What I Learned At Genkai's Temple
Distressing

Daphne and Kit are alone in the temple. Kit begins, "We have an announcement to make."

"It may disappoint some of you," Daphne added, "but we have explanations - not very good ones, but explanations nonetheless."

"Since Kohari and Jacqie can no longer communicate without nasty e-mails getting involved, it appears this fanfic will have to be discontinued," Kit jumped right into the matter.

Daphne explained, "Both of the authoresses have had lots of work to do. Perhaps that was part of what tore them apart. Their friendship had been fading for a long time. But...ya know? Stuff happens, I guess."

"And Kohari wants to make it perfectly clear that this is NOT about Jacqie's boyfriend, as Jacqie claims it is."

"Don't start a fight in the fic, Kit," Daphne warned.

"I'm not," Kit assured her. "I just want to defend my creator's honor. And I'll tell them what's going on, too, if you'd like."

"Sure, go ahead."

"Since I'm Kohari's character, I have no right to speak for any parties other than her. Daphne may later give Jacqie's point of view, but, as it stands, I know only my authoress's opinion, therefore, that is the only one I can give. I'm sure everyone's familiar with the whole scenario with the boyfriend?"

"Not everybody visits the profile page, Kit."

"Okay, well, since it's no longer written there, anyway, I guess I should probably explain that, too. Well, long story short," Kit began, "Jacqie's dating Kohari's ex-boyfriend. Kohari really doesn't care - she gave Jacqie permission. Jacqie asked several times if it'd be okay, and Kohari said it was perfectly fine. And it is. Kohari's exact words were 'If you want him, you can have him.'"

"Then what's Ko's problem?" Daphne demanded.

"Since the start of the new semester, Kohari and Jacqie didn't communicate that much, even about the fanfictions. It got even worse when Jacqie started dating the ex...Well, Jacqie's current boyfriend, Ko's ex."

"We get that."

"Okay," Kit went on. "Well, there's a lot going on with Ko's family right now. Namely a nasty divorce - and it's getting uglier by the day. I'm not gonna go into the divorce of Ko's parents. But on top of that, Kohari's health is declining. Depression, hypoglycemia, stress...it all adds up, ya know? And she needs her friends' support more than ever. Jacqie and Ko were best friends. But Jacqie barely spoke to Ko - she didn't IM, e-mail, call...nothing. Even at prom, the two barely hung out."

"That wasn't Jacqie's fault," Daphne broke in.

"Any more than it was Ko's," Kit defended. "Anyways, that's a whole separate story. Over the months leading up to all this, Ko did attempt several times to talk to Jacqie - no real success. The two hardly talked. Ko got sick of being ignored. And here's where a lot of the issue comes in."

Daphne groaned in annoyance. "Hurry it up, Kit."

"I'm trying," Kit assured her. "Well, Jacqie thinks that Ko's just upset that she (Jacqie) is dating Ko's ex. My job right now is to point out very clearly that it is not Jacqie's dating her ex that bothers her - she honestly does not care. What irks her is that Jacqie, well, I guess the best way to put it is that Jacqie pushed her away."

"Jacqie's been really busy, okay?" Daphne replied. "She's not like Ko where everything just falls neatly into place without alotta work!"

"You think Ko hasn't been busy?" Kit snapped back. "Jacqie's only got one AP class to deal with - Ko has two! Plus an Honors class. And everything does not just neatly fall into place! Ko's worked her butt off this year! She's got a $75 thousand scholarship on the line - if she doesn't graduate Valedictorian, the school's gonna take away the scholarship!"

"Whatever," Daphne concluded. "I'm not gonna argue over this."

"I'm not trying to argue. I'm just explaining my authoress's point of view, here!"

"Then hurry it up!"

"Fine!" Kit spat. "Here's where the nasty part comes in. Kohari got sick of being ignored, so she decided if Jacqie was gonna be that way, then Ko wanted to officially severtize the friendship instead of pretending everything was hunky-dory. She sent an offline IM saying, and this is what she actually said: 'So much for our friendship. Sorry I can't even measure up to your standards of even being one of your acquaintances.'"

