When they received the offer, Setsuna didn't oppose sending Hotaru to live with this Acheron, but neither did she fully support it. There were advantages and disadvantages, and she was merely compiling a list of the two to see which would outweigh the other. The stakes – Hotaru's health and wellbeing – were too great to not take that into consideration.

When Acheron requested to speak privately with her, she silently apologized to Mamoru and went to meet him at the designated location, an office at a three-story building in Tokyo.

"A pleasure, Princess Pluto," greeted the man. Her first impression of him was underwhelming. He appeared as the definition of unremarkable, what with his white hair lacking luster, glasses covering a plain pair of eyes that failed to shine brightly, and mundane clothing draped over a body seemingly made of skin and bones and little else. "Please, sit."

Almost too underwhelming. She couldn't even sense a trace of magic of any kind from him, or from the office – nearly empty, save for two sofas and a coffee table in between. Either he lacked magical talent, or he was very good at hiding it. Setsuna would have bet everything she had that it was the latter.

"Guardian," she returned his greeting, slightly wary as she sat in the sofa he gestured towards. Only once was she seated did he sit in the sofa opposite of her. "Likewise, though I did not know of your existence until recently."

He smiled lazily, and it was not an expression that inspired trust but rather the opposite. "I tend to try and keep it that way. I dislike attention or stepping into the spotlight. Were it not for the circumstances, I don't believe I would have made myself known."

The circumstances, of course, being Hotaru's current condition.

"May I ask why you requested to speak with me, and not your prince?" Not the man he was closer to, in theory. The man he should have had a stronger connection to, instead of her.

The man shrugged. "You are her legal guardian, not Chiba Mamoru."

He said his prince's name so casually, as if it bore no weight upon his lips. Setsuna narrowed her eyes. "Then why bother offering us your aid?"

Helios had not recommended his fellow guardian out of whim. He had done so with the permission of Acheron to mention his name, his existence to all the sailor scouts and the prince, who would never have known about him had this not happened.

Why not stay entirely out of his life, then? Why step in for Hotaru? What was he seeking to gain?

Acheron met her eyes dead on.

"Guilt is a powerful motivator."

Guilt?

That single word threw Setsuna off-balance.

The man nodded at the bewildered look in her eyes.

"Chiba Mamoru lost his parents in a car accident on his sixth birthday. Kino Makoto's parents died in an airplane crash when she was ten years old." His eyes were blank of emotion, and his words weren't mournful or bore the submissive respect that usually came when discussing the deceased. He was merely recounting facts, not attaching emotions. It was almost doubtful if he had any emotions towards them. "Tell me, is it usual for orphans to grow up the way they did?"

While it was true that both were orphans, neither of them ever struggled financially. From what she knew of their backgrounds, both had legal guardians until they were of age and were never strapped for money. Just the presence of a caring parent, or a caretaking adult directly in their lives.

Money. Legal guardianship. Protection – impersonal as it was. Enough to assure the biggest threat to Mamoru and Makoto was loneliness. Not hunger, not illness, not a lack of shelter, not crime.

"It was you," Setsuna realized. Not insurance money or parents that had prepared for the worst-case scenario, as both Mamoru and Makoto had assumed.

"I have been involved in your lives for longer than you might think," he answered mildly, like someone describing the color he wanted to paint his house. "I checked each one of your births, your circumstances and families, and kept track of your lives. Through associates and third parties, I made sure that the prince would not be lacking monetarily or be endangered when his parents of this life passed away in his childhood. I did the same for the princess of Jupiter when her parents passed in an accident."

And he still had not revealed himself, or, from what he implied, directly ever met them until now.

His eyes met hers directly. "When yours passed away, I did not interfere, because you went to live with your grandfather."

Setsuna forced herself to not react, but there was a tenseness in her shoulders she felt all too acutely that moment.

