In the Eyes of Doumeki Shizuka (Part 2)

Through the Eye of Another is One Other

Through Watanuki's half-eye you see a girl, a sad and lonely girl under a sakura tree, the same sakura that the spring lady once possessed, causing its unseasonal blooms.

A few weeks later, Watanuki introduces you to the girl, and you can see a resemblance in some ways: like him, she is kind, gentle, lonely, innocent despite knowing other-worldly horrors, and irreversibly bound to the spirit world. Similar, but not the same. Her name is Tsuyuri Kohane. It is clear that Watanuki already has some history with her, and for some reason that makes you feel happy. Watanuki rarely reaches out to make friends, even though he needs them. In the beginning, he would never have got up the courage to talk to Himawari-chan alone, and Yuuko practically forced him to get along with you.

Kohane whispers something to just the two of you: it's more than just the eye. You and Watanuki are "mixed together." You wonder—in what way? It's possible that she is referring to the trade (Watanuki has his sight, and you can see the supernatural through his eye), but you don't think so. To your way of thinking, Watanuki gave you more than he gained. So she must mean something else...

She's a talented seer, and has been on TV several times. Although she always tells the truth, her costars lie and conspire to crush her, just because they see her as a rival and an upstart. Her mother is a scary creature: paranoid, sharp with fear, stern, strict in all the wrong ways, set on a path of suffering that only she can see. Watanuki's face always twitches when he sees her, as if he can sense something but hasn't realized it yet. According to Watanuki, she also doesn't call Kohane by her first name anymore. Hearing this immediately made Watanuki feel uneasy, he says, but he had to ask you about it to make sure his instincts were right. Of course they were. It is indeed troubling.

Some time later, Watanuki convinces you to cut school with him to check on Kohane, and give her the bento he made. Just as you all were about to eat together, her mother unexpectedly returns. She has a right to be angry: any parent would find it frightening and strange to discover two unknown high school boys at home with their nine year-old daughter. However, it should be clear that the two of you do not pose a threat: you are eating, Kohane clearly called you friends when her mother came in, and Watanuki (who is closest to her) is holding his hands up harmlessly and is offering to leave—if she'll listen. But one look at her face tells you there isn't much hope of that.

Instead, after she's done screeching, blind with anger, she lunges for the open thermos of hot green tea and hurls the contents in Watanuki's face. You could have—never mind. Watanuki first. While she's still gaping, aghast at what she had just done, you drag Watanuki to the bathroom sink and help him bathe his face and eyes in cold water. He could have been badly burned; only his glasses saved his eyes. Watanuki is right. Something is wildly wrong here, and Kohane needs help.

Things only get worse in the succeeding weeks. When you and Watanuki next visit, the public has seized its opportunity to bring down Kohane's credibility as a seer and tear her down as a person. There's graffiti on the walls of the house, vandals have broken windows, planters and fixtures, the grounds are ripped, shredded, and torn by footprints, and a huge crowd grows ever larger, clamoring just outside the gates. Watanuki was forced to give up that time.

The one who is hurt most by the media blowup isn't Kohane, who instinctively ignores everything but that which is vital to her survival. The girl is surprisingly strong and resilient. It is her mother who is harried and driven by it, and under the pressure, she cracks.

Then one day Watanuki insists on heading to Kohane's TV station. He's got a hunch that something is going to happen. He's going to save her more pain, he explains, but he needs you there to be there. He won't tell you exactly why. And when you get there—everything works out just so, much more easily than it should have. It's the power of hitsuzen, Watanuki mutters, a bit impatiently, as he pulls you along, and the two of you arrive just in time—you could hear Kohane's confession as you were rounding the last corner. There was the distinct sound of a slap. In that moment, Watanuki dove between Kohane-chan and her mother before she could hit her daughter. Undeterred, the woman raises her hand to strike Watanuki instead, but you dart around and catch her wrist. Watanuki's sigh of relief is more for Kohane's sake than his own, you think.

