[ Watashi ]

[ Tomodachi ]

[ Saint Seiya ]

[ Clamp ]

[ Fanfiction ]

The quiet hum of conversations drifting around our table was making for a rather pleasing and cozy atmosphere in the nakingly modern decor of Maduro. Of course, the subdued lights of the elegant, extremely expensive and fashionable bar also contributed to the feeling of quietness engulfing the place. Low sounds of Japanese, English and even French words glided past me, mixing together before slowly fading into the grey walls and the abstract paintings artistically set upon them. Lifting up my glass of wine--a Chateau Pape Clement of the year 2000, bottled in the prestigious domain of France whose white wine was among the finest in the world--I imitated Benedict when he toasted to our guests' good health and fortune. Then I sat back in my very comfortable armchair and allowed myself the smallest of sighs.

It had been a hard day, even though things were turning out rather smoothly, considering. Early this morning, we had started with a trip down to the Park Hyatt of Tokyo, where we had met our guests--the UNU's guests. Wealthy, powerful sponsors of various scientific programs supported by the UNO, they had come all the way to Japan to see for themselves whether the freak waves forecasting project was still worth spending money upon. It was thanks to Benedict that they had come--thanks to that stupid German, who should have seized the opportunity to be rid of me and get his revenge for not being chosen as the forecasting project's leader. Instead, he had thrown his considerable weight in the balance, and he had moved. He had reached out to contacts in Europe, while I had wasted my time watching everything crumble around me without reacting.

Wallowing in self-pity, that was what he had told me, each of his words dripping well-deserved contempt. It was easier to hide behind guilt than to confront failure and struggle to correct whatever it was that had gone so horribly wrong. A long week had gone by, and several letters from the central scientific bureau in New York, until I had been forced to acknowledge that the fault didn't lie with me, at least not where the loss of twelve hundred lives was concerned. Not only had my forecasting model been leaked out, but it had also been misused. I had never intended for it to predict which area of the oceans was safe. What it had been thought for had been to detect higher probabilities of freak waves formation in given regions of the world.

Chances of occurrence, never assurances that the phenomenon wouldn't appear.

Still, the tragedy had made the headlines all over the world, and some among our sponsors had balked, fearing the negative publicity. Project funding had come dangerously close to being cut off entirely, and its continued existence depended upon our convincing the five men and women currently sitting in front of us in one of Roppongi Hills' most expensive bars.

"Impressive," a woman in costly designer dress murmured, her flowing black hair catching Maduro's faint lights as she turned to study the paintings to her right. "I had never seen anything quite like it."

"It sure stands out," the man on her right nodded. "A perfect choice of location," his gaze was set on both Benedict and I, and there was a knowing smile on his lips.

More than you know, I thought at the man while Benedict let out a muffled chuckle. Not only was the place classy and weird enough to put our guests in a favorable mood, but what was more it afforded me with a nice opportunity to reconnoitre the premises. Tonight was the last night of July, and the timing of our visitors' coming to Tokyo was just impeccable. Nonetheless, now wasn't the right moment to dwell upon what our visit to the sky deck of Mori Tower had taught me. Now was the time to focus on the anything but naive or altruistic people accompanying us.

"Does this mean you found this day's visits satisfactory?" I looked into the man's brown eyes, and saw what might have been amusement flash in them.

"Diplomacy is the art of discussing a touchy subject without ever having the other side realizing it's being nudged into giving anxiously awaited answers," he replied with the same infuriating smile on his lips. "Your approach is refreshingly straightforward, though."

The group's only other woman set her glass down on the table with a musical clang, then joined her hands and bent down slightly, resting her forearms upon her thighs. "Satisfactory is the right word," she mused, her gaze distant, then she reached up and briskly pushed back a lock of brown hair that had started dangling before her eyes. "Still, our companies' main interests in this project remain the same: getting options and high reliability rates in the new ships and platform design directives."

