Days passed by all of them. One had spent them in the gimnasium, in one's studio, among roses or dreams, in the 
silence of one's cosy house or in the noisy bustle of the school corridors.
Kage hadn't been looking for Anshi. Somehow he got a feeling their meet could harm her - he remembered the voice 
that had separated them, and the coldness, pursueing him ever since that day.
However, he put the coldness down at some indisposition.
"Had too much studies," he explaned everybody.
"What? You?" Kozue snorted. "Then I had, too. As well as Himemiya."
"What's wrong with her?"'
"What's wrong with you?"
"Had too much studies..."
"You have a crush on her, haven't you? Whenever I mention her..."
"Kozue, you're baka... I'm just curious."
"Well, she's our dean's sister. Since that studeing isn't obligatory for her... as opposed to you or me."
"Quit dreaming, write the reactions down. I'm your boss now."
"Yurino Kage-san, may I ask you for a favor?" the teacher looked from behind the edge of the cracked vase. 
"Can you please take it to the home economics department and ask to glue it up? I'll check your assisted's work."
"Oh no..." Kozue moaned.
"Don't put me in a spot." Kage winked at her and took the china vase.
It was so cumbersome that Kage could hardly see the path. Shouting 'Beware' in a middle of the large break was quite
 meaningless - noone could hear anything though the noise.
"Kage-sempai, may I help you?"
"Oh, Miki, it's you... Thanks. Together we can smash this damned vase significantly sooner. Why don't you just play for me tonight? 
What music room will you play in?"
"Actually...I don't play currently. I'm sorry. I'm having fencing trainings instead."
"Kozue told me there would not be any competitions in the nearest future. You've got season acute condition... e-er, I mean, er, 
c-cute activity increase?"
"Sorta... I'll take part in the most important competition in the end of this month. If I win, I'll play you the most beautiful melody ever composed... 
no, I'll compose it for you...no, if only I win, the world will be the beautiful melody itself!.."
"Wo-ow!" Kage carefully went round the group of a students, keeping Miki in his sight."So all I have to do is to wait untill 27th?.."
"Yes, twenty... Kage-sempai, how do you come to know about the date?"
"How come? It's you who told me few seconds ago."
"Me?"
"Yep. Look, you better skip the training today - you've given out noticeably... Oh, by the way, your sister have made considerable progress in her studeings. 
There'll be no more problems with biology."
"Thank you very much, Yurino-sempai. You're the only one I know to treat her this way."
"What way?"
"As anyone else, as an ordinary student."
"You know, I'm not sure I understood anything, but I apprecia-a-a-a!!!
Someone pushed Kage accidentally. He tried to to keep his balanse and hold on the vase, but its heavy edge hit the metal grating.
"Abunai! Beware everyone!!!"
China splinters scattered and fell on the corridor floor. Miki bounced back cunningly, those who had been standing near the window 
managed to hide behind the columns.
There was only the heap of of the china shives remained in Kage's blood-soaked palms. Raising his gaze he saw another victim of the accident - a young 
man holding an imposing file with a long scretch bleeding on his hand.
"Oh my... it's terrible! I'm sorry, I must have tripped or ... that's doesn't matter. It's my fault anyway..."
Noticing some papers on the floor, Kage squated to lift them.
"Ohtori-san, somebody pushed him", Miki said. "It's really not his fault."
"Wait," Akio frowned, squating near Kage, and catched his hand before it touched the paper. "These are important documents. 
One shouldn't stain them with blood."

Slowly as if it was a dream, a drop of blood slipped down his chocolate skin. Kage's fingers squeezed in Ohtori's hand became 
quite cold and shrudded when some strange blood got into the one of the multiple small cuts. Like an icy bead got under the skin and melted in his blood.

"What's your name?"
"Ohtori-san, it's really not his fault! I told you I saw someone had pushed him!" Miki hadn't calmed down yet.
"My name is Yurino Kage, 12"e" class," Kage replied, not listening to him."You're bleeding."
"You too."
"I'll give you my handkerchief..."
Kage stood up and pulled the handkerchief out of the back pocket while Akio gathered the papers and erected.
"Your hand, please."Kage couldn't came round. If there was somebody else instead of this man, he would have laughed off, 
but now he felt strange depression - his hand was numbing, and the voice... the voice that interruped his sudden meet with Anshi...

The witnesses of the accident attentively watched Kage folding the handkerchief and Akio stretching his arm. But till Kage was 
smoothing the band, thick steam of blood flowed down his injured palm into Ohtori's wound.

