I admit that we let ourselves drift apart. I suppose I can't speak for the others, but I saw it happening the whole time.

It was Rowen I couldn't predict. Always has been. The best friend I've ever had, and one of the biggest mysteries I've never solved. He was so together, so involved, so there. I didn't think anything could stop him. Hell, if he could stand up against Talpa, what did a few grades and a few parental battles have over him? Nothing! Or at least...that's what I thought. That's what we all thought.

I guess sometimes you can see the whole world crumbling down around you and forget that there're heroes fighting behind the curtains to stop it. I guess you can see a hero and forget that the whole world's crumbling down behind the curtains.

After Talpa was gone, things just sort of came together for us. Before, we'd all been from somewhere other than where we were; like tourists in our own homeland. Now we belonged. We knew who we were and what our purpose was. It was so liberating. For once in my life I forgot about what people expected of me and how they saw me, and for once, just for a little while, all that mattered was living. Is that what it means to be the Warrior of Life? To go through everyday without feeling like I have to conform, to transform into something I'm not? Is that what Rowen did?

Yeah, of course he was always a stubborn bastard about his habits and his values, but was it just Rowen being Life? Carpe diem, nothing! All he had to do to earn the title was take it easy and be himself. Just like I earned Wisdom? Maybe. But then again, maybe not.

It has to be more difficult than that. Otherwise things wouldn't have come out like this. We wouldn't have... I don't know. I guess there has to be a reason why only a select few can be Ronin Warriors. I mean, it's because we're the best suited to our virtues, right? But....if we're the best the world's got, why wasn't it enough? Why wasn't it even enough to make us see? If all the world is a stage, and everyone is an actor in the play of Life...how can we all stay so blind?

I'm getting off track, here. People are always telling me that. It never used to be that way. I guess it's just something I've developed over time. Like a receding hairline. Hn, what a thought.

Anyway, none of us stayed. At first we all agreed, we were going to finish high school in Tokyo and stay with Mia. That was only the beginning.

Cye's mom needed him at home to help with business affairs and his sisters. She said that she needed a man's help around the house, to take care of the things she couldn't. It was a lie. She'd been doing it for more than ten years. What was so different now?

Kento's family's restaurant, despite all it's excellence and quality, was faltering, and he was needed back home to help them out. It was never questioned. Not with his family.

Rowen's mom had popped back into town from out of nowhere, wanting to take him away with her on some wild story for a magazine, a concept that didn't fly too well with his father. For the first time in his life, he found himself engorged in their attention, if not a battle for it, rather than striving for it as he'd always had to do. I didn't see much of him then, but I tried not to worry about it too much.

I was called home to help Grandfather with the dojo. He claimed, when I talked to him about it over the phone, that he was getting too old too fast, and that he wanted me to be there to take things over when he was gone. I think he just couldn't stand the thought of losing his most precious pupil to adulthood so soon. One battle he lost, I guess.

Ryo didn't really have anywhere to go. He stayed the longest. In fact, he was the only one who never truly left. He and Mia hooked up almost as soon as Talpa was gone, and they never got over eachother. The reason I can still say that nobody stayed is because about six months after our lives resumed, they skipped out of Tokyo and got married. They have a little girl now, a sweet thing with Ryo's wild hir and Mia's gentle eyes. She'll make them happy, I know.

At first, I hung on as tightly as I could. I thought that if the memories stayed with me, I wouldn't have to go on. I could stay safe with the thought that we would always be there for eachother, and then I wouldn't have to leave them behind.

But Life caught up with me. High school ended, and the letters and phone calls grew fewer and fewer. I was accepted into a decent business school, a college to make my family proud of me. I never did end up going. My grandfather died one month before classes began, and I had to take over the dojo, just as he had wanted. My family thought that my brothers, or even my father should have done it, but I knew from day one that no one else ever could. It was my place.

Somehow I got through the days, and even managed to be happy. When I started seeing Jo, the trees were raining sakura on us. She's beautiful. A traditional Japanese woman with eyes the color of finely polished jade and skin as soft and fair as the cheek of an angel. She was the one who encouraged me to write down the things that bothered me. She said that meditating just doesn't always cut it because there is never any way to look back on what you find there.

