//Chapter break in the middle of the pot-induced climactic scene. The Sueness gets ever worse. But hey, last chapter. The ordeal is almost over. It's sad how much fun this was to write.//



Akio, still unfamiliar with hopeless rage, paced furiously. Why had this failed? He couldn't believe that he had actually underestimated the force of human selfishness. It was ridiculous, almost ironic. His head throbbed from the effort he'd put forth trying to revive her. It hadn't had the slightest effect.
If she had the power to destroy herself against his will, did she have the power to destroy him?
His last bid for power was not completely gone, however. Her soul was still here. If he could harness it somehow... He might just be able to if he played everything right. The triangle was a most potent figure. If he could find out how to use the connection between her and Touga and Kyouichi...
Kyouichi had run away. Typical. He'd spent too much energy trying to keep her here to notice her rival escaping. Well, he still had the one she loved at his mercy.
Suddenly a huge brightness gathered in the sky. It was vivid amber, the color of autumn sunlight on gingko leaves turning. The color of a fairy-girl's eyes.
The light looped and swirled about the Arena and finally came to a wisping, flowing halt beside Akio and Touga weeping over the fallen Rose Bride.
It was Mayumiare's spirit, in the form of an Eastern dragon.
Touga couldn't see it; she had no more substance now than her original form. But considerably more power.
She glared at Akio with eyes of crimson dawn, and roared, a sound like a tidal wave. She didn't need words to make herself understood. For a split second he was almost afraid.
Meet your own destiny, Prince of Darkness.

She was borne up to a place of light, of complete tranquillity. Shifting landscapes sparkled, laughter tinkled.
Am I...home? wondered her spirit-voice.
A figure of warm light took shape before her. She knew the word to describe the figure was "motherly," although she had no mother, and her only point of reference was little Yumi's mother on the beach. The goddess—for that was the figure's nature, she knew, in the sense that humans thought of gods and goddesses rather than unseen watchers did—radiated a feeling that reminded her of a rare moment of Juri's compassion, but the goddess was always that way.
This is a place like your homeland, said the goddess. But it is inhabited by different beings. It is a waystation for human souls.
Who are you?
She felt, rather than saw, the goddess laugh. There's no one answer to that question. Where you live, they call me...oh, I believe it's Kannon.
Comprehension dawned on Yumi, except for one part. Live? But...I'm dead. I died...
I don't say "dead" until you leave the waystation, replied Kannon. But your circumstances are peculiar. A not- quite birth leads to a not-quite death, it seems.
What are you saying?
The place where you left your body was a half-reality. It was not a true human dimension. And for that reason, your path branches again. You can return, if you choose.
She remembered Touga's grief at her departure. His tears...so beautiful...but if she could avoid making him cry then so she must. A dead girl was no better than a Rose Bride at healing that rift. Yes. I must return.
You are as brave as your friends say, Kannon beamed. Follow me.
She had left him alone with Akio—whom she had defied. NOW! she exploded.
Ouch! Calm, Yumi. Kannon put metaphysical hands on her, quieting her anxiety with the compassionate serenity for which the goddess was known. Don't worry. Time does not exist here.

Miteki sat bolt upright in bed, her face wet with tears. Dreaming, she had seen Yumi's death; waking, she knew it had just happened.
She couldn't think. Maybe in the back of her mind there was the mad hope that it had really been just a nightmare. She had to see someone—she had to see Miki. Why, she didn't know, she just had to find someone...
Someone to tell her it wasn't true...
But it was. She knew the difference between nightmares and psychic visions. This was her curse.
Chest aching, she threw on her uniform and staggered out into the morning sunlight. The day was too pretty for this to have happened. Why, some part of her wondered bleakly as she ran, why had she not foreseen something this brutal and devastating? It made no sense that she hadn't seen it until the actual time of the event...that was not the way her curse worked...
She had no way to figure it out; the voices were too loud, the voices telling her that by becoming Miteki's friend Yumi had marked herself for tragic death, that people were better off dead than being around someone like her... The voices never said anything about actual cause and effect, and they said nothing now about the real cause for which Yumi had died.
She reached the music room, knowing that Miki was already there.
Miki was playing the piano, and Juri was leaning on a windowsill sipping cold, sweet vending machine coffee. They had been startled awake by a strange, unsettling feeling at dawn, and met in the hallway of the Student Council dorm, both wondering what had happened. So they had gone to the music room to wait for something that might tell them.
Miki was absorbed in "The Sunlit Garden," but Juri heard footsteps running, and what might be a sob. Alert as a wildcat, she looked up as the cause of the disturbance revealed itself.
Miteki clamored onto the scene, her despairing cry at odds with the gentle strains of Miki's song. "Yumi-chan's dead! Yumi- chan's dead, she's dead!"
"Wha—!?" Miki shouted, missing notes with a discordant bang as he stopped playing and jerked his head around.
"I saw it in a dream! She's dead!" Miteki hiccuped and broke down. Tears started in Miki's eyes too as he ran to her.
Juri stared blankly, putting down her can of coffee. She didn't believe it. It was easy to draw the conclusion that Yumi had finally given up—too easy. It couldn't be right. The way he was now, Touga wouldn't have wanted her to, and the way she had always been, that alone would have kept her from taking her own life. There was some other side to this.
"How? Why?" Juri stepped away from the window. "Kodama, I'm sorry to have to ask, but what did you see?"
Miteki cried harder. Why was the saddest part of all, and why was the secret that Yumi would have wanted her to keep.
"But where is he?" Miki whispered roughly. "He was staying with her..."
"He was there," sobbed Miteki. "He was there—and she died to protect—to protect—she killed herself—rather than—" She couldn't finish; she must not. She had sworn to Yumi, and she was not so terrible as to make postmortem betrayals. But nor could she let people believe that Yumi had only succumbed to despair. "She didn't give up! She said she was going to fight to the death for it! She—she sacrificed herself!"
"What?" Miki blurted. "What did she have to protect like that!?"
Juri looked at the floor. "It's something she never wanted us to know. Am I right?"
Miteki nodded, tears streaming. Miki's face was wet now too.
"There are things here we can't understand," Juri murmured, like a eulogy. "We think of ourselves as having reached a point too civilized for warriors and martyrs. But she saw something lost, something so beautiful it was worth dying to revive it, or just to call attention to its absence. We called her Maigo, but all the rest of us are the lost children." Juri was almost suprised to feel a tear fall down her own cheek. The last time she could remember crying was when she was ten and her cat had died. Funny, the cat had had bright amber eyes too.

