Hanging around Otoochan's office with nothing to do, to be honest, is rather boring.
    The above was why I'd fallen into conversation with Shimorenjaku Keisuke in the front lobby, who quite frankly is something of a bore himself. Maybe he'll become something more of a conversationalist by the time he's graduated from middle school, but at the moment he's a pompous know-it-all who thinks that having been born a little before I was gives him the right to pontificate on all sorts of subjects that I know more about than he does.
    I'm not about to contradict him, though. The last time I did that, half of Otoochan's office got into the argument and my father got into trouble for having such an outspoken child. (By outspoken, they meant that I had not only contradicted them but turned out to be right -- we did invade half of Southeast Asia, or at least a good portion thereof, in the years before WWII.)
    You'd think I'd remember that I'm a child again, not a man in a responsible position of power.
    You'd think I wouldn't remember being a man in a responsible position of power at all.
    Unless, of course, it's some form of particularly exquisite torment the gods-that-are-not dreamed up in order to punish me for daring to reach for their power.
    After all, it's perfectly obvious that they wouldn't give a bandit's damn for any one of my other thousand and one regrets.

    And so, rather than contradict Keisuke-chan, I smile and nod at appropriate points and wish for Harada or Okita or Soi to exchange mocking glances with and roll our eyes for each other's benefit at the particularly irrational or redundant statements.
    Speaking of my thousand and one regrets... that I could not do more for Harada, that I could not do anything for Okita, that I could have done something for Soi and didn't...
    What good are regrets? Can regrets bribe Yaman to judge their souls lightly? Doubtless those three are long settled in the Inner World, or have been tempered in Suzaku's fires to walk the worlds again.
    That is, if the Majin are real.
    But then, there is a Suzaku -- I have seen him. I have known his power as intimately as one who never bore it can. Even if his chosen would revile me for naming him among the Majin, when they might spare time from the hundred other excoriations that they would rightfully heap upon my head.
    And so, perhaps, there is a Yaman. Or an Enma Daioh, as he would be named in this place and time. And perhaps there is a justice beyond the circles of the world, and this is it.
    Or perhaps this is a revenge of the Tenkou impostor on me for having failed him, and he was merely sloppy enough not to reach me until my fifth time around again; after all, he's not really the god he wants to be.
    Was that it?
    Would it surprise you, 'Tenkou,' to know that I knew you were not Tenkou Luk'ken from the first? I was using you, and you knew it; and you were using me, and I knew it. But I knew that you knew I was using you, and you knew neither that nor that I knew you were using me, and that's the difference between us.
    You think yourself to be smarter than all who dwell within the universe of Seiryuu dev'batr and his brethren, merely because you found us within a book. On that authority, you claim that you are "real" and we are mere illusions.
    You don't know a thing about illusions, then. If you give illusions enough power, you can touch them. Enough, and they can even touch you.
    Haha-ue...
    And if you did this to me to try to make me believe -- for what is any god without belief but a lost voice crying in the dark? -- you should have taken me before my last life. Before I had nothing better to do with that life but have entertainment poured into my skull.
    Claim to be the Sunlord? If you had been in Egypt, would you have expected them to name you Ra-Horakhte; if you had been in Japan, would you have expected them to name you Amaterasu? You, to be Tenkou Luk'ken, wielder of the Sword of Light, master of the white-winged ship that sails the sky? No way in all the hells. Shatner could do a better imitation on a bad day than you could ever hope to.
    Claim that because you dealt with a world lying in a book that it was unreal, that you could move us about as pawns to your whim? Oh, I would love to turn Heinlein and Ende and Pratchett loose on your sorry hide.
    And then again, maybe it wasn't you. Do I deserve anything better than the hell of my own thoughts or the hell of Keisuke-chan droning on as I wait inside, unable yet even to go out and look at the cherry trees in bloom?

