A/N: Okay, so I really wanted to post this extra, as depressing as it is. The idea occured to me and I just had to do it. So... wind time back around a year to when Nao was preparing for the regional dance tournament and her family was still alive. Then... well... hopefully I don't depress you guys too much!

It jumps around a little, but that's just the way things came out.

“Neechan! Oneechaaaan!”

Gritting my teeth, I spun around to hit pause on the C.D. player as Akihiko came running into the room. His hair was a wild mess on his head and his eyes wide and excited. A bit of my irritation died away into curiosity as I noticed his expression.

“Well, what is it?”

“Neechan, I won!”

Confused, I simply gave him an annoyed expression.

“Won what?”

“Won our bet! You said I couldn’t get invited to that tournament and I did! They just called!”

I blinked slowly, attempting to pull up what he was talking about. When it came to Akihiko and his obsession with kendo, something I’m rather certain he started to impress our uncle, I’d often began to tune out his conversations about it. When I finally remembered, I was even more confused than before.

“Wait, you just now got invited? Isn’t that tournament tomorrow?” I demanded.

Akihiko grinned, giving an excited nod of his head.

“Uh-huh! Okaasan said that we can leave tonight, so that I’ll be there with plenty of time for me to register to compete tomorrow! I got invited cause the guy above me in ranking dropped out, so I got his spot. Awesome, right? I’m awesome, aren’t I Neechan?”

Rolling my eyes, I spun around to adjust the C.D. player so that it would go back to the beginning of the song.

“Uh-huh, just amazing.”

“You’re coming, aren’t you?” Akihiko questioned, his voice becoming hesitant.

I could hear him cross the room. While I thought the idea over, he grabbed my arm and tugged it to turn me around to face him. A small, irritated sigh escaped me as I realized that, rightfully, I should say ‘of course I’ll come’. At the same time, one of the biggest tournaments of my dancing career took place in two days. If I wasn’t completely prepared I could kiss goodbye my chances of qualifying for the nationals this year. Last year had been a mess and if I wanted to make up for it I had to qualify this year as well.

Which meant I needed to place in this regional tournament.

“I don’t know…” I muttered, averting my eyes from his suddenly downcast expression. “You know I’m busy…”

“Neechan,” he whined. “You have to come! I always come to your tournaments!”

Guilt bit me, but I shook my head, pulling my arm away from him as I straightened up.

“Sorry, there will always be other tournaments, right? Tell Okaasan and Otousan that I’m going to stay and keep practicing. I’ll probably work through dinner, too. I’ll grab a snack later.”

“That’s not fair!” Akihiko snapped, clenching his fists at his sides as he glared at me. “Not fair at all! You should come!”

Irritation replaced my guilt as I sent him a glare in return.

“You know how important my tournament is! I need to practice until the last minute! I can’t afford to waste time, Aki.”

My irritation disappeared in a split-second as soon as I caught sight of the tears threatening to fall from his eyes. Before he could run out of the room, however, I grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward so I could kneel in front of him.

“Aki… don’t cry… look, I’m not trying to be mean.”

“I’m not crying!” he protested angrily, swiping his hand across his face to remove the evidence. “I’m not a baby!”

I couldn’t help it, I chuckled.

“Yeah, I know, you’re not a baby. A baby wouldn’t be one of the best kendo competitors in his age-group. That’s only something a big boy can do.”

This time the glare he gave me only made me chuckle even more.

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a baby either!” Akihiko ordered. “I don’t want you to come, anyways! You’ll just be bad luck.”

I released his hand, a small smile in place of the glare I’d been holding earlier. I then reached that hand up to pinch his nose, earning an irritated protest from him. Within a second he’d swatted my hand away.

“Of course I would be. I’ve got horrible luck after all. When I made that bet with you I was hoping to win, so that I didn’t have to do this.”

Akihiko sniffed, refusing to look at me once again as he backed up and crossed his arms.

“I don’t care. You just work on your stupid dance.”

Then, before I could catch him, he turned around and darted out of the room.

“BAKA-NEECHAN!”

_________________________________

“What do you mean you can’t come home!” I demanded into the phone.

Mom sighed on the other end and I could hear muffled voices on the other end, she’d probably placed her hand over the phone to try and hide the conversation. A second later the muffled voices stopped.

“You promised you’d make it back in time for the tournament!”

“Yes, I know, and I’m really sorry,” she replied, her tone sincere. “It’s a lot later than I thought it would be when I made that promise, though. You know how dangerous some of these mountain roads are. If it weren’t for those, I’d have no problem driving through the night to get home. As it is, I don’t think we can do that.”

“Don’t worry so much,” I retorted. “We’ve never had any problems on those roads!”

She sighed again.

“Nao, we’ll try to make it tomorrow, we really will, I just wanted to warn you that there’s a pretty good chance we won’t be. Look, do you want to talk to Aki? He’s really excited to tell you about how he did in the tournament.”

I frowned, rather surprised by her words.

“He was pissed at me when he left yesterday.”

“Nao! Is that any way for a lady to speak,” she reprimanded.

A faint smile reached my lips as I leaned back in my chair, rather glad she couldn’t see how amused I was by that.

“Probably not- sorry. He was really mad at me. Is that better?”

“A little. Look, I’m going to pass the phone to him. Just talk to him, alright? He was really upset that you didn’t come, you can at least make it up to him by talking to him, can’t you?”

I rolled my eyes.

“Of course I can. I’m not heartless, Okaasan. I felt bad about it, too.”

“Alright. Here he is,” she replied. “Aki, here, Nao wants to talk to you.”

