| Chapter 7 |

He should be embarrassed to tag along behind Shizuka, too distracted and muddled to learn the route they took today, either. But he's not. Well.

Actually, that's not true, this is deeply embarrassing, but he's too…what?…relieved? It's better than the alternative. He'd rather be seen clutching Shizuka's hand like a child than lost like he probably would be without him. He's happier holding Shizuka's hand than worrying about what people think or which spirits are itching to catch him next. He's not content, but he's more alive than he's been for most of his time spent within the closed walls of the shop. In fact, being with Shizuka—

This is just—much better.

"Watanuki." Shizuka looks back at him. Watanuki barely meets his eyes. His expression—

"I'm coming," Watanuki croaks, and ducks his head.

Shizuka nods, and then his head swings back to watch the street. "Un." He'll just ask again in a couple minutes…

Shizuka drags Watanuki through the wrought-iron gate and releases his wrist with a small sigh. Watanuki immediately picks it up in his other hand rubs the spots under pressure with his thumb, preoccupied. Because what he kind of wanted...

Watanuki catches Shizuka still staring at him and drops his wrist. He looks up.

"C'mon," Shizuka mutters, and leads the way back to the porch, where they sit down. "What's going on?"

"He was talking about Yuuko," Watanuki says. "The spirit was."

Shizuka blinks. "Her? Yuuko? Why?"

"Saa…I don't know. But he knew about her. It could have been worse." Watanuki's gaze turns moody. "Told me I was a selfish hypocrite and waiting for her all this time was just for my benefit. I accused him of the same. Still…it may have…he had a point."

Shizuka phrases his words carefully. "I know you waited a very long time…but what is it about her?"

Watanuki shakes his head. "I need her."

"But what?"

"I need her to take over the shop," Watanuki says. "It was always a stretch for me. I'm not suited for it, not like she was. She occupied a niche that I couldn't hope to fill as more than a generic placeholder, and there's still a need for it. Kochoushu, of course, has the right skills to do the job Yuuko left, whether she kept the spirit of Yuuko or not."

"That still doesn't explain why the spirit accused you."

He leans his chin on one hand, fingers tapping his cheek as he thought. "Yuuko—she was always sad," he says to himself. "Underneath everything. For all the time I worked for Yuuko, I didn't know what she wanted or what she got from the work she did or the wishes she granted. Leading people to the dooms they chose—she was the gatekeeper, but it wasn't a thing she took pleasure in. She was a mystery." He props his chin on one hand discontentedly.

"So then..."

"Then I realized." Watanuki looks at Shizuka then. "That I had everything I ever wanted, if I refused to let go. I looked outside myself and saw— Why was she so concerned about me? Why didn't I know anything about her? Didn't she also deserve to by happy? That's why I promised to grant her wish. Except she told me her wish was for me to live on. But that was—I couldn't do that, not when I was just learning to live for myself. If I was going to live then I would live so I could do something for her."

Watanuki's gaze drifts back to the garden. "I knew she wasn't living for herself…not just because she was forced to, but because…it was because of her that I existed…she was kith, not kin to me but somehow just as close, and I never quite understood why. She felt responsible for my being what I am, a precarious existence. I didn't know that she was on borrowed time... Her wish seemed wrong, to me. She should have had a fair chance at life for its own sake, but instead she gave up her remaining time for me. So I wanted to return the favor. She'd done it for me, after all…" He runs a hand through his hair. "…given me a reason to live. It probably sounds backwards. Like I went all the way back to the beginning. I guess that's what I did. I put my entire life on hold to do that. Doumeki would argue that I let go of my own happiness to do so." He sighs. "But I don't regret it, despite everything. I can't."

"So what do you want to do?"

"I want to meet her again. I want her to have the chance to heal and become everything she should have been, and I want to tell her what she meant to me. Then we can part ways. And I can…I can continue my life." His voice cracks.

"But Kochoushu…" Doumeki trails off.

