More story, almost done.
Oct. 17th, 2006 10:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76Wow. Almost done.
Is the way to the heart between the second and third rib, or the third and the fourth? Couldn't remember.
Once upon a time, Marina would have said Mirai was the strangest member of Crew GUYS. Well, she granted, he wasn't any less strange now than he'd been before, but knowing he was an alien made it all make a good deal more sense. She'd revised her estimates after finding that out and decided that Teppei was the strangest, monster-otaku that he was. Now, though, leaning against the doorframe of Mirai's room and seeing that he had a neat Teppei-like lineup of Ultraman figures on one of his shelves, she was tempted to reaward the title of strangest to Mirai. Why on Earth would Ultraman collect toys of the other Ultramen? And the last one, she saw, was a Moebius figure. There had to be something deeply disturbing about having a toy of yourself, she thought.
Mirai turned back to her, the racing magazine he'd borrowed in hand. "Here you are... Marina-san?" He followed her gaze.
"Should I blame Teppei-san for that?" she inquired, nodding at his bookshelf.
Mirai looked puzzled. "He did take me to the collectibles store with him...."
Marina pushed off the doorframe and walked further into the room, examining the figures. "It just seems a little weird, you having an Ultraman toy collection," she said.
"Why?" Mirai had followed her. "They're my brothers."
"Reminds you of home, hmm?" Marina touched a finger to the base of one, the original Ultraman. The one who'd first come to Earth to save it from the monsters. He'd been before her time, but she'd seen replayed television footage of his battles. She wondered suddenly if somewhere in the computer archives of GUYS they had all the Ultraman battle footage ever shot. She should ask Teppei; he'd probably know.
"Reminds me of why I'm here," Mirai admitted. "Of who I have to live up to." She glanced over at him, saw that he held the Moebius toy gently in one hand. His eyes were unreadable for a moment, then he set the figurine back on the shelf, turning it until it faced forward again. She wondered if the toymakers had a different model for his Brave mode. Probably, she thought. They did live in a capitalist society. She noticed that Mirai kept a careful space between Moebius and the Ultraman next to him, 80.
"Who's supposed to be here?" she asked, tapping the blank spot.
"Hikari," Mirai answered. "They only had one, and I thought Ryu-san would appreciate it more."
"You bought Ryu-san an Ultraman Hikari toy," Marina said incredulously.
"Teppei-san bought Konomi-san a Miklas plushie," Mirai replied, looking bewildered.
"That's—" Marina caught herself on the words "entirely different," because it wasn't, not really. "—sweet," she finished instead. And it was sweet; Mirai was like that. "What did Ryu do with it, do you know?"
"It's in his room, on his desk," Mirai answered easily.
"Really," Marina said speculatively. Maybe Mirai wasn't as clueless as they all thought? But, no, this was Mirai, who really didn't have much in the way of knowing how things went romantically on Earth. And, really, she preferred his approach to the idiot Spaniard's. She turned and smiled, picking her magazine back up off the corner of the desk where Mirai had set it. "Thank you for letting me have this back," she said, waving the magazine.
"Thank you for letting me borrow it," he answered. "Would it be okay if I went riding with you sometime?"
Marina raised both eyebrows, surprised.
"You seem to like it so much, it must be fun," Mirai explained.
Ah. That made sense, in a Mirai-ish way. Hers was about the last of all their hobbies that he hadn't tried. "Sure," Marina said. "Maybe Saturday, if there are no monsters?" It would be interesting to see how Mirai handed a bike.
"Saturday," he promised with a grin.
*
"Senors and senorita~s," George sang out, carrying a large serving dish into the room and laying it on the table, "dinner is served~!"
"It smells good," Konomi said, then blinked as she saw the contents of the dish. "Um...."
Around the table glances were being exchanged as George served each plate with a mixture of rice and spices and seafood.
"You do know that rice is supposed to be white, don't you?" Marina asked.
"It is?" Mirai asked.
"It's paella, a Spanish dish," George returned with a smile that was more like a smirk. "Try it before deciding you don't like it."
"It does smell good," Konomi said again, slightly more dubious now, poking at the vaguely red-brown rice set before her. "I suppose it can't hurt to try."
"If we die of food poisoning, it'll be your fault," Ryu warned George, pointing at him with the fork that had replaced the expected chopsticks.
