Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for what the ending of this does to your immortal soul. Whatsoever. And I also take no responsibility for any of these characters, because I don't own 'em. Whatsoever.

Silent Messiah
by Crystal Dawn Phoenix
Final Chapter

The streets were almost completely dark by then. Since winter was coming, dusk came sooner and sooner in the evenings, and this evening was no exception. In addition to being dim, it was also getting colder. The thick scent of rain hung heavily in the air, threatening to pour down any second.

Nagi could feel the stinging breeze as it brushed his skin. But it didn't stop there - it crawled down through his veins, into his muscles, boring into his bones. He could no longer deny that the cold he felt was unnatural. The problem was, even though he knew that it wasn't natural, he couldn't tell exactly *what* it was.

Tot surely wouldn't be any help. He knew now that she had likely been feeling the same things, but stronger. As it was, she was either unconscious or very close to it; she only stirred to groan in pain or clutch at invisible wounds. Nagi had slung her arm around his shoulder and drug her along with him in that manner. He didn't think he'd done a bad job, either. They'd made it all the way from the school yard where she had collapsed, to roughly twenty meters outside of the house they shared with the other members of Schwarz.

The wind gave one last breath before it finally gave up. Nagi suddenly felt small, cold, stinging drops of rain hit the top of his head and the outside of his coat. Tot whimpered a bit as the rain began to hit her as well. He swore to himself and picked up his pace a bit. It wasn't far to go now - just down the sidewalk a bit, up the driveway, and then up the stairs. Then he could put Tot to bed and figure out what was wrong with her - what was wrong with both of them.

The rain began to come down in torrents as soon as they reached the driveway. Nagi hated the feeling of the cold water sliding down through his hair and over his eyes. He blinked it away and fumbled for his house keys with his free hand. Finally reaching the safety of the front porch, Nagi pulled his keys out of his coat and held Tot close. A few seconds later, he opened the front door with a loud 'bang!'

As Nagi entered, three familiar faces turned to watch him. Schuldich, Farfarello, and Crawford regarded the two of them apathetically as they stood in the doorway. There was a small stack of books on the coffee table between the three of them, and Crawford once again appeared to be reading the paper. He and Schuldich had small mugs of coffee. Farfarello, on the other hand, sat on the far end of the couch, watching the two of them as though he were waiting on something. Nagi stood still, dripping on the wooden floor with his shoes still on, waiting for a reprimand which did not come.

"Tot is sick," he finally said, "And I think I may be as well." No one looked surprised or upset to hear this. Nagi wanted to scream at them. He wanted them to help or laugh or do anything other than just sit there. Frustrated, he finally stepped over the threshold with her, allowing the door to swing shut behind them.

"I know," Crawford said calmly, flipping a page of his newspaper. Schuldich grinned at them, that annoying, knowing grin that was meant to let Nagi know that it was he who was in control of the situation. The idea suddenly struck him that the time had come to pay the piper.

"Indeed it has," Schuldich said, smirking as though there was a joke that only he knew, "Why don't you put the girl to bed and then come back down here? We need to talk to you." If Nagi had felt bad coming home, he felt ten times worse now. Silently, he headed for the stairs with Tot.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Wet blue hair lay in tangles across the pillows in Nagi's bed. He had managed to change Tot's clothes and dry her off a bit before taking her hair down and putting her in her nightshirt. And throughout the entire ordeal, she hadn't really been coherent enough to say a word. She would blink occasionally. Her hands would clutch at fleeting aches and her face would contort in pained grimaces, but it wasn't enough to say that she was awake at all.

The truth was, Nagi was beginning to feel sick as well. He wasn't certain if it was what was affecting Tot, or if it was just from watching her in so much pain. He smiled sadly and bent over her, smoothing back the hair on her forehead. In his mind, though, he was trying to get ready to talk to his teammates. It was going to be taxing.

"Please don't worry," he whispered, "I'll try to fix it." He gave her a small kiss in the middle of her forehead. As he leaned back to go, Tot brought her hand to her head and caught Nagi's hand.

"Nagi-kun?" she asked weakly, her eyes remaining shut tightly. Nagi looked just a bit stunned.

"What?" he asked, wondering if she was actually awake.

"Nagi-kun," she said slowly, "Please promise. Promise me, if I change a lot, you'll still love me?" This added one more mark to the list of things that had confused Nagi today. Instead of raising the point, however, he squeezed Tot's hand gently.

