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A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers: Henry the Magical Pancake, M.S.K., autumnburn, whooptidoo-basil and Ilex-Aquifolium. I aprreciate your reviews very much.

-- Disappointment is much worse to bear after years than at the beginning.

- I'm sorry.

-- I know.

- …

-- But it still hurts.

Chapter2: Memories

When I was fourteen and denied his very claim over my body and my soul, I vowed never to become any kind like him. That's another illusion I am freed of now. Forcibly so.

I am more like my grandfather than I want, but in one respect at least I am completely different. There is something I need even more than I need power:

Friendship.

Friendship and trust…these two terms go hand in hand, because when I talk of friendship I don't speak of something more serious than the random associations I've formed throughout my life. I speak of the few people I truly and sincerely call friends, the ones I trust. To a certain extent only, I have to admit. My friends do not know much of my past or of my thoughts because…well, they don't have to know… So, I have never been really open with them, not even Rei or Sinamé, but I did trust them.

That I can trust in friendship is something I learned late enough, but I learned it eventually. My team mates and later friends had a hard time to befriending me, because stubbornly, I kept my distance. And I knew why. Sometimes I still think that it would have been better for me and for them had I kept them at a distance; I have done them no good.

This thought vanishes the moment I recall the happiness their friendship had brought me. Compared to the emptiness of my past, even this small amount of is precious. That I gave in to trust them finally was mere incidence, born out of a desperate situation where I decided to have a go at it. It couldn't have gotten any worse at that point. While I do not regret the decision to trust in friendship, I learned not to trust in power. It consumes you or it lets you down. Either way is not pleasant.

So I would rather keep to my friends … at least I was able to relax around them, joke with them and simply enjoy the presence of people who wouldn't harm or betray me.

So it remained always just me who hurt them.

Like Sinamé. The only person I called a friend since I parted from the Bladebreakers. Actually she was more than a friend to me; she was my companion for a time. I would call her my lover, if I dared to use this word. We were a couple for three years. She meant very much to me, and, as with everyone else, I hurt her.

I blame my grandfather for my inability to love, my lack of appropriate feelings. Or is it my own fault?

I don't know love; I have never encountered it apart from the word that comes out of the mouths of others. Love. If I had known it as a little child, then I have forgotten it now; what it means, what it feels like. I don't feel, I can't feel love and I am sincerely sorry for that, sorry for me and sorry for Sinamé. I would have been glad to return her feelings.

I am alone again.

Sinamé and I broke up a month ago.

I stare into my glass, half-full of whiskey. I don't care about the chatter in the inn room around me. I don't care that it smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol. I don't care about the grubby tables and glasses. I only care about my own thoughts. Memories of Sinamé, memories of my friends, my father, my grandfather… everything that I have been, because I don't know what I am… Only memories…

My hand wanders to my necklace, a fine golden chain that is long enough to tuck it under my shirt. I take the necklace into my hands and gently finger the two pendants. My memories…

An oval slice of gold with mine and Sinamé's names engraved on it. Shining metal with little indentations scrapes in form of letters. She gave it to me on our first anniversary.

I should put it away, keep it somewhere I don't see it every day. It's over now, past. Another chapter in my life has come to its end.

But I haven't put it away and I know that I won't do it. I'm not good at closing doors. I have finished many a chapter in the twenty-four years I have lived, but rarely have I closed a door behind me. Memories of everything that has been important to me and that is important to me still, I carry them with me, all the time, leaving the doors slightly ajar.

My life. I hardly ever remove the necklace, but now seems an appropriate moment. After all, I am alone again. One of the pendants, the golden name-tag of Sinamé. It still hurts me to think of her, but the end was inevitable.

And the other… I close my hand around the little object and feel the smooth yet finely crafted surface. The silver metal is still warm from my body heat. It was gift from my father and enclosed in its heart are the other memory pieces I call my own. I gently lay the beyblade-shaped pendant on the table before me. Only I know the exact movement required to open it, which I do now, to look at the enclosed objects.

