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Horns honked, lights changed, crowds surged, and Mikage was invisible. That was how it was when you sat on a city sidewalk with a sign explaining you were down on your luck and could anyone spare some change for you to buy something to eat: suddenly everyone within a two-block radius was studiously blind to anything on street level, fixed solely on some distant point straight ahead. Your education, eloquence, experience, and everything meant nothing. The outside world was that kind of place. It was so much faster and colder and more uncaring than he could have ever imagined.Truly, graduation was a punishment for the unready—an exile from Eden.He didn’t bother to sigh, though he’d spent many breaths in lament in the early days, as yet another clutch of wealthy-looking adults walked past his sign and donations cup without a second glance. On rare occasion, those who hated the fact that poor people would exist in public yelled at him to get a job. Mikage had not seen fit to explain that it was difficult at best to obtain employment, even if you were educated on a master’s level with excellent extracurriculars, if you had no home, no references, and a dubious history at best. He’d seen other beggars perform for their donations—dancing, singing, playing the guitar—but he wasn’t an artist, he was a mathematician. What was he supposed to do? Explain the Planck constant for the public’s amusement? Solve calculus problems with imaginary numbers like they were circus tricks? And anyway, it mattered little. Even if he proved the existence of eternity itself, as long as he remained in an undesirable shell, he could never prepare the way before himself.So instead he clutched his hair, greasy and scraggly from lack of wash—when you were homeless and dirty, he had found, people begrudged even your use of public facilities—and stared across the sea of concrete and asphalt that spread around him in all directions. What city was he in now…? He’d forgotten. His memory had grown even spottier since he’d left Ohtori Academy. Been forced out of Ohtori Academy. If it weren’t for the occasional clinks of yen and brief but pitying looks, he would wonder if perhaps he were dead, if now he were only a ghost haunting the outside world.But that would be too easy, too merciful. Ghosts didn’t feel light-headed from hunger. Ghosts didn’t feel humiliated by their tattered, unwashed garments. Ghosts didn’t think longingly of the school life where they had been respected and feared… well, no, perhaps they did that one. But they wouldn’t huddle under park benches at night for warmth and a few snatches of slumber, praying that neither rain nor policemen found them, knowing as autumn grew increasingly chilly that winter inevitably would.Slumber. Nemuro, Nemuro… To sleep, perchance to dream… No, that too would be the easy way out. Mikage had long since concluded that if he ended his own life, only oblivion would await him. No Mamiya, no Tokiko, no one would greet him, just as no one had greeted him on his way out of his time-plated Paradise Lost. He would simply cease to exist.Sort of like he functionally had now. That realization prickled his mind and skin. If it made no difference, then…?…No. That was the hunger talking. He rubbed his forehead, glanced at the meager contents of his donations pan; then he folded his arms on his knees and rested his head upon them. Horns honked, lights changed, crowds surged, and Anthy strode forward. Her pink dress and purple hair fluttered around her thighs as she walked, head held high. There was a time when she would have preferred to die than inflict herself upon a sea of strangers. Then she found there was something—someone—for whom it was worth braving the most chilling of terrors. Each time she challenged the outside world, it actually left her feeling a little better about herself. I made it through, I didn’t collapse, I didn’t fall back into a shell of myself, she could tell herself. And then: Utena, I’ve come a little closer to you. It won’t be long now!On her shoulder, Chu-Chu rode, eyes bright and ears open for all the sounds of the city. Her brother had told her many times, long ago, that the outside world was just as cold and uncaring as the world within her coffin, so at least she could stay with the devil she knew. That line had worked on her for so very, very long… The crowds might be vast and uncaring even in the outside world, but it was easier with even a single