Hi, here's the second-to-last chapter.

Disclaimer: RahXephon and its characters are the property of their respective owners.  This piece is not for profitable purposes.

Chapter 6: A Summer Apart

We sit together quietly at the café, each glancing over the campus paper.  Much of the time we spend together is like this, though, on weekends, we go out, to movies, concerts, and the like.  It was some time after our first date that I felt it would be all right to kiss her.  However, when I do, it seems she is almost forcing herself, which makes me anxious. The summer break is rapidly approaching, and I've been ordered back to the Bähbem estate.  I do not want us to be apart, but I know I cannot defy the order.  I have been putting off telling her, but resolve to tell her now.

"Haruka?"

She looks up at me from her paper and says, "Yes?"

"Although I'd rather stay here, I need to go home over the break."

She looks downward and appears upset.

"I – I see."

I place my hand over hers and say, "I'll give you the address and phone, and of course, we can always use e-mail and our cell phones."

She looks up at me and says, "Yes, that's true."

I grin and say, "I'll be back before you know it." 

She smiles in response.

I sit in the desk chair in my room with a textbook on the table.  Despite my efforts to concentrate, my mind wanders and fills with doubts. The feeling that our relationship is not genuine, but something contrived, that seeps out when we apart, has surfaced once again.  I cannot deny that, despite our time together, my feelings remain unchanged.  I believe he knows this; he has never said again that he loves me, I know that that is because is he is waiting for me.  When I am with him, I feel a contentment that I have not experienced since I was separated from Kamina-kun, but this emotion is not the love that Itsuki-kun hopes for.  Indeed, when we are apart, I am submerged in a whirlpool of uncertainty that I am only rescued from by his presence.  I am afraid, because I realize, that, possibly, what I experience with him may be only my own delusion, and the uneasiness, reality.

I reluctantly open the door to the mansion, and am surprised when I enter into silence.  Is it possible that no one is home, that is unlikely.  I walk through the foyer and to my room and start unpacking.  When I finish, I walk downstairs, and see Makoto at the bottom of the steps.

"Itsuki."

"Hello, Makoto."

"Hello, Itsuki."

I look and see Helena.  I hadn't noticed her before, but I see now that she is standing away from the staircase, but still in view.

"Hello, Helena."

As I stand before them, Makoto looks at me with an odd expression and says, "My, you look almost – happy."

I am caught off guard, is it that apparent?  Not wanting to discuss it, I remain silent.

"I haven't seen you like this since – before you were 18."

I flinch, remembering my 18th birthday, when I had to, at last, accept that I had not been chosen by Ixtli.  I have found it difficult, I had hoped – and even, to some extent – believed, that I could fulfill the role of an Ollin. 

"What could possibly make Itsuki happy except – you found someone, didn't you?"

I say nothing and he continues, "That sounds like a confirmation, how amazing, even our scholar."

Annoyed, I answer, "Since you're going to annoy me about it until I tell you, yes, I am seeing someone, her name is Mishima Haruka."

I take out my wallet and show them a picture.  Makoto grins, but Helena looks surprised, which I had not expected.

"My, what a beauty, how did you get her to fall for you?"

I stand frozen as the reality that I have repressed emerges, Haruka has never said that she loves me. 

I flip through an album I've made this summer of pictures of the two of us, doing so calms my earlier anxieties.  I smile as I look at the photographs, remembering the happy times that we have spent together.

"Haruka?"

I look and see that my mother has entered my room.

"Okaa-san."

"What are you looking at?"

"A photo album of Itsuki-kun and me."

"Ah, let me see!"

"Ok."

She walks beside me, and I start from the beginning, explaining each photograph.

As I finish, she says, "I'm so happy for you, Haruka.  You've accepted what you can't change, and you've even found someone else to love."

To love?  But I don't…

"You don't still carry around that picture everywhere do you?"

My first thought to say is 'Of course I do,' but then I realize that that isn't what I should be saying if I were truly committed to Itsuki-kun.  Indeed, I still keep the picture with me wherever I go, and I reach for it or look at it whenever I'm alone and upset; I never look for a picture of Itsuki-kun. 

"Haruka, what's wrong, you look like you're going to cry."

Unable to hold them back, the tears flow from my eyes.

"It's terrible of me, so terrible, I thought, maybe, I could grow to love Itsuki-kun, that's why I agreed.  But, my feelings haven't changed, and I know they never will.  I will always love Kamina-kun."

My mother starts to cry as well, but places her hand gently on my back.

"It's important that you be honest with Itsuki-kun."

I nod my head yes as I wipe away my tears and resolutely answer, "You're right, I will."