THE PASSING WIND

-TheSilentReader-

[PROLOGUE]

He have never seen a work that made me think of his mother, until he went to the east wing of Hinomura's gallery, at the Nihonga section. She had told him so many things about that girl—that girl who had been her junior—who she loved very much. She never talked about herself, no inclination nor reason to do so, but she always had time to import a piece of her experience and translate that into secondary memory. That was how he knew about her.

She was fragrant in her stories—a full-grown sunflower eagerly following where the rays of the sun hits, or like a prism refracting thousands of colors. That's how she said that to him. He couldn't think of a way to describe a person so anonymous yet so familiar, just because he had heard of her, in broken stories and unprecedented reminiscence of memories.

Even though she was quite insufferable, she was great in telling stories. The comical coupled with subtle affection were her ingredients while she talked about her sisters, and of course, Yumi. There was a certain hesitance in the way she talked about her—a flicker of the eyes upwards, unable to look directly at him, or the silent snort before she spoke—and those piqued his interest. He had not known these people from the other side of the hill, and had chosen the decision of never knowing them, but he wondered if ever he should have had removed himself away from that pleasant spot under the shade of a tree in the school grounds of the highschool pigtailed girl who had removed the ribbons binding her hair when she entered senior year, and who had loved her onee-sama very much. Simplicity was the first thought that entered his mind.

And his deduction was never wrong.

By the time she showed him the painting, there was a rush of wind—that same ocre yellowish, toxic storm, which he felt from the tips of his toes, slithing through the nerves of his legs—warm, crescending into scorch. He awed that painting. Like any other artist, he said to himself—in a proud sort of way—that he should have done that work.

When he asked her about it, she smiled at him, hurtful, forlorn. Then, it's true, there was a sad history behind it, it seemed.

But what challenge was that to fabricate that budding artist's work. That was his greatest test, to testify his talent—the talent that his mother left him. And to do that, he must touch it with his fingertips, to abrade his eyes to the minute mountain ranges of dried paint, and to feel the emotions when she made it. A form of knowing all of her, frighteningly intimate and omnicient. Like his mother did with her paintings.

—Kashiwagi Suguru (1997)

CHAPTER 23:

Frantically, Yuuki called Touko's cellular phone. He might have been torn with the decision whether or not revealing to Yumi what he found out at the Ogasawara Mansion, but he needed to warn Yumi. He was at already late at night, but he had to be sure. Touko was with Yumi ever since she came back to Musashino two days ago, and probably, she would still be with her. On the third ring, Touko answered.

"Yuuki," A firm voice laced with soft pronunciation at the vowels came out of the speaker.

Yuuki calmed his voice, and the tremble in his vocal cords. "Hi. Is Yumi with you?"

"We—Yuuki, I'm at my apartment, she already left yesterday afternoon." She sound a bit distracted; he knew it that he called at a wrong time.

"You mean, she went back to Kyoto?" His voice fluctuated, almost hinting alarm. He mentally punched himself in the face for that one little slip.

"Yes." Again, a little distracted.

He grinned inwardly, in hearing the little inflections of Touko's tone. "Thanks, Touko."

There was a pause hanging. Finally, Touko asked, "Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. I'm just checking."

"Okay. I love you."

"Bye."

When proper goodbye were made, he dialed once more Yumi's number, repeatedly, waiting until the last ring before an automated voice record informed him that the number couldn't be reached. He tried again and again, but with no avail. It would have been better if she would have rejected the call (indicated by the busy tone abruptly stopping the ringtone) but the tone just proceeded and proceeded until the voice record warned him once more. Yumi was not answering her phone, therefore it was either not in her person or its battery was consumed. Either way, his sister's neglect to the only device of communication that they had was now getting on his nerves. Because, if something happened to her, especially at a time like this, he wouldn't forgive himself.

