I apologize for my absence, it wasn't intended.

Let's get this trainwreck moving.

After school, I gather everyone who'd showed interest in learning martial arts. I've got it at least part of the way down, though I'm not done yet...but this should be enough to prove to them that, yes, I am working on it.

I give them printed manuals of what I have so far, and show them what each individual stance or action is. Then, as they go through the motions, I'm there to correct their forms...generally at the shoulders and the ankles, the same as everyone learning how to fight for the first time. A couple of them have no difficulties, and it makes me think that they may have been people like me before they were sent here. Maybe they tried and failed, or maybe they succeeded and they just want to see if I will as well.

I'd need to ask them about their lives first, though.

We continue until it's close to dark, at which point people start to break off from the group in order to do homework or sleep. After that, I call it off, and round up the five who were having no trouble with their stances.

"You were fighters at some point. Before you came here."

They nod, one by one.

"Anything specific you've done since then? What styles?"

One was a brown belt in Karate, the second had black belts in Wing Chun and Tae Kwon Do. The third had a black belt in Jujitsu. The fourth had a black belt in Kendo and a brown belt in Kung Fu. The fifth had a second-level black belt in Karate.

"I fought you, once." Jin, the fifth, said. "Before you learned the meaning of peace."

"I still don't know if I understand that meaning." I reply.

"You were a demon of a man." He goes on. "I broke your arm, and you cracked my jaw with it in retaliation, like you didn't even know it'd snapped."

Ah, I remember that fight now. "When I fight, there's nothing. Only me, and my opponent. Nothing else matters...not pain, not fear, not any of the watchers, not the people who might get in the way. I don't have the time to focus on anything but victory."

It had been a good fight. He'd put up one of the best defenses I'd run across, but pure power had won the day for me.

"You did much better than some of the others I've faced, before or since then."

Even with a missing...come to think of it, all that he's missing is his thumb and ring finger on his left hand.

"You don't need to be here, though, so...why are you? I'm developing styles for those with limb handicaps."

He grins.

"You can take the need for the fighter out of the ring..." He begins the phrase.

"...but you can't take the need for the ring out of the fighter." I finish. "So that's how it is."

"Yeah, that's how it is."

I hold up a fist, outstretched towards him, and he does the same. There's no need for contact. Our score is settled, we will not fight again, but we are not victor and loser; we are equals, now, by circumstance and time.

"Are you alright?" Miki asks, concerned.

"Not really."

It feels like there's a wedge partially driven between us. It's there, sure enough, since we're not really connecting...but it's driven in just poorly enough that we can still feel for one another. I get the feeling that it's my actions pushing the block down, that I'm somehow creating this distance that's growing between us, but I can't help it. It's who I am.

If we aren't meant to work out, then we won't work out. It's that simple. I'll be sad for it, but what will be, that's what will be. No use worrying about the future when it's the present that makes that future. No use worrying about the past that you can't change, because that's what led you to the present.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really."

She frowns.

"You never want to talk about much, anymore. I'm starting to think something really is wrong."

"I've been doing a lot of thinking. For me, it's hard to talk and think at the same time."

"Thinking about what? You've never done a lot of that."

I ignore the insult, though it's more of an honest truth.

"My place in the world. Who I am. Where I am, mentally and physically."

"And have you found anything out?" Her questions are unwanted, but I will suffer them if I must.

"My place...or, rather, the place for the person I once was...is gone now, it's not there. I want to say that's a bad thing, but I can't go back to being who I was before this happened to me."

"So you feel lost?"

Not physically. Mentally, I've had a while to adjust to having metal bones, but facing the potential consequences here and now is...difficult, for some reason. I've always been able to adapt quickly, but this is different somehow.

"Yes and no. I know where I stand, I think I know what the future will be like, but the problem is getting to that future...it always has been."

She raises an eyebrow.

"A future with you." I put the words bluntly, and continue before she can stop me. "And yet, as close as we've become, it feels like I'm doing something that's pulling us apart...but I can't figure out what that is."

"You've just had a couple bad days." Miki shrugs off my worries, in the same manner I usually do. "We're still together, neither of us is dead, we still have plenty of time to worry about what comes next."

