Disclaimer - Guess what? Watsuki's just a pen name! I'm the real creator of Rurouni Kenshin!
Enishi - Give me a break! Tomoe was an Ayanami look-alike, and you didn't even know about Neo Genesis Evangelion until a year ago!
Hitoezakura - Fine, I don't own Rurouni Kenshin! There's really no need to burst my bubble!

Anyways, since it was Thanksgiving, I had nothing better to do than update...well actually, I was slacking off on my homework so I had plenty of time to update, which means tonight, I'll be staying up till 2:00 or 3:00...oh well...

Anyways, I only got one review last chapter, which makes me want to cry...I can't really tell how many people actually like this story (although charmedsword, thanks for reviewing both chapters!), and I really do hope to hear more from readers...

Alright, here's the next chapter, so happy reading!

TO INSANITY AND BACK

Chapter Two - Happiness And Loathing

I have never been able to smile as much as I wish to, but today, I truly cannot express my happiness with a simple smile, and although I attempt to pen my happiness in this diary of mine, I will never be able to convey the extent my delight through words. Today, my heart knows no bounds; it is bursting with excitement and bliss. Today, my father finally seemed to regain a bit of his life. I finally found a spark of happiness in his previously dull and saddened eyes.

Today was the day that the Kiyosato Akira chose me.

I have known him since I was a mere child. He was the boy who never seemed deterred by my coldness, but instead spoke to me despite my lackluster face. He walked me home on multiple occasions, and accompanied me to the marketplace numerous times, since I was always afraid of Enishi throwing a tantrum or becoming overly protective if the soldiers came walking into our village. For the first time in my life, I suddenly wished to leave my home, suddenly wished to explore the world with Akira by my side. The feeling was exhilarating, it was liberating, it was fanatic and ecstatic…yet I could never express these feelings through a mere smile…but I hope that will not matter to Akira. Akira is a hardworking, honest, and simple man. I could not ask for more in the man I wish to spend my life with forever. I love him dearly, and I pray that he will be able to understand and realize the magnitude of my love, despite the lack of emotions that spread across my face...

However, there is one person who dampens my excitement. I know it is not intentional, but still, it does hurt me that he cannot accept my love for Akira. That person is my dear little brother Enishi. The gravity of his name strikes me once again as he sits in the small room next to mine, throwing yet another tantrum. As he grew to become a young boy, our connection and relation grew deeper. He not only thought of me as a sister, but as a mother…I had become both mother and sister to him, and to leave him now was heart wrenching for me. He is my little brother…he is the world to me, and I am the world to him, for father has never left his depressed stupor ever since the day of my mother's death. But now, the connection has grown so deep that he does not wish to release me…and I suppose he feels like he has no one else. We have no other family, and poor father seems so lifeless, despite the fact that he managed to muster the energy to help arrange my marriage. However, I hope that someday soon, Enishi will understand exactly how powerful my love for Akira is. One day, he shall realize how love can open the heart and heal the wounds inside, fill the loneliness and emptiness inside the heart, and liberate the soul, sending it into an unknown world of excitement and bliss…

And perhaps someday, he will be able to accept my love for Akira, and will cease from throwing tantrums…I pray to the Gods that he will soon gain an understanding about how I truly feel about Akira…

Kiyosato Akira…that name makes my blood boil. I was furious with the man, although that fury would seem like a mere sliver compared to the fury I had towards Battousai. At least Kiyosato was not a murderer. However, now that I assess the situation, he indirectly caused my dear sister's death, ultimately destroying my only family. He had stolen my sister's heart, pulling her away from me, leaving me with only a lifeless father, and then, a year later, he left her, assuming that she was not happy with him, when in all honesty, she loved him with all her soul, and did not care about his accomplishments. Had he not left my dear sister by misinterpreting her feelings and immediately deciding to prove himself by entering the war, Battousai would have never murdered him, and she never would have gone to Kyoto and met her death there. Then again, Akira was not the one who sliced through my sister in the swipe of the sword. I will never forgive Battousai for murdering my sister, but I have come to accept that she did not blame him for this heinous crime. It was an accident to the world, but to me, it shall always remain a crime, and I will never forgive Battousai, though I shall never pursue him and my revenge again. Perhaps many will never understand my feelings, but they were never in my situation, so I frankly do not care about their opinions. They will never share bonds as deep as the one Tomoe and I shared.

