Sorry this is taking so long. Yami no Matsuei seems to have taken over my life. For those of you who are wondering, yes I do have a plan and yes the story is almost finished. Unless, of course, no one reviews, then I just won't finish it at all.

Tomo:  That's not much of a threat.

dodger-chan: Shut up Tomo.

Shun didn't come back while Taka was awake, nor was he there the next morning. Taka felt no guilt at being relieved. Suboshi, Shun, whoever was scary. In the lifetime since he had last been kissed by a guy, the experience had gotten no less creepy. He missed Miaka at breakfast, almost went to the wrong class and nearly fainted when Tomo tapped him on the shoulder.

"Well?" The former Seiryu seishi seemed eagerly awaiting something, but Taka couldn't for the life of him figure out what.

"What?" Taka sighed. Lately, he kept having to ask that question.

"The twins. Are they friends again?" Tomo watched him curiously. "With that expression, I'm likely to assume you caught them in some act of incest."

"Incest?" Miaka was right. All the Seiryu seishi are perverts. "You mean they-"

"No. At least I don't think so." Tomo quickly amended his statement. "You just seem to be in shock, and seeing that might have put you there."

"Shun kissed me."

"What?" At last, the shoe was on the other foot.

"Last night, after Kai left. He called me a bastard, said he hated me, then he kissed me." Tomo started laughing and Taka glared at him. "This isn't funny."

"Oh, but it is, Yui-sama!" With effort, Tomo stopped giggling. "So Amiboshi wanted nothing to do with him?"

"Well, Shun said they were never going to see each other again. But he didn't seem devastated. He was sad, but also pleased in some way."

"Basking in the glow of newfound love?" Tomo suggested.

"Shut up."

"I was being serious. How much do you know about Suboshi's infatuation with the Seiryu no Miko?" Tomo asked. Taka shrugged. He wasn't particularly close to Yui, and Miaka hadn't told him anything about Yui and Suboshi. "Well, when Amiboshi 'died' she was kind to Suboshi. She told him to cry and she sympathized with him. She was never kind to him again. She cared for him the way you'd care for shit scraped off the bottom of you shoe. But for the rest of his life he was her loyal dog. Following her, adoring her, willing to do anything for her because one time she made him feel that he was not alone. Do you see a moral in this story?"

"Shun falls in love with people who are nice to him."

"And he stays in love with them even when they aren't. Congratulations, you now have your very own pet lunatic." The words sounded like a joke, but Tomo's tone was all serious. "But there is a bright side."

"What? I can have him kill people I don't like?"

"I hadn't thought of that, you really could. No, I meant that at least he doesn't expect anything from you."

"What do you mean?" In Taka's mind, kissing him had implied certain expectations.

"He knows you're not going to love him. The very fact that you keep being nice to him is probably too confusing for him to understand. He expects you to have contempt for him."

"Still? I mean, he's lived another life."

"You never quite get over who you were." Tomo sighed.

"You should tell him. Jake, I mean. He does deserve to know."

"Shut up, Taka."

"If you really want him to love you-"

"I'm asking him to love who I am. That's hard enough without asking him to love who I was too."

"You just said you don't get over who you were."

"And I was a deceitful guy, basing everything about himself on illusions. None of us has changed all that much. I'm weaker, not nicer."

"Another life, different experiences. You are different." Taka tried to smile at Tomo like a friend. He didn't quite succeed. "Neither of you are who I remember."

"Only because you never knew either of us."