Yuki awoke with a start. Rubbing his eyes, he looked outside and saw the soft colours of orange and light pink slowly seeping through the window. He glanced at his watch and groaned. He was late.

He had walked through that scene countless times in his dreams, never allowing him to forget what had happened. He remembered watching from behind the siding doors, the shivering silhouette of Tohru standing in front of Kyo, clinging on to a thin thread of hope.

Scratching his head, he looked around. He was alone. Everyone had left. Nobody waited for him.

Yuki walked to the front gates of his school, stopped, and took one last glance behind. He spotted the flower bush in which Tohru would occasionally wait for him as he finished his student council meetings. He pictured her smiling face that seemed to lighten up when he walked towards her. It seemed like she was delighted to see him, but maybe, just maybe she was just glad that she didn't have to wait anymore.

Yuki sighed and continued his journey home.

Tired of waiting? Just like everyone else.

But a nagging voice of hope whispered to him, "But she kept on waiting. Day after day, she kept on waiting."

That annoying small voice of hope pissed him off. Because as much as he tried to smother that thought away, he hoped and had wished for it to be true as well.

When he got home, he saw Shigure sitting at the front porch as if nothing had happened, sipping a cup of black coffee. "Yuki! You're home I was starting to miss you! Oh boy! Am I hungry? You know… I got tired of waiting for you to return so I attempted to cook a little something to settle my grumbling stomach. I proved something new today. It turns out I am a terrible cook."

Yuki opened the front door to see an amazing mess of black soot coming from the kitchen.

"SHIGUREEEE~!"

In the end, Shigure and Yuki ordered a pizza. Shigure ate the pizza whistling, happy and content that he could finally feed his bottomless pit of a stomach. "It seems," Shigure began. "That nothing can quite quench my hunger as much as Tohru's cooking."

Yuki didn't answer. He kept on eating, pretending he didn't hear. "Where's that stupid cat?" he asked.

"Don't you miss Tohru's cooking?"

"He's in his cave isn't he? I'll go call him to eat." Yuki got up to leave.

"My favourite dish of hers is the onigiri!"

"DON'T ACT LIKE SHE'S GONE!" Yuki snapped, his eyes burned fuming with anger.

Shigure paused a moment before setting his pizza on the plate. He looked thoughtfully at his pizza. "Call Kyo down to eat," he said. "I have something to tell you two."

Tohru stared at the nervous looking woman standing at her hospital ward doorway. Her jet-black hair gleamed against the soft kiss of dusk. She peeked in inside, as if afraid that Tohru might suddenly yell at her.

"Erm, would you like to come in?" Tohru asked the woman. Akito Sohma nodded slowly and finally stepped inside the room.

"T-tohru Honda?"

"Yes?"

"D-do you remember what you said that?"

Tohru looked thoughtful. "What do you mean?"

"On that day, you said that you wanted to be friends!" Akito blurted. Akito fidgeted with her fingers.

"Eh! Really?" Tohru chuckled softly. "My memory must have been so bad that I must have forgotten. I apologize. Sorry!"

Forgot? What if she rejected her now?

"What do you mean you forgot?" Akito almost cried out.

"I'm not really sure," Tohru confessed. "But if you want, we could start over!" A look of delight appeared on Tohur's face.

Tohru extended her hand, wrapped in bandages. "Would you like to be friends?" Her smile stretched from ear to ear, plastered on her naïve, innocent face. She looked like a fool, in one's eyes. Akito would have perceived it that way, once. But on that day, she saw Tohru's smiling face as pure and sincere as she had never seen. It frightened her.

Akito slowly approached the bed, raising her hand to accept the offering of friendship.

Minutes later, Akito left the room in a daze. After shutting the door behind her, she looked down at her own two hands that were shaking uncontrollably. "I did it," she said. "I made a friend." But realization suddenly hit her, and she was looking around frantically.

What did she mean when she said she forgot? Is something wrong with her body?

"Hotari," she whispered. He must be able to help. He's a doctor. He must know the answer.

And she started picking up her pace, in search of the Sohma family doctor.

Hotari clutched Akito's shoulders in disbelief as the tears streamed down her face, telling the story of what happened. Gasping for breath, she managed to say the words, "Please help her." Words she never thought she would one day come to beg from Hatori.

"Let go of her, Hari," Shigure said, releasing Akito from Hatori's grip and held Akito tight, comforting her. "Hurting Akito won't help Tohru."

Hatori ran his fingers though his hair in disbelief. All his life he had taken away people's memories so that these people who suffered due to those memories bore the burden of sadness and distress would be able to get on with their lives. Memories were like treasure chests stored in one's soul. Once sealed, it may never appear again. The treasure chest would be there, but it'd be hidden. Not even an 'X' would mark its possible existence. The treasure chest of history, story and life would lay in the soul, and within time, it would just fade away buried by the new memories. It'd be forgotten. But that was the point of sealing it in the first place.

That was Hatori Sohma's gift. It was a cruel gift, but sometimes, for some people, a blessing in disguise. And now, Akito had approached him with a request almost impossible to accomplish.

"Restore someone's memory?" Hatori said, breathing every word.

Memories only brought pain. Memories only dragged one to misery. He didn't understand the significance of it. Perhaps that was why he had always obeyed Akito's orders in the past when she had asked him to erase the memories of Yuki's friends, Kana's memories, Momiji's mothers' and so many others. He believed that memories were replaceable, like books on a shelf. That empty spot in the corner of a shelf could always be replaced by another book and another and another, up to the point where one could not even tell the difference. Life would still go on. Perhaps, it'd be missed, but it wasn't impossible to live. Sometimes, life would be better.

Yet, this time, when he found out the truth, he started to question those principles.

He had only known to take it away; but never to return them.

Even if he wanted to, he couldn't. He could only take and take, but never give back. He was thief. He stole people's memories and never returned them. How cruel he was.

Hatori stood silently in the middle of his office in comprehension of who he really was. Only Akito's soft sobs muffled against Shigure's chest was heard in the room. He once again, felt so utterly useless even with a gift like his.

"I… can't return people's memories," Hatori finally said, trying to be composed. "I can only take them away."

Somewhere outside the room, leaning against the door, was a purple-eyed young boy. Shocked and shaken by what he overheard, he walked away before they could find him. He picked up his pace once he left the Sohma residence and his legs, step by step began to churn faster and faster under him. He looked down on the ground and saw a whiz of his own legs running. One step at a time as he rushed to the hospital. That was the only place in which he could think if heading.

(At the hospital)

Yuki begged the nurse to allow him to see Tohru. After, seeing that the nurse's efforts in trying to stop were fruitless and seeing the desperate look in his face, she caved in. Yuki knocked softly on the door with the label, "Tohru Honda" hanging proudly on it.

"Erm… come in"

Her voice was soft and sweet to his ears. It was like a long lost melody that he had finally found.

He opened the door and stepped inside the room. "Sorry to be bothering you, Honda-san," Yuki said.

"Ah! Sohma-kun!" Tohru looked at him surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"Honda-san," Yuki began. "Do you remember me?"

Tohru stared at him, puzzled by the question. "We're classmates, Sohma-kun."

He looked at her with begging eyes; eyes, asking her to remember, to tell him that she didn't forget anything, that she remembered the days they spent with each other, the moments when she taught him to smile, the times when she saved him.