He pulled the wounded hand aside like burned.
"I'll better turn tothe first aid post... You should do it, too." He added hastily, trying to avoid attracting attention to his reaction.
"E-er, Miki..." Kage appealed to Kaoru, when Akio got out of their sight and all witnesses went out to share their impressions. 
"I do realize I'm a dork, but... who was that?"
"That man? Akio Ohtori, the Academy dean."
"Himemiya's brother?"
"Yep."
"Pretty bad luck...  Wonderfull day, ne? It's only morning now, but I've almost killed the dean already. What will happend till evening, I wonder?.."
"I'm not sure about the evening, but you have a birthday the week after. If only you neglet your wounds they'll inflammate and you'll be
 unable to hold the tea spoon because of the multilayer bonds on your hands."
Kage glanced at his bloodsoaked palms.
"How shell I explain it to the teacher?.."
"There's no need to. Everybody saw it was an accidence..."
Miki kept speaking, assurely and sedatively. Kage could not concentrate 
on his voice and words meaning. Ice-cold coiling snake of the strange blood flew in 
his veins and that feeling pushed into background all the rest sensations.
"You're OK? Kage-sama, you're so pale!"
"I'm... cold."Kage pronounced hardly mooving his cold lips and took some unsteady steps for the window, 
lightly pushing aside the students who supported him. Gaining his mights all together, he opened the window wide.
There was a ground in a turbid haze somewhere far below, and up there, much, much closer to him, someone's figure leaned over the tender roses.
"Watch out, he's gonna fall out of the window!"
He just wanted Anshi just to glance at him. Whatever cold shade of emerald was the color of her eyes, it could warm him...

Anshi raised her head. Fluffy scarlett rose trembled in her hand, shedding it's velvet petals.

"Look at me," Kage whispered .
"Have he said something?" People vanitied around him.
"Just turn around... and cast a glance..." He said in a breaking voice.
"Is he raving?"
"Oh my, he must be raving!"
"Kage's raving!"

Anshi squeezed the flower convulsively and the wind carried some red petals away. He 
needed her help, and it was so easy to help - merely turn around and take a look.
'Cast a glance', the wind whispered to her. 'Turn around', the multicolored buds prayed.
It was so easy... and so hard - to cast a glance she thought can never be resurrected again. To cast a glance 
she had casted only at her prince...
A simple glance was a betrayal.

Anshi hurried to raise and turn around. The wind hit her back, played with her deep violet 
hair plaiting the rose petals into it... but the window the boy was supposed to be in was empty.

The world became mute and turbed. The last thing he saw were bloody red petals carried away by the wind.

Utena was sitting muffing in a blanket on the uncovered bed in her semi-dark bedroom. Cold midnight air 
creeped into the room through the open window.
Somewhere far away in an old dorm at the outskirts of the Academy Kage layed on the bed with one hand gangling 
in a steam of the cold air coming  in from the wide opened window. But the air seemed nearly burning in comparison 
with the freezing drop of Akio's blood.
The dean has got tangled the injured hand in jabout unbuttoning the shirt. Hissing in pain he disengaged it 
carefully. It would heart less if he didn't wash it so throughoutly but Kage's blood had been burning him and 
depriving of rest. Whenever he'd closed his eyes he'd seen  a strange room with two-tier bed and an unskillful 
vague drawing attached to the wall at the head of the upper tier of the bed.
But the wound was clear now. Nothing disurbed him any more - the vision ceased being importunate.
Sitting at the edge of the bed, Akio took his shirt finally and leaned down to the sleeping girl's lips.

Kage rolled himself up to a ball, propping his head against the wall an almost undescernible in the twilight 
drawing had been attached on. Clutching his ice cold fingers to the chest he looked at the drawing but saw completely 
another sight - vast field of the red and white roses, long sword in his hand, white clothes... filled with admiration 
Himemiya's eyes, her trustfull smile...

'Every rose has it's own color, it's own aquires, it's own mystery hidden within the tightly folded bud. 
People are just like that - they have their own characters, their hidden abilities. Teachers of the Academy 
are ready to help all their students by working out a special curriculum aimed to reveal those hidden talantes as fully as possible. 
As everywhere in the gardens, there must be carefull gardeners...'
She hadn't been reading by now - it was too dark - the words revealed in her mind as Utena followed the indescernible lines by her fingertips.
'Long-long time ago in a far, far away land...'
Utena pulled her hand aside the prospectus.
'...there lived the Rose Prince who made all the girls in the world into princesses.'
"Where is that prince now?"
Her question remained without the answer again.
The Prince of the Rose...
The rose...
'The rose is  refine and magnificent. It simbolize the beauty and style, 
and only such an elite school as Ohtori Academy could be able to affort to choose the rose to be it's emblem.'