With that, the television show is over, the cameras are shut down, and everyone is rushed off-stage.

Moments earlier, Kohane had just made it clear that her mother asked her to lie. It was a clever thing to say, and true, but of course everyone will misunderstand her. They will think the true things that she said were lies her mother put in her mouth. She meant her statement to be misconstrued. Through this ordeal, Kohane learned the power of rumor. She turned it against her mother. That had to hurt. Yet in so doing, she broke the cycle. She broke it so completely that neither of them could return to the way they had been living.

Despite everything that has happened to her, Kohane is still patient and kind to her mother from afar. In fact, she finally uses the yellow balloon Watanuki gave her to try and take away her mother's pain so she could start over again... That surprised Watanuki. But then, he is only just learning about family, and how wishes don't always directly benefit the wisher.

And now she has a wish for the shop. She explains her decision carefully: perhaps if Kohane becomes happy herself, then her mother might as well. Whatever happens to her mother, however, it has become clear to Kohane that they cannot heal when they are together. There are too many memories. Yuuko takes her exorcist powers in exchange for the wish. Very soon, Kohane leaves the wish-granting shop to live with a business associate of Yuuko's, a wise old truth-seer.

That Which is Seen May Not Always Be As It Seems

Watanuki doesn't even protest when you walk with him to school, or sit down to lunch with him anymore. He says your name instead, quietly, and his hand brushes at his dark wispy hair as if he doesn't know what to say beyond that. It is a bit harder to make him spastic, and sometimes he stops himself mid-rant and walks off, distractedly, almost apologetically, always thinking. Or he falls asleep in the middle of the day: in the middle of lunch; of walking home; of putting on his shoes; of getting splashed with hot water. Although it seemed harmless at first, it is quickly becoming much more concerning.

If Yuuko is to be believed, his existence itself is becoming more tenuous. It is all because of a flaw in the universe that is breaking across the worlds…a paradox that may never fully heal. And Watanuki, in a sense, is caught in the eye of that storm.

When Watanuki returns from the world of dreams, he talks about your grandfather, Haruka, who seems to have adopted him of late and become his spiritual advisor of sorts. Watanuki certainly needs it. You listen to every word avidly, and occasionally chime in with a remembered detail of your own, although sometimes it is hard to suppress spurts of jealousy that Haruka has moved on. It doesn't help when Haruka reveals details about you that you're not sure you ever wanted Watanuki to know—because he's more bothered by the information than you are, and tries to lord the knowledge over you. It is immature and highly irritating. Although...there are also times when Watanuki spills something that reminds you that Haruka still watches and remembers you, even if you so rarely dream him anymore: and that makes it worth it.

Nowadays there are ever more characters—people Watanuki knows, people who are close to him, people who may be saying goodbye but he doesn't understand why—and you can tell that Watanuki is worried and weary. He insists the problem isn't rest. You believe him…because nothing can explain what has befallen him. His body is in this world, but for instants of time, his heart has escaped to another. He does that often, now, and it worries you, but there's naught to be done. At least he doesn't hide it—but that's not even possible. This is happening in plain sight.

One night you think you met him, Watanuki, in a dream. Or was it real? It felt like it could have been. You were walking home from school. You told him to go home and sleep, which was odd because you (and presumably he) were already sleeping. Does he actually get any rest like this? Nonsensically, he told you he couldn't remember his father or mother…

Is there really nothing to be done?

Today Watanuki was mumbling about dreams, and asked you weird questions. "Does my food taste good"? Yes, you reply, incredulously, because he should know this. He can taste it himself, can't he? He knows you wouldn't eat it if it was not good—if you were not completely sure of it—grandfather Haruka already told him that!

