Hanajima knew she hadn't meant anything by it except that she wanted to share her excitement at thinking about how everyone had their own special talent. Her denpa were pure, simple like that. Tohru thought that Souma Kyou was wonderful because he could cook, and that Souma Yuki was wonderful because he could study. That they were kind.

Hanajima had brought this up with Prince Yuki himself once. When she had spoken to him that time in the classroom, telling him that she was sorry. "Your 'umeboshi'. . .maybe it's like Tohru says. Maybe you just have so much that people can't stop looking. It must be hard on you, too."

He hadn't understood what she was talking about; she saw that. But, surprising her, he'd answered. "Maybe. . .Honda-san's talent is that she can see those individual characteristics in everyone, but. . .maybe she doesn't always recognize them for what they are." He said it almost as if to himself.

It was perhaps this unusual insight that caused Hanajima to ask the fateful question one May morning.

"Uo-chan. . . ."

"Yeah?" They were sitting, once again, in the schoolyard, playing a game with Tohru and Yuki. The yankee was in the middle of what appeared to be a complicated decision about which card to play next.

"If Tohru is right about people being like onigiri, I wonder what kind of umeboshi we have?"

"Well, yours is obvious," replied Uotani, not paying overmuch attention. "You're protective." She finally selected the Jack of Clubs, and threw it down on the pile. "Hah! Take that, Prince!"

Tohru clapped her hands together, looking excited. "That's right! Hana-chan is very considerate of others, isn't she? Like when we first met!"

"Actually, I was rude to you when we first met," Hanajima said in her calm voice.

Yuki played a Queen of Clubs, making Uotani swear revenge in the next hand. To be polite, he asked "how did you first meet?"

And that was how, before Hanajima knew it, her two best friends came to be telling the whole story; how she transferred schools, how she rejected their advances but they refused to get up.

"Until. . . ." Tohru suddenly trailed off, looking uncomfortable.

Her friends' denpa radiated worry. They worried that it she didn't want to talk about it, they wondered if it would be painful.

Of course it was painful.

Yuki began to look sorry he'd asked.

Two apologies began at once, his and Tohru's. They both stopped at the same time, and then both insisted the other go first. Hanajima cut through the ensuing confusion with her quiet voice.

She told them everything.

She wasn't sure why--perhaps she just didn't want to deal with their anxious denpa tripping over each other. Perhaps she wanted to scare the Souma boy, just a little.

Perhaps she just wanted someone to tell.

Whichever impulse led her to it, Hanajima found herself rarely enthralled in her recounting, so that the sounds of their classmates' chattering voices and their footfalls on the walkway didn't bother her; ceased to even register. She told of her parents, of the first school, of the. . .the accidents, and she did not notice the world around her even when one set of footfalls slowed to a stop a little distance behind her.

"You see?" Tohru said when she had finished. "Hana-chan's kindness is beautiful umeboshi."

As usual for Tohru, half exactly what you needed and half completely missing the point.

"It's a good story," Yuki agreed, smiling. But Hanajima could tell he was a little afraid.

Well, that wasn't unusual either, was it.

"Hah! What part of that was a good story?" said a new voice from behind Hanajima. She froze, a little startled. Yuki almost imperceptibly slipped into a ready fighting stance.

"Kyou-kun?"

He slid out of the shadow of the building he'd been leaning against, eyes slitted and unreadable.

"Carrots! What are you doing sneaking around behind people and eavesdropping on them?!"

Souma Kyou ignored all of this, his eyes fixed on Hanajima. Like a cat. . ., she found herself thinking. Like a cat stalking its prey.

"So you think you hurt some people just by not liking them? Is that it? That's what you've been afraid of all this time? Ch'. Don't make me laugh."

"Jerk!" spat his cousin. "What gives you the right to barge in and make fun of Hanajima-san like that? Back off or I'll--"

"I'm don't have time for you right now, damn rodent," said Kyou, cutting him off.

Yuki fell back a little as if stunned.

Tohru's eyes bounced back and forth between all of them, uncertain.

"What are you trying to say?" Hanajima asked.

"I'm saying, why have you been afraid for years about something so stupid? That was why you didn't wanna become friends with Tohru and that Yankee, right? Because you were afraid you'd hurt them. Do you really think you can do that? Do you really have so much power you can make everything your fault?"

Kyou's own eyes widened at that, and he paused for a moment, finally muttering under his breath, "maybe that's why Tohru gets along with you. . . ."