"I promise," he said. She smiled and released his hand, appearing to fall into a labored sleep once again. Nagi sighed reflexively and headed for the door. The coldness had left his skin, instead opting to travel to his gut and bundle up there in a large knot. He knew that a part of it was from his apprehension of facing the other three.

Swallowing back the last of his fear, he stepped out the bedroom door and into the hallway.
A short time later, he stood on the stairway overlooking the living room. His three teammates still sat there, looking as calm and collected as ever. A large bottle of dark red wine had replaced the coffee that Schuldich and Crawford had been drinking. The cork had not yet been pulled on it, though, and four glasses sat empty around it.

Schuldich could still be seen to be wearing that same feline grin, and Crawford was still calmly flipping his paper. The only one who seemed to notice his presence on the stairs at all was Farfarello; the white haired man was staring openly at him. Nagi couldn't help but be unnerved.

"Well," Crawford finally spoke, not turning to face him, "Don't keep everyone waiting." Nagi did as he was told, walking mechanically down the stairs. Crawford put the paper down onto the table as Schuldich picked up the bottle of wine and a corkscrew that had been placed on the coffee table with it.

"It's about time you got down here," Schuldich said, screwing the corkscrew into the top of the bottle of wine. He pulled on the corkscrew, causing the cork to come out with a resounding 'pop' sound. Nagi watched, confused but wanting to hide it from the others. Schuldich tossed him a look over his shoulder and began pouring the wine.

As he reached the couch and sat down, Schuldich handed a full glass to him. Reluctantly, as though he thought it might be poisonous, Nagi took the glass. One by one, Schuldich handed glasses to the other two and then poured one for himself.

"A toast," Schuldich said finally, smirking at Nagi, "To Nagi. For single-handedly doing what the entire Estet could not." Nagi had not the first clue what Schuldich was talking about. The other two raised their glasses and gave him knowing looks. The corners of Crawford's mouth had also begun to twitch into something resembling a smile. He lifted the glass of wine to his mouth and drank as Nagi looked on, confused and quickly losing what was left of his well-worn temper.

"I don't care about toasting or what the Estet could or couldn't do," Nagi finally said smartly, "Tot is sick. What did you do to her?" He didn't care if it sounded accusatory or if it sounded rude. Crawford and Schuldich, at the very least, knew what was wrong with her.

"Us?" Crawford asked, lowering the wine glass and looking over the rims of his glasses at Nagi, "*We* didn't do anything." Schuldich's smirk, if possible, seemed to get broader.

"No, Nagi," Schuldich followed up neatly, "You were the one who caused this." Nagi glared at Schuldich. The red head simply smiled back sweetly.

"I haven't done anything," he snapped. Crawford leaned over the table and picked a small book off the stack that had been placed in the middle of the table. Nagi recognized it as the same strange dayplanner-type book that had been on Crawford's desk last Sunday.

"So you say," Crawford replied dismissively, "Can you tell me what this is?" He held it up for Nagi to see. There were the same strange symbols and there was a date at the top of the page. Instead of the current date, however, it was a page from roughly six months ago, with the date circled in red. Nagi studied the symbols lining the side of the page - he thought they looked familiar, and he was right. They were planetary symbols.

"Isn't that an... ephemeris?" he asked haltingly, wondering what it had to do at all with his and Tot's condition. It looked to him like one of the books that astrologers used to draw up birth charts. The truth was, though, he'd always dismissed such things as utter nonsense, a refuge of the ignorant and gullible. As such, he hadn't devoted much time to studying them.

"Yes, it is," Crawford replied, holding it out to him, "Now, can you tell me what is special about the day I've circled?" Nagi took the book from him and looked at the date. May 21st. He looked at it for a second, the memories dawning on him. He had never really placed the events with the date before then.

Yes, he knew what was so special about that day. He remembered it like it was yesterday. The battle with Weiß; begging Tot not to go; watching as she ran away from him; and finally, watching her lie on the floor, dying. He had cradled her still body, cauterizing her wound as he screamed in anguish. As he shouted, he let loose a blast of raw telekinesis, demolishing Schreient's mansion. When he woke later that night, it was raining and cold, just like tonight. And Tot was gone.

Nagi calmed himself and stared blankly at the ephemeris. "I remember," he said firmly, "That was the night you took Fujimiya Aya from Schreient." Crawford smirked at him, causing him to get frustrated all over again.