My dear sister, as I mentioned before, was both my mother and sister to me, and due to our father's depression, my only family. I began to grow attached to her as the guilt for causing my mother's death grew and as Tomoe showered her motherly and sisterly affections. As the attachment grew, so did my anger and jealousy. Edo women began to talk to my father, insisting that he arrange Tomoe's marriage quickly, but my father would simply ignore them, lost in his stupor of depression. For the first time, I finally felt my father was useful, and I was thankful that his depression kept him from separating my dear sister and me. I had no intention whatsoever of sacrificing our relationship for any other man, and as my love for Tomoe grew, my jealousy grew, and soon, I threw tantrums as soon as I felt like my sister was drifting away from me. Thankfully, my father was too lifeless to think about the welfare of his children.

However, my world came crashing down when I was eight. My father, who was wallowing in depression, suddenly gained the energy to arrange my sister's engagement with a man named Kiyosato Akira. Tomoe quietly told me that Kiyosato was not a bad man at all – he was the second son of a simple family similar to ours, and although he was not accomplished, he was honest and hardworking. However, I would hear nothing of it. I threw a tantrum, and I know it was childish, but at that time, I had no other method of pulling her away from this engagement; I was only a mere eight-year-old child. Tomoe reprimanded me in her quiet, softly cold voice, declaring this tantrum my worst tantrum ever, but I still would not accept the fact that my sister would be leaving me forever.

For days, I wallowed in my fury, screaming at the Gods above, asking them how they could possibly take my only family away from me? I began to loathe my father for even suggesting Tomoe and Kiyosato's arrangement. The man had sat around for years, lost in his thoughts of a dead woman who could never be brought back to life, lost in his depression, and suddenly, he wanted to get rid of his only daughter? He wanted the one motherly and sisterly figure in my life to marry someone else? Did he want to ruin my life by destroying the only family I had? I cursed my father and the Gods endlessly for this new turn of events, and I began to make my plans to end this relationship forever.

However, as I continued to watch over my sister and Kiyosato, I suddenly realized that my dear sister was in love with him. Usually, people mark my sister as cold and emotionless, which is not true at all. She just is not able to smile as much as she wants to. However, she made more efforts to smile than I had ever seen her try to make. She used to smile only for me, but now…now she was trying to smile for him. She truly loved him, and she was truly happy that he had chosen her as his soul mate. She could never express her feelings in words or a smile, but I knew my sister the best, and I could understand the happiness in her heart. With a heavy heart, I accepted this fate, and my tantrums decreased as I watched my dear sister grow happier and happier by the day.

She still barely smiled at him though, since bringing a smile on her face was extremely difficult, and I of course, gloated, thrilled with my glory over Akira. Tomoe has always been able to smile at me, has always been able to express herself to me, and I took pride in the fact that Tomoe bestowed smiles upon me that she could barely gift to anyone else. I knew deep in my heart that I would be the only one to see the unguarded Tomoe, the one who could smile freely, and I was thrilled that I was the only one who would ever receive every ounce of Tomoe's love. Perhaps that was why my tantrums slowly ceded – not only was I beginning to accept that Tomoe loved Kiyosato and would be desolate without him, but I also realized that she would never be able to gift him with the smiles that I received so freely. I had the one piece of her heart that no one could take away from me, not even Kiyosato Akira.

However, then the day came where I lost that piece of her heart, and ultimately lost her forever…

"Reading that diary again, eh youngster?"

I sighed exasperatedly and shut the diary to see Oibore standing in front of me, once again flocked by multiple birds. Thankfully, the birds seemed to be preoccupied with him to notice me, and I therefore did not have to endure becoming a perch for some annoying birds.

