A long time ago, I was popular...not really popular, but...accepted.  I was the ever-cheery deity of Death, nothing could make me sad...if it did, how would I be able to do my job?  My job was to guide people to the land of the dead, anyways.  I was a ditz, I have to admit, but the days that went by in the past were so much happier...if only I could return to them...maybe I would be able to change what happened...

People say that you can't change the future.  They're right, in a sense that each and every one of the humans in the world have their deeds written down for them...but they're not completely right.  They're wrong in a sense that people could choose to do something different...even if it changes that writing in the book.  Who cares if someone wrote it up for you?  You could just go back and erase...re-write your own ending.  Everyone has the power to write their own life story...

Today, there will be rain.  I say so, because the book tells me.  There are still some things that can't be changed, however much you want it to.  Like the weather.  Like the death of a loved one.  Like how other people act.

Somehow, I think that rain will match the mood I am in today.  The rain, in a sense, is like my inner self...the sky will cry its heart out until it runs out of tears...  I wish I could do the same.

I slide open my drawer and sigh softly.  It's still there, of course, because it can't willingly leave.  I pick it up.

A picture frame, with an old color photo inside of it.  I smile to myself.  Although it brings back memories, all of them aren't too bad...

When I was helping Urameshi Yusuke and his friends with his missions and assignments, we had taken that picture...it is of most of us, only missing Shizuru-san, who was the one taking the picture.  The picture itself had been her possession, until she left it to me...

Urameshi Yusuke had passed away a long time back, and so had his friends.  I felt bad, that as they grew older, I did not change.  Well, I didn't in appearance.  Somehow, in the depths of my heart, though, I think they have all affected me.

I didn't choose to stay this way forever...to stay like this until the world was over...but I have no choice.  Unlike Kurama...although he was almost as old as me, maybe even older, he still had the choice to stay in his human form...so he could grow older and leave this world when it came time.  Which was what he chose to do.

Koenma-sama made me take each and every one of them to their resting area...where their spirit could live for eternity... Although I regretted it when doing so, I think he only meant well.  If I took them, it would be the finality...a way for me to know that it was all true, and that none of it was a dream...

Though I wish it was all a dream...a dream all too real to erase from my memories...

The memories of them are all so sweet, however much I didn't think that they would matter at the time.  I still remember the day when I met each and every one of them, and how we all got along.  Well, some of us.

The only other one of us who remain is Yukimura Keiko.

I sigh again, placing the picture frame on my desk where I could gaze at it whenever I wished.

Yukimura Keiko had stolen the heart of the most stubborn man I knew.

And that was Koenma-sama.

I think I should have been happy when Koenma-sama erased Keiko-chan's arranged marriage with Yusuke from the book so he could marry her, but I couldn't get myself to be.  I should have been happy that he had finally found who he would want to spend the rest of eternity with, but I sensed that there is something wrong with Keiko-chan having so much...power in the Reikai.  He gave Keiko-chan the right to leave eternally, like all of us in the Reikai...but I didn't think she deserved it.  And I still don't.  I'm not trying to be snobbish and say that I think I am better than her, because I am not.  She is smart, and a fun person to be with...I just don't think that she should be ruling the Reikai with him.

I'm not jealous of her in any way...I was never romantically involved with Koenma-sama...I just wonder what he saw in a human girl...

I know that they shared a lot of love between each other, because if they hadn't, Koenma-sama would have known first off.  He could read people's hearts, and their emotions, although he never cared much to do so.  The least he could do was check and see if her love was genuine.

Which it must have been, or else that marriage would have never gone on...

Keiko-chan ignores me now.  I can't blame her, I hardly go out of my room in the Reikai anyways.  Not after what happened...although it was so long ago...

Still, it seems like she had caged me up since we've last met.  I can almost feel the invisible chains on my hands and feet when I get up each day...I hardly have a chance to see Koenma-sama or Keiko-chan anymore.  They won't allow me into their rooms.  Not anymore.  I think Keiko-chan is making Koenma-sama careless...he has hardly enough time to save energy in his pacifier.  It's come to a point that I can barely take it any more.  I wish they would be more careful...the Maikai could return and take over the Reikai whenever they wished...and I know that that time was coming soon.  Too soon...

I blink, then shake my head.  Outside, the soft patter of raindrops begins to sound.  I watch the rain in a moment's envy.  I had promised not to cry after Yusuke's death, and haven't broken the promise, yet.  Nor do I want to.

I lean back in my chair, then take a close look at the picture.  The only reminder I have of what happened before.  Well, besides my own memories...

I know that some people say that memories are things in the past, and that the past doesn't matter anymore.  I can't say that I agree with that...I treasure the past most dearly, and when things in the present aren't going too well, I'd rather think about the past and what good things happened then than the things that may happen in the present, but I'm not too sure of.  I don't want false hope.  I never want to forget my past, and everything that happened in it.  I especially never want to forget my friends...ever.

I have to smile whenever I look at the picture...Kuwabara-kun has the weirdest expression on his face.  He always cheered me up.

But I still recall how it felt when I had to guide all of my friends out of the human world and into where they would be spending their whole eternities in.  I can still feel the faint tug in my heart that I felt long before.  When I had to take Yusuke back...he had already been there so many times, but each and every time, Koenma-sama seemed to give him another chance to live...to change the future...to touch everyone's life...and he did.  Every time.  He never failed us on a mission...and he seemed to always care...

I blink away the tears threatening to flow again.  I scold myself for being so stupid and emotional.  It was such a long time ago, and I had guided so many other souls to the realm of the dead without a second thought.  But then again, I didn't know those other people...and I'm glad of it.  I already have enough memories of the past with my old friends...

