Ruki sits up and pats the spot next to him so she can get closer. But instead she sits in front of him with her legs crossed, looking at him waiting for an answer as to why he said that. He tells her that he was losing his passion for singing and he doesn’t even know why he’s still doing it anymore. He also told her that he would rather be here with her relaxing instead of going back to the live.

While he was telling her this she had tears running down her cheeks and was shaking her head, “Don’t you see when you go out on stage, how many people are there singing along with you and screaming your name out? Or how do you think your songs always reach the top of the charts? Who cries with you when you’re crying on stage?” she stands up and angrily wipes the tears away, then gestures to her room, “Do you not see how crazy and dedicated your fans are?!”

Everything she had said had clicked in his brain. He thought of the crowd yelling their names and how it made him want to do everything in his power to make them happy. How could he forget all about that?

Then at that moment he hears knocking on the door. He already knew it was her mom. It was like about the fifth time she came to knock on the door. “Why are you yelling Azumi? Is everything ok? Open the door.” She starts to turn the locked door knob.

Azumi yells back, with a surprisingly steady voice, “It’s ok mom I was just singing along to a song.” She starts to cough harder than last time.

“Are you alright?! Open the door now!” she yells, twisting the knob faster.

Azumi stops coughing enough to yell back, “I’m ok, geez can’t you just leave me alone? Stop worrying so much.”

There is a long pause from the other end of the door. Till finally her mom says in a low voice, “alright just call me if you need anything.” Ruki hears her slowly walk away.

Azumi looks at Ruki with her smile gone, “come on we have to get you back, don’t want to disappoint the fans.” Then she goes to her closet and pulls out her shoes and a tan canvas bag. Heading to the bathroom she says, “Give me a minute would you?” Ruki didn’t have time to think before she closes the door behind her.

She stayed there for a while but at last she emerges with a bright smile and goes to the door leading out of her room. She nods her head to the door with a hand on the knob, “Come on.”

Ruki gets up from the bed and ask, worried, “what about your mom?! Won’t she see use leave?”

She smiles and shakes her head like she is talking to an idiot, “you remember asking me about having another power?” he nods, “well this is the other one." She opens the door, but instead of it being a hallway it’s a white abyss. She bows and makes a hand movement like a butler and states, “you have to go in first so we can find the place.”

He nods nervously and hesitantly takes a step forward into the nothingness. Every time he took another step forward he would hear an echo go on for miles and the ground somehow felt unstable like it could break with the wrong step. When he was completely in he turns back and sees Azumi walk in smiling at him closing the door behind her.

When she let go of the knob the door starts to disappear. She walks ahead of Ruki and grabs his hand as she leads the way. He ignores how hot his face felt.

They walk like that hand and hand for what seemed like forever till Ruki finally saw something coming into view. It was a metal door that he recognizes it as one of the doors that leads to the back stage area. Azumi pulls the heavy door back and a light shines so bright that they have to shield their eyes.

When the blinding light clears up they see a scan of people running around with phones stuck to their ears yelling into them and freaking out. “Where is he?!” Reita shouted out walking in a little circle.

“He told me he was going to his dressing room, so I didn’t think too much about it.” Kai says looking around and biting his thumb nail.

Uruha was sitting on the couch with is his head in his hands, not saying anything. Aoi was standing next to the couch with his arms crossed looking angrily at the ground and biting his bottom lip.

Everyone was so wrapped up on where Ruki was that they didn’t hear the heavy door swing open. They did hear when the metal door closed with a loud clicking sound. Everyone turns to look at the cause of the sound and see two people standing there. All goes silent and every one of them looks at the two wide eyed.

Ruki steps in front of Azumi, “yeah I went out for a walk and I got lost.” He pauses and points to Azumi, “and then she found me and brought me back here.”

Everyone then looks from Ruki to her. She smiles and waves, “hi I’m Azumi Ito. It’s nice to meet you.” She bows.