There was a beat of silence in their little patch of grass and sun. Whizzing around Hanajima's head were suddenly complicated denpa, coming from everyone, crashing into each other. Denpa, and an echo in her own mind: "Can you make everything your fault? Can you make everything your fault?"

"You think that even now, don't you?" continued Kyou after that tiny pause. He looked as if he were realizing something, figuring it out even as he said it. "You said you found the trick to turning off people's waves if you didn't want to listen to them--you were looking for that the whole time, weren't you. You wanted to find that trick, so you wouldn't have to listen to how people were always afraid of you; that's what you told those two"--he jerked a thumb at Uotani and Tohru without taking his eyes off of Hanajima--"but it wasn't really that. Really you hoped if you found that, you could find the trick to seal your own power in your mind. Because you're afraid someday you'll really hurt someone, maybe even hurt them. You're still afraid of that, even now."

"Stop it. . . ." said a tiny voice. Hanajima realized with a little start that it was her own.

She looked at Tohru, afraid of what she would see. Tohru's eyes were wide and wet. She could feel the question radiating off of her friend: "Are you really? Are you really afraid of hurting us, even now?"

That horrible sympathetic suffering.

"Stop it." Voice cold. She didn't want Tohru to feel like that. She wouldn't forgive someone who made Tohru feel like that.

A tiny sound, and she was looking at Yuki. He looked stricken. His eyes were pained and his denpa said so many things at the same time that Hanajima couldn't even begin to interpret them all. "Why. . ." he whispered. "why does he always do this. . . ."

Kyou's arms were crossed, waiting.

Hanajima didn't know what else to say.

As it turned out, Kyou wasn't all that good at waiting anyway. "All right. If you think that, fine. Curse me."

There was a silence.

". . .what?"

"Curse me. Hate me. Wish I was dead. Whatever. Attack me with your denpa. Then we'll see."

His denpa. She couldn't read them. She couldn't read him at all.

"Kyou-kun," Tohru started hesitantly. "Hana-chan is--"

"Will you do it?" he said, eyes fixed on her. Cutting off even Tohru? His eyes were so strange.

". . .you may want to die," she replied, finally, "but I'm not interested in killing you."

Kyou's face clouded, but cleared almost immediately. "Read my denpa, Psychic Girl. You know that isn't what this is about."

Hanajima felt herself starting to break. Why was he doing this? Did he want her to be in pain like this?

Suddenly her mind flashed back to a clear day and a picnic blanket spread out over a grave. Can you see ghosts? he had asked her. And her reply: Of course I can't see them. And: But you. . .your waves are echoing cruelly right now. Why are you standing in front of that grave and regretting?

And his eyes looking like he'd been slapped.

"Oh," she said. "Is that it."

"Is what it?" Kyou snapped, sounding briefly like his everyday impatient self.

"Is this payback for that time in the graveyard?"

"Who knows? Let's get this over with. Do it."

"No." I won't I won't I won't.

"Do it," said Kyou, inflexible. Like a different person.

Hanajima found herself casting around for support. "I--"

"Oh, I don't know, Hana-chan." Uotani had been strangely, uncharacteristically silent up to that point. "Why not?"

'Why not?'!? You know why not! "Uo-cha--"

"He's asking you to," her friend pointed out calmly. She watched as Kyou and the Yankee shared a look that seemed to communicate something. Perhaps, a wild voice said in the swirling panic that her mind was becoming, Uo-chan and Kyou-kun had always understood each other. "Besides, if anyone can take it, he probably can."

Uo-chan grinned then, her manner almost offhanded. "He's always been the won't-die-even-if-you-kill-him type."

Hanajima couldn't even talk.

And then, Kyou leaned towards her slightly, murmuring something.

". . .what?"

"A brother," he said. "Didn't you have a brother named 'Megumi'?"

That blew the lid off.

Suddenly, it was just like it had been, back before she'd learned the trick to it, back when she'd heard everything. Voices were pressing in on her from all sides; Uo-chan's voice curiously in favor of the operation, and Tohru's worried "Mother, I don't understand what's happening. . .please protect Hana-chan and Kyou-kun and Yuki-kun and. . . ."

Tohru's voice was always too confusing, too innocent not to burn you. Focus on something else. Voices coming in from everywhere, too many, voices she didn't want to hear, crowding in on her.