Watanuki shakes his head, shrugs slightly. "I don't know. Yuuko is a part of her, but buried; I don't know how to wake her. Or if I should wake her." He pauses. "Sometimes I still think that between one blink and the next I could meet her under the sakura tree in our dreams. The place we last met. We'll talk about the old days and she'll tell me about the future. So far—so far that's never happened. It probably never will." He licks his lips. "Not that way. As if it would be that easy."

"But you want it, don't you?" Shizuka says softly.

"More than anything." Watanuki wraps his arms around his knees, rests his chin on them. "More than anything in the world. But that's part of the problem, isn't it?" he half laughs. "That I traded her for the world."

Shizuka touches Watanuki's shoulder. "The world brought you back."

Watanuki slumps towards the touch. "It did, didn't it. Or you did…" He sighs. "I'm grateful for that, you know."

"Oh." His voice sounds off, and Shizuka's eyes glaze, staring into space. In a minute he snaps out of the trance and focuses back on Watanuki.

Watanuki pulls away, looking wary. "Doumeki again?"

Shizuka colors slightly. "Un. Yeah. He says…" He licks his lips, nervous.

Watanuki is tired. "I'm glad it means something to him…you." Something inside him shuts down, and his spirit recoils back into himself. He doesn't want to hear what Doumeki has to say. He's still afraid of it.

"Watanuki."

"What?" the shopkeeper asks.

"…"

Shizuka can't say it...

"The journals," he says instead. "Have you read them?"

Watanuki blinks once and shakes his head. "Haven't found the right opportunity," he mutters, breaking eye contact. "Have you made a decision about the eye?"

Shizuka shakes his head.

Watanuki gets up and goes inside to prepare dinner. Fai and Kurogane are lounging in the living room, playing and teasing each other, having a disjointed conversation of sorts. Shizuka enters and they make an effort to include him, occasionally thinking of some question or other that they wanted to ask him about working and schooling in this country amid the lighthearted banter that they invite him to join. Shizuka doesn't feel comfortable with that yet, but they don't seem to mind.

Kurogane leans back from the kiosk where he's been talking to the secretaries and tells Fai, "They're saying we've got to take a test."

"Then we'll sign up." Fai resumes pacing. He keeps rubbing his hands up and down his arms. Occasionally he becomes distracted by the art, but only for moments at a time. He's not cold. Kurogane's seen him in much colder places wearing thinner garments than he is now.

Frowning, Kurogane turns back to the lady in front of him and makes his inquiries about dates and times and subjects. He and Fai know nothing about this world; they need to study. As for what skills this world requires them to have—Kurogane has a sneaky suspicion that they don't have them. Still, they've got to try.

Kurogane makes the appointment, thanks the secretaries, and circles back to Fai. Fai doesn't look up.

"Are you all right?" Kurogane says softly, hefting his shoulder bag. Mokona, who had been almost asleep, rolls around in it. Her job as translator is almost entirely passive, it seems. But now she's waking up, and her weight is shifting around as she regains her bearings.

Fai shrugs.

"Are you...hungry?" says Kurogane, fighting with the shifting bag.

Fai shakes his head. "I can't think," he mutters.

"Then you're nervous?"

Fai makes a quick, sharp negative motion without looking him in the eyes.

The motion that tells Kurogane that's exactly what it is, and it takes him aback. "Fai—"

While Kurogane is still searching for words, Fai grabs his arm and drags him towards the building's entrance, out of earshot. "This is different," he mutters. "Different from before. Kurogane, what if we can't do this? Do you know how many entrance exams we've messed up before? We've got only one chance. We can't mess it up. I can't move again. I don't think I can do this again."

"We will do it," says Kurogane in a low voice.

"There's so much we don't know."

"Yes," says Kurogane. Mokona peeps out of the top of the bag.

"Are we going to make it?"

Mokona makes a distressed sound, and Kurogane says extra firmly: "Yes, we will."