Just to make it clear that you think he is off his rocker, you tell him that perhaps he should go home and sleep after all, because if he sleepwalks then he might hit his head. Although you've haven't heard of someone sleep-walking while napping in the daytime before. Kunogi, who hasn't been up on Watanuki's exploits as much since she confessed her cursed condition, is perceptive enough to tell that Watanuki dropped the jumpy idiot act and she worries, too. And then when your offbeat prediction comes true…it's not even funny. He almost hit his head on that fence post.

It's a very good thing that Haruka made sure you knew you hadn't got a trace of precognition. If your words had power, that could have been your fault. You feel ghastly.

At last, on a walk to the wishing shop, he tells you what you've been afraid of all along: that he really shouldn't be here, in existence. Not because he's an orphan, but for a more fundamental reason which he cannot remember. And yet…because of the friends and the people he has met who will remember him as a result of his time in Yuuko's shop, he wants to be here. To stay here. Perhaps it should have reassured you—it is suddenly clear that this is what Yuuko wanted for him all along, wasn't it—but instead it frightens you more than ever. You would never have guessed that he was so close to the brink, and that time he cradled the cat by the river and gave voice to his despair was not so long ago. The moment that convinced you that he needed a friend. "You won't change your mind?" you ask, with all of your intent behind the question. No, he won't, he replies. You walk on.

Another time, Watanuki asks you to approach some secretaries at a kiosk for him. He says he has a shadow, so he is human, but other humans may not even acknowledge his existence at this point. He doesn't seem to want to find out if he is right, and frankly, you wouldn't either. Without question, you do it. It still makes you unhappy.

All you want to say is, "kieru na." Do not disappear. And repeat it, until it isn't even a possibility.

It is the clearest thread that dashes through his dreams, which he relates to you…through its insistence and repetition, something or someone is continually and desperately trying to convince him that life is worth it, and necessary...

Insight Into the Future

Yuuko has given you an egg. It is your responsibility, she says; it must be kept for a choice that will happen in the future. You must not hesitate. For the sake of two futures, she said… Unlike this egg's twin, nothing will be born from it… so what is it for?

Something is happening. She is preparing for something that is coming.

Soon.

Soon.

Very soon.

But as she is one who lives by hitsuzen, the witch's view of "soon," of time, is very different from yours.

The Witch's Ascended Pupil

Watanuki is serving his first customer to the wish-granting shop. Yuuko's giving him advice as he needs it, of course, but she's left Watanuki in charge. You are suspicious of Yuuko's intentions in this case. They indicate that there has been a change. Watanuki is now ready to take over her responsibilities. Now that has happened, you get the odd feeling from her that there is no going back.

Watanuki is teaching a woman to cook, which is a rather strange proposal when he can't, apparently, taste anything he eats himself. (You don't understand that at all. Even if his memories of the taste disappeared, why can he not taste it now?) Nevertheless, if anyone could teach another to cook, it would be Watanuki.

His student is a problem. Watanuki's food, potato nikkorogashi, was fine…but he mixed it with hers, and you didn't know about it until too late. You couldn't eat any of it after that. To any other person, the difference would be too slight to notice, but you knew. There was no warmth, no kindness, no personality at all behind this meal. It didn't taste like … anything.

After that, Watanuki confronted her about it, and she refused to go through with her wish. The habits of the mind will out. In this case her problem revolves around her peculiar revulsion for her own food. Watanuki will find a way.

There comes a day when Watanuki can't find Yuuko, or Mokona, or Maru and Moro. And you know—this can't be good. Even he has the feeling that perhaps he'll never see them again. But, a moment later, Watanuki is still kidding himself. Maybe she's on a trip. Well, true. It's happened before. That might be the case. Still—without telling him? But your gut tells you that's not so. She didn't leave.

You mustn't leave Watanuki's side for now. The day Yuuko promised would come must come soon if she is gone. So you stay with him in the wish-granting shop instead of going home to the temple that day, and despite Watanuki's loud and inventive protests, a strained kind of relief runs beneath it all.

