A/N Reborn as a Hot Spring wanted to see how it ends. Be careful what you wish for.

The rain comes hard on the windshield, and the wipers can't keep up. I don't mind. The driver keeps to himself, John holds my sweaty hand, and I can still pretend that there is nothing worth thinking about behind the curtain of rain.

"So, this is your hometown," John's warm smile makes my involuntary shudder easier to bear. He squeezes my hand. After six months I still can't get used to his open displays of affections. They are nice, but returning them takes an effort. You can take the girl out of Japan, but you can't take Japan out of the girl.

"You didn't visit your family once in all the time we've been together. I've started thinking you didn't want them to meet a gaijin like me." He looks at me like he expects a reaction.

All the time we've been together? Six months? I haven't gone back to Chiba in nine years. Not everything is about you, John.

"Makuhari Messe, madam," the driver says, and I take a deep breath. From the moment I step out, no matter what happens, I must show no weakness. Not to John, not to others. Once this evening is over I must still be able to live with myself and with the memories I make.

I step out of the car before the driver can open my door. The big, modern, ugly building is bathed in light. I've a feeling I am not in San Francisco anymore. I can smell wicked witches in the air.

We join the line of well-dressed people waiting to get in. I look around, but there is nobody I recognise. Thank heavens for small mercies.

"Look," John nods towards a big poster above the entrance. "Is that your friend, the writer? Would you recognise him?"

Oh, yes, I would, John. It has been almost ten years, but Hachiman looks the same. His hair a bit longer, the eyes still world-weary, a ghost of a smile on the lips, the new book in his hands. A discreet logo of the Yukinoshita publishing company at the bottom. Everything has changed, but he remains the same. He always refused to change for the world, but it seems he will not change for the time, either.

"Tsurumi-sama?" a soft voice almost makes me jump. A uniformed attendant is standing by my side, his head inclined politely.

"Yes." My voice is calmer than I feel.

"Would you, please, come with me? There is no need for you to wait in line." And he takes John and me past the waiting people and through the entrance, not even bothering to check my gold-embossed invitation.

I still recall the feeling of dread on that sunny San Francisco morning, a single luxurious envelope waiting on the wide, dark, glossy expense of my desk at Ollen&Avery. Receiving an actual, physical letter was strange enough, but, below the Latin script address, my name was written in kanji characters, obviously by a master calligrapher.

I don't know how long I kept looking at that spotless white rectangle, and its promise of pain, before I took it, carefully, like handling poison, and dropped it in the shredder.

Another letter arrived a few months later. That one I opened. It was an invitation for the presentation of Hachiman's latest book, and it died in shredder's sharp teeth, too. I got blind drunk that evening.

The third arrived last week.

So here I am. I know that coming here can only end in pain and regret. But not coming would have ended the same way. The devil and the deep blue sea. Nothing to be done about it. The choices that led here were made years ago.

And the invitations are a challenge, after all. Did I manage to build a life on the ruins of the old one? We will see, Hachiman. We will see who flinches first.

The attendant ushers us into a big ballroom, already half-full. I've never seen a book presentation like this. Every surface shines, every staff member smiles politely, the food is discrete but plentiful, and the guests are Chiba's richest and most powerful. Far too extravagant for a book author, even a successful one. I can feel certain woman's iron will and limitless resources behind it.

John looks impressed, and that annoys me. I know we won't be alone for long and looking impressed gives the other side an advantage I can't afford.

"It is a point of etiquette here to look indifferent and bored," I say as I watch a group of particularly well-dressed people head our way, led by the same attendant who brought us here. "Try to look the part."

I can feel his sidelong glance. "You never cared about etiquette back in the States." It might be my tone or my words, but his face is impassive and cool, and that is all I need.

The group reaches us, and the officials, politicians, corporate executives and councillors unfurl like petals, revealing what was hidden in the centre. What I knew was coming from the day I saw that envelope on my desk.

It is Yukino Yukinoshita, her elegant dress both demure and extravagant, her face smooth and calm, the midnight black hair showing a few silver strands that only make her look more exotic. Yukinoshita's eyes are as unforgiving as ever, her faint smile sharp, cold, and curled in distaste.

