Deus smiled as he watched the scene unfold before him, Someieichi-kou’s response to her daughter’s woes was almost identical to his own father’s response whenever he was in trouble.  It pleased him to think that his father had been such an important influence on Someieichi-kou’s attitude to life; after all, his father to the Someieichi-kou was the same as his own position to the present Mercury Princess.  He only hoped that there would be the possibility that he was as successful as his father had been, and help shape the life of his own princess. 

When he saw his princess, he saw her as everything he could hope her to be.  It seemed that everything he could teach her, she already had, inbuilt into her character.  All he had to do was to bring it out of her, and help nurture and strengthen those roots.  Despite the feelings of his heart, he knew what destiny and fate would bring, he did not believe in fighting against a force so strong.  If, at the end of the day, a heart had to be broken, he would rather it be his, than his princess’.  He berated himself as he thought about his position and yearnings; it was though an artist fell in love with his own sculpture.  The sculpture that embodied each and every one of his subjectively perfected traits, and in the process embodying more than the artist had ever imagined possible.  But the sculpture could never love the artist, and if the artist loved the sculpture, then the artist would whither and die in his daydream.  The sculpture would never come to life in his world, just as the artist could never form part of the sculpture’s world. 

Deus Mercury envied his father for having so successfully discharged his duties without letting his heart come in the way of it.  He had allowed destiny to fulfil its course, and had even match-made the Someieichi-kou with her husband.  There had been rumours that whilst she had loved the King of Mercury, part of her heart remained with her teacher; but those had only ever been rumours, and no one had been able to fault his father’s performance or any impropriety due to unconfirmed gossips.  He wondered if the Someieichi-kou’s heart had been broken at any one point by his father, but he doubted it, since he had immense trust in his father’s abilities. 

He had watched his Princess’ life from birth and had slowly seen her bloom gently elegantly like a bouquet of delicate flowers – lilies of the valley.  The symbol of sweet innocence coupled with the strength of huntress Diana as she strode past the tragedies with her head held elegantly high yet stooping low enough to empathize and feel in the misfortunes.  She was, in every sense of the word, perfect in his eyes.  He could no longer be her teacher as there was nothing more in the world that he could teach her.  At one imprecise and indefinite moment in time that he could not fixate, he had ceased to be her teacher and mentor, there was nothing that she needed to have taught to her, he could only try to philosophise with her.  Life was not black or white; answers were not right or wrong; it seemed to him that he had to discuss it with her, to see which shade of grey would be most beneficial.  He was not so bigoted as to think that the student would never be able to surpass the teacher, nor was he offended; yet to envisage that one day she would no longer need his existence hurt him beyond his imagination.  It did not hurt his pride or vanity; it only hurt his heart when he thought of that day when she would no longer call on him, perhaps even forget him…

 “Kunki, what on earth are you doing in the attic, the dust up there, surely the doctors would not approve of it, you must come down immediately.”

“Ota-san, I am not quite an invalid, I can manage.”

“Would you want me to call the nurse for a second opinion of you going in the attic?  I don’t like the idea of you in that room, I’m sure that nurse will agree with me, and you know she is only in the West Wing tending to your grandfather’s medication.”

Kunki shuddered at the thought as he remembered his days being tended to and supervised by the nurse in the West Wing.  It wasn’t so much that he was scared of her; but her constant supervision perturbed him – she had treated him as though he was a terminally ill patient.  “Hai ota-san, I’m coming.”

Armed with a bundle of letters and several photos enclosed in an envelope, he descended the narrow stairwell that was usually reserved for the usage of the servants.  He carefully checked his footing with each step as he was rather suspicious of the structure of the rickety staircase, and with his mother glaring at him at the bottom, he didn’t want to give her yet another reason to send him to live in the West Wing. 

“Now, what was it that you were looking for that the servants couldn’t find for you and you had to get it yourself?”

He wordlessly handed the envelope to his mother; she looked at them inquiringly and glanced at her son’s serious expression.  He allowed the curiosity to build for a short moment, “I wanted to see if you still remembered those photos, and then see if you could tell me why these letters are still in my hand when they should have been sent out several years ago.” 

She unlocked her front door with the usual brisk turn of the wrist, twisting the doorknob; she placed her slight weight against the heavy mahogany to push it open.  However, a sudden bright flash that was reflected from behind her onto the polished surface of the wood startled her.  She spun around, half expecting a flashlight camera to be the source of the light, her heart beating wildly as she thought of the worst – had the media got hold of the fact that she was SailorMercury? 

