---
The memory arrived without asking.
Not announced. Carried forward by the rain, or the voice in the rain, or the space between them. The present unlocking the past the way certain things unlocked certain things.
---
The room was full of light.
Angel Realm light — the specific trueness of it. The light of a place designed for what light was for.
The kindergarten.
Toys. Puzzles. Small beings encountering the world for the first time in the version appropriate for their age.
In the center:
Young Jena.
She had solved the puzzle.
She was standing in the triumph of a child who has done a thing and wants the world to know it.
**Young Jena :** "I solved it! Yay!"
She said it at the volume of someone who had not learned that volume required calibration.
The other children turned.
Her eyes moved across the room.
They found the corner.
A child facing the wall.
Legs pulled up. Arms around the legs. The specific shape of someone who had decided the wall was safer than the room.
Pouty cheeks.
Golden eyes visible in the profile.
Jena moved toward him with the committed forward motion of someone who had identified a direction.
**Young Jena :** "Hey. What's your name?"
He turned.
Golden eyes finding her.
**Young Kaizar :** "Kaizar."
She poked his cheek.
Her finger finding it with the energy of a child who had discovered cheeks were pokeable.
He went red.
She giggled.
**Young Jena :** "You are becoming red."
He faced the wall again.
**Young Jena :** "I should call you Kaikai-kun."
**Young Kaizar :** "No."
**Young Jena :** "Kaikai-kun! What do you like to play?"
**Young Kaizar :** "Don't call me that."
The other children had turned.
Making the sounds children made when something interesting was happening.
**Young Jena :** "Kaikai-kun~"
He looked at the floor.
His eyes were filling.
Not from the teasing — from the room, from the children, from the laughter, from all of it at once. The specific overwhelm of someone for whom all of it at once was more than the current capacity.
**Young Jena :** "Are you crying?"
She sat beside him.
She put both arms around his neck — the kindergarten hug, complete commitment.
She pressed her cheek against his.
**Young Jena :** "Don't cry. Or I will cry too."
She reached into her pocket.
Small chocolate.
She held it out.
He shook his head.
She put it in his mouth anyway.
He chewed.
**Young Kaizar :** "Thanks."
She kept her arm around his neck.
**Young Jena :** "Yay. You're happy."
Her mother at the glass — watching her daughter with the expression of someone who had made something and was seeing what it was.
---
Elementary school.
Older now. Both of them.
Outside on the school grounds. Angel Realm morning light on the grass.
**Young Kaizar :** "I don't have parents."
Flat. Direct.
**Young Jena :** "Why?"
**Young Kaizar :** "They died a long time ago. I have no one."
She was quiet.
**Young Jena :** "Who said that?"
He looked at her.
She was smiling.
**Young Jena :** "I am here."
**Young Kaizar :** "Really."
**Young Jena :** "Yes."
He looked at the grass.
He stood up.
**Young Kaizar :** "My dream is to become a Guardian Angel-Dragon. Not a normal warrior."
**Young Jena :** "But that would take your peace."
**Young Kaizar :** "Let it. I want to grow stronger. I want to protect."
**Young Jena :** "Really?"
She stood.
**Young Jena :** "Then you would be my hero first."
He turned.
He looked at her.
The faint red in his face — the same red from the kindergarten corner, still present across all the years between.
She removed the bangs from her forehead.
She looked at him.
**Young Jena :** "Hmm? You don't want to be my hero?"
He hesitated.
He held her hand.
**Young Kaizar :** "Always."
The door opened.
Classmates arrived.
**Other students :** "OOOOOOOOO—"
Both of them:
**Young Kaizar and Young Jena :** "IT IS NOT LIKE THAT YOU IDIOTS—"
The laughter. The chaos of a hallway that had found something.
They were unbothered.
They had been through this before.
---
The festival.
High school now.
The Angel Realm during festival season — the light doubled by lanterns added to the natural light.
Matching kimonos.
Golden. The same shade.
The matching that had not been decided — arrived naturally, the way things arrived between two people who had been paying attention to each other long enough that the attention expressed itself in the small choices.
They moved through the festival.
Food from stalls — eating while walking, not stopping because stopping was not what the festival was for.
They climbed the holy mountain at the festival's edge.
They stood at the top.
The realm below — every lantern a warm point in the constellation of the festival.
Jena looked at it.
**Teen Jena :** "This is the whole realm."
She said it like seeing it for the first time even though she had seen it every year.
**Teen Kaizar :** "Yes."
He was looking at her looking at it.
She turned and found him looking.
**Teen Jena :** "What?"
He looked at the realm.
**Teen Kaizar :** "Nothing."
She laughed.
---
The wars.
She was beside him in every one.
Not at his level — nobody was at his level — but beside him. The specific beside that meant present, fighting with everything available.
Every war.
Every mission.
Every return to the house with the warmth in it.
Her mother who had once thought he was bad for her, revising the assessment quietly across the years.
Her father's hand on his shoulder — every time:
*You always bring her back.*
---
And then adult Kaizar.
Cold now in a different way.
The cold of someone who had decided protection was more important than presence.
**Adult Kaizar :** "I need to go for training."
The silence.
Her parents' faces.
Jena's hand finding his.
**Jena :** "Please don't go. I feel something unholy coming."
**Adult Kaizar :** "Nothing will happen."
**Jena :** "You said that last time—"
**Adult Kaizar :** "I said nothing will happen."
**Jena :** "Kaizar. Listen to me. Please—"
His hand pulling free.
The word.
The specific word in the space where her name should have been.
**Adult Kaizar :** "Shut up."
He turned.
He flew.
He did not look back.
The sky received him.
Behind him — her on her knees, crying his name into the space where he had been.
---
The ruins.
He came back to nothing.
---