I was rather certain that the response he gave was somewhere along the lines of ‘tell her to go work on her stupid dance, I don’t want to talk to her’.

“Aki! Just take the phone!”

There was a bit more grumbling on the other end and I had to force myself to keep from getting irritated when he finally got on the phone.

“What do you want?”

“Okaasan said that you wanted to tell me how you did.”

“Why would I want to do that?” he questioned, his tone slightly mocking. “Neechan doesn’t have time for unimportant things.”

“Aki…”

“Neechan,” he mimicked.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I muttered, clenching my free hand in my lap. “I promise that no matter what’s going on during the next tournament, I’ll come. Alright?”

It might come as a surprise, but I’m not the type that likes to apologize.

“... … fine.”

“Now, how’d you do?”

“I was so awesome, Neechan! There was even a reporter! Did Okaasan tell, you I beat Ichi-kun and got first place and…”

______________________________

I can do this. I might be the only one here, but I can do this. I thought, stretching my arms above my head and attempting to calm my panicking heart. Maybe they got here and didn’t call so that I wasn’t distracted. In that case, it’d be easy to think I’m not alone. Just focus on that. They’re probably already here. You’re not alone.

It became increasingly hard to breathe as the girl in front of me finished her dance. The crowd began clapping and cheering and she blew them a single kiss, causing me to roll my eyes, before turning on heel and making her way back towards where I stood offstage. As soon as she was hidden from view, she sighed, gripping the collar of her dress with one hand and giving it a harsh tug. I winced imagining the lecture she would get if her teacher saw her doing that.

“Damn, I hate that,” Katsuki grumbled, stopping next to me. “Nao-chan, do you think if I flipped them off instead of blowing a kiss they’d cheer as much? Why do I have to pretend to be such a…”

“Girl?” I prompted.

She nodded vigorously, giving her collar another tug.

“It’s so stupid. Sure, I love the dance part of it, but I hate the whole ‘pretty face’ thing my mother and Sensei go crazy about. You know? Hell, I feel like I’m about to suffocate in this dress.”

“I bet that you’re the reason Okaasan keeps scolding because of my language.

She shot me an amused smile and I could hear them beginning to introduce me on stage.

“Good-luck, Nao-chan,” she added. “Hey, if you beat me this time then we’ll be even! Right now I’m winning.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You mention that every time we see each other.”

Katsuki laughed, giving me a small shove towards the stage before turning on heel and starting towards the back of the stage.

“Don’t be so mean, Nao-chan~ I know you keep track, too!”

I was about to step on when suddenly I heard footsteps rushing towards me from behind. Spinning around on instinct, I caught sight of another one of the competitors, her eyes wide and fearful.

“Nao-chan! The police are here asking for you!”

What?

“There was an accident!”

______________________________________

Why didn’t I just go to the tournament?

Why did I have to whine so much about them getting back in time?

“Nao.”

I quickly drew my hands over my eyes and sniffed as if those quick motions could get rid of how obvious it was that I’d been crying. My eyes fluttered up from my lap to find Uncle Harou standing there, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. There was no puffy redness to his eyes like there happened to be mine, but if I wasn’t mistaken there was a certain look of age to him that I didn’t normally see. He looked so much older than I remembered seeing him ever look.

“Ojisan,” I mumbled, sniffing once again. “Sorry, I should… I mean… sorry…”

Scrambling for the nearby kleenex box, I attempted to clean myself up a bit more and looked back up at him. His expression hadn’t changed from before.

“They haven’t gotten to the will just yet,” he began slowly, each word seeming to be practiced. Emotionless even. “But… I know what they would have put in it. I’d like you to come stay with me when everything is over.”

My eyes widened, I’d been expecting it, but it hadn’t prepared me for the real thing.

“That’s… you… everything is here!” I protested. “O-Okaasan, Otousan, A… A… Aki, my friends, my school, everything is here! I can take care of myself. I want to stay here! You understand, don’t you Ojisan?!”

He sighed, looking away. It was only then that I realized there actually might have been a slight red-tinge to the skin around his eyes. The rumors I’d heard about his and Mother’s relationship flashed through my mind in that moment. If those were true, those stories about how he and Mother had been engaged before Father and Mother were… this was probably just as hard on him as it was on me. It wasn’t right for me to be acting so… selfish.

I sniffed, dropping my eyes. Harou sighed again.

“I know. This is the best way for things to be, however. I’ll take you in, and in time we’ll see how things go. If you can’t get comfortable, you can come back. If you do get comfortable, I’ll even train you to take over the business. You can understand this, can’t you? The way things are now… everything is yours. There’s no one else left for it.”

His harsh words, although perhaps they hadn’t been meant to be that way, cut through me and I had to work to hold back another wave of tears.

There was no one left.

The last thing I’d done with Aki was argue with him about going to his tournament. Had he really forgiven me during that conversation on the phone?

The last thing I’d done with Mom was snap at her for saying that they wouldn’t be able to make it since the mountain roads were dangerous at night. She’d tried to make up for that and the accident had happened.

I hadn’t even talked with Dad on the phone that night.

Everything seemed to start spinning around me.

Aki’s words flashed through my mind.

“It’s not fair!”

It wasn’t fair. Aki won the junior tournament and was interviewed. Then he dies in a car crash on his way to see me preform.

Not fair at all.

Had it been my fault?

“I… I understand…”

A/N: Did I say this would be depressing? Yeah... it really was. I feel sad now. I should go write NaoxMori fluff. 

Hey... I realize, there is no ship name. I love ship names. You guys wanna come up with some to relieve the sadness?

Anyways, I'd really love to hear what you guys thougth about this chapter! See you again when I finally manage to figure out what to do with the next chapter!