"What about it?" he finally said.

"Two days later was when the Estet performed their ceremony," Crawford reminded him, "Turn to that page and compare the positions of the planets." Nagi glared at him briefly, but did as he was told anyway. He looked down at the planetary symbols and the degrees and signs of the zodiac listed beside each of them. On the first page, each planet was at 0 degrees of their respective signs, with the moon void of course until around 9:30 pm. On the other page, the planets had moved a little, but each was still in its respective sign. Nagi had no clue what any of this was supposed to mean to him.

"I don't understand," Nagi said plainly, putting the ephemeris on the coffee table, "What does that have to do with me?" Crawford gave Nagi a look that he reserved only for those that he thought were being complete idiots as he leaned over and picked his ephemeris up off the table.

"Why do you think the Estet chose the day they did for the ceremony?" Crawford asked blandly. Nagi blinked and his eyes went wide.

"Because... of the alignment of the planets," he remembered aloud. Nagi also remembered what the ceremony was supposed to do; it was supposed to bring a spirit from beyond into the comatose girl's body. If the planets were similarly aligned that day as well... Nagi tried to wrap his mind around the possibility.

"But why?" he asked after a few more seconds of thought, "Why did they wait? Why didn't they just do it that first night instead?" Crawford shrugged.

"They didn't divulge that to me," he replied coolly, "It could have been that they didn't get organized in time for the ceremony to happen the first night. My personal theory is that they were waiting for the moon to move into a weak aspect with Pluto." Nagi didn't ask. He didn't need any more confusion today.

"So," Nagi said slowly, running his hand through his hair and setting his glass on the table, "That thing they were trying to summon... Ended up in Tot instead? Because she was near death?" It was less a question and more Nagi trying to sort out the thoughts that were going through his head. The looks he got from his teammates suggested, however, that he was getting closer to the truth. Nagi no longer even had the energy to be angry with them.

"It was more likely because of the outburst you had," Crawford said smartly, reopening the ephemeris, "But I'm certain that was part of it."

"The Beast," Schuldich said suddenly, causing Nagi to start. He looked over at Schuldich, eyes narrowing.

"What?" he asked.

"That's what it told me to call it," Schuldich replied, grinning slyly, "When it spoke to me. It has a name. And it didn't come into Tot 'instead' of anything. It came into her 'as well as'." Nagi glared openly at the red head.

"'As well as' what?" he asked, Schuldich almost tangibly eating away at his temper. Schuldich leaned closer to him and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

"When you kissed her that night," he hissed, "Did you taste her blood?" Nagi thought it was not only an insipid question, but a condescending, inane one as well. Her lung had been punctured; of course her mouth was full of blood. He couldn't help but taste it.

"Of course I did," he said angrily, "What does it matter?" Schuldich grinned a nasty, sinister grin at Nagi.

"He's in her blood," Schuldich replied, pointing a finger at Nagi's chest, "And he's in yours, too."

Nagi once again tried to show no reaction, but inside he was reeling. The demon, or creature, or ghost, or whatever it was, it was inside both of them.

"How do you know?" Nagi asked, his mouth suddenly becoming dry, "How do you know it's in me?" It was a stupid question, but it was the only one he could really think of at the moment.

"How do you think we found out about it in the first place?" Schuldich asked. Nagi knew at once that it was a rhetorical question. "I'm sure that you don't have the first clue, so I'll go ahead and tell you," he said smartly, his eyes narrowing, "I heard him calling to me from the back of your mind. That night you were looking up her case file on the internet. Yes, he called out to me. What do you think made you so eager to go looking for her? He did. What do you think made you say yes to my proposal so quickly? He did." If Nagi was reeling before, he felt like he was about to get motion sickness now. He knew he wasn't just a puppet on a string. That simply could not be. Hadn't he wanted to see Tot because he missed her? Because he loved her?

"Don't make me laugh," Schuldich said cruelly, once again replying to his thoughts and not his words, "Don't you know what 'love' is yet? There is no such thing as love. People feel lonely, or bored, or scared, or just plain horny, they latch onto the first person that passes by, and they call it 'love'. I thought you knew that by now."

Nagi felt sick to his stomach. It wasn't just because Schuldich was needling him; it was more because he knew that there was some truth to what Schuldich was saying. And it was a disgusting truth, a filthy truth: a truth he would rather not have known.