Mirai was the first to take a bite. His face lit up. "It's good!"
"What do you know?" Ryu groused. "You've never met an Earth food you didn't like."
"Yes I have," Mirai replied promptly. "Natto."
"Natto?" Marina asked as Konomi took a tentative taste of George's culinary creation. The flavors were strange, very different from Japanese food, but... not bad, she decided. "Who introduced you to natto?"
"Ryu-san."
Teppei choked on laughter. "You eat natto?" he asked Ryu. "The food with the devil's own taste?"
"It's a man's food," Ryu retorted. "The flavor can only be handled by those with the strength to stomach it."
"Ah, amigo, you're going about it the wrong way," George said chummily, draping an arm across Ryu's shoulders. "The way to the heart is through the stomach, and amor is never a burned fields campaign."
*
Mirai froze for just a heartbeat while Captain Sakomizu remarked cheerily, "Well, if it's war the quickest way to the heart is actually between the second and third rib, but I don't think that's the case here."
"The heart's actually not connected to the stomach," Teppei said thoughtfully, fork halfway to his mouth. "Unless you're willing to wait for the nutrients to go through the liver and intestines to be digested first."
"Ugh, we're eating," Marina said, throwing her napkin at Teppei, who half dodged it. "No medical talk at dinner!"
Mirai carefully didn't meet Ryu's eyes as he took another bite of the paella, buying time to re-orient himself, and then a sip of the white wine George had poured around the table to accompany the Spanish dish. It was all good, but he suddenly couldn't taste it anymore, being seized with a desire to flee, to run away, to not have to face this situation....
He faked a laugh and rejoined the conversation, pretending nothing had happened, nothing had changed.
*
The night breeze touched Mirai's face as he sat on a set of outside steps, one of the concrete pathways that led all over the grounds of the Phoenix Nest. His face was turned up to the sky, where the stars shone, each a sun of their own, many of them supporting other worlds, other lives, vistas he couldn't even imagine. And on some of them, too, there must surely be others looking up at the sky at this exact same moment.
Footsteps sounded softly behind him, a familiar presence coming closer. "May I join you?" Captain Sakomizu asked gently.
"Yes," Mirai said, nodding.
The captain sat down next to him and was silent for a few minutes, admiring the clear night sky as well. "You were quiet at dinner tonight," he said eventually. It wasn't a probe so much as an invitation to talk, should Mirai want it.
He thought about it and decided he did want to. The captain had known who he was from the very beginning, helped him fit in as best he could in human society, turned suspicion aside whenever he'd slipped up and been too blatantly different. And at the core of things, Mirai was different. His friends thought they'd accepted that, but he suspected Captain Sakomizu might be the only one who really understood what it meant.
"When humans love," he asked, "it's not forever, is it?"
"Ah," the captain said, "it's about that." He leaned forward, chin resting on his fingers. "Sometimes no," he admitted. "But sometimes yes. It depends on the person, and the love." His eyes were distant and a small smile hovered at his lips.
"Have you had one of those kinds of loves, Captain?" Mirai asked quietly.
Sakomizu tilted his head to look at him. "I have been so fortunate, yes."
"We--Ultra--don't love any other way," Mirai said, looking off into the distance. "Sometimes it takes an entire lifetime to find that one person, and you don't dare let yourself fall... let yourself hope... because if it's not the right person, then you'll never get another chance. Some never take the risk."
The captain was quiet. "It's different for humans," he said eventually. "We don't have any guarantees. Even in the best relationships, we have to work at it all the time." He gave a wry smile. "Without telepathy, it's just not possible to understand another person perfectly."
"Even if I did let myself love," Mirai said, looking at his hands, clasped inside one another, "I'd have to leave eventually. We don't ever stay on one planet forever."
"They say where there's a will, there's a way," Sakomizu said contemplatively. "There surely must be some way for him to accompany you, if that's so."
"I couldn't do that," Mirai whispered, head bowed. "I couldn't take him away from the planet he loves, his friends, his work...."
"Don't you think that choice should be his?" Sakomizu's voice was light and steady in the night air. "If anything should happen, it would be a choice for both of you, not just one. That's part of what love is. Partnership."
Mirai was quiet for a minute, eyes tightly closed to keep the tangle of his feelings from leaking out, betraying him. "Do I even have any right," he asked finally, "when we're not even the same species? I'm an Ultra, and he's... human...." His voice died away on a whisper.
