A/N: I lied. I've had this written out for weeks but never typed it. So sorry to my readers, though there probably aren't many of you left. Thank you for stick with me to the end.

"She died in my arms. I didn't even realize it until she was long gone. She looked so happy." A took a long drag of a cigarette I knew I shouldn't be smoking. It was a coping method. I could hear her voice in my head telling me it was a bad habit and I should probably quit. If she was here, I wouldn't need it.

The girl who sat across from me was not Minako. I'd tried to find something but everything from her eyes to her voice held no familiarity. There wasn't any resemblance at all. If I hadn't known better, I would never have thought they were cousins.

Naoto Shirogane. Master detective, and the last surviving member of her family. Her parents had died in a plane crash. Minako's parents and her brother died on the way to the funeral on Moonlight Bridge. In the week before, her grandfather had also passed away. The wake was this morning.

"I don't understand. Why are you telling me this? Why are you here?"

"My friend told me your grandfather had died. That his funeral would be today. I wanted to meet you." That wasn't the truth, but I wasn't going to tell her. It would only scare her.

"You wanted to see if I looked anything like Minako onee-chan." She was smart. I guess that's what it meant to be a master detective.

"That wasn't the only reason. I didn't realize it until after she died. I didn't know anything about her. She came, made a mess, and left. Her favorite foods, her favorite color, the things she liked to do, her childhood, her family, nothing. I don't know a thing."

She looked at me with pity and that hurt. She felt sorry for me but more than that, she couldn't help me. "I remember almost nothing about her."

My hand closed into fists. I'd expected this. Naoto had been three when her family had died. She'd been whisked away to live with her grandfather but Minako had not been of the Shirogane clan and she was left to an orphanage to grow up alone.

We sat in silence. It wasn't awkward. A little sad maybe. "People often tell me I look like her brother. The two were twins but she looked like her father whereas I assume he looked like his mother. All who are in the Shirogane clan have blue hair and gray eyes. His mother was my aunt and my father's sister. They would often visit when we were children. They were both very loud and happy. I followed them everywhere. They were three years older than me and I remember thinking they were so intelligent. They would make riddles for me to solve."

"She liked to eat oranges and vegetables but didn't like milk. Minato liked fruit. Her favorite colors were pink and orange. His were blue and black. The both liked to play cards and listen to music without words. Minato was faster but Minako was stronger. She would always win when they wrestled but only when she could catch him. When I was being bad she would sit on me until he cried for her to stop." Her words were apologetic but also sad and nostalgic. I believed the things she said. There was no other choice. I held onto every detail like it was water in a desert. Everything was a piece of the girl I had lost.

"Is that it? There's nothing else?"

She cast her eyes to the top of the table that sat between us. We were underneath a gazebo in a floodplain. There was no one for miles in this rain. She didn't want to disappoint me, but there would be nothing else. What should I expect from childhood memories? "I'm sorry I can't help you."

I smiled. It was the best I could do. "It's okay. I get it. You were just a kid, barely out of your diapers. I shouldn't have forced that on you, but you've given me a lot to work with. I wouldn't have known any of that stuff if I didn't come out here to see you."

She felt sorry for me, but she was also sad over the loss of her family. Her entire being sang of pity and regret for a man who couldn't get over the death of a girl he thought he loved. What a fool.

"Why didn't you tell her?"

"What?"

"In your story. You never told her you loved her. Why?"

I replayed all of our memories, every word and moment. It didn't take long. One replay out of millions. I knew she was right before I even answered her. I never said it. Not once.

"I don't know."

"She would've wanted to hear it."

"You think so?"

"Yes. Any woman would want to hear those words from the man she loved."

"Including you?"

She hesitated, and there was a thousand-year-old story in that moment of hesitation. She was probably thinking of a man or a memory. I would never know which. "Yes. Even me."

Part of me wanted to hear her story. I wondered if it would end like mine. I doubted it. It's not every day a bunch of teenagers get the magical ability to enter another dimension and fight monsters to the death. I laughed but it sounded more like a bark. I was too old to be talking about this shit with an under aged kid.

"You should go all out when you tell that guy your feelings. I can see you like him so don't hold back or you'll regret it in the end.

"Like you?"

That hit me like a ton of bricks but I recover fast. "Yeah... Like me."

We looked at one another as equals. The two of us were alone. The ones we wanted were not by our side. Maybe if we had been a little more reckless, a little braver, the result would have been different. I was not a romantic. I was not a man of fancy words, but if I had said it, we might've hit a different ending.

She smiled and for a quick second I could see Minako's smirk. It was knowing, a little cocky, an unspoken soliloquy. "Sayonara Aragaki Shinjiro."

"See ya later, Naoto Shirogane." Farewell, Minako Arisato. You will always be…