"Hari!" Her fist made a thump-thump-thump against the door, Rika nearly bubbling over with excitement. "Hari, are you home?"

She should've called ahead. Warned him. Instead she'd realised there was mail and run straight for his door. Now, she was stood here like an utter buffoon and not entirely sure what to do next.

Raising her hand to give one last try, she almost toppled through the empty doorway when he pulled back the door. His hair was sleep ruffled. He was half dressed (or his version of it anyways) in slacks and a shirt buttoned up wrong.

"Do you realise what time it is?" The man deadpanned at her and Rika looked at her watch.

"Six?"

"On a Saturday."

"But I have something!" She shoved the white envelope beneath his nose as he rubbed blearily at his eyes. Dressed like so, he was disarming in his humanity. It took all her strength not to reach out and straighten his hair for him. He perked up once he registered what she was holding, focus lodging on the official seal at the edge.

"Have you opened them yet?" Rika shook her head. He pulled the door open farther to allow her entry and she kicked off her shoes beside a pair of his. Dumped scarf and coat on the hooks. Just when these motions had become every day, she didn't know. It was harder to deny it when they flowed so easily. At some point in the last few months, she'd become less of a guest in his home. More a frequent flyer.

He led the way to the kitchen, Rika grabbing the mugs as he prepared coffee. She left the unopened envelope on the counter between them until they both had a warm mug in hand.

"Why were you up this early anyways?" He eventually asked, hip rested against the counter. Rika shrugged, distracted. She was trying her damnedest not to reach out and attempt to fix the order of his shirt buttons.

"I'm always up. Kyo and I go running then have breakfast with Tohru when we're home." Hatori shook his head, giving her a look as if seeing her for the first time. She had a feeling it was suddenly making sense to him how she'd snuck out of his place so early after new year's. The man frowned and looked back down to the elephant in the room.

"Why didn't you open it yet?"

She gestured weakly at the thing; her mouth twisted. The truth was fear. She'd been working so hard since Mayuko had first put forward the idea of her taking her entrance exams early. There'd been endless recommendations letters to be gathered. A particularly heart-breaking phone call to Master Chiba that made her briefly miss Okinawa (she'd gotten over it once she'd fully considered the possibility of going back there and leaving everything behind again). If what was inside those pages was anything less than what she needed for her acceptance to University then it would mean returning to stage one. Another year in high school that she didn't want to give.

An opportunity so close suddenly snatched from her fingertips.

Rather than say all that, she found another truth.

"I wanted to be with you when I did."

The man did a good job of covering up embarrassment but by now she had begun to learn his cues. A scratch at the back of his neck. Pink blossoming on the tips of his ears. For someone so stoic ninety-nine percent of the time, Rika was revelling in the one percent of him that she got to see that nobody else did.

Even if all it was ever going to amount to right now was attraction, she could live with it knowing she had his ticks and mannerisms down to an art. The opposite side of that of course, was that for every titbit he gave her, she gave something away in return.

"How afraid are you?" She flushed. The bastard knew her too well.

"Immensely."

He reached out. Squeezed her shoulder.

"Want me to read it for you?" Rika exhaled. Counted to ten.

"No. Part of fighting my own battles includes being brave enough to do this doesn't it?" He snorted. Raised a dark brow. Her expression clouded, daring him to disagree.

"If you say so."

"Shut up before I lose my mettle." She grabbed the paper and drew her thumbnail along the seal. It came away almost too slowly, determined to torture her to the last. When the page came free, she had it turned away from her but Hatori pointedly twisted his head away. She'd said she was doing this herself and he was respecting it. Yet another reason to put her faith in him.

Turning the page over she pressed it down onto the countertop. Pushed out the edges as flat as they would go. Ran her fingertips over the seal on the very top of the document, feeling the embossed edges. Each action was designed to sooth her. To set her mind at ease. None of them did. It was Hatori's arm looping around her waist that settled her erratic heart. The pressure of his touch against her side. The whispered words in her ear.

"Whatever it says Rika, you have everything to be proud of."

Finally, she dared look at her results. And shrieked.