    Of the two hells, however, I much prefer the latter. Even if he is interrogating me as to why I have been spending time at the office.
    "It's a punishment," I shrug. "For fighting."
    "Fighting? You?"
    "Some creeps were annoying my little brother, so I beat the crap out of them." Really, who did they think they were? And just because they were taller than I and bigger -- in three lives before this one I trained in the skills of war for years, and this my family-now has a tradition of swordsmanship (even if my father and younger brother near-completely ignore it). In a real fight, you go for the vulnerable spots and don't let up until they stay down; and I'd known that I had to win this one decisively enough that I wouldn't have to keep on fighting it.
    I didn't even kill anyone.
    At least, I think I didn't.
    Otoochan would have told me if I had, right? And the police would have come around and everything.
    Well, the one officer did, but that was just about the two that were in the hospital.
    "Good for you," Keisuke-chan says, after working through being shocked at my rough language. "My little sister, now... "
    He goes on talking about his little sister and her kindergarten experiences for a while. I drift, watching the cherry trees moving in the wind out the window.
    If it's clear this Sunday, we're going to go blossom-watching with our cousins, the ones who have the kendo dojo nearby.  I think Cousin Nobuhiko's supposed to give me a lecture on my somewhat liberal interpretation of Ohijitchan's dicta on the necessities of fighting to protect a person, but we can relax and enjoy the cherry blossoms after that.
    Honestly. Cousin Nobuhiko's never been in a real fight in his life. And as for what Ohijitchan's passed down from his teacher's husband, do they really think I'm going to pay that much attention to an assassin-not who couldn't even do the thing properly and shave his head --
    Ah. Someone passed by with a cigarette. I draw in a lungful of secondhand smoke; even if it does taste pretty dreadful, it will straighten out the conflicting memories and keep me straight on who I'm supposed to be at the moment.
    " -- so then Miaka said the flower bed project... "
    Miaka.
    That is not a common name.
    First I'm having dreams about messengers from Haha-ue watching over me to see if I'm all right -- a thing I want so badly to be true that I dare not believe it.
    Then memories from the past keep getting in the way all this week.
    And now a name I'd recognize, casually tossed into the middle of a conversation about nothing much. At least it wasn't one of the others, one of the ones to which I'm not sure I could control my reaction, not without more practice.
    This is just not my day.

    "Miaka?" I ask politely.
    "Oh, my little sister. Her new best friend's mother's going to drop her off here in a bit before Aunt Rumi picks us up to take us over for dinner, if you'd like to meet her," Keisuke-chan tells me.
    At least there's an explanation.
    Hm. Drop off here? Aunt Rumi?
    "Why are YOU here, Keisuke-chan?"
    He hates being called Keisuke-chan these days, and glares at me before responding. I love getting his goat.
    I never said I was a nice person.
    "My parents are arguing again," he finally mutters. Hm. Maybe the glare wasn't entirely due to the '-chan' after all. "Mother took off to visit friends in Kamakura, and Dad doesn't want to have to deal with us while she's gone, so we're staying with her sister."
    "Is your aunt married?"
    "Yeah. She's got a a girl about Miaka's age -- Miki's so like her it's scary."
    "No boys?"
    "No." Keisuke glares out the window. A car pulls into one of the visitor parking slots in front, surprisingly open at this time of day. The driver, a woman, shepherds two small girls out of the car and into the building.
    I wonder if that's them. If I could see their faces, I could try to tell if one looked like Keisuke-chan.
    "If they're going to get divorced," Keisuke-chan growls from beside me, apparently having forgotten my presence, "I wish they'd just hurry up and DO it. I'd like to know which surname I'm going to enter high school under in time to get used to answering to Shimorenjaku or Yuuki."
    Yuuki.
    Miaka.
    A coincidence, it must be a coincidence. Majin Dead and Living, it could not be...
    The elevator bell chimes.
    "That's her," Keisuke-chan says, gesturing to the elevator. "The darker one. The other one's the best friend she's been blabbering on about, Hongou Yumi or Yuri or something."
    And I stare at the lighter-colored girl as she steps out of the elevator listening to her friend, my mind unable to do anything except gibber :It's she, it's she, itssheitssheitsshe...:
    "Yui," I breathe, fortunately as Miaka says happily, "Thanks, Yui-chan!"
    "Okay, Yui," Keisuke-chan grumbles, apparently not noticing anything. "I was close... " He rises to greet his sister, leaving me to desperately shut my mouth, to call on my lifetimes of control to keep my face straight as I watch Yui.
    Hongou Yui.
    The girl whom I was bound to protect.
    The girl whom I betrayed in nearly every way that a man can betray a woman.
    The girl whose mind I know the ins and outs of almost as well as I know my own; the girl whom I played like a lute to get what I wanted.
    The girl who surprised me, at the end, by finding strength where I thought it was gone.
    The girl who even now arouses the same instincts to protect that drove me to attack five bullies in defense of my little brother.
    The girl whom I, impossibly, indubitably, remember.
    Majin Dead and Living, Seiryuu dev'batr, Yaman, Naushka white-winged ship, is this why?

