"Oh! It looks like someone's almost here!"

Yukina was looking down the mountain, where two figures were making their way up the mountain.

The occasion was an engagement party—although only Kurama and Yukina knew that. Genkai had wanted to make the announcement in person, so as not to miss any of the "wonderful dumfounded looks".

Fair enough. Especially since Yukina hadn't acted nearly as surprised as she should have.

Shishi swore he had never met anyone so hard to read in his life. She'd just smiled in her gentle way and said, "I'm so glad for you!"

Was she just better at hiding surprise than anyone, or had she really seen this coming? Why would she bother acting unsurprised? How could she have anticipated something like that, especially given her professed lack of knowledge concerning human concepts of love?

In any case, her reaction was only the beginning. Now, of course, they were about to get the next set.

Yusuke's, once he finally made it to the top of the mountain, was a little more like what Shishi had been expecting.

"HAHAHA! GOOD ONE, OLD HAG! I didn't know you had it in you!"

"It's not a joke, dimwit!"

Yusuke stopped laughing with his mouth hanging open, dumbstruck.

"Dimwit!" shouted Genkai again, and before anyone could blink they were pummeling each other and yelling indistinctly.

That left the detective's companion, Keiko, watching from the sidelines with Shishi.

She turned to him, sweatdropping, and said, "Well…congratulations!" She looked more than a little unsure, though…probably not surprising, given what she must have heard about him from the tournament.

"Hn. Thank you."

He could be gracious. Of course he could. Why couldn't they just have sent a letter, again?

While the teacher and student were still fighting, Kurama arrived with the rest of his six fighters. Kurama hadn't told them anything, wishing to leave that honor to the two of them—he really was a sadistic fox, wasn't he?—so Shishi had to bear their first reactions, too.

Jin slapped him on the back. "So that be what got ye knickers in a twist! I'm 'appy for ye, lad!"

Well, that wasn't so bad…

Suzuka had looked at him like he'd lost his mind. Too be fair, that was probably not inaccurate, but still.

"You're…what, now?"

"Getting married." Shishi's lips were twisting at the questions.

"To…"

"Genkai."

Suzuka looked over at the woman, who was still beating up her student, and then looked back.

"Good luck."

After that, Touya's stoicism was a welcome relief. He simply nodded cordially and offered his congratulations. Was there some secret ice demon taboo against showing surprise?

Chu and Rinku stared at him, cocking their heads in opposite directions like a pair of bookends.

Well, a pair of bookends where one was three times taller than and twice as wide as the other, and where one was slightly drunk and the other was holding yo-yos between his toes…actually, they weren't much like bookends at all.

"Yer sure that's what ya wanna do, mate?"

Shishi made a valiant effort to suppress a scowl, only succeeding partially.

"Quite."

Chu had stared at him, and then traded looks with Rinku. Abruptly, both began to laugh uproariously.

That was only to be expected.

"Looks…like…Touya…won the bet!" chortled Rinku.

"Aye, it sure does!" snickered Chu.

That…was not.

"Wait…what? What bet?" floundered Shishi.

"Jin swore up and down that 'your wind smelled lovesick', so we had a betting pool about who it was," explained Chu.

Shishi's eye twitched.

"And…who were the choices?"

He was going to regret asking, wasn't he?

"Well," said Chu, "I guessed that one sheila from the Dark Tournament, the one with the ears." He crooked his fingers, miming the pointed ears the stood on top of Koto's head.

"You just said that 'cause you liked her! I didn't know, so I guessed the other announcer—Juri." Rinku stuck his hands behind his head and grinned.

Shishi had an eyebrow raised at both of them, but they didn't stop.

"Jin guessed that it was one of your fans who are always following you around, someone whose name we didn't know," continued Chu.

"Aye," said Jin, coming up behind them. By this time, the fight between Genkai and the dimwit had ended, and everyone was gathering in to listen. "I thought tha' maybe one of 'em had gotten to ye!"

"And, like we said, Touya voted for Genkai!" said Rinku.