Fai takes a deep breath. "Okay."

Kurogane doesn't say anything, but he takes a step back, and Mokona disappears back into bottom of the satchel hanging from his shoulder.

"…for now." Fai sounds tired.

It's taken its toll on both of them, the traveling. Fai's never had a home; perhaps Kurogane should have anticipated how scared he would be to finally settle on one. But it never occurred to him.

Kurogane says slowly, "We've got experience since we've done this before. It's just the same as always. We'll take this one step at a time. We can't get discouraged when we haven't done anything yet."

Fai just looks at him, face wan. Kurogane asked him not to lie anymore, and he won't.

"Is there some place you'd like to go? To do?"

Fai nods, eyes wandering...

"Where?"

Fai's eyes snap back to his face. "Kuro, don't laugh, okay?"

Kurogane blinks.

"I really...I want to visit a library." Fai still looks miserable. "I think I'm too tense to enjoy it, though."

Surprised, Kurogane says, "A library? But last time we…"

"Yes, I know, I know. We were forced to commit a felony. But not all libraries are like that; that place was actually rather abnormal. Most places don't place such a high value on knowledge as that..." Fai's voice grew faint. "It's just…I practically grew up in the palace library. Ashura-Ou taught me the basics of magic, but after that I had to study for myself. I was a princeling and a scholar for a very long time, and it was how I occupied myself. So few would willingly interact with me."

Come to think of it, unlike Kurogane, Fai had a lot of book knowledge…and he seemed to enjoy being around it. He shared that interest with the innocent clone Syaoran...

Ah. It was what he thought of as home.

Fai was right, there was no way he could enjoy relaxing while he was jumpy as a frog in a tea kettle. Still, he didn't want Fai to reject his own idea—it was good, just not timely. Kurogane frowned.

"…probably wouldn't be able to read the language anyway," Fai mutters.

"What!" That caught Kurogane's attention. "You can't read?"

Fai casts him an irritated look. "I can read some languages, like mine. I'm not illiterate. Just not this one."

"Oh." Kurogane palms his face, and hastily resecures the bag on his shoulder when Mokona turns in a slow circle, forming a small moving bulge. "Mokona can't help with that, can she?" He frowns.

Fai shrugs. "I don't think so."

"Yet again something else to work on," Kurogane grunts. "You'll need to know the language to perform on the tests."

Fai flinches. "I forgot about that."

"As did I, but the secretaries wouldn't let me sign up for anything sooner than a year in advance, so I think we're okay."

"Seriously?"

"Really."

"Oh."

"Anyhow, do you have any magic that could hurry the process along?"

"I know of some spells, yes, but I'd need to look up the details."

"Think Mokona could transport us and we could fetch your book?"

"No, the spell on Seresu…"

"…My fault..."

"No, it's not." Fai sighs. "But Yuuko might have some book on a similar subject in her stores. She probably inherited half the magic books of the known worlds from the magician Clow."

"Then I think it's time to pay Watanuki another visit."

They get back just in time to witness Kochoushu's lesson. Watanuki is teaching her to balance written spell diagrams—Kochoushu is sketching in pencil. Watanuki bends over her shoulder now and again to correct the obvious mistakes. When Fai and Kurogane enter, however, Watanuki straightens up gratefully and heads over to them.

"How's it going?" asks Kurogane, because it looks like Watanuki needs to vent for a bit.

"Thank goodness you're back. I just taught her the basics an hour ago, and look at her now." Watanuki chuckles nervously. "She'll surpass me in no time. If she practices, in six months she could do transport magic across worlds if she wishes. I can't even do that. She's just got a knack for it." He points. "Look at those drawings, Fai! I'm already getting a headache, they're so intricate…" he complains.

Fai's attention, at least, is caught. He smirks slightly and prowls his way to the table like a great cat. Scanning the table in a brief glance, leans over, points at some stuff, and begins whispering suggestions. Kochoushu looks up and replies, and they begin discussing ideas. In half a minute, Fai sits down next to her.

