Disclaimer: Same old, same old. (I have a habit of repeating things very quickly right after another, as you might be able to tell from past disclaimers).

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He never saw the same old Loriko again. He saw her again, surely, but she wasn't herself. The doctors described her as having held over shock, that she would eventually get over it. But she never did.

The hardest part for Kurama was her reaction to him. Every time he got near, she'd look at him with terror in her eyes. Then, she'd scream and scream until he left. No one could get her to calm down when he was nearby, nor could anyone discover what it was about Kurama she was so afraid of. Eventually, the doctors just said it was his own involvement in the incident. That, maybe everything relating to the incident somehow scared her, that it brought back bad memories, or something of the sort. No one ever guessed the truth.

'I suppose it simply didn't occur to them that a child could possibly be the one to cause so much damage,' thought Kurama. 'It just isn't possible, even with my other violence records. No child could ever kill five men, cold blooded. But I did,' he thought looking down at his hands. 'I lost control again, and I did.'

Kurama couldn't understand this feeling. Why should he feel guilty for killing these few couple of men, when he had killed so many other people in the past and felt no remorse at all? And those people had been innocent too. The world was probably better without those ruthless thieves. Yet, he could not stop himself from feeling a horrible kind of uncleanness. The kind of uncleanness that isn't as easy to wash away as blood was. It was blood of the heart.

"Shuichi dear, are you alright?" his mother called from outside the bathroom door.

Kurama, jumping from the noise, looked up quickly from his hands. "Yeah, mom," he told her. "I'm just fine."

"Okay," she said, although he could tell she was still a little worried. She walked away from the door though, leaving him again to his thoughts.

Kurama looked back down at his hands. They looked clean. His pale hands were soft and his fingernails trimmed and neatly kept. But to Kurama, they looked like the hands of a killer. He would have sworn, every once in a while when he glanced down quickly at them, that they had blood on them.

He ran his hands once more under the cool water, than turned the tab off. Wiping his hands on his shirt, he glanced up in the mirror at himself. 'It's amazing,' Kurama thought to himself, 'how different I've become. Not just on the inside, but on the outside, too.'

Kurama's hair was a rose red color, which he wore long down his back. His hair color might have changed much, but when he couldn't feel the swoosh of long hair as he turned his head, couldn't brush his mane of tangles every morning, he didn't feel like himself anymore. 'It's just not right,' he thought, 'for people to have short hair.'

His eyes were a bright green color, which sparkled like emeralds. No, not like emeralds. They weren't any kind of stone. The best way to describe his eyes was like two black beetles, each sitting on a bright green leaf just after rainfall. The green was so bright, so vivid, that it seemed to have a life of it's own. It seemed to dance like candlelight. Yes, that's the best way to describe it; like a green flame, flickering in the wind.

His skin was oddly pale, but Kurama assumed that was a characteristic he carried over from his demon body. He was a light cream colored, like those skin colored sofas. It even carried the slightest tint of brown, but it wasn't the tiniest bit read.

The reincarnated demon's smell was an odd one. It was neither a kitsune's smell, nor a human's smell. It seemed to be a kind of odd mixture of the two, a little bit like a rose, maybe mixed with the smell of wet hair. But not wet fox hair. Wet human hair, was the best way to describe it. Like his own hair, fresh out of the shower.

The size of the boy was an odd one and annoyed him much. It was a characteristic he still hadn't gotten used to. In his demon form, he was well over seven feet tall. In his human form, he was barely four. 'Well, I am only eight after all,' Kurama thought to himself. 'I'll grow, I suppose.' The rest of his body too was young and not as fully developed as his normal form was. The boy sighed, almost sadly. 'It would be nice to be so strong again. In that form, no one would kick me around,' he thought, annoyed.

He ran his wet hand through his hair, leaving a dark, damp streak. Sighing once, he opened the bathroom door and stepped into the hallway. He looked down both ways, looking for his mother. Not spying her, he listened intently for any sounds of breathing. Although his hearing was barely even a fraction of what it was in his demon form and he was drastically in need of ki practice, he heard a faint breathing coming from the living room.

Kurama trotted down the brown-carpeted hallway into the living room. His mother was sitting on the sofa reading a thick book of some sort. When he entered she glanced up to look at the boy, a slightly worried expression still on her face.

Not wanting to trouble her further, Kurama asked his human mother, "May I go for a little walk?"

The woman looked at her son for a minute. 'He looks tired, with small black lines under his eyes and a few random strands of hair floating around his head,' she thought, studying him. 'This has hurt him harder then he'd care to admit. Loriko was his best friend, his only friend, and now she goes crazy every time he comes close.' She hated letting her only son go out alone, particularly with the recent events. 'But I know Shuichi,' she thought to herself. 'He'll go crazy himself if I don't let him leave the house. The boy isn't the kind who can keep himself cooped up indoors for very long.'