It was going well until the moment when Watanuki saw the people from his past whom he could not remember, so similar that they look like twins. Then he ran through the house, calling out for Yuuko. The shop was changing. All he could find was Yuuko's kiseru pipe. She wouldn't leave without it.

After so long, after Watanuki has been leaving his food on her gates every day for weeks, Watanuki's student finally gets the message. She eats what he cooked and confronts him and her fear, and the cooking lessons look set to go on—

She doesn't remember meeting Yuuko.

Watanuki turns pale as death and he runs home, before you can stop him—

He's collapsed inside the shop.

The Existences Unrecognized By the Universe

Yuuko is gone. Watanuki knows, now, and he is unbearably sad. Watanuki's time with her was time she didn't have, but she was very, very careful never to let on. He has decided to wait in the wish-granting shop to wait for her, until Yuuko returns. "If she ever does" is left unspoken, as is "it could take eternity." Watanuki believes in the power of wishes with the stubborn, irrational faith of a child. To force his hand or to crush that faith would rip out his heart.

While he is away, presumably making dinner with Maru and Moro, you probe the witch's familiar, Mokona. Mokona warns you that there is another choice for Watanuki to come, and after it will be the time for the egg. But everything is yours to decide. Finally, deeply unhappy, Mokona tells you how it is to be used…and what it is for, explaining the hint that "nothing will be born from it," so it may be used only once. It is something that must be decided, if it must be decided, for Watanuki. It would be impossible for Watanuki to go through with it himself.

This particular responsibility is odious, and tempting, and might take away many of the choices Watanuki has made up to now. That is by far the most painful thought of all.

Watanuki. Yuuko. Sakura. Syaoran. Fei-Wong Reed. Images, names and faces pop into your head for no reason at all, and fade as quickly as they come. It is something Watanuki knows.

Running to the storeroom, you slow and stop. Watanuki has a new pair of glasses that he must have received just now. Watanuki has made his other choice. He will not grow old, he may not leave the shop, but his powers will grow and he will stay and take ownership of the wish-granting shop. His blood will no longer draw spirits to him, but he will continue to see them. It is his price, he says.

Did his wish change? Yuuko never did grant the entirety of Watanuki's wish. If she had, he could not run the shop, for he would not be able to see the spirits. Did she plan for that to happen? Surely the exchange between them is still unbalanced? What would happen?

Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing for now.

The Man in the Cage is a Bird is a Man

And the years passed.

Your best subject in school was chemistry and physics, but in the end you ended up doing folklore as your major, with a minor in chemistry during college… Watanuki was upset at you for not employing your talents to their fullest, but honestly, he can't begrudge the help he gets from you in the shop, and the folklore major will be helpful someday. It is entirely likely that you will inherit the temple at some point. But just because you had a talent and took enjoyment from something doesn't mean that it was your dream. This way will also bring you happiness…

Once a week you visit him just to have dinner and bring him groceries. If you can't get there, Kohane has to do it. The few times neither of you could make it, Watanuki looked fine but a little out of it. Weirdly, he hardly even noticed the first time it happened. After that, he makes a big show and needles you every time an oversight occurs (though he skips this treatment with Kohane, even when the two of you come together to apologize).

Still, you mustn't let it happen more than it absolutely has to, if only to make sure that Watanuki is alive and well, and to impress upon him the importance of precaution and relying a little more on others. It has happened a few times already, times when Watanuki misjudged a wish and was badly hurt by it. He always makes excuses. In fact, in his first year the accidents happened enough times that Kunogi, so distant from the action, become protective when she heard about that season's series of incidents. She called him up and scolded him soundly for his recklessness. You didn't know she had it in her. With time and practice, Watanuki becomes more adept at the slippery, sliding, sideways thinking that is needed to grant the wishes properly without getting hurt, and the incidents get fewer.