I had often had to sit down and coax the spirits of the dead to come with me, had to hold their hands and coo gently to them.  I had often had to watch broken families crying and wailing over their loved ones.  I had often seen how the others had died.  And I never flinched.  Not that I didn't care, because I did.  I was just so...accustumed to it.  I thought that I would be able to overcome everyone's death...obviously, if I was emotional over each death, I would have long since left my job.  I was sure that I could handle everything...until I watched someone I knew and dearly cared for, be in the same situation.

I can still remember back a hundred years or so, to when I had to steal Yusuke away from his friends and family, when I had to end his life...can still remember his calm expression when I told him it was time, and his friendly acknowledgment.  I still think back on the time...I had gone to the hospital with tears flowing down my cheeks, still crying, and unable to stop, and he had smiled when he saw me...he asked if I had come to take him away, and I had nodded.  I told him that he only had a few minutes until it was time, and he stood up, taking off all of the hospital equipment that was connected to him, and embraced me...

I was surprised at that time, and I had ordered him to get back in bed so the doctors wouldn't suspect anything, and that he was shortening his life more than he should, but the nurse walked in at that moment and had smiled encouragingly at me.  She seemed to know what I had come for, and gave me a swift nod of the head and disappeared to call the doctor...

To think that that was the last time I was held by a human being...not a spirit.  I remember the warmth of his touch, and even the steady slow beating of his heart...

Yusuke passed away when he was only twenty-three...younger than we all expected him to live until.

Koenma lent me a few minutes to be alone with him later on...although talking to Yusuke's spirit wasn't as normal as talking to his real self, I had first met him spiritually, so I didn't think it made a difference...except for the fact that he wasn't ever going to return to his human body anymore, and that he was never going to be alive again.  The thought made me sad, and he let me shed my tears for a long moment of silence.  Soon after, he took me back into his arms and wiped my remaining tears away.  He grinned down at me, then, and whispered,  "Don't cry anymore."  into my ear in such a soothing tone that I stopped.  He made me promise not to cry for him, and not to shed a tear for any of his memories.  He said he didn't want to see me hurt...  He just wanted a favor from me, and that was for me never to forget about him.  I don't think I ever would have been able to, even if he didn't ask it from me.

After his death I found that I loved him.  That is, if Death is allowed to love.  He would never care for me in the same way I cared for him, but nonetheless, he cared.  And that was enough.  Enough to make Death fall in love with him...enough to make Death cry over the loss of him.  It's ironic how the outcome was...he befriended Death.  He was strong enough to calm Death down, even strong enough to place himself so deeply in her heart that she would never forget him.

I tried not to be emotional when I had to take my other friends from the human world, either.  They were all ready for it, one way or another, even if they didn't show it.  I tried to be the same cheery self that I used to be...so they wouldn't worry about me.  Inside, though, I thought that I would burst.  Yusuke's death was just too traumatizing for me to handle...I don't know how I was able to withstand the others, also.  Even Hiei, whom I thought I would not care much about, caused me a lot of grief.  I don't think he knew about it, though, because if he did, he would have just snickered and told me that his death was not of any importance to me.  Of course, it shouldn't be...because I am Death, and it comes so naturally for me to watch the loss and grief of people so...passively.

I wonder if this is what the people who suffer losses of their very best friends feel like.  I wonder if they feel like they're missing a big chunk of their heart, too.  I think I envy them, because they can leave the human world and live eternally with their loved ones, later on.  Unlike me, who has to stay here and continue to be everyone's worst nightmare, Death.  I have to live forever, and take people to their loved ones.  No one cares about me, no one thinks that Death could have feelings.  Especially not for a human being...who would believe such a thing?  Death is more personified as someone who has no feelings at all, who doesn't care for human life, and who kills for fun.  I am not like that...and I wish I had some sort of Death who could take me to my friends...

Is Death allowed to have friends?  Is Death allowed to care?  Because even if Death does care...even if she does have friends, they would all eventually die...and they would be killed by her.

I shiver.  It was almost time to go to work.  I feel almost too lazy to get up.  I've realized that I hate my work, and that I hate my eternal life...hate everything I have done since childhood...

I don't even remember my childhood, it was so long ago when I was a child.  I wonder if I ever even was a child.  I don't remember...

I glance at the picture and all of us smiling and posing for the camera.  (Well, most of us, anyways.)  Who could have thought that a single picture could hold all of the memories of everyone in it...?  I sure didn't think so.  I never thought that the time we spent together would end...

Time took its toll, though, and now they are all gone.  They have been gone.  Except for Keiko-chan.  In a way, I think I blame her for Yusuke's death.  She was seeing Koenma at the time when Yusuke had been in the hospital, and never visited once.  I wish that I could have explained to him about Keiko-chan, but he probably wouldn't have let me...

I remember everything so clearly now...except some of it's blurry because of the tears in my eyes.  I wipe them aside.  I will never break a promise, especially not one made by him.

It has stopped raining, and I spot the rainbow.  Beyond the rainbow I see images of little children playing on a grassy green field.  Almost as quickly as they appeared, they vanished into thin air.  I smile, suddenly brightened.  I have to act more like I did before.  During the 'better times.'  I've been hurt enough, but for my friends, I would gladly do the same a thousand times over.

I run my hand over the picture frame once more, then tuck it back into my drawer for safekeeping.  Then I stand and walk out of the door.  It is a start of a new day.  A new day that I could change to suit myself.  Another day which would be full of memories...