"Tsurumi-san," she looks at John, "I see you finally found a man desperate enough. My congratulations."

"Yukinoshita-san. You look great. I can only hope to look so well preserved when I am your age. How is your family? Are you still in touch with them?" John doesn't understand much, but he can see Yukinoshita's hanger-ons recoil in shock.

Her teeth still show behind the rictus of a smile. "Haven't lost any of that fake innocent girl's charm, I see. Still running? That is a solid lap, even for you, first running away to San Francisco and now running back home. Took you some time, but here you are. A full circle."

"Yukinoshita-san, even today I feel like a little girl compared to your mature charm. I particularly admired your taste. You always had the best friends… I mean acquaintances money could buy. Are your boyfriends similarly high-priced? Or is it a husband these days?" The last of her lackeys are drifting off, their faces carefully neutral. Hearing things like this said to a Yukinoshita is never good for your career.

Ten years ago, after that happened, everything started falling apart. Friends turned on each other, took sides, the Service Club against its founders. Ultimately, my parents relented and allowed me to transfer to a US school. But Yukinoshita obviously never forgot or forgave. I thought at least I had. I thought I was better than this.

Still, it is almost comforting to see that some emotions never change, no matter how many years pass.

Yukinoshita's face is composed, but terribly pale, only her cheeks flushed a deep red. She takes an actual step towards me, fists clenched, and I am happy, no, eager, to meet her halfway.

A hand grips my shoulder, and I turn to meet John's worried gaze. "Won't you introduce me to your… friend, Rumi?"

By the time I take a deep breath Yukinoshita is back in her impeccable shell. Her English is nearly perfect.

"I am Yukinoshita Yukino. Tsurumi-san and I used to have common acquaintances when she was in her high school." There are total strangers more intimate than what you describe.

"This is John Ryson, my boyfriend," I say, and John bows, but his smile is strained, and the empty conversation limps along like a dying horse.

I keep waiting for Yukinoshita to leave, there must be many things requiring her august attention. But she stays on, casting furtive glances towards the entrance, and I know that she is not done with me.

Finally, Yukinoshita's head jerks to the right, like a string is pulled, her eyes lock onto something with a single-minded intensity, and her whole face lights up. I have ever seen her come alive like this for one person, and I hope, desperately and earnestly, for her sake and mine, that something has changed, that she has moved on somewhere, anywhere, with her life.

John stops mid-sentence and follows her gaze and, with those two staring over my shoulder, I have no choice but to turn, although I know, with absolute certainty, what I am going to see.

It is a group of people, and some of them I know, and they are threading their way through the crowd, and Yukinoshita is waving them over. None of that matters at all. Hachiman is among them. Older, his hair longer, but the same Hachiman I first saw in that dreary summer camp, the same I chatted with all those happy mornings in his apartment, the same that smashed my life into pieces so tiny that I still haven't found them all.

Memories keep flooding back like a dam has burst, and I know something embarrassing is going to happen. I will yell, or wave, or gasp. So I keep still, not moving a muscle. I just need a few seconds to get my mind working, to get my breath back.

Hachiman looks our way, stops, and the group stops with him. I can't see his expression from this distance, but he doesn't move for long seconds. I know the feeling. He finally jerks into action, turns the other way. His back is now to me, disappearing slowly into the crowd, and I finally breathe out. I can't even say whether the feeling washing over me is relief tinged with bitterness or the other way around.

The crowd suddenly parts again, and Hachiman reappears, coming back, striding our way, the others trailing behind. I have mere seconds, but I am ready by the time he reaches us. Or as ready as I am ever going to be.

"Rumi," his eyes sweep over the others and go back to me, unreadable. "It is a surprise to see you here."

"Nobody is more surprised than I am, Hachiman. Sometimes things just happen." Sometimes all you can do is go with the flow and hope you miss the rocks.

Yukinoshita drifts to a frail-looking woman standing by Hachiman, hovering, almost touching her, in a way I can describe only as protective. And very unlike her.

"Allow me to introduce Mayako Hikigaya. Mrs Mayako Hikigaya," she repeats, in English. The way Yukinoshita bares her teeth wouldn't be out of place on one of those small, fierce, utterly merciless predators. "Hikigaya-kun's wife." Her eyes never leave my face.