Prince Yuki. "That's Kyou's umeboshi," he was thinking to himself. "His talent. He can pick apart any life but his own." For someone usually so polished, his denpa were very raw. "He doesn't even have to know you."

Umeboshi?

". . .doesn't even have to know you. . .doesn't even know me. . .pick apart anyone's life but his own. . .cruel. . .doesn't think about how it hurts you. . .but he forgave Kazuma-shihan that time, forgave him--I wouldn't have forgiven him (couldn't have forgiven him?), so maybe it's. . .?"

His thoughts were going in circles, hard to follow, making no sense.

"Go ahead, Hanajima-san," he said out loud. "Even if something happened, it's not like it would matter."

Hanajima wondered vaguely how his thoughts could be so jumbled and his words so lucid and cool-sounding.

"He's already the most cursed of all of us."

And then, Kyou.

"Come on, Psychic Girl. You want to do it, don't you? You don't want me to keep talking about Megumi, do you? I could make life tough for him--"

He.

He was.

He was thinking at her on purpose.

"What do you want?!" she screamed. She couldn't remember screaming since she'd come to this school, ever. She couldn't remember ever losing it like this.

The other three stared at her, shocked.

"You're angry, aren't you?"

Yes. Yes, she was angry.

"Are you seeing red yet?"

Of course she was angry.

"You don't want me to go anywhere near him, do you?"

Megumi could take care of himself. And Kyou wouldn't dare. She knew this. Some part of her knew this.

"You don't want me to talk to him about his sister, do you?"

She was being irrational. She didn't even know what he was threatening. He didn't even know what he was threatening. But.

"You're angry, aren't you?"

Yes.

"Angrier than you've been in a long time?”

Why wouldn't he stop thinking at her?!

"Then do it. No one will blame you."

She was angry. She was angry.

She hated Souma Kyou.

"I'm not afraid of you.”

She hated him.

"I'm not afraid of you at all.”

She did it.

He grinned at her.

". . .what?"

Hanajima felt as if she were coming out of a dream.

"Hana-chan. Hana-chan! Open your eyes! Please, open your eyes!"

". . .they are open," she murmured.

She was very tired.

Tohru threw thin arms around her, crying. "Oh, Hana-chan, I'm so glad."

Glad?

"Hanajima." She looked up, blinking. It was Uo-chan. She was grinning. Why was she grinning? "Look at him, silly." Uotani knocked a fist lightly against her head and pointed in Kyou's direction.

Souma Kyou. Souma Kyou.

"See? He's fine."

. . .fine?

She craned her neck slightly, trying to take in her surroundings.

"Yes! Hana-chan! He's totally fine!" Tohru was smiling even as tears were streaming down her face. A look to Souma Yuki told her that he was in shock, sort of vacant-faced, as if he were trying to make himself not there by pretending not to be there. There was an old pain lurking about his eyes.

And finally, turning her head a little more, Souma Kyou.

There was a tiny smile still hanging about the corner of his mouth.

She could barely breathe.

She was terrified.

"Are you satisfied now?" said the mouth with the smile.

If she dared to believe, it might break her. It might break everything.

Hanajima took a teetering step forward.

And suddenly he was there, catching her gently by the shoulders, an expression on his face that was supposed to be cool and indifferent but wasn't.

"See?" he said, and she realized that she was mere centimeters away from him and her hand was resting lightly on his chest, above his heart. "Still beating."

Her friends were smiling at her, and Kyou's heart was still beating and he was standing up and she managed a tiny smile and then a real one.

And then she joined Tohru, bursting into tears.

Both Souma boys immediately looked horrified, and everything seemed to snap back to normal.

"Gyah!" screeched Kyou, jumping away. "What the hell are you crying for? I swear I'm never gonna understand girls!"

Yuki stood and walked up to Tohru. "Honda-san, here, a tissue. . . ."

Through the faint remaining open channel she heard both their denpa in unison: "Psychic Girl cries?!"

"Kyou-kun. . .I. . . ."

He grumbled something, averting his eyes to a point on the ground slightly to her left. "Just stop being afraid of stupid things, then! Stupid girl."

Yes, everything was back to normal.

But. . .but somehow, she couldn't stop smiling.

"Souma Kyou," she intoned, gathering all her power around her and adopting her most frightening tone. "This debt will be repaid. Oh, yes. Prepare yourself."

She saw him immediately go pale, and laughed softly to herself.

Souma Kyou, standing before her, mouth still with a smile at the corner and now quaking in his boots.

"Umeboshi, huh?"