They were in his private quarters. The yellow light that emanated from two candles between them soothed the rather hostile and ragged face that Fukuzawa Yumi was contorting, as well as Kashiwagi Suguru's smooth, blank face. The six unfinished duplicates of Fukuzawa's The Passing Windwere between them, lying and lazily stacked on the smooth, unirritable tatami mat. In a farther distance, they seem to be having a meeting, formal in their position and manners, informal in the candled ambiance that enveloped the room. Informal because of the bed that was steps away from Kashiwagi.

Before each of them were two cups filled with tea. Neither minded it.

Both of them were assessing their temperaments. Neither was moving from his and her positions—their back were straight as a ramrod, their hands rested on their folded laps, their shoulders relaxed, and their eyes staring at each other. Pupils dilated. They both see how the light had impaired their vision by how their black pupils eclipsed the colors of their eyes—all he and she saw were immense black.

They were murderous, their stares at each other.

But in all their talk, mundane or important they were, she was always the first to give in to her impulse, to her feelings, whatever hostile or radical they may be. And it was always Suguru to react the same as he always did:with a question.

"Why did you do this?" She pointed at the stacked canvasses.

He replied with his usual blank acumen, not even phased by the implication she was poisonously darting. "I've always wanted to duplicate your work. It's obvious, Yumi. I told you, I admire them, didn't I?"

She looked at him darkly. "If this were your form of admiration for me and my talent, you are making a wrong impression. I am not flattered; I am frustrated."

"Frustrated? Isn't that such a mild word?"

"Why? Are you suggesting that I should hold a much deeper sentiment for you?"

She looked at his face and watched the candlelight dance on the contours of his face. She knew he was observing the same too.

It took a longer moment for him to speak again. "I am expecting that you'd hold a much greater reaction than this. This is your greatest work, your heart. I always thought that your over-protectiveness with it is the proof of your sentiment with it, like all of your works. Yet, this one is the closest, isn't it? But you are so calm."

She held her anger at bay. "You read me well, then why is it that I'm not doing what you've had expected me to do? What can you tell about that?"

"That you are restraining yourself, like you want yourself to do."

"You think you are above me," She exhaled, and then sneered at him, knowlingly, calculatingly. "You are such an arrogant man."

He produced the same face. "And yet you are trying to prove yourself to me, not to be so weak, unlike what you were in the past."

She will not ask the question. He will reveal this by himself. This is her resolution and her proof of winning. She would ask, if she knew she had won.

"You seemed to know everything. Tell me more of what you know."

His shoulders relaxed. "I know that this was not the way Fukuzawa Yumi should act when she saw that her painting is being duplicated by someone in the compound—rooms and corridors away from her. That it should be here all along, yet, where is the original, you wonder."

She agreed silently, letting his words hang with its importance.

He asked, "Do you feel betrayed?"

"I told you before that I never trusted you." She answered briefly.

"Yes, I perfectly remember that telephone conversation. But then, you pointed it out so forcefully. I am afraid to tell you, they're connected. Again, do you feel betrayed?"

Now, she couldn't find the answer.

Kashiwagi inhaled and looked at the duplicates with profound absence. "I always tell this to myself: the degree of trust you've invested is the degree of betrayal that you'd feel in the end. I have known this very much since childhood, and I know that you can tell that I don't . . . invest that much. But it is in you, isn't it? You couldn't help giving that trust along with your sentiments, minute or overflowing they were, but it is always there. That trust."

She shrugged, "I figured that much a long time ago, too. You don't have to lecture."

"I know. We both learn from the past. It makes us stronger. But then again, avoiding the question, in fact, showed the truth."

"That I felt betrayed? Is that what you mean?"

"Yes."

She scowled at him, dropping every syllable from her tongue with venom. "Right, what do you think I'd react otherwise? Yes, I felt betrayed, you don't have to drill that to me. You have the painting, which is very dear to me. That is my life. And it took me years to administer the hatred . . . feelings into that painting, over protecting it, then I'd find out that it's no longer in the wall where I want it to be? So, it is no wonder I'd feel that I want to murder you. To skin you. You can see it in my eyes; I am that expressive."