Kannon stepped into a current of light, and Yumi followed. She felt that huge rushing again, and then she was back in the Arena, where Touga held her lifeless body and Akio stood trying to form a last-ditch scheme.
Now, freed from mortal shape, the extent of her power of which Akio had spoken became clear to her. She had the power. It was made of her love.
Good luck, murmured Kannon, in the guise of an unseen watcher.
Yumi's spirit moved toward him, twining around his exquisite sorrowing form, basking in the warmth of her own feelings, drawing her energy from his heart that he had found enough to cry.
Akio moved toward him as well, placing a hand upon his head in what should have been compassion, but with End Of The World was only scheming and lust. Touga didn't even notice, so Akio ran caressing fingers through the vivid red hair...
She tensed, and then shot up into the sky, swirling into bright form. This form was suitable to her power. She tested it, flying her sinuous length about the Arena, and then faced her enemy, roaring a challenge.
She could see the beginning of the tiniest edge of fear in his jade eyes. Then he smiled darkly in reply.
Ohtori Akio left his body to collapse slowly to the ground. Blackness burst into the sky, twisting into the form of a dark bird—a phoenix, its lush feathers bright jade and black and every shadow-color inbetween. Its mocking eyes were intense glowing purple, beak and talons cruel as an eagle's.
But she had her own razor teeth and talons.
The bird screamed. Two can play that game. But you cannot defeat me, for I am Darkness! Burn me with all the fire of your true feelings, and I will rise anew from the ashes!
Touga looked up, realizing something was happening, though he had no idea what. Akio had fallen? What was going on now...? Not that it mattered, with him holding a dead girl.
Protect him! cried Kannon the watcher, seeing that he would become a casualty on the battlefield. The watcher called Athanynth echoed the cry, and then the myriads took it up as well, and they all formed a shimmering cloud of protection around Touga, all except the imps and other dark ones. "Dude, no fair!" the imps shouted, and did the same for Akio's body.
The effect of the cloud of watchers was that, looking through so many of them, Touga could actually see what they saw. And what they saw was a huge golden dragon and a great shadow-colored phoenix circling and glaring, about to battle.
The dragon growled. I may not defeat you forever, but I will defeat you here! The words flared in Touga's head, though really there were none. He stared, wide-eyed, knowing that something of import was happening though he could not understand it.
The phoenix made a mocking cry. Here, in my own realm? This is my dimension. It obeys my laws. I can trap him here and never release him...
Electric lines snapped free and moved to ensnare Touga, but the unseen ones were enough to deflect them.
Your army of unseen cicadas? the phoenix cackled. Well, they can't protect him from everything.
Touga gasped in pain, clutching at his head, as he was not one to cry out. But he trembled, his breath shuddering.
The dragon curled around him and let out an air-shaking roar, making the metal towers quiver and pebbles fall from the intricate stone structures. It matters not where! I WILL DESTROY THOSE WHO HURT HIM!
The wires crept toward Yumi's serpentine form, but she writhed effortlessly away, charging for Akio.
He flew about so quickly it was as much as teleportation, shrieking with bird-laughter. So you always say, but you passed up your chance to destroy the one who causes him the most pain!
You know nothing, growled the dragon. I am the defender of the lost dream. I will restore the destiny you stole.
How adorable. Fighting for dead lies! The fairy-girl thinks she's so noble...but of course there is that nobility in fighting for a doomed cause. The dragon and phoenix swirled and lunged, striking but scarcely wounding.
He was unsure what tactics to use. If he made her angrier, would it get her to make a vital mistake, or would it give her more power in this form? What he had to do was make her afraid. But anger too should work. Everyone knew that hate opened the door to darkness. Yes, her righteous wrath would be her downfall.
I can kill him here in my realm. I can seal off this dimension so the two of you can never leave. You'll have your wish after all, alone with him for all eternity.
Think you know so much about humanity, don't you? Apparently you missed the part that I'm not at the top of my wish list.
And more the fool you are for it!
he cackled. You went about the wrong way proving it. For now that you've disobeyed me, it's him I'll punish...as I did before... He flung the images into her spirit, images from long ago of a pretty red-haired boy fleeing the tall dark figure; overtaken, struggling uselessly, clothes torn open, pinned down, finally resigning glassy-eyed as butterflies alighted on him and the shadow above him grinned in vicious pleasure—
The dragon whipped violently from one end of the Arena to the other, trying to escape the assault of horrors from the past, roaring a sound that would surely have split the earth apart were it anywhere nearby. Touga pressed his hands to his ears in pain.
Why, I don't even have to lift a talon, Akio laughed. You'll kill him with that sound you're making.
She couldn't hear, nor even see anything over her own rage. It was shaking the very Arena, causing metal structures to squeal and chunks of stone to fall. She wanted to fly higher but the electric lines closed her in, for she was afraid of their dark humming energy. She thrashed around aimlessly, and didn't avoid the wires that he sent to snag around her.
Suddenly, she was caught. She should have been able to break away, but Akio felt her hatred fueling his power. The more she wanted him to suffer and die, the more she fell into his grasp.
The phoenix screamed triumphantly. So I know so little about you, do I? I created you, and I know how to destroy you. Same thing, in fact...
YOU'LL NEVER HAVE HIM! the golden dragon shrieked, her satiny scales standing on end. NEVER! NEVER!!
He has always been mine. Even you with all your tennyo powers cannot set him free. He threw the past at her, again and again, the broken boy and the butterflies, the degeneration and the rivalry that later would leave Kyouichi crying alone; the wretched shamed scream in a cabbage field that was the sound of rent destiny...
The great shadow-bird landed on the dragon, perching behind her head to arch his neck and look intently down into her furious crimson eyes. You missed your chance for a fair trade-off. Now here's your choice. You can give me your power and return to your destiny as the Rose Bride—
The phoenix spread his wings again. Cabbage heads sproated from the floor of the Arena, and white butterflies rose from them and fluttered about...toward Touga.
—or you can watch a real live flashback...
Yeah? How badly do you want your own fate sealed!?
the dragon roared deafeningly, and whipped her head around to snap at the phoenix who cawed with laughter.
With the look of a frightened animal, Touga glanced up warily from where he was still bent over Yumi's body. The mass of unseen ones fought to keep the butterflies away from him, but they were small and devious creatures. Touga looked in terror to the sky, where he could still see the phoenix and dragon in battle, except the dragon was losing.
Then it dawned on him completely. It was some kind of spirit duel between Yumi and Akio...and she was losing, because Akio was using him against her...
Trying not to look, he took the hilt of the sword that was his name and pulled it from her body, hating the sound it made as it left her flesh. New tears spilled over when he blinked, and he set her body down softly, then stood, ready to fight for her with the sword stained by her blood.
The butterflies tried more violently to swarm at him, and the cabbage heads struck old terror in his heart, but he knew they were there only for that purpose. And to make Yumi angry. He trembled, and he wept, but he stood.
What will it be, Mayumiare? How much can you stand to see him suffer? The phoenix dug his talons into her neck. She roared again, incoherent rage.
Cold with fear, tears shining on his face, Touga called her name.
The sword he held was still connected to her. She felt him take it up, the sword of her heart, and when he called her name, all the hate and fury and horror left her. The dragon closed her eyes and dissolved in a shower of bright golden scales.
The phoenix didn't miss the chance. There was the connection, like a gleaming strand from Yumi's now formless spirit to her sword in Touga's hands. Akio swooped and grasped it in his talons, then took his beak to it, drawing its power into him. It was the rich energy of her being. His feathers sparked and glistened blackly as he absorbed it.
Touga didn't understand what was happening now, but he felt an odd pulling on the sword. She had disappeared. He yelled her name again, not even knowing that he was defending her that way, with the power of the name by which he knew her.
Her spirit seemed to wake again from the darkness of Akio stealing her energy. The one she loved was calling her, and she would go to him. Her spirit took a shape like her body formed of brightness, and floated down to him, like Dios used to float down from the castle to Utena...
The unseen watchers parted for her, and all the butterflies nearby broke into fragments and evaporated. She stretched bright spirit-hands toward him, glowing with her feelings, and met him in a kiss that was more like a sunbeam on his face. He felt her warmth flow into him, into the Paulownia Sword he held.
There was one last sacrifice she could make. She took power from his tears, power from the truth of her love and everything she existed to protect. She became her own sword, so that it was like sunlight in his hands and he felt her presence in it. Ringing softly, it transformed into a blade of light, shining with the brilliant radiance of her spirit. The brightness inside her.
The connection snapped out of Akio's reach. But he had regained enough power now to seal them both here and use them against each other for as long as he needed. He retreated back into his body, jade and shadow feathers swirling away, and got to his feet. Yumi's body, in her bloodstained Rose Bride dress, lay in a coffin of white roses, where the white butterflies gathered. Horrified, Touga swatted the insects away, but it was the sword of light that destroyed them, making the butterflies burst into flame and vanish when the blade drew near.
"Well?" said Akio. "Do you want me to revive her?"
Touga almost flinched in painful hope. Did he have that kind of power?...
Don't listen to him! Yumi shouted in his head. He'll make you sell your soul for me, and he'll keep my soul for himself. Strike him! Touga, strike him down and destroy his hold over us!
But how could he? If there was some kind of chance for Yumi...how could he ruin it?
I will live again, she told him, her spirit voice warm and sweet. I love you. I will never leave you if it makes you cry. Strike him, so we can live free. We have the power. The sword shone yet more brightly. I promise. I'll come back.
She always told him the truth. If she said she would live again, then he would fight so that she was not doomed to live as a Rose Bride. He would avenge her, as true chivalry demanded.
Not to be caught unarmed, Akio drew a sword from the air, a Sword of Dios made of blackness that was all his own power.
It should have been more than enough to parry the blow. But light always cut through darkness.
Touga struck, slicing through the dark sword as easily as through thin air. The sword of light impaled Akio, and Touga let go of it, leaving it there to destroy him. Akio staggered back, face haggard in shock. The sword through him became a blinding brightness, and he yelled in pain. The Arena shook as though with an earthquake, fit to ruin it once and for all.
Touga flung himself over Yumi's body, trying to protect her so she could keep her promise, as the Arena crumbled into nothing.