companion. She smiled warmly at the little monkey, and Chu-Chu squeaked affectionately back.Then he turned his head, and he yelped, he yelped and leapt into the air in bound after bound, pointing desperately at something. She turned her gazes towards where he indicated and—She sucked in a sharp intake of air—There, ahead of them, past the busy streets and throngs of human bodies, was a patch of pink hair.Anthy thrust herself forward like a saber strike, and Chu-Chu tumbled in mid-air and grabbed hold for dear life onto the strap of her white purse. Though she stumbled from time to time, though she crashed into strangers who yelled at her to watch where she was going, she didn’t stop moving forward, couldn’t keep her gaze off that figure, slumped, defeated and in despair. Tears stung her eyes, and with one final push, she burst through the crowd and staggered to a halt before the one she sought.“Utena?!” she called, heated and hopeful and so, so yearning. An achingly familiar voice called an achingly familiar name. Half-asleep as he was, memories mixing with reality, Mikage lifted his head and saw a blur of an achingly familiar form. “Mamiya…?” he whispered in a voice cracked from disuse.Then his vision cleared. Mikage stared at the former Rose Bride.Anthy stared back at the once Professor Nemuro.“Ah,” they uttered in unison. ~*~ The spoon’s clinking on ceramic jangled Mikage’s nerves as much as the rich scent of black coffee soothed them. In the end, it was a zero sum balance, and he took a shallow sip of his roast as Anthy mixed hers with cream.“I’ve never understood people who cut their coffee with cream or sugar,” he remarked, cradling his mug and letting its heat thaw his fingers. “If one doesn’t want a bitter drink, one shouldn’t be drinking coffee.”“I used to think the same way,” Anthy replied, setting her spoon to one side and picking up her own mug with long, delicate fingers. She took a longer sip, then set it down. “Then I realized the value of sweet to go along with the bitter.”Mikage had no response for that, so instead, he glanced around the coffee shop to which Anthy had brought him. It wasn’t a large place, and based on the fact that the single barista was also the single server, he suspected that it was a pet project that made little if any money, but it was absolutely stuffed with memories. The walls and furniture were polished ash wood, and antique lamps decorated tables and green plush booths along with knit doilies. The walls were hung with framed portraits of decades long gone by, and a phonograph played a pleasant, nostalgic tune. The lighting was low and intimate, a combination of the lamps and small windows high up on the walls; the most light came from the door in at the top of a stairwell leading in from ground level. It was the type of place he might have brought Mamiya, once upon a time. Mamiya had always preferred the darkness of underground places.A Mamiya had, anyway. Mikage still wasn’t sure when the Mamiya who had been his co-conspirator had traded places with the Mamiya with the freckled face, though hindsight armed him with some suspicions. How astounding, what yearning for a beautiful memory could make one overlook.He took another sip of coffee. Somehow, it was even more scalding than the first.“Why did you bring me here?” he asked then, because it was a question that could no longer be delayed. It asked many things at once, and here was the least important of them. Anthy drank deep of her coffee. She had never been one for coffee before, but she liked the way that the liquid turned the same shade of brown as her skin when she mixed it with just enough pale cream. It felt then like she was imbibing herself, taking the thing that everyone around her had always carelessly consumed and becoming one with it once more. When she was feeling particularly vicious, she could imagine it as her brother’s skin instead, now the one consumed instead of the one doing the consuming. Those thoughts did pass her mind fleetingly in the present moment, but she swept them aside. Right now, she drank of herself.“Why did you bring me here?” her companion asked then.“You seemed cold,” she replied. On the table, Chu-Chu gnawed through artificial sweetener packets.“That’s all?” he said, ringing with skepticism.“Do you need another reason?”“It’s not a kindness I would have expected, considering what I kept trying to do to you.”“You were hardly the only one who did ill by me, and of everyone who did, you were hardly the worst,” Anthy said calmly. On the table, Chu-Chu gnawed through cane sugar packets.