"I MADE THE CUT!" She nearly crumpled the page in her elation, twisting round to fling her arms around Hatori's neck. The man chuckled, accepting her embrace without question. Pulling her close to him, Rika had a brief moment of exaggerated glee before she promptly burst into tears. Hatori leaned back in alarm.

"Rika! What is it?"

Sniffling desperately, it took minutes before she could compose herself to spit out an answer.

"I – I ha-have to t-t-tell K-ky-kyoooo."

"You're leaving us again." Kyo's voice wasn't accusatory. Instead it was resigned. Accepting. Rika shifted on her futon to look up at his presence in the doorway, a dark and pulsing thing that she was almost afraid to touch. He'd been like it all evening since she'd returned from Hatori's with her news, adopting the band aid approach and blurting the full tale out in the kitchen over breakfast. She'd been hoping he'd make a reappearance at some point but knew that Kyo had to come to her. Even if seeing him tear out of the living room with door slamming in his wake had stung terribly.

"Come sit with me."

"I don't feel like it." How this utter prat ended up as her best friend, Rika could barely understand sometimes. All she knew was that she looked at him and knew what to say. To do.

She decided to exercise that ability.

"Sit your ass down or I'll tell your Shishou that it was you that broke that vase in his hallway last month." Kyo grumbled under his breath but did as he was told, kicking his feet at the floor while he did so. As though the timber was the root of his problems. The futon sagged beneath his weight and Rika rode out the tide of his frustration. The betrayal she suspected he felt. She understood it, naturally, but couldn't let it stop her now. Not when things were finally falling into place.

"You can call him Shishou too." Kyo said finally, squaring his shoulders. The offering was surprising. "He - I think he'd like that."

"That's yours Kyo. It will always be yours." He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Those impossible eyes that shifted and changed with his mood, his pupils otherworldly. They were disappearing down to slits now and Rika leaned forward to claim his hand and pull it into her lap. Her thumb ran itself over his knuckles, teasing out his frustration and anger. "And I'll still always be your friend Kyo. Distance won't change that."

"It did before."

"Those were different circumstances. I remember now. I love you. Too much to forget."

"Not all of me. You don't know all of me."

"I love the parts I do know and will love them as long as you let me."

He scoffed a non-committal response. Rika sat back, a little thump-thump-thump of her head against the wall as she figured out what to say. How to explain it to him. Kyo reached for her. Slotted a hand behind her head and dropped his head to her shoulder. His look said, don't do that.

It was easy like this, to wrap her arms around him. Tuck his head beneath her chin.

"If I had stayed with the Sohma's growing up, I'd already be gone you know? To university. You and I would've had this goodbye two years ago. If we were still even friends." Would he have pushed her away long before then? For her safety. For his sanity. Rika liked to think that wouldn't have happened. Another possibility made itself known. "If I'd even been able to go." If she had survived that long. She would've just been another pawn in Akito's games, bowed and broken. Would she have lasted, knowing what she knew now? Hatori's eye. Rin's endless hospitalisations. Hiro and Kisa's pain. Somewhere within it, the spine holding her upright would've snapped. Anyone would have under that weight of responsibility.

"And if I'd been in Okinawa, well, we wouldn't know each other anymore." And there would've always been a piece of her missing. That inexplicable guilt. Shame. Full Bodied and agonising. Time might have helped. Therapy. A life could have been carved. University. A partner. Her father, still alive. It was a nice dream. A dream that would have been uncut by reality she couldn't shake. Love that never seemed to be enough. The optimist in her thought, perhaps she'd have had a breakthrough. Gotten her memories back on her own. Found her way to Tokyo and the Sohma family. She liked to think she'd have seen them happy. Moving on. What would that awareness have done to her? Knowing they'd found their way without her.

Instead -

"I want to be a Sohma, Kyo, but the best kind I can be. Someone who can be there for her family because she's strong enough to stand up for herself. Leaving for university isn't just about me leaving everyone. It's about me being someone who is worthy of coming back to you, someone who doesn't have to rely on other people for every little bit of support."

Kyo's head rested against her chest, his body lax. It had started to rain, the tat-tat-tat-tat of drops hitting the shingles revealing why he was so pliable for once.

"I still don't have to like it."

