Author's Notes: So sorry for not updating regularly like I used to do before. It's not really that I'm losing interest in writing, it's just that I seem to be having some problem to putting scenes in my head into words. And I'd hate giving second-rate effort from me when I know I could make stuff better, which is why this chapter has been in incubation for a long, long time. Plus, to make up for the long wait, I've made this extra juicy! Yup, this is specially dedicated to all you who read and review!

Without further ado, one of the most emotional and angst-filled chapters I've written for Echoes of the Past...

Twisted Fate

Kaede still sat motionless; facing the city that knew her so well, yet never knew her at all. There was a twinge of light coming from the far distance. She squinted to see if it was the sun, her savior from this reminiscing, rising up to keep her busy for yet another day. But blinking, realized, that it was just another huge roving spotlight of a rave.

Foolish kids. They know not what life they waste.

Her heart slumped back in its desolate place again as she realized none of the lights before her now were real. Her sun has not yet awakened. Sitting back, the darkness engulfed her once more as memories took her consciousness back to her yesteryears.

~ * ~ ~ * ~~ * ~

BLAM!

Kaede almost lost the frighteningly calm composure she held all her life when she heard a sound that only meant they had a flat tire.

What now? She thought irately.

That morning, she had woken up extra early just to prepare for this big meeting, but during breakfast, the new maid clumsily spilled maple syrup onto her lap instead of her plate. The twit was a nervous wreck that Kaede needed only to shoot her a glare and she went scampering out of her sight. Something was just not aligned with the cosmos that day.

It seemed that destiny just wouldn't allow her to go to that important meeting regarding that new plantation they were going to build. Sure, she knew she was going to buy off land from poor farmers who would be left homeless, but hey, she was going to provide them with jobs as laborers. And they would only wait for…two years. Was it karma? She wasn't that bad, so why was the world going against her?

A knock on her window pulled Kaede from her thoughts. "Ma'am, I'm afraid we have a flat tire," the chauffeur informed her softly awaiting a barrage of insults about his incompetence. "And, uhh, no spare tire."

Already, Kaede could feel the blood rushing to her face. She was mad, no; furious as she punched in the number of the office on her cell phone only to find that there was no network signal in that god-forsaken area. She didn't know if it was because of the stuffy confines of the limousine or the unventilated humid weather, but she suddenly couldn't breathe properly. Calming herself, she stepped out gracefully out of the car and left the fumbling chauffeur with one order, "Wait for me here."

She walked to the nearest establishment, which happened to be an aged, rickety bar, to see if she could use the telephone, if there even was one. As the door swung open, she glanced casually at the patrons and spotted two men sharing a drink on the left side and a solitary man coming out from the washroom. She breathed a sigh of relief as she spotted a payphone near the washroom.

She turned her back to the people, cupping the phone under her hand to suppress the yell she was about to release on her agent. She had always been strict with keeping up with deadlines and being on time for meetings. Like her father said, 'Time is Money' and Kaede was never pleased to lose money, especially money that she worked her butt off to earn.

"Joe, here's a ten for all drinks," the man from the washroom said, placing the bill on the counter as he shrugged his coat on.

"I need to be in this meeting—" Kaede stopped in mid-sentence as she snapped her head to look at the man who was about to leave the bar.

He sounded just like--but it can't be. He's dead… He's been dead for three years.

The man was of Hisaki's height, but thinner. This man was not Hisaki. Hisaki was well formed as he used to work out thrice a week in the gym. This man was not Hisaki. That defeated slouch in his posture couldn't be Hisaki. This man was not Hisaki. Hisaki has long been gone. Kaede repeated the words over and over to herself.

This man was not--

Kaede was about to shake these thoughts away, when the man turned around and walked back to retrieve his baseball cap on the counter.

"Staring is rude" has been hammered into Kaede's head for all those years, but she had to find out if by any chance the heavens had reincarnated Hisaki into some other man.

Just as Kaede turned to face him, the man looked up, meeting her stare. His eyes widened in surprise, a mixture of recognition and disbelief, at the woman standing right in front of him. Kaede's face split into a wide smile as she threw her arms around Hisaki, unable to contain the barrage of emotions flooding inside her. In that brief second, Kaede forgot about who she was, where they were and how they looked. All she cared about was that she had found the love she thought was forever lost.

Hisaki hugged her as tightly as he arms could permit. He couldn't believe it either. After three years, her hair was still as soft, her scent still captured him and her body still contoured perfectly to his.

"Is it you? Is it really you?" Kaede whispered into Hisaki, hoping that he was not an illusion, praying that this moment was real. For what felt like a lifetime, they stayed in that embrace, afraid to let go, afraid to ask, afraid to believe again.

"Kaede, it's been so long," He whispered back, holding her tighter lest she fade away in a dreamy mist.