The room stayed quiet for a few awkward seconds till Kai breaths a sigh of relief and gives Ruki a quick hug, “I thought we would have to cancel the live and have to go out looking for you.” Letting go of Ruki, Kai looks at Azumi and bows. “Thank you for finding him and for bringing him back! You should get a reward of something for this great deed.”

Then one of the staff members comes up with a concert t-shirt. Azumi’s eyes go large and steps back a bit. Shaking her head she utters, “Oh no you’re too kind, I mean I would love to take the shirt but…” she goes into her bag, pulling out some money, “here I’ll pay for it!”

Kai smiles his famous dimple smile and takes the shirt form the worker and goes to Azumi. He bends down and stuffs the shirt into her bag, “please I insist.”

“O… o… ok” she stutters. “Thank you so much!”

Ruki places his hand on her back, not liking how close Kai was, and gently pushes her forward, saying to the staff member, “I think she should get more than just a plain old t-shirt.” He smiles at the worker and she blushes. She bows then walks away.

Azumi looks up at him with her brows frowned and her lips in a tight line. He just laughs at her reaction and turns her toward the returning staff member, with her hands full with concert merchandise. Azumi looks at the poor lady with open, “Oh my gosh!” running up to her to relieve the load while apologizing the whole time.

Ruki looks at her from afar with a goofy smile. He didn’t sense that Kai was looking at him, “so how did she do it?”

Ripping his eyes away from Azumi, Ruki looks at Kai, “What are you talking about?”

Kai looks at him with his arms crossed, “don’t with me. I knew that you were losing your zeal, your reason, for music. That’s why I was so scared when I found out that you weren’t in your dressing room. I thought you finally had enough and just walked out on us, the staff members, and most impartially the fans.”

Ruki grins and stares back at Azumi, “I don’t know how she really did it…” he snickers and shakes his head, “you know she yelled at me?”

Kai looks him up and down, “Oh god, you like her don’t you?!”

Ruki was still looking at her rejecting the gifts and insisting on paying for them. ‘I can’t deny that when the first time I saw her my heart skipped a beat.’ He thought to himself not wanting Kai to know his feelings.

“Ruki?” a voice brings him back and he looks at the makeup artist. “We have to get your hair and makeup done.”

He nods and she walks away to his dressing room. He says as he follows the makeup artist to his room, “I have to get my makeup checked so I’ll be ready to go on stage.”

---

When everything is perfect from his makeup to his hair and even his outfit, the makeup artist and hairstylist take their leave. Then a few seconds pass and Azumi pokes her head into the room. Ruki laughs, “come in, you don’t have to be shy.”

She enters the room, closing the door behind her. Sitting next to Ruki by the makeup mirror she states, “Thanks for this” she gestures to the now full bag, “even though I was the reason you went ‘missing’” She air quoted the last word.

Ruki faces her and holds one of her small hands and rubs her soft skin with his thumb, “No, if you hadn’t done that I would have truly left. It’s thanks to you. I just wish I could have given you something better as a gift, but this is the best that I could come up with. I’m sorry.”

“No don’t be   ” she gets cut off by a knocking on the door and a muffled female voice comes through, “Ruki-san it’s almost time please come out.” It was the staff member that had given Azumi all the gifts.

“Alright I’ll be out in a minute.” Ruki shouts out and looks back at Azumi and smiles sadly, hating that their time together is ending so soon. “I’m sorry I have to go now. Oh! Did the assistant give you a pass for   ” she pulls out a blue pass that will let her be able to join the other fans at the concert.

“Come on Ruki!” Aoi yells from the other end of the door.

Ruki stands up and brushes himself off, “well I have to go. One of the employees will show you were to go.”She gets up too with her pass in hand and smiles sadly.

He walks to the door but her voice stops him, “Wait!” he looks at her to see that she is walking up to him with a grin, “I have a gift for you… plus I’ve always wanted to do this.”

