Author Fangirling: Hello, Readers! While they were originally brought in as plot elements, working with mentally unstable characters like Suboshi and Mayo can be a real treat. This is still Boushin's story, but it's a terrible injustice that there is not a character filter for him on .

Next week's update will be delayed a couple days, but it will go up. In the meantime, please leave a review!~Appa

"Juan! Juan!" Shouka ran out to Juan's house and yelled. The commotion caught Boushin's attention, and he looked out at her from the window. He saw Juan walk outside to meet her and ask what was wrong, and the words quickly spilled out of her mouth. "It's Auntie Miaka," she said, and motioned from her left shoulder down across to her right hip, "I've never seen any scar like that!"

"She had a big scar?" Juan looked at her with wide eyes.

"It wasn't just big. It was," she shook her head, searching her mind, looking for the right words. "It was like a burn, but it was deep. The skin's still all mangled."

"What does 'mangled' mean?"

"It means it's gross! Something really bad happened to Auntie Miaka, but I don't what it is!"

"Does she hurt?"

"I… I don't know. I didn't ask. I ran away. I don't know what could have done that."

"I don't know either," Juan shook his head, chilled by the thought.

Boushin felt a chill as well. Something drastic and unusual really had happened to the priestess—perhaps terrible enough to make everyone sure she had died. He edged away from the window with his hand over his mouth, and felt a rush of nausea.

Did something like that happen to my father, too?

He shook his head to rid himself of the passing thought, but his hands still shook.

Miaka did not act as if anything had happened when she and the others joined him in the guest room. There was a desk and only two beds, but they had at least been supplied with enough bedding for a couple of them to sleep on the floor. Miaka plopped down onto one of the beds and stretched. "This village is so nice," she said with a content sigh. "I'm glad we came and could see that Mitsukake was doing so well."

"How much longer are we staying?" Boushin asked in a low tone.

Miaka looked to Chichiri and they thought a moment before she said, "Well, it's not as if we can't come back."

"I told Kouji I'd only be gone a few days, so I'll probably just head straight back from here," Tasuki said. "I guess after breakfast or so."

"Yeah, that's sounds like a good time for us to head back too, you know."

That night Boushin still had trouble sleeping again, but by morning he knew exactly what he was going to say. As expected, Miaka and the others announced their plans that morning while they were being served breakfast, and as expected, their hosts insisted they were welcome to stay longer.

"I'm not leaving."

Everyone turned to Boushin as if they had misheard him. That made him nervous, but he continued. "I'm not going back until I've heard everything."

"Boushin," Chiriko started, "…you've already met them. Where else could we go?"

"I want to stay here. We'll stay as long as it takes for you to tell me everything. That's an order."

By this point, Shouka's parents thought it best that they step out of the room to let them continue. Once it sounded like they were gone, Chiriko found everyone else staring at him.

"How much did you agree to tell him?" Chichiri asked.

"He agreed to tell me everything!"

"Did I word it that way?" he tilted his head innocently. "Sorry, my brain doesn't work as well as it used to…"

"Come on, you're not senile!" Tasuki knocked him lop side the head. "Didn't you stick up for him at the palace?"

"Then I'm sticking up for him now," Miaka said. "Go ahead and tell him why we can't summon Suzaku. Tell him all of it!"

"Miaka?"

She stepped forward to face Boushin and crouched down in front of him at eye level, while still addressing Chiriko. "I don't want it to follow him forever. Just hurry and tell him so that he can understand what happened, and move on. I trust you to word it all the way it needs to be said, Chiriko."

"Then you're going back?" the emperor asked her.

She nodded. "Boushin, what I regret most is not being able to stop Hotohori that day. I wish he could still be leading Konan as its emperor, and I wish he could be here for you. I know you might be mad at me for staying away this entire time and for not summoning Suzaku, but I still care about you very much. Can you promise me," she took his hand, "that you'll still come and see me sometimes?"

"Alright," he nodded, then looked to Chiriko. "Are you going to tell me everything?"

"Since Miaka gave it her blessing…"

The two of them and their hosts saw them off to their horses. "Are you going, too?" Juan asked Boushin, who shook his head and answered that he'd be there a few more days. The younger boy stepped behind Shouka to hide his smile.

"I hope you don't mind putting us up a little longer," Chiriko said to Shouka's father, who insisted that it was no trouble at all, and Chiriko added, "Not to worry. Tasuki will compensate you."

"I will?"

"Compensation," he said again, pointing to what remained of the bruise of his forehead. Tasuki rolled his eyes and assured them he'd be back soon, and Miaka and Chichiri also went on their way.

Not far off from the village, Chichiri asked his companion, "You weren't going to stay and tell him yourself?"

She shook her head, downcast. "I don't want to."

Chiriko didn't want to have to say everything, either. He and Boushin were back in the guest room, and Chiriko was in a foul mood, which made Boushin uneasy. Nevertheless, he was impatient. "Chiriko?"

"Yes, Your Highness?"

"Boushin."