Although this was nothing different from what we had expected, my heart sank when the words reached our side of the table. These were representatives from oil companies and gigantic shipyards in Europe, not members of tourism operators or the maritime transport giants. What they needed were easy, cheap ways to reinforce hulls and structures, and insure that their products would respect future new regulations, as well as whistand freak waves when they appeared--not ways to predict whether sea routes would be more dangerous than usual. Still-- "Everything is tied together," I countered in a quiet voice, almost a whisper. "Every aspect of the project interacts with the others."

"Loath as I am to admit it," Benedict's sigh was unmistakable, as was the grin splitting his face, "My colleague is correct: I need his forecasting model if I'm to produce trustworthy recommendations, intelligent recommendations for modifications in the construction standards. The reason for this is very simple: not only does the forecasting model yield probabilities of freak waves occurrences in given regions of the world, but it also gives height and power estimations, without which I am, for all intents and purposes, stuck."

Soft laughter rose from the first woman. "So," she shook her head, "you won't give us any choice, will you? It's 'take the whole package or you get nothing at all.'"

"Right." Benedict's grin was now directed toward her, a sight which she didn't find funny if I was to go by the thin smile twisting the lines of her mouth.

During a few minutes, silence reclaimed our table while we all sipped at our drinks, and a member of Maduro's staff sat down at the costly piano set on the other side of the room and started playing a soft melody of blues. The gentle, treacherous lure of the music lulling me and cajoling me into closing my eyes was difficult to resist. One with the shadows cradled by the bar's dim lights, the gentle tune danced inside my mind and reached out to draw out the part of me which wanted Time to speed up so we could already be seven days later--the part of me which wanted to go back to Mori Tower here and now, to--

Feel adrenaline wipe my thoughts.

Feel my blood tingle.

Be free--be.

Simply to be.

The slight sound of a weight shifting in one of the armchairs disturbed the music's spell. One of our guests checked his watch, and nodded. "All right. What time is your flight tomorrow, Claire?" he asked the brown-haired woman.

"Ridiculously early," she grimaced. "Around seven AM, I think. And," she heaved out a sigh, "I can't miss it since I must be present at that meeting in Stockholm without fail."

"Well then," the other woman stood up, "I guess we'll call it a night. We have all the facts and information we need, anyway." With the faintest of bows, she added, "Our thanks for having been such gracious hosts, and for having opened your doors so honestly, even though we're potential nemesises for the project you worked so hard upon." There was genuine warmth beyond the mandatory politeness, and I found myself bowing back at her, Japanese-style.

Be fair, I wanted to tell them all. Just be fair, and give us a fighting chance to make it right. Give us the time we lack. But pleading with them would be futile, on top of being ludicrous as well as pathetic. Mercy and understanding were alien concepts in the universe of economics, where numbers, benefit margins and the rating of risks in an investment or the assessment of its return were all that mattered--that, and the schizophrenic whims of stock exchangers.

Economy, almighty monster for which the burp of a speculator was far more important than countless lives wasting away below the Tropic of Cancer.

"We'll consider what we learnt on the flight home," the first man told us even as we stood up. "Then we'll give our recommendations to the high spheres. I expect you'll hear from our companies before the end of August." With that, he held out his hand, that both Benedict and I shook.

On our way back to the limo that'd get them back to the Park Hyatt, I found myself wishing that magic and spirits did exist, that I could read these people's minds and give a gentle push upon their hearts. A part of me was disappointed that they hadn't given us their decision, but deep down I knew that it took more than a shopping spree in Roppongi Hills and a dinner of eccentric Scandinavian-Japanese cuisine at Juniper to make sponsors as powerful as these decide to spend millions of Euros on a project that might not yield the result they desired.

It took us a bit more than half an hour to reach the grotesque statue of a spider that guarded the entrance to the huge complex of stores, restaurants, bars and luxury housing. It seemed that incursions into Roppongi Hills always involved getting lost in its maze of brightly colored shop fronts. It was a detail to keep in mind, since it looked like there was no way to avoid the strange curse hanging over the place.

"It went better that I thought it would," Benedict turned toward me once the black limo had taken away our guests. "You," he smirked, "even managed to keep your head and give them true arguments in favor of your baby."