The captain was silent for a long minute, then gently patted Mirai on one shoulder. "I'm afraid that's a question only you can answer for yourself, Mirai-kun. Moebius," he said.
After Sakomizu went back inside the compound, Mirai just sat on the steps for a while longer, trying to get himself under control. When he finally opened his eyes, they felt wet, but no tears had fallen. He looked at his hands, at Hiroto's hands. At the shape he'd taken on in memory of the one he hadn't been able to save. At the body worn in his honor, giving him a sort of way to live on.
To Mirai's eyes and senses they looked very little like the hands of a human. Oh, the shape was the same, the arrangement of molecules and the bonds of electromagnetic force nearly identical, but the energy present? It was nothing like a human's. Beneath the flesh, he was made up purely of that energy. He wore a human shape by choice, by preference, for the sake of convenience, but it wasn't him; it was no more the essence of what he was than his battle form. Humans were made of a similar kind of energy, but for them it was still tangled up in flesh and matter, bound to those rules rather than their master. Their light was murky, netted, dark, while the light of an Ultra shone free to those who could see such things.
Ryu couldn't.
No matter how his energy, his self, shaped itself, reaching across distance to touch Mirai's sometimes, Ryu was still bound to the flesh within which he had been engendered. He saw with sight alone, knowing little more of what Mirai was than Hiroto's shape and Moebius'. How could Ryu love him, not even understanding what Mirai was?
"Hey," a voice broke into Mirai's thoughts, startling him, "you're glowing."
Mirai looked at his hands again with just human sight as Ryu sat down next to him, and saw that he was. He pulled the energy back in again, returning to full human solidity, rueful at the slip.
"You okay?" Ryu asked without a preamble. He was looking up at the stars when Mirai looked sideways at him. "Lots of stars," he said, voice almost wistful. "I suppose you've been to your share of them."
"No." Mirai shook his head. "Just the World of Light and here."
Ryu looked surprised. "Only two?"
Mirai shrugged, half-abashed at his lack of experience. "Earth is my first assignment," he admitted.
Ryu's eyes were wide, but he only said "That explains why you screwed up so badly that first battle."
Mirai nodded, wincing, wishing the memory wasn't so clear. Wishing he'd done better. Wishing he'd been worthy of his charge.
If wishes came true, dead stars would still shine, as the saying went among his people.
"Remind me to tell you sometime about my first day on the job," Ryu said. Then he hesitated. "Then again, don't."
"You can't have screwed up as much as I did, Ryu-san," Mirai protested.
"To scale, probably worse," Ryu replied. "I'm not so tall."
What Ryu thought he could have done that was worse than letting an entire city ward get destroyed, Mirai didn't know. He wanted to ask--no. He reined that yearning in. He couldn't want. Until he decided, he wouldn't want. Even if Ryu's name did have him tangled in it-- Even if he no longer had any doubt that both of those double swirls referred to him--
You have not yet found your important thing. Have you? a remembered voice questioned him from months before.
My important thing, Mirai repeated to himself. Ryu-san? he wondered.
Somehow, the thought shocked still all of the turmoil inside him, laid it to rest.
But he's human and I'm not. We're too different, Mirai thought incredulously, testing that peace. It held fast.
His breath caught. His important thing... his important person....
He looked sidelong at Ryu, who leaned back, looking up at the sky.
Slowly, certainty and peace bloomed in Mirai, a delicate white flower with roots deeper and stronger than the universe.
It wouldn't be easy; they were very different. It certainly wouldn't be like the pairings of the rest of his kind, probably more like those of humans than Ultra, but....
It could work, Mirai knew, and the knowledge flowed through him, sweeping away doubt, hurt, resistance....
"What?" Ryu demanded, suddenly looking at him.
Mirai shook his head and began writing his own name again, glittering letters that hovered mid-air. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the curve of his immaturity was a little shallower than it had been. The rest was all the same, though, except for the last character. The staff with the double curl at either end flowed easily, naturally, into the script before he sealed the word.
"Your name, right?" Ryu asked, looking at it. Mirai nodded. "It's different from before, though. This part--" His voice died away as he looked at the new character, the one Mirai had described to them all in his name. The one that dealt with matters of the heart. "Mirai...."