Physically, Watanuki grew until he hit the height of youth, and then the years stopped for him. His chin has gotten pointier and his face more delicate, his limbs slightly longer but also thicker and more proportional, and his slender fingers are elongated. He doesn't spend enough time outside, so his skin is still milky pale. The college girls you know would be too awed to approach him because he's simply too beautiful. He could almost be the descendant of the celestially radiant immortal stars. His humanity's saving grace is that his hair is still too wispy to lie flat (ever since the raijuu zapped him, Watanuki claims that his hair has been extra sensitive to static electricity), and he is still shorter than you and still incensed by the height difference. He must be something like nineteen now, biologically speaking, although you think his time was stopped at seventeen.

Even Watanuki doesn't know his own age, and apparently, didn't even know his grade in high school when he took on the shop full time. It gives you a headache every time you think about it. It raises questions like: How did Watanuki know who was sempai and who was kohai? He must have known, he so rarely got in trouble with the other students, and you did see him fetch things for others on occasion. Why did Watanuki forget his the face of his landlady, when he remembered the ghost-boy eaten by the sakura trees during those same years? How did he even know what he was doing in the time he has now forgotten? How did he even get born, how did he survive up until now? Whatever memory-wipe Yuuko did in the past was more than a little heavy-handed, and that probably did not help his existential crisis. But of course, by now that's all water under the bridge. Mizu ni nagasu.

Watanuki has lately taken to wearing kimonos like Yuuko, and smoking the kiseru pipe like Yuuko. He even takes life easy—sleeping in and waking up late—like Yuuko, although as her part-time worker he was always very disciplined. He drinks saké on his own occasionally, which he wouldn't even think of doing before. You could never imagine in a thousand years that he would want, or be able, to achieve this, but he actually lounges like Yuuko. Sometimes he lets his eyelids fall halfway and smiles mysteriously so that he appears to be seeing through you to the beyond, just like Yuuko did, as if he knows everything. Whatever he says next will tend to confirm this idea.

Maybe it's natural to start acting like her, having so many hours in his life and relatively little to fill them with. Her habits don't quite fit him yet. Or, well, it's not that. Seeing him use them fools you into thinking that the movements are natural until you remember, with a jolt, that the only way he could have adopted Yuuko's grace so completely is if he practiced very hard at it. It is difficult to imagine him doing that. At the same time, he has matured in many respects—it was just hard to see the growth until Yuuko's cloak of sophistication masked the jumpy idiot act that made it so hard to take him seriously in high school.

Eventually Watanuki expands his new wardrobe beyond the kimonos to include augmented Chinese-style robes, which must come from his own interest. It's then that you know that Watanuki has made Yuuko's style blend seamlessly with his own, and that allows you to accept it. You think the interest might stem from when he found a couple of letters left behind by Yuuko, remnants of a correspondence between herself and a certain Clow Reed; you don't know what they said, but they seemed to have given him ideas.

As expected, Watanuki seems somewhat lonely, although he makes the best of his situation: he plays with Maru and Moro and Mokona, something he did only occasionally while working part-time; in so doing, he keeps himself entertained. Almost always, he carries the pipe fox Mugetsu, unless he falls asleep and Mugetsu becomes bored and slithers away (but he usually comes back when Watanuki wakes up). Although sometimes it seems—though there is no way to confirm this—that the shop itself makes his burden a little easier by slurring together the days in between customers or visitors, of which there are many. It also helps that Watanuki is a dream-seer, and his slow, mindful, fluid and borderless style of magic sucks up time like a sponge. Even if he says it's just a nap…ever since his power began to develop, sleep has never been just sleep.

There are times when Watanuki drinks a little too much (never in extreme excess, mind, he's not a bottle-fairy like Yuuko—he's more likely to accuse you of being one) and the loneliness comes back, full flood. It doesn't make him weepy; just the opposite. His eyes get a brittle, glazed look, so that the deep blue of his left eye pales to a shallow gray, and the brightness of the right green eye softens and dims, turning murky. At those times, he won't let you look through his right eye.

