* * *

"Carve your name on hearts and not marble."

* * *

"Thank you for coming," Ichijouji Michiru murmured solemnly, tying a malachite-colored scarf around her neck in consideration of the gloaming's chill outside. Daisuke noticed she looked twenty years older than she actually was. He wondered how old he looked. She went on, also tugging a pair of marigold lady's gloves over worn, wrinkled hands. Calmly, so calmly; she must still be in shock, he thought. "He would have appreciated it. You know the way to his room -- of course you do . . . you can take whatever you like. It's a tradition, sort of . . . loved ones take a momento to let those who've passed away live on in their hearts. Ken . . . he -- he always delighted in the idea."

He didn't know what to say, so he nodded. Ichijouji . . .

"Mareo and I are going to the Daioh Temple in Kyoto for a few days," the woman provided, fishing around in her jacket. The premature silver in her brunette hair caught the light and shimmered while she searched. She withdrew her fingers in a jingle of metal clinking against metal; took off one particular key on the ring to press into Daisuke's unresisting palm. "This is a spare to the apartment. Lock up for us, please?"

"Okay," he affirmed, russet eyes flickering down toward the warm piece of metal he held.

"You . . . can keep it if you like, too," she said, hesitating slightly. The leftover keys were placed back into the lapelled coat. "So if you ever want to come over . . ."

"Ichijouji-san?" he requested softly, not looking up.

"Yes?"

". . . Have the others stopped by yet?" he asked, gaze seeking out hers in that moment. She was thunderstruck with how despondent he looked; how dim his maple eyes were. Hadn't he always been so full of life, every time she saw him? But -- but that was before . . .

"They did," she responded, tending to a very pale smile. "None of them took anything. They didn't want to. Hikari-san and her brother brought a nice batch of cookies. A few also inquired about Wormmon, but I said that he --"

"-- is with Veemon," Daisuke finished for her, unable to maintain eye contact any longer. His fingers closed tightly over the key, imprinting the ridges into his awaiting skin for a brief bite of pain. The image of his partner desperately trying to console the dismantled jasper centipede came unbidden. There was nothing he could do to help. He'd lost his chance already. "He's better off there, I think."

"Me too. Thank you again, Daisuke-san . . ."

And they were gone. Daisuke didn't remember seeing Ken's father walk by.

Shrugging this off blandly, he turned and went to the end of the living area; the first door on the right, across from a furbished side-table and potted bird's-nest fern. The domicile was completely silent, save for the auricular hum of the venting units and the incessant whirring of something beyond the door he stopped in front of. Unconcerned, Daisuke pushed it ajar readily and finished his journey. He slid the gift (of sorts) into the pocket of his somber slacks.

The door clicked shut somewhere behind him as he cast a glance around the room, still just as he remembered it from the many, many times he visited for a multitude of reasons. Ken sitting at the desk, lecturing him over how pi didn't fundamentally mean that there were fruit-fillings involved; Ken pointing out to him the lesser-known constellations from the balcony; Ken kicking his ass -- he admitted it now -- at the video games he had guardedly kept away in his closet with their consoles . . . at least until Daisuke found them one very silly afternoon of rummaging through Ken's things. ("Even your boxers are gray!" Daisuke exclaimed, brandishing the underwear. Their owner blushed garnet to the roots of his hair.)

Wrinkling his nose, he smelled something that had definitely not been there the last he dropped in. The air was heavy with diluted bleach and other ammonia-like solvents. An old fan, wheezing and whirring as it undulated slowly, had been set down beside an antediluvian floor-mirror. It was directing what noxious fumes it could towards the open sliding glass doors and much more pleasantly scented air beyond. The carpet was dry and unsoiled; Daisuke could tell. The odor lingered, allowing him to make his own conclusions . . .

"Was this where it happened?" he queried aloud, almost not recognizing his own voice. He took a few steps in the direction of the mirror, uncharacteristically staggered and unconfident. His voice rose in pitch as he settled to a stop a foot from the foul-smelling patch of thistle carpeting and its only observer prior to his arrival. "How . . . how could you do this . . ."

No one replied save for the squeaky rotary blades of the fan at his feet.