"Kage-sama, can I come in?"
"Kage-sama! Kage sama-a-a-a!"
"Kage-sempai!"
"Yurino Kage-san, open the door!"
"Let me, let me!" Kozue resolutidly pushed aside Kage's classmates. She approached the door and 
started knoking on it with the toe."Wake up, you lazy-bone! I've got the tests tomorrow so get out of 
there! I know you don't care if you'll have problems with teachers, but what about me, you boss?!"
"Gomen nasai, Kozue..."The voice coming from behind the door seemed to belong not to Kage, but to a much 
older tired man."Forgive me all of you, but... I can not."
"Are you sick?"Kozue asked plaintively."Shell I call the doctor?"
"No,"Kage answered in a wheesy voice leaning against the door."There's no desease, but... tell the teacher 
I've cought a cold."
"Hey, it must be deadly cold in your room!" Kozue shrudded touching the door. "Can you tell me what's going on?!"
"If only I knew... I would have known how to stop it!"
"Am I able to help?"
"N-no..."
"Who does then?"
"I don't know... Just leave me here."
"You always helped me, and Miki, and others... We want to help you now. Kage! Kage, do you hear me? Answer me!.."

"Hey, have you heard already?"
"About what?"
"Yurino-san, the one who lives in seclusion in the cursed dorm."
"Kage-sama! So what about him?"
"He made an attempt on the dean's life."
"?!"
"He wanted to kill our dean."
"Stupid rumour. I was told it had been an accidence."
"Nonsence."
"Nonsence is what you've said! He didn't attempt to kill anyone. He's KAGE after all! 
My boyfriend just pushed him when Kage carried a vase."
"OK, OK. Then what can your 'boyfriend' tell us about the dean's and Kage's illness?"
"?!"
"Yep, I haven't seen neither of them almost for a week."
"The dean must be quite busy as well as Student Council members, they seem to be prepareing 
for something very significant."
"Well, Kage is to be sick. Ask his classmates or teachers who tried to figure out what had happened to 
him... ask Kozue, at least... He's said to have an extremely bad condition."
"That's the curse of the dorm at the outskirts. Someone is said to die there... by getting killed."
"Kage will probably die too..."
"If you love Saionji, you still have no right to talk this way about the one who's better than he is."
"Wha-a-at?! Who's better than my Saionji-sama?"
"Calm down. Tatsuya is yours and Saionji is common."
"That big-nosed spooky feeble guy is better than my Saionji? That scraggy malicious know-all is BETTER..."
"Sounds like you don't fill sorry for him."
"Well..."

Anshi was listening attentively to this emotional conversation of four girls of her age. It eliminated her last doubtd. Squeezing 
the bunch of white roses tighly, she went down the path guiding to the old dorms.

Kage layed leaning over the edge of his bed. He gazed through the window-glass at the thick storm-clouds carried by the autumn wind. 
October happened to be windy but hot. Leaves still burned on the trees and the late roses of the hedge were blooming with all their might and main.
He had spent almost a week in his room, but he didn't feel neither hunger, nor thirst, nor loneliness. He hadn't close his eyes even for a moment - 
he did not need slumber to see the dreams of the strange life.
But something was wrong today. He'd come to an edge and needed to go somewhere now, but where? He was tired of living in a strange body with the foreighn 
memories, tired of being other's past.
Staying in this rave or doing something, but what?

"Kage-san? That is your name, isn't it?" Anshi asked timidly, flattening herself against the door.
"I'm not sure of it any more..." He sighned.
"But I am sure."
"You're late. You can not be sure of anything."
"I can be sure of you." Tears were filling her eyes as Himemiya speaked snuggling up to the door tighly.
"There will be tournament tomorrow, you know what I mean, don't you?"
"He's gonna draw the right to posess you."
"Please run away. I want to save you, believe me. If there's still something precious to you, leave it all 
and escape from this world, he wouldn't forgive your existance.
Kage was silent. Grey canvases had been curtaining with the white silk, and two pills were falling into the long cristal goblet.
"Kage, do you hear me? It's time to decide, and I decide you will be saved. You'll escape. Kage?.."
And all over again - silver sword, white cap, red carpets of the palace, goldish brocade of the princess dress, white lace of 
the jabot, white paper, white silk of the pillow... white mist over the Academy, white clouds pierced by the steeples of the castle, 
white and red roses of the Arena...white and red dress of the Rose Bride.
"Kage, do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Have you decided?"
"Yes."
The voice had changed - it was the same young highish voice again. Anshi recoiled, and Kage clinged to the door simultaneously.
"Farewell, Kage..."Anshi whispered. Roses fell to the floor."Tell me something at parting..."
"One day you'll be free again..."
Cold blood drop creeped down the door out of his palm.

Akio layed on the bed in his studio. Last painting was almost finished. It just 
lacked few strokes to be completed, but he could not 
concentrate. That dim famililiar drawing that he kept dreaming of all trough the 
night deprived him of rest. He closed his eyes.
A drop of blood creeped down and a little bit slantwise, crossing the drowing - 
dark skin, light curles, eyes of the sea waves... Young Rose prince.
Dios, conjured by the power of love.
Dios, killed by the same power.
Akio straightened, sitting on the bed.

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