"Our names change when we realize change in ourselves, Ryu-san," Mirai said quietly.
Is the way to the heart between the second and third rib, or the third and the fourth? Couldn't remember.
Once upon a time, Marina would have said Mirai was the strangest member of Crew GUYS. Well, she granted, he wasn't any less strange now than he'd been before, but knowing he was an alien made it all make a good deal more sense. She'd revised her estimates after finding that out and decided that Teppei was the strangest, monster-otaku that he was. Now, though, leaning against the doorframe of Mirai's room and seeing that he had a neat Teppei-like lineup of Ultraman figures on one of his shelves, she was tempted to reaward the title of strangest to Mirai. Why on Earth would Ultraman collect toys of the other Ultramen? And the last one, she saw, was a Moebius figure. There had to be something deeply disturbing about having a toy of yourself, she thought.
Mirai turned back to her, the racing magazine he'd borrowed in hand. "Here you are... Marina-san?" He followed her gaze.
"Should I blame Teppei-san for that?" she inquired, nodding at his bookshelf.
Mirai looked puzzled. "He did take me to the collectibles store with him...."
Marina pushed off the doorframe and walked further into the room, examining the figures. "It just seems a little weird, you having an Ultraman toy collection," she said.
"Why?" Mirai had followed her. "They're my brothers."
"Reminds you of home, hmm?" Marina touched a finger to the base of one, the original Ultraman. The one who'd first come to Earth to save it from the monsters. He'd been before her time, but she'd seen replayed television footage of his battles. She wondered suddenly if somewhere in the computer archives of GUYS they had all the Ultraman battle footage ever shot. She should ask Teppei; he'd probably know.
"Reminds me of why I'm here," Mirai admitted. "Of who I have to live up to." She glanced over at him, saw that he held the Moebius toy gently in one hand. His eyes were unreadable for a moment, then he set the figurine back on the shelf, turning it until it faced forward again. She wondered if the toymakers had a different model for his Brave mode. Probably, she thought. They did live in a capitalist society. She noticed that Mirai kept a careful space between Moebius and the Ultraman next to him, 80.
"Who's supposed to be here?" she asked, tapping the blank spot.
"Hikari," Mirai answered. "They only had one, and I thought Ryu-san would appreciate it more."
"You bought Ryu-san an Ultraman Hikari toy," Marina said incredulously.
"Teppei-san bought Konomi-san a Miklas plushie," Mirai replied, looking bewildered.
"That's—" Marina caught herself on the words "entirely different," because it wasn't, not really. "—sweet," she finished instead. And it was sweet; Mirai was like that. "What did Ryu do with it, do you know?"
"It's in his room, on his desk," Mirai answered easily.
"Really," Marina said speculatively. Maybe Mirai wasn't as clueless as they all thought? But, no, this was Mirai, who really didn't have much in the way of knowing how things went romantically on Earth. And, really, she preferred his approach to the idiot Spaniard's. She turned and smiled, picking her magazine back up off the corner of the desk where Mirai had set it. "Thank you for letting me have this back," she said, waving the magazine.
"Thank you for letting me borrow it," he answered. "Would it be okay if I went riding with you sometime?"
Marina raised both eyebrows, surprised.
"You seem to like it so much, it must be fun," Mirai explained.
Ah. That made sense, in a Mirai-ish way. Hers was about the last of all their hobbies that he hadn't tried. "Sure," Marina said. "Maybe Saturday, if there are no monsters?" It would be interesting to see how Mirai handed a bike.
"Saturday," he promised with a grin.
"Senors and senorita~s," George sang out, carrying a large serving dish into the room and laying it on the table, "dinner is served~!"
"It smells good," Konomi said, then blinked as she saw the contents of the dish. "Um...."
Around the table glances were being exchanged as George served each plate with a mixture of rice and spices and seafood.
"You do know that rice is supposed to be white, don't you?" Marina asked.
"It is?" Mirai asked.
"It's paella, a Spanish dish," George returned with a smile that was more like a smirk. "Try it before deciding you don't like it."
"It does smell good," Konomi said again, slightly more dubious now, poking at the vaguely red-brown rice set before her. "I suppose it can't hurt to try."
"If we die of food poisoning, it'll be your fault," Ryu warned George, pointing at him with the fork that had replaced the expected chopsticks.
Mirai was the first to take a bite. His face lit up. "It's good!"
