Disclaimer: None of the recognizable characters, etc. belong to me. I'm not getting paid for this, and you couldn't get much money from me by suing me, so please don't. However, new characters (Skye, Nobuyuki, Suki, Akira, Mirachtunel, Chephren) and this story are my sole creation and should NOT be used without my permission.
Part One
"Hello? I hope this is the right number... look, it's me, Skye. Listen... Suki's dead. She killed herself Friday night..."
The words slowly sank in, despite his greatest attempts to keep them out. All feeling drained from his body as he numbly let himself sink down to the floor. Emotionlessly, coldly, he felt the life seep from his body, shock replacing all else that existed before. He stayed there, just sitting there silently, never moving, never blinking. Just sitting and keeping the thoughts and memories trying to barrel through away. Far away...
*****
"Rowen? Rowen!? Rowen, what is it? What's wrong? Stop it, you're scaring me!" Cye nearly screamed as he desperately shook his friend by the shoulders. Cye was kneeling down in front of the blue-haired boy, who was sitting against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest and his open eyes staring straight ahead blankly. If he'd thought Rowen's skin was normally pale, he'd have now sworn he was shaking a ghost. Directly to his right, the phone receiver hung limply by its cord which ran up to the cradle atop the table.
Cye tried several more times, after making certain that Rowen wasn't injured anywhere. Far as Cye could tell, he was in shock. From what? He didn't know. But he sure wished he did.
Just then, Mia burst in, having heard Cye's calls. "Cye," she said, obviously out of breath, and apparently not about to wait to catch it, "Cye, what happened?"
"I don't know. He won't snap out of it. No matter what I try, he just... sits there. I think he's in shock or something. He left me in the kitchen to answer the phone and when he didn't come back after a while, I came in and saw him sitting just like that. Something must have upset him bad," Cye said as Mia tried to revive Rowen as well, his usual light-hearted cheer darkened to quiet, frightened solemnity.
"We-we should call for help. He needs help," Cye stuttered suddenly and firmly, though he could barely hold back the tears of fear. He reached out with one small hand to grasp the dangling telephone. Before he could quite reach it, a hand shot up and grabbed him around the wrist.
"No," Rowen said, his voice strong and firm, but edged with darkness, his eyes staring back into Cye's, but still miles away.
"Rowen?" Mia asked, her voice tight with fear and confusion.
"No. I'm fine." He paused. "I have to go somewhere. I can't explain right now..." Rowen slid up the wall until he was standing, then exited the room without another word. He passed by a bookshelf in the hallway near the entryway, snagging Mia's keys and a jacket as he walked by. By the time Mia and Cye got outside to stop him, he was pulling away in Mia's jeep.
*****
Rowen remained at the outermost edge of the sizable congregation, his head bowed and a few warm, clear saline tears trailing down his cheeks. He tried to remain unseen under the shade of a large sakura tree, but it seemed as though luck was not with him.
Half a dozen meters ahead, a pale violet eye caught him in its gaze, and the owner turned slightly to see him better. The teenage girl looked at him in half surprise, half relief, and turned immediately to whisper to the young man to her left. He, too, looked back at Rowen with a mix of emotions and conversed in hushed whispers with the girl.
As the priest finished his final prayer and the crowd began to depart, laying roses and small momentos on the closed coffin as they passed by, most of them sobbing with grief and leaning heavily on loved ones, the two teens who had spotted Rowen broke away from their crying friends and approached him with slow, saddened strides.
Rowen didn't look up when they stopped a few feet in front of him, but said, "It's been a long time, Skye. Akira. Nice to see you again."
"Likewise," the young woman, Skye, replied. "Though I can't say much for the conditions of this reunion." She brushed a long, straight strand of silver-violet hair out of her way and looked at him with large violet eyes. They looked on Rowen with love and compassion, and seemed to be pleading with him. "We have to talk, Ro. It's happening."
Rowen brought his head up sharply to meet her gaze with intense indigo eyes. "What?"
"It wasn't suicide, Rowen," the other teen, Akira, said solemnly. He met Rowen's gaze seriously. His deep gray eyes were filled with sorrow and regret.
"What do you mean? It can't be..."
"It is," Skye said, her voice low and dark. "He's back, and he's coming for all of us. We broke our oath, and he wants to make us pay for it."
A man walked by, and Skye and Akira turned away as if in fear of being seen or heard. When the person was gone again, they looked around suspiciously and left. As she brushed by him, Skye whispered in Rowen's ear, "We have to talk in private. I'll contact you as soon as I can."