"Hisaki, I thought you were gone…" Kaede breathed a huge sigh of relief as she leaned onto Hisaki, a gaunt and tired Hisaki. "I thought you were…dead." The last word sounded as unreal to her as the man standing before her.

"And you—" Hisaki suddenly stiffened as reality sank in. "You're married."

Kaede looked as the expression of bliss and relief on his face just moments ago now turned bitter as he roughly pulled away from her.

"You married a man, just what, a month after I was gone? How could you just forget about me so easily?" His eyes that used to look at her tenderly now looked like molten ores, burning guilt and accusations into her.

"No, you don't understand. Please—" she begged to explain, to tell him what really went on, what pushed her to agree.

"Damn right I don't," he stubbornly spoke, venting out the hurt that fermented inside of him for all those years that he waited to have her back. "Do you know how much it hurt as I watched you exchange vows with a man that was supposed to be me? Do you know how it stabbed me as I watched your father give you to another man?" His voice was voice was raw, trying to stifle the pain that ate him, that covered his words. "…And to my brother no less!"

Kaii is his brother?

Kaede cupped her mouth to stifle her surprise. She didn't know. For the life of her, she didn't know…

"Hisaki, please… You were gone, I thought--" But before she could ask anymore of the questions that hounded her, Hisaki had leaped at the chance.

"You thought you should jump at an opportunity like that, is that it?" He spoke to her in a condescending tone and she felt herself growing smaller, not knowing she could actually shrink even smaller than how little she already felt.

"It's not that. I swear." Kaede would swear on her own grave just as long as he believed her, but even if she did, she wasn't sure she could convince him. When she agreed to marry Kaii in his place, pretending to be him, Hisaki didn't know what hit him as he went crashing to the ground. Betrayed by his own brother and the only woman he ever loved. He had never gotten up from that fall.

"Kaede, you said you loved me." His tone was sharp, biting as he turned his back on her.

"I did!" She hung onto his back, forgetting all that she was known for in that one maddening moment, wrapping her arms around the only man he felt safe with, the only man she wanted to spend her life with. "I do…I still do."

"Why, Kaede?" His head was hung low, and even though she couldn't see his eyes from behind, she could feel the sting in his tears as they fell on her hands. A single word hung in the tense air surrounding them, "Why?"

"I…was with child." A heavy burden dissipated promptly after she said the words that had bound her to her guilt for years.

He slowly turned around to face her.

"Am I…the father?"

"No," Kaede said with a heavy heart as twinges of regret went through her in tiny shivers. She would wish a thousand times over that he was the father of Tsubaki. She could've lied and say yes, but enough lies were made to last this lifetime. Kaede was tired of running from the guilt that kept her afraid at all times.

His face mirrored a thousand questions, but mainly it was, "Then, who?"

"I…don't know." With that, she slumped onto the nearby bar stool and kept her eyes on the floor, afraid of looking into accusing eyes.

"You slept with another man when you thought I was gone?" He said in disbelief, his mouth hanging open as though this woman in front of him couldn't have been the same woman he fell in love with.

The words hurt. It was the truth, but still…the words hurt so badly.

"Kaede, I don't know you anymore." Hisaki brushed his fingers through his messy hair in exasperation.

"Hisaki, forgive me." she pleaded. Kaede took his hand, hoping she could make him feel the genuine regret and shame she was feeling. If she could turn back the time, she knew she wouldn't be hasty. But she couldn't, just like all those who made mistakes they shouldn't even have thought of in the first place.

Slowly, she looked up with eyes beseeching absolution; only to be stared back at with his dim spheres flamed with scorn.

Hisaki was almost perfect, but perfection in this mortal world does not exist. He had learned how to be every bit of a gentleman, but one thing he had never learned was how to forgive.

Kaii was one of the unfortunate few who received the end of his wrath.

Almost twenty years ago, Kaii made the mistake of negligence, a mistake that any teenager could have made. But this simple oversight had been occurred at the wrong time and place. Hisaki was away in university then, taking up Business Economics on a scholarship. Kaii was in highschool and their youngest sister was in second grade. Kaii was supposed to walk with her home each day, as their parents are both working extra shifts just to make ends meet.

But that fateful day, Kaii decided at the last minute to meet up with friends to hang out instead and convinced his sister to go home on her own. Pumped up by Kaii's exaggeration of how she's all grown up and able to take care of herself, their little sister confidently walked on home.

Kaii came running home late that afternoon to the sounds of wailing sirens in their neighbourhood, only to find his parents crouched together in tears. Their only sister was dead. She was run over by a ten-wheeler truck whose driver didn't see her leisurely crossing down the road, moreso did not expect her crossing when the lights were green.

