It is only a distraction. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing at all.
He remembers what he is here for. He can never seem to recall how it was he got here, and he hasn't the faintest idea what he'll do once he finds her (because he WILL find her. There can be no question of that.), but…he is here. He is here to find Tsukiko.
Who is Tsukiko, you ask? He remembers who she is. Even in those moments when he looks at the man in the mirror (is that really…? He doesn't picture himself with those cold eyes, cold as the sea because the sea is not malicious, it simply doesn't care) and he wonders who this stranger is, this stranger that changes and whose shoulders slump with the burden of a thousand roads that eventually all lead to nowhere again and again…he is not this person. He has not changed.
Tsukiko is beautiful. He would doubt his own face (perhaps he already does) before he would doubt hers. Tsukiko is the moon, distant and divine and always slipping from between his fingers like a reflection on raindrops, guiding his way to paradise. Or to nowhere. (she always told him he was a fool, and her laughter would pitter down onto his ears like silver moondrops falling) Her hair is the color of the Wolf That Ate The Sun, that nameless, timeless color that swallows the stars each night to clear the path for its mistress. Her skin radiates borrowed, brilliant moonshine; moon or girl, she is beautiful in anything she wears, and sometimes her eyes flicker hazel and she stares up at him with puzzled annoyance as he reads the paper at breakfast and she hums tunelessly as she restocks the store shelves in quick little jolts of fluid movement like a cat-
No.
No.
"Guarding the obvious way out isn't any good, Rikuo, even if you do it to try and protect me. What would happen if I were to slip out the back door?"
He gazes out the window, eyes frantically searching as the stars prance around him in a circle, their mocking laughter cruel as a child's, cruel as the sea that doesn't care.
There is no moon out tonight.
"I'm sorry," he whispers. But the one he speaks to is laughing somewhere on the far side of the moon.
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Author's Note: Hope you caught the Rikuo/Kazahaya references. Personally, I think Tsukiko's dead. But as I have no evidence to prove that, I tried to avoid directly saying it here in this fic. The ending was a bit abrupt, I know. But I thought that if I wrote him in waking up before he looked out the window, it'd drag on. So maybe he was asleep, maybe he was awake, maybe he is dreaming now. (wanders off to nag her friend to order Volume Three) Couldn't think of a good ending-border phrase, so I just left it blank.