"Mikagami, are you feeling alright?"

Tokiya warily looked up at his professor's face, full of concern. "Yes, which is what I can't say for you."

"Excuse me?"

"It's nothing."

"You look kind of pasty…perhaps you should go to the infirmary. You need to get a lot of rest for the week."

"No, if I weren't competing for this school in the annual trivia competition, then I don't think you would've cared at all." Tokiya brushed the man aside and continued walking on his way.

"Hey! Mikagami!"

Snarling under his breath, he turned around. "Yes, Fuuko?"

Fuuko glanced at him. "What's wrong with you? You look like a zombie."

"No, really?" he yawned.

"Yeah, and you weren't so rude before. Would you like me to give you a summary of your appearance the previous week?" Without waiting for Tokiya to reply, Fuuko continued. "OK, on Monday your hair was imperfect for the very first time. I don't think you even looked at it. It looked like straw. On Tuesday, you had dark circles under your eyes. They looked like they were going to droop straight to the floor. On Wednesday, you kept dozing in class. Now Tokiya Mikagami the teacher's pet all-star pupil would never doze off in class."

She paused, waiting for Tokiya to remark. He sighed. "Continue."

"On Thurday, you were pale, like a vampire. Now if you'd just gotten rid of your sunken eyelids, you would make a very, very handsome vampire. Yeah, I think some girls here would have been willing to drive a stake through your heart. On Friday, you were beginning to lose some of your bishounen status. You were stumbling often, and whenever you talked you sounded like you were drugged."

"OK, OK, that's enough."

"I was finished."

"It's really none of your business about what I look like. You don't have to stalk me," Tokiya muttered.

Fuuko placed her hands on her hips. "I am not stalking you! Don't forget just because team Hokage has split up and are studying in different schools, that doesn't mean our friendship has broken too!"

Tokiya waved his hand at her. "OK, fine then. Go sing the friendship song and spare me the trouble. I would like to live my own life now, thank you very much. You're not my mother, and even my mother wouldn't annoy me this much."

"I'm still your friend, and I'm concerned about you," Fuuko said.

Tokiya's head began to throb. He closed his eyes. "Mikagami? What is it?"

The bell rang, signaling the end of classes. His eyes sprang open. "Fuuko, do me this huge favor and get out of my face, I'm not in a good mood right now."

"Fine," she snapped. "I was only trying to help here. You can't get through life alone, Tokiya, no matter what you think."

As if she hasn't compared me with Leonhart before,. "Fuuko, keep your stuff to yourself, OK?" he said. His head was beginning to throb now…there was nothing else he'd like to do more than just collapse. Not in front of Fuuko…she'll laugh…He closed his eyes again and began to slump.

"Mikagami, what's wrong?" Fuuko cried out in alarm. "Your nose…damn, your nose is bleeding!"

What? Haven't you seen…a nose…bleeding…befor…Tokiya thought dizzily before finally collapsing.

*

"Yes, I'm so sorry I had to bother you with such a stupid patient," a familiar voice said.

"Yes, we're so sorry. He won't be such an idiot next time," another, slightly higher voice said.

Tokiya blinked and opened his eyes. Recca and Fuuko were bowing profusely in front of a doctor, who was standing by the door, and Yanagi was peering at him with concern. What are you doing here?

"Oh, thank goodness you're awake!" Yanagi cried in relief.

"Tokiya!" Recca and Fuuko cried out in unison, whirling around and glaring at the white clad figure lying on a hospital bed. "You had to wait till you fainted, didn't you?" Recca muttered. "Wouldn't listen to Fukko…I mean, sheesh, 'I can take care of myself', yeah right…"

"Recca, Tokiya just collapsed. Please don't be so hard on him," Yanagi pleaded.

"Yeah, but then with his bloody nose a lot of professors thought I'd knocked him out. They nearly killed me for that, because he's representing us in the competition." Fuuko said, frowning. "As if my record wasn't screwed up enough."

"Oh, yes, I know that. Yanagi is representing us," Recca said. Yanagi blushed. "Not like I really wanted to…" she murmured. ("Don't be so modest!" Recca said.)

"Ah…Mikagami," the doctor said, stepping in and holding clipboards. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," he said. "I'm alright now. May I go?"

"I'm afraid not. There's a possibility that it's just a high fever, but we found something out of the ordinary in your blood, and we'd like to check it out. You'll be staying here for tests for the following week."

"I said I'm fine," Tokiya snarled.

