Two years had passed.

During that amount of time, in spite of--or more likely, because of--the homicide controversy that centered Tetsuya Ogawa, the hype over Ogawa Industries exploded to astronomical proportions inside nearly every available media in the country. The wedding of Tetsuya Ogawa and Hyde Takarai and the contract their families' companies had arranged to merge the two empires together were by all means cancelled without any allegations from either of the parties. Too many things had happened, and the public, much less the members of both families, had not yet fully recovered from the range of devastating incidents which was reported as one of the biggest controversies to take over the nation's industries since the past decade.

Tetsu underwent several trials in court since he was charged with the murder of Ken Kitamura and was finally proclaimed innocent and released. The evidence found at the crime scene was found to be too elaborately arranged and thus, was suspected to be a sham-especially when combined with the curious fact that the gun found at the crime scene was completely devoid of fingertips except for Tetsu's and Tetsu's alone. He seemed too positively guilty of everything, it was downright conspicuous. Especially a man who had apparently managed to enter the building out of the guards' supervision would not be very likely to drop the weapon as neatly beside the corpse with his own fingertips embedded all over it.

"A new employee working at my office showed me this gun, telling me he'd just bought it," Tetsu testified in his defense at court. "I distinctly remember that he was wearing gloves at the time, whereas I wasn't. I spent some time going over it, checking out the bullets and everything. Then I returned it to him and never saw it again... until it was presented as the main evidence in this very courtroom."

A search for Yukihiro Awaji was immediately conducted, but when the old apartment building Tetsu led them to was investigated, the room Awaji had occupied was vacant, and had apparently stayed that way since the very day that Tetsu was arrested. Further investigation was proved to be futile; the man who went by the name Yukihiro Awaji did not seem to exist in any of the records in the country's legal archives, and it was a sure bet that he was most likely going under a completely different name and a different life at the very moment. For all anyone knew about him, he might also be dead. There was no way to be absolutely certain. Countless nameless bodies turned up all over the streets every single day; one of them just might be the man who had been decided of framing Tetsu Ogawa.

What truly redeemed Tetsu from spending thirty years in jail or more, however, was the invincible alibi which was later proved to be in his credit.

Tetsu had been extremely reluctant to acknowledge his whereabouts at the night the crime occurred at first, much to the judge's displeasure and his lawyer's exasperation. Finally after this persistent haggling had been going on for some time, resulting in the judge very narrowly losing his patience and sentencing him to half a century in prison, Tetsu gave up and succumbed in telling the truth of where he was on that fateful night, exactly one week before the arranged date of his wedding with Hyde Takarai.

"Now, Mr. Ogawa," the prosecutor had addressed him sharply, eyes gleaming in anticipation of his long-awaited defeat. "I'm going to ask you one last time. Are you or are you not willing to answer my question as the truth, and nothing but the truth?"

Tetsu's face was pale and glistening with cold sweat. "Yes, I am."

"Where were you on the night of the 25th, during which Ken Kitamura's office was broken into and the man himself shot?"

On the live broadcast of the trial, millions of citizens all over the country were perched at the edge of their seats, waiting for his answer. Tetsu felt his tension swell up, suffocating him; the lights of the courtroom were making him sweat and the eyes of the jury seemed to pierce into his flesh, eating him alive.

"Mr. Ogawa?"

Tetsu emitted a choked sound from his throat.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ogawa, please state your answer clearly so everyone in this room can hear you. I repeat, where were you on the night of the 25th when Mr. Kitamura was killed?" The attorney's voice lashed against him relentlessly.

Tetsu's voice rang loud and clear in the heavy silence of the courtroom and in the living rooms of thousands of families all throughout the nation. "I was visiting a woman by the name of Kaori Mochida. I have been in close contact with her for quite some time. I stayed with her that night and did not leave her house until very early in the morning the next day."

Cue chaos.

The fact that Tetsuya Ogawa, one of the nation's youngest and brightest leaders in the industry, had conducted an affair with another woman merely a week before the date of his arranged wedding was enough to make the public respond in an uproar. The press had a bank holiday. The woman, an uprising musician by the name of Kaori Mochida, was immediately summoned to court to testify, and much to the further shock of both the Ogawas and the Takarais, she agreed under oath to practically everything that Tetsu had had to say. Yes, they had been having an affair for a considerable amount of time before he was arrested. (Tetsu's father, Ogawa senior, once reluctant, was now relieved to confirm this as a fact.) Yes, they agreed to carry on with their relationship even approaching the date of Tetsu's arranged wedding. Yes, she had promised to Tetsu to keep their relationship a secret from anyone no matter what so as to not raise any scandals whatsoever concerning his family and the Takarais.