Rowen watched them go, his facial expression blank and his insides numb. When he lost sight of them among the throes of people, he looked back toward the freshly dug grave. A middle-aged woman was bent over the coffin, crying her eyes out. She was small and looked frail enough to snap in half at the slightest touch, and her thin, gray-streaked hair was held back by a charcoal gray scarf. She wore a simple black dress that covered her body with fabric to spare. Rowen went to her, kneeling by her side in front of the grave and placing a warm arm around her shoulders.
"Mrs. Tanaka..." he whispered, trying to comfort her. She looked up at him, and her tearful eyes widened.
"Rowen-san? Oh, is it really you? How time flies! You're almost a grown man now!" Mrs. Tanaka's sadness was complete, and she looked at him sorrowfully, remembering the little boy he had once been. "Did you come to see my baby girl? You were always such a good friend to my babies. Oh, but that seems like ages ago! And now they're gone, both my babies..."
She trailed off into a string of quiet sobs as Rowen embraced her uncomfortably, trying to hold back his own tears for her sake. Eventually she pulled away, collecting herself a little bit. "Did you see Akira and Skye? They were hoping you'd come. It's been so long since I've seen all of you together. Suki really loved you, you know. I still don't understand why you four stopped seeing each other. You were like brothers and sisters, along with my Nobuyuki. Do you remember back then, Rowen? You were all so happy..." She looked at him desperately, then shifted her gaze to the grave of her only daughter, Suki Tanaka. Her tears threatened to spill over again.
Rowen listened to her ramble sympathetically, unable to remain apathetic. He barely kept a lid on his volatile emotions, but he did. He looked at the cold grave and the heavy oak coffin positioned over it, ready to be sentenced to eternity, and seeing it filled him with more dread and sorrow than he could ever remember. But he buried his emotions, and helped Mrs. Tanaka stand. She leaned on him heavily from her grief. He said to her, "Tanaka-sama, do you have anyone here who can help you get home? A friend, or another relative?"
Mrs. Tanaka shook her head. "No one..."
Rowen looked around and spotted the beat-up old car that Mrs. Tanaka had owned since as long as he could remember. He glanced warily at Mia's jeep, then proceeded to gently guide Mrs. Tanaka toward her car, telling her, "C'mon. I'll take you home, and then we can get some tea for you and talk all about the old days, okay?" She didn't struggle, and with a last glance at the lonely grave and the intimidating lack of people in the big old cemetery, he helped her in the car, got in himself, and drove away.
*****
Rowen closed the door as silently as possible behind him and dropped Mia's keys back on the bookshelf with a tired sigh. He wasn't sure of the time, but it was long past dusk, and he really wanted to avoid confrontation tonight. He'd had to stay with Tanaka-san for hours, then he'd walked maybe five or six miles back to Mia's jeep and driven back, his heart and thoughts heavy with depression.
"Rowen?" Of course. No such luck for him. "Rowen, where have you been?" Mia's voice was stern and angry, but it was impossible for her to hide her worry beneath it.
"I really don't want to talk about it," he slunk past her in the small space she left in the hall. He went into the kitchen and burrowed in a high cupboard, scavenging for something to fill the void in his stomach.
Mia wasn't about to leave it alone. "Rowen, you can't just pull this kind of crap with us! We're your friends, and we deserve to know when something's wrong."
"I said I don't want to talk about it, okay?" Rowen snapped. He abandoned the cupboard and poked his head into the fridge, milling through the remnants of past meals and small items of food that cluttered the appliance.
Cye and Kento walked in to see what the noise was about. "Hey, what's going on? Rowen, where've ya been all day? We were worried about you."
"I had some stuff to take care of. And if you don't mind, I'd really rather not get into it. I'm tired and I just want to go to bed, okay?" Without waiting for a response, he slammed the refrigerator shut, stormed out of the kitchen and marched up to his bedroom.
Flopping down on his bed in the room he and Sage shared, he kicked off his shoes, plugged his headphones into his stereo, and blasted away his thoughts with a loud, pulsating music. He turned out the lights and settled down on top of his covers with his clothes still on, letting the heavy metal vibrate in his eardrums. He wouldn't have normally listened to this type of stuff, but tonight the dark, rageful music felt appropriate. He watched the patterns of light cast across his ceiling by the halllight and the bright white moon outside for a long time, until eventually his eyelids slid shut and he drifted into an uneasy sleep filled with troubling dreams out of the past.
