When Rina woke up the next day her head felt like it had been stuffed to the limit with cotton. She felt strangely confused, every thought took much longer than it should and the most random things weren't at all as easy as they usually where. Her socks got mixed up, she tried to put on her shoes on the wrong foot and just before she locked the door she realised that she was about to leave her home in nothing more than a bra.

This time there was no mysterie to why she felt like this though, this time she was a hundred percent sure about what had caused it. It was the girl, she thought as she locked the door for the second time in ten minutes. The dark haired and grown up child was the reason for her confusion.

"It was something about her", she knew that it was borderline crazy for someone to talk to themselves, but sometimes thing became clearer when she heard them in actual words. This wasn't one of those times thought, she still didn't understand any more than she had when she left the house yesterday morning.

She had seen herself in the girl, seen the one she had been and the one that she could become again if she wasn't careful. It was something awful to lose hope in that way, to be completely sure that there was no place where you would ever be needed again. Rian knew this, she knew the feeling she had seen in the deep brown eyes, and even though she didn't know the girl that was named Olivia she hope that her words had helped at least a little. No one deserved to feel like that, it didn't matter what they had done to make themselves think so.

"Do you always leave your house twice?", she turned with a little scream. Yuji stood leaned against the stone that marked the entry to her garden and looked at her through his sunglasses. He held a cigarette in his right hand, between the index finger and the middle one in a nonchalant gesture.

"No I don't", Rina answered shortly, and then she added, "so you are stalking me now?". He gave an ironic smile and put out the only halft smoked cigarette on the stone.

"My sister got up and went to school today", his words where at once very serious, and the look that he gave her was so fundamentally different from the first one that he had given her that it was hard to think that it was the same person. Nice was an overstatement, so was gratitude, but it was something closer to that than to hatred.

"Olivia's your sister?", Rina couldn't help but to be surprised. They looked nothing alike, not to mention the way they had spoken to each other. Sure she had heard in their voices that they were somehow familiar, but she hadn't even for a second considered the possibility that they would be brother and sister. He had most certainly not treated her the way you treat a sibling.

"Yes", Yuji said, and then he continued "she hasn't been there in months". He seemed sad about it, in a way at least, and Rina wondered now more than ever what it had been that had made the girl start skipping school. 

"I don't know why she listened to you", Yuji took a new cigarette out of his pocket as he followed her as she started walking, "you don't even know her".

"Actually I sort of do", Rina didn't even understand herself what she was about to say untilt the words slipped out of her, "I used to be her". She felt a wave of terror go through her body as her words reached him. Never before had she told another person about her feelings back then, and this was a person that she didn't even know, that she wasn't even sure if she liked or not yet. It wasn't sane, not even a little, but she felt comfortable in some way, like she could tell him. Because if she had been able to see it in his eyes he might have seen it too.

"You don't know anything about her", there was no conviction in the words, it seemed like he just uttered them because he felt like he needed to protest. Or perhaps because he found the situation strange, because he didn't realise how much you could understand in a few words.

"I know the feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore", the voice inside her head, the reason the scream for her to stop telling him these things, had gone almost completely quiet now. In a was it was nice to tell someone, even if this someone was a street punk that probably didn't understand what she meant anyway. Probably didn't, at least.

"What did you do?", he wasn't playing her this time, it sounded like he seriously wanted to know.

"Nothing", Rina answered, "not to begin with at least". She stopped in her tracks as she told the last words, and sat carefully down on the pavement. A battle was going on inside her, and the side that wanted him to know it all was about to win. It scared her, after all she didn't know if he could be trusted with the pain of her past. If he threw it in her face it might leave another scar, and she wasn't sure if she could take that.

He waited, patiently and with quite a gentle look in his eyes. Without a word he sat there beside her, giving her all the time she would ever need. It almost looked like he was concerned, that he no longer saw the spoiled queen of the local high school but someone that was much more the real her, someone that needed a person to listen.

"I was only ten when I saw my best friend bleed to death on a classroom floor", a new sensation came to her as the words poured out of her. It was sorrow, all the sorrow that she had locked behind a mask of fake smiles even since that day. Tears where suddenly burning behind her eyes, the first real tears since she was ten years old. She didn't want to let them out, didn't want to show this, stranger basically, that kind of weakness. But she couldn't stop them now, it was like opening a dam.

"She hadn't done anyting, she was just a kid", she sobbed now, like never before, but there was nothing condescending in his eyes at all. In fact all she could see through the streeming tears was kindness. Real one now, and not the "pity kindness" that she had gotten so often as a child. No, he felt sorry for her in a real way, the way you are suppose to feel sorry for people.

Slowly her put one hand on her shoulder. His touch was smooth and gentely, and even though it wasn't much. People didn't give physical comfort in her family, that kind of closeness was frowned upon. So for that reason she was grateful towards him, because he gave her something she had never gotten before.

"Thanks", it wasn't much, but it was all she could think of, "thanks".