A flute. Its melody carrying over the wind, creeping towards Suoh, wrapping itself in and around his senses; captivating him. He follows the sound, heart pounding erratically against his rib cage. He stops in front of a wisteria tree, looking up to see a girl with soft lilac hair playing the flute. Just as his mind registers the fact that it was Nagisa-san, the scenery shifts slightly. The wisteria tree turns into a sakura tree, and on one of its branches sits his charge, his President, his kimono1's sode2 and golden hair fluttering slightly in the breeze. He smiles slightly at his guardian and extends a slender hand, lightly touching the side of the ninja's face with a folded harisen.

Suoh rolled over in his futon, breathing harshly, flushed and sweaty. He knew. He had been having frequent flashes of what had happened in the three months' gap in his memory for weeks now, but never had they triggered something as big as this dream had.

In a few moments of agony, Suoh lay rolling and clutching at his head as three months' worth of memories came flooding back. He could do nothing but lie there and watch the scenes play themselves in his head backwards until they stopped at the day he saw Nagisa on the wisteria tree. It felt odd, watching his memories replay themselves in reverse; he felt oddly detached from his body the whole time; like he was watching from an outsider's perspective. It was eerie and enlightening at the same time.

He knew and remembered. He remembered the heat he would feel spreading through his body whenever Nagisa would step into a room. He remembered the way his heart started beating faster whenever he laid eyes on her. He remembered how badly his body shook when he had been teaching her how to play baseball. He remembered how the accident happened, how he lost three months of his memory; how he lost his memory of her. He remembered trying his best to try and continue like before for Nagisa's sake. He remembered, but that was all.

He tried imagining Nagisa, her slender, pale body and her soft lilac hair; the gentle gaze in her eyes and the soft curve on her lips whenever she looked at him.

He waited for the thump, thump, thump in his ribcage to start, but his heart steadfastly retained its now-steady pace. Xanthous eyes brimmed with tears; confusion, frustration and anger at himself and at the world breaking him and releasing all the pent-up emotion he harbored inside.

That night, a blue-haired, golden-eyed fifteen year-old ninja really cried for the first time in years. He cried till his shoulders shook, his nose streamed and his eyes turned red; he didn't stop even when the tears refused to pour out of his wide-open eyes and had stopped their dance down his cheeks.

Nokoru's blonde head shot up from his pile of paperwork when he heard the boardroom doors open. His smile froze on his lips when he saw that his secretary looked like death itself; his normally lustrous blue hair lay limp and dull around his face, his bright yellow eyes had turned a dull shade of mustard and his healthy tanned skin looked grey, giving him the appearance of a terminally-ill person.

"Suoh?" he queried gently, quickly getting up from behind his desk and making his way towards the blue-haired boy. "Daijobou?"

"Daijobou," Suoh answered softly, heading straight for his desk, hoping his Kaichou would get the hint and leave him alone.

Unfortunately for him, the blue-eyed Imonoyama heir was nothing if not persistent in his concern, his instinct of putting others' welfare before his kicking again.

Nokoru kneeled beside Suoh's chair, laying his hand gently on his secretary's arm. "Nandesu ka?"

"Nothing, really, Kaichou. I just had a rough night. Please don't concern yourself with me just because I'm a bit off. You should get back to your paperwork," Suoh answered, forcing a smile at his charge.

"A bit off?" Nokoru breathed incredulously. "A bit off! You always force me to tell you what's wrong with me, always try to make everything alright for me, always ask me to trust you, but you can't seem to trust in me enough to tell me what's wrong with you. You always tell me that I put others above myself all the time, yet here you are, doing just that which you accuse me of," he cried out, arms flailing around in emphasis. "I won't sit back and let you be when you're obviously breaking apart at the seams. What's the point of years of friendship, then?" he finished softly, blue eyes conveying what his words and actions could not.

Suoh sighed. He knew when he was defeated. His shoulders slumped; he was too drained emotionally and physically to put up much of a struggle anyway.

He stared at the wall slightly to his right, face averted from Nokoru's heartbreakingly open face. "I remember," was all he said quietly.

A sharp intake of breath to his left brought his gaze back to the blonde boy kneeling beside him.

"I…I…," Nokoru started off awkwardly, shock robbing him of the capacity to speak. "Well, what are you going to do?" he asked tentatively when he had composed himself enough.

"What do you mean what am I going to do?" Suoh frowned. "There's nothing to do. I remember everything-from what happened down to what I felt at precisely each moment-but it doesn't seem to matter now. I remember how I felt for Nagisa back then, but I don't feel that anymore. I stopped feeling it years ago."

