Dark Edge Village

Yuuru walked in from the fields for one last time and found himself sitting on a small rock just outside the village. He saw a familiar feline walking towards him. The initial fear inside of him caused his muscles to tense a bit. The cat drew near to him and rubbed against his leg. He tried to shoo the beast away but it remained close to him and began licking its paws.

He chuckled once through his nose as he watched the creature lay down on its side and look up at him with its dead feline eyes. "Came to say goodbye Fluffy?" He asked the cat.

Out from the same tall grass, a young woman appeared. Looking around as if lost for a moment she quickly spots both cat and Soshi, blinking in surprise. After a moment hesitation, she walks over, not knowing some nettles were still in her hair, "Huh... I've been following this guy for ages, and he stops at you? Surely there is some strange force at work here."

He smiled weakly as the woman appeared from the tall grass, "Hey Beautiful." He looked up somewhat timidly into her eyes.

"Must be your lucky day." He tried to smile.

He moved over on his rock opening a space for her, "Come here. You've got some gunk in your hair. Let me get it for you."

"My... hair?"

Yukarin lifted some over her shoulder and quickly saw what he was talking about. Letting go, she blushed a tiny bit, "I was a bit focused on not losing his trail I suppose.... and I'm hardly used to blazing trails..."

She walked closer to stand in front of him; Yukarin wore knee length purple and white robes again, rather than the longer fancier robes from earlier.

Yuuru leaned forward and began taking the bits of plant from her hair. "Looks like you needed your guide to help you out then... and yet he was sitting here on his butt on a rock. How negligent of him."

Yukarin made a little sound as the nettles stuck yo her hair, "I was fine; I had my lucky charm and adventuring clothes on. ...but you would have made a much better guide than the cat, yes."

He chuckled, "Looks like I win one showdown today among your favorite things then."

His hands worked gently as they removed the bits from her hair. "Shame I didn't win the one that mattered."

A small sight escaped her lips, "I'm... sorry I didn't tell you before the ceremony, Yuuru-san; There wasn't enough time, and I didn't have the nerve..."

He nodded, "I figured. It's not often that a woman leaves her bed with you to be with another man, then doesn't talk to you for a day, that then she turns around and asks you to marry her."

He smiled weakly, "I saw it coming my dear."

"You still looked like Jigoku itself at the ceremony though..."

She finally looked at him again after looking away, looking at his face closely.

He smiled as she looked at him, "Did I? I'm sorry. Guess the fool in me was willing to hope I had a chance. But it seems I made some fatal mistakes along the way."

He finished taking the last of the thistles away and leaned back a bit, "Or just as always, my luck ran out when I needed it most. Apparently I didn't have that last little bit of magic to help convince you of what I know to be objectively true."

"Perhaps... or perhaps my own luck ran out then, if I missed the truth n the end."

She could engineer a smile, but it was wobbly.

He nodded, "Only time will tell. Will you enjoy your life far from your people with only having done marginally little help to their cause with the money your cute husband was able to amass while you become his accessory and trophy to be shown around as an oddity and sought after sexually as a toy? Will you be pleased with having taken the conventional choice, ended up gambling little, and getting little in return?"

He tilted his head, "Or would you have preferred to invest a little now for a greater return for you and your people in the future? Would you have preferred a position of crucial importance and necessity, not redundancy? Would you have liked to have altered an entire geographic region for generations to come? Would you have liked to have taken the less conventional path... the rebellious one... and see if you couldn't have done more for both your people and for yourself?"

He looked into her eyes with care and affection, the softness of his tone showed he didn't wish to tear into her any more than necessary. "When it came down to the moment to put it on the line, you decided to take the easy way. The safe way. There's no faulting you in that... even if I was surprised. Because the woman I fell for was the independent and rebellious woman with a piercing intellect that could see beyond her immediate surroundings to see all the potential futures and weigh them accurately."

He smiled weakly, "If you ran out of the luck to make that choice... it was probably my fault. Looks like my bad luck is more powerful than the good luck you carry. I just hope that when you and I part... that your good fortune will return, and you'll have all you could dream for and more with your new husband. Because more than my own happiness... I truly do wish for yours. And since we are not on a path where our collective happiness is dependent on the other... I am relegated to praying on your behalf instead of acting to make your life better."

"Hai, we will certainly not likely find ourselves close much in the near future; I won't be able to depend on you. But I will do the best I can with where my choices have lead me... you know that."

Yukarin wasn't the best at hiding emotions, and her sadness was very evident in both wet eyes and her posture. She did at least keep it out of her voice though.

He nodded and said, "I have every confidence in your abilities my dear... I always will."

But then added,"You never know though... rich merchant like yourself. Maybe you end up in Ryoko Owari someday for some business... and maybe you need your guide to help you around? Follow your heart long enough and you never know where it'll take you."

He smiled down at the cat, "Maybe fluffy here will lead you back to somewhere near me some day."

He then looked up into her wet eyes and stood up. Only a few inches away from her he looked intently into her eyes as he brushed back a strand of hair from her face. "I just have one question to make sure my demons don't get the best of me..."

He paused as his eyes wettened to match the pair he was staring into, "It was real right? I didn't imagine 'us'?"