She was light.
She existed as a sunbeam, glowing with her last radiance. It hurt, but it was beautiful; blissful suffering, the core of her being...
She hadn't told him what she was giving up for him. She was shining all of her light into the overpowering darkness, banishing the shadows forever from that which she had to protect.
And the truth was that this light was the thread which held her together. She would return to her body; she would not die; but soon she would disappear just as she'd appeared. Her soul was formed of this light, and now she gave all its energy to banish the darkness.
It was not the sorrow that would make her body dissolve, her atoms drift apart. For that too was part of the light, of her destiny. Sending all of her fire outward to burn the phoenix, leaving nothing to keep her in human form—that was how she would go.
Shining bright as a star, formed of the void, returning to void.
She knew only the brilliant force of her love, until finally, the darkness was filled, and her small broken spirit had nothing left but the empty pain of her feelings gone.

They were in the planetarium, but much havoc had been wreaked. It looked as though several explosions had rocked the place. All of the windows were shuttered, though pieces had fallen from some of the shutters, letting bits of sunlight filter in. But most of the illumination came from the center of the room, where the great globes were cracked open, the pieces scattered, to reveal the blindingly bright lights behind the phantom stars.
She has smashed the world's shell, thought Touga with strange clarity, to reveal the shining light within...
He looked around, frightened for a moment, but Yumi was sprawled beside him. She was in the normal girls' uniform, which was torn and frayed, but there was no wound, no blood. He took her into his arms and her eyes opened slowly.
Although she knew she had stopped breathing and her body had ceased to function, Yumi couldn't pinpoint the moment when she started again. She ached all over. Light stung her eyes, and then Touga floated into focus.
She should have said "I love you." She should have been able to say it; her mouth almost formed the words out of habit. But she did not feel it. She felt empty. Her heart was a wasteland in nuclear winter, as though a hollow-sounding wind blew through her, leaving only the memory of a shining fairy-tale castle.
He cried her name and held her to him, so grateful to see her alive after all, not knowing that she had made a greater sacrifice than her life.
She had sacrificed her identity.
Her hands tangled into his hair, because they were used to doing so. The gesture had no meaning to her.
He looked in her eyes, making sure she was really in one piece. But something was wrong. She looked confused, and sad, as though trying to remember something important. "Yumi, what is it?"
She held her hand up to the light. Just as she thought, she was going translucent. "I'm going to disappear." Her voice sounded distant and ethereal, echoing strangely, as though from the bottom of a well.
"What?" He saw the light beginning to glow through her, like she was becoming a ghost before his eyes. "Yumi, what's happening!?"
She looked at him, trying to feel something, and only coming up with the sharp regret at feeling nothing. "I gave my power to destroy him. Now there is nothing holding me together. I didn't want to leave you in a death like that, staining your heart with it... Instead I'll go just as I came."
"I don't understand! Where are you going? What power did you give up?"
"I burned out, like a star. I used all the power of my feelings, and now my feelings are gone. You don't need to worry any more about hurting me." She smiled softly as her voice seemed to drift even farther away.
"You're not making any sense! People don't run out of feelings." He was speaking anxiously, afraid she really would disappear, to remove the constant of her pure and sometimes brutal honesty that he'd been taking for granted. "You can—you can fall out of love, but that doesn't mean you disappear."
"It does for me. I told you, it's what made me human...and now I'll probably turn back into what I once was... So don't shed any tears over me." She was, perhaps, a little bitter, missing the core of her being.
"No! It doesn't have to be like that! You can get out of here and live. There's so much world out there, don't give up on being human just because of this! You—you've never even seen cherry trees in bloom!"
"I'm not going to die. You just won't be able to see me. Why do you want me to keep living as a human being?"
"Because you have something to teach the rest of us," he said, touching her hair, now so sure of what he was telling her that he didn't shiver as he saw his hand through her face. "As long as there are people in the world like you, who can find real happiness by just looking at something beautiful with someone they love, there's a chance for humanity. We're stupid creatures, we keep trying to kill the planet and kill each other, we cause each other so much pain...and I think maybe you came here to remind us how to live. I want to be able to live like you do." He swallowed on a lump that had come up in his throat. "But I...I haven't gotten the hang of it yet."
"Maybe it's not as easy as I can make it look," she smiled, almost transparent. "But it's like this...you go deep, deep into to the center of your being, and find the one thing that's truer than everything else, and you don't hide it, but let it out, and it shines...it shines..." Her voice faded like a waking dream.
He tried to take her hand, and passed through. He stared in dismay, opening his mouth to protest, but then a tall unearthly figure was standing beside them, all in regal white, jeweled and caped. It was like Akio, but not the same presence...a gentle, noble presence...godlike...
Dios.
Just as Touga realized this, the Prince touched his forehead, and he fell over slowly, unconscious. Yumi was not alarmed. She knew it was nothing more harmful than a healing sleep.
The Prince held out a gloved hand for Yumi, and her hand did not pass through him. She seemed to regain a little solid form as he took her hand. Wide-eyed and ghostly, she got to her feet to face him.
"Who..." said Yumi's faraway voice.
"I have been called Himemiya Dios," he replied, his voice just as ethereal. "Fallen, I have been Ohtori Akio, the first Darkling, the Morning Star. I am the Prince from the beginning of creation, the spirit of nobility. I am Darkness and Light in one, the ever-shifting balance of yin and yang. I am Abraxas, the god of revolution."
Yumi blinked. "That's a lot of identity to keep track of."
The Prince smiled kindly, almost remorsefully. "I'm not sure it could be called 'identity.' But I've come to apologize for taking yours."
"You didn't take it," said Yumi. "I gave it up to free him."
"You also freed me. I was trapped in that form of darkness, and it took the sacrifice of three girls to burn the Phoenix in the purifying flame. But the first two had each other to protect. You are protecting something you cannot have...and thus you are the bravest." The Prince bowed gallantly, but completely serious. "You have my true gratitude. I can offer you something in return, but it will be as much a curse as a gift, for such is my unavoidable nature."
"I've reached the end of this path..." Yumi looked wistfully at the sleeping Touga lit by the broken planetarium. "I don't know where to turn next. I'm turning back into what I was, but I don't know how I can be that way. I miss myself. If there's somewhere else to go, then please tell me."
"You are not quite human, and not quite watcher," the Prince told her. "You possess the greatest talents of both beings—to love, and to travel between worlds. Having escaped the sorrow of a lost childhood, your soul is of rare strength. And in your defeat of the Morning Star, you've taken some of his magic. Beings such as you have not existed since the shattering of worlds."
"...The shattering of worlds?"
"You read the story of Paradise Lost, the land called Eden and the Fall. It is a story like that. At the dawn of time there was one world, where all girls were princesses and all boys princes, where all was light and innocence—Himemiya, the Princess Shrine. But the unity was unstable, for an existence only of light cannot sustain itself. I was the light at the center of the world, but I could not uphold it, and I grew ill. Anthy, the Flower, my sister, sought only to protect me. She came to see that sustaining that world was killing me, and began to feel hatred for it—she vowed that if it was the only way to save me, she would destroy the harmony. You have known that kind of love. And she called darkness, trying to protect me; the story has split her into Lilith, the witch, and Eve, who took the fruit of original sin. But it wasn't all her doing; I accepted it, becoming the Morning Star, the fallen one whom the story calls Lucifer. That wasn't what she wanted, but it was too late. She was exiled, sentenced to eternal agony by those whose hate and fear she had inspired. To allude to another myth, Pandora's box was open. Darkness was in the world, and paradise shattered into all of the infinite realms that continue to fly apart into oblivion."
"But then...how did you and Anthy survive?"
"Her sentence required her to live in agony, so she did, flung to the corner of a far realm—this realm—and unable to escape the torture of her sentence. The Morning Star survived the shattering simply because of his power. It took millennia, but he found her, and devised a scheme to open the door to the first world and restore it, so that he might overtake all creation from there. It makes no sense to a being with a good heart, but that is the way of darkness. The dimension beyond the Rose Gate was made as a model of paradise, designed for the duels to play out, a place of magic from where the door would open."
"Then, what happened to the victor, that Tenjou Utena?" Yumi felt like she should be taking notes. This was a lot of explanation, and she'd probably forget all of it, when she ended up wherever she was going.
"She freed Himemiya Anthy from her sentence, and the backlash of power threw her into some unknown realm. Perhaps she is through the door, in the remains of the first world where Ohtori Akio was trying to return. Even I can't tell, though the part of me that lived in the castle is now alive within her. There's no way I can explain it to make sense to either human or watcher understanding. But the truth is that Utena and Anthy both gave up the same thing to protect each other. They both gave up the dream of finding the Prince to protect them and living like those innocent princesses in paradise. You, however, gave up the very power of your feelings that went even beyond dreams."
"Well, yes... This is very enlightening, but why are you telling me all this? What's the thing that you were going to offer me?"
"I want you to understand the path that you can choose. It's not an easy path, and most would be wiser not to take it. But you have the strength for this destiny. Light is fading out from too many hearts in too many worlds. Princes forget their true selves, as I did; nobility is dying, and the balance is being lost. But you've made it clear that you have the power and the will to remind a prince who he is, and that restores light to the universe, a change for the better no matter how small the scale. Take this path and it will not be the last time. You can become the Seeker of Princes."
"The Seeker of Princes..." She tested the words and the meaning of the destiny spread out before her like a landscape touched by sunrise. She would love, again and again, never to have, but always to seek. To protect, and become not a princess, but a guardian, a defender of what was true and right for the ones she chose. Awakener of dead lies, finder of lost dreams, warrior of exploded stars, restorer of light. A neverending quest. The extent of joy and sorrow would come upon her each time, and her happiness would be in looking at beautiful things with that person.
So she would walk this path, because she wanted to feel. She wanted to keep her soul. She wanted to find it again, that heartrending bliss. That was the way she knew how to live.
She drew herself up tall. "My name is Yumi, and I will be the Seeker of Princes."
The Prince gently took her head between his hands in something like a blessing, and she felt solid form return to her, the energy of her body and soul tied together again. "Then live, Seeker, and call yourself not Maigo, but Hoshimoto, star-seeking. I am indebted to you for freeing me, so if you should find yourself trapped in the darkest depths, call upon me for strength. You are brave to take this destiny. He was always right about the brightness inside you, Hoshimoto Yumi." He kissed her forehead. It felt like an old dream, like a lost memory from the childhood she'd never had. "When your work in this world is done, then step into another realm and begin your search again. When the time comes, you will know how to go. Hold on to your brightness, for it will never burn out..." He faded away just like a ghost, the way dreams vanish on waking, leaving the same kind of feeling behind.
She stood in the ruined planetarium, feeling utterly alone, but not lonely. Touga lay sleeping amid the debris. He was beautiful but it no longer burned so dazzlingly in her heart.
The future given her by the Prince didn't seem real at all. What was she supposed to do now? Her work here wasn't done, but what more could she do?
She would find a way. She always did. She murmured her new name, trying out its syllables. "Hoshimoto Yumi. Hoshimoto..."

