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It was one of those odd, singular moments which often happened around Watanuki, though Doumeki hadn't realized that until he was already in the middle of it. He was never quite sure whether he'd dreamed some parts, or all of it, or none; all that was certain was the sliding, floating feeling of its memory in his mind's eye.
Doumeki had happened-- just happened-- to be out walking on a late November evening, when he took a turn around the shrine gate and saw the ghostly glow between the trees. He'd followed it to the edge of the pond, moonlight making paper-trails of white beneath the branches.
Watanuki stood on the high, small bridge, before a great shimmering vision: a golden koi, eyes like harvest moons and scales like polished mirrors. No words reached Doumeki's ears, but standing under the trees he heard a sound like the sighing of waves on some distant shore, or the rushing of a river flowing towards another world. It settled beneath his skin, in his head and his heart, a peculiar calm that suddenly expanded until he felt as if the whole universe was spread smooth and glassy beneath his feet, and Watanuki was its only occupant.
And Doumeki thought, perhaps, he'd always existed just for this moment, to stand here and watch Watanuki converse with eternity by moonlight.
It was the strangest feeling, to casually contemplate the possibility of one's raison d'etre being so fleeting and without apparent meaning. Is it something like love, he wondered. Is that why poets prize sakura blossoms so highly?
Then the wind shifted, the moonlight dimmed, and the apparition vanished. Watanuki sighed, irritated. "What are you doing here?"
Doumeki had no answer.