    Mrs. Hongou takes Yui-sama away, satisfied that Keisuke-chan has his sister.
    I don't want to speak to them -- I can't speak to them, not now, and so I flee at walking pace back to Otoochan's office.
    "Good timing," he says, looking up. "I'm just about ready to go."
    No, bad timing, bad timing, I want to shout. How can I find out Yui-sama's address unobtrusively from Miaka without speaking to her?
    But I am still a child, and I am being punished, and so I resentfully follow Otoochan to the back elevator and down the street to the subway stop.

    I feel a little better by the time we reach home -- there was the normal complement of stupid gropers on the subway, and I managed to ram pens into their hands every time they petted the office ladies next to me, which was very satisfying.
    Also the office ladies were pleased, and one said that she was going to ride with a ball-point pen in her hand from now on. I said that a hat pin would probably work better, but that unfortunately I didn't have one with me.
    I'll have to check in the boxes in the closet to see if we have some old ones.
    At any rate, I have also come up with a plan of action, and so as soon as we enter home and toe our shoes off I disappear into my room with the telephone book.
    Does there have to be so many Hongou households in town?
    But Keisuke-chan gave me a clue, with his mentioning the flower bed project that his sister worked in. All I have to do is call them, pretending to be younger -- a first-grader at their school, perhaps -- wanting to congratulate Miaka on the flower beds. The correct Hongou family will surely be able to pass me on to the Shimorenjaku, and not recognize me later.
    Once I know the address... well, I'll think of something then.

    Okaachan remarks on the speed at which I eat dinner, and I apologize and slow down. It's not that I meant to be rude, of course; but I have things on my mind, and I want to get back to my room to think in peace.
    Which I finally manage to do, after having thanked Okaachan for dinner, and listened to Otoochan's surprised approval on the matter of the stupid gropers, and very firmly dissuaded my little brother from pestering me to play with him again.
    I am grounded until next week, so I have some time to think about how to manufacture a meeting.
    We are going to move at the end of the trimester, so I have to be close enough to Yui-sa-- to Hongou Yui by that time that we can keep in touch.
    And I mustn't think of her as Yui-sama, or I'll slip and address her that way and scare her away.
    Which means I'll have to meet her soon after Sunday; the cherry blossoms will still be falling, probably, when I pretend to meet her by accident.
    So far, so good. What then?

    I can't possibly warn her ahead of time. She'll think I have gone crazy, she'll never let me see her again, and she'll have forgotten about it by the time she's sucked in unless I manage to do it the day before or something -- and she never told me when she entered precisely enough for that.
    Besides, I know myself too well. Manipulative bastard, the sort who goes on to prove that black is white and gets people killed at the next zebra crossing. I could probably convince her that I was lying.
    And even if I didn't -- I needed her cooperation, and I would have gotten it willingly or unwillingly. I would have disliked the necessity, but I would have taken hostages against her if I'd had to. I know my own obsessions, even when I've grown out of them.

    And there is just no way that I can sit on her all that year and make sure that she never comes near a scroll or book entitled "Universe of the Four Gods." The very idea is so impracticable that it comes to mind only to be dismissed.
    Besides, the gods-who-are-not have their own power. Even if I could do such a thing, they would drive a loophole if they wanted her badly enough. And if not her -- there would be someone else, and I would have to redeem her, too...