“My princess.”

“Deus!  You scared me half to death.”

“I should hope not, it would be a pity of it were so.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Standing.”  He replied with a wry grin on his lips.

“And I suppose that you are breathing as well?”

“Not really, the polluted air of this world hurts my lungs,” he answered in mock seriousness, “although I must say that your presence does sweeten the air considerably.”

Ami laughed embarrassedly and mumbled, “why are you here?”

“Do I need any reason other than to visit the most beautiful and refined young lady of this universe and beyond?”

“Seriously Deus.” She reprimanded.

“Oh!”  Deus placed his hands on his chest as though he had been wounded and was bleeding to his death, “dost thou query my intentions?  Query my seriousness?  Query my affections for thee?  Oh, the hurt, this shall surely drive me to my early grave.”  He ended his jesting when he saw her strike a pose of annoyance with her arms crossed at her chest, “very well, I wanted to drop by to see you.  Now, despite advice from your mother, I thought I could give you any assistance or guidance in your currently messed up life, that’s all.”

“And you put it in such wonderful terms.”

“Of course I do, and they are very precise terms as well, I believe.”

“Fine, come in then.” 

Ryo-san stood on the steps of the train as he placed the pieces of luggage onto the train whilst his son, Urawa, handed it to him.  Urawa, surrounded by luggage, struggled to lift the heavy pieces of luggage as he swallowed his saliva pensively, thinking of the things that had to be said.  Wordlessly, he handed a smaller case to his father. Gulping for fresh air as though it were his much needed fountain of courage, he handed his father’s last piece of luggage to him; this was the moment, surrounded him remained only his own luggage, he had to speak now.

“Oka-san?”  He ducked a little as he realized that his voice was squeaking from the stress and tension that he was feeling.

“Yes?”  His father reached out for the other pieces of luggage.

Shaking his head, Urawa indicated that he did not plan to place his luggage on this train, “I’d like to stay here, for a little while longer; temporarily, I mean, just…, maybe for a year or so, maybe less, before I join you in Tokyo.”

“But you will be studying in Tokyo.”

“Hai, but I want to stay here, for a little while in Juuban, there are a few things that I’d like to see through before I leave, some things I want to set right, and make sure that it’s okay before I come to Tokyo to be with you.”

“Does it have to do with last night, with what you saw?”

“Hai.”

“You have never been by yourself before, you’ve always moved around with me, when I look at you now though, I can see that it is time that you learn to grow up and be independent, spend a little time learning to look after yourself.  I’m sorry, I’m sorry that I never had time to really be with you, and now that I can secure a permanent position in Tokyo, you are too grown up to live with me.  Sometimes, time just pass you by, you forget that your children have grown up, you take too many things for granted, and then, suddenly they slip by and it’s too late.”

“Iie!  Oka-san, it’s not too late, I’m not too grown up to live with you and learn from you.  This is temporary, I promise, after I’ve seen things through, I’ll be coming home, to you.  We can call Tokyo home, together.”  Urawa gushed as tears began to form at the corners of his eyes, “there is no need to be sorry; I’m not too grown up.”

“I believe you, but I think you know by now that some things are beyond your control.”  His father descended the steps of the train, “I am not blaming you, I’m not angry at you either, come back home to me when you have fulfilled your obligations like a grown man should, and you know that the door will always be open for you.”

Ryo-san bowed formally at his son, acknowledging that his son was a full adult.  Urawa struggled for composure as he watched his father, then, his feet snapped together and he bowed in return.  Keeping his eyes to the ground, he saw his father’s shoes retreat; in a moment’s time the whistle of the train sounded signalling that the train was pulling away.  When Urawa looked up, the train had already chugged away from the platform, slowly leaving Juuban and him behind.  He ran to the end of the platform waving to his father. “Sayonara!  I will be coming home soon.”

His father stood at the door of the train, his body leaning out slightly from the window of the doorway.  He watched his son waving to him, the size of his figure diminishing yet growing in stature at the same time.  He did not wave back but merely nodded his head at the grown man that his son had become. 