Watanuki eyes them, and sighs, "What a relief. I can't discuss this with her at all..."

Mokona sticks her head out of the bag hanging from Kurogane's shoulder, and Kurogane opens the top more fully and lets her hop out. "Is it that bad?" he asks, when he looks up.

"I'm a total amateur!"

"Is it like this with everything?" Kurogane asks in some concern.

Watanuki runs his hand through his hair. "No. Just sometimes. When it has to do with Yuuko's specialties."

"But she's not aware…?"

"Not like Shizuka is. Sometimes I think Doumeki actually has words with him; Shizuka seems to think of him as other, separate. Doumeki is the part of him with the wisdom and experience advising him from "outside" and then there's Shizuka himself, reborn without his preconceptions to new experiences. But with her, Kochoushu has a knack, a prompting that seems to come from her own self. Which is true, and…harder to address. It's her, I know it is, but the slate has been swept clean."

"I see."

Watanuki hangs his head. "I still haven't told her why I'm teaching her."

"Probably wise," Kurogane agrees.

"Kurogane, is it foolish to hope that Kochoushu has something in her of the adult Yuuko?"

"Either way, you're fulfilling your wish, aren't you?" Kurogane points out.

Watanuki nods.

"We can't live without hope."

"Yeah…."

"Just don't let your hopes cloud what you know of who she really is right now. Eh?" Kurogane touches his shoulder and steps back.

"If I can," Watanuki agrees. "I don't know if I can avoid it, though."

"You do your best, it's all you can do. Your wish is going to get complicated, but it wouldn't have been worth it if it didn't. Gods know that's how it was for us while we were traveling."

They watch Fai and Kochoushu discussing one drawing avidly, sketching out their ideas on different pieces of paper. Fai keeps adding artistic flourishes for fun, and Kochoushu's look more and more maze-like until she shows Fai one that makes him cross his eyes. Kochoushu giggles.

"Why'd you come back so early, anyway?" Watanuki asks suddenly.

"Oh." Kurogane starts. "Fai was wondering if we could borrow some of Yuuko's magic books. The ones on languages, and learning them, with magical techniques. I don't know what he was looking for in particular."

"Hm." Watanuki thinks. "I'm not sure how useful they'll be."

"That doesn't matter. I don't think Fai has much hope either, but any help at all would be good. He can't read, and he can't speak or listen without Mokona. He told me he wanted to visit a library today."

Watanuki smacks his forehead. "I completely forgot about the language barrier."

"So did I," said Kurogane somberly. "And…we started to wonder if we could ever call this place home."

"There is no place to go back to. You have only one option." Watanuki stretches. "You have to make your own home. Those who can stay where they were comfortable from birth are fortunate. Those who cannot—do their best. It takes time."

"That's what I told Fai."

"There, you see."

Kurogane shakes his head. "I don't know if it's enough."

"It probably won't be," Watanuki says quietly, "but you can't give up."

"But what is home? Is it our mother tongue, the stories our parents taught us, the lessons we learned? Is it the pillows and the beds and walls and the tables and the hearth? Is it comfort? Is it habit? Is it the smells and the sounds and the song of birds in the morning, or the feel of the floor under our bare feet? We don't have any of those things, Fai and I. We have nothing in common—not with each other, and not with this world. We have to learn all of those things. We have to find compromises, invent new traditions. Even though I was an orphan of Nippon, I had those things. And though I was angry for what I had lost, I was fortunate for what I had not. At least I had what was familiar to me." Kurogane speaks in a hushed whisper.

"No." Watanuki shakes his head. "That's not it at all."

"Then what is it?"

Watanuki leads Kurogane to the couch, and sits. Kurogane sits as well. "Home isn't a place. It can be attached to a place, but home is the people," Watanuki says, looking nowhere. "Home is nothing without the ones we love. Home is the way we live, day in, day out, so we can go out to meet them."

