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R O R R I M
chapter four

"Enjoy life today. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow may never come."

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I've never seen him look so sad.

I don't know if I'm grateful or disturbed. His penchant for icy gazes appears to have waned; the formerly omnipresent glacial quality of his eyes is missing, as though broken away by a warm tidal flow. The now unhampered topaz, clear like a diamond and still capable of being just as splitting, is alarmingly incongruous to what my reeling mind can recall. The malignancy is gone. There is something more human now.

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

I'm not even surprised he's here. His tension is apparent with the shell of cold gloss stripped crudely away; like it's a mistake, that he shouldn't be here, and . . . well. My shoulders are given a squeeze, crooked though they may be in the awkward position I'm sitting in. I am back against my haunches, knees bent inward and weight tilting towards one, and my head craned to the side and back to look up the length of clothed arm to his face. I probably look like hell. The tears are incidental now. I've lamented enough.

He is all together morose in the colors he's donning: a beryl sweater and pair of blue jeans dark enough to be considered midnight if minded improperly. The wool of his cuffs brushes against my neck, where my raven hair had been pushed behind my ear at some point in our silent contemplation of one another. His smile is melancholy. He feels he has been late for something; the disquiet on his face is as readable as a book; he has always been so punctual in his exploits. He reminds me of the White Rabbit, forever obsessing over his pocket-watch and its Victorian hands. His disappointment in himself is dense.

I want to tell him it's okay; I'm okay. But I can't seem to find the words.

I don't remember him ever crying before. He is now, and I can't help but marvel at that fact: But whom are you crying for? Yourself? . . . Or is it I too now?

The alarm clock rings, irritatingly bright and cheerful. Predawn stretches zirconium fingers across the sable horizon in a slaughter of night and proud heralding of sunrise, edges vaguely pink. The silver-footed queen, whose nocturnal post had been so high, flees toward the west, yowling vengeful curses that she would return in a day's breadth. Their dance carries on, unbeknownst to most of the populace who lay unaffected in their beds at this ungodly hour.

I open my eyes after enough screaming insistence; the ceiling -- a sparse number of feet away from where I lay on my elevated mattress (only accessible by the ladder that is propped nearby) -- gives salutations in unmoving floral-white plaster and paint. My hand slides out from beneath the downy comforter and searches half-blind along the adjacent ledge. The bells stop their head-splitting cacophony once the offending machine is turned off.

I roll onto my side, bleary-eyed, searching for the much easier to read neon numbers that my desk clock bares lambently in spite of the darkness. Five o'clock (AM, of course). My slipshod morning condition makes seeing difficult for a while; sometimes I wonder if there are glasses specially designed to tackle this problem. I gurgle something incoherently and return to where I had been, flat on my back. My eyes slip shut, as I'm still half-asleep and in that zone where dreams can so smoothly overtake you again.

"KEN-CHA~AAAN!!"

It's a lot harder to accomplish when Wormmon plops square on your chest.

"I'm awake," I profess, trying to shake him from his perch. "You saw to that."

Copper trickles down the back of my throat. Only a little. My dreams had evaporated upon waking.

"I just had to make sure you were awake!" he giggles, hyper and spontaneous in the barely lit hours even when not the overly energetic Minomon. A green feeler taps against my cheek in an obscure form of affection.

I smile. "Thank you. I'll get up now."

The bathroom floor tiles are always very cold. My smoke-gray uniform is immaculately pressed (as always), the pyrite clasp and rows of cufflinks polished (as always), and smells of lemons and sunshine due to the fabric softener my mother uses (this, too, as always). My socks and shoes, the latter having been shined the millionth time by a compulsive hand, reside by the front door; the slippers I usually wear are being laundered. The ceramic chill is unfamiliar to me. Feeling queasy, I settle my weight on my toes and lift upwards to reduce the contact. The edge of the sink, similarly cool but bearable because of my clothes, dents the fabric at my waist as I lever against it. My hands open the medicine chest in front of me.

I still don't know when the entire practice started. The foundation was a definite result of dun half-moons I would find under my eyes, no matter how much or how often I slept. Annoyed at my own vanity, I still resorted to using various powders and tinted creams thieved from my mother's collection to try to conceal the ugly marks. It was after I found a satisfactory combination of products that I began to buy my own. After that, amidst all of the secrecy this invoked, I dappled with other angles of beautifying myself. No -- not beautifying exactly -- but something to make me . . . well . . . I don't know.

