A/N: Oooh. Bad Jonah, bad. Hadn't I just mentioned in the previous drabble that I was fairly good at this updating thing? Tsk tsk. I probably jinxed myself.

Anyway, I apologize to all my readers (eep! I hope I still have some!) for taking so gosh-darn long with this one. I'm going to go ahead and blame school, even though I know that excuse has been used way too many times, but it's the truth in my case. I really have been way too busy with schoolwork, especially when it comes to a certain Calculus class... mutters miserably

Ah well. I guess I shouldn't take anymore of your time, should I? Yes. Best get on with the show.

Crazy Little Thing
By JleeBean

9. Four twelves are forty-eight.

It's been forty-eight hours since Kyou last saw her.

She'd been crying then. Crying like it was all she could do, bleeding tears into his shirt like an open wound.

He told her he'd never love her, at least not in the way she loved him, and she'd cried, because tears always came so easily to Kagura, and because tears were the only way she could say she was sorry.

He knew she was sorry, he could feel it in the way she shivered against his arms as he gathered enough courage to hold her as she cried because he figured, well, he owed her that at least. But she was sorry for something he couldn't understand, and probably would never be able to understand, because he'd just shut her away forever, hadn't he?

It was all for the best, he told himself, because letting her go on any longer would only be like murder. He didn't want to kill her, didn't want her to die of a broken heart any more than he wanted the same fate for himself.

So he had to hurt her. He had to tell her the words she needed to hear and the words he needed to say to spare them both. This pain was miniscule, he tried to convince himself, compared to the kind of pain she'd feel if he'd let her continue to fool herself.

But there was so much more he wanted to tell her, so many more words he needed to say. He wanted to say it wasn't her fault, that it had never been so she shouldn't blame herself like he knew she would. He wanted to say it was his own undoing, that he was so fucked up she couldn't have been able to help him no matter how hard she tried. He wanted to tell her she shouldn't even waste her love on someone like him, someone who was only just beginning to grasp the concept of it because she needed someone who could love her as much as she dared to love him and as much as she deserved it, as much as he wished he could, he just couldn't give her that.

But she was gone before he could even force the words out, and all he could do was stand there. He thinks about it now, two days, four nights, forty-eight hours later, and realizes it probably wouldn't have mattered if he said them anyway…

He was already too many years too late.

Next: One true thing.