He scowled back. "I can see that."

Then, she felt that the ball is in her court now. "Am I in some sort of a clever game? Because I haven't realized I'm in it, until now. I don't know what my part is. How am I in your game? Am I a pawn? A rook? A bishop? Your queen? Because I haven't been doing anything. Except mending those decrepit artworks, of course."

The word "decrepit" was selected to provoke a reaction from Suguru and it did in just a fraction of a second; the pupils of his eyes constricted.

She continued, gaining more courage and confidence as she focused on her goal never to be provoked, "But that's the only thing that I do. I am not the queen, obviously; she does the most difficult and elaborate of jobs; not a rook either, I have not been protecting anything. The rest of the pieces were just as exciting but it's not me, not really. I'm interested in the dullest ones: the King and a pawn. Which am I?"

"The King." He hinted.

"Oh, so there is a game."

"Yes, there is, and it isn't as elaborate as you thought, but it concerned more of . . . sentiments, which rather hurts the most."

She raised her arms, her palms facing upward, while she feigned a grin on her face, acting overly dramatic. "So, I am King! Am I worth protecting? Is this your idea of protection, stuffing me into the compound, giving me a mystery such as those Kinomoto paintings, and watch me dance in admiration to them?"

"You are entertaining to watch."

She gleamed, "And so are you, dear Knight. If this happened years ago, I would have shed more tears. You're right, I have this tendency to be fragile because of my feelings." Then, appearing smug, she illustrated more of her failures. "Look what happened to me when I was with Sachiko. But that was before, and now, looking back, you coming into my life and the rest that happened before that and until now, not everything is coincidence. I have the right to know."

"Know what, Yumi?"

"To know my place in your game."She said. It was the first time she dropped her pitch much lower to emphasize what she wanted. "You said: it wasn't elaborate. You said: it involved sentiment. Am I correct to assume that this involved the Ogasawara family?"

He was always mimicking her. He said in a low voice, "Tell me about your assumptions."

Her voice turned serious, grave. "When I asked you if there was a person you hated so much, you said there was. Everyone had someone to hate, but not with you. You are the sort of person who don't express sentiments; you claimed that Touma Ryu is your best friend, yet you're not as vocal as him. Shimata-san undoubtedly cared for you in a paternal sort of way, but you don't seem to give that sentiment back. Nothing seemed to touch you. Not even when you told me you're attracted to me. I wasn't even convinced. But when I mention Ogasawara Kyouiichi, your eyes,"

She looked at them squarely. "Your stare mirrors mine."

It was hatred and bitterness.

She continued, not letting go of the eye contact that they established since she figured him out. "You began to be so concerned to the extent of forcing me to trust you. You called me in the middle of the night just to say that to me. What? Is that your final words before you engage to battle into something so colossal as Ogasawara Kyouiichi? Because hurting him means piercing his weakness. And you told me how family is the foundation of his stubborn beliefs, at the same time, his weakness. Thus, are you going to involve the granddaughter? Are you going to screw my life as well? If you want to settle debts to that family, by all means." She gestured a welcoming hand. Her lips twisted downward, not giving a care.

But she carried on, with a scowl. "But you don't have to include me. I can be very emotionally supportive, but I will not stoop so low to even touch them. Is that why you called me that night to talk about trust? To drop breadcrumbs as if you were doing me a favor?"

"I am doing you a favor." He deadpanned, which caused Yumi to roll her eyes.

"What kind of favor?" She asked back automatically, but she whisked the question away by making an unpleasant noise. She revised, "By stealing my work?"

"I did not steal your work, I duplicated it."

She rested her hands on her lap. "Ah, so you are the other artist in this compound. Unbelievable. That's why you were too invested with my work, it's itching you, isn't it? To comment while I'm working. Those times when you go inside my room and inspect the unfinished Kinomoto business, you wanted to hold a brush and do it yourself, do you? You are a fan, but you don't want to reveal that you had the talent."

