A/N: Hey, guys! So this was later than I'd expected, but even now I'm putting off homework and sleep to finish, edit, and upload this chapter. Sorry it's slow in the beginning, but there will be drama to come in the later chapters, so don't worry. Thanks to all that reviewed, and a special shoutout to my dear friend GamerJ1998, who reviewed so sweetly and even broke her sacred vow to read this. :) Love you and miss you, Shiara-senpai. I hope you like reading this fic as much as I love writing it. Consider this a dedication.

To art-x-soul, the sweetheart on DeviantArt who started it all, the readers and followers so far, and most importantly, Ciara, my best friend and my company for a time that felt like forever. Thanks to all of you for sticking by me. None of you know how much it means. Except for Ciara. She might know.

So Far

Chapter 2

The Bet

Utau

-One week earlier-

Wednesday night Ramen was a tradition that Ikuto, Souma, and I had been into for a year or so, although I joined in halfway through its beginning. I really came for Ikuto, and Souma did, too. This is why I was more surprised than irritated when, the Wednesday before winter break, he decided to approach me as soon as Ikuto had left for the bathroom.

The Ramen shop was a dull clutter of pots clanging and people talking, and it was warm. Warmer than it was outside, anyway. I'm not just talking about the climate, either. The lights filling the kitchen and shop were golden and melting, flushing my cheeks just a little. Ikuto had waited for one of those rare pauses in Souma's storytelling to stand and mutter that he had to use the restroom, leaving us alone. It wasn't like this hadn't happened before, which is why it was nothing new when Souma just slurped up his noodles without a glance at me.

I began to focus on the Ramen and the atmosphere and how much I wished that Ikuto would come back so that I could listen to someone talk again. Everything was, in a word, normal.

And then it wasn't.

"So Hoshina."

I found myself staring at Souma Kukai in a matter of seconds.

"What?" he asked, eyebrow quirked. He was still grinning.

"What do you want?" I was too surprised to remind him that my name was Tsukiyomi, tell him to shut up, or even call him a moron. I swear, he'd never said more than two words to me on Ramen nights. At school he'd wave, flash a peace sign, call out my name, or pass on a message, but that was it. Neither Souma Kukai or any of the former Guardians (Amu and Tadase excluded) had ever really paid much attention to me. They tried to include me in things, yeah, but none of them had ever made it sound so casual and offhand as Kukai had just then. Anyone that didn't know better might think that we were…..well, friends.

Souma twirled his chopsticks around the noodles before glancing back up at me. His eyes never failed to startle me, at least a little. Even in the golden haze of the shop, they stood out, almost electric. Impossibly puzzling, at least to me. I had no idea how anyone could be so cheerful so consistently, but Souma was always in a chipper mood.

"I was wondering something," he said. There was a pause, in which I almost asked wondering what , but Souma plowed on before I could open my mouth.

"We're friends, right?"

I nearly choked on the noodle currently sliding down my throat. After a large swig of tea (it was cold, but I was choking, so), I pressed my messy mouth to my sleeve and glared at him.

"What the hell gave you that idea?" I muttered. A part of me was afraid I'd blush like my idiot best friend, but of course I didn't. The initial surprise was gone, irritation seeping into my nerves now.

He shrugged, smile finally starting to leave. "Well, you're always hanging around me, so I guess I kinda fig-"

"I hang around you because you hang around Amu and Ikuto," I snapped. "Don't start imagining things."

His eyebrow raised again, but it wasn't nearly as playful as before. "When I wave at you in school, you wave back."

He was just grasping at loose threads now. "What else am I supposed to do, moron?" I scoffed.

Finally, his mouth set into a deep, irreversible frown. His eyebrows settled in a lethal calm over his eyes. I felt the urge to scoot away, but I didn't. I wasn't intimidated by him; I wouldn't let myself be.

He cocked his head to one side, just a little bit. "If you're being honest, I have a proposal. A bet, actually."

This time I raised an eyebrow, partly from interest, partly from confusion. Had he really instigated this conversation to bring up a bet?

