The day after the incident, Hokuto was chattering away happily with her friends when she saw Tamiko enter the classroom across the hall.
"Excuse me, will you?" she told her friends, and got up. Hokuto checked her watch; homeroom didn't start for another ten minutes. That was enough time, she decided, and crossed the hall to Tamiko's classroom.
The beautiful girl was sitting by herself in a window seat. The bright sun struck glittering highlights off her glossy hair; her expression was cold and distant. More than one of her classmates cast envious or admiring glances her way, but none made any attempt to approach her. Hokuto had no such reservations; she drew more than one pair of raised eyebrows by walking right up to Tamiko's desk.
"Hey!"
Tamiko's head snapped up.
"What? Who are you? You seem familiar."
"I'm Subaru's sister. You do remember Subaru, don't you? The one who saved your life yesterday?"
Hokuto found the other girl's reaction very strange. It started out as a sneer, then there was a momentary flash of anger in her eyes, and then she seemed to sigh with her entire body before settling back into her usual impassiveness.
"You were in the waiting room last night, weren't you? Then you know that I was all right. Calling an ambulance hardly qualifies as saving my life. If he hadn't done it then someone else, probably a teacher, would have."
Hokuto's eyes narrowed.
"You don't have any idea what happened to you, do you?"
Tamiko blinked; the question had caught her off-guard.
"It was a seizure -- the doctor said that it was probably brought on by stress."
"Is that all you can remember?" Hokuto challenged.
The beautiful girl blinked again, so taken aback by Hokuto's earnestness that she gave in to the demand, attempting to send her mind through the experience.
"I -- everything was normal; I was on my way out of school, on my way to juku. About twenty yards from the school gates, I..."
Tamiko fell silent, thinking. Her right hand clenched suddenly, involuntarily, into a fist, the knuckles turning white, fingernails digging into her palm.
"I could feel it," she whispered. "They hate me...they all hate me. I could feel it like a thousand eyes on me, glaring...burning their hatred into me..."
It must have been, Hokuto realized, the first time that Tamiko had relived the event. Losing consciousness had allowed her to shut it away from her waking mind, but the walls of denial were new and fragile, easily broken down by the simple act of trying to recall the events.
"Then...birds?" She raised her head wonderingly, those incredible black eyes wide and gleaming. "Three white doves, circling me, holding the hatred away." With growing amazement she said, "I don't understand, but...the birds were Subaru-kun's, weren't they? That's what you meant when you said that he saved my life..."
Her head dropped; she could not bear to face Hokuto.
"...and I as good as slapped him in the face. I had no idea; I thought that--"
"I'm not the one you should apologize to," Hokuto said, not unkindly.
"You're right, of course. I've made a selfish, foolish mistake, and have to make it up to the one I've hurt." She smiled up at Hokuto. "I hope that Subaru-kun knows what a staunch defender he has."
Neither Tamiko nor Hokuto noticed the soft whisper of an eagle's wings.
-X X X-
Across the street, Seishiro Sakurazuka stood, looking up at the school building. The sun was full in his face, the reflection turning his glasses into blank, opaque panels. His shadow was thrown on the wall behind him, a black silhouette staining the gray stone. Someone watching closely might have seen the shadow of an eagle settle on the silhouette's shoulder, then fade away as Seishiro lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs for a long time, then exhaled slowly, sending a slow gray stream flowing upward. He smiled and began to walk away.
"You're quite right, Miss Hironagi," he said softly. "Our charming Hokuto-chan can be very fierce when she is protecting Subaru-kun. It would never do to underestimate her."
-X X X-
"Hello, Yuri-san," Subaru said gamely. Yuri looked up from her easel. "Pardon me for interrupting you."
"It's all right," she said.
"I wanted to apologize to you, for not going sketching with you yesterday."
Subaru looked over her shoulder at the sketch she was working on now. It showed the Tokyo Tower, drawn as if the viewer was right under it, looking up at the observation deck. It was the sky, though, that caught Subaru's attention; the clouds came rushing from all directions towards the point of the Tower, mirroring the way the buildings below seemed to be reaching upward.
"Wow! This is really good!" he exclaimed. Seeing that one corner of the sky wasn't finished yet, he added, "Did you do it all here? The detail is really incredible!"
Yuri smiled, blushing slightly at his praise.
"No, I...I couldn't do anything like this from my mind alone. I sketched the Tower last week, downtown. The rest of it I've been adding here."
"Reality and imagination mixed. I like it a lot!" He turned from the sketch to Yuri. "You like to draw buildings, don't you?"
She nodded.
"I know this will sound silly to you, Subaru-kun, but when I look at nature, I see something that has majesty and power for its own sake. I can't change that by drawing it. All a sketch can do is blunt it, by filtering it through my mind -- but a building, that's something entirely human, so when I draw one, I can express something of myself in it."
"I don't think that's silly at all," Subaru said. He wasn't sure if he agreed with Yuri, but he understood her feelings. "I think buildings can be powerful symbols."
"This Tokyo that we live in...do you like it, Subaru-kun?"
He smiled.
"Yes, I do. I really do love Tokyo."
"You're too gentle-hearted about people, Subaru-kun."
"That's what my sister is always telling me," he admitted sheepishly.
They both dissolved into happy laughter, laughter that was interrupted by the soft, metallic snick of the door latch. Subaru and Yuri turned their heads to see Tamiko framed in the doorway, hands folded at her waist.
"Subaru-kun...may I speak with you privately?" she asked softly.
"What's wrong, Tamiko-san?"
"Please?" she asked plaintively, unwilling to extend herself further, or perhaps unable to.
"Do you mind, Yuri-san?" Subaru asked the other girl.
