Lips brushing over the feather in a light caressing kiss, Chiaki knelt down and placed it under the golden crucifix. Resplendent ribbons of light filtered in through the stain-glass windows of the church and danced upon her kneeling form.

After a few silent seconds, she picked herself up and retreated backwards to stand in line with Toshi and Uta.

In that moment, it seemed that all the good-byes and last minute words they had intended on delivering to their departed Angel crumbled and dissolved into the playful light. No words were passed between the trio.
 

“… Have a nice trip, Shigi.”
 

It wasn’t a grand, spectacular farewell.
But wrapped up in those five words was an unspoken sea of emotions that ran to an infinite depth.

Toshi was the first to turn and start back down the aisle. Uta followed slowly, but when he did not hear Chiaki’s footsteps sounding behind him, he turned his head.

“… You coming?”

She still had her back towards him, gazing up at the giant cross and the feather under it. “…… You guys go ahead. I’ll catch a bus back.”

“Are you sure…?” Uta inquired softly.

There was a short pause. “Yah. Yah, I’m sure.”

“… Alright, princess.”

Uta turned back and threw an arm around Toshi’s shoulder. The two trudged through the shower of colored light and disappeared through the arching doorway.
 
 

Chiaki grinned and planted her hands firmly on her hips. “If it’s your approval I need, then I will stop at nothing to obtain it, you hear me?”

He did not look up from his guitar and music sheets.

Toshi laughed loudly and wrapped his arms around Chiaki from behind. “That’s the spirit, sugar, you tell him!”

Uta wore a large grin as he watched the exchange silently, leaning against the doorframe.

“Looks like you’re in a bit of a bind, Shigi,” he finally said, chuckling. “She even cut her hair, and you know how girls treat their hair like it’s their life.”

“Pleeeeaasssse, Shigi? With chocolate sprinkles on top???? Just one chance??” Toshi pleaded, forcing his eyes to be as big and watery as he could manage.

The dark haired lead singer of BLIZZARD remained in his chair, head bent down, scrawling notes across the sheets in silence. And for several minutes, the only sound that filled the room was the noise of his pencil scratching against the paper.

Came his response, finally, and the trio broke out into cheers.

Before Shigeki could deliver an annoyed “Urusai!” Chiaki had raced up and enveloped him in a tight hug. There was no time to hide the surprise and to keep his eyes from widening. She pulled away, a huge vibrant smile splashed across her face.

He grumbled and quickly turned back to his notes, trying the best he could to hide the blush that had somehow crept across his usually phlegmatic visage.

“…… Who’s going to yell at me when I’m late for practice? Who’s going to lecture me when I’m out of tune?”

Even though her voice was barely above a whisper, it echoed and bounced off the walls and seemingly multiplying several levels in volume before it hit her ears.
 

“… Who’s gonna warn me when my hair’s gotten too long again?”
 
 

“You taught me everything I needed to know to survive here…”
 
 

“……. What am I going to do without you, Shigeki….?”
 
 

The only response she got was the silent twinkling of the playful streams of sunlight.
She let the tears come and fall.
 

Funny…. It almost sounded like someone was singing that…
 

The soft singing gradually grew louder until…

“!!!!!!!!!”

Her head snapped back so fast that she could have sworn she heard something crack.
 

… And there he stood.
In a white T-shirt and a pair of torn jeans… as if he had never left….
In his left hand, Araguel’s Staff shone and glimmered.
 

“SHIGEKI!!!!”
 

She stumbled a bit as she scrambled to her feet, before sprinting for all she was worth towards him. As her arms went around him, he drew up his arms as well and pulled her tightly against him, holding her back for the very first time.
 

“Oh God, it’s you, it’s really you!!” She sobbed loudly into his chest, and he held her in silence, allowing her to release all the tangled emotions that had been building up over the past few weeks.
 

“… You came back …….” she cried out softly between sniffles, her voice well muffled by his shirt.

“I did…”

She brought her face up. “… Why?”

“You really think I’d feel comfortable leaving those two dorks to keep you in line? They can barely stay out of trouble themselves.”

She laughed and wiped furiously at her eyes. She had once vowed to never show weakness in front of Shigeki. Anyone but him. His opinion of her mattered too much, and it had been a long and hard fight to earn his respect. She needed to refrain from doing anything that might cause him to look down on her. And before she knew it, she was fighting again. Fighting to adjust to city life, fighting to keep her grades up, fighting homesickness, and fighting for the Matsushita stamp of approval. It was even more tiring than fighting the supernatural. There had been rough times, and extremely low times, and to her surprise… it had been Shigeki who turned out to be the one who kept her in one piece. It was Shigeki who pulled her through. In his own way, harsh as it was, he reminded her of her vow to never give up. He wasn’t a man of many words, but the ones he was willing to spare her were exactly what she needed to hear.
 
 

She placed the emergency phone back as he had instructed and slumped down beside him against the wall of the frozen elevator.

His brows bunched, and she was instantly hit with a bad case of ‘maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’ She hastily tried to patch the verbal slip-up.

There was a long, solid moment of silence. She reached over to her guitar bag, unzipped it, and pulled her acoustic across her lap. Tattered, callused fingers plucked delicately at the cutting steel strings; calming cords and a gentle melody vibrated to life.

Her unashamed honesty actually induced a slight wave of embarrassment.

Another period of silence followed, this time illuminated by her graceful notes.

She smiled to herself. He leaned to the side for a moment, and sat back up, guitar in hand. Having almost instantaneously recognized the song she was playing, he joined in with little difficulty. After a few cords, he closed his eyes, and opened his heart.

His eyes were closed, lost in the song.
Her eyes were closed, lost in his voice.

