out with their meanings.

I watched Chimon for a while in silence before he burst into tears and all the emotion that he had been suppressing up until this point came out in full force, I loved the kid he was basically my son with how close we've been since he was younger, but this was one of those moments where I wasn't needed. this was what was left of my nephew and good friend...

I left the room.

AN: With that Pure Water's Beauty is officially over and I'm grateful for that because it was a series that despite my initial goal for where I had intended the story to go before deciding upon this ending and it took a very very different route from what I had planned initially which ended up shaking my writing up for a while. I'm also thankful to those of you who read this far and did continue to read it as well as follow or favourite it, I haven't really got much else to say so uh Happy Holidays.