"Aye, we didn't know wha' had come over 'im!" chortled Jin. "But it turns out ye were the one we oughta been wond'rin' about!"

"I hadn't planned to mention it," said Touya, his only change in expression a slight tilt of the head.

"But…" begged Rinku, "how did you know?"

Touya shrugged. "I was paying attention."

Well, hell. Apparently he hadn't been as inconspicuous as he'd hoped.

Rinku just rolled his eyes and turned back to Shishi, jumping right back into the previous topic.

"And Suzuka voted for himself!"

"Well, it could have been," said Suzuka with careful dignity. "I am very beautiful."

Shishi did his best to match his teammate's poised tone. "Not that I would dare risk denying that, but you're not quite my type."

He never had been able to get past that clown getup.

But before that particular conversation could go on any longer, it was interrupted by the arrival of the next group, which consisted of Kuwabara, the oaf's sister (whose name he couldn't remember), the detective's mother (who had apparently learned of the presence of free alcohol), and Hiei.

He was honestly quite surprised to see that last one. Hiei really didn't seem the type to voluntarily attend social events. Then again, judging by the intensity of his scowl, it might not have been voluntary at all.

Their reactions had varied at least as much as the others'.

"WHAT?!"

Kuwabara's voice might have shaken the rafters, had they not still been outside.

"Don't make me beat you up too!" snapped Genkai.

"Heh…sorry," said Kuwabara, but he still sounded sullen, glaring at Shishi…obviously still sore about the whole "Cape of No Return" incident.

Shishi smirked at the memory, which probably didn't help his case any.

Kuwabara's sister introduced herself as Shizuru. "Nice place up here. Hope you two don't destroy too much of it in the collateral damage."

Genkai chuckled.

"What fun would it be not to have a sparring partner?"

Apparently, Shizuru was also the type to believe that affection was best demonstrated through violence. Which, come to think about it, explained a lot about her brother.

Shizuru just smirked and headed off for the drink table with a slight wave.

Hiei didn't even bother talking to either of them, which was probably just as well. He just set up camp on a convenient windowsill and sat there watching everyone. Shishi found himself wondering again who could have possibly induced him to come at all.

Atsuko had headed straight for the table with the alcohol, and she had already managed to get herself quite tipsy…or had she arrived like that?

She made her way over to the couple with many an expression of congratulations and calls for toasts, filled instantly by herself.

She flung her arm around Genkai, who was rolling her eyes, and whispered, "You sure caught a cute one!" and then winked theatrically and walked off in as straight a line as she could manage.

Shishi was fairly certain he wasn't meant to hear the exchange, but he wasn't sure whether to blame humans' tendency to underestimate demon hearing, or just the fact that she was drunk.

Then he heard Keiko giggle and whisper "She's right!" to Shizuru—which made the second option seem far more likely for Urameshi's mother, though the first was probably still true for Keiko.

He felt a weird combination of the desire to preen, and the desire to get the hell away from all the awkwardness.

"Come on, you bunch of dimwits. Dinner time."

Finally.

The next few months left Shishi running ragged and cursing human traditions.

Why did this have to be so difficult? Even if they wanted a ceremony, couldn't it be simple?

"Nope. I've never had a wedding before, and I want it done properly!"

Shishi huffed. Fine then. If it really meant that much to her…

Not that it was all bad. For instance, Shishi found himself quite taken with the concept of dancing.

This was one human tradition that he found he was quite suited to. He'd always taken great care to present himself as a perfect gentleman, and this fit rather nicely with that image. Besides, it was ridiculously easy compared to his sword training (never mind Genkai's training)—and he found that the constantly changing motions based on the same basic patterns held enough similarity to what he'd learned to give him an edge. In fact, he requested that he learn more than just the one dance Genkai had insisted on, much to her surprise and acidly-expressed delight.

But as enjoyable as that particular preparation turned out to be, Shishi still felt that there was far too much bother about the whole process. There were bridesmaids to pick and groomsman to coerce and invitations to send and decorations to plan and colors to coordinate, and a thousand other things that didn't really matter, but apparently did, and why oh why had he ever thought this was a good idea?