And finally, after sorting out the roiling feelings of nausea, Nagi's mind began to formulate questions.

"What did it want?" Nagi asked weakly, "Why did it make me seek her out?" Schuldich shut his eyes and grinned secretively.

"I think you know the answer to that," he replied, "If you sit still and listen to him for a second." Nagi thought for a second, and then it struck him.

"It... He wants," Nagi stammered, clutching handfuls of hair in his hand as he leaned forward, "He wants us to unite him. To make him whole again." Was that what happened Saturday night? Was the creature just trying to use him and Tot to reunite its disparate parts? If so, which one would all of it end up in? How would it decide?

"I don't think you really understand what he wants," Crawford said, "Or you don't want to admit to yourself what he wants." Nagi looked at Crawford in confusion and anger. Once again, he shut his eyes and tried to listen for the other voice inside him. When it spoke, Nagi felt more than nauseous: he felt as though he might faint from anger and disgust. He buried his head in his hands and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs.

"He wants us," Nagi said slowly, quietly, and deliberately, "He wants us to bear a child for him. He wants an empty vessel." When Schuldich grinned again, Nagi thought that he might well snap then and there and just punch him.

"Why do you think the Estet wanted to use that comatose girl?", Schuldich asked, "Her spirit wouldn't fight with him. And her body would never age. She was the perfect vessel."

"The child he wants would give him a new physical body," Crawford said, reminding Nagi of a very detached doctor, "With no other soul to interfere. And from there..."

"The end of everything," Farfarello hissed, actually speaking for the first time, "A Messiah of Chaos."

"I thought you had come close the night I was gone," Schuldich said, smirking, "I really expected better of you, you know. I can't believe you're such a dull kid." Nagi didn't respond. He clutched at his hair, trying to restrain himself enough not to pull it out. He knew he was starting to shake, and he didn't care if anyone saw him this time.

"I won't do it," he finally mumbled, barely loud enough for the rest of them to hear, "I won't do it. I won't let him hurt her. And I won't let him use any child of ours that way." Crawford snorted. Farfarello looked slightly offended and Schuldich sneered.

"That's very sentimental of you," Schuldich replied, "But I don't think you can hold out against him forever. He's already almost completely taken her, you know. She's become so much more like you because of him, hasn't she? I hear she's been reading novels and working calculus problems..." Nagi screwed his eyes shut and clamped his hands over his ears.

"Shut up!" he finally screamed, almost bereft of any reasoning abilities, "I won't do it! I won't!" He suddenly sprang from the couch and ran toward the kitchen, stumbling as he went. The door slammed behind him as his teammates looked dully in the direction he'd gone.

Once in the kitchen, Nagi looked frantically around at the appliances and cabinets. Schuldich had said the thing was in their blood, right? He reached for one of the drawers and opened it with a violent bang. The utensils inside rattled and Nagi shuffled through them quickly, strewing them throughout the drawer. When he didn't find what he was looking for, he pulled the drawer out of its track and flung it across the room in frustration. He was sure the clatter of silverware and the loud 'bang' the drawer made as it hit the floor would bring Crawford into the kitchen to breathe down his neck, but he didn't care anymore.

Another drawer and another came out without producing what Nagi was looking for. Finally, on the fourth drawer, he found it - a black handled cooking knife with a four-inch long blade. They had made it hard to find because it was one of the only things in the kitchen that could actually cut with any efficiency and they had wanted to keep it away from Farfarello.

Nagi stared at it for a second, frozen. He looked at his hand clutching desperately at the handle and he considered what he was going to do with it. The thought that it was a bad idea never even occurred to him; he knew it was an incredibly bad idea, as well as an incredibly stupid one. But anything he could do would be better than letting that creature hurt her anymore.

Knife in hand, Nagi headed for the kitchen door again, pushing it out of the way at a run. When he reentered the living room, his teammates were still sitting where they had been, staring coldly at him. He ignored them and ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time. When he made it to the top, he turned and bolted toward his room.

Downstairs, Schuldich looked over his glass of wine at Crawford. A red eyebrow rose curiously.

"So I take it that he's not going to try to bed her?" Schuldich asked, smiling perversely. Crawford shrugged and picked his paper up again.

"No, I'm sure he's got something quite different in mind," Crawford said, opening his paper again, "That's alright, though. He'll serve our purpose, one way or another."

