Once back in Tokyo, things gradually began to settle down. Tsukushi returned to school, desperately trying to play catch up on the few days of classes that she'd missed, and furiously turning down Soujiro and Akira's constant offers to just do it for her. She could stand on her own, damnit! She could get by in this school without help! She had done so for a long time before she'd met the F4, after all. And at least this time around, she had social support. She had friends.

She also had melancholy hanging like an albatross around her neck.

Rui orbited her, sometimes hovering near, sometimes far—wanting to be near her, but respecting her desire to be left alone. Giving her the chance to learn to be just friends again. They talked sometimes, and she tried to pretend she didn't feel awkward, that his loneliness didn't eat at her heart. But it did.

She didn't smile much these days. Even when Akira and Soujiro played pranks on her, dragged her out to clubs, or dropped by the dango shop to taunt her. But she didn't cry either. Almost, she felt as though that weekend up in the mountains had sapped her ability to feel. As if she'd wrung herself dry of emotion, and that nothing could return until the reservoir of her soul had had time to refill. Sometimes, she reminded herself of Rui, the way he had been when they'd first met. When she looked in the mirror, she recognized that faraway preoccupied look in her eyes.

It wasn't over yet. Something in her was waiting. Waiting for what might never be. Waiting for Tsukasa.

He didn't come to school much. Word was that he was recovering, at last. She'd gone over to his mansion once or twice, dragged by the F2. He'd been less pale, less weak, but still irritable. He seemed very lonely. He was very lonely, and a strong part of her wanted to reach out and grab ahold of him and never let him go. But she didn't, because she didn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past, she didn't want to wound him more than she already had. Whatever he thought, she'd decided, his amnesia was her fault, a way of blocking out the pain they'd caused each other. Loneliness was a small price to pay for shutting all that out. It had to be. She had to believe that this was for the best.

After the first few visits she stopped coming over, unable to bear the look in his eyes when he stared at her.

She'd recognized that look, that heat. She'd seen it before. But she denied it, a trick of the light; he didn't remember, he couldn't want. . . .And when he cursed her out for an insipid little thing, a scrawny peasant, she told herself that this Tsukasa meant it, that this Tsukasa didn't say such things out of endearment.

But he did, and he raised his voice, longing to see a fire in her eyes. Craving her voice, the way she could spark up, igniting his own flame. Reminding him why he was forcing himself to live. But she never did. He healed anyway. As if to spite her for her refusal, as if to say, "See, I can do this without you."

But he didn't recover any more memories. Not a single damned one.

He didn't care, not anymore. He didn't need those memories anyway. He was Doumyouji Tsukasa, and he knew what he wanted. Just as soon as he was well again.

In the meantime, he worked, spending the time he was recuperating in reading up on his family's corporation, their investments, the role he would soon be called on to play.

And he worked on getting to know his friends; the men they had become in the time that he had lost. It was easier than he'd thought. They were strangers in some ways, but not completely. And whatever people might say about his brains, he wasn't that slow a study. He knew people. That animal instinct at work, perhaps.

But he was still lonely. And he was still hungry. A fire eating away at him, the hunger for that which he could not remember, that which he could not have.

The girl whose lips he dreamt about at night, the eyes that haunted his dreams, the feel of her calloused hands, the smooth skin of the rest of her, her petite curves and bony hips. Was it any wonder that he often awoke, drenched in sweat, a raging hard-on demanding relief?

If only they were memories, and not a dream.

Makino. . . .

. . . . Makino dreamt, as well. But her dreams were nightmares. She often awoke with a whimper, with his name on her lips. . . And sometimes, she cried out for Rui, unknowingly, in the depths of the night. Susumu took to sleeping with a pillow over his head to block the sounds of his sister's night terrors.

But she was a weed, and a weed perseveres, no matter what. She went to school, she withstood the renewed gossip, she worked, and she went about her days, as one week turned into two, and three, and the gossip and malicious looks subsided again, as they always did, in favor of newer, fresher victims to slander.

In the fourth week since the weekend up in the mountains, Tsukasa woke up one day, and pulled his stitches out from the ragged scar in his side, running his fingers along the red raised tissue in wonder. Several times in the first two weeks, he'd thought he would never heal, but by the third week, he'd seen it closing, day by day, the oozing lymph and blood drying and being replaced by living cells. It had itched like hell, and he fought like a demon against himself, refusing to cave in, to scratch until it was an oozing mess once more. His doctor proclaimed his recovery to be a near miracle; if you'd asked him that weekend at Shigeru's, he would have said Tsukasa was a goner for sure. Tsukasa's neurologist looked at the charts, and shook his head. "Mind over matter," was what he said, "there's no organic reason you can't remember. I recommend a psych consult." Tsukasa had refused.

Instead, he went back to school. Step one complete, it was time for phase two; operation Make Makino Mine. He hadn't a clue how to go about it, but he didn't care. He knew what he wanted, and that was it. She'd been his before, and she must be his again, to make up for all that he'd forgotten. He would make new memories to fit the familiarity he felt, and he would follow his dreams. She would see reason. He would make her see, and no one would stop him.