But then he saw the light in her eyes, and remembered.

Genkai had just started worrying about the dress when an unexpected pair showed up for a visit.

"Kurama, Suzuka. To what do we owe the pleasure?" she asked.

Kurama smiled. "We went together to get an early wedding present."

Suzuka held out a pot with a small sapling growing in it. "It's the Previous Life Tree—the one I tried to use against him." He jabbed a thumb at the fox.

Genkai's brow furrowed, and then she cracked a sardonic half-smile as she glanced at Shishi. "Looks like he's not the only one who wants to see me in my young form."

"We thought you might find a use for it for the wedding, so we brought it early," said Kurama graciously. "If there's a good place for it, I would be happy to grow it out for you."

Genkai picked a spot right at the end of the training field, and Kurama, with a glow of purple energy, made it grow until its branches spread out over them and flowers opened above them. A single fruit grew out in front of them as Kurama finished.

"Here," said Suzuka, handing Genkai a paper. "I've worked out about what each dose ought to do by now, and included instructions on the best way to prepare it."

Genkai smiled, a more genuine one this time.

"Thanks."

That gift forced Genkai to make a few changes in her carefully-laid plans, though she didn't seem particularly upset at having to make them.

Still, almost everything else was going as it had before the unforeseen interruption.

Shishi took advantage of a quiet moment—which was being used for the apparently-vital purpose of putting small pieces of tissue paper in the invitation envelopes—to ask a question he hadn't managed to voice yet.

"Why did you say yes?"

Genkai paused to glance up at him, and then resumed her task.

"Oh, you know. Never been asked before—thought I'd see what it was like." She made a rather flippant gesture with her envelope as she set it down.

Shishi, realizing his mistake, only smiled as he picked up another piece of tissue paper.

"Well then, I suppose I'm lucky that no one thought to ask you first."

Genkai snorted.

"Damn straight."

They continued to work in a companionable silence, but Shishi hadn't really dropped the question. He was just waiting for a better moment to ask.

He got his better moment later that night, when he found Genkai under the new tree in the training area.

She was standing in the grey shadows of the moonlight, fingers barely touching the tree's rough bark, with an almost wistful expression on her face.

"Quite a gift, isn't it?" asked Shishi.

"You could say that," she said without turning around.

Shishi stepped forward beside her, running his own hand along one of the smooth branches that leapt from the gnarled trunk.

He breathed in the air around them, scented by the many flowers of the tree. It smelled faintly sweet, but tinged with something sharp and bitter. It was almost…nostalgic, somehow. The bittersweet air filled Shishi with a sense of longing for something he couldn't identify.

He let his hand fall, and the sweet silence surround them for a long moment.

"Why did you say yes?"

The corner of Genkai's mouth quirked. "Didn't I already answer that?"

Shishi shrugged. "Not really."

There was another long pause.

Shishi waited in silence for her answer. Something about how the night's dark shadows hid ordinary things made it easier to reveal the important things that normally remained hidden—either from others or from yourself.

"I don't know."

She stared at the tree as if it held all the answers, trying to force it to give them up with her eyes before giving in and speaking again.

"This really is quite the gift, you know." She pressed her palm against it. "It's…well, it's another chance at life, in a way. A chance to do the things I never did when I was younger, even while looking like my younger self." Her hand came away from the tree and clenched into a fist. "Why the hell do I get so many chances? I've already wasted more than most people ever get."

"Perhaps because you've learned to value them."

She looked at him, and he shrugged. "You say you've wasted your chances. I prefer to think that you did use them, even if not how you think you should have used them. Tell me: would you really go back and change any of your past actions? Would you really risk the person you are today for the person you might have been yesterday?"

Genkai looked back at the tree, this time focusing her gaze on one of the large white flowers that adorned it, but didn't answer.

"You're not the one who's wasted their life."

Genkai's gaze slid over to him.

"Not the one?"

Shishi chuckled humorlessly, and the bitter scent seemed to overtake the sweet.