Hisaki jumped on the train home as soon as he heard. He almost ripped the driver's throat at the police station, but the policemen held him until he calmed and sat down helplessly, tears falling down his cheeks for a child who would never grow up. He had never been so angry, so angry that he was ready to commit murder.

Kaii never went back home after that, guilt-ridden by the death of their sister and because he knew Hisaki would never have forgiven him.

"I can't…" Hisaki confessed regretfully, his own disability weighing him down as well. "If there's one thing I can't do, I can't forgive."

Kaede's heart sank to the bottom of her stomach. As though he had punched her right then and there, Kaede winced from the pain that sliced inside her. She never expected him to be so blunt, so uncaring. But maybe years of suffering made him a hard, unfeeling man.

"Please then, give me this one night. Just this one, to remember you by…for old time's sake." Kaede knew it sounded absolutely pathetic at all points of view. She knew it was stupid to even ask this of him. But she wanted him so bad in her life. She wanted to have him in his arms this one night, even just for a few hours, so she can ingrain everything about him in her mind. If she lived for almost nothing, maybe she can live off his memory, even just that illusion, for the rest of her life.

Hisaki was quiet for a while, deeply considering her request. He obliged with merely a nod. Inside, maybe he knew it was what he needed too. They had to put a closure to their false hopes and dreams now that they were never coming true.

After being droven to the nearest hotel, Hisaki & Kaede drank glass after glass of the finest red wine the hotel had in stock, just sitting in the most luxurious room, contemplating, perhaps half thinking that the alcohol could mottle their senses and make them believe, even for a short while, that the person in front of them was the same one they had lost years ago. Make believe, the game of pretend was all there was left to it.

Maybe it was the wine, the softly playing music, the dark ambience or the years of longing. But whatever it was, the intense longing for each other finally took over.

Barely conscious of his actions, Hisaki faced Kaede with a menacing hunger in his eyes, his pain momentarily numbed by alcohol. He kissed her aggressively, tasting the sweet remains of the wine that still lingered on her lips, pushing her against her seat. Her mind screamed for her to push him away, a side of Hisaki she never knew, but her will waned, because her body desired to satisfy its suppressed cravings. Soon, they were in a tight embrace, lips locked in a fiery battle of tongues, limbs imprisoning them in, as hands clawed on each other's clothes that felt too hot and too rough on the inflamed skin. Hisaki and Kaede satisfied their bodily hunger as their sensations peaked one after the other in explosions only sexual intercourse could have delivered.

Kaede and Hisaki would have wanted to believe and remember that night as one filled with making love, but there was no love that mediated in the act of passion they shared. In the end, it was only gratifying sex of a one night stand.

Dawn came and passed.

After a sound slumber, one of the longest and most peaceful sleeps she has had for such a long time, Kaede reached to feel Hisaki beside her.

But she grasped nothing but air.

Author's Thank You Notes:


888: Thanks for the very nice comment. It was really assuring.

BlackArmoria: WOW!!! New reader! Intriguing nickname...where'd it come from? Thanks for reviewing...as for Tsubaki's father, Kaede doesn't really know. That's because she went crazy when her father asked her to marry Kaii, remember? She was grieving then, but she didn't know what to do so she decided to just leave her room and go wild.

windsoffortune: Yay!!! You're back! I've missed your reviews...SO MUCH! Yeah, Tsubaki is a little darling, the kind of child who you'd want for a daughter, unfortunately, her parents doesn't seem to actually realize that.

deepseadolphin: New reviewer! *showers confetti* Hurrah! Thanks for the comment. I really felt good about my writing. ^_~

jeffer: Needs more dialogue, huh? Well, I have comparatively more dialogues in this chap...how's that for starters? Thanks for reviewing! I really appreciate it.

cOokIng PoT: Yay! I'm glad you reviewed...it's really a delight to hear from you. Thanks!!! I'm looking forward to more of these! *Wink*

GreenCookie: Hey! I'm glad I finally got a review from ya. I've been waiting SO LONG. Hehehe!!! And yes, you have discovered where I stash all that angst just boiling under my skin. About the Hisaki not being Hisaki, I sort of did it on purpose. I was picturing it as the scene played in my head, where Kaii does look EXACTLY like Hisaki but Kaede knew inside her that he was an impostor. Get me? Or do I really need to make it clearer? If I do, how do you think would I rewrite it? Need help.

Buzz03: Yippee!!! Another old reviewer is back! I'm really glad that you've reviewed the past three chapters you've missed. I really really appreciate that! Keep on reading to answer the questions you have in mind.

Gal: Here's the stew I've been cooking. Hehehehe! Thanks for the encouraging reviews!

Sheen: Hey! I thought I wouldn't hear from you again. I'm glad you're still reading. ^_^

Thank you everyone for the awesome reviews! I'll be writing the next chap as soon as possible. There are several hints on the plot already planted in this chap. Please review some more!