The sky looked like rain the day of the funeral. A strong, cold breeze ruffled the hair and clothing of the mourners. The pastor spoke as they all looked solemnly at the casket.

The man under the glass cover looked much like he had in life- tall, broad shouldered, black hair shot with silver, in his fifties. There was no outward evidence of the disease that had killed him.

A group of seven gathered slightly closer to the coffin than the rest of the crowd. A man and a women, both brunettes at the end of middle age, held each other close, smothering tears. Another man, appearing roughly a decade younger. He dabbed at his bespectacled eyes as his companion comforted him. She was a woman in her mid twenties who looked very much like the man, save for her bright blue hair. A woman with long hair that had once been dark but was now mostly silver stood with her arms wrapped around herself, tears silently flowing down her face.

The two remaining women in the group were easy to categorize. The one to the left, a petit woman in a black pea coat, was bawling freely, obviously the bereaved widow. The other appeared at first to be a normal teenaged girl, though and extraordinarily attractive one. She was short and slim, and her silver hair trailed down to her ankles. She wasn't crying, but her large amber eyes betrayed her pain. Clearly the daughter of the deceased. A second look would reveal pink and white earports on the side of her head- a persecom. Not so unusual, anymore. People took their persecoms everywhere, a funeral was no stretch. It was becoming less and less strange for a barren couple to adopt one, even. To the casual onlooker, these two would appear to be wife and child.

But if the casual onlooker assumed as such, they would be wrong.

After the coffin was lowered into the ground and the people dispersed, the seven gathered close together.

"My house, then?" asked the man with the glasses.

The silver haired woman nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Minoru."

"Anytime. Let's get going then?"

They dispersed to separate cars. The silver haired women got into the driver's seat of one, and the persecom got into the passenger seat. Rain had started to fall. They drove in silence for a few minutes before the persecom spoke.

"Chitose?"

"What is it, Chi?"

"Was it like this when Ichiro died?"

Silence again. "It was and it wasn't," Chitose said at last.

"What do you mean?"

Chitose sighed. "It's hard to explain. Both of them had so much more living to do. They didn't go quietly. I'm sure some people die peacefully, all their affairs in order, little left to tie them to this world. But not our men. Neither of them wanted to leave the women they loved. Neither of them wanted to leave you."

Chi raised a delicate eyebrow. "Ichiro didn't want to leave me? Hadn't I already- left- at that point?"

"Yes, but he had always hoped he would live to see you happy, even if it was from afar. He wanted to walk his girls down the aisle."

"Mr. Ueda did fine," Chi said with a sense of finality.

"Hideki worried that you wouldn't be happy without him. That no one else would understand you like he did."

"I hope he wasn't right."