He interrupted, and while she wanted to bashed him with words, his crisp voice stopped her from doing so. "And now, you saw it. I would be lying if I don't want this to happen—why else would I even put my work here in the compound. It was always a fantasy of mine to show you something that I personally am proud of. What do you think about them? Did I impress you?"

She gritted at his arrogance. "Six of unfinished. How could you impress me with incomplete work? You wanted to make an impression, but it isn't here. You made another one."

"How can you tell?"

Yumi explained, as if he were an idiot. "The stands. All six of them were upturned to the wall, covered with cloths. Two stands were empty, and there were where your seventh picture and my painting were placed before they were gone."

"You thought this over." He mused.

She corrected. "I am not stupid. Your world inside that room is my world as well. Where is it?"

"It was destroyed."

It made her heart stop. The thought of it destroyed—were they referring to the same item? Because if they did, then, there was no point of this conversation. She would go straight into skinning him. "Excuse me?!"

He answered, "The seventh, I destroyed it. So, it's just the six, unfinished paintings now. Now, tell me, how did I do?"

"Do not make this conversation longer as it is."

He demanded. "Tell me, how did I do."

"I won't, unless you answer my question."

Then, Suguru gauged her once more. (Yumi admitted that he had the talent to fucking sway the conversation) "How are you so confident that I'll be obliging with your demands?"

She answered, "I am confident. One thing I know the moment I saw this room, is that you keep it all to yourself. If ever there were an underground room in this compound, you won't use it to hide your secrets, no, not this one. An artist always wants attention . . . he always wants an audience . . . audience that he respected. Hence, this place. You let no one in your compound in such a long period of time, except me. Or that's what I know. If someone else had been here like me, that person also holds great respect from you. So,

"Aside from me, there are others who know about your talent. Shimata-san must be very, very proud of you. But any case, it doesn't matter, because you only wanted me to see them. When you said, 'No, you made it,' clearly dawned that conclusion to me.

"It is adjacent to your room, barely locked, even though it is only accessible through here. You sometimes told me to walk around the compound yet I usually don't because I don't have the time, and because I don't want to. Just this time, after I got back from Musashino, when I was frustrated not to get back to work, and just wander around. You know that, do you? My actions?

"And when you saw me here, you weren't hostile, you were not trying to keep it from me. In fact, you welcomed me. If you were trying to hold your anger because I discovered your secret, you weren't showing anymore betraying detail in your actions. You wanted me here. And the way you want me to make an assessment of your duplication of The Passing Wind, I say, you wanted my acknowledgement. You wanted me to recognize you. Not as my employer, but as an artist."

"You are King, as I said." Suguru finally spoke. "You nailed it, my weaknesses. The yearning for an audience; my admiration to your work. It completely reinforces your ego, doesn't it? When you translated and told those things to me, I completely thought that you are finally accepting what that work means to you, but as you continued, I read that you're not confronted yet, with your feelings."

Yumi frowned. "What are you talking about? Isn't the course of the conversation about you?"

"At first I thought that you'd burn those six incomplete replicas, but it's still here, in front of me, moderately touched. I saw you looking at some of them, particularly the sixth, because it's the most proper copy that I've done among them. You were shocked when you found them, you plan to burn them out of pure anger, but you didn't. Instead, you took your time, until this late hour of the night and waited for me. You waited to see my reactions. And while you wait, you looked at them, one by one."

It was now Kashiwagi's turn to volley. His face was showing calculating knowledge as the candlelight danced to the frame of his face.

"Clearly, you were flattered when someone had been duplicating your painting, just like this small, perverse pleasure when you find out that somebody stole it instead of a Higeshimaya hanging adjacently from your work, which was basically what the people usually prefer to look at. There is a deeper ambition to be the best, to be one of them, yet you are stuck. You are stuck to your past and the pain that reinforces you to do these masterpieces. You just couldn't move on, because you are afraid of what would happen if you let go of your bitterness. It won't make you special anymore. When hatred is released away from you, you couldn't think of a way to underpin any inspiration. But either way, you will be stuck, just like how stuck you are that for the past two years: you've done nothing."