She sighed, than told the boy unwillingly, "alright, you can go." Once she would have been rewarded with a huge smile. Now, it brought only a small one, from the very corner of his mouth, showing her just how much it was affecting him.

As the boy turned to leave, she called back, "Wait, Shuichi?" he turned back to look at his human mother.

She hesitated for a moment, then said quickly, "be careful, alright?" Kurama looked at her with blank eyes for a moment, then smiled and nodded, stepping out into the light.

Kurama glanced up at the sky. It was bright out, almost the exact opposite of the weather on THAT day. He shook his head realizing what he had just thought of. 'Great, now I'm comparing everything to then. Learn to live in the present, Kurama,' he thought smiling ruefully. 'That's where everyone else lives.'

Lightening his spirits a little, he stopped to look down at his little garden he had planted in the corner of the front yard. He leaned down, brushing the leaves on his favorite kind of herb, thyme (a/n: thyme is my favorite herb!). It swayed a little when his fingers came close, reaching out and feeding off of his ki. He smiled a little at its reaction, than checked the other plants. Each of them seemed to be in healthy condition, thriving even, with the help of his own aura.

The boy stood up and brushed the dirt off of his blue jeans. He then reached over to check the rose bush, studying the leaves closely. Then, his eyes lit upon a gorgeous, red rose in the center of the bush. He reached in to touch it, stroking its petals softly, like one would stroke the cheek of a baby. The bush, as if sensing his joy in the pretty flower, swayed softly.

Suddenly, the rose Kurama had been reaching for broke off the rest of the vine. The fox, startled by the snapping, jerked his hand and arm back quickly. Catching his shirt on a few thorns, the sharp daggers punctured his skin, drawing blood. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth, and barely whispered, "ouch," softly to himself. Pulling up his torn sleeve, he studied the red scratches across his arm.

The bush drew back a little from Kurama, apologizing to the boy for cutting him.

He laughed softly and thought at the bush, knowing it could hear his thoughts, ::that's alright::

The bush swayed again. Kurama, pushing his sleeve back down again, watched the bush wide-eyed as it leaned towards fallen rose. ::You want me to have it?:: he asked the bush. The bush swayed again, indicating an affirmative.  Then he smiled down at the bush. :That's very kind of you to give your most beautiful flower to me,:: he told the bush, reaching under the tangle of thorn covered vines and prickly leaves.

He pulled the flower out, clutching the stem in his hand gently, for fear her might break it. Digging his nose into the folds of the petals, he inhaled deeply, drawing the sweet sent into him. He smiled, thanked the rose bush once more, and exited the yard, the red rose still clutched tightly in his hand.

Kurama walked aimlessly for a while, letting his feet take him where they would. He studied the houses and the trees, stopping every once in a while to give a quick greeting to a shrub or herb. They couldn't answer back, at least not in words, but the boy knew they appreciated his kindness.

Suddenly, he realized where he was. The reincarnated human had been careless allowing himself to walk to the town park, a pretty place, with a large jungle gym and a thick grove of trees. It was the same place he had spent so many hours with Loriko, talking and playing, sharing each other's jokes and just taking joy in someone else's happiness.

Loriko's favorite part of the structure had always been the monkey bars, while Kurama's had been the swings. "There is no greater joy," he had once told Loriko, "then working so hard to get yourself so high, then taking in all the beauty of where you are and how hard you work." "No way!" Loriko had countered. "The monkey bars are much more fun! You set a goal for yourself then go to get it, with only your own strength to get you there." The two of them had debated long hours about this….monkey bars, swings, monkey bars, swings. They had never finished the debate.

Kurama shook his head, irritated with himself. 'There are to many memories here,' he thought to himself. 'It's to full of happiness and joy. This place can never be the same sanctuary it once was.'

As he was turning to leave, he suddenly stopped. There was a noise, and a very odd one, coming from the forest glade by the park. If he had been in fox form, his ears would have twitched back, trying to pick up the sound. He shook his head ruefully. 'It's not my business,' he thought to himself.' But he paused again. Then, the fox sighed. Turning around he murmured to himself, "Oh well, you know what those humans say…curiosity killed the cat, but the fox gets the mat."

He plunged off into the thick trees.

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Hi fans,

Not much to say. I've been really sick lately, so I don't want to type much.

Thanks everyone who told me how Hiei and Kurama met. I'm going to have to change it a little to suit my story, but I'll try to work those versions in.

Next chapter will either be up on Saturday or next Tuesday. Sorry it will take so long.

I'm going to go lie down and suffer a little more.

Dream Fox