160Disclaimer: I've been telling you this for 24
chapters already. This is mine. If you try to steal it, I'll set all my
friends/reviewers on you and then you'll be sorry!
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A/N: Well, this's it. The last chapter. *cries*
Yeah, but remember - there is a sequel in the works! So don't fret, my
dears! There is an ending to this legacy! I promise! Now here's the deal
- if I get enough people to tell me that they want the sequel (even
though the story would NOT have a satisfactory ending if there wasn't a
second book) then I'll start UPLOADING the chapters under a new title.
So, get ready, here it comes: Chapter Twenty-Five: The Final Chapter!
Please...enjoy.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
ENTER MOMENTARY PARTINGS
I was ashamed to do it, but I had to borrow money
from Dr. Kazamaru to buy the train tickets to Tokyo. (To this day I
haven't paid him back. Shh, don't tell!)
That last night in Takamatsu before I left for a
month was awful. Rapier and I managed to stay away from each other. He
was walking around all by himself now, by using his senses as a samurai
and his wits as a human being to substitute all other senses for eyes.
It was unavoidable. We would have to run into each
other eventually.
It happened at around one in the morning. I couldn't
sleep and was sitting outside in the garden.
I sighed, and listened to the clonk-clink-clonk of
the water in the pond and frogs and crickets singing.
"Who's there?" asked a voice.
I whirled around, only to see that sitting up in a
tree, just opposite the pond, was Rapier.
"Rapier?" I called.
There was a sudden blur, which I can only imagine
meant that he was moving too fast for me to see, or my eyes were fuzzy.
He appeared in front of me.
"Tomorrow," he said, more of a question than a
comment.
"Yeah," I answered.
He gave me a sad smile. "I'm sorry I've been
avoiding you all day."
I shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I've been
avoiding you, too, to tell the truth. I've been nervous about leaving. I
don't know what I'm supposed to say to my grandfather. What...what should
I do?"
Rapier sighed. "Just be yourself. I'm sure that
he'll love you. Even if he doesn't, you always have us to come back to.
Naru, and Xiou, and Dr. Kazamaru, and Toshihiko will always be here for
you. I suppose that Li will be here too." He sighed. "You know that
you'll always have friends here in Takamatsu."
"Wh...what about you?" I asked, reaching forward and
touching his shoulder.
He gave me another sad smile.
"Regular swordsmen don't live that long, never mind
samurai. I won't live forever. One of these days, Matsuhara might come
along and finish me off. He was better than me. I admit it."
I felt my heart crumble to ashes.
I had never even considered the possibility of
Rapier losing a fight until he had lost to Shenuyu. It hurt me to say it,
but I was worried about Rapier all the time. ALL THE TIME.
Being in love may seem glamorous and wonderful, and
it is, don't get me wrong, but to be in love you have to put up with a
lot of emotional stress, and a lot of pressure.
I love Rapier, and I hope he never stops loving me
back, but he is very different from me.
For one thing, I'm female and he's male. Even though
this may seem to be a very (duh) obvious thing, men are very different
from women. We think and feel while they think and then think some more,
unless they're living with below-average intelligence, and then they're
only looking at girls and TRYING to think all the time.
Most men are always either in one of those
categories, while women don't EVER have categories. If there were, then
there would be endless amounts of them, and no one could ever discover
which they fell into, anyway, so it's pointless trying to categorize
women.
(This is just for all you men out there reading
this. Don't get angry with me, but I'm just trying to give you
information from a woman's perspective, because I know it's already hard
enough to understand the opposite sex without being even more thoroughly
confused by all that I'm writing down. Sorry.)
I left for Tokyo about five hours later. It was an
emotional time, and I was scared. But Rapier kissed me and Xiou gave me a
hug. They both reassured me that it would be fine. Naru was confident
that he would take care of me and clasped Rapier on the shoulder, his way
of saying goodbye. Rapier and I said our farewells and then we parted,
but we didn't try to avoid it like a bad disease. We figured time apart
would only draw us closer together.
And, as it turns out...it did.
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The End
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Oh my God, I'm crying...
So...whatcha think? The sequel should be up VERY
soon, but I must tell you - I'm still not very far into it, so if it
takes me some time, please forgive me. The second book will be entitled
Tomorrow's Decisions. Just so you know. (Kinda a coincidence, huh?) 0.o
Anyway, I really hoped you enjoyed reading this, because I have put many,
many hours and a lot of love into the story.
The first chapters of the sequel will be out very,
very soon. Maybe tomorrow. I'm such a wuss - I couldn't leave you guys
hanging for so long without knowing what happens! The sequel will be up
the day after I upload this chapter, or maybe even sooner!
Thank you for reading. You have no idea how much
I've appreciated your thoughts in your reviews and your advice.
So, for a while, goodbye. I love you all much more
than you believe that I do, and I appreciate your sticking by me even
when I was being stupid and couldn't get the chapters out quickly enough.
I hope that you all go forward to read the sequel,
because it would mean so much to me to find familiar faces in the depths
of it all.
Aishteru and ja ne.