I don't deserve a friend like her. I was horrible to her. HORRIBLE. And she never stopped believing in me. She crossed a huge deal of hostile lands and walked into a city that would have seen her dead as soon as look at her, all for me. And I threw it in her face. I was so horribly jealous of her. She had a perfect young man watching over her and protecting her. She had a whole bunch of other guys clustered around her, liking her, willing to die for her with few regrets. It always was hard not to like her. Even when we were little, I'd get mad at her for something, but I couldn't go on seeing her and stay mad. If I wanted to stay mad, I had to avoid seeing her. Well, I avoided seeing her. I was so STUPID... I wanted the man that was hers. I didn't love him, really. I'm not even sure now if I was ever in love with him. I'm embarrassed just to think of the way I threw myself at his head -- I wouldn't have done that, before. Not until after I was convinced of my own worthlessness, in the back of my head, where it counts. I was used goods anyway, I hadn't deserved protecting; if I was a rotten person, I might as well enjoy myself. If I was nothing more than a convenience, I might as well be his. And he would protect me, and he would hold me in the night -- the way my mother did when I was five -- and he would keep all the bad nightmares away. He was good at that. Hadn't I read how he had warded them from my friend? Maybe I wasn't in love with him. But he was strong, and he was handsome. And he had never betrayed me. Not the way I thought she had. Not the way I felt my parents had, by not being there to protect me, the way parents are supposed to. And so I argued myself into being in love with him, the way I'd argued myself into being in love with Seifretti Weisse from Southern Cross when I was younger. And the other people she had around her! They were friends. They cared about each other. The death of one diminished all. I? There were maybe two people I got along with. I liked the one that played the flute, but I didn't see much of him before he left for his special assignment. I would have been friends with the red-haired lady, but she was jealous of me. It hurt. And so I had nobody, really, to turn to... except HIM. The one who found me, afterward. Who prevented me from killing myself. Who offered me revenge if I had lost my friendship. The world's not as simple as I thought it was. You can't divide people up into good guys and bad guys. Well, you *can*, but that's not to say it works. I know that he wasn't completely bad. And yet, the things he did... he didn't care about me. That hurt. He had people die. I never wanted anyone else to *die*! (Well, except for those -- those *bastards* who assaulted me.) I just wanted her to suffer as I suffered! I didn't want her DEAD! I dreamed about that, afterwards. That that boy, the telekinetic, came to me, dripping with blood, holding severed heads in his hands. "I killed them all for you," he said, smiling, wide and not quite sane. "I made them suffer as much as possible while they died. Now will you love me?" And I woke up, screaming. It was all my fault. I knew, afterwards. Knew that I was the lowest slime on the face of the earth. I went to her, to try to tell her that now I knew what I was. "It's all right," she told me. "It wasn't your fault, he lied to you. We can go on being friends, the way we used to be." I don't deserve a friend like her. "We can't ever be the way we used to be!" I tried to tell her. "It'll always be there. I'll always know that I can do such things. It was my fault; I was too easily manipulated. I didn't have to listen. I'm supposed to be the mature one!" She didn't listen. She hugged me, and told me she forgave me, and that it was all right. But it wasn't. I thought I was going to die, be absorbed, when I used my last wish to help her. I should have died, then. It would have absolved me. It would have wiped out my previous transgressions, so that I might be remembered at the end for what I became. But I wasn't that fortunate. I lived on, and had to remember my sin every time I saw her face. I couldn't bear to live with myself. I wanted it to stop. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again. So I raided Mother's medicine cabinet and took all the sleeping pills I could find, in some nice hot tea. I didn't remember to put the bottles and stuff back, although I'd gathered them together. I was getting sleepy, and the last thing I remembered was hearing Tetsuya-san's voice. mmmsoftwarmdarkdisturbancegoawaydarkCOLD!WET! moredisturbancegoawaygoawayIdon'twanttowakeupSHOCK! no, no, stop, go AWAY! leavingfreenopulledbackIdon'twanttogobackstomachrevoltingnonono -- retching, retching until I thought the next one would bring up all of my guts and kill me after all -- drainedemptyplacidclearpassivenumb. When my eyes focused again, I was in a hospital bed, and Tetsuya-san and a doctor were bending over me. "You're very lucky, young lady," the doctor told me. "If it hadn't been for your friend's finding you and quick thinking, you might not have pulled through." I screamed every profane word I knew (and quite a few that I made up on the spot) at Tetsuya-san, all wrapped around the one essential question: "WHY DID YOU STOP ME?" Poor doctor. I don't think he even understood what was going on. Poor Tetsuya-san. He didn't deserve all of that abuse (only about half of it). I still don't know how he came to be there in the first place. He listened patiently until I ran out of breath, then argued with me. I would have shut him out, but he used the two arguments I couldn't ignore. What would it do to her, to have me go and die on her? She'd already lost the one she loved. Did I want to make all that pain and suffering be for NOTHING? And since when did I deserve to have nothing but a dreamless sleep? I couldn't just run away from the problem; that wouldn't make it go away. My dying wouldn't even begin to balance the scales. I had to go on living, and help other people to make up for the people I hurt. When they kicked him out at the end of visiting hours, the nurse sat by me and translated from her special edition of Spider Robinson's *Callahan and Company* on the spot. When Tetsuya-san came back the next day, she pointed him to the correct part and told him to start reading. I've written to my favorite publishers, the ones that did *The Nine Tailors*, to ask if they'd translate Robinson-san's works into Japanese. People ought to read them. "Usually if you've got the guilts, it's because you did a disservice to someone or something you care about. So what you want to do is go and do a service for someone or something you care about." So I'm going to. Whatever I can. Especially for her. If it will make her happy, no sacrifice is too great. I tried to have my best friend -- my heartsister -- tortured and hurt beyond bearing; now that I've failed her so signally, all I can do is give her the rest of my life and hope it's enough. Please, Kannon-sama, Seiryuu-sama, let it be enough. She doesn't know what I tried to do, at least. She was too busy studying for the entrance exams that Tetsuya-san and her brother could easily screen her outside information. And I didn't get into that school after all. It's no more than I deserve. I suppose I deserve to have Tetsuya-san watch over me like a hawk, too. My parents have started to tease me about my "new boyfriend." If they only knew... And so here I am, walking with her, both of us pretending that nothing whatsoever other than high school tests has happened in the past few weeks. Then she notices my earring. I tell her yes, it is Nakago's. It didn't disappear for some reason. And I tell her I keep it to remind me of his mistakes, but that's not quite true. At the end, I *saw* -- I think Tamahome did too -- what had happened to him. Why Nakago had acted as he had. I could have been him. I very nearly was Suboshi. I had been sorry for Suboshi, yet scared of him at the same time. I had hated Nakago when I found out he had been using me, had counted him as bad. But the same things had driven him as had driven Suboshi, as had driven me. And so I keep the earring. Because I hope that someday the day will come when I can forgive them. And then, maybe, I can forgive myself.