Sometimes, he'll subtly shift his posture to a more provocative stance, as if he's fishing for a particular response—although if you asked, he would probably deny or be unable to define what he was looking for. It's not like he's aware enough to make an explicit invitation. Although after watching for these moods, and especially after the incident with the Jorou-gumo, you think you know what the problem is. It is not something you can give in the quantity that he requires. In fact, even if you could give it, he would be conflicted and ashamed of himself afterwards, making everything worse. It would not be right between you. What he is instinctively groping towards is a blind want, not a need, but the root of the instinct is to fill a need. Specifically, human contact.

So instead you grip his shoulder, or surreptitiously brush his hand, and usually he smiles and pulls away. For a while the need is put at bay. At other times he only gets more agitated. He can't sit still, and his hands shake. You will remind him to call for Mugetsu, who is never very far away. With the pipe fox hypnotically twining itself about his hands and fingers, stretching sometimes to rub itself against Watanuki's face or along the line of his jaw, the glaze on his eyes dissolves and his breathing comes easier. This is a side of himself that he never shows to anyone else, which makes it all the more saddening. Because of all the difficulties Watanuki has endured because of his decision to wait for Yuuko in this shop, alone except for his customers, yourself and Kohane, this is the worst consequence.

On one of these occasions, your frustration on his behalf urges you to speak. "You know, other people might be driven mad by the fate you chose for yourself."

He looks at you, tilts his head down, and measures your mood. "I know," Watanuki says. "I really do. The fact that I..." he falters, "...can live...is amazing. That I can live this way would astonish many people. That I can—that does not mean I am strong, nor that others are weak. It is just...my birthright, I guess." He closes his eyes and murmurs, "I was lucky." Then he opens his eyes, but only halfway. "The price was almost right. To me...what Syaoran chose..." He shakes his head. "And yet we are the same. If that's what my payment seems to you, then—I can almost understand. And I'm sorry. But I won't change my wish, or the price. But I try to remember ... what Haruka warned me ... that I must never ... make ... make Yuuko cry." And he lapses into silence. Moments later, his consciousness has lapsed into sleep.

There's nothing you can say to that. At least he knows.

Meeting of Eyes, Meeting of Minds

Once a year, everyone comes to the shop on his birthday: you, Kohane, and Kunogi come, and even Kohane's mentor the truth-seer comes every couple of years. Kunogi calls as often as she can, though she can't visit more often because of her condition. Kohane stops by as often as she may, and sometimes you cross paths with her, or she helps you with an errand of Watanuki's.

When Kohane grew to the same age as Watanuki, you grew a little concerned that maybe he would fall in love with her, but his feelings never changed: if anything, she became close as a sister rather than dearer as a friend. Watanuki is never happier than when she stops by and he sees that she has grown a little more, and become that much more beautiful. He misses seeing her life. (In that respect he reminds you of your grandmothers who cheerfully, albeit wistfully, doted on your girl cousins who grew up on the other side of Japan. The resemblance is bemusing.) Eventually, Kohane is able to inform you both that both she and her mother have found happiness.

One March 3rd, you come over and it is your birthday. You wondered if he would notice, and at first you thought he didn't. He starts a short discussion of the festival and symbols that have come to bear on that day, and finally awards you with a present. Eventually you get the feeling that he was testing your folklore knowledge just to see if you could properly appreciate what he gives you: specifically, the evil-warding properties he has been driving at. Even so, the worth of the object—a thick peachwood ring, supposed to be used as a thimble—is not immediately apparent. With a few hints, Watanuki guides you through its use and with little further preparation or explanation, provides the crisis necessary for you to bond with it. Turns out, appropriately enough, its other form is an exorcising bow. You know exactly what to do with that. You shoot the demon that slipped in through the gap Watanuki opened in the wards moments before it would have collided into him.