*****
He was laughing, his carefree naiveté mirrored by the twelve-year-old boy with the jet black hair and bright green eyes. They sat together in the back seat of Mrs. Tanaka's old green Chevy Nova, talking excitedly about the movie they were on their way to see. Nobuyuki was telling him all about the hilarious party scene in it he'd heard about from a kid at school, and they were laughing hysterically about it.
Mrs. Tanaka glanced at them in the rearview mirror and smiled at her son and his young friend with motherly love and pride. In the split second that her attention was diverted, another car bolted out into the intersection coming from the lane crossing hers. The man swerved drunkenly, screeching his tires, and Mrs. Tanaka looked up to see that he was on a collision course with her. She tried to swerve out of the way, but his car caught her on the driver's side, near the rear. The momentum of the other car propelled them across the expanse of the intersection and the Chevy slammed against a post for traffic lights.
Rowen's head was throbbing and his stomach ached as he slowly came to. He touched the back of his head with trembling fingers and saw the fresh warm blood on them. His back was against the rear door on the passenger's side, and the cold metal lightpost was jutting through the frame of the car just a few inches to his right. He tried to make his eyes focus, and he saw the body slumped across the seat in front of him, almost in his lap. It was covered in blood and lacerations, and all he could see was red and a matted patch of black.
His jaw gaped open in shock and denial, and he chanted no over and over again in a desperate, whispered mantra. He bent forward slightly and gasped at the shock of pain it sent throughout his back, stomach, and up into his neck. He started to swoon, but his eyes caught bright red and white lights flashing somewhere outside, and he used them to steady himself. He refocused his vision and tried to bend forward again gingerly and much more slowly this time. He placed his hands around his friend's shoulders and leaned over his head protectively, tears stinging his eyes. He knew without checking that his friend was dead.
The car that had collided with them was lying in the middle of the intersection still, its front bumper smashed in and the windshield shattered, but the driver was reviving and people were going to help him. The Chevy was another matter. Its windows were all cracked and shattered, and the frame was collapsed in on itself where the car had made impact with the other car and the traffic light's post; the former just happened to be right where Nobuyuki had been sitting, and the jagged metal shell had crushed his legs and lower torso when it bent inward.
A sob escaped Rowen's lips, and he let his tears fall freely now. He sat up slowly, looking around at the people and cars all around them desperately. He saw Mrs. Tanaka slumped over the wheel of the car with a small trickle of blood trailing down her brow, and knew he had to get help soon, even if it was too late for Nobuyuki. He tried to yell for help, but a sharp piercing pain cut it down to a small, frightened yelp. He looked down at his stomach, and saw a shard of glass protruding from his lower abdomen. Dark crimson blood was pouring over it. He suddenly felt very weak and feint, and his head throbbed more and more insistently. His vision began to blur again, and the last thing he saw before he passed out was a worried face peering in through the glassless windows, looking for survivors.
*****
Rowen jerked awake, sitting upright in his bed with a jolt. The CD he'd turned on last night was still playing, skipping on the same electric guitar part every three seconds or so. It was blaring in his ears, and he felt the beginnings of a horrendous headache setting in. He pulled the headphones off and flicked the power switch on his bedside stereo off.
He slowly rose from his bed, his muscles tight and stiff. The dreams he'd had just before waking were fastly fading, but he could feel a residual heaviness and sadness from them that he was pretty sure he could place if he wanted to. He didn't. He stretched his spine and extremities tiredly, but it did nothing to alleviate the heaviness he felt. He looked over at Sage's bed, where he was just beginning to stir in his abnormally light slumber. Pale shafts of early morning light were filtering in through the thin shades over the large bay windows between their beds, illuminating the dim room just a little bit.
Trying not to make a sound, Rowen grabbed a few stray articles of clothing from his side of the room and snuck out of the bedroom to take a much-needed shower.
Fifteen minutes later, he was sitting at the kitchen table with wet blue hair and a bowl of Lucky Charms in front of him. He was taking his sweet time eating it, dipping his spoon in and swishing it around for awhile before capturing a few morsels of sugary cereal and reluctantly putting it into his mouth each time. The whole process took at least twenty seconds per shot, so the progress was pretty slow-going - at best.
His mind and soul felt numb and empty. He couldn't really say why, but Suki's death meant more to him than he ever would have imagined. They'd been friends since before he could really be sure, and the Tanaka's had been like family to him, back in the days before the accident; before Nobuyuki's death and the biggest mistake he'd ever made...
"Rowen? What're you doing up so early?" Cye asked, surprised to find him in the kitchen at such an early hour.
