"Sorry Anna. I love someone else." He answered slowly. It was all she had to hear before she finally lost control of herself.

Heartbroken Itako

She didn't say a word. The itako got up and left the restaurant without another word. The hair covering her face was enough for her to hide the masked heartbreak she had undergone all in less than thirty seconds.

"Miss Anna-chan!" Ryu waved joyfully although he wasn't able to see the tears that dripped from her face. She ignored the Elvis impersonator and left the restaurant silently.

Tamao had her hand over her mouth the entire time. Manta seemed to have passed out entirely leaving Yoh to stare at his food the entire time with a scowl on his face.

"Boss?" Ryu tapped lightly on the boy's shoulder. Yoh glanced at the taller shaman with surprise like nothing had happened.

"What is it, Ryu?" Yoh asked.

'I can't scold boss. He probably said something that made Anna-chan upset, but nothing ever makes Anna-chan sad! Maybe a relative of hers passed away or Yoh even...' Ryu thought to himself.

"Is Anna-chan okay? What happened?" he asked unaware that he was intruding their privacy. This was definitely not the time to be yelling at his leader's face. Yoh might not even be the cause of Anna's depression for the past several weeks.

"Umm..." Yoh stared at his food again and beamed. "Nothing too important." Tamao recoiled in alarm. It was fortunate that Manta had already passed out. The shock seemed to have got to him more than anyone else.

How could Yoh say something like that? The pink-haired psychic avoided her ouija board for the answer. 'Am I just blindly loving someone for so long?'

'Or is it because no one could ever live without living to love someone?'

Her vision became a wide blur as she stepped clumsily over the dirt road. She walked to wherever the road might take her. What place was there for her to go? Only her feet and the dirt path could take her somewhere far from here. What was the point of going on after your life was based on one thing alone?

She recalled several of her past adolescent classmates argue after reading poetry by Edgar Allen Poe that people just had to move on. 'Who cared anyway?' They would say. It was a selfish thing for such stupid adolescents. Life should be so simple. 'Just move on'. It's that easy, right?

The itako tried finding the right path that would make her life 'easy to move on'. She shook her head and continued down the lonely road.

"Was that the right thing to do, Yoh?" Tamao murmured. Yoh nodded almost confidently.

"She had to know the truth." Yoh answered softly. "I couldn't lie to her, even if she is my fiancée." Tamao understood and nodded sadly.

"If you said that to me too...I...would be disconcerted."

"Tamao, don't get the wrong idea. I know you would love me regardless of whatever happens and I'm thankful." Tamao covered her mouth as she felt her face become numb from mixed feelings. "I want Anna to rely on someone who can give her unconditional love. That person isn't me.

"People can recover and forget. Anna is strong. Even I have faith in her." He smiled. Tamao pushed her food away. It was definitely the last straw she was willing to take. The person in front of her was not the person she thought he was. It was enough no matter how innocent other people said she was, she was by no means, stupidly ignorant. "Tamao?"

"I'm done."

"You haven't even finished half..." Yoh muttered.

"I know." she whispered. "Did you have to give Anna any false hopes?" Her eyes began to tear up. She never thought she would have ever reproached someone like Yoh in her lifetime. It didn't even have anything to do with her.

"Are you implying I should have pretended to love her? Was I suppose to know she actually began to love because of this fiancée thing?" Yoh countered. His face held a sense of confusion and loss that Tamao felt it was not to blame. Yoh was always sensitive but he certainly wasn't God. Perhaps they all had thought him to be someone greater when in reality, he was just Yoh.

Tamao grabbed her ouija board fumbling over the pads of papers that were scribbled by a simple pen. "You could have called off the engagement." Of course, she did not know what the guidelines of the engagement could have been. "If you told her the truth, you should have said it sooner." She then placed several yen on the table before leaving the restaurant quietly in the same direction Anna took without looking back.

"Yoh?" Manta crawled back up the seat.

"You're alive." Yoh grinned.

"You sure you should let them go like that? I mean..."

"Love hurts, Manta. Even I can feel it." He smiled sadly. "We're only thirteen."

"Yeah. I guess so." Manta sighed staring at his unfinished meal. "Water, please." He called the waitress.