"Benedict," I growled.

"I think they'll agree to follow us," he said, staring in the direction they had gone. "Roppongi Hills was a very nice touch I would never have expected you to think about," he laughed.

Yes, a very nice touch. Unbidden, a smile crept up my lips, and I bowed low to Benedict's back. "Thank you," I told him softly, not caring that he'd hear the warmth in my voice. Without him, it was likely these people would never have come here and consented to listen to our defense of the project.

Hell, it was likely I'd have given up on it, if not for the big German's constant jibes and moral slaps. "No charge." Benedict gave a shrug, his back still turned to me. "Death will shake a man. I know it shook me before, and badly. So, more than a thousand--yeah," he sighed. At last, he pivoted to face me, and added in a gruff tone, "I still think I should be in charge of the forecasting model, and that you're a moron to stick to Al Osborne's figures."

"Right," I nodded at him. "What does an ape like you understand of quantum mechanics and the dynamic modelization of extreme singularities anyway?"

His attempt to glower at me ended in utter failure when booming laughter shook his wide shoulders. "Okay," he said once his hilarity had subsided somewhat, "I'm leaving. The humidity in the air is so high I'm feeling soaked through even though it's not raining...yet."

Reaching up and finding my shirt to be damp after only a few hundred meters of walk, I had to admit he was right. The heat lingering this late in the evening didn't help one to feel comfortable. The rain season wasn't over yet, apparently. It was late, perhaps content to laze over Japan and smother the human population foolish enough to crowd itself in megalopolises and houses or apartments so small they felt like rabbit cages.

"Wait," I reached out and stopped Benedict before he could leave for the closest subway station. "Let's get a taxi. My treat," I smiled at him.

"Least you can do," Benedict bobbed his head in ascent. Ignoring him, I started scanning the night for the tell-tale lights of a free taxi.

Taxi.

Air-conditioned space.

A luxury, to be sure, but a much-needed one in stuffy hot Summer.

In daylight, there's something to be said for the utter simplicity of Spartan modern architecture, if only for the benefits the designers get for using raw, relatively cheap materials--and selling them to rich snobs and eccentrics who agree to pay fortunes that make ceilings and roofs recoil in horror for fear they might explode. Once the sun has set, the plain steel, concrete and glass make for a bleak, unfriendly environment, however. Still, even if the emptiness of it gives me the creeps, it's a small enough price to pay.

Tonight is August 6th, and Roppongi Hills feels as if all life had been sucked into the complex's grey, featureless walls. Tokyo has been clogged with people all day, which I suppose means that Greenpeace's symbolic march was a success.

Good for them.

As to me-- I pause before reaching the ugly rectangle of concrete that Maduro uses for a door, but the exclusive club's dim lights are even weaker than usual. For the time of a heartbeat, I stare at them, and I think of lanterns lit to hold a vigil for the dead.

For the hundreds of thousands of victims of what was one of the most unforgivable crimes of humanity.

Nuclear holocaust.

Fire raining down from the heavens.

Invisible tendrils of poison weaving themselves to people's livers, blood, stomachs, lungs and guts, starting their slow, filthy work of rotting away the bodies of those who had survived the first moments of the nuclear blast. On August 6th of the year 1945, humankind gave Hell a substance, and branded it in reality--branded it in men, women, young and old, weak and strong, in children, in boys and girls who had never had a choice as to where or when fate had caused them to be born.

We are insane, we human beings who visit such horrors upon our own and shrug off the atrocity of it later with rationalizations such as those saying it stopped a bloody war and avoided many more deaths.

Yes, we are mad.

In front of my eyes, the subdued lights flicker and I tear my gaze away from them. There will be time to remember Hiroshima later, time to go to a shrine and think about all those who suffered so much and died so humanity could witness the fullness of its immense talent when it comes to slaughter and destruction, so it could hold its collective breath and take in the unspeakable horror of what could strike it on a whim of those who think of themselves as powers-that-be. Right now, I have a task to accomplish.

