Just listening to Ninja Gaiden music… the soundtrack actually is pretty good! Anyway, sorry for the slow update, but hopefully two chapters will make you forgive me :)
That was certainly… strange. Ayane had spoken to him more just then, more then he could recall her ever doing before. He would never have guessed that she would have come to apologize for her actions, regardless of the driving force behind them. She just hadn't struck him as the apologetic type, quite the opposite, in fact. He took up her empty cup and his own, before washing them in the sink and sitting back down in the chair he had been in before she had woken up from his… daydream.
More like a nightmare, he hadn't been aware of anything until she had shaken him, she could have been trying for minutes and he wouldn't have noticed. Irene's death was haunting him more then ever. This was bad, and the worst time as well. He knew that if these thoughts kept on bothering him like this, it would reflect on his physical health, at least that was had happened for the previous few months, had kept him lying low until this tournament, at any rate. There was nothing he could do to avoid his fate now, which was bring down the dreaded Tengu or die trying, and protect Hayate's sister as well. He couldn't let the loss dominate him, he knew that Ayane had seen that something was worrying him, which meant that his shields had slipped, and that was not a good thing. Emotions were things which had to be bypassed, avoided at all costs. At least that was what he thought. Irene had made him think otherwise, but now that she was gone… he just couldn't push those emotions away! Why?
Because… I still love her, he thought, sighing heavily. It wasn't that he didn't want to love her… just that he knew that emotions made you weak. They had set him back for months.
He stood up, and walked to his room. He really didn't know what to do about it. There was nothing he could do about it. He sighed again. Fatigue was washing over him like a cool stream. He opened his top drawer and picked up something from it, holding it up to the light. It was a fairly simple but exquisite ring, with sapphires around the silver band and a diamond framed in the middle. The ring he had never got to give her before she… passed away. Was murdered. Whatever the hell you wanted to call it. Either way, she was here no longer. He gently placed the ring back into the drawer, before pulling out something else from behind the various array of items he had in there. A picture, in a simple wooden frame. A beaming, pretty young lady was standing in the front, her blonde hair cut to her shoulders. She had her hand on a man's shoulder and she was looking down caringly at him.
The man had about the same length hair as the lady, except it was an auburn color as opposed to the sparkling golden, and it was tied back. He was smiling slightly, almost wistfully, although his gaze tended to be somewhere other then the camera.
He stared at himself about three years ago in the photo. Sad, that this is the closest that I ever got to smiling about something, he mused as he scrutinized the photo. That was after she gave me a huge lecture about photos and the necessity to smile in them, or something equally so.
He lay down on his bed, shutting his eyes. Thinking about Irene, worrying about Hayate, isn't there anything else to my life? He wondered tiredly before drifting off into a somewhat restless slumber.