"I know. I don't like it all that much either." Which was true. She wanted it. To follow a path beyond duty. Giving up a final year with her friends to do so felt like an immensely high cost, but so too did continuing to just move through the motions. School would mean spinning wheels and routines that only existed to keep her legs moving forward. University, that was moving forward. "But I will be back. At weekends. The days I don't have lessons. Holidays. Plus, I don't leave until autumn."

"I guess," Kyo groused and she smiled against the bright red strands of his hair, "If he doesn't steal you away again."

She looked downwards through her lower lashes and a furrow appeared between her brows. Rika poked the teen on his shoulder.

"What's that supposed to mean? I'm not a toy to be divvied out." There was a suspicion mounting in her gut. A name that took form in her mind even as she queried it. Rika squashed it down as quickly as it rose, not willing to entertain that idea yet. A year. Even just a hint of it reminded her of that night. The attic. Heated breaths and desperate touches. The evening on the bench. Enough, she thought with frustration, leave me in peace.

"Sorry," He sighed. "Forget it." Kyo's weight was hefty but comforting, and she exhaled. Stretched out until her ankle clicked and her limbs were soft. Her history with Kyo had come back little by little. Not enough to recount the whole story, but she could recall them laying like this as kids. He was heavier now. She was taller. Still they were able to be tucked rib cage to rib cage, the bones slotting together in their familiarity. It was funny in a way. Had anyone seen, it would've looked intimate. Which it was. Just not in the sense that would've appeared on the surface. She'd found herself craving these kinds of hugs. Feeling a whole bodied relief when any of the Zodiac fulfilled them.

She suspected it was why she embraced Momiji's bouncing tackles. Kisa's hand holding. Why, when she slept in Hatori's living room, her head gravitated to his lap. Or he gravitated to her. For the most part, there was nothing expected in those embraces. It was just human contact. It made her world feel less lonely.

"I understand now."

Rika mumbled a confused huh in response.

"When we were kids, you talked about a kind of love that lit you up like a sun under your skin. I get it now." She didn't dare look at him. Didn't dare move. That conversation she couldn't recall, but the feeling - she knew that feeling. "Only I don't think it's the only way to love someone. I reckon it can be like the warmth after clothes get put in a dryer. There's patches of heat, some enough to burn, but most of its just gentle."

Her mouth quirked into a smile against her will and she knew he felt it against his hair.

"Shut up."

She didn't say that she hadn't spoken. She didn't have to. He knew why she smiled, and she knew why he equated his love to the laundry.

"I think it can be something else too." Rika murmured drowsily, eyes closed, once Kyo's breaths had lengthened and softened, his inhales heavier. "I think it can feel like the ocean on a bright day. There's salt on your lips and your feet in the sand. It's warm and scratchy on your skin. When you reach the water, it's cold at first but that evens out. Invites you in. Washes away all the things you don't like about yourself and replaces them with seashells and glinting sunlight. Gifts instead of - instead of -." Her voice trailed. The rain fell. The cat and his fractured god slept on.

The house was quiet as Rika checked over her exam results again, mind whirring. It had been two days since she'd gotten official confirmation and bright and early Monday had dawned the arrival of her University exam pack. It was another exam, arguably more difficult than the initial ones but Rika had already passed the first hurdle with flying colours. Jumping the second a week from now was merely a box ticking exercise.

Teeth pulling at her bottom lip, the woman twisted her hair in her palms.

Kyo's comment about her not knowing him fully had stuck with her since that night, a nagging sensation in her stomach that told her what she was missing was big. Important as hell.

She'd sworn to herself to consider asking Hatori for her memories back after the first exams but now with her University admissions exam so quickly after, she had a clearly defined timeline. Either she could suck it up and finally set her role within this family to rights – or keep running. Convincing Hatori that she didn't need protecting would be a damn sight harder with the latter. He already was prone to jump to her defence in a split second. If she told him she wasn't ready, that she didn't want them at all – he'd accept that.

Rika wasn't ready. To face Akito. The truth.

She was also running out of time.

The longer she delayed, the less time to begin reparations after graduation. Could she really live with the guilt anymore? That constant itch beneath her skin that felt like it was eating her inside out?

No.

Therefore, like it or not, it was time.