"You could've talked to me!" he cried, pausing to listen to his words reverberate off of the walls of the empty room. His seething countenance was flashed to the mirror on a vagary, fuscous eyes dwindling into choleric slits. He was positively gaunt, and appeared to be very exhausted and fatigued on top of that; the reflective surface exposed this and his anger soared to new heights. His hands became shaky fists. "You could have, if -- if something was bothering you, Ichijouji! So why? Why did you do it?"

. . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . . whirrrr . . . squeak . . .

"Why did you leave everyone -- leave me?! WHY?!"

Crack.

A tracery of chrome lines, intersecting and breaking with one another in a pattern not unlike an intricate spider's web, corkscrewed outward across the mirror from the epicenter: Daisuke's fist planted firmly at the midpoint. The glass fissures gleamed like the profiles of curved tacks, pricking his white knuckles where each edge had been made lethally razor-sharp. He withdrew his hand, only glancing indifferently to its surface. The skin was torn in places; already ruby egressed into view in attenuate rivulets. Experimenting, he flexed his fingers slowly; the cuts darkened with fresh blood.

Shards of the mirror, broken away, collapsed in a cascade of shining silver at his feet; splintered further twice more. The dissonance almost drowned his observation: "So . . . is this what you felt, Ichijouji . . . ?"

He shook himself, looking away from the schism of his reflection and ignoring the pain and wound entirely. His very first impulse was to collect Ken's crest and other Chosen ornaments. He went to the nearby computer desk and opened the northernmost drawer, as this was where he had last seen the media-acclaimed prodigy tuck them away orderly. There was a lot more in there than he thought. He disturbed black-and-white composition notebooks, on the brink of falling apart from immoderate use; a lump of tea candles (pinkhazelolive!) tied up in plastic wrap followed, which held no meaning to him. Stray pencils, wood shavings . . . and finally, a puce rectangle inscribed with a rose, the dark D-3, and a uniform D-Terminal.

Kindness. Ken is -- was Kindness . . .

Biting back a scream, Daisuke took all three items and shut the top-drawer stridently. Its other contents rattled.

He looked up after taking a step back to settle his nerves. His breath caught. He surely hadn't seen this before: a frame of eggshell white had been used to hem a mat with four individual "compartments," all marked off by thick black lines. This was hanging on the wall as though just another painting. (It certainly wasn't.) Each carefully measured "box" contained one item: an insect with its beauty presentable because of pins that skewered the tips of unfurled wings. Butterflies. Four different species with their ephemeral lives on display for Daisuke's eyes, taunting him with an unwelcome pondering . . .

Ken was only a fledgling butterfly, emerging from his cocoon in a natural process of life . . . to be caught in a downpour five minutes after taking to the skies. He the pristine being, dying from the most impossible to grasp and violent manner . . . the wrong place at the wrong time . . . when the flight-granting powdery sheen was washed away permanently . . . sending him plummeting to the wet ground while the angels cried selfishly above.

Before he even really understood what he was doing, Daisuke set down the digital devices and tore the thin case from its place above the desk. The balcony door was already open. He quickly strode out to the steel railings that prevented him from falling and peered over the edge, the portrait-sized canvas held parallel to his position.

He didn't know the names of any of them. He didn't need to. Suspiring inaudibly, his fingers wrapped clumsily about the head of the pins, and then extracted every last one from the material they were stuck into. He prudently lifted the wholly brittle butterflies from their place -- God knows how long they had been there -- and let each spiral off the side, one by one, lifeless despite their illusion of flight upon a lenient breeze . . .

"There . . ."

The Blue Metalmark went first, royal sapphire blue scales refracting the sun's rays and scintillating majestically, before being blown rather forcefully out of sight. His hair.

"Now you all . . ."

A Sickle-Winged Skipper lasted much longer, despite the blotchy spots of ash-gray that marred otherwise iridescent magenta. Daisuke watched until it too was gone. His eyes . . .

"You'll all be free . . ."

Despite its commonplace misgivings, the Giant White was very exquisite. It was much larger than its companions, and tumbled downward over milky wings rather than floated, but still maintained its natural dignity while doing so. His . . . his skin.