As an attempt at intrigue it is pathetic. It might just work, on somebody as isolated as Yukinoshita is. But anybody who follows Japanese literature, let alone a person who, speaking purely hypothetically, has news alerts set to a certain name, could hardly miss details about his family life.

I turn to Mrs Hikigaya. I am calm and composed, a ready smile on my face. This is something I have been rehearsing since I boarded the plane. I start to speak, but my mind suddenly stutters, every thought blanketed out by a scream in my head.

My name! It should have been me! How dare you!

A whinging, entitled, pathetic little girl's voice. I believed it long gone.

"N-nice to meet you. I am Tsurumi Rumi, Hachiman's… acquaintance. This is my boyfriend, John Ryson." I studiously avoid looking at Hachiman's face. I fear he might react. I fear he might not. Better not to look.

My first impression was wrong. Mayako Hikigaya is not frail, she is delicate. And if I ever thought Yukinoshita and Yuigahama truly beautiful I stand corrected. Young, a lot younger than Hachiman, Mayako is slim and petite, pale to the point of translucence, her hair so black that the colour can only be natural. But those are just words that apply to hundreds of girls. Mayako radiates the flawless beauty of a heavily edited front page model. Seeing someone like that in real life is surreal, is unfair. Like having coffee with a fairy tale character.

She smiles, and the smile is so kind and guileless that I smile back, despite myself.

"Oh, I heard of you, Tsurumi-san. Hachiman and Yukinoshita-senpai mention you sometimes when they think I can't hear them. You are a part of their mysterious past," she actually giggles and Yukinoshita, Hachiman and I exchange what must be the world's most awkward series of glances.

"I like meeting Hachiman's old friends," she continues, so oblivious that my eyes narrow in suspicion for a moment. "He has so few of them. And the ones he has are the best friends in the world." Mayako takes Yukinoshita's hand and smiles.

"Indeed, I don't know what I would do without Yukinoshita-senpai and Yuigahama-senpai," she says, and I interrupt before another wave of love and adoration washes over me.

"Speaking of which, is Yuigahama here?" My voice sounds rough and uncouth, even to me.

"Oh, she is back home," Mayako replies, "taking care of Shiori. Aunt Yui is really spoiling her rotten, though Yukinoshita-senpai is no better. I sometimes think that we are taking advantage of both of you," and she bows to Yukinoshita, "but you enjoy spending time with Shiori so much!"

"Nonsense. I couldn't care more for her if she was my own." Yukinoshita smiles, sounding so in earnest that I shudder.

"Shiori is our daughter. She is two," Hachiman explains to no one in particular, though I suspect I am the only one that doesn't know. "Our babysitter is sick, so Yuigahama offered to help."

I keep silent, just barely. The whole thing sounds so creepy that I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Miura is doing their laundry.

"They are always there for us," Mayako continues, "They are family, really," and I am not at all sure whether the slight ripple of a grimace passing across Hachiman's face was just a play of light.

"I am grateful to you for many things, Yukinoshita-senpai. But most of all for introducing me to Hachiman," Mayako's eyes shine when she looks at him. If love was a radiation we would all have to be treated for an overdose.

"Yes, we are all thankful to Yukinoshita," Hachiman says, blandly, and, somehow, incredibly, Mayako keeps on smiling. Yukinoshita doesn't.

"But, more importantly, Rumi, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company. It has been, what, ten, fifteen years?" Hachiman's eyes finally turn my way, and the emotion in them is something I never saw him direct at me.

"I am not sure how long it has been myself, Hachiman. Time just flies when I am away from here." He winces, almost too fast to notice. The wan smile that follows is even worse. Whatever else we've lost the ability to hurt each other survives intact. Naturally.

His eyes drift to John. "I see you brought a friend."

"A boyfriend, Hachiman."

"He must not know you very well."

"Oh, he knows me well indeed," I smirk, and Hachiman's face goes pale and taut, his eyes cold.

"Why are you here, Rumi? Nobody misses you." The pain is sharp, crisp, clean, like a needle going all the way through me. I know nobody does. Still, anger wells up.