"Mikagami, stop thinking of yourself as high and mighty!" Fuuko shouted. "Take orders for once. They found something unusual in your blood; perhaps it's a vampire and that's why you look the way you do!"

"Fuuko," Yanagi said gently.

"What? He's being an idiot."

"It's not his fault if he's sick."

"Yes, but it is his fault if he doesn't take care of himself!"

"OK, that's enough! Will you guys please get out of here?" Tokiya asked impatiently. His head was beginning to hurt again.

When he was alone, Tokiya sank back on his bed. There was something weird in his blood…that usually led to a disease. "My professor is going to kill me…" he said. "Not like that's a major problem."

The big problem at the moment was his friends. They were constantly annoying him, never leaving his sight. Always chattering, always wanting something from him…

"Just like monkeys," he said, frowning.

*

A couple of weeks later, Tokiya, still in the hospital woke up to the sounds of someone crying. When his vision cleared, Mifuyu was crying on Recca's shoulder.

No, it wasn't Mifuyu. It was Yanagi. Yanagi was the one crying on Recca's shoulder. Mifuyu was dead. But it looked so much like Mifuyu than Yanagi…but it couldn't be.

"Yeah, that's right, Mifuyu's dead," he said quietly.

"And soon you will be too," Fuuko said from her position, perched on the end of his bed. "In a few months, if you're lucky."

"Fuuko!" Yanagi gasped.

"Yanagi," Fuuko said, scooping up ice cream from her carton, "when do you want me to tell him? When he's on his deathbed?"

"What are you guys talking about?" Tokiya muttered. "And what are you doing in my room so early in the morning?"

"Good morning, Mikagami," his doctor said, approaching his bed. She flashed a sympathetic look at Yanagi.

"And you'd better enjoy it, because they're limited," Fuuko added. "For you, anyway."

"Fuuko!" Recca hissed.

"It turns out that your body has been producing more white blood cells than normal," Tokiya's doctor said. "Thus resulting in leukemia. I trust you know what leukemia is. Some people pull out of it like it like it was just a slight cold, but others aren't quite so lucky. For others, there's really no hope at all."

"Can you guess which category you fall in, Mikagami?" Fuuko asked. Yanagi continued to sob in Recca's shoulder. "Yep, you guessed right. It's the latter."

The doctor cleared her throat. "Without treatment, you'll last for about three months. With treatment, probably six or five. You may choose whichever, but I'm really sorry. You're going to die."

Now she has a lot of tact, Tokiya thought, rolling his eyes.

After the doctor left, Yanagi pulled away from Recca and clutched Tokiya, sobbing. "You can't die, Tokiya! You're only nineteen! It's not fair!"

Tokiya looked at Recca, who looked tortured at the sight of his princess crying. Then he glanced at Fuuko.

She glanced back, her face blank.

*

News had gone out in Fuuko's school that Tokiya was diagnosed with an incurable case of leukemia. Fuuko was getting tired of hysterical woman shoving her black love letters to give to Tokiya. Recca and Yanagi and even Domon wouldn't speak to her because of the way she acted, and that was just fine with her.

Of course she cared about Tokiya; he was her friend, even if he was a little distant toward her. But leukemia wasn't something Yanagi could cure, but at least it wasn't as gruesome as Ebola. So Tokiya was going to be the guinea pig in her first step in being a special kind of necromancer, not one who could just communicate with the dead, but bring the dead back to life.

She'd met a beautiful woman who turned out to be a master shino necromancer, one that could bring the dead back as long as there was a body to return to. And Fuuko had decided this was something she really wanted to do. She even had the Talent, as Anthianette called it. Without the Talent, Fuuko had no way of being a shino necromancer at all.

It was nearing the end of the day, and another sobbing girl approached Fuuko. "I have never told him that I loved him," she moaned.

"You and every other female in this school," Fuuko said impatiently. "Well? Where's your letter?"

"I have no letter. Just tell him that I love him and that I will pray for him!" and with that, the wacko burst into hysterical tears and ran out of sight.

"Yeah, OK," Fuuko muttered, "And your name…?"

When she'd finally gotten rid of the last female (and a few homosexuals) Fuuko headed straight for the hospital.

"Hello," she greeted Tokiya in his room. He was channel surfing and looking like the president with his inaugural speech was in front of him . "How are you today?"

"This is a change from your indifferent attitude," Tokiya muttered. "What brings it?"