"Just . . . just like Ken . . ."

The Ruddy Daggerwing held true to its name, pigments the color of the same coagulated maroon that hadn't fallen from Daisuke's hands. The other sides of its wings were a nutty brow and betrayed its deep red, if only for the sake of looking like dead leaves the majority of its short-lived airtime. And his . . . his blood . . .

He dropped the frame. At his left, it clanked woodenly on the concrete.

He felt lightheaded. What was he doing? Oh yeah. He needed to take something else, something . . . closer to Ken than a lot of what was stockpiled in the room behind him.

The closet. Its setup was very inelegant, a tad messy for the usually so perfectionist Ichijouji, and was full of boxes and clothes on metal hangers he had never seen Ken wear before. A checkered soccer ball was stuck in one corner while a jersey bearing the white letters "TFC" on the front and "#7" on the back mingled with the bleaker formal wear. Its somber peridot and jet fabric, breathable, stuck out like a sore thumb. Daisuke immediately grabbed for the ball first.

A piece of paper fluttered the ground, suggestive of the falling butterflies:

Soccer with Motomiya. Six PM.

He hadn't imagined that Ken would have had to remind himself. That note with its appointment was dictating their plans for today. They were going to meet at the soccer field. They were going to play soccer; Daisuke was going to let Ken win because he didn't want his best friend to feel bad (of course, because that's how it always went), and . . .

He lost his grip on the black-and-white sphere, wondering in the back of his mind about perhaps building up his hand strength. Before it fell to the carpet innocuously, however, he reared a foot back in the same breath, launching all his strength into its connection with the worn two-tone leather of the ball. TH-WHOCK!

It instantaneously went loose as a reckless blur, making contact with three different surfaces before Daisuke could blink. After nearly putting a hole in the wall, it struck the ladder to the raised bed at an angle and made an unstoppable beeline for his head. Its travels were halted after that collision, resulting in a migraine and short trip to an adverse sitting position. The soccer ball landed harmlessly some feet away and rolled to a standstill.

He felt like the world was laughing at him; he shut his eyes to ward off sour tears. Ken . . . Ken wouldn't have laughed at me . . . he would have rushed over, and asked if I was okay or not, and . . .

"Daisuke-kun!"

His lids flew upward like untied sashes. Ken was kneeling beside him, lips etched just the slightest bit downward; lilac eyes, so crystalline, defined with the shades of intense distress. A cool palm had been pressed against the source of his throbbing headache, soothing the unerringly bruised lump of skin with a chaste touch. His mouth felt dry. He didn't do anything but stare at the one opposite of him, taking in hitched breaths.

"Ken . . . Ichijouji, I'm fine," he croaked, voice cracking. He wanted to push Ken's hands away, he wanted to do a lot of things: ask him why, punish him, hug him and never let go, cry into his shoulder, stroke his hair . . .

"Are you sure you're all right?" Ken whispered, one hand slipping down to Daisuke's tense shoulder. He was afraid that if he looked, he would see only bleeding wrists. "That looked like it hurt an awful lot. I think you need an ice pack."

He shook his head furiously. This wasn't right. Ken was gone. "No! I don't want an ice pack. Ken, why did you go? Why did you do that?"

"Daisuke . . ." the voice that was undeniably his best friend's trailed, girasol painted eyes dropping downward as they customarily did whenever he was ashamed of something. Daisuke realized that the suffocating stench of bleach was almost completely gone. "-- Your hand!"

"That's from . . . I broke your mirror," he said sheepishly, unable to prevent himself from slipping back into the mirage that Ken hadn't died; he wasn't buried next to his brother in the cemetery. "I'm sorry."

"We'll have to get that cleaned up right away," Ken soberly replied, peering at him closely. "It could get infected. Come on, Daisuke."

"Ken . . ."

"Yes?"

"Just don't -- don't -- leave me again . . ." the Motomiya boy stammered, tears rolling down his cheeks. He raised a hand to touch the silk-spun blue hair. It never dawned on him from that moment on that Ken wasn't really there.

Ken ghosted his lips over Daisuke's forehead. The recipient nearly convulsed.

"I won't."