"You are the one to ask me that? After all those invitations you sent?!" My voice is rising, and people in groups around us start turning.

"Invitations? Is this again one of your delusions? Like I would ever invite you." There is contempt now on his face, and that hurts far more than anger.

My hand drops into the purse and grabs at random, tissues, keys, makeup spilling out. Finally I have it, the gold, the paper, the words, all crumpled in my hand, as they should have been from the start. I move to throw it in his face, but somebody grips my hand.

It is John. Again.

"Do... not... touch me!" I spit with more venom I ever intended. There is no taking the words back. His hand drops and his face goes from worried to slack with shock.

I throw the invitation on the floor. Nobody moves to pick it up.

"I…" Yukinoshita speaks up, and both Hachiman and I turn to her in perfect synchronicity. She almost recoils but keeps on going. "I invited her."

"You what?" Hachiman's voice is so calm and level that I have to struggle to hear it.

"I invited her, Hikigaya-kun," Yukinoshita is getting paler with each word, but she looks him steadily in the eye. Whatever her faults avoiding responsibility has never been one of them. "Some of our last ten years have been…" and her eyes flick to me "... difficult. But we overcame all the challenges. Together."

"I just wanted her to see how happy we..." and she goes silent, her eyes wide. Hachiman smiles, ever so slightly, but there is no joy in it. "I just wanted her to see how happy you and Mayako were."

Hachiman looks at her in silence that slowly stretches from uncomfortable to unbearable. Yukinoshita somehow grows smaller under that pitiless gaze, but she doesn't avert her eyes. I admire her for that.

"We will talk about this later," Hachiman says, finally, and Yukino Yukinoshita, the powerful, feared, ruthless head of the Yukinoshita conglomerate, just nods meekly and looks away.

He turns to me, and his face comes alive with emotions again. Not the good kind, though.

"This changes nothing. Nobody forced you to come, Rumi."

"I missed you," I pause deliberately, and enjoy the brief flicker of panic in his eyes, "all my old friends."

"It was never possible for us to be friends," he throws my old words back at me, and I wince. He is right. "And you only have two kinds of friends, anyway. Ex-friends and those you haven't stabbed in the back yet."

"I stabbed you in the back? Everything I did was for you! You almost killed me, you sanctimonious, self-absorbed bastard!"

"That is rich coming from you! You ran abroad, like a coward, never called, never wrote, left me to pick up the pieces!" Hachiman's face is all red, his tired eyes no longer tired at all.

"Pieces!" I almost shout and see drops of spittle flying from my lips. I would be embarrassed if the all-consuming rage left room for any other emotion. "You talk to me about pieces! You smashed my life! Twice I told you how I felt and twice you rejected me!"

That is the part that still hurts the most. A broken heart, ruined hopes are one thing. They heal, or at least scab over. But the wounded pride, the humiliation of having to tell Hachiman I loved him twice, and be rejected twice, still burns like it happened yesterday.

"I never rejected you! It is all in your mind, as always. I needed time, but you never had any patience, did you?" Is that how it looks to him? Is he really that delusional?

"You are just a coward, Hachiman. You were always too cowardly to choose, and today you are afraid to face what you did. I told you I loved you." Twice. "And you rejected me. I told you I would go away and that is what I did. To save what sanity I had left. You coward."

My eyes are wet, and I blink furiously. I will be damned if I add the image of me crying to the memories of this night that I know will come back to haunt me.

I look around. We are on our own. John is nowhere to be seen, all of Hachiman's companions are gone, there is only a white-faced Yukinoshita tugging at Mayako's arm, dragging her away from the two of us.

I breathe in deeply. We have embarrassed ourselves enough, and I am at least as much to blame as Hachiman. It is unlikely we will ever see each other again, and there is no need to part on worse terms than they already are.

I turn to him, the words of an apology dying on my lips.

Hachiman is close, too close, his hands clenched like he wants to punch me, his eyes burning with anger.

"I don't need you. I don't want you. I have a life now, such as it is. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out from. Go back to fucking Americans, that is what you are best at." There is malice in his smile I never believed him capable of.

"Better than fucking a porcelain doll while thinking of somebody else," I whisper back.

