Disclaimers: I don't own Fushigi Yuugi.

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Narrator's POV

As Einosuke read those last words, he felt a great wave of relief flow through him. Takiko was finally coming home. She was going to be fine. Everything was going to be okay again.

The same bright green light that had swallowed Takiko up only a few weeks ago came shooting out of the book once again, knocking Einosuke backwards. After his eyes had healed, he could see his daughter, his Takiko, lying on the floor, green lightning playing through her clothes and hair.

She was wearing strange clothes. They looked almost...Chinese. Wait... They were Chinese, weren't they.

So I was right. She did go into the book. I wasn't being delusional after all,' Einosuke thought. He had been a bit afraid that he was only going crazy and that Takiko was somewhere else ñ possibly even lost or kidnapped. He rushed over to her and picked her up in his arms. Slowly, her eyelashes flickered and her eyes opened.

"F-F-Fath-ther?" She asked weakly.

"Yes, Taki-chan," he said using his childhood nickname for her. He hadn't called her that since her mother had died, but now he did. "It's me. You're home. You're finally home."

"Thank Genbu," she replied slowly, using the name of the god that she had served. He didn't know why, but this surprised him. Before she went into that book, she would have said "Thank God", but now, she used Genbu. It was a small thing, but it really brought into focus for him how much she had changed while she was in that book. He shrugged it off. He had more important things to think about at that moment.

"Are you okay?"

"Oh, Father... It hurts. It hurts so much... I didn't know that anything could hurt this much. Oh...! Oh... It hurts even more than before. Please, Father, make it stop. Make it stop. You can do anything, right? Make it stop!" She screamed in pain and agony, her scream ripping Einosuke apart.

"No... I'm so sorry, Taki-chan. I... I can't do anything... I..."

She screamed again.

What can I do? This is all my fault. If I had been a better father... If I hadn't given her that book.... If it weren't for me, she wouldn't be in such pain. What can I do? There must be something that I can do to help her,' Einosuke thought, his eyes flying around the room in search of something, anything, that may help his daughter. His eyes rested on the book. Quickly, he reached over to it, flipping open the pages.

"And so, the god of the north, Genbu, continued to devour the Genbu no Miko, taking her young life as well as her body." He read.

"Oh... Taki-chan..." And now, he finally realized that there was nothing he could do. He could not challenge the power of a god, even if he would do so to save his daughter. He took her upstairs into her bedroom, trying to make her feel at home; as if nothing had happened to her.

Einosuke didn't think that his daughter had heard him read what the book said, but she had.

"Father...." She said as she lay on her bed, panting from the battle raging on within her.

"What is it, Takiko?"

"I... I want you... to do one final thing... for me... Before I... die..."

"Anything."

"I... I know that it will... be hard for you... but..."

"Yes?"

"I want...you to...kill me."

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Takiko's POV

I know that what I asked him was the worst thing that I had ever asked of anyone, but I had to do it. The pain... You have no idea how painful it was. I would rather be dead than have to deal with that pain. And it wasn't only the pain that my body was enduring. It was also the pain that my heart was enduring. Leaving the book world with so many of my friends. Hikitsu dying. It was all to much. But the hardest thing of all was loosing Tomite. If I died, I'd be with him again, right? And Hikitsu, too. I wanted to see them so much!

And I would.

I can still remember that time that I was on the verge between life and death. I can still remember all those people that I saw in that strange garden; My mother, Yoshi; Kuro; A girl that had to be Yind with their son; And so many others. And now Tomite and Hikitsu would be there too. They would be waiting for me. I could see him now. Tomite, with his arms held out just waiting for me to rush into them. A smile on his lips.

"Takiko!" He would say. And he would tell me how much he loved me...Oh, I had to see him. I just had to. If I had to, I would wait a thousand years for him, but if there was any way to see him sooner then I would take in a second, despite how horrible it may be.

And the pain. You have no idea how painful it was. I just wanted it to stop. Is that so wrong? Is it so wrong to just want everything to stop? I know that asking a father to kill his daughter was a horrible thing to do, but I just had to. I had to. I would die anyway. This would only make it go quicker and be less painful.

"Please. I... I want to see him again, Father. I want to see Tomite, and... and Hikitsu."

"Their just characters in a book, Takiko! They're not even real!"

"But they are to me. I... They're my friends. All of them. I know that they're just characters in a book to you, Father, but they're more than that to me. They all have feelings. They each have their own past and have gone through hardships. They all have or have had families who they love very much. They cry and bleed, even fall in love. Each one of them has risked their life for me before and I would do the same for them. Maybe they don't exist in this world. Maybe they're just characters in paper to
you. Maybe you don't feel that they're really real; that they really exist. But they exist to me. To me they're all human. They're all my friends.

Father, I... I love Tomite. And Hikitsu too, just not in the same way. I love them all. I love them as friends. Now, I will never see any of them again. The only way for me to see any of them is to die. Father, I want to die. I want to see them again. And... And it hurts, Father. It just hurts
so much. So... So please...."

"I understand Takiko," my father said, but I could tell that it hurt him to do so.

"Thank you." He raised a knife over my heart. He hesitated, and then plunged it downward. I smiled at him.

"I love you father. I always have, I always will."

A deep pain pierced my chest. My conscious faded quickly. Everything was going dark, fading into black.

I couldn't think.

I couldn't feel.

If this was death, then maybe it wasn't so bad. I felt... Warm. Almost as if I was encircled in my mothers arms, like when I was little. Or as if Tomite was hugging me. As if he were kissing me; telling me that he loves me.

"To... mi... te..."

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~End of Chapter 46~

That was... *Sniff* So hard to write... *Sniff* I had to stop in the middle of it and go away for a while. When you've written about characters like this for so long they almost feel like a friend to you.

I always wanted Takiko to ask her father to kill her. I thought that it was, not only sadder, but showed Einosuke in a much nicer light, and I always liked Einosuke. Also, I think that after everything that she went through she probably really did want to die.

I think that I should explain a few of my reasons for doing things now. One of the things that used to really annoy me was the way that so many people make Takiko wish to stay in the book world. That was Suzuno's wish, not Takiko's. It is a known fact that Takiko only made two of her wishes before she was killed by her father. I knew that Takiko would want to stay in the book world because she was in love with Tomite so I had to make him die. But he couldn't die before the ceremony or else Genbu wouldn't be summoned. My solution? Making Kutou attack why Takiko was in a comma and having him die then.

Since I was having Tomite die, I decided to make Hikitsu die as well because I thought that after they died they could both go up to Mt. Black together to guard the shinzaho. Thus, Hikitsu and Tomite's deaths came into the story.

Well, on a happier note, more coming soon! Please review!