Touga dreamed. He had a dream of searching and not finding, searching for something huge and vital just out of his reach. He was just on the verge...but he couldn't get to it...
Then Yumi, angel-winged, seemed to drift down from the sky in gauzy celestial raiments, smiling and holding out her hand. "Wake up. I'll take you to it."
He took her hand and then he woke. He sat up, and Yumi was there beside him, solid and whole. He touched her shoulder, making sure.
She looked at him with her amber eyes clear and serene. "My name is Hoshimoto Yumi. Hoshimoto, from 'star' and 'seeking.'"
"Seeking..." Everything came slowly back to him as though from a great distance. "Dios was here..."
"Abraxas, the god of revolution. He named me." She turned toward the shining broken planetarium. "Man, somebody should turn that off. What a waste of electricity."
He laughed. "Yeah. Let's turn it off and get out of here." He found the switch and flicked it off, and the vast room became almost completely dark. They went down in the elevator to the entrance lobby, where a few clumps of students were still hanging out.
Suddenly she knew what had to happen. Heedless of their ripped uniforms that made students look at one another curiously, she grabbed his hand and ran, pulling him behind her.
"Yumi?" He was confused, but he didn't stop. He trusted her. He had a feeling that it was a continuation of the dream—was he still dreaming?—and she was taking him somewhere he wanted to be. He couldn't see the exhilaration plain on her face, an expression like a child at a fair, like the day at the beach. Dusk had turned almost the entire sky pale pink.
Confused over the state of reality, he didn't realize that she was leading him to the dojo until they were already there. Both knew that Kyouichi would be inside, sullen and brooding, wondering what had taken place beyond the Rose Gate, if the image of the stupid girl dying in Touga's arms had been real. If she had really killed herself not out of her own despair, but to keep them from fighting...if she had really seen something there worth dying to protect...
Wondering if it was too late for him and the dead girl had Touga's heart... Wondering, Yumi knew, and wishing...
Touga looked at Yumi nervously, his heart quailing. Why did she still believe in this? It was gone...so far gone...
"Don't you run away," she whispered, somewhat conspiratorially, then kicked her shoes off and skipped into the dojo. He did want to run, but some kind of habitual pride took over—he wouldn't be that weak in front of her.
Kyouichi managed to mask his surprise and only raised an eybrow.
"I'm your fairy godmother," Yumi announced with a grin. "I can grant you one wish!" She held up a finger in his face. "What'll it be? C'mon, make a wish!"
"I wish you'd shut up and go away," he said, slicing the air with a real katana.
"Aw, I'll do that anyway. Make a real wish. What do you really, really wish for?"
"You're the one who thinks she already knows. Get out of here before I stop thinking about beheading you and really do it. You were supposed to be dead, anyway."
"Hm, does that mean I have to pick your wish for you?"
"No, it means I don't want any wishes from you. Go away, you crazy bitch."
"Nope! Can't go away 'til you make a really real wish!"
She really epitomized the meaning of "pest," he thought. He always had to play along to get rid of her. He got the eerie sense that she saw beneath his forbidding exterior to everything that was hidden away, and he knew that the impression wasn't wrong...
"Fine," he spat bitterly. "I wish for ten thousand lost dreams. How's that?"
"Perfect! I got 'em right here!" she shrilled so jubilantly that, thinking back on the morning, he had to wonder if she had some kind of bipolar disorder. Hell, she probably had every psychological problem in the book and then some. She bounced out and then there was a male "Hey!" and mischievous fairy laughter, followed by a crash.
Touga had expected her to beckon or maybe try to forcibly pull him in by the arm. Yumi caught him completely off guard when she skipped out past him and then body-checked him with all her strength, running against him, making him stumble into the dojo and finally fall over with an utterly undignified thud not far from Kyouichi. "Was that necessary?" he yelled.
"It certainly was. Bye- bye!" she called in English as she danced out again.
Kyouichi stared, unsure whether to laugh or run. "Does the word 'henpecked' mean anything to you?"
"Funny girl, isn't she," said Touga sheepishly, standing. He was abnormally disheveled, with his uniform practically in shreds. They both looked around uncertainly, as if waiting for some kind of cue.
Say it, Yumi willed, out of sight but not out of earshot. Say it. Somebody say it.
"I—" Touga began. He wasn't sure what he was about to say but before he got it out, a huge feeling choked him, regret and nostalgia and an interminable aching for something lost, the thing he was so afraid to face because it would only hurt...
"There's something in your hair," said Kyouichi with trained indifference.
Bewildered, Touga ran a hand through his hair automatically and a shining white feather drifted to the floor. He picked it up.
Yumi's...
All of that had been, somehow, real. For a little while she really had been dead. And she had sacrificed herself for...this...
Then she had gone even beyond that sacrifice, and parted with her own truth, so that she wouldn't want to stand in the way of it...
"You go deep, deep into to the center of your being, and find the one thing that's truer than everything else, and you don't hide it, but let it out, and it shines..."
He put the feather in an intact pocket, trying to find the courage. The one true thing...
He didn't have the courage. But he did it anyway. Touga walked to Kyouichi and touched his shoulder, making him stop swishing the katana and glare; but when he saw the look in Touga's eyes, the sword fell with a clang.
"Can you...forgive me...?" Touga's voice wouldn't work. Only a barely audible whisper came out.
Kyouichi tried not to tremble. He shouldn't believe it. This shouldn't be trusted. But maybe...
Just maybe...
Maybe was good enough, wasn't it?
The old dream came back with a jolt of emotion so intense there wasn't any word for it. Words were remote and useless abstractions. He collapsed into Touga's arms, tears trickling out as his chest shook quietly. Touga took the elastic from the forest hair to tangle his fingers in it, holding the one he'd been hurting so much... It was like reaching the calm in the eye of a storm.
Yumi risked a peek. It was the beginning of the end of that era. She mouthed the last verse of the song to herself.
"Even if bit by bit, even if it's just a little,
I want you to hold me and wrap me up tightly.
I want to dream again, and when I can do that,
Then, slowly opening my eyes, now I'm over the end."