Yes, Tetsu had spent a night at her house during the night of the 25th and thus could not possibly be at Ken Kitamura's office to commit the murder that he was prosecuted for.

This most recent evidence had been so preposterous in nature, the jury was left with no choice but to vouch it as the truth. Especially since no opposing information could be gathered from the devastated Takarais, nor from Tetsu's arranged bride-to-be, Hyde Takarai.

Hyde Takarai had disappeared. The authorities combed through the entire state for her whereabouts and yet she was still nowhere to be found. The last that was seen of her, reportedly, was on the morning of Tetsu's arrest. She had left with a car belonging to her family when her parents were still paralyzed from the shock of Tetsu's arrest and had not returned ever since. The car itself was found in the border approximately two weeks after she had left, abandoned, without containing any maps nor hints of where she might be headed.

Curiously enough, a male secretary at the Takarai Enterprise by the name of Sakura Yasunori had also disappeared from his abode presumably around the same time that Hyde did. The press reported all this in a deviously suggestive manner that immediately persuaded the public to draw up imaginative scenes of their own regarding Hyde Takarai's "runaway honeymoon".

The deal between the two companies, needless to say, was aborted not long after Tetsu was released and the search for Hyde yielded nothing. There was too much coverage on the medias for either of the families to be left to do anything else besides, and too much incorrigible damage inflicted within their relations and beyond. The arranged marriage which had been relied on as the sole key of the diplomatic merge had already combusted into shambles in the enormous hype of the controversy.

However, as if not at all affected by the bizarre range of incidents concerning the arrest and Hyde Takarai's disappearance, Takarai Enterprise's reputation and reliability suffered from no significant damage after the case had been closed and the killer of Ken Kitamura was still left undecided. In a way, it was almost as if the girl had never existed at all, and her disappearance was indirectly regarded as a convenience to bury the ruins of the bulldozed wedding plans-and possibly, her parents' unhealthy ambitions which controlled her future for their own sake-in the past where they belonged.

Ogawa Industries, on the other hand, progressed tremendously in the competitive world of business ever since Tetsu took over his father's reign in the company with his adaptable but unfaltering sense of leadership. The young man had amazingly sharp instincts when it came to business matters and with his level-headed, diplomatic composure, he somewhow managed to convert all the hype regarding his involvement with the criminal case-and the controversial proof of his innocence-to his favor. Under Tetsu's control, Ogawa Industries soared up and above anything it had ever achieved before, and Tetsu Ogawa was rumored to be the sole inheritor of his family's enormous wealth. In his success that followed what the media described as "the man's struggle for his forbidden love which eventually saved his life in the end", Tetsu married Kaori Mochida shortly afterwards. This romantic tale of success and irony remained in the tabloids for months, of how an affair which threatened to condemn a corporate-based wedding was the only thing which managed to save the same corporation in the end.

In a way, it was almost like fate.

Tetsu drove through the large iron gates of his lavish suburbian home and rolled to a halt in the long graveled driveway that curled in front of the manor's entry. From the sky floated down an endless sprinkle of early snowdrops, drifting to the ground like white feathers from the infinite expanse of the darkened sky above. The tires of his car left long tracks in the snow-covered ground, and as Tetsu stepped out of his car he found his feet digging into approximately an inch of the soft white substance. It amused him to watch the snow fall, the way it did for the past two years, because it would remind him that yet another year had passed him by in safety and relief.

Tetsu wrapped his coat tighter around him and made his way to the front door. He'd been living in this house which was of his own private property instead of his family's with Kaori for almost a year now. Time flew by so quickly in the dream-like range of events he had undergone in the last two years, beginning from what started out to be a horrendous nightmare and at length converting into a wondrous fantasy that he always wished he would really never snap out of.

Kaori had accepted the deal with a major international record label and was now in the recording process of her second official album. She almost always spent her time out of the house recently, either to attend vocal lessons at the studio or to perform at various venues, but Tetsu never minded the demands of her profession in the least because he understood perfectly well how it felt to be immersed in doing something that one was incredibly passionate about. It was what made him fall in love with her in the first place. It was why they complimented each other so perfectly.