"Couldn't sleep," mumbled Rowen. He didn't want to tell him why he was really up, and he figured that was as good a reason as any he could give.
"Well why didn't you wait for me to come down? I always make breakfast for everyone in the morning." Rowen shrugged. "Is something wrong, Ro? Do you feel like talking about it?"
Rowen stood up and carried his nearly full bowl to the sink to dump it out. With his back to Cye, he said, "Not really, but thanks. I think I'm going to leave early today, walk to school so I can think about some things and clear my head, okay?"
"Yeah, sure, Rowen. Whatever you want." Cye watched him leave with bewilderment.
*****
Rowen walked along the sidewalks of Tokyo, on the edge of the city, with his head bowed slightly. He didn't really notice the beautiful April morning around him as the outside world was coming alive for another day, despite the warmth of the sun, the chirping of the birds, and the sweet smell of blossoming flowers. He walked for a long time with his thoughts elsewhere, walking without aim or purpose, not even noticing where he was walking to. Occasionally, he exhaled a puff of the cigarette he was smoking as he walked, glad to be out of the house. Sage and Mia wouldn't let him smoke at home, so he only really got the chance at times like these. He knew it was a horrible habit and it might very well kill him someday, but he'd never really had the ambition to quit.
A car pulling out of its respective driveway screeched to a halt when it nearly backed into him, and Rowen jumped in alarm and woke up to reality, staring around at his surroundings. The person in the car honked his horn in irritation, so Rowen stepped aside so he could pull out into the street. Once he was relatively safe again, he looked around at the rather large, well-kept houses lined along either side of the street he'd ended up on. His eyes fell on one house in particular, a couple houses down.
It was a little smaller than some of the others, but just as nice and well-kept. It was paneled in bright white and sky blue trim, with large bay windows and French doubledoors at the main entry which were made of oak. It stretched upward two stories, and had a modest-sized green lawn, a little larger than was normal with prices on property being the way they were in Japan.
Rowen walked up to it slowly, his eyes wide to take it all in. He knew the place without thinking twice about it. This was the house he'd grown up in. He'd lived here with his parents from infancy until his parents' divorce when he was ten-years-old. Wow... I walked clear across the city! he thought to himself. He looked across the street and saw the house that Akira Ueda lived in since birth, and down the street a couple doors to where Skye Robinson had moved in from America when they were all seven. The Tanaka twins, Suki and Nobuyuki, lived on the next block south. He hadn't been back to either neighborhood in almost five years, save for the day before with Mrs. Tanaka. It brought back a lot of happy reminiscences, and a lot of bad ones too.
He remembered countless days the five of them had spent together, doing any number of things, sometimes nothing but hanging out together. And he'd always been able to depend on them to put him up for a night when his parents' fighting was getting to him. So many of his childhood memories concerned them that he found it shocking to realize just how little he thought about those times anymore. That part of his life was inaccessible to him now, and he guessed he'd always just left it in the past, where he thought it belonged. And now it was all coming back to slap him in the face for one last time... He just hoped he did things right this time around, so he wouldn't have anything to bury.
A door opened across the street at the Ueda household, and Akira stepped out, dressed in a navy blue school uniform, with his blazer and a couple of school textbooks in one arm. He was walking down the drive to the street as he began his trek for school, but stopped short when he looked up and saw Rowen standing in front of his childhood home. He called out in a sedated greeting from where he stood. Rowen held his gaze briefly, took a drag from his cigarette, and turned and walked away down the street without a word.
*****
Rowen walked into his Chemistry class five minutes late that morning, taking his seat at the back of the class near the windows silently. He sat down at the table he and Ryo shared, as they were lab partners at the present, but didn't look up or say anything to him. He placed his books on the tabletop and took out his notes, hurriedly jotting down the notes on the overhead in front of the class.
Ryo looked at him expectantly, but got nothing. "Well?"
"Well what?" Rowen muttered without looking up from his notes.
"What's up with you? Where did you go this morning?"
"Nowhere. Just forget about it."
Ms. Hanaseki looked up in the middle of her lecture and spotted him with disapproving eyes. "Hashiba-san, perhaps you would like to teach the class today? After all, you must know the material already, seeing as you do not find it necessary to come to my class on time or pay attention to my attempts to teach you."
Rowen gave her a small, semi-sarcastic smile in return. "No, thank you, Hanaseki-sensei. You're doing a fine job yourself, as always."
The twenty-something teacher regarded him harshly, definitely not appreciating the humor. "Perhaps you could work on your behavior a little? Maybe a few hours after school would help you learn better etiquette?"