Hachiman freezes in mid-sentence. Slowly, ever so slowly, the rage drains from his face. He is still looking at me, but his eyes are focusing on somewhere else. Or, possibly, sometime else. I can follow brief flickers of hurt, shame and realisation on that face I know better than my own.

"Oh," one of us whispers, and I will not know who to my dying day.

I didn't mean it that way, Hachiman. I didn't know. I take it back.

I didn't know.

There are a hundred things I want to say, I want to do, but none of them of least help now.

I feel like one of those cartoon characters that takes step after step off a cliff, never noticing. Now I've looked down, and it is a terribly long way to the bottom, and the cliff is so far away.

"I hate you," Hachiman says, clearly and loudly.

And I am falling.

I hate you more, I want to shout back, but it's no use. How do you hurt somebody who hates you by pretending to hate him back?

I look around, and there is nobody in the whole enormous ballroom looking our way, paying any attention to our noisy little drama. Hundreds of people, and they all look elsewhere, anywhere but this way. Somehow, it is more embarrassing than being the centre of attention.

So that's it, then. The end of the affair. Or the end of something, at least. We had something, right?

I look at Hachiman once again, for a long time. This memory will have to last. I don't think I will be seeing him again. Once in a decade has been enough. More than enough if I value my sanity.

"Goodbye, Hachiman." I turn to leave.

"Please," and I freeze. The word is so unlike him that for a moment I think that somebody had snuck up on us.

"When I say I hate you, I mean…" I can see muscles in his neck working, but no words come out.

"What I mean is that, for a long time." Hachiman's mouth snaps suddenly, halfway through the sentence. His fists are clenched, and he keeps leaning towards me, like reducing the physical distance will help in some way.

Seeing him this way is a torture for both of us, and I finally understand romantic stereotypes that require that I run away, right now. It is painful, and it is scary, but I will not leave him standing here, gasping like a fish out of water. I will stay and hear what he has to say.

"I am here, Hachiman." That seems to help. He draws a deep breath and tries again.

"I… I didn't like you from the very start." What?

"We were so different. I just couldn't connect, couldn't understand you." I open my mouth, but Hachiman raises his hand.

"Then you revived the Service Club, started coming to me for advice. I really grew to dislike those mornings we spent together, chatting, being around each other. Really detested them." His smile is wistful and sad, and I can't get enough of it.

"When you stopped coming I didn't care. Barely noticed. Nothing changed in my life," his smile grows, and I think I am smiling, too. Strange how quickly smiles feed off each other.

"That is when I knew that I… " and the muscles in his neck go taut again, words stuck in his throat. I touch his hand, the first touch in ten years, one of the precious few ever, and Hachiman looks up at me, startled, his eyes troubled and haunted.

I nod, and he smiles again, even relaxes a bit. I could get used to that smile.

"That is when I knew that I hated you," his smile turns bitter.

"I tried to say it. Wanted to. But saying it, back then, would have meant hurting many people. And there was always the next week, or the next month. Until there wasn't. Until you disappeared, leaving a girl-shaped wrecking ball hole behind." Good to see I am not the only one whose mind is filled with all those memories like an old attic.

"Not that I missed you, or anything. So I continued hating you, and, over the years, perhaps grew to hate you a bit, too. After all, you can't loathe just yourself all the time. You need some company," and it is all so familiar that I barely need to nod my understanding.

"Anyway, there it is. My very own little story of hate and hate." Not exactly just your, is it?

"I wonder whether it happened the same way with all those ordinary people and office slaves I used to mock. You start with an ideal, you try to do the right thing and not hurt people you care about, you make a compromise, then another. And you end up like this," his gaze is steady on me, but I can't resist glancing across the hall, where Mayako is chatting away happily at a tight-lipped Yukinoshita.

It is not exactly an office slave life, Hachiman. But I know what you mean.

So here we are. Something perhaps not very far from the truth finally laid bare. Everything I ever wanted. Inevitably, in the worst possible way.

"Do I need to say it, Hachiman?" After so much time the name is no longer a curse on my lips.

"No, Rumi." The things I would have done once to see him smile like that. "I've heard it two times already. Unless something has changed," the old insecurity comes creeping back, and it is so him that I want to laugh and cry.