The first photo showed the younger version of herself and Mewagi-chan standing in front of a cherry blossom tree as they were attending the Sakura festival.  Her arms had been flung over the shoulders of Mewagi-chan, both women dressed in a kimono – it was evident that her own kimono was ill-fitting, the tacky shininess of the material was nowhere as fine as Mewagi’s silk kimono, nor as intricately made as the hand embroidered patterns.  She winced as she remembered putting her kimono on for the first time, she had thought that it was the most elegant and expensive piece of clothing in the world; even when she had met with Mewagi’s family she had not felt belittled by their wealth. 

Her friend Mewagi’s family was not tremendously rich, but they were well off enough with contacts in the society.  After all, they were a family of top-surgeons and scholars, chancellors, and even the Dean of the Tokyo University of Medicine; they would always be well known.  The family had been kind to her, they had helped her without hurting her own family’s pride, even introducing her to others, including her future husband, without being shameful of her relative poverty. 

She remembered her frantic phone-calls to Mewagi on her first date with her future husband, when she was trying to find a suitable dress.  She had desperately searched through her wardrobe with no avail, and had finally borrowed one from Mewagi in the midst of frantic pleas.

Mewagi-chan had been her anchorage during all those years when she struggled and juggled between living the life of relative poverty and yet somehow managing to keep her head above waters when it came to socializing with her future husband’s family and friends.  Thinking back, she realised that she would have never met, fell in love, let alone have married him had it not been Mewagi’s introduction and support – she would have never, even in her wildest dreams, have imagined that she would be where she was now…

But then, where was she now?  Or who was she now?  What had she accomplished now?  She was a woman, rich by all standards - with no ascertainable relationship with her husband; a relationship with her son that somehow did not include in-depth conversations; phoney friendships with other rich socialites; and non-existent friendships with her real friends.  She could barely remember when it was that life had become so superficial; when it was that she began to categorise her friends by their assets.  She had become a snob – the very snob that she had looked at in distain as a teenager, and the very snob that her husband had always hated.

 “I guess what troubles me most about this whole thing is the possibility that I might be doing the wrong thing, and going about it in a completely wrong way, I might just be hurting myself and maybe everybody else around me.”

“But surely you must know that life is not something that is completely right or completely wrong.  The whole idea of life, and the whole fascination with life is that it is grey, not black, not white – most of the time you don’t even know if something is right or wrong because you can’t see the other side of the coin.  You have to trust your judgement and make the best possible decision with the facts that you have at hand.  That is something that you will have to deal with, either now, or when you are a doctor – when you have to decide on whom to save; whom to let die. 

“The situation before you is not a hypothetical test that you pass now, and you put away the knowledge forever, it applies to everything that you will do in your life.  The good thing about this is though, even if you make the wrong decision now, you will get a chance to correct it, but you must still weigh your decision carefully, because its not often that you get to correct your mistakes.  It is a technique you have to learn to use – correctly and quickly, most importantly, without thinking back and regretting, asking ‘what if this’, ‘what if that’, because if you do, then you will spend the rest of your life regretting instead of doing something useful.”

“But you have to look back to learn.”

“Only when you are calm enough to look at it in a detached manner, it is only then that you might be able to learn from it, and gain the most advantage from it.  The saying that you learn from your mistakes is not entirely correct; there are very few pure mistakes in life, most are imperfections that we should learn to improve on.  It is only when you are calm and objective that you might find the way to improve upon your imperfections, knowing full well that you might never achieve complete perfection.”

She sighed at that, “then what’s the point if you can’t get 100% no matter how hard you try, why must we keep on torturing ourselves with the so-called ‘imperfections’?”

“To gain the ability to improve without blaming yourself and depressing yourself over what is beyond your control.  Life very often is like that, you have to live with it.”

“Are you satisfied with that?”

“Of course, that is that greatest gift of life, knowing that there are surprises in the future.  The only sure thing in life is that we aren’t sure, we are like a pack of cards, we get shuffled and we get dealt out, we don’t choose the other cards that we are in a hand with, but we make the best out of it and try to be outstanding and useful amongst it all.  Can you imagine how boring life would be without surprises?  Imagine if Kunki did not just appear in front of you that day, would you be enjoying the time you spend with him as much as you do now?”

“But if he didn’t disappear then…”

“…then you might not have still had a friendship to speak of, surely you remember the lack of correspondence between the two of you as time passed?”

“We forget each other, we were too busy for each other.  It seemed that we forgot to cherish each other’s friendship and took it all for granted.”

“It took separation to pull you closer together, now that was a surprise.”

“Hai, a very fortunate surprise too.”

“Then you understand.”

“Hai.”

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