Watanuki's glasses, the ones he got from Syaoran, have broken again.

Though these are the only casualty, you don't suppose he could have told you before he took another stupid risk? Well, perhaps not stupid. Like Yuuko, he calculates his odds exactly, with very little room for error. It's still enough to make you worry.

After watching you think, Watanuki leans back with a small smile of satisfaction on his face. That's all that he wanted to see. Worry.

What a needy idiot.

Apparently he's given you a hand-me-down from the Jorou-gumo. It's a near priceless gift — as valuable as his left eye, once upon a time. So there is a little more to this gift than meets the eye. You wonder what he could be trying to tell you. And then, suddenly, it comes:

"If things get dangerous, use it without hesitation. No matter what happens." There is no laughter left in Watanuki's eyes as he says it.

Your mind flashes back to that day you returned from the archery competition, the day your friendship came to the test. The day you prepared to shoot him with the exorcising arrow for his own good, no matter what it might do to him, or what he thought about it afterwards… "I might use it on you," you say evenly, as if it's not an effort to appear unaffected. Your heart is now quickening, now stuttering with unease that won't make it to your face.

"Especially if you have to…use it on me." Watanuki cocks his head and smiles fondly with just a touch of ruefulness. It says: I'm sorry, but I'm glad you did what you did and you can do it as many times as you have to. I ask you to.

He remembers. He always remembers. But you shouldn't have to use the ring that way, because he's gotten better!

Oh. Dammit. If you let his meaning slip sideways...Yuuko's egg...if you use it...that's what he's really talking about, here. Of course he knows. You didn't want to be reminded of this. The choice is still there in the open, waiting to be made.

It would be a whole lot easier if the choice of the egg meant two actions rather than a choice between action, and delay. At times it doesn't seem like a choice at all. It may well be the wrong choice to use it. You dread that someday you might break down and choose to use it while knowing it would be wrong, just so that you could never delay the choice again.

It isn't very long after that when the time comes to use the gift Watanuki gave you. This test is far more strenuous than the last, and the outcome isn't entirely pleasing. It has been a long time since Watanuki been hurt so badly by a wish. After a short conversation with Mokona, you conclude that the injury is understandable given the restrictions of the task and the fact that Watanuki asked for your help and protection before he needed it. It was not a question of balance or miscalculation. Watanuki did what he could, though he could do little because he was trying to protect another—an unborn child. He didn't tell you what he was planning, or who he was doing it for.

Oddly enough, it was Kohane's grandmotherly mentor, the truth-seer, who explained and teased apart his reasoning for you. Perhaps Watanuki thought you would be upset if you knew he was going to deliberately put himself in danger? But how could you be? You realize that it's rather like the time when he protected Kohane from her mother, but doing so left him defenseless, so he took you along to protect him. He couldn't not do it, it's not in his nature to refuse someone in need like that out of concern for his own well-being; the important thing was that he didn't try to do it all alone. He did so.

It's not just times like that, though. Watanuki is habitually close-mouthed about his work. He prefers to keep it to himself except when something important comes up. And when he asks for help, like Yuuko-san, he tells you little more than what you need to know at the time. Once, when you pressed him, he told you that it created fewer circumstances in which to fail the granting of the wish, which would be disastrous. You're not sure if you buy that explanation.

But you know generally what has been going on: the shamisen player, the pipe-cleaner, the Jorou-Gumo and the mermaid's red pearl, and the kitsune. It makes him uncomfortable to discuss the details. The things he learns seem to come arrowing closer to his heart than he would like. Unfortunately that is exactly what the supernatural is wont to do: lay bare the weaknesses. Watanuki doesn't like to mull over them with others, so he glosses over the incidents. He rarely tells you anything about the few times he sees Syaoran and Sakura either, though occasionally you have received rare glimpses of them through his eyes. Though they have physically met but once or twice, they are dear to him for reasons he can't quite explain. They have begun to speak to each other occasionally through the Mokonas.