“Trying to kill you was ‘hardly the worst’?”“In many ways, if you’d succeeded, it would have been a kindness.”Chu-Chu began to gnaw into a salt packet, paused when he reached its contents, burst into tears, and flung it away. The one who called himself Mikage flinched back as white granules flew everywhere, but Anthy only took another sip.Presently, he settled and followed suit. “You look in good spirits,” Mikage observed then. He had never seen the Rose Bride in such bright clothes, with her hair unbound, without any glasses. “Does that have something to do with why you’re so far from Ohtori Academy?”Neither had he ever seen her smile so warmly. “Yes.”“...I note that Tenjou Utena isn’t with you,” he observed again.“She will be,” Anthy replied, undaunted.Mikage was not one for hunches. He preferred cold, concrete facts, ones that lined up dutifully when you counted them, and not emotion-based guesswork that spilled everywhere if you slipped in the slightest way. Still, seeing her now, knowing what he did, he had to surmise, “Did she revolutionize the world?”“She revolutionized a world,” Anthy corrected him. “As it turns out, that was enough.”“...I see.” He lowered his gaze to his drink; his haggard face stared back at him palely. “So she succeeded where I failed… I hope you reunite with her soon.”That seemed to surprise her, if her blink was any indication. “Thank you.” She paused. “But why do you say that?”“I have no grudge against you. If she’s the reason you look so happy, then good for you. May you have a happy future together.” He could have left it at that—certainly it would have made the conversation more pleasant—but he continued, “Perhaps that sounds odd, coming from me. While I sought your death, it was never personal. It was simply what needed to be done.” He shut his eyes. One could almost believe him noble, with words like that. Thoughts of Tokiko striking him across the face made him add, “...Since to my eyes, you were nothing more than an object to be replaced.” It wasn’t the first time someone had said such a thing about Anthy. It wasn’t the first time someone had said such a thing to her face, or at least in her presence. It was unusual, however, for someone under her power and in her debt to be so plain about it.“Oh?” she prompted.“That’s all,” he said. “I simply never thought of you as a person until now. It was easy and convenient for me. If you weren’t a person, then killing you was a matter of no consequence.” His thumb traced down the side of his mug. “...And Mamiya would be able to gain eternity.”“It takes a certain passion to be willing to kill for someone you love,” Anthy observed.Mikage said nothing. He brooded into his mug for a moment; then he drained it and leaned back in his booth seat. While he sagged there, Anthy caught the barista’s eye and gave them a nod. They came by a moment later and refilled his cup.“I was a fool,” he murmured as the barista walked away. “I never noticed that he had already died. Everything I did was meaningless.”Anthy sipped her coffee. Chu-Chu sulked, feet dangling off the edge of the table.“...but I suppose you have no reason to care,” he added, wearily sitting upright. He blinked at the sight of his mug, and turned in time to see the barista return to their spot behind the bar. Then he sighed and cradled his cup between his hands. “Thank you for the coffee. I should have said earlier.”“You’re welcome,” she said. “It’s not much, I know.”“It’s more than I deserve.”Anthy set her now-empty mug down, thumb tracing the curve of the handle. Chu-Chu hung his head.“You should go,” he prompted her, curled over his refill. “You have someone out there for you.”“...And nothing for me here?” she guessed.Mikage gave her a thin smile and nothing more.“Does my presence bother you that much?” “Yes,” he said truthfully, though he didn’t think she’d take kindly to it. The fact that she didn’t outwardly react meant little. “When I look at you, somehow, I start to see Mamiya again.”Her gaze was steady and implacable. “I see.”“It sounds nonsensical, I know,” he added. “But in the end, I’m a ghost of the past that could never let go of his few precious memories.” He glanced away in shame. “It’s no wonder I began to lay Tokiko’s image over Tenjou Utena’s… though I didn’t realize that until after I ‘graduated.’”