Upstairs, Nagi burst into his room, slamming the door against the wall and causing Tot to start. She hadn't left the bed at all since he'd been gone. Instead, she had been writhing around in pain, and had torn most of the sheets off. Now was no exception. Even though her eyes were still not open, she was still whimpering and clutching at fleeting pains. Nagi realized then that she must be trying to fight off the creature.

He came to the side of the bed and looked down at her. Every fiber of his being hoped that she would forgive him for what he was about to do. Slowly, he bent over her head and gave her a small kiss.

"Tot," he said quietly, "Tot, will you still love me if I change a lot?" He realized now why she had asked him that before. It made perfect sense to him now. Tot actually stayed still for a second before she opened her eyes a hair's width. He could see that they had shifted to that disturbing gold color again. The thing was winning.

"No matter what," Tot said weakly, trying to manage a smile at him, "I promise." Nagi smiled back at her sadly.

"Good," he said, almost so quietly that she wouldn't hear. Silently, Nagi raised the knife that he had taken out of the kitchen.

In one smooth motion, he grabbed Tot's wrist and pinned it to the bed. With the next, he brought the sharp blade of the knife against the palm of her hand, slicing it clean open and releasing a small stream of black ichor. He knew there wasn't much time; even as he watched, the wound looked as though it was already closing. As quickly as possible, he brought the palm of his own hand down on the blade of the knife, fighting the urge to scream as the tip protruded from the back of his hand. His blood, too, was black. Schuldich hadn't lied. Nagi pulled the knife out and flung it across the room.

Before Tot's wound was halfway closed, Nagi shoved his own hand on top of hers, forcing their wounds together. Using his telekinesis, he began to pull at the black blood, drawing it into himself.

"Come out, you bastard," he hissed softly, feeling the strange, icy power pulsing into his body, "Come into me instead." He could feel it working. A deadly cold raced through his hand and up his arm, stopping only briefly at his elbow before progressing. Nagi fought the feeling that he was going to pass out and kept pulling. A hard throbbing started to ring in his ears. The cold raced through his shoulder and into his chest. At once, he felt his whole body cool. It occurred to him that this must be what it feels like to be dead. Even through the pain and the cold, though, he could have sworn that he heard Tot scream.

After several seconds, he pulled his hand away with a jerk. Even though it had taken no more than twenty or thirty seconds, it had felt like several days, taxing his body almost to its breaking point. A cold sweat poured down his face as he grabbed his right hand by the wrist and stared at it. As he watched, the wound he'd made began to close on its own. Not ten seconds later, all that was left was a small line of rapidly dissolving, sticky black fluid.

Suddenly, the pounding in his ears became deafening, hammering Nagi to his knees. He thought briefly that his head was going to split, or that the pain in his chest would become a full-fledged heart attack, but neither happened. He clutched his head in agony. The creature was spreading itself throughout his body, growing stronger all the while. Nagi realized that, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. All he could hope to do now was to hold onto his humanity.

At the edges of his consciousness, Nagi could hear whimpering and crying behind him. Tot had awakened. He knew that her wound, unlike his, was still open and would remain so. He wanted to help her, to hold her and tell her everything would be alright, but in his condition he knew that he couldn't dare. He wasn't at all sure what he would do.

"Nagi-kun," he heard Tot say behind him, her voice wavering from the tears and exhaustion, "Nagi-kun... What's wrong?" He could feel her reaching out to touch him. A part of him wished that she would and wanted that comfort. A small, cold voice inside him said 'Let her'. And then he knew that he couldn't.

"Don't touch me," he said softly, his voice wracked with pain, "Go bandage your hand." He didn't look up at her. He couldn't look up at her - not with those eyes. He could feel her withdraw, feel her pain from being rejected. But she did as she was told and rose from the bed, clutching her wounded hand.

"Nagi-kun, do you want a band-aid, too?" Tot asked hopefully.

"No," Nagi replied, his thoughts and body beginning to stabilize again, "Just take care of yourself, okay?" Tot nodded sadly, curls bobbing around her tear-stained face. She left the room, shutting the door behind her with a quiet 'snap'.