She turned away, letting them have the moment to themselves. A beautiful, bittersweet feeling welled up in her chest, taking her over, as the cloak of a warm night fell and crickets chirped. It was so painfully exquisite, it made her giddy with joy to feel it, and she giggled as she pranced and cavorted away.
Touga heard the soft tinkling of her fey laughter. It felt like a tennyo's blessing upon the heartbreaking perfection of everything he'd denied for too long.

Miteki, Miki, and Juri were all sitting in the Kurihama dorm lounge, staring at the TV but not really watching, having eaten the comfort food that Miteki had prepared (trying not to get tears in it). There was an untouched bowl of miso soup on the table, chopsticks resting in it, an offering to Yumi's spirit.
"Aha, here's Teki-chan!" said the dead girl, bursting into the room.
"Eh!?" Juri started. Miki jumped.
"Yumi-chan!?" cried Miteki.
"Huh? What's wrong?" Seeing the ceremonial bowl of the miso soup she so favored, and Miteki's red-rimmed eyes, Yumi immediately understood. "Oh, Teki-chan, I'm so sorry! I told you that place was magic!—"
Miteki nearly knocked her over in a fierce hug.
"But—but—" Miki faltered. "Yumi-san, you left a suicide note!"
"Suicide note! You should know better than to read other people's love letters." Yumi went for the bowl of soup. "Suddenly it occurs to me how starving I am. Hey, is this still warm?"
"Don't eat that! It'd be bad luck!" Miteki said hoarsely. "And no, it's cold."
Juri handed Yumi the last onigiri. "Would you mind sitting down and telling us what the hell happened?"
"Thanks. Well, first I sold my soul," Yumi replied with her mouth full, "then that didn't work, so I tried harakiri, then that didn't work, so I used all my energy and fell out of love."
"Huh?" the other three blurted.
"Didn't work for what?" said Miki.
Yumi gulped. "To protect the shining thing, of course. Oh, and I think the Trustee Chairman's dead."
"Huh!?" they chorused again.
"Oh, is that what that was..." Miteki murmured. There had been another huge campus-wide blip, like that night a couple of weeks ago; but instead of a migraine, Miteki had gotten a feeling like a cage being unlocked.
"Yeah, dunno where he is, though." She shoved the entire remainder of the onigiri in her mouth, an impressive feat.
"You fell out of love? Really?" said Miteki, thinking it must be a shock to someone who loved so deeply.
Yumi shrugged. "More like jumped, actually."
"That's really brave," Juri remarked. She hadn't been able to pull it off yet.
Yumi shrugged again.
"It must be better for you," Miki added.
"I don't much care for it," said Yumi. "But if you want to get all technical and stuff, yeah, I guess it is."
Miteki laughed a bit. "But where's he?"
"Ssh." Yumi got a sly, guarded look. "It's a secret."
Everyone looked at her blankly, though Miteki thought she understood.
"So is there any more food, or do I have to go find the vending machines?"
They laughed. "You damn moocher," Miteki scolded as she led everyone back to her room for more sustenance.