I take out a dark-colored tube no larger than a thin ballpoint pen and unscrew the cap, meanwhile closing the cabinet with a knock of my elbow. Liquid eyeliner is a challenge. It feels like aqueous satin and has the consistency of thick ink. It will be runny if you're not wary; however, the glossy quality is amazing after accurate application with the minute wand, which broadens the lash lines (when not producing a "raccoon" effect) and defines every curve. Its most useful operation is to give the eyes that inexplicable theatrical flare, drawing attention to them well. It distinguishes the face as the most unique part of the human body, as it really is. I like the dramatic look it gives me. Daisuke just thinks I look like a girl.

"A girl?" I ask, turning my head.

We make a ritual out of meeting after school each day, something sacred and hollow; our anger at one another for missing an appointment due to miscommunication of when and where is always incredibly stellar. As of the past week, I had spent at least five of those days standing by the roseate brick walls that encircle the school-grounds at Odaiba, whiling away at least an hour or more while he suffered through a browbeating detention for any menagerie of offenses.

I was bothered only with some regularity by die-hard fans that remember, in their words, when I was "more untouchable." I nodded and smiled mindlessly, eyes trained to the chalk graffiti of a green elephant, unable to discern more than a pair of dead eyes and string of victories (chess, Judo, soccer) as I thought back. Praying, hoping, even demanding wordlessly that the teachers release him a tad early ensued.

Today is different. He's had to wait for me at the discordance of asphalt and iron that together form the gates to Tamachi for more than an hour himself. I think he's worried about me. The words "Ichijouji Ken" and "detention" are evidently not synonymous with one another. He didn't ask why I had been served the punishment, and I didn't tell him. I know he'd only fret more. My lack of elaboration doesn't faze him.

"Yeah," Daisuke replies, regarding me in jest, "really feminine and stuff. That sort of thing."

His eyes are toasted ovals of cinnamon bread, spread with a citrine jam that turns the crusts into gold. The sun gives a wounded cry; the influx of sunlight is hinted with a bloody mandarin orange. I hear the hum of passing cars somewhere behind me, but it's curiously far-off at the same time. The present is here; now. My gaze darts to the movement of his shoulders, rolling upwards in his joking nonchalance. I'm infatuated with the rippling of his clothes.

We strangely haven't gone anywhere yet. Nine times out of ten Daisuke will have after-school plans for us, with or without my consent -- an impromptu game of soccer on the school field that usually results in us getting caught and seeing how fast we can run, or even stopping by the nearest ice cream parlor for an unhealthy treat prior to dinner. ("No one has to know, Ichijouji," Daisuke explains, rolling his eyes at me. They're full of laughter. "So stop whining and eat your ice cream before I do.") He hasn't offered us any outlet. I notice there are no elephants drawn near our feet.

"Well," I murmur, inconspicuously exchanging hands with the Tamachi issue briefcase I'm holding. It serves as our backpacks; makes us look more professional. We're almost adults, after all, at the ripe old age of thirteen or fourteen. "I think it looks . . . nice." I couldn't condone saying dramatic. I thought Daisuke would laugh at me.

He grins somewhat bemusedly, eyes twinkling with warm mirth. In this moment I know he wouldn't have laughed at me had I confessed I fantasized about being a pretty-pretty pony princess. I feel flushed. If I am, Daisuke elects not to say anything about it.

"Come on, Ken," he chides, turning on a heel in the direction of the street. I follow automatically, observing his unrepeatable profile of auburn spikes for as long as he faces me sideways. I will always have sharp regret for never learning how to draw, as word-oriented as I am, because he would be the perfect bronze specimen for my pencils and paints. He begins across when it's clear, calling back to me. "You're going to call your mother!"

A hideous squeal of tires assaults our ears.

"Are you psychic, Daisuke-kun?"

He never saw that van coming.

Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it. It's a lesson everyone learns outside of the classroom about getting through school intact and moderately unhurt. Survival skills are essential in this jungle of impersonal faculty and a student-body that would only step over you (or on you, if they were feeling hateful enough) if they found you frantically trying to collect dropped assignments in the middle of the hall. I've never met anyone who ever bothered to stop and help out those in distress -- the hostile stares from everyone else they receive in turn is enough to send them scuttling on -- aside from myself, as I feel impervious to their judgment now.

While laughter may be easiest to throw off . . . whispers are not. Half-cloaked in airy tones that can easily be mistaken as the ruffling of a breeze by your ear, you're never wholly sure of what they're saying, even if immediately deciding it's derogatory. It's frustrating.

"Have you heard . . ." someone breathes into his best friend's ear in the locker room. I'm changing out of my soccer practice attire -- a lot of hard work and concentration has gone into assuring that the skills obtained while I wasn't myself are still exemplar. I am team captain. I write the playbooks. I pull the jersey upward, seeing only terre verte material as I listen to their damning words. ". . . Ichijouji-kun . . . yes, ever since he got back. He has been hanging around that guy from the Odaiba team. A lot."

"I did not think he was . . ." his companion whispers into his hands.

My uniform top slaps wetly on the bench, soaked in sweat from the impossibly harsh training schedule I've had my team on. We have our practices before the school day. It's cold in the locker room, just as it was in my bathroom this morning.

The eyeliner is waterproof. Only a combination of soap and water can have it effectively cleansed from the skin. Even then, its richness usually attributes to how it can almost, but not quite, stain your eyelids. Vigorous scrubbing is required. It hurts, but it's worth it.

I lower back down onto my feet, revolted at the chillsome floor, and go to search out my soccer uniform. I have soccer practice today, before school. Getting up at five in the morning is the latest anyone can sleep if they want to make it on time.

"KEN-CHA~AAAN!!"

It's a lot harder to accomplish when Wormmon plops square on your chest.

"I'm awake," I profess, trying to shake him from his perch. "You saw to that."

Copper trickles down the back of my throat. Only a little. My dreams had evaporated upon waking.

"I just had to make sure you were awake!" he giggles, hyper and spontaneous in the barely lit hours even when not the overly energetic Minomon. A green feeler taps against my cheek in an obscure form of affection.

Something doesn't click right. "Didn't you say that to me already?"

I brush a fringe of hair from my eyes after we make it to the other side of the street together. The moon, grinning silver, lances another blow off of the already crippled sun. More definitive spatters of vermilion snakes over us in abnormally spaced bands while we continue down the sidewalk. I don't know where we're going, but I've never questioned Daisuke's leadership abilities, now have I?

"Are you psychic, Daisuke-kun?"

"Maybe. But I want you to have dinner at my house tonight." He smiles at me. I tentatively return the expression, feeling that I would awkwardly shuffle my feet and blush like an ignorant schoolgirl if we weren't still moving. "You'll call your mother to make sure it's all right."

"Of course," I reply, and the world is real again.

I hear low snickering as I sit, reaching down to unlace and take off my grass-stained cleats. This must be their revenge. These two particular acquaintances on the team I had been especially verbose with concerning their tardiness. They had neglected to come for a lot of the starting warm-up and drills. I suppose they can't take reprimands very well. I also forced them to stay for an extra twenty minutes. Everyone else has already left.

"Has he ever looked at you in the showers?" he grunts peevishly. I must have missed something. I pause, one of my shoes resting in my hand. "Jesus, Hiroshi . . ."

Yes, sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.

"Isn't this magnificent, Ken?" my mother titters, standing back a few feet so she can survey just how splendidly I look with the antique objet d' art by my side. I swivel in my computer chair, regarding her rather distrustfully. What use would I have for another mirror? The one in the bathroom is fine. "I bought it at this strange little thrift shop in the city, and I just knew it could liven up your room."

I only smile complacently, thoughts drifting back to where I had just been. The school night ruined it. We have sleepovers often enough, even when . . . well, regardless, I don't need her "livening up" my life (thank-you-very-much). Looking toward the mirror, its surface catches the light just so, and winks. I feel unnerved.

"A shooting star! Look!"

I bolt awake violently. I'm lucky I remember to duck my head when I sit up, as otherwise I would have ended up with a rather nasty scrape to my scalp. My cloud-white duvet is wreathed around my waist and legs tightly. There had been a considerable struggle with invisible demons, and the rancid taste of my mouth gives evidence to that. A trembling hand lifts, using the linen of my sleeve to wipe the gelid sweat from my forehead and cheeks.