Tetsu had never been much of a religious man before he was arrested, but ever since he had been miraculously freed from all charges he often laid awake at nights thinking about the life he was leading at the moment and whether or not his past deserved it. Everytime he prayed, his only wish was for his life to stay the way it was at the moment... and for his past to stay where it belonged.

Sometimes, when he still couldn't sleep, he would think about Hyde. And occasionally wonder about where he was and what he was doing.

But not too much. Not too much at all really.

Thank God.

Tetsu unlocked the front door with his set of keys and opened it to grant himself entry. Christmas was approaching in another week, and Kaori had wanted to have the house all to themselves during the holiday, so the servants were permitted to spend the few weeks approaching the holidays away with their own families. However, his home was still an exceptionally humongous place, and he hadn't been staying there for long enough to be entirely comfortable about everything in it. In spite of how much he liked the place the way it was, Tetsu would sometimes find the lush, spacious nature of the place to be unnerving and alien during the times that he spent in it entirely on his own. He wished Kaori would be home soon. But she supposedly had a staff meeting with her crew for the upcoming tour and wouldn't return home for another three hours.

Tetsu removed his shoes in the door, then took off his coat and hung it on the hook near the doorway. He had just had particularly a tiresome day at the office, and there was nothing that he longed for even more at the moment than to pour himself a shot of brandy from the liquor cabinet in the living room before embarking on a hot bath. He walked through the dimly lit hallway towards the living room and flicked on the lightswitch on the wall.

He froze.

A man he did not recognize was sitting in the middle of his living room.

The man had short tousled dark hair and was somewhat small built in proportion. He was wearing dark winter attire and leisurely sat with his legs crossed over the large armchair opposite of the room. When Tetsu entered the room to stare at him in shock, he merely smiled.

There was an almost painful twinge of familiarity that Tetsu sensed upon seeing that smile and the way the man's slender limbs moved as he rose from the chair to greet him.

He knew. Without even asking to confirm his thoughts, he knew.

"Hyde," he said. His voice was but a barely audible gasp.

The complexion significantly paler, the face a bit thinner and maintaining a slightly haggard look, the hair obviously having undergone a number of different changes since, but it was definitely him. That smile-how many times had Tetsu seen it as he laid awake in his bed at nights, even though he would always curse and try to drive away memories of that beautiful face out of his mind? Staring wide-eyed at the impossibility that laid in front of him, Tetsu could not force himself to utter a single word.

Finally Hyde laughed. "What's wrong, Tetsu? It's not like you to get all slack-jawed just to see me for the first time in years. How are you?"

Tetsu still couldn't find the strength within himself to answer. All his concentration was numbly focused on how much change Hyde had undergone in only two years, yet still having an undecided part of himself maintaining that distinct manner which image still frequently haunted the dark depths of Tetsu's mind. A part of the past he could never really run away from. A part of himself he did not want to remember.

"Come on, Tetsu," Hyde said again cheerfully. "You're looking at me like I'm a ghost."

Finally Tetsu managed to say something. "How did you get in?"

Hyde shrugged slightly, and displayed an expression mildly akin to guilt. "Let's just say that two years of living out on the streets has gained me some adequately useful experience."

"You broke in?" Tetsu exclaimed. "But this house is wired with alarms!"

"Easy, Tetsu," Hyde said in his amused calm. "I'm not some kind of thug. I didn't want to cause your house any damage by barging like one into here. I just wanted to see you. I'm sure you'd treat me differently if only I got here wearing a dress."

Tetsu looked at him in repulsed fascination. "You... you're a guy. You ran away and returned a guy."

Hyde shrugged again, grinning. "Nice of you to notice. Can't say I'm really returning, though. There's no life left for me in the present. Hyde Takarai is dead, and she'll forever be that way to her entire family and everyone else that's ever known her in her life." He paused, then, "I'm just here to send you warm greetings from an old friend."

Tetsu shook his head numbly and inched forward slightly. "Hyde, where have you been?"

"Hideto," Hyde said.

Tetsu stopped. "What?"

"Hideto. That's who I am now. Don't call me by any other name besides."

Tetsu was dumbfounded and remained that way as the rechristened Hyde continued. "Like I said, I've been everywhere. On the streets, out of the country, any place under the sun I've got tickets to go to. Since I'm in hiding, I have to keep moving around and sometimes it can be so hard just to get a decent meal everyday, but I manage. I'm happy with my life right now, and I don't think I've ever felt more alive."

"You didn't show up at my trial," Tetsu said absently.