Disappointment showed in his face, but he did not rub it to Yumi by showing a conceited smirk like he used to do. Instead, he continued on—his eyes piercing her.

"I admit that I admire you, and I admire your talent. That's why I'm so impatient to see how you will manage if you were to get past this bullshitting stage and get on with whatever that is left in you. It's some sort of a fanatic fantasy, of me getting you somewhere out of the pitiful state you are in, because a fan feels what the object of their obsession feels. A fan wanted to know you, to be with you, to let you recognize him, and to its most extreme: to be in your shoes. If you did sell your all your works all these years, I would have bought them all. But you didn't. You just wanted the world to see your heart, to sympathize with you, but you don't want them to touch you."

She cut, "Is that what you feel when you stole my painting?"

He quickly corrected. "I didn't steal it. Even though I was there in the gallery, I am not responsible for that. I had done what I wanted to do. But, nevertheless, you ask the wrong questions."

"Then, is that what you felt when you were copying my painting?" She tried to finish the sentence, just to get over his scrutiny. She knew she was being lambasted, but I all hit through. Kashiwagi's words—someone she just had known for months, had been screwing her head as if he had known her ever since.

He smirked, "Oh, I felt you. I felt your heart. I felt your enormous sentiment for Ogasawara Sachiko and Hinomura Takuya, those who had mandated you to experience what is most natural in you, and exceptionally hate it, at the same time. Do you want me to continue?"

She didn't answer; he pursued.

"I felt your lust for her. I felt your desire to tear her apart, limb by limb, and at the same time to embrace her. Not anyone can see that, Yumi, but not when the audience feels what you feel. It's actually simple, basic and primal; it's all in the picture: the naked woman, the wind, the degrading flesh of her legs, streaming up her thighs, eating her from her feet upwards. And that woman was loving it. Disgusting in its depiction and meticulousness, but horrifically erotic want her to feel your perverse sentiment, and what it does to your body. It eats you, slowly, but my, you love it. And you wanted her to feel that too, even in vain. The pain she had inflicted you, and the pleasure that you get from that pain—like doses of coccaine that runs through your blood . . . it makes you escape from reality. You love it when it is in your veins, of what it does to your senses, but does it love you back?"

He paused. And when she found that she couldn't contradict Kashiwagi to save her remaining dignity, he continued. But in a milder manner than before. He was showing concern.

He said, slowly, testing once more. "You wonder. You wonder what in the world is wrong with you, what in the world is lacking in you, that they never stay. You have done everything to deserve their love, yet, what seems to be lacking? I felt that when I am doing my best to perfect my duplication, seven of canvasses—each one I sacrificed too much of sleep and time, but all that time, I felt you. In those seven trials, I had torn the heart out of you."

"No, you didn't." She gritted. He doesn't know what she was feeling.

He smiled wickedly, looking at the stacked paintings before them, "That is what I am hoping for: that I won't belong to those people who don't appreciate you, and affected you somehow. For one thing: they enjoyed how selfless you were."

She tried not to flinch at his last assessment. Then, he looked at her once more, squarely into her eyes. "But I rather have you selfish, cynical, and conceited."

It should take time to heal reopened wounds once more, and that time took all noise that they should have made. Everything stopped after his admittance. He stayed quiet, waiting for an answer, while she delayed her reply, to measure her control. Each examined his and her opponent, gauging each other's reactions, trying not to fold at whatever game they were playing.

Finally, she acknowledged him, as an idol does to her follower.

"You impress me."

"Thank you."

She tore her stare away from him. She played her forefinger onto the rim of the neglected teacup, sliding its tip clockwise. "We both know what we think of each other now. Isn't that a measure of equality? I commend you for that. I am easy to read, am I not?"