He didn’t have a second to ask anything, let alone think, before she stood up on her tippy toes and kissed him on the cheek. His eyes go big and his heartbeat speeds up, ‘just from a kiss on the cheek?! What am I a little boy?’ he yelled to himself. She pulled away but to only press her lips a few centimeters away from his lips. This only made his heartbeat go faster.

He restrained himself from turning his head the slightest bit so their lips would finally meet. But he wanted her to give him his ‘gift’ properly without any help. But the waiting was driving him crazy! At last she moved to his waiting lips. When her soft pink lips touched his, an electrical current was sent down his spine and a swarm of butterflies were set free in his stomach.

She slowly goes down to her normal height and Ruki followed with his lips craving more of that electrically sweet sensation. Pulling an inch away she whispers, “Thank you.”

He whispers back against her lips, “You’re welcome.” He closes the distance between them again for a few more seconds only to be disturbed by pounding on the door and someone saying to hurry up on the other end of the door.

She steps back and straightens herself. With her hand resting on the handle she smiles and giggled, “Well, see you at the concert.” She opens the door and walks out.

Ruki waits a little bit before he swings the door open and walks to his awaiting band members. They do their usual prep talk and chant then they walk out to the screaming mob. Grabbing the microphone he begins to scan the crowd, but doesn’t see her.

He continued to look for those striking brown and blue eyes, but still had no luck, until they played the song Untitled. He hears her call out his name. Ruki looks around and finally finds her standing close to the front. She smiles her usual bright smile and makes a heart with her hands. He smiles and winks in response. The girls around her go crazy and scream out his name.

Ruki looks at Azumi for the rest of the song. When they start to play the next song Ruki reads her lips, “look at everyone and not just over here.” He nods looking her over one last time then at last looked somewhere else.

He restrained himself from looking at where she was for two more songs till he couldn’t take it anymore and looked at where she had been. But she wasn’t there. ‘Maybe she got moved around by the crowd’ he reassured himself. He looked around… but she was gone.

---

Azumi pushes the heavy door that lead outside. Once outside she drops to her knees and coughs violently. She had been holding the coughs when she was in his dressing room and during the live but all that did has made it worse.

Someone approaches her, “are you alright? Do you want me to call the ambulance?” a woman that looks like she was in her early twenties squats down so she can be at eye level with Azumi.

Azumi looks at her to see that she has a concerned look. She nods her head feeling another wave of coughs coming. She tries to suppress them by placing one of her hands over , but when she couched she felt warm liquid coming out of . She knew without pulling her hand away from and looking, that it was blood. But still she pulled her hand into view. Through the poorly lit street lights she saw a pool of dark red. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen this fast!’ she yelled in her head.

The blood was already starting to roll down her arm when the woman gasped at the sight and got up, digging into her purse. She pulled out her phone and dialed the ambulance.

When she ended the call she sat back down with Azumi, rubbing her back in slow soothing circles, “they said that they’re on their way. Say, you don’t have any family or friends you want to call?”

“Yes but first do you have a pen with you?” the woman nods and pulls out a blue ball point pen. Azumi smiles and thanks her then takes paper out that she had put in her bag before they left the house. Then with just the dirty ground as her desk and the street lights as her lamp, she started to write something all the way till the paramedics came for her.

When she was placed in the ambulance the woman that had been with her approached the door, “my name is Hiromi Sato by the way.”

She looks at Hiromi from her laying position and grins through the oxygen mask they had put on her, “I’m Azumi Ito. Thank you for helping out a random stranger on the dark streets.”

Hiromi smiles showing her teeth and was about to say something but was stopped by one of the paramedics, “ma’am are you coming along? If not then I’m going to have to ask you to step back.”

She looks at the paramedic than back at Azumi strapped to the oxygen tank. Then she pursed her lips and climbed into the ambulance sitting next to Azumi and holding one of her, now extremely pale, hands. Azumi looks up at her with surprised eyes but then her cheeks slowly rise into a smile.