"Nothing has changed," and if I didn't know it before this evening, I certainly know it now.

He kept exerting gravitational pull over years and thousands of kilometres. It is a constant. It will never go away. I will just have to find a way to live with that fact. Like an oyster and a grain of sand. Everything smoothes over in time.

"It is getting late, Hachiman." It really isn't, but I can feel poisonous looks. Our many significant others will soon be back to claim us.

"I should be going." Taking my eyes off him is… not easy.

"Will you be coming back soon, Rumi?" He is just asking a question that must be asked. Though we both know the answer, it, too, must be said.

"I don't think so. Frankly, I think that coming back to Japan once in a decade is far too often. All the attention and excitement, you know, I can't really stand them." What we have left are mere minutes together. If that.

"Take care, Rumi." You have no right to look at me that way, Hachiman. Please, never stop.

"See you on the other side, Hachiman." A movement seen from the corner of my eye stops me mid-turn.

He raises his hand in the middle of that sumptuous hall, in front of all those people, and touches my face.

"I never wanted to do this, all these years."

His fingers brush my cheek, drift softly to my ear, exactly where his lips grazed me the single other time, back then, in front of the university. I like to think it is no coincidence.

The silence in the car is suffocating, yet I hesitate to break it. Far better to watch the rain than to say what needs to be said. My hand traces the line where Hachiman's touch still lingers. The heat it is radiating scalds the fingers, and I have to stop myself from bringing them to my mouth.

John comes to my rescue, as he always does.

"Sou ka." John speaks very little Japanese, but there is no misunderstanding this.

'Yes, that's how it is', I think, and the words echo between us, even unsaid.

"You know," he seems to be fascinated by the rain, too, "I always thought it was a cultural thing. Or a purely personal thing. That you had trouble expressing your feelings. That you were less open. I was fine with that." I only see one side of his face, and it is strangely calm, impassive.

"On good days I thought it would just take time. On bad ones I thought you would always love me less than I loved you. I was fine with that, too. Some people's emotions are just more subdued." He turns to me, finally, and his eyes are calm and clear. The eyes of a man who has no more doubts.

"But it is not like that, is it? You are not incapable of deeper feeling. You just can't feel that way about me."

He waits, but there is really nothing to say.

"That guy…" he starts, and then, mercifully, thinks better of it.

In the end, he just nods. I expect another "sou ka", but his interest in Japanese seems to be waning.

"Once we drop you off at the hotel I will go straight to the airport." I knew this was coming, but it is still a shock.

"Will you come upstairs to pick up your luggage?" My first words since I entered the car and perhaps they should have been kinder words. But it's not a good evening for kindness.

Something coordinating muscles in John's face fails badly and his attempt to smile ends up twisted and grotesque. I don't think he knows.

"I don't want to step inside that apartment again," he says, and it is my turn to grimace now.

"I am sorry, John." He didn't deserve this.

"It is what it is."

We don't speak again.

I am dripping water all over the apartment floor, but I had to revisit my old Chiba route one last time. Running past midnight, in my jeans, my best sensible shoes, in the pouring rain. Probably the most rational thing I did tonight.

I take a shower, pack away John's stuff, watch TV, stare through the window. Completely exhausted in more ways than one, I still can't sleep. Welcome back to Chiba, where sleepless nights are guaranteed.

There have been far too many last times tonight. The whole trip to Japan has been like falling down the rabbit hole, revisiting some alternate reality where angles are not right, parallel lines intersect, and old friends still live in mutated, malignant high-school dramas. No wonder John ran away.

I can't wait to get back to San Francisco. Back to my regular, decaf, air conditioned, regimented reality. Where people say what they think and occasionally even think what they say.

I toss and turn in my bed, formerly our bed, when a light somewhere goes on and off. I turn around, but it is gone. Then it is on again. It is coming from the nightstand, where my mobile phone, my personal mobile phone, starts blinking steadily into the darkness. There are very few people who have the number, and none who would send anything at this hour, here or in San Francisco.

I stare at it, and it blinks back. A message. A message. A message.

I sit on that big bed in a warm hotel room, my knees under my chin, arms wrap around them, and still I can't keep myself from shivering. I stare at the blinking light until the morning comes.