Three days passed, and L was still at her side. Her grocery budget had gone up considerably since his arrival, even after he explained that he had no need to eat at all. At this point, she really had no choice but to believe him.

One /would/ think that might be a good thing, but instead, it was wreaking havoc on her life. She was distracted in classes, peering out the windows in search of him or-more commonly-doing her best to be alright with the fact that his existence was possible at all. It defied everything she had come to know, logic and science and.../common sense./ People worshiped at temples and churches all over the world, but how many truly, fervently believed in what they were doing?

Who could /possibly/ believe that there were supernatural beings living in the sky, recording names in their magical killing diaries? It was /utterly/-"Ridiculous." She shook her head, peering down at her own notebook.

"Nikaido-san."

She jumped in her seat. Apparently she had completely forgotten where she was. Her eyes went wide as she looked up to her professor, the woman regarding her head-on with a rather disapproving expression. It was understandable, of course. She could feel herself slipping.

"Pay attention, please." Her professor gave her a final warning look before turning back to the diagram pinned to the chalkboard.

"Yes, professor."

Maki deflated against her desk, doing her best to scribble down what the woman at the head of the classroom was going over. Despite the fact that she managed to put the words to paper, none of it stuck in her mind. She had been reduced to a transcription machine.

/Psst./

Her brows furrowed at the sound, no matter how familiar it was. She frowned easily enough, turning her attention to the man in the seat beside her. It would have been more appropriate to call Hiro a /boy/, but the fact that he was in university more than made up for that. Unfortunately.

"What's wrong with you, eh?" Hiro took her questioning look as enough of an answer, apparently. He gave his best attempt at a winning smile, brows raised. She had seen that same smile work on countless young women in the area, but it did little to affect her. It didn't do much to girls over the age of nineteen.

Muroi Hiro was /supposed/ to be her friend. By all accounts, they had known one another for a very long time. He had gone to the same school as she when all of those horrible things had happened to her, when she had been branded a walking contagion. His carefree attitude had left him with only one response to the entire ordeal-he had asked her if she'd really been on a runaway airplane. At the time, his nonchalance had been refreshing. Once Hiro hit puberty, however, things had gone downhill...in the sense of things falling straight into a sinkhole.

"Nothing." She hissed, gaze flitting back to their professor for fear that she might hear the pair of them.

Hiro frowned dramatically, leaning back in his seat to the point that he might go slipping right out of it. If there was one thing she admired about Hiro, however, it was his physicality. He had always been more interested in sports than schooling, even now that he was in university. No matter what he did, he moved in a graceful, smooth sort of way that belied a kind of power.

All the same, she worried for his future patients.

"Oh, come on." He reached across the aisle to her desk, nudging her forearm with his knuckles. "You can tell me."

She hated it, but the only way to shut him up was to say /something/. Frustrated, she shifted in her seat to lean closer to him, brows raised questioningly. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

For a moment, she thought that he would take her seriously. His expression of mild surprise quickly turned into disbelief, and he was on the edge of laughter. She shouldn't have said anything.

Exasperated, Maki sat back up in her seat and returned to her work. Hiro's silent laughter beside her only made her furious.

Three hours and two class periods later, Maki had finally escaped. Her usual hideaway was blisteringly hot in the summer sun, but for lack of anywhere else she was forcing herself through it. At least there was /some/ shelter afforded to her by the overhang meant to protect the door from the weather. The caretaker responsible for watching the three buildings on the center of campus was a nice elderly man, and he had a soft spot for leaving the door open to her. There was a kind of sadness in the way he looked at her, and she imagined that it had something to do with the fact that she attended the same school as her father had. Yamashita-san was old enough to remember him when he was young, too.

The thought saddened her, but it was a dull, distant sort of pain; the kind that came on a humid day to a long-healed bone. She pushed around a clump of rice in her lunchbox, her mind as distant as it could be from lunch period. As she tossed her hair out of her face and tipped her head back toward the sky, however, she could /literally/ feel the weight of reality hit her.

And of course, it was because of L. He was standing at the far side of the roof in the sunlight, peering across the way toward her small piece of shelter.

Her eyes went wide, and as she scrambled to her feet the remnants of her lunch went spilling across the tarred rooftop. She reached the edge of the roof and reached out to him, palms out and pleadingly.

"L, what are you doing here?" She looked over her shoulder, back toward the door she knew anyone could come stepping through at any moment. For then, it was still closed. They were still safe...

Except, the instant she seemed to calm-her heart granted some reprieve from its furious beating-she looked down. L wasn't /standing/ on the edge of the roof. He was /floating/, mid-air, beyond the railing intended to protect people from falling.

"What?" Maki jumped back, her head swimming from the view of campus from above. She tripped over her own feet and went plunging down onto her backside. Before long, she was reduced to a groaning, knobby-kneed mass on the tarred roof. At least it was warm.

"You could have warned me, you know." She grumbled, rubbing at the back of her hip as she glared up at L...but she received no answer. He was still looking back toward the door, attention set and brow furrowed ever so slightly. Whatever he was looking at, it must have been incredibly important.

Without a second thought, she followed his gaze back to where she had been sitting before. She heard his footsteps before she saw him emerge from behind the door-Hiro was there, where he had never come before. He had always told her she was silly for going up there, that she was abusing the kindness of an old man. It was rich, really, coming from someone like him. Just as she was about to open her mouth to question him, however, she recognized the expression on her friend's face.

His eyes were glossy, lips parted just so in the set of despair. It was a look so unlike Hiro that Maki was struck speechless as she sat there on the rooftop. He didn't even seem to notice her.

Hiro reached up and hooked a thumb into his already loosened tie, pulling it away with ease before discarding it to the ground. His pace was unwavering but slow, long, steady strides taking him toward her. But he still didn't say anything. He still didn't notice her.

It took the sound of his bag hitting the rooftop for Maki to snap back to reality. Hiro was standing at the very edge of the roof, pausing only to step out of his shoes...

"No!" She screeched, suddenly coherent. Stumbling to her feet, she darted forward.

One of his legs was over the railing.

All she could hear was the pounding of her own footsteps.

Just as his body began to tilt forward over the railing-destined for that drop that had made her head spin moments before-her tiny fingers closed around the back of his shirt.

But he was too heavy, and her hands were sweaty from the heat.

"Hiro, no." She groaned, tightening her grip around the small amount of fabric she had managed to grab onto. The heat was swarming in on her and her head was spinning, and she could feel her hold on him slipping. Will alone wasn't enough, but even if it had been it wouldn't have done much good. The corners of her vision were blurring and darkening, and there wasn't anything she could do.

The last thing she remembered was watching Hiro fall away from her