"This." Happily, Fuuko spread the letters and flowers and candy all over Tokiya's bed. "From five-eighths of the population of our school. Would you believe one-eighth of them are gay?"

"Yes, I can."

"You look dead bored."

"Please don't use that expression in front of me." Tokiya took a deep breath. "I decided that I don't want the treatment."

"What?!"

"Yeah. It doesn't matter. It's just going to cost money, and I'm going to die anyway."

"How did Yanagi take it?"

"I haven't told her yet."

Fuuko sighed. "See, this is what I mean! When were we planning to tell you? Yanagi wanted to tell you when you were already half-dead, not having time to do the things you really wanted to do. When are you going to learn that the sooner the better?"

"They're still not speaking to you." Tokiya said. To get Fuuko's mind off the decision, he picked up a black envelope. Attached to it was a heart-shaped box of expensive chocolate. "Want?" he asked, offering some to Fuuko. She shook her head, looking deep in thought.

If Tokiya goes without a treatment, then I'll have less time to train with Anthianette. I still wonder where she got her name, it sounds like a search engine. But if he goes with the treatment, I'll have more time. "Tokiya, I want you to go on with the treatment."

Tokiya had just finished the letter and was rolling his eyes; Fuuko couldn't tell whether it was because of the letter or because of her opinion. "Why?"

" Look, do you really want to die so quickly? Do you know how much we're going to mourn? Well, maybe not me. And maybe not Domon. But Koganei thinks of you like an older brother,and Yanagi thinks of you as a special friend. Pleeeease?"

Tokiya looked at her and sighed. "I don't know, I'll think about it."

Fuuko smiled. "Thanks."

They both were quiet.

"You know," Fuuko said suddenly, "since you're going to die soon, I was thinking…could we be a little more friendly towards each other? You can't survive on your own, you know."

Why should I be buddies with her? But then Tokiya knew that he would need one. "Yeah, you're right. Let's be a little more friendly," he said, then sighed. His icy reputation was over.

*

"No, you have to concentrate," Anthianette (Anthia for short because her full name sounds kinda silly) said. She and Fuuko were in the hospital, practicing on a freshly dead corpse.

"I'm trying," Fuuko muttered. She pressed the man's picture of his family against his forehead. "It's hard…there's something blocking my way…"

"The Dark Light," Anthia said. "It's just there to try and discourage anyone. It's kind of a stupid thing, if you ask me. It should be gone soon…until you learn how to get it out of your sight forever…"

"It's OK, I can see the first Layer!" Fuuko cried, sounding excited... "He's here somewhere, I can feel his Aura…oh! There he is!"

And within seconds the man had jerked upright, gasping.

"Quick, leave!" Anthia shouted. Fuuko darted for the door and quickly shut it after Anthia had rushed outside. "Good job!" she said.

Earlier Anthia had told Fuuko that the reason shino necromancers didn't revive everyone was because the world would be too full. They only used it when shino-in training needed hands-on practice, or when it was very important to revive someone who would make a difference, good or bad, in the future. They didn't use it on old people or people who would just return to a broken body.

"You found him in the first Layer, good job. His illness wasn't so bad, so therefore he didn't need to rush all the way to the seventh," Anthia told her.

Fuuko was silent. "That was my first view of the underworld," she said.

"Don't think of it as underworld. Think of it as a waiting place. Once they go past the seventh into paradise, then it's going to be impossible to retrieve them. And those who want to go to paradise…well, we can't exactly stop them, can we?"

"Anthia, are you sure I can't revive Mifuyu?"

"I already told you. Mifuyu's body is already decayed and broken, so her soul can't return to it. But when you reach an advanced level of necromancy, you can communicate with her." Anthia said, slipping in coins into a snack vendor in the hallway of the hospital. "You hungry?"

"No."

When they stepped into the sunlight, Fuuko was thinking. "Anthia, can I tell other people that I've got the Talent to be a necromancer?"

"You can't. Think of how many offers you'll get to revive the dead. This Tokiya…he's only going to be an exam. You're only allowed to revive the dead as many times as you want because you're my apprentice. Ouch!"

"Oh! Sorr--Fuuko!" Yanagi cried after she'd collided with Anthia.

"Y-Yanagi."

"Did you visit Tokiya?"

"…No, I didn't."

After that, Yanagi didn't say anything. She just brushed past the two of them, clutching a tiny paper bag close to her chest.

"You are obviously having a bad day," Anthia said.