The corridors I'm running through are all empty, all dead. It's as if Roppongi Hills had somehow found itself estranged from the rest of Tokyo, as if some invisible version of the Styx had started flowing in the walls separating the Grand Hyatt and its occupants from the rest of the complex.

Insubstantial border between the realm of the living and the domain of the dead.

Sudden lightning reveals a smirk on the lips of my reflection in a high wall of glass. The rain season refuses to end, so of course there's a thunderstorm brewing outside, but it's nothing I can't deal with. It takes me less than five minutes to reach the foot of Mori Tower and the elevators that lead all the way up to the sky deck. The place is as deserted as the rest of Roppongi Hills. Good. Punching a simple combination of keys on the closest elevator control panel sends the switch-to-online-mode signal to the computer in charge of managing the ascendings and descendings of those strange, two-legged mammals who fancy themselves to be the center of a thirteen billions years old universe, and who keep wishing they could sprout wings and touch the sky.

The time on my watch is half past one AM. I now have half an hour before a secondary security routine checks the status of the elevators against the time of day--fifteen minutes more for the security to scramble and at least twenty more for the police to deploy around Roppongi Hills.

It's more than enough.

Through the high walls of glass that sheath Mori Tower, I feel a low vibration coursing in the granite floor. Outside, thunder must be rumbling, warning Tokyo citizens to take shelter indoors while they can. In the same time, the elevator doors slide open without making a single noise.

The wide coach shoots up as soundlessly as it came down, whisking me up the fifty-two floors of Mori Tower in less than thirty seconds. Two floors above the sky deck is the Mori Arts Museum, my goal of the night. As I step into the empty place, a smile crawls up my lips. This is why I like those so-called unbreachable places so much: no security post where there should be one. Oh, there is a guard patrolling the museum for sure, maybe even two or three, but they're alone, cut off from reinforcements by a gap of seven hundred feet. The idea behind this faulty arrangement is both simple and logical enough: no burglar can come in or get out other than by using the elevators. The emergency stairs would take too long, and the fences rising at the edge of the sky deck are solid stainless steel bars it would take much too long to cut through as well--not that there are any construction works in the area with high enough cranes anyway.

In other words, the elevators are the key to the building's security, plain and simple. Control them, watch them, and everything will be fine. Make a mistake, however, and the whole security system is compromised. And, just as there's no perfection in this world, there are always mistakes, even if they look like mere inconsequential oversights.

Not deigning to change the activation code more often than once every six weeks is one.

Hiring staff that has an exaggerated taste for soapland bars and can't hold their sake is another. There are enough places in Kabukicho where you can procure all you need to have a quiet little chat with someone, as well as the means to have the same someone forget all about it with an enthusiasm as great as the one they put in telling you information that would mean instant firing if it was done consciously.

The wonders of modern chemistry.

In quick, long strides I go through the modern arts gallery and beyond it, to the museum's central room where the one true treasure exposed here is sleeping: a bright, magnificent wheat field swaying under a tormented sky of blue grey metallic reflections, where distorted crows swim upon wind streams. It's one of Vincent Van Gogh's most beautiful pieces, and it was leant to the museum courtesy of a secret private collection which happens to belong to one of the bastards sitting on Exxon's board of directors. I'm sure the painting will feel much better in other hands.

I don't even spare a glance for the cameras when I step inside the room. They were the first thing on my list when I reached Roppongi Hills half an hour earlier, and they're now blind, deaf and mute. With ginger, careful motions, I unhook the painting from the wall, which sends a futile alarm signal flowing through wires that will no longer get it anywhere. There's no secondary trap like the one that locked me inside a room in Nihombashi, I made certain of that before coming. Removing the painting from its canvas and its frame is a slow, painstaking work, but there's no help for it. As soon as I'm done, I roll the painting upon itself with infinite precautions and then store it inside the protective, weatherproof tube sticking out of my backpack.

There.

It's done. Now, all that's left is--

Steps.