"I may not act with the intent to harm the prince," Acheron stated. "Or the sailor soldiers reborn on this planet, though if I see fit, I may aid them. It is a part of the alliance established when the Silver Millennium fell."

Queen Serenity, wise and kind even after her sacrifice. The inside of Setsuna's throat tightened.

"Be that as it may," she pressed, because he did not sound regretful speaking of how he had aided Mamoru or Makoto. "What does that have to do with guilt?"

Ami's parents were divorced, but her mother was still in her life. Minako had both parents, though she wasn't on the best of terms with them. Rei's mother had passed away years ago and she strongly disliked her father, but she lived happily with her grandfather at the Hikawa Shrine.

Setsuna didn't need to go further to realize the connection and the meaning behind his words. One of the sailor soldiers had been in the custody of a dangerous person, in need of help, yet had never received it until she died and was reborn. The very same girl the elusive guardian had finally revealed himself for.

"When the princess of Saturn was suffering," Acheron said, confirming her hypothesis. "I could do nothing. The Death Busters were corrosive by their very nature, and the foreign crystal they brought set a boundary I couldn't enter. She was out of my reach."

He didn't say anything further, but he didn't have to. She remembered the Death Busters.

"You offer aid, out of guilt?" Setsuna filled in the blank. She could unfortunately understand the feeling.

When she, Uranus and Neptune had realized that Saturn, for all her considerable power, was also one of them, that her duty was terrible and forced her to give so much, to bear so much, Pluto had been wracked with guilt. They, the soldiers of the outer solar system, should have understood.

Pluto had especially felt the guilt. She of all of them should have understood sooner, before the answer was spoon-fed to them at the final moment. Saturn was so very much like her, down to even the nature of their powers, and she had cursed herself for being so blind to what should have been obvious.

Instead she had let fear cloud her eyes and worked to kill her fellow soldier. She, like Uranus and Neptune, had known just what a terrible crime it was, and had been ashamed of what they were about to do even before learning of Saturn's feelings and duty. Then, they all watched as Saturn threw herself into the Tau Star System with Pharaoh 90, sacrificing her own life before anyone else's.

Guilt had been a strong motivator in taking in Hotaru, returned to the form of a baby, and starting a family. Love soon overtook the guilt, gave them the sense of family and belonging they had craved desperately, but Setsuna could not deny that at the start, there had been much remorse and a fiery desire to atone for their harsh and rash condemnations.

Acheron sighed. "I thought myself free of that irksome emotion, but yes."

It shouldn't have been reassuring to hear he thought himself free of guilt, the implication being that he no longer cared, but it was also a relief – that he did, in fact, care if he felt it now.

"Can I trust you with my daughter?" she asked at last. If he spoke truly, then he had a reason to keep Hotaru safe.

Setsuna wanted to know if she could trust him with Hotaru's wellbeing. Not as a sailor soldier, not as the princess of Pluto.

As a mother.

"I realize," he said frankly. "That I've not given proof for trust, and that it is a hard thing to earn. Perhaps this will help appease your worries in me."

Acheron raised the ringed hand to his forehead. With a blaze of light, a symbol etched between his brows.

A circle, divided into four equal parts, proof of the origin of his magic. Setsuna's breath caught at the revealed symbol of Terra. Indigo mist surrounded them, and from the fog rose circles of script, lazily orbiting around the two of them like a satellite. A brief glance told her it was a language of magic, long forgotten in the present times.

Oaths. Bindings. A contract to enforce whatever words would be spoken inside, with heavy consequences should they be broken.

"I, Acheron," he began, and every word manifested into a script to join the circle orbiting him already. "Swear to the Golden Kingdom of the past, the Golden Crystal of the Royal Family of Terra, and to Sephira, the leader of the guardians after the fall of the Silver Millennium and the Golden Kingdom, that while she is in my care the princess of Saturn will be in good hands. Furthermore, I swear that everything I've said so far is the truth, and that I will never speak falsehoods to the princess of Saturn, or any of the sailor soldiers of the solar system."