He leaned in a little, his expression more serious than I'd ever really seen it. "I bet," he said, "that by the end of winter break, you won't know anything about me. You won't know, just because you won't care."

What. The actual. Hell.

"What kind of a bet is that?" I'd been right; Souma Kukai was an indecipherable enigma, unintentionally (or intentionally) screwing with my head every chance he'd get.

"Does it matter?" he challenged. "You either accept it or decline it."

What kind of a stupid…..

No, I didn't want to back down from a bet. Doing so would be the first time I did, at least between Souma and I. But this was really the dumbest thing he'd ever brought up in my presence. Why on Earth would he want me to know him any better than I did? Why would anyone want me to get to know them, really? I wasn't really the ideal friend; even Amu didn't talk to me as much as she talked to Yaya or Rima. It made no sense, and as much as I hated to say no to a wager, I didn't really have a choice.

So I denied his offer. And he just kind of smirked and turned away like we'd never spoken at all.

-One week later-

"Utau!" I jumped a little at Amu's voice, turning to see her behind Ikuto. I pretended not to notice Souma, who gave me a slight wave in hello, and scooted my chair to give her some extra room (though the girl didn't need it. She'd gained some curves over the years, but she was still slender as a young tree).

"Yo," Ikuto murmured as he passed me. I smiled a little bit and stared into my coffee.

"So what'd you order?" Amu asked, peering into my cup, too. "I don't really come here often, so a recommendation would be great."

"Nothing over 50 calories!" Ran squeaked this from Amu's shoulder, tugging a strand of hair.

"This is my break, Ran. I can eat what I want." Amu said this with a rather deadpan expression. I almost laughed, but decided against it after all. When she caught me off guard, Amu could be a legitimate killer. She'd become dangerous since she was an elementary schooler, practicing false smiles and cold, unfeeling stares. I'd earned some of these attacks, and they were unpleasant to say the least.

"Get some green tea," I advised her. "Coffee's not all that good for you."

Her Shugo Chara did a little air-punch of victory; Amu sighed and stood to claim her order. Before her other two Charas left with her, they stopped and look me in the eye.

"Um, where's El and Il?" The one with the blue hair, Miki, asked. I stared back into my coffee.

"They, um, haven't been feeling well," I muttered. They'd been that way for the past two months, and I couldn't figure out why. My dad said that they were starting to fade, but I didn't want to believe it. I wasn't done yet; I was only sixteen. You're still a kid at sixteen, aren't you? Who decides when you grow up, when your Shugo Chara are taken away from you? I wasn't ready, if it was true. I wouldn't be ready for a long time.

An hour passed, and Amu left the cafe soon enough. Ikuto followed after her, pestering her with that familiar grin on his face (someone was going to die soon if they kept that up). Nagihiko and Yaya left around the same time, and even Rima left with a silent nod towards me. I was now alone with Souma, who was, again, avoiding my gaze.

I stared out the window and settled into my own line of silence, enjoying solitude once more. Or, rather, pretending to enjoy it. It was all I'd really known, anyway.

Even when surrounded by screeching fans, in the center of a real and breathing collection of people that drowned me in adoration, I'd still felt….alone. My dad left me. Mom left me. Ikuto left me, and despite everything, he still hadn't returned yet. Not completely.

But I didn't want to complain about it; I actually kind of liked being by myself. It was just moments like these, chosen at random, that I wondered if I was supposed to have something more. It was hard to lie to myself, you know? I felt what I felt, and I guess that I didn't deal well with pushing my feelings away. So I wondered. Now and again.

It wasn't until I finished my tea, halfway out the door, that I stopped and stole a glance at Souma from over my shoulder. He was staring right at me.

And maybe it was his expectant, raised eyebrows that did it. Maybe it was the fact that I hated turning down bets, or maybe it was because I was lonely after all. Maybe it was, of all things, how cold it was outside. I can never be sure.

But I paused in that doorway, and as the frigid weather drifted into the cafe, I found myself nodding, once.

