Twelve White Butterflies

Yugao

Author's Note: The last one… sorry this took so long. Heck, it's probably been a century since I last opened this, but one night, sometime after I graduated from high school, I was doing a cleanout of my files on my laptop, and I came across my fanfiction stuff again. I just want to set things right and finish all my incomplete stories. I know that in the Tekken section, that would be a lot, but I'm willing to work on it for the two-odd months I'm free. I know that it might sound plastic and insincere, but I want to keep this account going. Work with me here. Love you, honeys.

Disclaimer: I don't own Tekken.

"There you go – twelve white butterflies."

Twelve… Twelve White Butterflies

The fact that Julia knew he was planning something didn't make it any easier for her to bear.

After all, there was no real reason that Jin should be avoiding her, if that was really what he was doing. She had returned to Japan a few months ago for the fifth Iron Fist tournament, when she had unexpectedly met up with some old friends – and by friends, of course, that meant Jin was included. She wasn't sure why, then or even now. He had never been particularly close to her during the third tournament, though an awkward konnichiwa had always been in order whenever they bumped into each other. She couldn't help natural politeness, could she?

It wasn't natural politeness for very long, anyway. During the fourth tournament, she was actually forced to fight him in one of the matches, and though she lost (she kept telling herself, "big surprise there, huh Jules?" over drinks to comfort herself from her failure), he went beyond the average konbanwa and made conversation in whatever English he knew. It was sad, in a way, but very endearing as well. Who could resist a guy struggling to speak a language he barely knew for you?

Don't answer that question.

In any event, they got closer, went even to the point of calling each other good friends. It was inevitable, though, that they were split up at the end of the fourth tournament, putting their friendship on hold for the moment. Besides, there were more important things in their lives. She had her forest rejuvenation project; he had his soul-searching revenge-seeking dilemma. See? Way more important.

The news of the fifth tournament, however, had Julia hopping on the first flight out to Tokyo not only because her project had failed miserably and she needed the Mishima Zaibatsu's data on it, but also because she thought – and perhaps, thought quite rightly – that the friend she made last time around would still be there, and would still remember her.

Luckily, he did.

Recently, though, he hadn't made his presence felt at all. Every time she would see him across the street, he would pretend (he was a horrible actor, by the way, and had no place in Hollywood at all.) he didn't see her and would turn the other way and do something ridiculous like buy a banana cream pie just to cover up his ignoring her. Whenever she would go look for him, he was always out, or pretending to be out anyway, even though she could hear him talking to someone else on the phone from the adjacent room. Calmly she would excuse herself and leave, wondering exactly what she had done to deserve any of this.

Still, she knew that he didn't become like this for no reason at all. He was a sensible person, she'd found that out at the beginning of the fourth tournament. It would stand to reason, said her logical mind, that he was either making up some twisted diabolical plot to have his revenge once and for all and simply had no time for anything else, or he was plotting something she had absolutely no idea about.

Truth be told, all of the above scared her to the core.

She could hardly concentrate as she sat there in the laboratory, checking off some tasks that needed to be done for the new experiment they were testing out, when all of a sudden her mobile phone buzzed. She was welcoming the distraction, so she flipped it open and checked – it was a message, from an unregistered number. What really didn't register was the message itself.

Take a cab and go to this address.

Listed next was an address, with the street and even the lot number. Curiously, she opened up her computer and looked it up on Tokyo maps – it was apparently just a zoo. Perfectly harmless place for a stalker or a murderer to want to meet up with a victim, right? And whatever happened, she was certain she could hold her own.

Even she needed to do something completely reckless once in a while.

But first she needed to be sure. After all, she couldn't just jump in. Tempted, she replied with, Why should I? She looked back at her computer screen and opened the files she still needed to complete, the data she needed to fill in. She was tired. Everything was on her mind and failure was encroaching on her once peaceful thoughts. Not for the first time, she felt the burden of the whole project weigh down on her. She knew this was what she wanted. Hell, this was what she had been working for since she was eighteen. This wasn't something she could just abandon even if she wanted to, and she knew she didn't.

She just needed to rest, that was all.

Trust me.

Julia smirked. She might be optimistic about her homeland and its progress with reforestation, but she wasn't a naïve little eighteen-year-old anymore. She was a realist in every other aspect of life, and she didn't go around trusting anonymous people who just expected her to fall for every little thing they asked of her.

And if I say no? Ever the skeptic, and yet ever the spirited one, she challenged him.

I know you can't, the reply came almost instantly. You're too curious to stay away.

She stopped, because she knew that what he said was true. Her mother had always said that her curiosity would someday be the death of her, and obviously whoever this was knew her well enough to know that she just couldn't, wouldn't stay away.

Who are you?

She never got a reply, but that wasn't important. She was already out the door and hailing a taxi outside the laboratory, her heart racing at the thought - no, the hunch really - that she knew who her anonymous caller was.

"There you are… twelve white butterflies."

She turned around, a rueful smile on her face at the recognition of that voice. "I thought you weren't talking to me," she said quietly as she watched the butterflies swirl in a dizzying circle above her head. The exact part of the zoo she had been led to was the butterfly farm, this little dome of which was the home of twelve white butterflies of all sizes. She had never seen anything so beautiful before.

"I wasn't," he said, a serious look on his face, as per usual. "I was afraid I'd spoil the surprise."

She shrugged. "What does all this mean?" she asked, curious once more.

"There's one white butterfly for every month you were in America," he said thoughtfully, but his warm brown eyes weren't on her. They were focused on the magnificent creatures that spiraled around the dome they were in. "For every month we fell out of touch, and for every month I was wondering if you were all right?"

Julia laughed. "You did all this because you were worried about me?"

"No," he said finally, "I did all this because I hoped you would come back."

Author's Note: Blah, I know. What really fell out of touch was my writing, and I'm sorry. This finally complete, I can work on the other stories I'd neglected a chapter in, haha. No real need to review, it was just personal gratification – but if you'd want to leave one, then by all means! Go right ahead.