Don't look at me with those eyes. Don't look at me.

The Biral story, "The Silent Escape", is a dark, dark thing. It opens with a long shot of an elegant brothel; Mugen arrives, pays the fee, and asks for Jin. He's shown to a room in which "a beautiful prostitute, with skin so pale that it must have been years since it's seen the light of day" kneels on the futon, smoking his kiseru pipe. It's been two years, Mugen thinks; the wound that gave him that startling scar was fresh the last time we made love. The manager tells Mugen he can do anything he likes to this one: "his eyes do not see the present reality".
--I came to see you, Mugen tells him, but "it's so hard to look at your face now, wearing that price tag around your neck." Jin's face is expressionless. Mugen takes what he came for, but there's no response, and with growing dread Mugen realizes "--something was very wrong. Jin was broken." Chilled, staring at his hands as the beautiful whore finally sleeps, he tells himself "it's better to kill a doll like this, that only knows how to spread [its] legs." These hands that had wanted him now want to end his life, yet Mugen knows he can't do that...he remembers that before he wanted to kill him, and then wanted him to live forever. "If only I'd known that I'd lose him like this. To have him lose his mind, alone in a strange place, without me knowing. To have him go so far, far away from me." It's a punishment for trying to keep him, Mugen thinks, that now he can't even let go of Jin's empty shell. I still keep on losing you...he laughs bitterly, but tears drip off his chin as Jin licks his cheek.

==what a stark, wrenching piece; I think it's Biral-san's strongest work.
[--though the characters she uses actually say "Biraru", I've used her own romaji spelling here.]

In stunning contrast is the utterly gorgeous Tsubaci-sou story, "Higan-sugimade (I'll remember too)", the sequel to "I'll remember you" in Hakka. Higan-sugimade means "Beyond the other shore", and ryu_kk009 explains that "We celebrate o-higan to commemorate the loved ones that passed away. In that sense, Higan refers to a certain period of the year saved for the dead. In a broader sense, Higan refers to the 'other shore' where we join the ancestors once we leave this world." ===In a parallel to the earlier story, Mugen's inner monologue runs behind and during the plot. It's a hot and humid night soon after their escape from Mukuro's pirates; the puff of Jin's pipe is keeping injured Mugen awake (isn't it remarkable how that has gotten attached to Jin's character in fan art, when he never used or even carried it in the series?)--he muses that living as they do, either one could die without ever having a chance to bid the other farewell. Mugen teases (flirting) that if it's too hot for Jin to sleep he could cool off by undressing; Jin chides him that he should take his injuries more seriously--"not that you'd ever listen to me--"--adding with a haunted gaze that Mugen did nearly die. Mugen puts an arm around him ("aw--don't look like that!"), they kiss, and progress into lovemaking with all the tenderness-plus-burning intensity we've come to expect from Tsubaci. In the background, Mugen recalls a legend Kohza told him, of a flower whose fragrance carried as far as ten li, and how on hot humid nights the fragrance of such a flower can be absorbed into the skin to stay forever. He sympathizes with her; he knows this fantasy of the flower was a wish she clung to in the hell of her real life; and he knows he has a wish as well, that the intangible and precious thing that exists between him and Jin could last like that fragrance, absorbed into their skin, and could carry even beyond the "other shore" of death.