It tastes like I have a mouthful of copper ball bearings stuffed in my cheeks, melting together into one large sphere that will reside there until I muster enough fortitude to swallow. Copper always reminded me of blood.

Arching a svelte brow, I pass Daisuke a side-glance before returning my eyes to the starry night sky. The disintegration of the cosmic chunk of debris was swift and entirely too ephemeral. I smile knowingly, having caught sight of my hopeful friend squeezing his eyes shut and crossing his fingers, making that unsaid wish for all the universe to take into its heart. I don't tack my desires onto the tail of transient stars. I'm afraid they'll come true.

"You know, Daisuke," I recite softly, feeling that all suffixes are unnecessary while we're truly alone. This section of the park is wonderfully excluded in the first stripes of the coming night, a spot we discovered after fitful wandering here following dinner with his family. We have school tomorrow, so we can't stay out forever.

"Yeah?"

We're sitting next to each other, admiring how visible the wild yonder can be even in the middle of a horrendously refulgent city, outstretched legs straying close enough to touch one another. I lick my lips before speaking: "Some people believe shooting stars denote sadness and grief."

His good-natured grin fades. I feel horribly guilty. His voice is quiet when he speaks: "Do you believe that, Ken?"

"I wonder if he has fucked that guy . . ."

They never stood a chance. I still don't know what happened exactly. Something snapped in me, like all of my insides had been a tightly wound spring, and their little guffawing assumptions just kept twisting and twisting it around. When it broke, I didn't have any sort of control over myself until it was too late. I frighten myself a lot, anymore. There are just moments when I wonder if maybe I shouldn't have resisted the therapy and lithium.

I place a hand abruptly on the ground beside me, taken from its post of lying parallel to my leg. I use it to steady myself, watching the world tumble around me crazily. Where am I? What time is it? I . . . oh, crickets in the background, and the victorious pale cornsilk moon dancing across the sky. The park. And Daisuke . . . he's looking at me, anxious: "Are you all right?"

"Something's broken," I whisper, feeling more ill.

I don't employ my fancy self-defense martial artwork on them. They don't deserve to only come out with homely bruises that will teach them better than to say such rude and prejudice things. The janitors are the first to find me with them, and they go to get more robust attendants to haul me off when they can't stop me. I scream the entire time, a high-pitched keen that just tears their hurtful laughter apart while I bash them repeatedly with the spiked flat of the shoe I have just taken off.

I know I left one of them unconscious, bearing a concussion I'm sure was the result of when I threw him into the row of cerulean lockers. The other boy, his name I can't extract right now, is left with a split lip, broken nose, and plenty of bloody puncture holes.

I only receive a detention, although the principal is furious. He says, "We will discuss the matter of expulsion with you later!" I want to tell him to fuck off. I really do.

His good-natured grin fades. I feel horribly guilty. His voice is quiet when he speaks: "Do you believe that, Ken?"

Hadn't I already been here? My memories . . . they've all blended together.

I watch Daisuke's face for a moment more. "I don't know," I offer honestly, tilting my head back to take in the dark tapestry with its crystalline studs. A breeze toys coltishly with a few longer tendrils of navy blue that had been intruding my eyesight.

There's warmth on my cheek. My eyes widen, and I level my chin with the slightest turn of my neck to look back towards my stargazing colleague. His fingers, tanned and healthy-looking, clash greatly with my own blanch skin; they rest near my mouth comfortably, his eyes burning with an emotion so vivid and denuded that it scares me.

"You don't have to be sad any longer," Daisuke clarifies for only my ears, shifting a little on the moist grass that blankets the ground. He looks beautiful. "I'll always be here for you. And I think your eyeliner makes you look pretty, too."

(Love -- strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties; affection and tenderness felt by lovers.)

I begin to cry when he touches his lips to mine, and my arms fasten themselves around his waist. I finally know absolute completion.

I go to sleep thinking of Daisuke and his kiss with its silent promises. The new mirror says nothing to me, and merely keeps watch from its post opposite of my private terrace. And that's when I dream:

"I can't believe I have to take you to get ice cream," Osamu grumbles, pulling his sweater around himself tighter in his vexation. He shoots a glare to my obliviously happy face, the ice in his eyes making a rather fearsome comeback. "I'd rather be studying."