    And I must be reasonable. Supposing that I could make it so that I never betrayed her, never broke her, never destroyed her -- it would follow that the me of then would never / had never done such a thing.
    (I agree with Douglas Adams that tense is the greatest difficulty. Even when speaking of reincarnation, rather than time travel in and of itself. Perhaps especially when speaking of reincarnation.)
    And if I'd never done it, how would I remember having done it now?
    And if I couldn't remember having done it now, how could I prevent it from happening / happening again?
    And if I couldn't prevent it from happening / happening again, what would keep everything from happening the way I currently remember it happening?
    Nothing in all the worlds, that I can see. Nothing in all the worlds.
    I know exactly what hells Hongou Yui will go through, and exactly what she'll endure, and exactly how she'll break, and I cannot do ONE THING to stop it.

    There is a vacant lot nearby, where some of the neighborhood children play this or that, much to their parents' distress. It still has the remnants of a shed on it, long since collapsed and falling apart.
    I pick one of the boards up and hit it as hard as I can against the rest.
    It lands with a satisfying 'whack,' nearly jarring out of my hands.
    I do it again.
    And again.
    I can't do anything.
    I can't do anything.
    I can't do anything.
    Can't stop it.
    Can't stop it.
    Can't stop it.
    Can't stop it.
    The board breaks in my hands, and I reach for another one. I've probably got a splinter, but who cares about that?
    I can't do anything.
    I can't swear.
    Well, I could.
    But it wouldn't do anything.
    It wouldn't make me feel better.
    It just wouldn't.
    I can't cry.
    I wish I could.
    But I can't.
    I saw the dead piled in a blond heap, to be burnt like trash.
    And I could not even offer the water of my grief to speed them to the Gates of the West.
    The tears were all dried up.
    And they stayed that way.
    Even in the lives since.
    When I didn't remember.
    Grief burns.
    But it doesn't rain.
    I can't do anything.
    I can't stop it.
    I should never have been born.
    But I can't do anything about that, either.

    When I finally come home, my parents scold me for having gone out in the evening without telling them where I was going, for having collected palms full of splinters which will now have to be painstakingly removed, and for knocking the lamp over and breaking it when I threw my pillow across the room before I left.
    "You broke it," Otoochan tells me, speaking of the lamp, as Okaachan goes at my hands with tweezers and needle. "So you fix it. You have to learn to clean up your own messes."
    My own messes, indeed.
    How do I clean this one up, Otoochan?
    How?
    "I think you can glue it together," Okaachan says, probing with the needle. "We have rubber cement about somewhere."
    I don't flinch.
    "It won't ever look the way it did before," Otoochan mutters.
    "Well, there's no way we can make it not have been broken," Okaachan argues reasonably. "We'll just have to do the best we can with what we have." She turns to me. "If you really can't fix it, you'll have to find a way to earn the money for a new one."
    If I really can't fix Yui, is there a place where I can buy a new one?
    People are almost as easy to break as lamps -- at least for me -- and much harder to replace.