“Not once you lost the duel?”He laughed like a faint sigh. “I was in a bit of shock at the time. I suppose that sounds pathetic.” Anthy didn’t respond, so he continued, “In any case, it’s not good for me or you for us to stay together. I can’t repay you with money or favors, so you’re best off returning to your search.”Anthy threaded her long fingers together and tilted her head at him. “Why do you think you need to repay me?”“Illusions are powerful indeed when you want to believe the fairy tale they show you. But I’ve already been stripped of all that. I know the weight of my sins.”She considered this for a moment. Then she tilted her head the other way. “If you really think that’s what’s the best for me, why don’t you leave first?”Mikage paused. To leave first would mean to surrender the warmth and comfort and refills of the coffee shop, to return to the cold streets where he was invisible and miserable. Then he half-sighed, half-chuckled. Yes, he understood what she meant. “You’re right. I’ll do that.”Half-rising from his seat, he reached for his mug to drain it before he went, but before he could pick it up, Anthy rested her hand over his. Startled, he looked up, and wine red eyes met leaf green.“You really are like Utena,” she said, smile rueful. “And I know the weight of my sins, too.” His confusion was palpable in the way it furrowed his brow, parted his lips, and made him blink. Anthy’s smile deepened at the sight.“What do you mean?” he asked.“Have you ever wondered who the false Mamiya was?”He stared at her like that was a question he’d never realized he needed to consider. He sat back down. “Why are you asking that?”She let her hand and eyes linger on his until his hand tensed and his eyes widened.“...You?” he whispered.Anthy shut her eyes and pulled her hand away. “Yes.”Silence rung between the scratchy beats of the phonograph. Then she heard a low heh, followed by an almost noiseless, heartbroken laugh.“I see… I see. So you and Ends of the World used me from beginning to end,” he murmured. “It all seems so obvious in retrospect, but at the time, I didn’t notice at all. It was all a lie, and I drank it up without even pausing to notice the flavor of deceit...”Anthy opened her eyes. Mikage’s gaze was on the ceiling as he slumped again on the back of his booth seat. He sighed like a coffin lid pulled open for the first time in decades, then took his coffee and cradled it like it was his sole remaining support.“After I took up the Rose Signet, Mamiya came to me,” he told the air. “I thought Tokiko was lost to me, but I wasn’t completely convinced, either. He brought me roses and said, all of a sudden, that he wanted eternity. That… was you, was it?”Anthy said nothing.“When… I set that building ablaze… was he still inside?”“I couldn’t say. But whether he was or not,” she murmured, “Chida Mamiya still died a long, long time ago.”“I see… I see.” He drank deep of his brew. “How fitting. I fancied myself a puppet-master, never noticing the strings on my own limbs.” His sorrowful smile settled like dust on an abandoned house.“You seem less upset than I thought you would be,” Anthy noted.“Were you expecting me to be angry with you? I suppose I am, at that. But even if the two of you manipulated me, the hand on the candelabra was my own. At this point, all I can do is apologize to Mamiya and Tokiko for what I’ve done… and what I’ve failed to do.”His words floated in the air like dust motes in dying sunlight between them. She studied him, then looked down at Chu-Chu. He looked up at her, and the two of them shared a nod. “What are you doing?” Mikage wondered as Anthy pulled her purse into her lap. Next to her, her tiny monkey companion stood up from the edge of the table and used an unbroken packet to begin to sweep up the salt he’d spilled.“You said you couldn’t repay me with either money or favors,” she said as she rummaged through her belongings. “But there is something you could do for me, if you’re willing.”He frowned. “What is it?” he asked, then took a drink.“When I left Ohtori, there was someone I never saw on my way out, even though the world should have changed,” she said, pulling out a pair of envelopes. A pre-folded, blank sheet of stationery followed, and she wrote upon it as she spoke. “And he stated he intended to restart the duels. However, the duels won’t run without a Rose Bride. With me gone, he would have to find a replacement… and I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone, no matter how much I hated her.”“Who are you talking about? The one you never saw, I mean,” he clarified. From the way she spoke, he couldn’t imagine she meant Utena.