"What do you know?" Ryu groused. "You've never met an Earth food you didn't like."
"Yes I have," Mirai replied promptly. "Natto."
"Natto?" Marina asked as Konomi took a tentative taste of George's culinary creation. The flavors were strange, very different from Japanese food, but... not bad, she decided. "Who introduced you to natto?"
"Ryu-san."
Teppei choked on laughter. "You eat natto?" he asked Ryu. "The food with the devil's own taste?"
"It's a man's food," Ryu retorted. "The flavor can only be handled by those with the strength to stomach it."
"Ah, amigo, you're going about it the wrong way," George said chummily, draping an arm across Ryu's shoulders. "The way to the heart is through the stomach, and amor is never a burned fields campaign."
Mirai froze for just a heartbeat while Captain Sakomizu remarked cheerily, "Well, if it's war the quickest way to the heart is actually between the second and third rib, but I don't think that's the case here."
"The heart's actually not connected to the stomach," Teppei said thoughtfully, fork halfway to his mouth. "Unless you're willing to wait for the nutrients to go through the liver and intestines to be digested first."
"Ugh, we're eating," Marina said, throwing her napkin at Teppei, who half dodged it. "No medical talk at dinner!"
Mirai carefully didn't meet Ryu's eyes as he took another bite of the paella, buying time to re-orient himself, and then a sip of the white wine George had poured around the table to accompany the Spanish dish. It was all good, but he suddenly couldn't taste it anymore, being seized with a desire to flee, to run away, to not have to face this situation....
He faked a laugh and rejoined the conversation, pretending nothing had happened, nothing had changed.
The night breeze touched Mirai's face as he sat on a set of outside steps, one of the concrete pathways that led all over the grounds of the Phoenix Nest. His face was turned up to the sky, where the stars shone, each a sun of their own, many of them supporting other worlds, other lives, vistas he couldn't even imagine. And on some of them, too, there must surely be others looking up at the sky at this exact same moment.
Footsteps sounded softly behind him, a familiar presence coming closer. "May I join you?" Captain Sakomizu asked gently.
"Yes," Mirai said, nodding.
The captain sat down next to him and was silent for a few minutes, admiring the clear night sky as well. "You were quiet at dinner tonight," he said eventually. It wasn't a probe so much as an invitation to talk, should Mirai want it.
He thought about it and decided he did want to. The captain had known who he was from the very beginning, helped him fit in as best he could in human society, turned suspicion aside whenever he'd slipped up and been too blatantly different. And at the core of things, Mirai was different. His friends thought they'd accepted that, but he suspected Captain Sakomizu might be the only one who really understood what it meant.
"When humans love," he asked, "it's not forever, is it?"
"Ah," the captain said, "it's about that." He leaned forward, chin resting on his fingers. "Sometimes no," he admitted. "But sometimes yes. It depends on the person, and the love." His eyes were distant and a small smile hovered at his lips.
"Have you had one of those kinds of loves, Captain?" Mirai asked quietly.
Sakomizu tilted his head to look at him. "I have been so fortunate, yes."
"We--Ultra--don't love any other way," Mirai said, looking off into the distance. "Sometimes it takes an entire lifetime to find that one person, and you don't dare let yourself fall... let yourself hope... because if it's not the right person, then you'll never get another chance. Some never take the risk."
The captain was quiet. "It's different for humans," he said eventually. "We don't have any guarantees. Even in the best relationships, we have to work at it all the time." He gave a wry smile. "Without telepathy, it's just not possible to understand another person perfectly."
"Even if I did let myself love," Mirai said, looking at his hands, clasped inside one another, "I'd have to leave eventually. We don't ever stay on one planet forever."
"They say where there's a will, there's a way," Sakomizu said contemplatively. "There surely must be some way for him to accompany you, if that's so."
"I couldn't do that," Mirai whispered, head bowed. "I couldn't take him away from the planet he loves, his friends, his work...."
"Don't you think that choice should be his?" Sakomizu's voice was light and steady in the night air. "If anything should happen, it would be a choice for both of you, not just one. That's part of what love is. Partnership."
Mirai was quiet for a minute, eyes tightly closed to keep the tangle of his feelings from leaking out, betraying him. "Do I even have any right," he asked finally, "when we're not even the same species? I'm an Ultra, and he's... human...." His voice died away on a whisper.