From very far away, I feel my eyes go wide, even as I fleetingly wonder if I stayed in here too long, if bits and pieces of Time have again escaped my grasp. Blinding light brutally floods the room just as I shift my weight on the left foot to bolt toward the door.

Everything in front of me blurs when I push upon my left heel and fling myself to the right, reaching out for the diminutive telescopic steel rod that's sold in the black-market under the name of Ranger's Pike, in homage to a mythical TV series. There's no thought inside my mind, no plan or calculation. If I even so much as pause to consider, I'll fail. I know that, as I know that allowing myself to slip into the reflex motion might take me too close to the shadows lazily drawing patterns on the wall next to me.

I have no choice.

None at all.

In a fluid gesture, I throw the rock-hard rod up in the air, and the stark white light dies in an instant with a sound of glass fragments raining down.

"Shit!" The angry curse is muffled by the thick blanket of blackness that has drowned the room. "Damn you, you won't escape, lights or no lights!"

The slight shuffle of the guard's feet reaches my ears, as loud as if the man was stomping around. He's alone, and he can't see me, not while his eyes are still struggling to adjust to the sudden darkness.

"You thought the building deserted because of the Hiroshima ceremonies, didn't you?" The man is babbling. Uncertainty trickles beyond the taunting words. He's afraid. His fear is leaking all over him and the acrid smell of it is filling the room. He's--

    ...right to be afraid.

With a hand, I push myself away from a wall the shadows have left. My hand, my arm are the shadow--my shoulder, my whole body. "No," I smile as I give the guard his answer. Then I whirl around, taking a single, swift step to my left, and--

    Reach out.

        Soft flesh yields beneath my fingers.

            High walls dissolve within this body I wear.

                The will supporting them has winked out.

        Time.

    Mine.

Now.

I can feel the frantic pulse of his blood, so close under the skin's surface. Even as a glint of metal catches my eye, I shove the guard to the side and slam him against the wall, which makes a rather unpleasant crack. His hot breath blossoms in the palm of my other hand when I silence the scream of pain he was about to utter.

His shoulder then, most likely.

"No," I tell the so-fragile-it's-a-joke creature gently. "No, what I didn't expect was for one of you to be mad enough to dare disturb me." Lightning abruptly illuminates the room, and shows me a face contorted with pain. A face whose wild eyes are turning glassy.

The man's struggle to get air inside his famished lungs is growing weaker. Watching Death's long, bone-gnarled fingers wrap around him with infinite tenderness would certainly be a fascinating spectacle in other circumstances, but it's a much too slow process in this case.

"Die, now." The soft echo of my words flows into the room, and I make my fingers squeeze harder.

The man's heartbeats flutter.

Lightning again floods the room, and draws our shadows on the wall--pushes the shadows back to the wall, even though they writhe and quiver in their struggle to get back to me. A shrill cry pierces through my skull, even as--

    ...nausea rakes my body.

Staggering back, I watch while the security guard slumps against the wall and falls to the floor, in a slow motion.

        No.

The gloved hand I have lifted before my eyes is shaking feverishly.

            No!

                I--

            A hoarse cry tears through my lips.

        Something batters against my skull, and tears at my spine.

    Black.

Brutal.

Savage.

Inside of me--beside me.

A shadow. A shadow on the wall, it--strikes.

It screeches.

Not on the wall. No. Within me, woven to me. Never on the wall, but always waiting in a dark corner of my mind. I'm--

    ...standing next to the guard's unconscious body.

He's alive. I can feel the man's heartbeats vibrating in the air. Weak, but steady.

        Damn him!

On impulse, I kneel beside him. I...

            ...'ll finish this once and for all.

                Too much time has passed already. I must--

...both hands closed upon his throat. The intoxicating sensation of his fading life is filling my senses.

                    There, almost--

...almost done--no!

"NO-O-O-O-O!" The desperate howl resounds into the room while I stagger backward. Oh no. Gods, no! Please, no!

Don't let him be dead!

Don't!

Don't!

In a reflex, I press the palm of my right hand against my mouth as bile rises up my throat. For a moment, my vision blurs and something black claws at me, burns me and shoves me aside. No! The cry is a mental one: I'm busy biting my gloved hand, and the taste of the leather is filling my mouth.