Yuri opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it, and shook her head.
"Go on, Subaru-kun."
Subaru was sure that there was something Yuri was not saying, but what could he do? Certainly he could not try to get Yuri to expose what it was in front of the other girl.
"All right, then," he finally said.
Yuri watched the two of them leave together, the two beautiful young people side-by-side. When the door clicked shut, she turned back to her easel and tried to resume her sketching. After only a few strokes, though, she squeezed her eyes shut. With one convulsive twist of her fingers, the soft graphite stick snapped in two.
-X X X-
Tamiko took Subaru up to the roof of the school; they leaned against the railing, looking down at the school grounds. There was a wind; it tossed Tamiko's long black hair out behind her, but there was a bitter scent to it. No doubt it was just the smog, but to Subaru it seemed as if each breath tasted like the pain emanating from the girl next to him.
"Your sister came to see me this morning."
"Hokuto-chan?"
"She made me realize a few things, one of which was that I owe you much more than I thought last night when I was so rude to you. I -- I made stupid, egotistical assumptions that were unforgivable."
Instinctively, Subaru protested the beautiful girl's tone of self-loathing.
"You shouldn't say such things, Tamiko-san!"
"Even when they're true?"
"Being rude to me isn't unforgivable," Subaru told her.
Tamiko shook her head.
"That isn't all." She combed a few windblown strands of hair out of her eyes with long, slender fingers. "When I was told that you had called for the ambulance, gone to the hospital, and waited for me to wake up, I assumed that you were an admirer. When you offered to see me home, I thought that you wanted to capitalize on your devotion."
Subaru had gone white.
"You mean, to use your illness as an excuse to get a...a date?" It was a revolting thought, and the shock showed in his tone. Another person might have been furious with Tamiko for assuming such a thing about them, but any anger Subaru felt was quickly dissipated when he began to consider how the events of last night could have appeared to her. "No wonder you walked out on me!"
"Yes, but I didn't know what you had done for me then!" She went on to explain what Hokuto had forced her to realize that morning, the words tumbling out of her in a rush. "I...I'm so ashamed of how I treated you, Subaru-kun!" Tamiko wailed at the end of it.
Subaru smiled reassuringly.
"There must have been a lot of pain in your life, hasn't there, Tamiko-san?" he asked quietly, his voice understanding.
"I loathe the way I look," she answered him, her voice full of bitterness.
"But...but, you're so beautiful, Tamiko-san!" he protested.
"That's exactly it," she answered. "Even when I was a child, my friends would tell me, 'I wish that I was as pretty as you.' Every time they said that, I wanted to laugh. I was so proud that I had something that others wanted. Then, when I got to junior high, it was still funny, only then it was me that they were laughing at. All the boys idolized me; I was the one they all wanted to ask out. Only, none of them cared about me. None of them wanted to know what kind of person I was. All they wanted was this face...this face that so many of the girls hated me for having."
Tamiko folded her arms on the rail and rested her chin on them, looking out at the city.
"When my family lived in Osaka, I had a best friend; her name was Miyako. She was the only person I knew who really liked me for who I was. We would do everything together, share all our secrets. She told me, once, that there was a boy who she was in love with. I thought she should be brave and confess her love to him, and it seemed that I was right, because when she did, he asked her out. They dated for about a month, and then the boy came to me and said that he was really in love with me, that he had asked Miyako out only so he could get closer to me.
"She heard him say that.
"Miyako must have really loved him too, because she killed herself because of it. She filled the bathtub with water, got into it, and cut her wrists with a kitchen knife. She slowly bled, and bled, until she just went to sleep, forever.
"My father received a promotion at his job, and we moved to Tokyo a month later."
There were tears glistening on her cheeks, gleaming trails of liquid fire reflecting the afternoon sun.
"That's why...that's why you've always held yourself apart from other people here," Subaru realized.
"Yes."
The wind whispered softly around them.
"But that only makes it worse, doesn't it?" he asked. "No one knows you at all, now. No one knows anything about you."
"So the boys see me as the unattainable goddess and the girls as the cold-hearted bitch? That my actions only make it worse because I won't let anyone know anything but how I look? Is that what you were going to say, Subaru-kun?"
He nodded.
"Well," she told him, tilting her head so she could look at him, "at least this way no one gets hurt but myself."
What can I do? Subaru thought helplessly. How could he make her understand that she hadn't done anything wrong?
"Tamiko-san..." he began haltingly.
She chuckled softly.
"What now? Is this where you tell me that none of this was my fault?" she said, again expressing his thoughts before he could say them. "That people make their own choices in life, and that I can't hold myself responsible for them? That I can't let the past keep me from living my own life in the present?" It was obvious from her self-mocking tone that she had already told herself all these things, and dismissed them.
"Tamiko-san, this isn't how life should be!"
"You're too much of an optimist, Subaru-kun," she told him with a gentle smile. "You don't care at all about who I am or what I look like, do you? You'd do the same for anyone in my position. That's sweet; our world needs more people like you."
Subaru blushed at her compliments.
Tamiko stood up and turned fully towards him, her hand still resting lightly on the railing.
"Subaru-kun, I do want to thank you for what you did, but...please, from now on, just forget about me."
"Tamiko-san...I..."
He felt it this time, an instant before it struck. It wasn't like the previous day's attack, though; it was quick and precise, and there was a presence to it, something specific instead of nebulous
A surge of wind came from nowhere. It seemed to flow around Subaru with no effect, but sent Tamiko stumbling.
The railing crumpled beneath her weight, like it was made of paper-thin aluminum instead of steel.
Then, the presence was gone.
And the girl was falling.