Setsuna felt the stir of magic now, golden light pulsing from the symbol at his brow, and an indigo mist swirling around the two of them. The distant sound of chanting filled her ears, and knew there was an oath being bound by a powerful force before her now.

"Should I break my vows," he said. "May my remaining existence be one filled with nothing but eternal torment and torture, so that death becomes a mercy and hell a reprieve of my suffering."

The words finished and thicker than when he started, the script circled around him one last time. With a flash of light, it faded away, as did the symbol of Terra between his brows. The thick mist was the last to disappear, and once more nothing seemed out of the ordinary – just the two of them in the room, sitting opposite each other on cheap furniture.

As if everything that had happened was just a midsummer night's dream.

"Shall I swear on the Styx?" he quipped when she didn't say anything, almost sarcastic and biting.

"That won't be necessary," she said quietly. There was still much about him that she didn't know, and he certainly wasn't willing to make other things clear, but he had offered his own proof for trust. ". . . Thank you."

Acheron shrugged, letting it go without argument, and with a wave of his hand restored the glamor. Once more there was little outstanding about his appearance, and if he were to walk into a crowd, he would not draw eyes for spectacular reasons. There were no signs of his magical abilities anywhere, none of the distant chanting, like a funeral rite, in her ears or the indigo mist.

Before she left, he spoke up.

"If the prince wishes to meet me," he warned. "He will have to remember. I've sworn that I won't unless he remembers."

That was non-negotiable, it was clear.

As someone who cared about the prince, it was tragic to Setsuna how he would not meet Mamoru, but now that firm stance also partially reassured her. He had sworn to take care of Hotaru, and if he carried out that oath as strongly as he carried the others, Setsuna could trust him to look after Hotaru properly.

Years later, she had a different reason for wanting to speak to him, though Setsuna suspected there might be a correlation due to the similarity in the problem she faced. He didn't meet her in person again, but he did promise – through Hotaru – that he would call when he finally returned.

"I suppose you're calling about the curse you've witnessed?" were the words that greeted her from the other end.

Setsuna wasn't even surprised at this point. It also made things easier. Saya, after her first meeting with Fon, requested that Setsuna not speak about him to others.

"He's my brother," the matriarch of the Hibari Clan had said, and while the words were simple the old look in her eyes had made it clear there was a long story, the sad, dark kind that all families tended to have etched on the bones of the skeletons in the closet.

But if Acheron knew, then there was no point on beating around the bush.

"Good to speak to you again," she said, out of courtesy.

"And you. The curse is something I've witnessed over generations. It appears on a handful of people, in the form of the pacifier-like jewel you've seen, and reverts the bearer to an infant form. Well," he amended. "Turns them into infants with biological differences from actual infants, or what they looked like as infants."

Which would explain why Fon was different from regular babies. While she would never call herself an expert on infants – Hotaru was just a little too special to be considered 'regular' – there had been things odd about him, other than the blatant stone he wore.

"It was like a parasite," Setsuna spoke lowly. The stone was leeching his life from him, slowly but surely. The first time she met Fon, when Saya introduced them, it had been his time that caught her attention because it bore similarities to how Hotaru's had been when her biological time was frozen. A few minor differences, namely the stone that was attached to him like a brand that was clearly the cause, but overall it was obvious that his time was frozen to an infant body, no matter how mature his mind.

And yet she hadn't dared to even touch the stone. It was fragile, held together delicately like a house of cards, and one wrong move on her part would result in it collapsing – and ripping out his entire lifeforce with it.

Like a knife embedded in the stomach, slowly leaking out blood and the only thing keeping the victim from bleeding out immediately being, ironically, the very knife that had stabbed him. The pacifier was both the weapon and the agent applying pressure.

If she just undid it, if she so much as touched it wrong, she would have killed him.