    But Okaachan did have a point, I reflect as I paint iodine over my palms. I'll just have to do the best I can with what I have.
    All the king's horses and all the king's men --
    Mattaku, I need a cigarette. That's a profitless recollection if ever there was one, and what good are soldiers for headology anyway?
    I know Hongou Yui. After I've befriended her, I'll have time and time again to learn everything about her. Everything I missed. I'll know exactly how she is when she's herself.
    And I know exactly how I broke her.
    So when you put those two together --
    "Doesn't that hurt?"
    "Don't interrupt me!" I snap at my little brother. His face falls, and I relent. "Yes, it stings. Compared to other things, though, it's nothing."
    He looks confused.
    I sigh. "And I can zone out enough not to let it bother me UNLESS somebody startles me in the middle."
    "I'm sorry," he apologizes. "Will you tell me anotherstory about the memory people?"
    "Oh, very well. This one is about the golden-haired one."
    "Oh, hey," his face brightens. "You practically never tell stories about him."
    "The golden-haired one died," I begin.
    "You can't start a story with the main character dying!"
    "Yes, you can, because I say so. Now shut up. The golden-haired one died, and the emissary of Enma Daioh -- " I reach into my illusion-dreams, the ones I wish were real -- "Hinagiku, told him that he would be reborn as a friend of the miko lady whom he'd lied to. However, he wouldn't be able to do anything to stop the miko lady from believing his lies and despairing and betraying her friends. No matter how much he'd want to."
    "That sucks."
    "Yeah. It does."
    "But wasn't he still evil?"
    "Well, not exactly. He still wasn't nice, but he felt about the miko lady sort of the way, oh, I feel about you. Well, almost."
    "That's confusing. Why can't the bad guys stay the bad guys?"
    "Because if they start liking the good guys, then they feel terrible about what they did, and it's worse than anything the good guys could ever do to them."
    "I still say it's confusing," my little brother grumbles. "You're not supposed to feel sorry for the bad guys. You're supposed to kill them and save the day."
    "I'll be sure to speak to the gods about putting you in charge of the world when next I talk to them, Kazu," I tell him, smiling.
    "Don't make fun of me."
    "Sorry."
    "So what happened?" he asks.
    "What?" I say, putting the iodine bottle away.
    "With the reincarnated golden-haired one and the miko lady. What did he do?"
    "I don't know yet."
    My little brother makes a most peculiar noise, rather like a buffalo and a cat stuck in a gate. "What kind of ending is THAT? Why can't you tell me?"
    "It hasn't happened yet," I explain, going back to my room.
    "I still say it's a stupid ending... "

    Well, I don't know yet. I can only hope.
    But I will be Hongou Yui's friend.
    When she comes back... I will be there to put her back together. I will help her.
    And so that she will accept my help, I will befriend her before. What she would not accept from a stranger she will accept from someone who has known her almost as long as Miaka -- I know her that well.
    I'll have to ask Okaachan's help on picking out the right clothes to meet her in, as if I were going to apply for a position.
    In a way, I will be applying for a position. I need Hongou Yui and her family to see me as a trustworthy and dependable child. I need her to trust me. As she trusted Miaka, before I twisted that into knives and the other girl unwittingly drove them in.
    And, speaking of that, I will think of something to do for Miaka, as well, because I owe her a debt -- small, next to the one I owe Yui, but a debt nonetheless.
    Reincarnation, they say, is given so that balances can be worked out.
    I have come back on the wings of the eagle, as haha-ue would say, so that I can work things out right.
    For a moment I wonder if I will end up working out all of my debts. Harada, I would arm-wrestle with and then introduce to my younger brother -- they'd either become rivals on sight or turn into the best of friends. Or, knowing Harada, knowing Kazuma, both.
    Okita, I would invite over to read all my manga, watch my father's collection of American movies, generally hang out with. Maybe he would again pretend that we were closer than we were in order to freak out my brother and his friends, and maybe this time I'd even play along. And I'd collect the best healer I could find and make him (or her) sit on him, if necessary.
    Soi... Haku Kaen, lady, if I could have loved anyone after I broke, I would have loved you. The best thing I could do for you in the next life the gods-who-are-not give you, as far as I can see, is to dance at your wedding to the one you deserve.
    Haha-ue...
    Not all of my debts.

    But as for what I can do, which of my thousand and one regrets I can address, I will protect Hongou Yui. Even from myself, as best I am able. I will never in this life lie to her. Even if she asks me the truth. I will be her friend, as best I can. Whether she wants to be mine or not.
    I owe her no less and a great deal more.
    Maybe... maybe tonight, now that I have found her, now that I know what's going to be taking up a good deal of my life, I won't dream of guides across the River of Three Forks, sent by haha-ue.
    And I don't know whether to hope for that or dread it.
    Haha-ue... I would have made a great burning for you, and a flood of lamentation such as has not been seen since the fall of Jo'Iri, and sent you a great host to be your servants while you dwelt beyond the Western Gates.
    And you would have wanted none of it, even as I could not help but want to give it to you.
    But now, now that I'm finally starting to do what I should have done all along...
    Even though I don't deserve it...
    Would you start to approve of me?