A piece of blue paint. My triangles. I do not paint the four shark-fins in on my face anymore; I have grown out of such childish habits. The skin of my face is clean now of the smybold, but when I look into the mirror I still see them; and I can't bring myself to throw the paint away. The triangles and everything they symbolize have already become a part of me. Reserved and cold, off-putting Kai Hiwatari.

It's a symbol of the walls I have spent all my life building up around me, walls that now stand stronger than ever. Only a few people have I have seen what lies behind these walls: Sinamé, Rei, and the Bladebreakers, those who were my real friends. And sometimes Tala and the other Demolition Boys, because living and suffering through the Abbey together forms a sort of companionship despite the contrary attempts of the scientists. For those who are not important, for the rest of the world, it is as if I still wore the paint on my face. Distant, different, and dangerous, that's what I am.

The blue paint is as much a part of me as my slate-coloured bangs are. So I keep a piece of it. Because it reminds me. Of where I come from, of what I have been, and of what I still am. My everlasting taint.

- I was willing to try.

--I know.

-For me, for you.

-- You gave me a chance to try.

- I failed.

--…

- And I hurt you.

-- I knew the risk.

- ...

-- I thought I could give you what you needed. I failed, too.

I lay the blue paint beside the silver pendant and take the next piece out. An irregular shred of white plastic, barely a centimetre in diameter. I take it in my hand and turn it around carefully, feeling the edges scratch over my fingertips. It's a piece that broke off Tyson's' beyblade when Dranzer hit Dragoon out of the arena. It was the last beybattle I fought against Tyson, the last time I won and the last time I bladed. Leave it to me to end it there. Tyson and I were equal in victories and defeats. Somehow, I would have liked to fight him once again to battle out the winner, but I didn't dare. I feared the air of finality it would inevitable produce that makes you believe that when all your affairs are settled and you leave now, it will be forever. But so I can think that Tyson owns me a battle, and there is hope that we will meet gain sometime. A door I left wide open and maybe, when I am old and grey, I will gather up the courage to find out where he is.

Meanwhile… I put the shred away and take out a small blank piece of paper. It's my most recent memory. I have put it in, because, well… there are two reasons. One is that this represents something I am proud of, something I have achieved, something worthwhile. It's a piece of the paper I wrote my last test on university on. I finished my studies with honour, three semesters ahead of schedule. I guess I have every right to be proud of this one. The other reason is not as happy but still important. It represents the power hunger that I've inherited from my grandfather. Knowledge is power. And power… Even though learning is a harmless outlet for that unwanted desire of mine, there is no way I can deny it for what it is.

Disdainfully I put the sheet away and tuck it under the shred of the beyblade.

I take out another piece of paper from my pendant, this time a happier memory. As I unfold it, I think of Max, whose attitude was so different than mine, but despite his annoying personality I have grown fond of him. There is a little picture on the paper; I got it from him when he tried to cheer me up once. It shows a twisted smiley, one that wears an expression of bare-all-teeth-because-my-cheeks-are-held-up-by-safety pins-and-no-it's-not-a-smile kind of smile.

It absolutely does not remind me of myself.

I refold it and put it to the others. I decide to take another sip from my whiskey and close my eyes as it burns its way down my throat into my stomach. I feel it pulsing through my veins, the golden glow of alcohol, warming me from the inside. Only, the warmth never reaches my cold heart.

I open my eyes and take the next tiny piece out of the pendant. It's a fragment of Kenny's old laptop, the one that accompanied us through so many tournaments and adventures. The computer exploded when Kenny tried to free Dizzi from it. Dizzy could roam freely then, but only days later, she got caught up in Kenny's new laptop. That may have happened by chance or on purpose, I don't know, but the bit beast definitely has an affinity to computers. If I ever see them again, I should them show the piece. They would be delighted; they are nearly as sentimental as I am.

Not that I am sentimental. But I have only this way of keeping memories alive. Memories of happier times, as the present does not give me anything to hold on.