Rowen looked up at her unapologetically, but recited the routine response anyway. "I'm sorry I misbehaved, Sensei. I won't do it again."
The woman watched him resume his note-taking, but turned back to the front of the class after a few seconds. She launched right back into her speech, and the class returned to its sleepy morning boredom routine where they sat there in a daze for their first few classes, most of them absorbing no more than two sentences throughout the entire morning. Rowen was one of these, but unlike most of the students he didn't have to absorb much during his classes to comprehend it fully. His unnaturally high IQ and photographic memory saw to that.
He wallowed in boredom and hazy-minded thoughts for at least twenty minutes before the light tapping at the windows woke him from his stupor. There, on the other side of the glass, was Skye. Her long, beautiful silver hair was down to her waist, held out of her way by two strands that normally hung across her cheekbones. They had been pulled back and clipped behind her head with a simple red hairclip.
Her lithe, femininely curved body was clothed in tight, dark denim jeans - the kind that could stretch so much it was like wearing a second skin - and a bright red tank top over which she wore a loose, flowery white blouse. It was sheer and very light-weight, and she left it unbuttoned. Her kind violet eyes were locked with his, pleading with him. He didn't remember her being so beautiful.
Rowen looked around to make sure the teacher wasn't in the room - she had left to run off more copies of some worksheet or another - and when he thought it was safe he went over to the window, sliding it open. Ryo finally noticed the girl outside and whispered urgently to Rowen, "Hey! You're going to get yourself in more trouble! Ro!" Rowen ignored him, leaning out to speak with Skye in a guarded, hushed tone.
"What are you doing here?"
"I said I would contact you, didn't I?" she grinned.
"So what do you want?"
"To talk."
"Rowen! Who're you talking to? She's gonna be back any second!" Ryo came up and warned him.
"So talk," Rowen said, still ignoring Ryo.
"Not here. Somewhere safe." Skye looked around herself like she expected to find someone watching. "Meet me as soon as you can get out of here. The usual place." She gave him one last smile as she backstepped from the window, turned and fled out of sight.
Ryo was getting really ticked. He didn't like being treated like he didn't exist, especially not by his friends. "What the hell was that? You mind explaining what's up with you lately?" he whispered angrily as he returned to his seat, trying not to notice the curious stares they had been getting from half the class.
"Yes, I do," Rowen answered, returning to his work without a further explanation. Ryo looked ready to throw a fit, but he shrugged it off and set back to work grudgingly, glancing over at Rowen from time to time.
*****
A chorus of slamming locker doors, chatter, and other common school behaviors filled the halls. Rowen opened his locker and dumped his books into it. He glanced at the contents disapprovingly, promptly closing the locker door with a forceful shove. There, leaning against the wall of lockers on the other side of the door, was Sage. Kento stood behind him. Both looked too serious for comfort.
"We ran into Ryo. He had some interesting news to tell us," Sage informed, his visible left eye boring into Rowen.
"Did he?" said Rowen innocently. "What about?"
"You and some strange girl. He said you agreed to meet her; thought you might've been planning to skip school to go see her."
"Yeah, so?"
"Well are you?"
"Maybe." Rowen brushed past Sage, but Kento moved to block his path. "Get out of my way, Kento."
"No," Kento said. He looked at Rowen sadly, wanting so much to understand.
"Get out of my way," Rowen repeated.
"Not until you tell us what's going on," Sage stated firmly.
"You wouldn't understand. It's personal." Rowen swallowed the lump in his throat forcefully.
"So since when can't you trust us with your problems, Ro? I'd really like to know when that changed, because I always thought we Ronin Warriors told each other everything."
Sage's words stung deep. Rowen never wanted to keep anything from them, but this was more than a secret. It was a curse, one he didn't wish to inflict on his friends for anything in the world. "This is different," he said softly, his sorrow plain in his tone. "I can't talk about this, Sage."
"Not to us, you mean. But maybe to that girl? Maybe she can understand but we can't?"
"It's not like that. I just...can't tell you. Or anyone. Skye knows. She was there. So she doesn't have to understand. She already knows..." He trailed off to an inaudible mumble, his eyes downcast and moist. He pleaded with them, swallowing his pride. "Please, guys. I have to do this - alone. You can't help me with every bad thing that happens. I have to face my past on my own. Let me do this. Please."
Sage sighed deeply and Kento stepped aside dejectedly. Rowen hesitated for a second, decided there was nothing more he could say, and walked away with his back to them, never looking back.