Breathing. Ragged, but--breathing. The man is alive, then. The thought touches the thing coiled up within me, and it lashes out again with raw savagery. Like a drunken man, I falter and drop to the floor hard, so hard the shock threatens to knock me out.

No way.

"No way!" The shout comes out as little more than a hiss. From very far away, the sound of hurried footsteps reaches me.

    Us.

Time's up. There's not enough of it left to indulge oneself in a little bit of killing, which is a very good thing for I have no strength left to fight whatever it is that's happening to me.

Holes in my memory.

Cracks in the passing of Time.

Fuck it! Unhindered, I run out of the room, just in time to glimpse flashlights on the corridor's far end.

    Fast!

I accelerate.

        Faster!

The elevators are no longer an option; the guards must have warned their central office in Roppongi Hills. There's only the stairs left, them and their impossibly long way down.

            ...am standing before the empty space in the staircase's midst.

                ...air whips my face.

                    ...floor numbers painted in dark red on the dimly lit walls of concrete.

                        ...hurtling past, blurred.

Black legs are surrounding me.

Eight legs, and a nightmarish shadow looming over me. Even as my heart freezes in my chest, I recognize the ugly spider statue set at the entry point of Roppongi Hills. Rain is pouring down every side of it, and thunder is roaring all around me, deafening. I-- Just how did I get here? I'm soaked through, I realize abruptly. I must have run to this place--or it has.

Later.

With difficulty, I drag air inside my lungs. Later. Here is nowhere near far enough. I need to get myself hell away from Roppongi altogether. I have to reach the Petit Paradis Perdu. Then--later.

Later.

Pushing myself from the shelter of the huge spider statue, I fling myself into the storm.

Dots of fluorescent lights, pink and bright yellow and sky blue and neon red were twirling around me, blurring into thin threads of colors barring the night. The low, droning sounds invading my mind were the shuffle of a myriad feet mixed with hundreds of voices. Dissonant.

Buzzing like a hive of insects.

Dizzying.

The tacky shopfronts, the tuxedo-wearing men waving for customers to enter the bars they worked for, the hotel signs flashing pink--it all belonged to Kabukicho. Deep inside me, something could remember that, rationalize what my eyes were seeing and what my senses were feeling, could understand that if there were so many people crowding the streets in the dead of night, it was precisely because this was Kabukicho, and because the cooling air that had flown into the streets in the wake of the thunderstorm was a lure much too tempting to resist.

What I couldn't remember was sitting on the subway or coming out of Shinjuku station. Everything in my mind was a shambles, in complete chaos, and I was--lost. Lost in the middle of a crowd with a Van Gogh painting safely stored in a weatherproof tube in my backpack. Looking down at my hands, I noted I had shed the gloves, them and the black coveralls as well.

A shadow licked at my feet.

Wildly I jerked aside and stumbled--hit something. "Fuck you, moron!" The furious curse reached my ears even as hands roughly shoved me aside.

Shadows.

There were shadows everywhere.

Shadows of faceless people.

Shadows drawn by the sickening signs on the storefronts surrounding me.

Shying away from them, I crashed into someone behind me, yelping in pain when an elbow struck me between the shoulderblades. "Watch it!" a voice yelled close to my left ear. Frantic, I scrambled to the right just as a hand reached out to me.

They musn't--musn't touch me.

They. Their shadows.

They'd die.

They'd be killed. I'd-- "Leave him be, it's just a fool who's smoked too much crystal, or who's on a bad acid trip. He won't even know you're punching him. Come on!"

On instinct, I pressed my hands against my temples, and fought to get air inside my lungs. I had to run away from this place, from that moving ocean of shadows dancing around me, taking advantage of their oblivious human owners' motions in the crowd to taunt me and spark black echoes within me. I could almost hear the shadow's voice inside me, the whisper of its presence inside my soul, gentle--gentle. Frozen in place, I focused on the pressure of my fingers against my skull, swaying like a drunken man and fighting the scream tearing at my throat.