"It must be really important to you, huh?" murmured Oibore, leaning against the wall and sliding down next to me, much to my dismay.

"I don't really want to talk about it," I muttered. Although I had been musing about Oibore's similarities to me the day before, I still did not intend to share the tragedy of my sister's death to him. It still enraged me that although I had known Tomoe for all of my life, I was unable to understand her, while Battousai managed to understand her completely, and managed to obtain the smile I had so dearly wished for all of my life. However, perhaps resentment ran stronger through my veins than anger, resentment that I had not understood Tomoe…

"You look pretty down," said Oibore with a chuckle. "You lost someone just like I have, huh?"

I nodded, slightly surprised that he had actually correctly deciphered the cause of my depression without my having to tell him. Then again, maybe he sensed the similarities between us too.

"Has that person's ghost visited you recently?" asked Oibore.

"What?" I asked, almost deeming the man insane. I believe in ghosts; I saw Tomoe by my side all the time, but in all honesty, would any ghost want to visit this dump?

"There are rumors that when you have lost someone, the moment you find yourself on the right track, you'll once again see the ghost of the person you have lost, smiling down at you, ready to help and guide you through life…" murmured Oibore with a small chuckle. "But I guess you haven't seen the ghost yet, huh?"

I shook my head. I had not seen Tomoe once ever since I stepped into Rakuminmura. I longed to see my sister smile at me, longed to see her serene face in front of me, gently guiding me to the right way in life, but she never appeared. It wrenched my heart to never see her after she had stood by my side throughout Jinchuu frowning, because I so desperately wanted to see her smile at me again. She had spent all of Jinchuu reprimanding me with her simple frown, and I wanted her smile, wanted her love, wanted her motherly affections once again. And the last few nights, I had woken up with nightmares that she had given up on me forever, that she had abandoned me due to her disappointment in me.

I guess my eyes betrayed my emotions (it was at times like these I adored my shades; no one could read my eyes behind the dark shades) because Oibore placed a hand on my shoulder.

"Don't worry…" he murmured. "Sometimes, it always seems like we are never doing the right things. It has been thirteen years since I have resided in this dump, and not once have I seen the ghost of my daughter, or my son, if he is dead, or even that of my wife, who I lost long before my children. Thirteen years have gone by, and not once have either of them come to visit me, but I no longer have the strength or the intelligence to determine what it is I must do to make them happy."

The birds chirped softly and flew away, leaving us alone in silence for a few minutes. Neither of us could speak. Neither one of us was happy with our lives because neither one of us could see the ghosts of the ones we loved and lost…

Oibore sighed and rose from the ground before patting my shoulder once again and speaking.

"However, I have no doubt that you will one day see the ghost of your lost one…who did you lose?"

Before I could stop myself, I answered "My sister." I was surprised that I had told this man, this stranger, this man of unknown origins my reason for suffering, but as I said, I suppose our similarities brought us together.

He chuckled softly. "Well then, I'm sure that your sister will come back to you someday. No doubt that she's proud of you for trying to push through life, but I'm sure that her pride will know no bounds once you discover how to find happiness in your life, until you discover what it is that is troubling you and why, and that day, she shall return to you with a smile…"

He walked away, leaving me propped against the wall, clutching my sister's diary. He always walked away before I could say something, but today, I had nothing to say to him. What could I possibly say? Could I ensure him that his loved ones would return to him after he had not seen them for thirteen years? I had no reassurances, no words of comfort, and I would not falsely claim anything.

Because even though his claim about Tomoe returning seemed genuine, I no longer knew whether Tomoe would ever return to me, whether she would ever come to forgive me again. All I could do was read her diary and sort my thoughts before trying to understand her own thoughts, before trying to discover why our lives took such a turn…

The sun fell below the horizon, dispelling the light that had filled the sky and filling the void with inky darkness. I shut the diary and stared up at the black abyss before my eyes finally shut, the darkness of sleep enveloping me.

Alright, I'm getting very into this story...so please review and give me feedback! I really am working hard on this story, and I would love to hear from some readers!

Ja ne for now!