In the back of his mind, Nagi could now hear a small voice speaking clearly to him for the first time:

Hello, Nagi, it said, I'm sure we're going to be great friends.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *
Epilogue
* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Only a week had gone by, and everything had returned to something resembling normality. The only thing that was really different now was that Crawford had managed to get Nagi and Tot both exempted from their classes under the pretext that they were being 'home schooled'. Crawford had assured the two of them that it was only temporary, at least until he could find a different school for them to attend. There was no way either one of them could go back to the old one, not after Tot's outburst. The fact that Nagi couldn't hide his eerie, cat-like eyes didn't help matters, either.

Both of them rose early everyday anyway, trying to keep some semblance of a routine. They still ate the same breakfast, Nagi still did his work, and Tot still burnt the toast (although once, under Schuldich's tutelage, she had managed to almost get it to come out a golden-brown color).

One morning, Crawford looked up from his coffee and paper at Nagi. The youth was drinking a cup of coffee as well, waiting on his breakfast.

"I've been meaning to ask you," Crawford said, blandly turning a page of his paper, "You took both parts of the Beast into you, didn't you?" Nagi knew that this was not the main question, merely a precursor to what he really wanted to ask.

"Yes, both the parts that Tot and myself possessed," he answered. Even though Nagi was still plainly himself, it was apparent that the creature was lurking just beneath the surface of his normal facade. Crawford picked up his coffee cup and looked at it.

"Then how are you able to retain your self?" Crawford asked, forgoing any further formality, "Why hasn't he completely overridden your mind?" Crawford looked suspiciously at Nagi. This was obviously something that had been bothering him for a few days yet. Nagi could understand why. By all rights, he knew that he should have been deranged, or at the very least, a soulless puppet by now.

"Unlike Tot," Nagi replied, taking his own cup off the table, "I've a much stronger mind. The mental training I've had in order to use my telekinesis has helped me, as well. And... There's something else." Crawford raised an eyebrow, looking over his coffee cup at Nagi.

"Oh?" he asked curiously. Nagi smiled slyly at him.

"I don't have all of him inside me yet," Nagi replied, "There's still one more piece of him out there." Crawford could tell by the way that Nagi spoke that he intended to do something about it.
Their conversation was interrupted as Tot plunked a plate of typically burnt toast and runny eggs down in front of Nagi. He smiled kindly up at her, knowing that even salmonella poisoning couldn't hurt him now.

"I think I almost got it right this time," she said brightly, "But I'll scrape the burnt off the toast. Hold on a second, let me get a knife." Tot flounced over to the cabinet drawer, pulling the same knife that had cut her hand a week ago out. As a matter of fact, her hand was still bandaged from it. Humming, she took Nagi's toast and began to scrape the blackened parts with the knife. Her hand slipped a bit after a few scrapes, though, and she pricked her finger.

"Ow!" she said, smarting as a few drops of blood began to bead on the tip of her finger. She instinctively raised her hand to her face, wanting to tuck the wounded finger into her mouth. Instead, Nagi caught her hand before it could reach her face.

"I've got it," he said softly, taking the bloodied finger into his own mouth instead. He found that now he quite enjoyed the taste.

* ~ * ~ * ~ *

Across town, a girl walked down a busy sidewalk alone, pressing her way through the late afternoon foot traffic. Her short, brown hair fell into her face, almost hiding a pair of large, excited, pale violet eyes. She had just come from her high school, as was made apparent by her blue and yellow school uniform and her black school bag. Smiling, she pushed her way through the crowded sidewalk, uttering 'Excuse Me's and 'Sorry's as she went.

A few more blocks, and she finally reached her destination: a small flower shop with a stylized painting of a cat in the window. She made her way past a few outside displays of fresh flowers and bouquets and pushed open the glass door with her shoulder. She knew it was probably not going to happen, but she still hoped every time she came in there that he would be waiting at the counter or watering plants, just like he used to.

The bells above the door tinkled cheerily as the brown haired girl stepped inside, taking in the smell of flowers and water that hung heavily in the air. Behind the counter, a strikingly similar-looking girl stood instead, counting the till in the cash register. As a matter of fact, the only difference between the two was that the one behind the counter had blue eyes and long, dark hair pulled into two braids.

Hearing the bell ring, the girl with the braids looked up from the register, smiling. "Oh, Sakura-chan!" she said cheerfully, "I was wondering when you would show up!" The brown haired girl, Sakura, smiled back happily.

"It took me a while, but I finally made it," Sakura confirmed, "What can I help you with today, Aya-chan?"