Nokoru's eyes widened a fraction and his heartbeat sped up a notch. "W-what?"

"I didn't know for sure, but now I do."

"Know what for sure? What is it, Suoh?" Nokoru asked, trying to keep the tremor making its way across his body away from his voice.

"That I stopped feeling that way for her just before the accident. My guilt held me back when I still had no recollection of what had happened in those three months so much that I couldn't even entertain the possibility that I had fallen out of love with her before the accident. But now that I remember exactly what happened, I'm certain," he said, standing up and pacing the room. "If I was still in love with her before the accident, then even if I didn't remember the three months we spent getting to know each other, it wouldn't matter. The moment I laid eyes on her after the accident, I'm sure that my heart should have beat faster and I should have the butterflies in my stomach, but I didn't. When I saw her, it was just another "who are you and how do I know you?" situation."

Nokoru fell silent, taking all this in. A part of him was ecstatic but the other part was making him feel sick because this meant that Nagisa's heart would be broken yet again, and this time, there was nothing Suoh could do to fix it. Not when he was now sure of what he felt…or didn't, for that matter.

"You have to tell her, you know, right?"

"Hai. It would break my heart to do it, but only because I feel like I've wasted years of her life inadvertently giving off the impression that I might remember how we were and we could pick up where we left off," Suoh said, stopping his aggravated pacing to stand in front of the boardroom's large window behind Nokoru's desk. "It took years for me to remember what happened, Kaichou, and I owe it to Nagisa-san to tell her the truth right away. So I won't waste anymore of her time."

Blue eyes followed Suoh's progress to the telephone, watching him lift the handset from the cradle then holding the lever down as he turned to Nokoru.

"Kaichou, forgive my rudeness but I don't think I could do this with an audience," he said, golden eyes pleading for understanding.

Flustered, Nokoru quickly stood up and began to walk out of the boardroom. "Iie. Gomen, Suoh. I should've realized you needed privacy sooner. I'll be out by the gardens if you need me. Ganbatte3," he said softly as he closed the door behind him.

Outside, he leaned against the closed doors for awhile, eyes closed and breathing irregular. He needed fresh air or he would asphyxiate.

Long, slender legs carried him as fast as they could (considering his poor motor skills) to the garden, where he slumped against a tree trunk.

As he slid down onto the grass, he lay down and looked up, realizing with a jolt that he was lying under the same sakura tree Namiko and Suoh met and his guardian had almost cornered him into admitting he was Namiko.

He watched idly as the blossoms fluttered down, some landing in his hair, on his cheeks, and a lone petal was bold enough to settle itself on his lips. Nokoru smiled. This was simple; it was easy to live in a dream world where he could pretend Nagisa-san was okay and that she loved someone else and that Suoh would see that he was here all the while, like he always was.

A strong hand gently shaking his shoulder woke Nokoru up; he hadn't realized he had fallen asleep. He blinked bleary blue eyes and locked gazes with Suoh's golden ones.

He sat up suddenly. "What happened?"

Suoh smiled and sat down beside Nokoru. He looked years different from the way he had this morning; his eyes were closed as he tipped his face back against the tree trunk and towards the sun. "I told her."

"And…?" Nokoru prompted, understandably baffled. He had expected to see Suoh disgruntled or ashen or shaken, by the very least. He had expected a dozen different things, but this-whatever this was-wasn't one of them.

"She knew before me. She knew years before I did, it turns out. She was sad when I told her, but she said it wasn't like she wasn't expecting this. She said she hoped it wouldn't turn out this way, but now, it doesn't matter. I just wish she had told me the moment she realized so we could've both been spared the grief," he finished with a laugh.

Nokoru was dumbfounded. "She knew? And she's okay?"

"Yeah," sighed Suoh, still smiling slightly. "I should've known she was smart and perceptive enough to know. She's an amazing lady, and she'll make a good wife to some lucky guy someday."

"Yeah, she will," Nokoru smiled. Yokatta4. Everything seemed right and clear in his real world for the first time in years. Now, if only Iijyuin were back from his vacation, they could have some strawberry cake to celebrate with.

A/N: Er…was that considered angst? It was anticlimactic at the end, but I couldn't bring myself to let them suffer for long. Who could blame me, though? I wuv Suoh and Nokoru too much/glomps Nokoru and Suoh/

P.S. Sorry, but it looks like we'll have to do with short chappies from now on.

Arigato gozaimasu:
Sodesne, zharmleanzon (or chrrypnk)

1 Traditional Japanese clothing

2 sleeve

3 Good luck

4 I'm glad.