Hyde regarded him in a curious expression for a moment, then laughed. Disregarding the statement, he began eyeing his surroundings appreciatively. "This is certainly an impressive place you've got here. You've been doing really well ever since you've been released, haven't you?"

"For someone who just very nearly got sentenced to thirty years in prison, yes," Tetsu said in an unexpectedly bitter tone, surprising himself.

Hyde did not look even the least perturbed. "If I didn't know better, I would've thought that the arrest has obviously done you more benefit than inconvenience," he said as his gaze swept over the room's interior in unconcealed amazement. Then he stepped up in front of Tetsu and looked at him meaningfully. "I had to disappear, Tetsu. You know how it is. The moment they get their hands on me is the moment I'll blow up everything I've worked for all my life. I hate to think that I'm doing things exactly the way my parents want me to, but it's my only chance in the world of being free. Of being happy."

Tetsu nodded firmly. "Yes, Hy--Hideto. I know how it is. Really, I understand very well."

They were only a few feet apart by now. Hyde closed in the remaining distance between them and in his shorter height looked up at Tetsu's face, only inches apart from his own.

"But I couldn't stop thinking about you, Tetsu. During the time I was running away and you were going through all those trials at court, I kept thinking about you and... I don't know... remember all the things we went through together."

"You're right," Tetsu agreed. "We've certainly been through a lot."

And in a sudden blur of motion, he drove his fist into Hyde's gut with all the force he could manage.

Hyde doubled over and clutched his stomach as the air flew out of him, making a strangled noise in his throat. Stepping aside, Tetsu watched as he sputtered and wheezed with pain. Two years earlier, he would have thought the notion of hitting the demure lady that Hyde was-although being a apparently fake one at that-of being an obscenity beyond words.

"You ditched me," Tetsu said in a cold, toneless voice. "You ditched me and left me to be framed. You made me trust you when everything that you've said was but a huge goddamn lie."

Hyde slowly straightened up, still cradling his stomach while his face contorted in pain and disbelief. "I would never betray you, Tetsu. We went through everything together. We're one and the same, and everything that we went through was for both of us. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, I remember, Hyde," Tetsu retorted sharply. "I remember very well that I'm the one who had to face charges in court and very nearly got three decades in prison while you're living the life in some plump-ass paradise with your boyfriend."

Hyde's face changed at that last statement. "You mean Sakura?"

"I don't care who his name was. You ditched me and stabbed me in the back..." Tetsu's gaze pierced through Hyde accusingly, "and you set me up, Hyde. You fucking set me up."

Hyde's eyes were widened, staring through him in hollow shock. "Tetsu, I don't understand."

"The fuck you don't understand, Hyde?" Tetsu's voice exploded in a shrill pitch. There was a momentary petrified silence between them, then Tetsu emitted a soft chuckle. "I trusted you, Hyde. Damn it, I think I even fell in love with you. You led me into committing a murder I underwent for your sake, and it turns out everything's just a huge sham. What else did you lie to me about, Hyde? Was there anything even half-true that ever happened between us? I have a hunch that your crying on my shoulder about being raped and whatnot was yet another drama-queen act of yours as well."

Hyde's face was drained from emotion. In a stiff, effortfully even tone, he said, "I never forced you to commit a murder, Tetsu. You said so yourself. Everything you did was for your future and your future alone. Don't turn me into your sufferable Judas just because your plans didn't work out the way they were supposed to."

"Are you trying to deny that you set me up, Hyde?" Tetsu snarled.

"No, Tetsu. I'm trying to imply that you're a paranoid bastard, and a clearly blind one at that," Hyde snapped back.

"Then explain to me why the gun was found beside the body with nothing on it but my fingerprints," Tetsu said, speaking in a composed but dangerous tone. "I gave the gun to you, Hyde. I trusted you to dispose of it so it would never be seen again. Instead, what did you do? You nicked the gun the moment you had a chance and returned to the office on your own afterwards to place it where you knew it would be found."

Hyde stared at him, flabbergasted. When he finally regained his composure, he slowly said, "Is that what you think, Tetsu? Is that what you've thought of me this entire time? I held the gun too, Tetsu. My fingerprints should have been there along with yours. Has it ever occured to you that I wouldn't be able to turn you in without dragging myself along with you?"

"Look, Hyde," Tetsu was rubbing his temples tiredly, "I don't know how you pulled it off, or why. All I know is that no one has a better chance of setting me up other than you. So, please. Just this once, try to bear with me honestly."