Her head was rested against his shoulder, his arm encircled around her. The light twirled and waltzed around them, momentarily resting on the pew they were sitting on, reflecting off the Staff, then it jolted up into another erratic pattern of dance steps.
 

He smiled in no particular direction.
 

She ran her fingers over the cross and could have sworn she felt a slight shudder from him.
 

The smile on his face sudden took a mischievous turn.

“By the way… the guys and I were wondering…. is Zenki really your boyfriend?”

“Aw, man, of all the questions!” She couldn’t help but laugh.

“… Well? Are you going to tell us the truth or leave it to our imaginations?”

She sat up and leaned back into her seat, heaving a long sigh.

“In all honesty… I really don’t know anymore.” She began, tilting her head slightly, bangs fluttered across her forehead. “The thing is… I’ve been ‘in love’ with him since I was six years old. When my parents started fighting… and eventually split up, the world ended for me. I missed my mother, I needed her, but she left that one night, and she didn’t come back the next morning. When my father remarried… things were never the same again. He became engrossed in his work. My stepmother was never that interested in me. I was left in the care of my grandmother.”

He suddenly came to the realization that he had never bothered to ask about her life back home or her family background. He had only heard some things here and there, shared to him by Uta or Toshi. He knew as much about her past as she did about his.

“I think I must have slipped into an odd case of childhood depression/denial or something. I’d sit outside everyday just waiting for my mother to come back. But she never did. And I kept waiting. I stopped smiling, and I think I eventually stopped talking, too. Needless to say, obaachan was worried out of her mind. My father wasn’t around; he was already off with his new wife on another archaeological expedition….”

A small, sad smile crossed her face for only a second before it vanished just as soon as it had appeared.

“She didn’t know what to do. She tried everything. And finally, she began telling me tales of my ancestor and how he purged the world of evil with the help of his shikigami. My mother and father had always been hesitant about filling my mind with all that ‘folklore nonsense,’ but obaachan was a firm believer in our family legends, even though my parents dismissed them. Funny enough, she was able to reach me through the stories. And when she showed me a fire reading of Ozuno-sama and Zenki, and told me that he was one day going to be my shikigami, protecting me...” She stopped to laugh at her own childish foolishness. “That was it. He become my hero, right there. I think I even made a patch-doll and dragged it with me everywhere I went, claiming it was Zenki. Anyone who dared to make fun of me, I’d claim that my shikigami would kick their ass. I told everyone and anyone about him… God, it really seems so stupid looking back now.

“Over the years, I eventually grew out of that Zenki-crazy phase. Well, sort of. I didn’t carry that patch-doll around with me anymore, but I think in my mind, I still did. To me, he would always be my icon of strength, hope, and comfort. And he would have remained that way, had not I actually met him in person. Talk about bursting my bubble! Nothing like I had imagined, I assure you.”

She chuckled and so did Shigeki.

“… I’ll bet.”

“But… it was Zenki nonetheless. I think I just idealized him way too much over the years, kinda feeding myself these thoughts that he’d be able to end all my problems. And when that didn’t happen… I took my frustration out on him. I guess I kinda felt betrayed, oddly enough, even though I had never actually met him before. I had been let down as a child, and I guess I just couldn’t take the fact that Zenki, my source of all things positive, turned out to be the world’s greatest prick.”

“But… you still feel for him.”

She laughed again, “Well, yah, I mean, it’s hard to give up on your childhood hero. I eventually accepted him for who he was. I think I loved him… but as what, I’m not so sure.”

“You think?”

She nodded. “And to make matters even more confusing, something actually started to happen between us. I mean, there was never anything solid, but there was definitely something there. My Zenki, the one I grew up with, actually started to appear…

“But that was where our relationship stayed. In that hazy gray spot where nothing had a name. I’d try to reach out to him, and he’d turn his back to me. We weren’t getting anywhere, and it felt like I was just chasing endlessly after him. Then high school was over, and I had to make a decision. Should I keep chasing, or should I face the fact that maybe he just didn’t feel the same way, and let go? I needed an answer. A good, solid answer. Something Zenki had never given me before.”

“…. And what did he say?” he found himself asking, even though he already knew the answer. She was quiet before she smiled ever so slightly.
 

“…… He didn’t ask me to stay.”
 

He couldn’t immediately think of how to respond, and before he knew it, Chiaki had already changed the subject. “You want to know why I kept my hair in those dorky pigtails even though I’d outgrown that hairstyle ten years ago?” She was smiling brightly, but he couldn’t tell if it was a true smile or not. “My mother use to put my hair up like that. She called me her ‘doll.’ After she left, I kept my hair that way, just incase I ran into her on the streets or something, she’d be able to recognize me. When I came to Tokyo… you made me realize that I couldn’t get on with my life if I kept holding onto the past.”

Don’t hold onto the past… Was it he who had taught her that? How ironic. He had been refusing to let go of the past himself.

“Thank you, Shigeki. Have I told you yet? Thank you for saving me.”

He shook his head.

“… No, Chiaki. You saved me.”

“Not just from this mess, Shigi. You saved me from myself. From what I would have become if I refused to let go. I probably would have given up and packed my bags if you hadn’t pushed me through. I would be back in Shikigami-cho right now, back in that vicious circle, never getting anywhere. You gave me wings, Shigeki. You taught me how to fly. You showed me a brand new world. Thank you.”
 

Is that so…?
Ha…

He didn’t know what to say to her. Words couldn’t possibly do justice to what he wanted to express. And so he did the only thing he could. He closed his eyes and spoke to her with his heart.
 
 

She closed her eyes, threw back her head, let go of everything as he had taught her to, and joined him in the soulful song.
 

A sudden gust of wind blew across the aisle and over the pews, taking the white feather up into its grasp. The feather took to the air, weaving through the dancing lights, out the arching doorway, and disappeared up into the blue, blue skies.