The last time we were all together was on account of Jo. It was our wedding day. I love her so much. I have since the first time she looked straight into my eyes and told me I couldn't fight worth the dirt on her shoes. Like I said, a very traditional Japanese woman. Just one who happened to have a black belt and a very fiesty attitude.

They all came. Even Yuli, who amazingly grew out of his annoying phase and is turning out to be an interesting young man despite it all. Rowen was, naturally, my best man. He smiled wide and told me how happy he was for me and how much he'd missed me, but I saw the shadow left by too many sleepless nights under his eyes. His words were all positive and selfless, but his soul was dying to escape from its torment. Still, it was my wedding day, and nothing mattered except my happiness and my wife. What a blind fool I was...

Cye called the most. About once a month, always toward the end. He'd tell me how life was treating him and what the others were up to, and then I'd tell him about Jo and I, and that was it. Every time, the same thing.

He was the one who told me when Rowen killed himself.

He told me how difficult it had been for him with his parents fighting over him even though he was old enough and living on his own, and his grades dropped so dramatically that the schools stopped calling, and that he must have felt so alone without all of us there. He said so much, I didn't think I would ever be able to hear again. At one point, I just stopped him. I told him that it couldn't be. Rowen was a Ronin Warrior; he couldn't die. There was just no way. He was Life. If he died, there was nothing left behind but a trail of death.

I didn't make it to the funeral. I stayed in bed the entire week. I don't even remember how it happened. All I know is that my best friend, the only man I'd ever trust with my life unconditionally as a reflex rather than a thought, is gone.

Realizing he was gone was the first good thing that happened to me afterwards. It helped me realize that the world hadn't ended without him. It hurt, more than anything has hurt me before or since, but I survived it.

Jo and I moved away when we first married. I bought off my family's summer cabin on the ocean, perched just on top of a cliff at the edge of a forest, with miles of beach below and not a neighbor in sight. It was about an hour from Tokyo, just far enough to open my own dojo on the edge of town and still make it home each night in time to be with my lovely wife.

I was still attempting to cope with losing Rowen, but I loved the house, and I loved Jo, so the pain wasn't too bad. I was finally beginning to believe that I didn't need the Ronin Warriors to fall back on in order to feel safe and happy.

One day, after my last class of the day, my wife and I went out for a cozy dinner in the city, just for the hell of it. We ordered our dinner and talked about little things for a time. After awhile, Jo became quiet. I knew right away that she had something she had to tell me by the solemn, almost pensive look that came about her, and my first thought was of Rowen. Who was it this time? Was I going to be robbed again?

A baby. My baby. Jo was pregnant with our child, the child we had made out of our love for one another. I couldn't believe it. My heart swelled with joy and love until I thought that surely I would soon burst and then I'd never make it nine months.

Two years. It was two years after his death, to the day, when Jo went into labor four months prematurely. I rushed her to the hospital at three in the morning, barely pausing long enough to throw some pants and a jacket on. The doctors did all they could to stop the birth, but to no avail. That child was coming whether the world was ready for it or not.

After 17 hours of labor and medical care to stop the bleeding - God, there was so much blood! - neither one of my babies could handle anymore. Jo stopped pushing. The doctors did everything they could, but it was just no use. Her strength was gone. Her heart stopped beating, and for all the world I could have sworn mine had as well when her once bright eyes looked blankly, speechlessly into my own for one final time. I think it was easier losing my heart than it was to lose my soul. At least my heart came back to me.

My world stopped when my love died, but another world was faintly pushing its way to the surface even as I mourned.

The doctors worked frantically. When CPR failed them, they turned to one last hope in the form of an emergency operation. As I kept staring into the dead eyes of my lover, they worked against greater odds than any I'd ever fought againt, this instance also to save a world.

My baby was born on the two-year anniversary of my best friend's death. He was so tiny and weak at first that everyone assumed he's die in a matter of days. But the days became weeks, then months. I finally took him home, on the very day that the little brat was supposed to have been born. He's strong and tall now, with his mother's face. And my hair, the poor kid. I named him Rowen.

I remember how Rowen died now. He died in the most noble fight of his - of our - lives. He died a hero, kicking and fighting all the way. The very embodiment of Life. In fact, it was he who taught me the most important thing about it.

Life always goes on, even if it goes on without us. It always goes on...

the end