"She said that?" Daphne asked, shocked at such meanness coming from Ko.

"Yup. And then Jacqie e-mailed a response, Ko replied, then Jacqie replied back...I'm not really gonna go into detail with all that; all the e-mails were dealing with was the same story that I spent all that time telling you."

"That's a load of crap!" Daphne declared.

"It is pretty stupid," Kit agreed, "And Ko did consider apologizing, but you know her - she has a lot of pride. She doesn't think she's the one that should apologize first since she feels that she was the only one trying to keep the friendship alive. I mean, after all, Jacqie did say that contacting Kohari would have been 'going out of her way.' (That does kinda imply that to keep the friendship alive would have been too much time/energy.) A little e-mail saying 'hi' every now and again would have even worked - at least then Ko wouldn't have felt forgotten and kicked to the curb. But, anyways, that's pretty much the story - Ko's side, anyway."

"I'll see if I can't get Jacqie's testimony soon," Daphne promised.

"Yeah, it's not right to give the readers only half the story," Kit agreed. "Regardless, even if it does seem hypocritical of Ko, she's still posting this. Just so people have an idea of what's going on."

"Okay, Jacqie's side of things," Daphne said as she settled herself into a chair, "just in case this takes a while."

"Jacqie does not think that the only reason Kohari and her friendship broke up is because of her dating this guy but she does think that's where some of this crap started at. She's sorry that she's not exactly doing very well in her AP US History class, actually she's almost failing and the state EOC is the only thing that might save her butt, and she's having a great deal of difficulty in Algebra II. She let herself slack off on her schoolwork at the beginning of this semester and is now trying to make up for it, which is NOT easy, in any sense of the word."

Daphne takes a deep breath before continuing, "And there is no way in hell that Jacqie is going to take all the friggin' blame for the ending of this friendship. Kohari did not e-mail or IM Jacqie very often either and if she called, then Jacqie never received those calls because her internet does not kick her offline for calls lately. So Jacqie didn't e-mail either, one because she was scared that the friendship was already over in Kohari's point of view, and two because since she hadn't received any e-mails either (and the one IM lasted through Ko's comment, Jacqie's reply, and Ko's response to that, and then Ko put up her away message.) she felt as though Kohari no longer wished to talk to her."

"Now honestly, from the way some of this sounds, it seems like one of the major problems was communication. It looks as though both Kohari and Jacqie felt as though the other didn't want to talk to them…look how that turned out," Daphne said thoughtfully.

"This has hurt Jacqie too, more than she'd care to admit, and yes, it's stressing her out even more then the stress that comes from schoolwork. Yes, she's spending a great deal of her free time with her boyfriend, mainly because he seems to be able to make her relax and forget her stress for a little while and he's pretty much her only way out of the house at the moment. (Don't anyone take that to mean, in any way, that she's using him because Jacqie would NEVER do that to a guy! It's just the truth, since she lives in the middle of nowhere and her mother rarely consents to take her anywhere.)

"And the whole "going-out-of-my-way to contact you" thing WAS not meant to be taken the way that it was. Jacqie had honestly not been online very often in the past few weeks when that string of e-mails occurred because she was spending a lot of her time reviewing for History and doing random review sheets for Algebra II. So the only way she could've contacted Kohari was by the phone, and calling Ko is long-distance for Jacqie and her grandmother gets pissed when she calls long-distance plus the phone is rarely free to use in her house and she unfortunately does not have a cell-phone. The whole scared that Ko didn't want to talk to her anymore also comes into play there."

Daphne sighs as she stands up and begins to walk out, "Perhaps, with any luck, writing all of this out may help both girls realize what really happened and where the miscommunications happened, from both points of view…oh well. Perhaps that may be an empty hope."

"Keep an eye out, guys - this 'chapter' is probably gonna get longer soon. So keep checking for add-ons to this thing."

The End (For Now)

Note: We DID NOT make any of this up. This stuff is actually taking place. Yes, it is rather ridiculous. But it's happening. Kohari and Jacqie would like to apologize for any inconveniences this whole issue may have created and we thank you for all the support you offered throughout the course of the fic. Thank you once again!