Even if I now saw you only once,

I would long for you through worlds, worlds.

-Izumi Shikibu

"Shino? Hey, Shino!"

It was Kiba's voice.

Blasted by the sunlight glaring in his face from the treetops, Shino sat up from the grass underneath him, adjusting his sunglasses to fit straight on his nose again.

"Hey, Shino," Kiba and Akumaru finally made it over to him. "What happened to you? You just disappeared all of a sudden!"

Kiba raised a questionable brow at him.

"Where have you been? One minute you were behind me, the next you were gone."

"I..." Shino started.

But nothing came to him. His memory chopped like suishi, filled with a strange foggy blur of images of bees, and fireflies, and silvery locks of soft snowy hair.

And this gnawing feeling that their meaning to him was all connected somehow...

Like right down to the core of his soul, he was missing a deeper piece of himself, but he couldn't quite put it into words.

His spinning head buzzed too much like houseflies under a trash bin to make any sense of it now.

"I'm not sure," he said quietly. "I must have gotten sidetracked. I can't remember what I was doing before you showed up...But I feel-"

"Now is not the time to be sleeping on the job," Kiba interrupted him. "We got a beekeeper to find. I told you to keep up."

Beekeeper?

And then Shino's gaze dropped to his side, where a full jar of honey wine shimmered golden in the sunlight.

Strange. I don't remember meeting any Beekeeper.

"Sorry to fall behind," Shino said to Kiba. "However, I did manage to get ahold of this somehow."

"Whoa! When did you get that?" Kiba exclaimed, impressed. "I figured you were just wondering around lost out here somewhere."

"Lost, huh? That's ironic," Shino commented vaguely. "The reason is, because I sense I am more lost now than I was before you found me."

It didn't add up.

How had he found the honey wine jar without remembering the Beekeeper who gave it to him?

And why couldn't he get rid of the bittersweet taste of Wisteria on his lips?

"Well, now that we got what we came for," Kiba said, making his way back to the path that led home to the Leaf. "We can return to the village. It's about time. I'm starving."

Akumaru barked in agreement.

Taking the honey wine jar in one arm, Shino slowly followed Kiba back to the path.

"And since you were the first one to find the honey wine, I guess that means you get to treat us to lunch. Right, Shino?...Shino?"

Kiba glanced at the silent insect master walking beside him.

"What?"

"What's 'bugging' you?" Kiba asked him.

"Somehow, I can't help but sense I've lost something important to me...A missed opportunity to know someone special...A lot like that cat girl you never had a chance with."

Kiba cringed.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Kiba declared. "Did you really have to bring that up again?"

"You mean, you don't care about her anymore?"

"I'll just write her a letter or something," Kiba said, waving dismissively as he continued walking. "What do you say we hit Yakiniku Q on the way back?"

Shino never answered him, looking back at the forest one last time, yet failing to pinpoint the unexplained sadness that left him feeling a little emptier inside.

Whatever had happened before he found Kiba, it must have been a dream.