Much like his name, Fon came and went like the wind, and Saya had no qualms about her baby brother doing so, confirming Setsuna's hypothesis that his true age was greater than his form.

"I suppose that's an apt way to describe it," agreed Acheron. "It does not leave the bearer until all the life has been drained from the host."

She felt the blood leave her face. "There is no cure?"

There was a pause on the other end, and then a very heavy sigh. It was the most emotion the guardian had ever expressed, and while Setsuna knew that as Kawahira he took care of Hotaru, and her daughter was genuinely fond of the man, it was surprising to see proof of that directly.

It was a sound filled with aged grief that never truly did go away, just dulled with the passing of time.

"It's robbed me of three dear friends and twenty-six nieces, nephews, godsons and goddaughters," he said hollowly. "And each time I could do nothing but watch them die."

She pressed a hand over her mouth.

"So no, Princess Pluto, there is no cure. Have you ever exerted any of your power around him?"

The mercurial change in subject, as well as the business-like tone he took on immediately with the shift, made her blink before remembering what Hotaru said – that he didn't like being honest with his emotions. "No. I didn't think it was a good idea."

"Very wise of you. The bearers of the curses are in a state similar to how Hotaru-kun was. Not nearly as serious, but if they were to be exposed to you while transformed, or the power of the sailor crystals, it wouldn't end well. Think the myth of the poor mortal princess Semele, who saw the glory of a god unmasked and perished for it."

She frowned at the metaphor. "What if the prince or the princess were to help them?" The power of the Golden or Silver Crystal, perhaps, could –

Acheron answered with a question of his own. "Did it help Hotaru-kun?"

No. It had actually exacerbated the problem, when Usagi and Mamoru tried. It was a case of the treatment being too severe to bear, and had to be stopped.

"But it's not the same," Setsuna protested. The people he spoke of might have been cursed, but they were not sailor soldiers, that she knew, and he said himself that the curse was one that drained the bearer's life. It couldn't be solved like Hotaru's. Time was not on their side here. "Surely-"

"Princess Pluto," spoke the guardian, interrupting her. "I'm usually of the opinion that personal businesses are not mine to dig into, but I grow curious. What makes you so invested in this, to the point where you seem willing to expose the prince and the princess to potential danger?"

That question, innocent as it was, silenced her, as if her mind was a chalkboard filled with writing and he had run an eraser through the words, rendering the remaining information on it useless.

His question was fair, though. If Setsuna asked, Usagi and Mamoru would be eager to help, Usagi especially, but it could expose them to danger. She didn't question the strength of her future queen, but curses were vile things, and needed only the smallest room to take root.

For the sake of . . . a friend. An adult man trapped in the form of an infant, who was more filled with self-doubt about being a parent than anything else. A calm spirit with wise eyes and listening ears. A confidant who she enjoyed speaking with.

A person who looked at her with respect and acknowledged her strengths – even if he only knew her as a mother with a daughter.

Was that really all?

"Well, I didn't expect an answer, so it's fine," Acheron said before she could reply, either to him or to the question that had come up in her mind, a voice of doubt and suspicion that made her freeze. "I know you mean well, Princess Pluto, but as someone who's been fighting this curse for a thousand years, believe me when I say this – no one wants it gone more than I do, and the last thing I want to see is babies exploding. Once was more than enough for me."

She didn't like it, but he was right. And she had been poking at subjects sensitive to him. "I understand. My apologies."

"No need for apologies, you meant well," he said, words bland. "But – it is the dawn of a new era we happen to be on the cusp of. Miracles might not be impossible. I haven't yet given up on finding a way to get rid of the curse, and a gut feeling tells me it might not be just a pipe dream."

The words felt like an olive branch. It was odd to hear such a monotonous voice try to comfort her.

He seemed to think so as well, because his next words were hurried, almost like he was embarrassed. "I'll let you know if I find out something new about the curse. Have a good day."