I managed to catch his grin, slow and strangely familiar, before I left. The bet was on.

Nagihiko

The sky was gray.

Gray. Isn't it the most depressing color known to man? Black and white are both lovely in their own respect, but their child turned out to be a rather ugly one. It sickens me, sometimes. Sometimes I get headaches from it. Just that color.

"Look at the snow." As said by Tadase, staring at the ground with a dear smile lighting up his face. "It's nice, isn't it?"

"It is," I agreed, because it was. It was too bad that the sky wasn't the same. I mean, wouldn't that have been great?

But it wasn't the same, and it wasn't great.

Tadase saw the snow because he was looking down. I saw the gray in the sky because I was looking ahead.

I can't tell you how naive my friend was. Of course he was like a brother to me, but he did what he was doing more often than someone like him should. Looking down only makes you clumsy, and you tend to run into things, especially if you believe that there's nothing to run into.

I wanted to break this to him in the softest way possible, but I didn't know what that way might be. Tadase was a fragile creature, after all, and his skin was growing thinner and thinner each day. I didn't know when it had happened, but something inside of him- the same thing that was making him stronger- had broken, and I was watching as his mind became like that of a child's. Back in elementary school, he'd been….bright. Like the sun. And now, he'd become a pale daisy, swaying with every breeze, believing himself to be strong enough to survive and smile at all around him.

Kindness isn't a life source. I wanted to tell him that, but I couldn't. Too weak to watch, to weak to save. I could feel him withering away from me.

I was smart, or so I'd long ago figured. I knew how to avoid pain like this. But it kept hitting me in the face, continuously, so maybe I wasn't as smart as I'd thought. Or maybe I was just a little masochistic. Kind of like a cycle, the way it worked. I'd solve a sadness, think I was free, and then fall into another one. Maybe the problem was that I cared too much. I always have, haven't I?

Love, I'd learned in my time with the Guardians, is kind of like a trap. Or an unfair bargain with false advertising. It starts with smiles and ends in sobbing messes. Sometimes the smiles will come back around, but it wasn't worth it, was it? How could it possibly be? Love wasn't worth its trouble; people were just….ignorant, I guessed. Even the love I had for my friends came with all sorts of stabs and betrayals, most of them not even intentional. I couldn't imagine getting so close to a person that they might have the power to hurt me any more than I've been hurt.

Tadase looked at the ground and smiled at the snow. He saw his friends, and he saw Amu. He saw his family, and then Amu again. He was in love with her, and it was so painfully obvious and doomed that I pretended as though I didn't know. At least, I told myself I didn't know.

I looked straight ahead and saw the sick, dark sky brush its deceptively pretty offspring. I saw my friends, and my family. I saw Mashiro Rima, but I ignored her. You see, I saw the ugliness of human closeness. I was done with being naive, and too smart to let myself get hurt so easily. Even before that winter, I'd sworn that I'd never let myself fall in love. There's too much pain involved, and never enough happiness.

Ikuto

Once I started coughing, Amu insisted that I went home.

Deciding that "home" could mean her house or my own, I chose her house in a heartbeat (Dad's burnt cookies would probably have me suffocating, anyway). She was going to the store, so I wouldn't miss out on anything big. Or so she said.

Her mother greeted me warmly, as she always did, offering some cookies and hot chocolate. I gladly accepted, chatted a bit, and headed up to Amu's room.

Yoru's tiny head was snuggled into the crook of my neck. He was awake, and I knew it, so as soon as I slid under the pink bedspread of Amu's bed, I reached in my pocket and gave him a part of a cookie I'd stashed.

"This is yummy-nya," he murmured cheerfully. "Thanks, Ikuto."

"No problem, Yoru," I replied. The ends of my fingers found his patch of hair, and I messed with it a little. He started to purr, which made me smile. "Thanks for being here, buddy."

He'd fallen asleep by the time I'd said that, but I didn't care. He was as sick as I was, so he needed the rest. I did too, but I couldn't sleep. So I laid a hand over him and closed my eyes, thinking.