"What do you mean?"

"I was an orphan also, remember? My parents, the clones of Syaoran and Sakura, died when I was young. I remember nothing about them except that I loved them... Yuuko said I traded those memories to survive—or was it for someone else's survival? I was young, anyway. I was in the care of the government, but did not have a guardian. I had a landlady: she had a heart attack and died. Once I had a friend, until he went on to the next life as a ghost—although really he had been one all along. When I was with them, that was my home. I had an apartment of my own—the place you're living in now, actually—I lived in it, but it was nothing. It was merely a box for shelter. Home and house are completely different." Watanuki pushes his glasses up on his nose. "But I kept losing them."

Kurogane should interrupt, to say something, to stop the tirade sweeping out of Watanuki like blood spurting luridly from a vein. But he can't. He has to listen.

Watanuki keeps going, desperately. "It was Yuuko who helped me see what home was. She gave me my job. Through her I met Himawari and Doumeki, and I began to trust again.

"You know about my heritage." Watanuki looks up. "I wonder if he told you. When my twin Syaoran and I bargained for our lives, that time Fei-Wong threw his curse at us at the end of your journey, the price was not quite right."

"What?" Kurogane croaks.

Watanuki's gazes falls to the floor. "It was fine for Syaoran. Because," said Watanuki. "You and Fai were with him. He kept part of his home, even away from Sakura… He was remaking a home he never had, reforging those bonds scattered among the worlds. He paid in space, and it was enough. His journey would define the span of time he would pay. But I paid too much.

Watanuki covers his eyes with his hands. "I paid the price twice over. I paid in time through the extension of my life, and the restriction of my movements to the shop. In a way I had already paid it—the payment was already required. Just weeks before, I wished to see Yuuko again and grant her wish to see me live… When I made my choice in the void left by Fei-Wong, the balance was set to even.

Watanuki bends over, hunching over himself. "Then the payment was correct, but it wasn't right." He exhales into his hands, steaming up his glasses. "I outlasted the home that was supposed to surround me. They died while I stayed young, and then none of them were left."

Only now that the payment is over is he able to admit what he did.

Kurogane doesn't know what to say. Like he had done when Syaoran was traveling with them, and his eyes became hooded, he presses Watanuki's face to his side and lets him hide there, while he waits for him to recover. Kurogane looks up and meets Fai's eyes across the room. Fai's lips thin into a straight line, not out of jealousy but of concern, and then he nods jerkily and turns his attention back to Kochoushu.

Kurogane has no idea how they are going to report this back to Syaoran.

Eventually Watanuki pushes back, and sits straight, looking at nothing in particular, not speaking. That also was Syaoran's way. In a low voice, he says, "My point is, Kurogane, that you can lose every thing you own and still keep your sense of home. On the other hand, if you lose your people…those things become nothing."

"It's the community we build that holds us here," Kurogane repeats.

Watanuki nods.

"Why none of the other worlds, then?" Kurogane wondered. "Why did we decide to come here?"

Watanuki shrugs. "It was up to both of you to decide. There was something weighing on you there, so you couldn't interact completely honestly with the people around you, even though you had broken the barriers between each other."

That was it. "The personas," Kurogane realized. "We never established bonds here. We met you, but we weren't yet acting quite like our personas—"

"Yes. And now that you're back, you aren't pressured to act that way. You've never been less than genuine to Doumeki and I." Watanuki smiles slightly. "I'm glad you trust us with that."

"It was a relief, as you said," Kurogane replies quietly. "Plus, you're Syaoran's…"

"I know who you are, but I'm not in the know, so to speak?" Watanuki's lips twist slightly. "I can call you out on the lies, but I don't yet know how you feel. So you get to decide."

Kurogane shrugs. "I wager you hit pretty close."

Watanuki stands, somewhat unsteadily. "It's my job to guess… Now if you'll excuse me, I think I need to check on Kochoushu."