Hyde looked at him vacantly. "Would you believe me if I told you that I killed Sakura Yasunori because he tried to stop me from falling in love with you?"

Tetsu sighed. The contempt on his face was almost entirely gone now, in its place a sad, regretful look. "Why did you come back, Hyde? Why did you have to show yourself in front of me again? I thought I've finally managed to forgive you, Hyde. Really, I did."

The living room was surrounded by the painful force of their silence for a long time.

Then Hyde said, "You're right, Tetsu. Maybe I should have never returned. Maybe it's best that we never even met each other at all. But I had been thinking that I owed you a lot of things. I owed you the truth of what happened after two long years of keeping it a secret to only myself." He stared at Tetsu with silent hurt in his eyes. "The question is, are you really ready to know about the past, Tetsu? Or would you feel better off living the rest of your life in this fragile sandcastle of lies?"

Tetsu shook his head slowly. "I'm not sure whether I can tell anymore what's real and what isn't, Hyde."

Hyde approached him again slowly, deliberately. Tetsu noticed that despite the appearance, Hyde had not lost that dream-like grace within him which always made it seem as if he were gliding over the ground rather than walking. It was one of the things about Hyde which memories he had never managed to destroy in his mind.

Hyde said in a low, soothing voice, "Then forget, Tetsu. Just leave the past behind you. It doesn't matter anymore what's for real and what isn't, does it? As of this moment, you already have all you've ever wanted in your life anyway."

"You're wrong, Hyde," Tetsu said, something in his voice oddly foreign to his own ears. "The past is the only thing that matters. It's what controls your entire life. As long as the past still exists, everything else will form in its image accordingly."

Hyde reached out for him and touched his arm reassuringly, in the same gentility and softness that a girl's touch had. Sometimes Tetsu found himself wondering whether it had truly been a mistake that Hyde was raised to be female, and not a natural state of affairs which went along in accordance to the boy's fate.

Tetsu stood rigidly still as Hyde slowly pulled him in an embrace. His arms wrapped softly around Tetsu's body, Hyde said, "Then don't dig up the past. The only thing you'll get is dirty."

Tetsu felt Hyde resting his forehead down over his shoulder. The warmth of Hyde's presence was so belongingly familiar, something which his senses took more immediate recognition of instead of his mind. "There are ways of putting the past where it belongs without having to wade among lies for the truth, Hyde."

Hyde smiled into his shoulder, as if he had just found a form of contentment there at last. "I don't care about the past anymore, Tetsu. I don't care anymore about what it is that we have or haven't done. I'm just here to show you that I'm for real. That I've always been on your side whether or not you may realize it-or believe it."

The zip of a silenced gunshot pierced through the large living room.

It was almost as if time stood completely still for a brief moment-past, present, and future, truth and lies all welding into one static existence.

Then Hyde sagged against Tetsu's shoulder and toppled downwards, his lithe form crashing over the cold marble floor.

"Liar," Tetsu said.

He stood over the body, the barrel of the gun still smoking in his hold. He had acquired the habit of always carrying the weapon in his pocket ever since he came to the realization that he was a man who was destined to be obsructed by others in the race. Hyde's body lay prostrate at his feet; he could make out a hole on Hyde's back over the sweater where the bullet had came out after piercing Hyde's heart.

Tetsu didn't feel the need to check for a pulse.

He wasted no time. He took out a blanket and wrapped it over the body and grabbed it under the arms and began to haul it out of the living room, out of the house. His wife would be back in another few hours and he did not want to risk her suspecting anything at all. Perhaps even by doing this, he was already risking too much in the first place.

But he did not want his perfect sandcastle of the present be demolished by the tidal waves of the past. Tetsu had little chance to think of anything else at the moment; he had to drag Hyde into the car and out of his life with all the time he still had.

"Why did you have to come back, Hyde?" Tetsu whispered as he dragged the body through the hallway. "Why did you have to show up and remember about what we've done-about what I've done? Nothing else was left for me to worry about concerning the single crucial error that I've made in my life. Nothing else but you."

He was at the front door now. The gardens were silent and empty. He dragged Hyde down the front steps beyond the entrance, towards the direction of his car. He didn't think he'd have to visit that bridge one more time. To get rid of yet another sliver of guilt in his perfect life. He'd hunted down and sent the man who once went by the name Yukihiro Awaji down that stream just a few months ago. Unidentified bodies in this city were so common they eventually became mundane occurences which the authorities never bothered to investigate any further. The search for Hyde Takarai by her parents had been abandoned months ago for all Tetsu knew, and besides, the police were looking for a healthy and breathing young woman, not the sallow, bloated corpse of a homeless male who had perhaps also been a drug addict.