"You're not easy to read."

"I think you reiterated it perfectly."

He countered. "We did the same, you and I. But then, why couldn't I know what you want to do about The Passing Wind?"

"Why indeed? It wasn't here. All that is in front of me now are your unfinished, imperfect duplicates. I would feel nothing even if you show me thousands of unfinished pictures of my work." She said, grimly.

"Then, what if we set them aside," he said as he stood up and walked at a nearby wall, and slid of one sliding door, revealing a compartment. He pulled a crate covered with white sheet and walked back to his seat. He put the six canvasses away and replaced them with the object that he extracted from the compartment. He continued, "and examine this, for a moment."

He revealed the object as he unfolded away the cloth's corner after another, his delicate hands like waves as he revealed it. He announced, "The Passing Wind, made by Fukuzawa Yumi at Musashino in 1997, style: traditional."

He sighed, "Tell me, are you happy to see it now?"

Was he . . . embarrassed?

Her eyes bore no more color except the darkest shade of black of her pupils as she bent over. She slipped a finger on the handle of the candlerholder and hovered it on the painting. Her eyes dilated more, as she scanned each stroke of her most horrific painting; her head moving, floating above the canvass, like a snake sensing the ground with her forked tongue. Kashiwagi looked from above, seeing how she engrossed herself into the ground—a true artist, he wanted to say out loud, because that was also the way his mother inspected a painting: eyes almost grazing the plane of the canvass, nose smelling the remnant of vapor in the medium used, and the tip of her fingers (and sometimes, her nose) touching at least a centimeter to validate its planar dimensions.

Then, she lifted her head and poised herself rigidly, her lips smiling.

"This is my work."

"I suppose it is." He agreed, but a hint of scowl etched his lips.

She smirked as she tore her gaze away from his eyes and settled the candle to its original position. She used her left hand to lift the now-lukewarm Japanese teacup and raise it to her lips. She said, "You must have done a great deal of sacrifices to acquire this."

"I have," he said, his eyes focused on her moving lips.

She looked at the painting once more, the fringe of her eyelashes unhurriedly sliding halfway— almost seductively and sedated; andthe fingers of her right hand lingering a caress on the painting before her. She spoke in a breathy whisper, private, feminine:

"The brush strokes . . . the lively, sickening color of yellow, oh, I missed them. Even the texture—I've never touched it ever since I hung it at the Nihonga section of the gallery—it never felt so real."

He smiled slowly.

"I've never been more proud of you, Suguru." The "king" complemented.

Okaa-sa—

The pupils of his eyes constricted once more, as if reminiscing a significant memory that rendered Suguru to shattered his control for a second—his real emotions resurfacing onto his previously calculating face—and struggled to keep his cool the next second. All the while Yumi observed him, and read that her words triggered a delicate nerve in is brain. She let the grave moment—long as it felt it was—passed them both, and let Suguru's realization of a memory and Yumi's discovery of another weakness lingered heavily in the air.

It was the first time tonight that she called him by his first name.

Yet, she continued on, with the sole purpose of winning this game.

"You have done the perfect thing, everything, but The Passing Wind is my heart, Suguru."

. . . the remnant of vapor . . .

"I know it when it's in my hands."

The hands that held the Japanese clay teacup had shifted a degree that made lukewarm liquid contained in it to pour on the painting, drops trickling down from the rim to the canvass. Suguru watched it thoroughly as Yumi let the cup hover around the dimensions of the artwork, liquid spattering on their folded legs. One droplet even touched Kashiwagi's right cheek.

She said, "You asked me of what I would do to the painting once I found it. You asked me of what I should do—to what you termed—move on. This is my reply, Kashiwagi-san. You have done a good job fooling me."

She finished pouring the whole contents of the cup.

Suguru smiled. In this game they knew she had won, as what she had demostrated theatrically in front of him—an example of arrogance, confidence and resolve. But she was taken aback by the way he smiled as she poured the contents onto it, as if he was the one winning. She decided not to show that little observation and its corresponding reaction.