He holds the book by its spine, balances it and sifts the pages and lets it fall open, spreads the folds open with his fingers...

一日四月 (April 1st, APRIL FOOLS)

…His own birthday. Watanuki pauses, finger poised just above the letters, blocking his view of Doumeki's words scribbled in shorthand. He takes a deep breath and willfully moves his finger down, down, down.

Lunch with Watanuki and Kunogi. Inarizushi delicious. Told him to make kitsune udon. He protested only yakisoba on hand but took out discreetly.

Watanuki stops.

Was this it? Did Doumeki only record his lunch exploits? Didn't he get bored of the same old pattern? Why would he write it in his journal?

…always puts too much sauce. Rescued half-batch, started eating before he treated it. He hollered...

Watanuki sighs. Sometimes he would give anything to kick his past self. His fingers slip, and the journal pages flutter until he has lost his place. He parts the pages carefully, checks his place—

Kohane missed me, but—

No!

Watanuki slams the book shut, pushes it away from himself, and leaves it on the table.

Not yet.

Shizuka walks in and glances at the book on the table, and decides not to bring it up. Instead he gets right to business. "Watanuki, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure." Watanuki looks up.

"I was wondering if you could come to a company meeting."

"What?"

"If you would accompany me as my friend."

"Out…side?"

"Yes. It's called a retreat." Shizuka makes a face. "My coworkers have been bothering me, wondering why I don't go out to drink and so on."

"Oh."

"I think it would help inter-office relations if they could see that I dote on a real person," Shizuka says stiffly.

Watanuki blinks. That smacks of the old Doumeki he knew. Then he wonders if Shizuka really means the word dote, rather than devote. Actually, both words are rather tricky in this context. He decides to ignore it. "They've been giving you trouble because of me?"

"No, not really." Shizuka shuffles his feet. "It's just, I'd like to do something before they get more persistent."

"About what?" Watanuki asks, even more bewildered.

"…personal life," Shizuka mutters, barely audible, looking at the floor.

"Are they trying to marry you off, or something?" Watanuki asks, genuinely confused.

Shizuka shakes his head. "No, they're just curious…"

"I don't understand."

"I think they want to get to know me," he mumbles.

"Then what's the problem with that?"

Shizuka's at a total loss for words. If Watanuki doesn't understand, then he has to redefine his problem. Finally he manages: "I—don't—speak very well. In public."

For a moment Watanuki stares at him incredulously, trying to think about what in his experience matches up with his statement, and then he begins to smile.

"What?"

"Nothing…"

"No, what is it?!" Shizuka is suddenly crazy with anxiety.

"I'm just remembering how you arrived on my doorstep." Watanuki grins despite himself. "Watanuki-sama!"

Shizuka immediately subsides, and scowls. "Not funny..."

Watanuki just grins to himself again. "If you say so. I see your problem. You're not very talkative when you're not around me? Doumeki wasn't a fast-talker either. He would say maybe two words at school parties, and still the girls flocked to him. I'll never understand why."

Shizuka doesn't think he's very talkative around Watanuki either. He's just more comfortable. He says nothing.

"Sure, I'll go with you," Watanuki continues. "So long as you get me a proper suit. I wouldn't want to embarrass you in an old-fashioned kimono. Your company is somewhat avant-guarde, isn't it? Still, it would stick out."

Shizuka nods.

"Also, you'll have to drag me out of the house, but I'm sure that's not a problem." Watanuki smiles his best, most secret smile. "You've done it before."

Shizuka smiles back the tiniest bit.

The windowless factory across the street

Regardless of the season, it made a low-pitched hum

And I always thought that wherever I was in this world

I would hear that sound and take it for granted.

That's what I believed.

My baby—

The nights you were gone, you sat on the sofa as usual

And the room without you didn't feel like home.

—"Sofa," by Shikao Suga [translated]