"See you, Kei," Hana said, waving to Kei with her arms full with a bouquet that he had given her as a present for the revealing of her painting. She stepped into the taxi, still waving at Kei until she was unable to see him waving back at her anymore. It was a ritual that dated back to her childhood when she had lost both of her parents. Kei always insisted that waving to each other until it was impossible to see the other created an illusion of eternity, and therefore, if the two sides of the action loved each other, created an eternity of love despite the hard acceptance of a good-bye.

She hummed a pleasant bittersweet tune that she had heard ever since she was young. She always wondered if there were words to it; it seemed incomplete without words to complete the emotion that had lead to this thought of a song.

"That's a nice tune, Ms. Customer," the taxi driver remarked from the seat next to hers. "A bit sad, though. Does it have words?"

"I'm not sure; that's what I've been wondering my whole life," Hana said. The driver acknowledged her answer with a slight nod typical of polite Japanese behavior and resumed concentrating on his driving.

She did not take up the melody again, but thought about it as the taxi drove closer to the apartment she and Kei had shared for many years. She wondered what chords would fit it, how it was intended to be played. And as she crossed the distance between the symbolic home her mother had made for the world and her apartment, she mused about her life as of far and her parents: Sho, Yi-Che, and Kei.

She knew that Yi-Che had died of some disease and Sho and her uncle had died because of their involvement in the criminal underworld of Mallepa. Kei had come after her relatives' deaths. She wasn't sure how he was connected to her father, mother, and uncle, but he refused to talk about them, though he acknowledged that he knew the three of them in some way. But what gave a part of his relationship with them away was the painful and guilty look that passed across his face every time she asked about them. Hana was sure that Kei was not involved with gangs and such like her father and uncle had been, but in something else; something shady that had less to do with what he did than with his state of being.

He lived like a nocturnal creature. It was not that he slept during the daytime (indeed, he made sure to always be awake and waiting with a treat or present for her when she returned from school) but that he always disappeared at night. She would not have found this out if not for a certain nightmare that plagued her when she turned thirteen. She woke up in the early morning after her birthday, sobbing for Kei, and when he did not appear, she went to his bedroom only to find that he was not there. She sat on his bed, waiting for him to come home. She had fell asleep, and when she woke up, she was in her own bed with the bright sunlight that was filtered by the shutters in the window warming her body slightly. She had thought that it was a dream, but because she had a nightmare the week after, Kei was not there when she woke up. It became her nightly duty to fall asleep on Kei's bed, to warm it with her heat so that she could pretend that Kei was always there for her, would never disappear, even though her warmth was never returned to her except for a slight touch in the early morning when Kei returned her to her bed.

One night, she did not fall asleep because of a terrible headache. That night, she decided to lie down on the couch in front of the entrance of the apartment. That night, she saw Kei walk in with blood on his sleeve and more on his mouth. She remembered how he looked, how he reacted: his mouth slightly open, in the wolfish expression he thought was a smile, his eyes wide, his nostrils flared a bit. And over his mouth, blood. Bright red blood. Fresh blood.

She had fainted and woken up again in her bed like she had every morning. But she knew what was different. Her knowledge of Kei had changed. And from then on, she never slept in his bed. Besides, the month after she saw Kei with blood on his sleeve, she received her period and it would've been altogether too sexual to sleep in Kei's bed, even if it was a lonely bed.

Hana broke off her train of thought in synchronization with the screech of the brakes. "We're here, miss," the taxi driver said.

"Thank you," she replied, handing some bills to him. "Have a nice night."

"You too, miss, you too."

It was funny; she had never said that to Kei before. It was always "good-night" or "sleep tight" even though she knew what he really was. It was in that way that she tried to hide the fact that Kei would be hated by society if society knew what he was. It was her knowledge of him that had led her to renew her mother's painting. She wanted an angel that would love everyone, even a being such as Kei. She imagined the angel's arms wrapped fiercely around Kei, protecting him from whatever would come in the future. And then she placed herself in the place of the angel, and squeezed everything from herself and Kei so that their lives would mingle and protect the other from the future and eternity. A love for eternity.

That night, she slept on Kei's bed. She felt old enough for him now. She thought of herself as an adult now. She wanted to be the adult, to protect Kei, to shield him from whatever he feared. She prepared herself in the empty space before she truly fell asleep for that role, to tell him how she felt now that she was old enough.

But he never came back.

A week came and passed, Hana sleeping it away in Kei's bed, waking with every small sound, hoping for Kei. And that hope came and passed with the sunlight that Kei relished in her paintings but would never face in real life.

Another week came. At last she decided that it was time to look for Kei. She had prepared herself to protect Kei, but then she had left him alone in the world.

She searched and searched. She never called the police, fearing they would take him to a place where he would be exposed to his deepest and darkest fears.

She finally found a cliff with an empty red convertible sitting on top of it. It was early morning before the sun rose. She was weary of searching but could not stop unless she knew where Kei was. Knowledge of him had hurt her before, but she had to have more. She wanted more and more. She wanted the knowledge that would stretch until eternity.

In that car, she found perfect silence and tranquility. Even though it had been abandoned for more than a week, nothing and no one had disturbed it. It was a shrine to those who had came and gone.

She found Kei's clothes in the passenger seat. She did not dare touch them. But the clothes in the driver's seat she picked up. And with her motion that disturbed the clothing, she disturbed a smell from within the messy folds within the clothes. It was familiar and bittersweet. She drew them close to her nose, trying to identify what the tears in her eyes were mourning for. She closed her eyes, trying to remember, then opened them. And in front of her was a black and white picture with Kei, Sho, Yi-Che, her uncle Son, and a man unknown to her. On their faces was a clear picture of pure happiness and love. In that moment when she beheld their emotion, the sun rose. And as the picture went from black and white to color, she realized whom the driver of the car was, and what had happened to the both of them. So she lifted Sho's clothes to her face and sobbed. At last she recognized that Kei had found everything that he needed and mourned for herself for Kei had left her with a man so distant in the past that she now wished she knew. So she cried.

When her emotion was cried out, she gently laid the tear-sodden clothes on top of Kei's and drove the car back to her apartment. When she arrived, she carefully took the clothes and laid them out on Kei's bed. Looking down at them, she felt unbearably lonely. But then a melody flowed into her head describing her pain and made her feel like she was surrounded by ghosts of the pasts that would follow her into the future and eternity. As she tentatively began humming the tune, she realized the first word that belonged to it: Sayonara.

Author's Note: I know that it's been an year… but here is the end to the fanfic that I consider my best of last summer. Here's to a new summer of writing on my part and one hopefully filled with reading on yours! Thank you for all the reviews.

P.S. Even though this is my best fanfic as of far, I plan another one that may be a parody of this fanfic. Perhaps an edited, longer version? We'll see. Sayonara for now.