They rode like that in comfortable silence for a while till Azumi felt her eyelids getting heavy, “can you pass me my bag?” Hiromi lets go of the hand that she was holding and gently gives her the bag. She takes out the paper that she had written in earlier and hands it to Hiromi. Feeling tears roll down her cheeks and her breathing slowing down, she says in the strongest voice she could manage, “give these to my mother, her phone number should be on one of them and if you could send the other one. It also already has the address on it.”

Hiromi nods, feeling her eyes overflowing with tears. That was the last thing Azumi remembered before everything went black.

---

A month and a few weeks have passed when Ruki last saw Azumi. He would always wonder what she was up to. But being the idiot he was, he had forgotten to ask her for a number or anything so he could get in contact with her. He would even occasionally look behind him to see if a hand would pop out the wall in hopes that she would want to spend time with him again. But of course that didn’t happen either.

Then Uruha walked into the dressing room and drops a stack of letters on the coffee table in front of Ruki. “Fan-mail for the day” He says then walks out the room just as quietly as he entered.

He grabs the stack and starts to scan each of them because they were practically all the same. All of them had nice writing and smelled girly, like flowers and stuff telling him how they are his biggest fan or something. Till he got to one that didn’t have a return address, ‘maybe she didn’t want me to write her back, which is kind of weird.’ He flips the envelope and rips the flap open, pulling out a slightly dirty notebook paper. “EW! What the hell?!”

Unfolding the paper and thinking to himself, ‘maybe it’ll explain why it’s dirty.’ But what he found wasn’t an explanation but something entirely different.

    Ruki by the time you read this I would have already passed away. I know this isn’t the best way to be telling you this, but you were already going through enough stress at the time. So I couldn’t tell you that every time I use my abilities it drains my life force. Don’t worry though, by the time I used my powers to bring you to my room my body was already breaking down because I had used it a lot as a kid trying to escape from the house or pull things out of pictures to relive my boredom. So I thought ‘what the hell. What did I have to lose?’

    Many good things came out of this. Like maybe helping you find your reason for singing again and also I got to meet you and know how you are as a person. I also had the chance to kiss you, which by the way is every fan-girl’s fantasy.

    I had a great time just talking to you, though I did really enjoy the kiss (*≧ω≦) ♡.  I loved watching you guys playing live. You were great! Oh! I also have to thank you and Kai for the many gifts but it saddens me that I didn’t get a chance to use them.

    But please don’t blame yourself or let this event that happened to me upset you. I made the choice to use them so don’t worry I was happy. I hope you continue to work for whatever makes you happy and do whatever you think is right, which I think you would make the right choices. And if you’re wondering about my mother don’t worry I also wrote her a letter and I’m pretty sure I got to say goodbye before I left this world. But being the daughter that I am I probably caused her pain and worries till the very end.

    Well it’s about time I end this depressing letter. Goodbye Ruki, I really enjoyed the short time we had spent together.  Plus I got to meet my favorite band of all time in person! (*´ ▽`*)

    ~with much love,

    Azumi Ito

Ruki gently sets the letter on the table. He can fell his throat closing and tears running down his cheeks. How did he not see all the signs?! Form the coughing, the overprotective mother, and her always smiling as if nothing bothered her.

A knocking on the door stops him form think of her and pushing the overflowing emotions to the back of his head. He wipes the tears away with the back of his hand and yells out, “What?”

Reita’s voice comes through, “hey come on it’s time to go on stage.”

Ruki curses, jumping off the couch and rushes to the mirror. Breathing a sigh of relief, “Good, the makeup artist used waterproof.” He grabs some tissues and starts to wipe away tears and blows his nose.

He looks at the open letter on the table one more time. Then folding it up and putting it in his jacket pocket that was close to his heart. Finding hope and love with that one simple piece of paper, he walks out of the room and into the roaring crowd. Imagining a pair of brown and blue eyes looking back at him knowing that some point in the concert he would shed more tears for her.

-----

Hope you enjoyed the story and the ending. Thank you for reading! And if you liked this story or how i write, then you should check out my multi-chapter story called Crimson Lotus