Utau's Shugo Chara were sick, too. As were Tadase's and Fujisaki's. Yoru had been the same way before my eighteenth birthday. Dad had said that they were fading, that their time with us was slipping away. In other words, we were growing up. Creating different dreams and goals. Shaping ourselves into new people. It was…..it was kind of terrifying.

I guess I'd know firsthand, though. I was still seventeen because I was scared. Initially, I'd thought I was anxious about losing my best friend, and that was a part of it, but it wasn't the whole story. Blowing out the candles of a cheap cupcake on December 17th, all alone slumping on the ground at a train station, I'd been crying. I hadn't cried in years. I'd never felt so unprepared in my life.

Yoru had been limp against my stomach, growing lighter and lighter. And I'd made the dumbest, most immature wish I'd made in a long time.

I wish I didn't have to grow up. Not until I'm ready. Please. Please, don't take him from me.

And when he'd risen, hugging my neck and laughing ecstatically, I'd joined him, relieved. Relieved that my companion since childhood had been saved. Relieved that I didn't have to face the world alone.

But Yoru was sick again, and that meant that I was running out of time again. I didn't know if this meant I was ready, and I didn't feel ready. I took deep breaths, in and out, to rid myself of the fear seizing my lungs. I thought of Amu's smile, and inhaled her scent, and brushed my fingers against Yoru's hair, and listened intently to his purring. Before I knew it, I was asleep. Putting off my worries for the future. Ignoring reality while I could. Like a kid, I guess.

A/N: Again, sorry for the late update! ^^' This is faster though, isn't it? I mapped out the plot, and worked on the characters and how they'd be, and a lot of things are organized, so... I just don't have a lot of time guys. Gomenasai.

I have Classical Solo/Ensemble to practice for, and Choral UIL, and I have a Japanese-Speaking Competition to practice for, and homework, and chores, and a blog to run, and friends to keep up with, and church to attend, and I'm just not the lazy middle schooler with tons of free time that I was, guys. So sorry. ^^'

But thank you all for reading this far! I know it wasn't really a HOOKING first chapter, and neither is this one, but I have to set things up before the plot does its thing, you know? So thanks for bearing with me. :)

And a special thanks to those that reviewed! Gosh, I love reviews so much. They really fill me with happiness.

This is a really symbolic and metaphor-filled thing, so I'm guessing that I won't have as many fans of this fic, but it's all fine. I'm trying to mature a bit when it comes to writing in general. Shugo Chara may not be the best fanbase to try this on, as it targets younger girls, but I have a promise to keep. :)

Ikuto: You've really grown…..0_0

Amu: Where's the crazy, random, lazy Juli we knew a few months ago?

Me: Gone. I guess that's why I'm theming this fic with growing up. I can identify with you, Ikuto. It's freaking terrifying, and really sad. I miss being so carefree.

Amu: DON'T DO THIS TO US

Ikuto: GAH RIGHT IN THE FEELS OW

Me: Shizukanishitekudasai, minna. (Please be quiet, guys.)

Ikuto: SHE SPEAKS JAPANESE. NO. STOP.

Me: iie. (No.) Urusai. (you're being noisy/ shut up.)

Amu: SO ADVANCED

Me: Amu-chan wa dare desuka? (Who are you, Amu?) Amu-chan wa kawaii, desune? Doshite? Nande? Go kazoku wa dare to dare desuka? Amu-chan wa nanji ni bangohan o tabemasuka? Amu-chan wa ochya o nomimasuka? Nanji desuka? Doshite? (You're cute, aren't you, Amu? Why? How? Who are the people in your family? At what time do you eat dinner? Do you drink tea? What time? Why?)

Ima wa nanji desuka?

(What time is it?)

Amu: YAMETEEEEEEEEEEE! (STOP IIIIIIT!)

Lol, so there's my chat. Hope you guys enjoyed/ learned some useful phrases? Gosh, I'm tired. Hope you guys had a great New Year's and a V-day just as good. :) Until next time. Please review!