Tsukasa arrived at Eitoku late in the morning, and waited impatiently in the hallway where the F4 had used to lurk. He saw them coming from down the hall; Makino with her arms loaded with books for her classes, a tired frown on her face; Soujiro talking non-stop, making jokes at Tsukushi's expense, judging by the blush on her face; Akira, rolling his eyes and muttering comments in Makino's ears; Rui, a few steps behind, looking almost as disgruntled as Tsukasa suddenly felt, watching the easy camaraderie between Makino and his friends. When Akira or Soujiro brushed against her, threw a casual arm across her shoulder, Tsukasa felt a stab of jealousy. She was his, damn it. He wanted her, and they made a mockery of his desire by their casual assumption of the place he wanted to be, the place they took so easily, and without meaning anything by it. He wanted to smash a fist through their complacent faces, he wanted to grab that clueless girl and shake her, he wanted to kiss her senseless until she came to life and slapped him back, until she writhed beneath him, the way she did in his dreams. . . . He could almost see it smell it feel it taste it, his desires made life, in the few seconds before Soujiro noticed him, and broke his reverie with a shouted, "Hey, Tsukasa! When did you get here? How are you feeling?"

"Better before you got here." He grumbled, unhappy at the return of reality.

"How's your wound?" Tsukushi, spoke up, the first thing that came to mind, as she looked away, afraid lest someone see the turbulence behind her eyes.

Tsukasa couldn't help himself, he grinned proudly, and, ignoring the growing crowd of Eitoku students in the hallway beyond, pulled his shirt off in one smooth motion. "Check it out!" He posed so that the ugly scar caught the light from the overhead fluorescents.

The murmurs from the peons behind Tsukushi and the F3 increased, as the braver students tried to press forward and catch a glimpse of the fabled Doumyouji Tsukasa, returned from a near-death experience, half-naked here before them.

"Dude, that's ugly." Akira blinked quizzically at Tsukasa, ignoring the idiots behind him.

"Put your shirt on please, before someone sees," Soujiro reiterated.

"Yeah. . ." was Rui's only contribution.

And what of Tsukushi? What did she think, or do, or say? She hardly, knew herself. She remembered all that pain, all that blood. The scar looked so small now by comparison, an ugly reminder of an ugly event. She felt as ugly and scarred in spirit as Tsukasa's torso. She could hardly believe it was real. As if in a daze, she stepped forward, and reached out one trembling hand, running it along the scar tissue, proving to herself that it truly was healed, would not erupt a torrent of blood, the river of Tsukasa's life flowing away.

Tsukasa sucked in a breath, shocked at the feather-light sensation of Tsukushi's fingers. He hadn't expected that. But he liked it. Oh god yes, he liked it. The tightening in his groin at each fleeting contact told him so. This had to stop before he lost control. Hastily, he snatched her hand away, in a seemingly angry gesture. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Idiot! Did I give you permission to touch me!"

"Oh god, He never learns." Soujiro and Akira were shaking their heads in dismay, while Rui looked on impassively, waiting to see how this little drama would play out.

Tsukushi blinked, and snapped back into reality. For one moment there, she'd forgotten that this was not the Doumyouji she loved. She jerked her hand away as if stung, bitterly regretting her lapse. She was really going to have to work on that. Bad enough that the whole school had seen, and would be pillorying her again by the end of the day. Only thing that could be worse, was if it happened again. She set her lips in a grim line, looked away, and reminded herself that a weed didn't cry in public. But a weed could walk away. She straightened her back, pulled the ragged shreds of her dignity together, and gave a stiff, formal, and totally sarcastic nod, "My apologies, Doumyouji-san, this lowly peasant did not mean to contaminate your sacred personage." And, with that, she turned on her heel, and stalked off through the whispering crowd, leaving Rui to trail after her once more, while Soujiro and Akira fought valiantly, if not entirely successfully, to keep their giggles from erupting into outright laughter.

"Hey, what?" Tsukasa mused to himself, "What the hell just happened?" Then, realizing she was gone, his commanding voice rang out down the hell, "Come back here, bitch, I'm not done talking to you."

"Oh. . . Déjà vu," Soujiro moaned,

"My head hurts already," Akira agreed.

"Tsukasa, what the hell did you have to do that for?"

"We're cursed, Soujiro. Cursed by the gods."

"With friends like these. . ."

". . .Who needs enemies? Seriously, these two are going to give me ulcers before I'm twenty."

"If we live that long."

"But seriously, Tsukasa, What the fuck were you thinking?"

"And will you please put your shirt back on? I don't want to look at that anymore."

"Shut up! Just shut up." Tsukasa roared; his friends were about as irritating and distracting as a swarm of mosquitoes. "And you lot, Go away before I do something you're going to regret." Scattering the onlookers like dust in the wind, until only the F3 were left, "That girl is going to be the death of me."

"Hah." Akira laughed humorlessly, "You're not dying anymore. If anything, it's the other way around."

"What the hell are you babbling about!"

"Let's go get a drink." Soujiro interrupted quickly.

"But, I'm not done with Makino yet."

"She's done with you. Drinks. Now."

"This isn't over." Tsukasa groused, but allowed himself to be dragged away by his friends, pretending that he didn't hear Akira's plaintive sigh."

"It never seems to be, that's for sure. . ."

TBC

- - - if it weren't for the lovely lovely statistic function, I would think that no one is really reading any more. Thankfully the hits tell me this is not so, (4 of readers review, hah!) otherwise I might've considered burying this fic alive, letting it die a well-deserved death. . . - - - -