She settled the cup on her side. She would ask him where her painting was. It was her reward for all of this.

But what she didn't notice after her momentary lapse because of her triumph, was the flicker of shadows and movements—Kashiwagi Suguru moving from her seat to reach for her shoulders. She felt as sting, very close of how an ant bites a delicate skin. She gasped in shock, but she knew Suguru had done something. With that, she looked at Suguru's face for a sign of reaction as he scooped his arms to her upper back to support her.

"I'm happy that you recognized my work, Yumi. And your move, which proved to me how strong you are."

The sting on her upper arm begain to fade, but the strength of her arms and legs began to dissolve, numbing any pyschosomatic effort to move them. In her mind, nothing was more important than the question: "Where is my painting?"

"I don't have your painting, not anymore."

"SAY THAT AGAIN!" She warned, tried, even when she felt her mouth watered. She felt like vomiting. But then her voice had shaken the entire room with its feroceousness. "Say that again, and if you're lying to me . . ."

His voice was calming, almost soothing; out of the context of what he was saying: "I am not lying to you. I don't have it anymore. Any more than I want it with me."

"Where . . . is it?!"

"Someone needed it more than I do. You'll see it again, don't worry, but it won't be from me."

"What . . ."

With her discovering him as the painter, it was enough for her to complete almost the entire puzzle. As much as she tried to separate herself from her feelings, it was the same for him. Ogasawara Kyouiichi was despairingly important to him, as much as Ogasawara Sachiko was to her. She never knew his history, and probably would ever be in the shadows of the future, but she knew when one is invested to eliminating sentiment. How it does to a person. It makes you shoulder the past even more, to feel like how it felt before, hence not entirely resulting to the apathy that you desperately want to reach.

She remembered what she told him and what he told her a while ago, and how true were they when they had captured the truth.

"You will know what will happen in the future. She always tells you that, didn't she? That she'll return the painting." He said.

Yet all her faculties seemed to be going down, and her senses couldn't fuction properly anymore, thus her inability to grasp everything that he was saying. Yet, she knew . . . she knew what he was talking about.

"Does that rob me . . . right to take revenge on her?" She smirked, almost joking.

"What you would do in the near future will be your vengeance."

Her vision become flooded with diffused light, unable to distinguish shapes and sizes anymore. Her head was spinning, and she felt arms on under her knees and her back, trasporting her to a much more comfortable place. She felt softness on her back, a dry, cool texture upon her forehead, and immediate warmth from her neck to her toes.

She still struggled just to get a little clue . . . "In this game . . . what're you?"

"I am a pawn. Always am." He said solemnly.

His voice was near her lips.

She frowned. "You'll regret this . . . motherfucking bastard." She slurred, in frantic hopes of having the last word, even though she knew that eventually, he would have it instead.

"Correct choice of words. But tomorrow," he whispered as he arranged the pillow beneath her head and look at her as sleep began to seize her, "everything will end."

TO BE CONTINUED

A/N: I hope you read the whole ordeal slowly and thoroughly, as I had repeatedly revised this for your reading. Too much neuron, morality, patience for my boss' mood cycles, and beauty sleep had been sacrificed for the sake of this chapter. I hope for your kind consideration, please. :)

Can you guess how many duplicates exactly did he make? He said he duplicated "seven trials." For those who guessed another number before Suguru revealed the last one, you saw thru me again.

I love writing Yumi, even though she was drugged in the end. I have a question though: should I change the rating? I am sure that the sexual situations in the past chapters are relatively Teens, but the mature language, do they still include in the range of that Rating? I mean, Yumi had been spitting expletives in a much insulting range than anyone else in this story, and it does bother me a little. In their conversation, however, I think Kashiwagi was the first to exploit an expletive into his sentence (Yumi wins in cursing-control department). I could be flagged for this, God help me. Opinions, anyone?

What do you think of Yumi? Suguru? In general?