“Someone connected to you, too,” she replied. “I don’t want to see her again, and even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to save her anyway. You can only save yourself… with, perhaps, a helping hand.”Mikage glanced at the letter, setting his mug down. The top curled up, hiding the addressee, but the message itself was simple to decipher, even upside-down: I forgive you. Please, forgive yourself. Love, Anthy.Reading it, his whole body seemed to squeeze in on itself. He mustered one word: “Why?”“Because you’re convenient. Because you’ve wronged me. Because I’ve wronged you. Because we both wronged her. Because I have faith again in both second chances and moving on. Because you now recognize the price of your illusions—something you now have over him.” Anthy paused, setting her pen down in consideration. “Because… no one else is left to give her a hand. And because both you and I have reason to spit in the eye of the Ends of the World.”That stirred his interest and something long-frozen, deep in his chest. “What would you have me do?” Eyes alight with lively mischief, she smiled. She slipped the letter into one envelope and addressed it, then pulled open the other envelope and filled it with yen bills. As Chu-Chu finished sweeping the salt into a neat little pile, she set both face-down on the space between herself and Mikage.“Deliver this letter for me,” she said. “The money will be enough for what you need to do so. If you refuse, I understand. I leave them for you still.”His gaze was troubled as he stared down at the envelopes. Anthy mused that he had remarkable self-control to not simply take them. Then again, he’d always been like that. Akio had had to give him an extra push before he accepted the Signet.“Is it good for me to return to the Academy?” he asked, perhaps of her, perhaps of himself. “I have no place there any longer.”“It may not be,” Anthy admitted all the same. “It isn’t for me. That’s why I ask this of you to do in my place.”He looked up at her. “Can I return? I already ‘graduated’ once.”“Those who have graduated from Ohtori Academy cannot return to what they once were,” she replied, tracing a finger along the lip of her mug. “But it’s not entirely barred to those who are older and wiser, either.”His gaze clouded. “Wiser… I’m not sure about that. But...” He paused, first to peer into his mug, then to take a deep drink. He frowned at her when he was done. “Himemiya Anthy. What is the outside world to you?”“Freedom.”“Freedom?” He made a bitter noise that wasn’t quite a snort and wasn’t quite a chuckle. “This dismal, disconnected world is ‘freedom’?”“Freedom is sometimes terrifying. But it’s because of that that you’re free to choose.”“...I have no place in the Academy any longer. But I have no place in this world, either.” He stared into space for a moment; then his focus returned. “All things being equal, then, I suppose it makes no difference if I return long enough to deliver a letter. I’m only concerned that once I’m back, I won’t want to leave again.”“It might be better if you didn’t.”He startled. “What? Why?”“Every school needs its teachers, and Ohtori Academy has a dearth of ones who know their illusions. Wouldn’t you say so, Professor Nemuro?”His eyes widened.“...But,” she added, standing up, “all I ask of you is to deliver a letter. You must prepare the way before you on your own.” She leaned over, hands on the table, to bump her forehead to his; then she scooted out of the booth, stretching out a hand for Chu-Chu to jump onto and race up her arm onto her shoulder, and walked away. Mikage watched her go, first to pay the barista, then as she left the shop, leaving the clarion call of bells in her wake. Then he lowered his gaze to the envelopes, picked them up, and turned them over to reveal the addressee in Anthy’s neat, flowing script: To Ms. Ohtori Kanae.Someone still trapped in the garden of eternity. Someone who couldn’t escape, even when the world changed… Someone who needed to be saved, to save herself, but needed a hand to guide her to the way out first. Someone no doubt wrapped tight in the Ends of the World’s web.The first of his Black Roses. The last of those he had agonized for nothing.Perhaps nothing would change. Perhaps everything would. Either way, it wasn’t like him to leave an equation unsolved, and he’d found none of the solutions he needed in this world.Tucking the envelopes into his pocket, the Professor took one more refill to go.