I crane my head back, taking in the list of frozen flavors that had been posted by the roadside confectionary stand we're visiting right now. There's vanilla (too plain!), mint (too weird!), rainbow sherbet (too colorful!), strawberry (too fruity!), almond (too nutty!), butterscotch (too sticky!), and . . .

"CHOCOLATE!" I blazon at last, tugging at my brother's hanging arm. "I want chocolate!"

Osamu stares at me for a moment, before a rather insidious smirk crosses his pale lips. "Too bad. You're getting vanilla," he rectifies, using the limb I'm riveted onto to knock me back a number of feet carelessly.

"No!" I yell, stomping my foot. "You never listen to me! I want chocolate! Chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate --"

"SHUT UP!"

I find myself on the ground, ankle almost sprained from its rather painful position underneath the rest of my body. The vendor, pitying but unable to really help anything, just decides to move on. While I gape at my brother hatefully, tears well in my eyes, large and globular. They drop like shiny beads down my face, tasting metallic at the corners of my mouth. My scorn throbs like the hand imprint on my face where he had so mordantly struck me down.

"Why can't you be like other big brothers?!" I wail, scrambling uselessly at the few pebbles that I just want to hurtle at him. "They're always nice to their little brothers! And they take them to do stuff! You always have to study, and when you're not studying, you're hurting me! Huh? Huh?! I . . . I hate you!"

He looks stunned. The frost in his vision falters, but I'm realizing all of this just too little, too late. He bends down to me, reaching out a hand with caution, as if he is about to touch a battered animal. "Ken-chan . . . I'm sorry . . ."

No, he's not. Say it. You say it at night, when you're crying into your pillow.

What? No, I can't . . . not again . . .

You say it while you're hiding in the shower stall, when your parents just don't care.

It's not his fault! There's something wrong with him! I've realized that!

And now, look at you, about to let him just do it all over again . . .

I . . . I can't . . . it could be different this time . . .

Really? You know it can't be. But you still have the power to make everything better, at least for a little while. You can't deny that, because you wish . . . you wish . . .

"I WISH YOU WOULD JUST DISAPPEAR!"

Osamu recoils instantly, straightening up as though called to attention. He looks at me indifferently while I continue to cry, more so from my own shame of saying something so cutting to my elder brother. I stand shakily, small hands clenched into fists as I almost choke on my own self-loathing. I barely hear him when he addresses me.

"All right, Ken. I will." He steps back into the street while I'm looking down toward the chipped concrete.

A hideous squeal of tires assaults our ears.

My head snaps up, eyes as wide as tea saucers. Osamu! Osamu!!

Osamu . . .

He never saw that van coming.

I bolt awake violently. I'm lucky I remember to duck my head when I sit up, as otherwise I would have ended up with a rather nasty scrape to my scalp. My cloud-white duvet is wreathed around my waist and legs tightly. There had been a considerable struggle with invisible demons, and the rancid taste of my mouth gives evidence to that. A trembling hand lifts, using the linen of my sleeve to wipe the gelid sweat from my forehead and cheeks.

It tastes like I have a mouthful of copper ball bearings stuffed in my cheeks, melting together into one large sphere that will reside there until I muster enough fortitude to swallow. Copper always reminded me of blood. My dry lips would crack and bleed before I took serious consideration into using balmy salve and I could flicker out my taste buds for just one suggestion of it. A solid ball of rotting blood is in my mouth -- his blood? -- and the rancor makes me want to vomit.

After I manage to ingest it, I decide that a glass of cold water will dispose of the acerbic and dry aftertaste on my tongue. I climb out of bed, careful not to hit my head or rouse Wormmon, and pad into the kitchen. It's on the way back that I spot the new mirror, my teary and disheveled state, and . . . I sit down, bewildered.

And it is later that I take the penknife from my desk . . . and . . . words, thoughts, feelings . . .

A pair of hands falls onto my shoulders when all of it is done. I investigate upward, sniffling.

I've never seen him look so sad.