With that he hung up.

Setsuna pressed at her temple, feeling the headache throbbing. Then, ignoring the pain, she pulled out the tomes she had borrowed from Mercury.

She wasn't giving up just yet, either.

The tatami floor of the manor his sister lived in was beginning to grow familiar to him, as was the living room and the guest room she set aside specifically for him. Fon tapped a small finger against his cup of tea, quietly reminiscing about how – and why – he had come to Japan so frequently that he was beginning to find this house familiar. Not just familiar to his memory or senses, but familiar in the sense that he was able to find comfort in it. To acknowledge it as a space not foreign to him.

Almost like a home, away from his secluded hut in the middle of the mountains.

It was unfortunate, Fon thought, draining the cup of its cooling contents to hide his face, that he only realized this now that he had made up his mind to stay away from ereh.

"I see," Setsuna said, after taking several moments to compose herself. After he broke the news, she had looked distressed. More shaken up than Fon had seen her, ever since he had dropped by to visit his sister and ask her for advice regarding I-Pin, only to intrude on a guest visiting for a talk over tea.

Perhaps 'distressed' was too weak a word to use. When he said, after steeling his heart and gritting his teeth and pulling in every bit of self-discipline he had honed over his years of living, both before and after the curse, that this was the last visit he would make to Namimori in the foreseeable future, Meiou Setsuna, a woman he would have called grace incarnate, had dropped her cup and ignored the spilled contents to stare at Fon in wide-eyed shock, lips parted but no words able to come out.

Fon nearly changed his mind then and there, a little elated that he was not the only one who would miss these quiet talks, and that she apparently did care about them enough to look so afflicted.

Reality slapped him back into his senses, when he saw out of the corner of his eye his hands, small and delicate and a baby's.

He couldn't be selfish, though. He had already been selfish, taking in I-Pin when he first found her, and his choice had nearly ruined her. He was fixing it now, giving his student – his daughter – the best he could offer, giving her a chance to make a choice instead of condemning her to a path. He was not allowed to ruin it again, or to drag the woman before him into his mess of a life.

All dreams had to come to an end. And Fon already lived and breathed in a nightmare he knew deep down would only end with his death.

Death, end, disappearance – whether he died of natural causes despite his unnatural curse, or disappeared without a trace like Luce had over a decade ago, Fon knew his end was coming, and that it would, like what remained of his life, not be something he wanted to expose to more people than absolutely necessary.

He couldn't be selfish, couldn't be greedy. Fon suppressed his wishes and put up a calm front.

The turmoil sank behind a poker face, but there was still a strain around her eyes.

"If you ever need help," Setsuna said at last, digging out a business card from her wallet. She turned it around so that the neat texts faced the table and wrote in elegant letters that suited her additional contact information. "For anything."

She held his gaze, and a light flickered in her garnet eyes. Fon felt, for one wild moment of suspension, that even if it was something as wild as being pursued by the triads, she would still help him.

Ridiculous of him, he knew an instant later.

Setsuna pushed the card to him, and he picked it up. It was a business card, the average size, but the stiff paper was still bigger than his hand.

Fon didn't often feel pathetic. He was trained by his mother with his sister, who never went easy but also acknowledged the potential for strength they had, and when he became an adult he found that he truly was strong.

Even when he was cursed into his current form, he had sought ways to break the curse, but also trained so that he could recover his skill even as he was. There had been no time to dwell on self-hatred or wallow in pity for himself. If he was helpless in one area, then he would strive to make up for his weaknesses with his strengths.

But right now, Setsuna's kindness warmed Fon as much as it made him forlorn. It was by no fault of hers, and every bit his.

And that was really all someone like Fon could ever ask for, from a woman like her.

"Thank you," he said instead, hiding what he felt. He knew right then that he could never contact her, lest he dare hope for more.

After the 'misunderstanding' was cleared up, I-Pin came to live in the Sawada household. Reborn could see Tsuna despair, but that wasn't his problem.