You screwed me over, Hyde, Tetsu thought as he opened the trunk of the car and wrestled to cramp Hyde inside. You brought this upon yourself by leaving me as a scapegoat while you escaped with your own lover. This is all your fault, and I won't take blame for any of it. Not anymore.

The blanket was tugged back at some point during Tetsu's efforts and Hyde's face was accidentally revealed. It was silent and obsolete, and the eyes were open in an empty, unfocused stare. Dark tendrils of hair partially obscured the porcelain-smooth face. Tetsu stopped for a brief moment upon seeing the lifeless eyes, contemplated closing them, then dismissed the thought and yanked the blanket back over the face again instead.

This is what you deserve, Hyde. This is where you were destined to end.

Tetsu strained and muscled the body to be able to fit into the trunk, but a few minutes later he realized he was presented with a problem. The trunk was too small, and Hyde wouldn't fit inside of it no matter how his limbs were twisted and cramped. Then Tetsu remembered that after he had shot Yukihiro he had stuffed him inside the back seat instead of the trunk. It felt like it had been such a long time since he remembered doing anything like this. In fact, it was almost as if he'd never done it in his life before at all.

Sighing resignedly, Tetsu began his struggle to lift Hyde's body back out of the trunk.

Kaori Ogawa drove her car through the south entrance of her abode and towards the direction of the garage. She still had more pressing arrangements to take care of the next day and the day after that, but the night was irresistably beautiful with powder snow which seemed as if they just floated down from the heavens. It was a cool evening, with just the slight edge of winter coldness to it, the kind of night made for warm bodies snuggling together, for intimate exchanges of deep thoughts, away from the wind, away from the unfriendly darkness.

Kaori couldn't wait to get inside and greet her husband with her surprise arrival. It had been awhile since either of them had much of any time off their respective jobs, and she was beginning to miss spending time alone with him very badly. They had been married for a year and a half, but every amount of time they spent together still felt like a honeymoon to her.

Before this, she had never even dared to dream that she could have such a wonderful marriage, a wonderful career, and on top of all that, a wonderful life. She and Tetsu were definitely made for each other; during the entire time they were married they had never once argued significantly.

She never told him, as it was one of those secrets which she felt comfortable keeping only to herself, but in her eyes, he was impeccable. Such was her faith of his perfection that she even rose to outrageous heights of daring by proclaiming a false statement in court for his defense. So she could spare him from bearing the consequences of a wrongly accused crime that she knew his flawless principles would never allow him to commit. She had put all her trust in him, and she loved him so much.

Kaori rolled into the garage at the right wing of the house and parked neatly inside. She had gotten out and was about to head towards the door which connected the garage with the main building, but then she stopped and remembered that she lost her key for that door just the week before. Fortunately, she still had her key to the front door. Kaori exited the garage and began to walk around the side of the house, towards the front entrance.

She saw Tetsu's car parked up in the front of the house and smiled to herself. The trunk was open and Tetsu was standing in front of it, seeming completely fixated in fussing with something or other inside. She nearly giggled when she saw the intense look of concentration that was engraved on his face. Tetsu was just so serious sometimes. He had probably went out earlier to do the monthly shopping and had overloaded the miniscule trunk of his car with groceries yet again. There was an almost childlike quality to him when he was fully immersed in his concentration like that, during the times that he thought no one was watching. Other women usually resented it when their husbands got too busy they no longer fully devoted their lives to them, but Kaori liked watching Tetsu work. It was as if she could see a genuinely human part of him that was left unguarded in the midst of his averted concentration.

But at the moment he seemed to be dealing with something of a particularly troublesome nature. His eyebrows were knitted in strained concentration and he was so engrossed in forcing out whatever it was that got caught inside the trunk that he didn't even notice her approaching him from his side. Kaori inwardly chuckled as she thought about what children men could sometimes make of themselves, and strolled up to the car to approach her husband.

After all, how hard was it really to unload the baggage in small amounts out of the trunk instead of trying to haul it out all at once? She was only a few feet away from him now, and in a second she would be helping him handle his difficulities just the way she always did.

"Need a hand there, honey?"

Because working together to accomplish practically anything was always a sure bet for the perfect results.