Nearly everything about the campus turned slowly upsidedown. The Student Council rose garden, already withering from the absence of its caretaker, suddenly died completely. Buildings began to inexplicably crumble, to the point where some students had to find alternate housing. Within a week the deterioration became so advanced that it was clear that the school would have to close and kick everyone out, at least until the cause could be discovered and remedied.
The Trustee Chairman was nowhere to be found. Rumors of a murder floated around the city, and the cops were called in. The strangely well-preserved body of his missing fiancée, Ohtori Kanae, turned up beneath a sheet in Nemuro Memorial Hall during a police search. It seemed to detectives that rather than being the victim of murder, Ohtori Akio had committed one and fled the country. A manhunt was issued in national and international law enforcement circles, to no effect. If anyone had reservations about closing the school, they were effectively wiped out.
But perhaps the most significant changes were within the students themselves. Nanami and Kozue, both suffering deeply from similar identity crises, sat not far apart in the café terrace one day. Suddenly they looked at each other and got the kind of guilty expression people get upon realizing they've been complete idiots. Then they burst out laughing and became inseparable friends.
Miki looked up from playing his song one day, wondering if he would ever see Himemiya Anthy again. Then he saw Miteki standing in the doorway and realized that Anthy, who had never really cared for him, was gone; and Miteki, who had always cared for him, was here...
Juri remained consistently unapproachable, but seemed just a little less cold, a little more mirthful. She couldn't say that she had fallen out of love like Yumi, but maybe that old story was starting to loosen its painful grip on her...
Kyouichi seemed to be losing some of his bitterness, though not his aloofness. It appeared to the casual observer that he and Touga suddenly didn't hate each other as much. They were seen to be hanging out more frequently. Opportunities to flirt with the Student Council President became close to nonexistent, to the dismay of many a female student. They let it look, for the sake of convenience, that he was serious about Yumi rather than anyone else, although neither were ever spotted doing anything more serious than sitting around with him. Touga understood now the real identity of the man who had ruined his youth, and that it had all been just a scheme to create duellists. That he had been used in that way as well left new wounds over the old; but it was all over, and he had avenged himself. He and Yumi had avenged themselves and everyone else, and there was nothing for it but to look away from the past. The present deserved more attention, to make a future in which he could be his true self, with the one he'd always truly wanted, so they could break out of their shells and fly...
All of the Student Council members had long since noticed that on their rings, the Rose Signet was cracked, so no one wore the rings any more. Nearly every student at Ohtori Academy underwent some kind of epiphany that summer.
Yumi, however, wasn't sure she could call the feeling she had an epiphany. She was more fairy-like then ever, often caught with a mischievous pixie grin, a mysterious glint in her golden eyes, gangly and tinkling with laughter. But inside she felt an immense uncertainty, a fear that her future was empty. She and Touga talked like friends, and she felt that what she had with him now was really more like friendship than anything else. He would tell her how it went with Kyouichi, still a turbulent affair, and she would offer her remarks from the perspective of one who had loved him. She would tell him of her sense of going nowhere and he would tell her that she was free to find herself, that she reminded him how to live even if she felt empty inside. He called her Yumi-chan now, not in teasing, and it didn't sound strange at all.
Somehow, perhaps from an electrical short caused by the unexplained dilapidation all over campus, the Tower caught fire one evening just after sunset. The weather had been hot and dry, and by the time someone noticed and called the fire department, the conflagration had taken hold of everything at that end of the main campus. Most of the students, wary of staying in the dorms in case those too were ignited, wandered outside to watch. Touga and Yumi, sitting on the hill on the edge of campus, went to join the crowds.
Seeing the tall overtly phallic structure in flames gave Yumi a strange sense of awe and liberation. She wasn't the only one who felt that way, but she was the one uncivilized enough to start the riot. Later she would say she only did it because it was too damned hot watching the fire in the middle of summer.
She ripped off her Student Council jacket and standard issue skirt (both repaired by Miteki some time ago) and threw them toward the burning buildings with a rallying scream of, "Revolution!"
Touga thought this highly amusing, so he followed suit. Besides, that way she wasn't making a fool of herself, because once the Student Council President did it, everyone had to. And everyone did. Someone brought over a burning stick and flung it onto the pile of uniforms, so that soon there was a bonfire with hundreds of students dancing around in their underwear shouting, "Revolution! Revolution! Revolution!"
The firefighters, too busy with the blazing buildings to break up a student riot, called the police, who took their own sweet time getting there. But the students couldn't go back into their dorms with the risk of the fire spreading. They had nowhere to go, so the cops gave them emergency blankets to cover themselves and exasperatedly herded them onto the high bleachers, where they continued to chant until their voices failed, and after that to laugh hoarsely at the folly of adults.
Ohtori Academy was defeated.

There was hardly any damage to the dorms, from the fire anyway. Some students were already being put up in hotels until they could go home because of the condition of the buildings. Boxes of student belongings waiting to be shipped home littered the dorm complex.
The administration was obliged to find different schools for students to attend and teachers to work at, but this proved quite a challenge since all of the records had been destroyed. More imminent, however, was the need to prepare for the graduation ceremony—Ohtori's last—which was to take place after the Star Festival in July. It had to be postponed, and students participating and attending were placed in hotels. The school had a vast budget, and along with the seizure of the Trustee Chairman's assets and the insurance from the fire, this didn't leave much in the way of debt. The school was closing, after all.
Miteki told her family about her friend Hoshimoto Yumi, whose parents had died in a car crash, leaving her with a bit of amnesia and not a single living relative. Vapidly empathetic and well-to-do, the Kodama family graciously decided without hesitation to take in the fey orphan. Miteki's mother was of the liberal persuasion, and felt the need to congratulate the Ohtori students on their riot. When Miteki revealed that Yumi had started it, Kodama Rie was even more eager to meet her daughter's friend.
The former Student Council and those close to them lived extravagantly on the school budget at an old-fashioned inn by the sea outside the city, partying on the beach, strolling around in elegant yukata on the night of the Star Festival, which delighted Yumi no end. And none of them could complain much. After the graduation ceremony which saw Touga and Kyouichi off with high school diplomas, Miteki's parents announced that they would be leaving Tokyo in a few days to come get her and Yumi.


The sky is so blue it's painful to look at. Miteki and I put down the last boxes and wipe our foreheads, gazing out over the landscape as though we stand at the edge of the world from an outdated fable, looking out into deep space.
"Yumi-chan!" I hear. That voice out of old dreams, calling my name, calling a friend's name. A feeling I have no word for swells in my heart, something like nostalgia or regret.
Touga runs up to us. "Oh, I'm glad I caught you. Look, I found these." Smiling, a simple genuine smile that makes my soul all warm and aching, he holds out half a sheet of little pictures from a photo booth. It's from that first day we went to the beach... Wasn't that some previous incarnation, some different world?
I take them, staring at that image, that frozen piece of time—my pure, uncomplicated, overflowing joy captured in a tesselation of tiny rectangles. I wonder if that sort of bliss can ever come to me again. Someone has a radio on to pack by, and a song drifts on the breeze, faint as though the wind itself is singing to me.
"As if this image that I'm likely to forget, like time escaping me, could revive me, it woke me up..."
The sun is warm on my shoulders. Joy, sorrow, anticipation, fear, contentment, loneliness, every possible conflicting emotion is crammed inside me at once. I look at him and I know he feels the same. I know he was happy in these pictures too, though he wouldn't have recognized it at the time.
"I kept some," he says. "Don't tell Kyo-chan."
We laugh just a little, even as I feel tears on my cheeks, and I begin to cry for everything I was and everything I might become. He takes my hand.
"When I stop time, there I am dreaming by myself. Will I go through the fragile meetings again, to a world my heart reaches?" The sun shines and the wind sings, and I feel every ocean wave and tree and building, every ray of sunlight and blade of grass. Everything in the universe rushes into a point in my head, transforming into this thing called "now," reborn in every instant of awareness. Past and future merge upon the present with dizzying clarity. I've never been more real. "I wandered at a loss meaninglessly. I'm living for now, again holding my throbbing chest." Suddenly I understand—this is the true meaning of "revolution." Changing, a space between eras, moments that never come again. I breathe deep to keep from exploding with the power of it. "If I make it through the night, I wonder if there I'll be betrayed by pain. Make me see the future you believe in to the infinitely expanding universe." Standing in the bright sun, holding these pictures of my happiness. Leaving the one I've given everything for, even my own identity. Twice.
And somehow we've lived through this. Somehow, so we can keep living.
"When I stop time, there I am dreaming by myself. The sadness running at full speed is painful, to a future that bears no substance." No one has any words. I know there is nothing more beautiful than this moment.