As expected from a student raised by Fon, I-Pin was skilled in the martial arts, though nowhere near as impressive as her explosive abilities.

Now that he had seen them himself, he recognized the driving force behind them to be Sun and Storm Flames. Fon theorized that the Sun Flames fueled the already-volatile nature of the storm attribute within her, and the result was an explosion. Reborn agreed with his assessment, after observing it. Her mental state would determine its trigger.

Fon didn't share how he had found I-Pin, but for someone so young to be a Flame user, uncontrolled as it was, meant she couldn't have had it easy.

That acknowledgement was all the pity Reborn allocated towards I-Pin. In the end, there were only two reasons why she was entering Tsuna's life; because of who her master was, and because she could be useful for his student's growth.

Fon landed next to him, steps light like a butterfly in the way only a master of his own body could be. Even the curse had never stopped Fon from reclaiming mastery and discipline over his movements, though he now lacked the power behind them.

"Satisfied now?" Reborn asked his fellow Arcobaleno.

"As much as I could be," replied Fon, eyes fixed on his student. "Though I don't understand why it was necessary to trick I-Pin into thinking the picture was of a target, rather than a person to find and stay with."

There hadn't even been a lie needed. All Fon had done was give her the picture, provided by Reborn, and told I-Pin to find him. That she assumed he was a target had reaffirmed Fon's belief that this was the best thing he could do for his student.

Far different from Reborn's methods, though that was by necessity and the differences in their goals. Fon looked to find a way to get his student out of the dark world she had been pulled into by association with him.

Reborn was preparing his student to survive when he finally pushed him into the world where the darkest desires of humanity came together.

Was it paradoxical that Fon looked at Reborn's student and thought he would be able to give I-Pin what Fon hadn't been able to? Not Reborn, the world's greatest hitman, one of the Seven Strongest, but the boy known as Dame-Tsuna?

On paper, yes, but Reborn was Tsuna's tutor. He knew what Fon had caught a glimpse of, what he had discerned from his student.

Fon had, after all, been one of the wisest of all the Arcobaleno, second only to Luce.

"The idiot needs to learn to see threats in even the most unlikely of people," Reborn said. The world he was going to push Tsuna into wasn't kind, not even to children. Youth was something to be taken advantage of, not protected. Young hitmen of I-Pin's caliber were rare, but death didn't need much to come. A stray bullet, a poison slipped in at the right moment, a bomb attached to a body and detonated nearby.

Judging by how Tsuna treated Lambo and Bianchi, that was unlikely. Two hitmen who had earned their titles in blood and he still looked at them like people. Weird people, certainly, but not hitmen.

Not murderers.

Not even the world's greatest hitman was given the fear and respect the title should have invoked, so Reborn knew that was unlikely, but still. Tsuna needed to learn to see potential threats to his life.

Because the world wasn't going to change, so if Tsuna wanted to survive it, then he had to.

The world's greatest hitman had his work cut out for him. Half-heartedly, he shot a flat look towards his fellow Arcobaleno for dumping even more work for him onto his already-significant list of things he needed to go through. Naturally, it slid off Fon like water off a duck.

Reborn lost all motivation after that calm, curious glance he returned. There wasn't even a reaction to enjoy, like with Colonnello or Lal. Fon just rolled with the pokes. Sometimes he wasn't even aware he had been poked, the dense idiot.

"Inform me in advance when you come to visit your student," he said instead. What business Fon had here before, Reborn could guess. Hibari Saya's face was familiar to him, though her name was new now. But now that his student was technically in Reborn's care, and Reborn had a student of his own to protect, Fon needed to let him know in advance.

"You need not worry, Reborn. I will not come back to Namimori after this," said Fon, voice gentle as always, as if he wasn't leaving his five-year old student in the care of what was essentially the eye of a storm.