The captain was silent for a long minute, then gently patted Mirai on one shoulder. "I'm afraid that's a question only you can answer for yourself, Mirai-kun. Moebius," he said.
After Sakomizu went back inside the compound, Mirai just sat on the steps for a while longer, trying to get himself under control. When he finally opened his eyes, they felt wet, but no tears had fallen. He looked at his hands, at Hiroto's hands. At the shape he'd taken on in memory of the one he hadn't been able to save. At the body worn in his honor, giving him a sort of way to live on.
To Mirai's eyes and senses they looked very little like the hands of a human. Oh, the shape was the same, the arrangement of molecules and the bonds of electromagnetic force nearly identical, but the energy present? It was nothing like a human's. Beneath the flesh, he was made up purely of that energy. He wore a human shape by choice, by preference, for the sake of convenience, but it wasn't him; it was no more the essence of what he was than his battle form. Humans were made of a similar kind of energy, but for them it was still tangled up in flesh and matter, bound to those rules rather than their master. Their light was murky, netted, dark, while the light of an Ultra shone free to those who could see such things.
Ryu couldn't.
No matter how his energy, his self, shaped itself, reaching across distance to touch Mirai's sometimes, Ryu was still bound to the flesh within which he had been engendered. He saw with sight alone, knowing little more of what Mirai was than Hiroto's shape and Moebius'. How could Ryu love him, not even understanding what Mirai was?
"Hey," a voice broke into Mirai's thoughts, startling him, "you're glowing."
Mirai looked at his hands again with just human sight as Ryu sat down next to him, and saw that he was. He pulled the energy back in again, returning to full human solidity, rueful at the slip.
"You okay?" Ryu asked without a preamble. He was looking up at the stars when Mirai looked sideways at him. "Lots of stars," he said, voice almost wistful. "I suppose you've been to your share of them."
"No." Mirai shook his head. "Just the World of Light and here."
Ryu looked surprised. "Only two?"
Mirai shrugged, half-abashed at his lack of experience. "Earth is my first assignment," he admitted.
Ryu's eyes were wide, but he only said "That explains why you screwed up so badly that first battle."
Mirai nodded, wincing, wishing the memory wasn't so clear. Wishing he'd done better. Wishing he'd been worthy of his charge.
If wishes came true, dead stars would still shine, as the saying went among his people.
"Remind me to tell you sometime about my first day on the job," Ryu said. Then he hesitated. "Then again, don't."
"You can't have screwed up as much as I did, Ryu-san," Mirai protested.
"To scale, probably worse," Ryu replied. "I'm not so tall."
What Ryu thought he could have done that was worse than letting an entire city ward get destroyed, Mirai didn't know. He wanted to ask--no. He reined that yearning in. He couldn't want. Until he decided, he wouldn't want. Even if Ryu's name did have him tangled in it-- Even if he no longer had any doubt that both of those double swirls referred to him--
You have not yet found your important thing. Have you? a remembered voice questioned him from months before.
My important thing, Mirai repeated to himself. Ryu-san? he wondered.
Somehow, the thought shocked still all of the turmoil inside him, laid it to rest.
But he's human and I'm not. We're too different, Mirai thought incredulously, testing that peace. It held fast.
His breath caught. His important thing... his important person....
He looked sidelong at Ryu, who leaned back, looking up at the sky.
Slowly, certainty and peace bloomed in Mirai, a delicate white flower with roots deeper and stronger than the universe.
It wouldn't be easy; they were very different. It certainly wouldn't be like the pairings of the rest of his kind, probably more like those of humans than Ultra, but....
It could work, Mirai knew, and the knowledge flowed through him, sweeping away doubt, hurt, resistance....
"What?" Ryu demanded, suddenly looking at him.
Mirai shook his head and began writing his own name again, glittering letters that hovered mid-air. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the curve of his immaturity was a little shallower than it had been. The rest was all the same, though, except for the last character. The staff with the double curl at either end flowed easily, naturally, into the script before he sealed the word.
"Your name, right?" Ryu asked, looking at it. Mirai nodded. "It's different from before, though. This part--" His voice died away as he looked at the new character, the one Mirai had described to them all in his name. The one that dealt with matters of the heart. "Mirai...."
"Our names change when we realize change in ourselves, Ryu-san," Mirai said quietly.