Summer passed slowly into autumn; autumn went more quickly into winter, and winter finally became spring, bursting with blossoms. The destruction and rioting that closed Ohtori Academy remained the talk of the nation.
Miki came up to an exclusive school in Tokyo where he could take the college-level material that suited him, so he and Miteki were seldom far apart. Juri found a school in Osaka with a fencing team she could take over, and often came to visit. Touga and Kyouichi became what people called ronin, taking the year off to study for entrance exams, something they had neglected to do enough at Ohtori. Yumi more or less breezed through tenth grade, with her talent for picking up knowledge, and joined Kodama Rie on crusades for feminism or the environment or education reform. Then she played the part of an older sister and joined Miteki's father in teasing her about Miki. When old thoughts seemed to drag her down, she went to a temple of Kannon to cast them off, and if she saw any monks as she made offerings she would tell them a bit of the story of how their bodhisattva had seen her back from death.
Last time Yumi had seen Touga was when they all got together for the New Year. She didn't have that inexorable yearning to be with him, but it felt strange to her not being near him, like she had moved to a foreign country with unfamiliar customs. She thought often of the future promised to her by Dios, but it seemed impossibly far away, fantasies of another universe.
It seemed that way, even though she had magic from End Of The World. She could move things around without touching them, give or heal minor ailments with contact, charm people and even animals. She never used such skills, except in cases like Miteki suffering a severe headache. She could see spirits and unseen watchers, and her old friends were often around her, all five of them, so she talked to them when she was otherwise alone. They revered her now, for she had become a goddess to the unseen watchers, and they said that Dios had sent them to be with her when she travelled between worlds. But when spirits started coercing her into delivering messages from the other side, she learned why Anthy and Akio had masked that ability.
Now, in the spring, Touga had insisted they meet in some park outside Kyoto, not telling her why. But once she arrived, stepping out of the cab she'd taken from the station, she understood. Cherry blossoms were exploding everywhere, tunnels of pink clouds, drifting pink petals. It was so magnificent it made her chest ache. She didn't want to cry because that would blur her sight.
He appeared in jeans and a T-shirt with nonsense English on it, hair in a loose ponytail, casual and laid-back in sharp contrast to that rakish and relentlessly elegant player everyone used to know. It made her wonder if at the same time she'd wanted his true self, she had really been in love with the diamond shell... That was what she had fallen in love with, anyway. If she hadn't given up her feelings, she would still have loved whatever he became...
She didn't have those feelings any more, but she remembered them so well. Even though the fondness she felt for him now was friendship. And it was so beautiful here, she couldn't help but feel happy.
"I told you," he said. "I told you, you had to live to see cherry blossoms."
"You were right. I'm glad..."
They walked quietly side by side in the clouds of soft pink, closer than usual friends, but not holding hands like a couple. There were plenty of couples and families about. Anyone would think they really were together. Only they knew the truth.
"Why don't you bring Kyo-chan here?" she said as they sat down by a pond strewn with petals.
"Oh, you know him... He's still competitive enough that he can't stand to be around anything prettier than him. It threatens his manhood."
They laughed. "You wouldn't really say that cherry blossoms are prettier than him."
"Well...I guess I can't really say that. Besides, I really wanted to see you here. The light on your face when you look at something beautiful, I've always loved that."
"It really is wonderful." She leaned against his shoulder. "It's like every time I'm with you, there's a different kind of happiness, a new kind of beauty. I'm not the same person, but that's still true."
"That's how I hoped it would be for you." He stretched his legs, a bit embarrassed at saying such corny things, but her presence made him want to say them. "Yumi-chan, I hope we're always friends like this..."
"Yeah. This is the kind of memory I want to keep forever."
They sat in silence for a while, watching the petals drift down slowly as dreams and the sun sink toward the west. Eventually they got up to find a place to eat.
"So do you guys know where you're applying to college?"
"I think Kyo-chan's set on going to an engineering school, where there won't be so many girls to compete with. He's still wary of the entire fair sex, afraid they're going to steal me again."
"Isn't he more worried about me?" Yumi grinned.
"He's okay as long as I don't talk about you. Besides, he owes you for getting me to forswear my foolish ways. I wonder if some part of him really believes that you were his fairy godmother..."
She laughed. "I wonder."
"Well, we're not sure where we're going to school. We don't know what we'll do...you know, we just know that we want to go together..."
"That's how it should be." She smiled, looking up at the blossoms again.
"Did I tell you that we found a feather from you that day?"
"Really?"
"Yeah. It was stuck in my hair, this white, white feather. It almost glows. It's stayed that white, and crisp and soft, and I've never lost it, not for a day. It's like a charm from a shrine or something. It really feels like there's this power on it."
"Of course. Something like that would protect your dream."
"It's almost like it is that dream. That feather, it's really special to me. People laugh when I say it's an angel feather."
"I'm glad you have something like that."
"I wish I could give you that kind of thing."
"You did. That charm you got me at the Star Festival. That's just as special to me. I was mourning myself then...but still I really loved that summer..." They smiled.
They found a little corner shop with seats outside and went in. "We're out of saké!" the girl at the counter exclaimed upon their entry.
"We just want a snack," said Yumi.
"Oh, I'm sorry. It's just that everyone who's come in all day wants saké to drink under the cherry blossoms. We've got plenty of snacks!"
Laughing, they ordered and took their food to sit in the cooling spring air outside.
"You know, it's funny," he mused. "I keep thinking how weird everything used to be back there. It feels like now everything's gotten so normal."
She laughed loudly. "Normal, huh? You have a boyfriend, and I'm telekinetic." She made an ice cube float out of her glass by itself and drop back in with a clink.
She had never mentioned her talents before. He stared. "Did you really do that?"
"Yep. And I can do way more than that. Fairy-girl's still not normal."
"Well, I didn't say things are normal. I said it feels that way after Ohtori."
"Fuck Ohtori," she said flatly.
He laughed, agreeing. "Yeah. Really. But none of us should forget it, either."
"You can't forget things, but you can't hold onto them too much. Such a fine balance."
"It is that kind of balance. I don't think Kyo-chan and I have quite hit it yet, but we're probably getting there. That's the struggle we're living in now... Really, I can't believe you weren't born human. You're better at it than any of us."
"Guess I should be queen of the world or something then, huh."
"At least write some books on your philosophy," he laughed.
"It isn't complicated enough to fill any books. 'Find someone you care about and look at pretty things. This is the true path to happiness.' Hey, maybe I'll start one of those new-age religions instead."
"Hm, Yumi-chan the guru. It could work..."
"And we used to think I should be a courtesan. ...Anyway, it's not the difference between weird and normal," said Yumi. "I think it's more like the difference between chaos and peace."
"Yeah...you're right again. But there must be more chaos ahead."
"We can't see that far ahead. Now, we have the chance to find ourselves."
"If you start a religion, I'd be your first convert."
"Then let's observe the ritual of getting smashed looking at the flowers and watching the moon rise while singing drunk songs."
He laughed. "You'll be a popular guru."
Beautiful moments that never came again. Every time, a new kind of happiness. Discovering and rediscovering one's own truth. That was the reason for being human.
She existed in that peace, in the beauty of old and new memories, the calm of friendship and watching the people around her become their true selves, knowing that the thing she had come to protect, the shatteringly beautiful truth they thought gone forever, was shining once more...