"What would you call wasting more time than a human is ever given being nothing but an arrogant, self-entitled bastard?"

Genkai tilted her head slightly to one side, considering.

"I'd call it wasting your life."

Shishi smiled bitterly.

"I'd call it wasting your life, if that was what you had actually done."

Shishi blinked, and then turned to meet her gaze, steady as ever.

"As you've already pointed out," she continued, "you have something most people don't: time. I'm already living on borrowed time, while you still have your whole life ahead of you, to make whatever use you will of the lessons you've learned. And as you also already noted, but apparently didn't think to apply to yourself, time spent learning that kind of lesson is never wasted, no matter how long it takes. Especially if they're lessons most people never learn, like how to see yourself as you are, rather than as you'd like to be."

The bitterness in the air shifted, turning into something that was still sharp, but not unpleasant, and even sweet.

The breeze and the moonlight swirled around them as they stood there, each lost in the swirl of their own thoughts, and the Previous Life Tree stood over them in timeless dispassion.

"That's why I said yes, you know."

Shishi turned back to her, not entirely sure what path her thoughts had taken in the interim.

She was contemplating her hand, not quite meeting his gaze.

"You…you, of all people…learned to see." She twisted her mouth, not entirely happy with her phrasing, but forged ahead anyway.

"You saw me when no one else did. You wanted me to have the second chance I'd already rejected." She looked up, finally meeting his eyes. "And you somehow managed to convince me to want it too."

That hung there for a few of her heartbeats before she gathered up the words to continue.

"You believed I still had more left to do in this world, and I finally came to believe it too. So when you wanted to share whatever time I have left…I found that I wanted it, too."

She inhaled her own lungful of the air filled with that liquid scent, and Shishi found himself wondering what it was like for her, whether she tasted more of the bitter or the sweet.

"And even if I wasn't sure how much of me you really wanted, I didn't want to say no."

Her head was slightly bowed, and the air became filled with a palpable longing, almost a taste. It was less sharp than regret, but still held that tang of bitterness.

Shishi moved hesitantly, stepping a little closer as he turned to face her.

"I told you, I want you as you are. Whatever of yourself that you'll let me have."

Gently, he brushed the side of her face with his fingers. Her skin might not be as smooth as it had once been, but it still held a warmth that made his hand tingle after the cool might air. "And you can have whatever of me you care to take." He let his hand fall to hers, and brought it up between them. He bowed slightly, and brushed his lips over the back of her hand. "If you'll have me."

She was staring at him, and the scent of the flowers seemed to waver, trembling between bitter and sweet, and overlaid with something like the air right before a rainstorm.

Her foot slipped backward, but she caught herself. She planted her foot back where it had started, not wanting to retreat, not quite able to step forward.

Still holding her hand in his, Shishi closed a little more of the gap between them.

"May I?" he asked softly.

She still didn't quite believe him, didn't quite believe that he could really want this, could really want her.

Shishi leaned forward, closing the last of the distance between them, and kissed her.

Genkai stood frozen, unable to work up any reaction at all.

But when Shishi pulled away, head bowed, she reached after him.

Her hand found his arm, keeping him from moving further away, and then lifted towards his face, not quite meeting it.

Shishi leaned in again, and this time when his lips met hers, she responded.

Her hand finally met his face, still unsure, but there, warm and real.

Shishi let go of the hand he had still been holding, and wrapped his arm instead around her smaller form, letting his hand come to rest under her shoulder, as though they were about to dance.

Her body still held the strength she'd earned over the years—she was the strongest person he had ever met. So where had this terrible uncertainty come from? How long had she felt herself unworthy of being wanted?

Genkai's newly free hand found its way to the back of his head, and she ran her fingers over his hair, her touch hesitant and doubtful.

Despite her caution, his hair came free of the band that held it, and tumbled willingly into her grasp.

The night breeze picked up again, but its chill couldn't reach between them. All it could do was lift Shishi's hair around their faces, shielding them from the watching eye of the moon as they stood together under the tree of life.