"Why should I? I just revived someone." Fuuko said. "It's partially my fault. I kind of acted…casual when the doctor told us that Mikagami was not going to live."

"Poor baby." Like an older sister, Anthia swung her arms around her Fuuko's shoulder. "I'll treat you to ice cream, OK?"

"I don't want ice cream. I want a buffet."

"It's a deal. But you have to finish everything on your plate, because I'm not paying for your leftovers."

"But…I don't have any money."

"Then I'll force it down your throat if I have to."

*

"And what is this?"

"It's a paper crane. Haven't you heard the story of Sadako and her thousand paper cranes? She had the same disease you did."

"I know who Sadako is," Tokiya said. "But it didn't work for Sadako, and it's not going to work for me."

"Yes, I know that," Yanagi said. "But please? Will you just make them? It would give everyone courage if they saw them."

Tokiya chose not to say anything.

"Did Fuuko visit you?"

"No, she didn't. She has school today."

"Really? I just saw her coming out of the hospital."

Well, it's normal for Fuuko to play hooky…"She probably visited someone else. It's no big deal, Yanagi. I've decided I'm going to take the treatment. Who knows? Maybe it'll kill more white cells that the doctor thought, and I won't die."

After Yanagi had left, Tokiya looked down at the pieces of origami paper she'd left. He thought of what Fuuko would think of them. "You know, Tokiya, you're just going to make her sad. Just fold the damn paper and make a thousand of them without a fuss!"

He smiled slightly and picked up a sheet of paper.

*

"Come on, let's go," Fuuko said as soon as she entered Tokiya's room. "Well? Why aren't you dressed?"

"Huh?"

"You moron. You want to stay here for six months? You're not supposed to be here until your next treatment. Hurry up!"

She handed him one of his suits. "I stopped by your place to pick up your clothes. Change quickly."

"Yes, well, you mind?"

Fuuko rolled her eyes. "You aren't hooked up or anything, go into the bathroom and change like a normal person.

Tokiya glared at her but went to the bathroom to change.

"Now there we go," Fuuko said as he stepped out. "You were looking weird in that hospital gown. Brush your hair."

When he was ready, Fuuko gathered up all of the cranes he'd folded and put them carefully inside a plastic bag. "You have school tomorrow, don't forget." She thrust the bag at him along with a canvas bag. "OK, bye!"

"Wait, where are you go--"

Fuuko had already rushed out the door.

*

"You've been working very well with bringing souls back to unbroken bodies. I know it's a rule for us not to revive people whose bodies have been damaged, but you must learn this as an apprentice," Anthia said. They were entering a hospital room with a very sick woman inside.

"And that means…?"

Anthia locked the door behind her. "You must release her from her pain then revive her again. Her most treasured possession is on her desk."

It was a cross. "Anthia, she wants to go to paradise. We should let her," Fukko pointed out.

"No," the woman gasped, hearing them. "I have unfinished business here. Please revive me after I die! Kill me then bring me back! Please!"

"In other words, Fuuko-chan, you've got to kill her."

"No, I can't do that!" Fuuko said.

"Use this." Anthia gave Fuuko another weird crystal, looking like a twisted, glazed stake. "It'll allow you to mend the wound. Fuuko, I told you before that you have the healing Talent. Use it."

Fuuko closed her eyes. Then before she could lose her nerve, stabbed the woman's heart. Her hands shaking, she opened her eyes.

She wasn't breathing anymore. "Quickly, grab the cross!" Anthia shouted.

Fuuko's shaky hands grabbed the cross and positioned it against the woman's bloody heart. After closing her eyes once again, she could feel the underworld.

Anthia had taught her how to banish the Dark Light without using the crystal. When it vanished, Fuuko could see the first Layer. The soul wasn't there. Fighting through the souls in the Layer, she reached the second. She wasn't there either.

Fuuko could feel herself growing weak. She wasn't accustomed to going this far. Reaching the third, she felt the woman's Aura in the very back. With the Aura in sight, she fought to it, grabbed it, and struggled to get out of the underworld.

"Good! Now heal the wound!"

Fuuko's hands had grown slippery with blood, but she closed her eyes again and concentrated. When she felt the tug, she pulled the stake out. The wound closed as if it had never been there, as well as the blood.

"Oh, bless you, bless," the woman murmured before falling asleep again.

Even though the blood from the woman's clothes had disappeared, the blood on Fuuko's hands hadn't. She stared at them and then suddenly felt sick.