Author's notes

Well, Nigakki 26 still isn't out yet, and this is, which means that there's still a shot that all of this was for naught. As you'll learn soon, I'm sure, in my version of events, Harima and Yakumo do not get together at the end of the series. (Because honestly, from my viewpoint, it seems as though they will in the end of Nigakki). In fact, Harima gets nobody at the end of the series. I suppose, then, that if 26 is released and, holy shit on toast, Harima's got hisself a lovely lady lump, this is officially an AU. Or based on the manga. Either way, enjoy the ride.

Also, I claim no credit for the literary jargon joke. I stole that from Stephen King; I've actually referenced him in several places already, including in the author's notes. Points if you spot them, but if you can't, never fear, there will be many more—maybe this seems a little like imitation, and whether it is or not isn't up to me to say. But in either case, I'm having a good time. Are you?

LANGUAGE NOTES

"Please take care of me" can be equated to, if you're "down" on your Japanese, yoroshiku onegaishimasu, which is a traditional phrase at the end of an introduction. It's a literal translation that doesn't add much without a note like this.

Finally, I've found that I can't help but keep imouto-san in its original language. Again, for those of you not down with your Japanese, imouto is a little sister, and imouto-san is somebody else's little sister—it's typically just an easy nickname, and it's one that Harima applied to Yakumo.All non-English words will be in italics, so please don't mistake it for emphasis.

737 comin' out of the sky / won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride?

I wan' move

Chapter two

Travelin' Band

It occurred to Karen Ichijou for the first time midway through their flight from John F. Kennedy International that when 747 touched down at Narita Airport in Tokyo, she would be officially out of a job for the first time in six years, and furthermore, that she had no idea what she was going to do with herself.

It wasn't the money. Money was no issue; her musical quartet, Traveling Band, had made its rounds around the planet not once but twice, and as a rule, anybody who pulled more than one world-tour run didn't have to worry about money for at least thirty comfortable years; more if they were content with an apartment and a Toyota, and more yet if they weren't camera-shy. Photo-ops weren't awfully lucrative, but they weren't free, either. She knew this, but the trouble with that was that Karen Ichijou was camera-shy. More than that, she was just shy. Her agent told her that was part of her allure, especially in America, where otaku the country over would flock to see her sing the theme song from Harima Hario's Days Lost, Memories Found. She supposed it was also part of her allure in Japan, but for different reasons.

Reasons that would probably make her blush if she thought too heavily on them, so she didn't. She was, after all, a shy girl. Strong, yes, and beautiful too now, as she grew and filled out more as her mother had, but still shy. Some girls were born that way, and some stayed that way, too.

People used to tell Karen that shy girls always got the best guys, because the only thing that could pierce her detached exterior was true kindness. Karen knew this directly to be untrue; in practice, it was the worst men, the social butterflies so adept at charming women that it was like a second (or perhaps first, and their day job was second) career to them. That was certainly what happened to Karen, and not just once—over and over again. First Imadori, who unwittingly drew her out with simple teasing and playfulness, but nothing ever came of that, and perhaps that was for the best. Then Uemura, with his faux-demure exterior that made playful, satisfying nights give way to empty, painful days. Last, but certainly not least, (considering her newfound employment status) was Miyamoto. Traveling Band's drummer since the beginning. Karen's love for equally as long, even through Uemura. Karen's lover as of three nights ago, and an empty spot on the bed as of yesterday.

Maybe it was his easy smile, his blunt speech that brought her out of herself, that had enraptured her. Maybe it was his small, beautiful eyes that had made her think for a moment that he was anything other than what he was—a womanizer.

Perhaps she had just gone out of her mind for a night.

It didn't matter, in any case. It had been awkward for her, getting on the plane, but they all had their separate cabins now, and, frankly, Useugi and Shingen had agreed that it was time for them to move on. They didn't look at Karen with any kind of animosity, and she was certain that Miyamoto still wasn't sure what precisely was going on.

It was only awkward for her.

It was only ever awkward for her.

Maybe that was why it was so much harder.

Yakumo Tsukamoto was greeted twice as an old, anonymous colleague might have been; the kind of person you said hello to every day in the office, but never really got to know. The kind of person that could have been anybody; a nice guy, a workaholic, an alcoholic with two kids in Kyoto and a wife in Yokohama; or a serial murderer—it didn't matter, really, so long as you didn't look them in the eye for too long, or smile too big. The kind of person you just greeted every day and moved on. She had never been accused of having an everyone face, but then again, she thought a little ironically, most salarymen had never been accused of having an eye for detail.

The odd thing about it was, this was only the third time she had been to Shakodan Publications. The first had been for her interview, about two years back, and the second had been half a year later, during the brief period she was out of work.

And now, here she was, out of work again, and in Shakodan's lobby again. Did that make this a last-ditch publication? Plenty of people back at Jump might have said that it did; that if Harima Hario, a sentimentalist who was already halfway down Hack Road less than a decade into his career,was the best they could come up with, then it was worse than a last-ditch: It was a last-ditch that outsold them by publishing a bunch of hacks.

Yakumo hadn't really been in the business for very long, but she got the feeling that maybe hack was a kind of slang, another word for successful or well-read in the literary jargon of the day.

She hadn't left Jump for any particular reason, really. It wasn't something she consciously thought about beforehand; she had no problems working there—no indecent looks, no ass-grabbing, no conspicuous attempts to corner her in a supply closet to get some "brushes"—really, it had just been an intuition. The kind of thing she might have attributed, many years ago and still a child, to the telepathy that had kept her out of any kind of meaningful relationship with a man. The intuition had said, okay, time to get while the getting's good, catch your ride to the end of the highway and move up in the world, and she had. It had served her well thus far, and really, it had gotten her her job at Jump, so it seemed almost fitting that it be the thing that take her away from it.

And really, what would be would be, regardless of if she followed her intuition or not. It ran its course, and standing against it earned you what standing against the flow of a powerful river earned you: A spot on the riverbed, in the same damn place downstream that you wound up if you were rafting instead of being stubborn.

And apparently, downstream was Shokodan, as an editor. Not a veterinarian—although, again, to hear the folks at Jump tell it, what the artists there really needed was a vet—but an editor. Whether what she'd told Harima before she left was a lie or not was, maybe, down to the day you asked her.

And, in fairness, she did have a year's worth of pre-veterinary-track courses, but she also had three years worth of Japanese-track courses and a big placard on her wall, informing people that she was a Batchelor of the Japanese Language.