"I don't understand," I murmured into the quiet morning. "It's all so strange." I glanced up towards the sky, hoping the stars would have an answer, but few were bright enough to show through the light of the streetlamps, and they had no answer for me, either.

"Oi, Maeve!"

I started from my reverie, and saw that I was not the only one who valued the silence and peace of pre-dawn. "Hey, Keisuke," I smiled at the young Japanese student who'd come to the States for a year of study. "Just getting in?"

He laughed, which lit up his face. I liked seeing him laugh; though I'd only known him for a month or two, he always seemed so serious, almost sad. "Mister Popularity, that's me," he replied in his slightly-accented English. "Actually, morning jog," he admitted, waving a hand at his exercise clothes. "It's too hot to do later in the day."

"No joke," I agreed.

"And you?" he asked, indicating my own clothing. "Jogging?"

I shook my head. "Couldn't sleep. Too hot."

"Ah," he nodded. "In my place also. I wish they would get the air conditioning fixed."

We exchanged glances, knowing how likely that would be. Most of the tenants were students and other youngsters on their own, which meant pretty darned impecunious. Poor, that is. Without wealth.

"Would you like to come up?" Keisuke asked. "I have coffee."

I tilted my head, considering. "Oooh, that sounds really good but . . ."

"The heat," he agreed. "We can drink it outside, on the patio."

I smiled at him. The stifling temperatures of Texas in the early fall rendered un-air-conditioned apartments into stuffy hotboxes which only contained and multiplied the heat, holding the occupants in its mercy. Electric fans helped, but only a little. The only solutions, besides complaining to the apartment offices, were to wear as little as possible or visit places with working AC. Sometimes both.

I followed Keisuke up the stairs to his apartment, admiring his lean legs, shown to advantage by his running shorts. He had a nice, wiry frame gifted to him by Mother Nature, enhanced by regular workouts and daily runs. Must be nice, I thought, reflecting on my own build, to be naturally svelte. I'd only recently lost the weight I'd gained when I was with Ryan, and was starting to feel good about myself again. The bastard had done a number on my self-esteem last spring, and I wasn't about to forgive him for it. I'd never be model-thin, but at least I was no longer heavy.

Keisuke's apartment was a mirror-image of my own; almost an efficiency except with walls separating the bedroom from the rest of the unit. As he puttered in the "one-butt" kitchen, I glanced about his apartment with interest. I'd met him early on in the semester, and we generally saw each other only in passing or at parties and other such social functions. He'd always been very polite, and somewhat reserved, so I was a little surprised when he asked me up for coffee. He hadn't quite finished unpacking entirely, there were a couple of boxes scattered here and there in various stages of being emptied. I glanced from them to the tiny bookshelf built into the wall, and saw the photograph.

It was Keisuke, with an older woman who, by the resemblance, was his mother, and a sweet-faced, smiling girl, who I figured was his sister. I smiled back at the photo - I really couldn't help it. Her smile was that infectious.

"Coffee will be done in a minute, Maeve-san!" Keisuke called from the kitchen.

"Okay! Great!"

"Do you want cream and sugar?"

"Please," I answered. I turned my attention back to the bookshelf, examining the other contents. Some were in Japanese, some in English. I couldn't read the Japanese, so I brushed over those brightly colored spines and moved onto the ones I could read. James Frazer's The Golden Bough, Evans-Wentz's Tibetan Book of the Dead, what seemed to be anything and everything by Joseph Campbell . . . and A. N. Roquelaure's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty? I bit my lip to suppress a giggle, instead, calling out to Keisuke, "I like your taste in books, Keisuke."

"Books?"

I picked up one that lay flat on the shelf, as if it had slipped with no bookend to hold it in place. It was an older book, like the Frazer, but it had worn Japanese characters on the spine. "Yes," I said, turning as I looked at it in my hands. "You have an interesting selection." I started to flip open the cover.

He stood at the entrance of the kitchen, frozen, a look of shock on his face. He held two full coffee mugs in his hands and his face had gone pale. I winked at him wickedly, said, "I think you might like the Anne Rice book."

"Anne . . . Rice?"

A brief laugh escaped me in a huff of air. "It's okay, Keisuke. I mean the A. N. Rocquelaire book - the naughty Sleeping Beauty books." I flipped a few pages under my thumb and glanced down. They were blank. I looked back up at Keisuke. He looked stricken.

"It's okay, Keisuke. I've read them too," I assured him. More blank pages flashed past my curious gaze. "What is this?" I asked him, holding up the book so he could see the spine.

"Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho," he replied faintly.

I glanced again at the book, and realized that I'd been flipping through it backwards. I righted it in my hands and looked at the characters on the back, er, front cover. "What's it mean?"

"Four Gods' Sky and Earth," he said.

I shrugged, putting the book back. "Those four gods didn't have a lot to say, I guess," I murmured, then went to relieve Keisuke of one of the coffee mugs. "Are you okay, Keisuke? We can do this another time, if you like."

The color was beginning to return to his face, and he shook his head as he handed me the coffee mug. "Daijoubo," he responded, nearly breathlessly, "I'm fine. I'm fine now."

"Good," I smiled. He stared at me a moment, as if trying to decide something. I silently berated myself - I'd heard that Asians were far more reserved than us Westerners, and perhaps he didn't appreciate my teasing him about owning a piece of erotic literature. "Look, I'm sorry I'm so nosy, looking through your books," I apologized.

"No - " he broke in. "I - that is not a very good book, Maeve-san."

I blinked at him. "What, the Sleeping Beauty book?"

He rewarded me with a blush. "No - the other. Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho."

I raised an eyebrow. "I would imagine so," I said, "it's got no words in it."

He looked at me strangely, and I continued. "But then, I think I was looking at it backwards. Shall we go to the porch?"

He seemed relieved at the change of subject, and led the way outside, where we watched the sun rise from the tiny patch of wood that passed for a patio in these apartments. As the world came awake around us, we spoke quietly starting with "safe" subjects - Keisuke had come over to study anthropology, I was a part-time art student.

He smiled a little as the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon. "Art?" He tilted his head a little in my direction. "What does one do with a degree in art, here in America?"

I shrugged. "Probably starve," I replied blithely. "I really don't care, one way or another. I just really want to - to create." I drew my brows together. "It's not the piece of paper that's really important, or what's on it. I just want the damn thing."

He gave me an inscrutable look, and I felt stupid. But it was true - I'd discovered through living on my own and holding down various jobs that it didn't really matter what was on that piece of paper, so long as one had one. The only times it really mattered would be if one went into engineering, or law, or medical school. Since I had aspirations towards none of these, I'd decided to get my degree in something that I wanted: art.

Despite feeling like an absolute idiot, I met Keisuke's stare, making ready my rebuttals for the questions and arguments that would surely come. Instead, he said, "Sometimes the paper has more power than you would think."

Thinking of nothing to say, I sipped my coffee. "This from a man going for a degree in anthropology?"

I think that caught him by surprise, a little. He looked thoughtful, distant, and a little sad all at once. "It is very important to me," he said softly. He leaned his elbows onto the railing and looked again towards the sunrise. "My mother wants me to be a business man."

Nodding sympathy, I said, "I understand that. My father wanted me to be a lawyer."

He looked from the horizon back to me, the corner of his lip quirked into a near-smile. "I think you would be a good lawyer."

"I think I would be a better artist," I murmured. "I would be happier."

"Ah."

We drank our coffee in silence. Keisuke then took our empty cups for more coffee. This was by far the longest conversation I'd had with him, and I was no closer to understanding or knowing him than I was before. I watched him return with full cups, and thanked him as he handed me mine. I looked at him drink his coffee while I waited for mine to cool a little. He seemed to enjoy the brew, allowing its flavorfulness to roll through his mouth before swallowing. He intercepted my gaze, a question in his eyes.

"I wish you would smile more often, Keisuke."

I think it took him a little by surprise, and he slowly lowered the mug to the railing. For a long moment, he studied me before replying. "I wish you would smile more often also, Maeve-san."

I think I was surprised as well.

Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho said nothing in response. In short, it behaved like a normal book. "Four mikos," Keisuke continued softly. "You have had four mikos; is your appetite not yet satisfied?" He clenched his jaw as he picked up the book, staring at its cover. Four Gods' Sky and Earth, Japanese Translation by Okuda Einosuke. Old Okuda had tried to burn it, to destroy it, after his daughter Takiko had been and returned as miko. It would not burn, nor would it be destroyed. Keisuke and his friend Tetsuya had also tried to destroy it after Miaka and Yui's adventures there, but the book would not allow it. The two young men had decided that perhaps the book should be guarded, and by unspoken agreement, Keisuke undertook the charge. He knew it would be a lifelong commitment, and had proceeded to make the changes necessary in his life so that young girls would never need fear being sucked into Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho again.

And with that thought, he hid the book in the back of his closet, where no one would "accidentally" find it.