And so, it's no surprise then when Watanuki becomes aware of a case that pertains to you, and had the potential to harm you, he asks you to distance yourself from him and deals with it quietly with a bare minimum of your knowledge. You respect the fact that he doesn't want to pain you. That trust in him is all that holds your gnawing curiosity at bay. For his part, Watanuki probably doesn't want to talk about it because he'd rather not think about how he might be forced to hurt you because of his job as shopkeeper, as it seems he was almost compelled to do. The thought is chilling.

At times Watanuki seems to be preparing, bracing against a future that nobody else can sense. And you think of the egg, of Yuuko's warning; if Watanuki's fears come to pass, then maybe that is time to use it. Oddly, Watanuki rarely considers the impact of that future on himself. On Chouyou, for instance, he brewed chrysanthemum wine to ward bad luck for everyone he knew. When you walked in on the process, you watched as he leapt from one thought to another, so full of goodwill plans that you immediately knew he wouldn't leave enough for himself. So you spoke up, and he gave you that soft, peaceful half-smile and agreed without fuss: "All right." This smile said he was waiting for you to say something—that he wasn't surprised you reminded him of something he should have thought of for himself.

But nothing happens. Nothing ever, ever, happens. Not to him, and not to any of you, the ones he wishes to keep protected. So maybe he's not preparing at all. Maybe Watanuki's gifts—the ring, the wine, the hei-gushi house charm he promised your family, among other, smaller trinkets over the years—maybe that's all they are, and they represent nothing more. Maybe Watanuki just wants to be useful, to do something for his friends than flourish his skills as a cook. But you don't know, and he'll never tell, not until the day of reckoning.

But there are so many more moments you cherish together. Chrysanthemum wine. The mysterious story of a secretive couple who may meet only under an umbrella with a spy charm. Early on, as payment for a wish, Watanuki acquired a shamisen that could not be played with a bachi, or plectrum. The shamisen likes to roam the shop, hoping to get noticed. The songs Watanuki plays on it are beautiful, no matter what he says about "not practicing much" or that he knows "only three songs and one of them is from an anime Mokona forced me to learn." He says the shamisen teaches him the tunes, and occasionally, the lyrics. It's not easy to persuade him to play, but whenever he does, the music easily pulls you into its thrall. No one else can reproduce the full beauty of that music. If he could leave the wish-granting shop, you would invite him to the folklore section of the college, and he would be so popular that he could never leave… Ah, idle thoughts, the kind of thoughts that flit through your mind when Watanuki is serenading under the moon after a couple of glasses of saké. These are the wistful thoughts that swirl about your mind while you listen and chow on his delicious snacks while he's not looking.

There are moments when, without warning, no matter where on the face of the Earth you are or whatever you are doing, the bond you share with Watanuki shivers as though it has been plucked. It never fails to get your attention. At those times, you pause in the middle of your work and close your eyes to relish sights of supernatural, otherworldly beauty that Watanuki sometimes allows you to see through his right eye, telepathically, despite the miles and miles that distance you. These are those entrancing sights that only you and he will ever get to see once in your life, the ones he could not keep to himself for selfishness, the ones that burnish painfully with that terrible, awful beauty that provokes awe and despair from the soul in equal measure. You can both feel the difference as the vision is transformed, changed, for by the sharing, it is made a little more mortal, a little more bearable.

He trusts you, doesn't he? There is no denying it anymore.

For the longest time, you were preoccupied with earning his trust; but now that you have it, it remains to be seen whether you are worthy of it. For you hold his life in his hands, and he is unaware. Does that make you unworthy? Have you already betrayed his trust by keeping this truth, this egg that you know will hurt him hidden from him? There is no room for fear, and yet there is so very much of it. Every time, you rein in your doubts, and you hold it in, and you hold it in.

Life goes on.