But then again, the martial artist had always been good at accepting what came, fluid as the wind that was his name and adaptable.

"Not even for the lady?" Reborn joked. When they had first turned to babies, Fon's lead into how to undo the curse had been to look into his family history. Tales of his ancestors, born into a family that had one foot set in a world of supernatural creatures, some of them singled out for being 'strong' and cursed to lose their strength by changing shapes into the weakest form possible had been shared, but there had been no records of any ever having been cured.

At the time a young woman, barely out of girlhood but with the eyes and mannerisms of someone far older, almost identical in face to Fon had aided the research, uncovering a possible connection to the Vongola before disappearing from Reborn's range of sight and informants to follow her own leads.

He hadn't seen her again until meeting the wife of the Hibari Clan head to discuss his staying in the town to teach the next don of the Vongola, and possibly recruit some of its residents as the next generation of guardians. She looked far too young to have been the same person from nearly thirty years ago, but Reborn didn't believe for one second that it was a mere conclusion or a family resemblance, not when she smiled knowingly and all but admitted – albeit in roundabout words – that it was good to see him again.

He'd met Talbot, after all, in his search for a way to solve the curse, heard from Timoteo himself that the wizened old man was from Vongola Primo's time, despite the ridiculous age that would make the retired metalsmith. And while Reborn was and still is of the belief that the greatest, darkest evils in this world were that of humanity's greed, he also saw things literally inhumane, that did not make sense by conventional rules. He had become a part of something unnatural himself.

A woman that aged slowly was hardly something shocking.

And she had been surprisingly – almost suspiciously – willing to cooperate, so long as they 'provided a challenge' for her son. Hibari Saya, as she called herself now, even gave permission, speaking on behalf of the Hibari Clan, for them to recruit Hibari Kyoya into the Vongola if said boy wanted.

What Reborn expected from Fon was another quote about inevitable partings, or children always having to leave their homes to grow stronger. Some wise philosophical response, hardly a fun reaction.

What Reborn got was Fon choking, and he nearly got whiplash in turning his head to check that yes, that was Fon, yes, he had choked in surprise because Reborn had caught him off-guard with that comment, and by the gods, Fon was blushing.

Fon was blushing. This was not an illusion.

There was a woman of some interest to Fon, other than his sister. In Namimori.

A wicked smirk spread across his face. If it had been Skull or Lal it might have been easy, almost too easy, to find out who. Actually, it wouldn't even be a challenge with Lal, because everyone knew except Colonnello.

But Fon? A worthy challenge, and finally, decades of knowing each other later, Reborn had a way to guarantee an actual reaction other than his usual calm response from him.

This was just too good.

"I must get going," Fon said, Lichi making anxious sounds on his shoulder as he rose hastily. Fun killer.

AN: After this chapter if you go back and read Daily Life 6 you might find foreshadowing there.

Finally, the conversation Setsuna and Kawahira had is revealed, as well as part of the reasons for why Kawahira's nice to Hotaru when he doesn't like Mamoru. It's not the whole reason, but it's part of it.

Kawahira: There, they've been provided for. They're covered legally and financially.

Makoto, Mamoru: *Lonely, socially unsupported, mourning and scared*

Kawahira: Eh, aren't we all. Not my problem.

.

Hibari Saya: *makes a new friend she knows is her brother's type* *deliberately plans teatime so that Fon will drop by while Setsuna's over* *this is so unlike me to play matchmaker but it's for my baby brother's happiness*

Fon: *full of self-doubt and loathing because he's an Arcobaleno* I'm not coming back please take care of my adopted daughter.

Hibari Saya: You f***ing idiot.

.

Setsuna: Well, at least I can still keep observing Fon for clues on how to break his curse.

Fon: *has a crush on Setsuna but is digging a hole because of the curse she's trying to break* I have to leave… I guess this is goodbye…

Setsuna: щ(゜ロ゜щ)

Sweet Dreams~