Years went quietly by, letting them find themselves. Touga and Kyouichi, still gathering up lost dreams one by one, were at a university for things they probably wouldn't end up doing; Miteki and Yumi got into a two- year college. Miki and Miteki were adorably devoted, playing piano and singing together to achieve local fame when they performed songs first written by Yumi; and there was a joke about something between Juri and Kozue, but nothing really. Actually, Kozue found her type in older businessmen who liked to buy her things, and Juri's career as a model was taking off—rumor had it that she was more than a protegée to a high-end designer who looked like Maria Callas. Nanami turned into a ravishing blonde bombshell, and couldn't commit to anyone besides the younger boy who still followed her around. Yumi had no interest in getting a boyfriend, though not for lack of interest from the opposite sex. No one could pique her interest. But in the dead of winter, the long cold nights that went incessantly on with no one to hold her, not even in reveries, loneliness closed in, the loneliness of not being in love. Her nature was restless. She could stay here no longer.
It was time...to step into that future...
She bid farewell to Miteki and to Touga, the only ones who knew and actually believed that she was from another world. Maybe everyone else would think she'd committed suicide, but she couldn't help that. She had to promise those two that she'd come back, and someday she would, because she never wanted to forget.
She looked so forlorn when she came to say goodbye, Touga couldn't keep from holding her. There was still a tiny echo of that long-ago sense of rightness from being in his arms; but really it was just nice to be held warmly by someone who cared for her, when it was so cold outside...
That person she'd given everything for. The prince she had to protect...and now her friend.
It was frigid outside, and not much better inside the cheap apartment, so they had hot cocoa and sat quietly, looking out at the thin flurry of snow that turned to glitter under the streetlamps. Kyouichi came back then, so Yumi brought him the cup they'd kept on the stove for him, grinning rather domestically. He got a slightly cynical look, not as bitter or suspicious as would have come into his face in years gone by.
"What'd you do now, get married while I was out?"
"Not so much," laughed Touga.
Yumi poked his forest green hair, because the combination of a post-kendo shower and the weather outside had made it solid with ice. "Your hair's frozen!" she giggled.
"Ditzy as ever, I see." He sat down, sipping from the steaming mug.
"Oh, be nice," said Touga. "She's leaving."
"Leaving?" Kyouichi looked up, his curiosity genuine. "Where? Studying abroad?"
"Guess you could say that," Yumi replied, rather wistfully.
"Do you know where you're going?" asked Touga.
"Of course not. I won't know until I get there."
"You're studying abroad and you don't know where," said Kyouichi with a smirk, half-questioning.
"Well, if you count another world as studying abroad..."
He looked at Touga. "Where do you find these people?"
Touga looked pointedly back. "I think it's more that they find me..."
"I was searching," Yumi agreed. But she stared sadly into her cup. It still felt too unlikely that she would fall in love again, somewhere else, starting all over. She wanted to, and yet she was afraid; but the funny thing was she couldn't tell whether she was afraid of the feeling itself or afraid it wouldn't really happen. She felt so...bleak. Maybe it was just the winter and she didn't have to go to another world, only to somewhere warm.
"Why so blue? It must be exciting to go to other worlds," Kyouichi teased, as if to echo her thoughts, but everyone in the room knew that he was suspicious that Yumi was still in love.
"I can't stand winter," she said. "Cold makes you feel lonelier. When there's no one to hold you, not even in dreams...when you don't even have that kind of feeling to keep you warm...it's colder than ever." Her voice cracked and she hid her face in her mug, trying to blink back tears and coat the sadness with hot cocoa, then she smiled to cover. "I'm sorry, I'm so depressing..."
Touga gave Kyouichi a pleading look. Can't we keep her warm, just for a little bit?
Seldom one for subtlety, Kyouichi remarked, "For an ex-girlfriend, you're pretty high-maintenance."
She didn't know why, but that really stung. She pursed her lips, feeling as though she ought to remind him that she could have chosen to destroy him and take that person for herself.
He hadn't meant to hurt her, not really. He meant to say that he would put up with her, and it came out harsh, just because he was used to the idea of disdaining her, even though he didn't now. He never was sure how to feel toward her. He felt Touga glaring at him, but not because of that, he looked away and muttered an apology.
She stared at the table, saying nothing. If she opened her mouth she would either cry or say something spiteful.
Kyouichi rubbed the back of his head, where the hair was still thawing, stuck in its ponytail shape. That really had been mean. Touga wouldn't forgive him until she did. But he couldn't sort out what he'd meant to say. "Well, maybe you've forgotten how stupid I can get with words. Besides, it doesn't help to have frozen hair...it probably kills your brain cells faster or something..."
She managed to laugh a bit, but the loneliness was so cruel. It occurred to her that she had no one to come home to if her hair was frozen, and she never would. That was not in her destiny. To seek and never to have, doomed to repeat the same story over and over.
With no one in that place in her heart, she was cold and weak. She tensed, almost doubling over to keep tears from coming out. I'm lonely, her soul cried, again and again, an endless winter night. I'm lonely, I'm lonely, I'm lonely. She should leave. She should get out of here now, before she drove herself between them in her desperation.
"Yumi..." Touga murmured as she got to her feet. He couldn't let her leave like that. Touching Kyouichi's hand apologetically, he stood and held her again, in his embrace where it was warm. She sighed, tears spilling from her lashes.
Kyouichi sniffed and drained the last of his cocoa. Poor little lonesome girl. One did have to feel sorry for girls. They just never caught on to real life. Still trying to get Touga...no, that wasn't the case. This was the girl whose surreal martyrdom had created the angel feather hanging on the wall...and she was leaving, because she was so lonely here she couldn't stand it anymore. He had been well acquainted with the demons of loneliness. They were some of the worst.
Wondering what direction the night was supposed to be taking, he got the futon from the cabinet and unrolled it with all its winter quilts. It was cold and time to get into bed, chastely or not. Things didn't go the way he'd suspected for a few moments; it ended up with them all tangled up in underthings beneath the thick blankets, completely innocent, simply huddled together for heat. Yumi was enfolded in their warmth, not driven between them, but holding them together...
She felt a little bit of desire, but it was only an echo, a reflex. Finally, she was warm, in the midst of the beautiful thing she had done so much to protect, these two people who loved each other so completely and still had room in their hearts to keep her warm for just this night. Slowly her sadness melted away like the ice in Kyouichi's hair, and it was completely silent but for calm breath, utterly peaceful. This was the meaning of Touga's name...winter-bud, the promise of warmth and blossom even in the deepest cold, the certainty of spring no matter how long the winter, hope in a flower bud pushing up through the frost, a dream of the future. That the north wind could cease to blow and diamond shells could break. That no one had said she would have to go on seeking forever. Only as long as she wanted to.
And she would never forget.

She took the little pictures from that day at the beach in her pocket, and a bracelet from Miteki, and the charm from the Star Festival that first summer on a cord around her neck. That was all she took, no more than she needed.
Now, a new revolution, a new destiny. New happiness and new sorrow. Another kind of beauty...the search for another prince. There were stars below and stars above, near stars of metropolitan lights and far stars of endless space, sparkling everywhere in the night to create an illusion of no horizon. Hoshimoto Yumi, the Seeker, stood on the highest platform of Tokyo Tower beneath the icily clear sickle moon and winter constellations as the new year turned, looking out at the glittering city.
"Endrei'anna, open the door."



//Holy shit, it's OVER! You MADE IT!! I should buy you a beer. PLZ R+R!!!11!XDXD ..er.. I mean ... If you leave concrit I'll buy you TWO beers.
Gee, I sure am glad this is an anime Sue, so I can't get sporked to death on Deleterius.
Yes, there will be a sequel. This is what happens when college summers are 4 months long.