I don't know if I'm grateful or disturbed. His penchant for icy gazes appears to have waned; the formerly omnipresent glacial quality of his eyes is missing, as though broken away by a warm tidal flow. The now unhampered topaz, clear like a diamond and still capable of being just as splitting, is alarmingly incongruous to what my reeling mind can recall. The malignancy is gone. There is something more human now.

Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

I'm not even surprised he's here. His tension is apparent with the shell of cold gloss stripped crudely away; like it's a mistake, that he shouldn't be here, and . . . well. My shoulders are given a squeeze, crooked though they may be in the awkward position I'm sitting in. I am back against my haunches, knees bent inward and weight tilting towards one, and my head craned to the side and back to look up the length of clothed arm to his face. I probably look like hell. The tears are incidental now. I've lamented enough.

He is all together morose in the colors he's donning: a beryl sweater and pair of blue jeans dark enough to be considered midnight if minded improperly. The wool of his cuffs brushes against my neck, where my raven hair had been pushed behind my ear at some point in our silent contemplation of one another. His smile is melancholy. He feels he has been late for something; the disquiet on his face is as readable as a book; he has always been so punctual in his exploits. He reminds me of the White Rabbit, forever obsessing over his pocket-watch and its Victorian hands. His disappointment in himself is dense.

I want to tell him it's okay; I'm okay. But I can't seem to find the words.

I don't remember him ever crying before. He is now, and I can't help but marvel at that fact: But whom are you crying for? Yourself? . . . Or is it I too now?

I take Osamu's hand in my own, and let him help me to stand.

"I was too late," he whispers past his throaty tears, bowing his head as he regards the effeminate hand in his grasp. Confusion pours over me, and I tilt my head just slightly, listening. "I thought that I . . . maybe . . ."

"Onii . . . Onii-san . . . ?"

"Just turn around, damn it!"

I do just as he orders, unquestioning. Everything suddenly seems clearer and sharper but darker, as though the Kaiser's goggles had been slipped over my head. I'm lying there, facedown on the jejune fuchsia carpeting, one arm splayed to the side and the other curled under my body to reach in the same direction.

The only reflection in the mirror is of my crumpled body, resembling that of a fallen dove, paralyzed by Coccidiosis at the base of an autumnal tree in a forest of uncaring shrubbery. The silver of proemial sunrise casts my hair in an aluminum glaze. It's going to be five o'clock soon. I have soccer practice this morning.

I take a halting step backwards; luckily my brother is there to catch hold of me before I can fall once more. I have found the rest of the picture in my search. Burgundy gashes flay my wrists' veins open both horizontally and vertically, resembling a pair of very fleshy and untidy T-style lacerations. A pool of this ichor has spread out a least a half foot from where my hands rest, one loosely clasped over a gold-handled blade, staining the sleeves of my pajamas crimson. I must have been there for quite some -- oh shit. The Primary Village, when I -- and my wrists -- the penknife -- I was distracted by the daydream . . . oh . . . fuck! I couldn't stop myself! And afterward . . . but I . . . I was seeing what I wanted to see: that I stopped in time . . .

I stand there for a long time, trying to process everything.

My brother tugs on my wrist, this one unbroken and perfect. "Ken . . . it's time to go."

"Where are we going?" I ask him, one arm wrapped tightly around myself.

He just smiles sadly, tears still present. "You know the place. It's where your happiness is epitomized, where you can taste the sunshine on your tongue, run through an open field, and watch the sky in its summer blue robes . . . where we'll chase butterflies together through the flowers, and play any game you want, Ken-chan . . ."

I nod, breaking my eyes away from my . . . "You heard my plan that day, in the graveyard?"

"Yes, I did."

"Onii-san . . . what's the meaning of life?"

He winds his fingers around my forearm. He's warm. I never imagined he'd feel so . . . real. "Life is but a prelude," he answers, directing me towards the balcony, where already the shut glass is starting to swim together and brighten to make a glowing white frame. I can smell honeysuckle. "What comes after it holds all the meaning."

I turn my head back one last time before I go through the gateway. I bite back the bile, trying to sum up all I could say . . . my parents, Wormmon . . . Daisuke-chan . . .

"I love you all. We'll see each other again someday, ne? . . . Good-bye."

My alarm clock begins ringing as I step into the light.

* * owari * *