She gets up and kisses me before leaving my room; after she closes the door, the reality of the situation hits me: I'm worried about things that I don't seem to have any control over, because I'm so used to being in power that I don't know how it feels to be anywhere else but the top of the chain. Is this what normal people feel like? Caring about things that they can't decide?

I can't live like this, worrying about everything. Death would be better...no, it wouldn't. Death would be easier. I don't take the easy way out. If I'm truly intent on dying, I'll have to do it the hard way, the long way.

Fine, then, let problems come. I will face them, just as with any other enemy, and I will end them in the same manner.

And still, the three-path choice looms over my head.

"Follow the butterfly." Rin says, laying on her back and staring at the sky. "The butterfly doesn't care, doesn't worry...just like you and me. It just flies. Like that feeling where you do something because you can, not because you have to or you have something to like about doing the thing that you're doing."

I laugh, not understanding what she means, but it's fine that I don't. Rin is my friend. That's all I need to care about in this moment. My eyes do track the butterfly, though, as it flits back and forth, rising and falling against the backdrop of the sky. Unexpectedly, it's somewhat calming. That calmness is what allows me to ask her my question.

"Rin...I feel like I'm facing three roads. One leads to death, one leads to change, and one leads to loss. I was wondering if you might have any thoughts on my course of action."

"Well...from an artist's point of view, change is...bad. You don't just become different, modify your style. You...change is bad. Fighting was your art form, right? You've been forced to change, and you don't like it, and you don't want to change further. Loss...death...those are acceptable. I would destroy myself, if my art required it. You did destroy yourself, when your art required it. You refused to lose, you were forced to change because others wanted you to avoid death. Unless you're different from you were then...changed by your change, as it were...then I would think your path is self-evident."

That lucidity, the seriousness in her voice, is unexpected; ironically, it's almost surreal. The sheer boldness and simplicity, as though telling one of her only friends to go headlong to his death was an everyday occurrence...her conviction. I used to have something like that, before I came here. The knowledge to do what was to be done, to let the consequences come. Has my time here at Yamaku softened me? Am I incapable of carrying out my own annihilation if that is what's required of me?

"Thank you, Rin. I don't know if it's what I wanted or needed to hear, but I'm glad I heard it. I get the feeling that it won't be very long now until my final choice gets made..."

She stares at me, right in the eyes, with her typical "not quite melancholic" look. Almost as if...as if haunted by something, anything, that might have been. Something between us, perhaps? I'm her only male friend, as far as I know, so the fact that she'd think about that wouldn't be too out of the question. Unfortunately, it's just another thing which could have been...no longer something that is a possibility. Not something I'd think to be in the foreseeable future, either, if I follow the logic that her words are tempting me with.

Still, though, the choice has yet to come. I still have time to understand what must be done.

When the bell rings, and we head back inside, I'm still a little shaken up by the way she said those words. I tell myself that I shouldn't be, but the fact remains that I am; I just need to accept it and deal with it.

"You're getting better, physically." The nurse says it with a smile, though he and I both know I already knew that. "I'm worried for your mentality, though. If what I've been hearing is true, then I don't know how you'll manage. Coming up with martial arts for the handicapped?"

"No one should be denied the way to inner peace. If my art, as it were, can guide them...who would I be to deny them that serenity?"

"I've seen your file. Hell, kid, I even looked up a couple of your matches that were taped. There's nothing peaceful about you."

"No, there wasn't, but I've tried to become different."

"Trying, and doing, are different things."

"Are you actually trying to goad me into a fight?"

"No, I'm trying to see if you're still sane. You, a fighter who did things so brutal that I actually wish I could un-view them, talk of bringing peace to your peers? Physically challenged ones, at that? I won't question your mission, but the fact remains that I'm more than a little dubious of your true intentions. If any of them get hurt, I'm going to hold you responsible."

"I wouldn't expect anything less of you, or anyone else who doesn't understand the meaning of my peace."

I would almost swear that the nurse glares at me, but it might have been a trick of the light.

"Go on, then. We're done for the day, I'm too young to be talking philosophy." He laughs, smiling, tilting his head back.

I leave his office, not sure whether I should count this as a victory or if I could consider it a fight at all.

In my dreams, only fire and blood await.