"Boushin," he repeated with a sigh. He could tell that Miaka had fled because she didn't want to do the work of recalling everything, but why did it have to fall with him? He wasn't even there for half of it!

"I'm ready whenever you are."

"I'm just thinking of where to start. It's highly complex. It didn't all start at the same time or place, wherever you could say that would be."

"I know the basics," he said. "Miaka is the priestess from another world, and she faked her death instead of summoning Suzaku. My father, Tamahome, Mitsukake and Nuriko were warriors who died, and you, Tasuki and Chichiri are still here. There was a war, and Suzaku was never summoned."

"You could say that—"

"Oh, and Seiryuu was summoned instead."

"Yes, we made a lot of mistakes," the counselor wasn't succeeding in hiding his irritation. "I'm not sure which mistake to start with."

They sat quietly, Boushin anxious to hear where Chiriko would start, but his counselor merely had his eyes clenched shut in thought. Just as he was starting to wonder whose stubbornness would win out in the end, there was a knock at the door. Before they could respond, the door opened, and Juan fell in the room. Shouka was directly behind him and had opened the door, not bothering to allow her houseguests their privacy. "Juan wants you to come play!" she announced.

"Shouka, that was rude," he meekly scolded her from the floor.

"And you were slow."

"Juan, Shouka," Boushin addressed them with a smiled, but then looked back over to Chiriko to see what he would say.

"Why don't you go?" Chiriko smiled, much softer than before. "That would give me a chance to collect my thoughts."

Boushin nodded, strangely more excited to join the other children than to hear what he had been waiting for all along.

Mayo flipped back through the pages. She had not even had to read them before; the knowledge had simply flowed into her consciousness as if the book had reached out to her. She found it somewhat amusing that the wording the book would never refer to Miaka by name, but instead she was referred to constantly as "The Priestess of Suzaku." It was such an open title that anyone could take—anyone, and that meant Mayo.

The story was going to move again, all for her. All for her, because she got it—she was the only one in either world who understood why the story had never finished.

She caught a page and looked down into its' words.

The Priestess of Seiryuu cowered, consoling herself. The god stood before her, a hand outstretched as he looked into her face. "Priestess," he spoke. "Your wish…"

"Stop it!" she screamed and swatted his hand away. "I'm done with this! I want to go home!"

"I will grant you one more wish, My Priestess."

"I only want to go home and never have anything to do with this world again! That's all I want!" Burying her face back into her scaled arm, she sobbed and repeated, "That's all I want."

Seiryuu Seikun took a step away from her, fading into the distance as the world around the Priestess changed. "If that is what you wish, my Priestess," his voice lingered.

Immediately, she could no longer feel his presence. She was seated on her bed, at the home she had known since childhood. The entire country of Kutou felt far away, as if it had never existed.

"But it did exist!" Mayo shrieked back at the words. "Yui Hongo's last wish was nothing but a bandage!" It did not count for anything, Mayo was sure. Yui still had one wish left, but she had been ignoring it—as well as the god dormant inside of her, as well as the god still left sealed—all this time, for years! Mayo was determined to rip that bandage off. She thumbed through the pages searching out a name, and came to it: Suboshi was troubled as his heart leapt back to memories of the priestess he had served years ago…

"Suboshi," she grinned as she fingered his name. "You can feel it, too, can't you? She's closed herself off from me. You're the only one who can reach her now."

The pain felt strong enough again for Suboshi to grab his chest. He hung his head, and opened his eyes slowly to look at his hand. It had grabbed exactly where the bow was hiding on the other side of his clothes. Lady Yui… he mind drifted towards it.

"Yui Hongo's last wish was nothing but a bandage!"

The general gasped—something had spoken to him. He was sure he heard words! Had Yui really not used all of her wishes?

"You're the only one who can reach her now."

I can reach her. I can reach her! She can come back!

He stood up, unable to contain a smile, and then a laugh. In an instant, it seemed perfectly plausible that Yui's role in his world had been left unfinished, but would it continue now—so many years later? It didn't matter! If Yui would come, that was all that mattered!

In his joy, Suboshi did not notice the shadow of a god following him. "It's time," Seiryuu Seikun whispered behind him. "Call her forth."

The reawakening of Seiryuu did not go completely unnoticed.

Nakago, the emperor of Kutou, sat with his chin at his hands and his elbows on his throne. The reverberations of a deity in the air shook his bones, but somewhere in the depths of his insides, he could feel something that had been missing for years.

Yui.

For the first time since she had disappeared, he could feel a hint of her presence again. No longer was she entirely closed off—something in his world, or in her world, or even in both had to have been acting to pry her open again. Not only could he feel her presence, but he could feel anticipation.

Mayo was unaware of how Yui's life force resonated within the pages of the book, and only knew that the book needed to reach Yui. That, she was sure, was the only way she would be able to draw Suzaku away from her, away from wherever she had sealed him.

She closed the cover, and held the book to her chest with both arms folded over it. "Not much longer," she said to it. "I'll free you, Suzaku. I'm coming."