Movement.

A ripple in the tide of people.

A shiver in their sea of shadows.

On my left, the crowd's waves parted, ever so slightly, clearing a thin line of free space between the forest of bodies. For the time of a heartbeat I watched the eerie motion, uncomprehending. It was obvious the men and women didn't realize what they were doing. Like a wild stream, they were altering their course to avoid a rock in their way, or they were yielding to a stronger counter-current.

A brutal gust of hot wind splashed over me and then scattered in the crowd, rousing a few murmurs of protest at its abrupt change of direction as well as at its unwelcome heat. Before me, the shadows shuddered and slithered away--just a little.

Enough.

Flinging myself forward, I ran straight for the opening in the crowd before me.

Blind.

Deaf.

There was no thought inside my mind; there couldn't be any thought within--no realization that the round of waltzing shadows was closing in already, and that my narrow path of escape had never been anything other than an illusion.

A deception.

The shock when I slammed into an obstacle was so violent it robbed me of breath, and I fell.

"Hey!" Fingers had closed around my left shoulder in an iron grip, holding me upright. Reflexively I looked up, and drew a sharp intake of breath.

Light brown hair, and even lighter brown eyes.

Almond-shaped eyes.

Throwing my weight to the right, I fought to pull myself free, but as he had before, Sumeragi Shuusuke thwarted my attempt with incredible ease. Shuddering, I tried again. Harder. I didn't need to glance down to know that the shadows had closed their circle around me, and would swallow me in a matter of seconds. "Let go!" I cried out between chattering teeth and a growing, velvety purr vibrating within. "Let go, damn you! It's--"

A smile twisted his lips, and contempt came to his haughty gaze when he peered down at our feet. "Those pitiful things," he said in a cold, emotionless voice, "are nothing. Insignificant rubbish which knows better than to even dream to make me notice their presence." Following his eyes, I looked down in time to see the circle of swarming shadows break.

Withdraw.

Scatter and sink into the night like a flock of terrified birds.

"This one, however," Sumeragi Shuusuke's eerie, unwavering gaze was now focused on me, "is another matter." In a slow motion, he reached out to my brow with his free hand. Between two beatings of my heart, I watched him while a hiss invaded my soul.

Nausea overwhelmed me, raking my body even more violently than it had in Roppongi Hills, and blackness obscured my sight, just as I felt myself flinging into the night.

"I have you." The calm, unworried voice cut through the blind curtain that had darkened my vision. "Hush," Sumeragi Shuusuke whispered, and I realized I was trembling from head to toe. His second hand had closed upon my other shoulder, and he was holding me at arms' length, his grip so strong it was sending small waves of pain coursing down my forearms. Around us, the crowd was flowing on, never once bouncing into us--never once looking at us even though we were standing in its midst and hampering its blind, mindless movement.

As if they and we belonged to different worlds.

"What--" I stammered, holding on to the first stray thought that popped inside my mind. "What are you doing here? You don't belong here." No, certainly the strange, fey brother of Sumeragi Ran had nothing to do in Kabukicho, was alien to Kabukicho, and--

Laughter rippled in the night.

Bitter mirth--dark even.

"You," he snorted, "belong here even less than I do."

Lightning pierced through the darkness, eclipsing the neon lights. In the split-second during which it illuminated the men and women passing us by, I blinked. Their features were unclear, blurred somehow, as if they had lost their solidity--as if these people were blending in with the night, sinking into it. Thunder roared, its rumble eerily distant even though it had followed lightning almost at once and should thus be deafening.

Water.

Rain started falling in a slow shower of sparkling drops. The sensation when it started trickling down my face and my neck was odd--off.

Unreal.

Disembodied, if one could qualify rain so.

Again I blinked, as it continued falling its sluggish way down to the ground. Lightning sparked the night, thunder woven to it--still absurdly distant. Around us, the blurred lines of the crowd broke, and people scampered away from the returning thunderstorm.

"Great," Sumeragi Shuusuke heaved out a faint sigh. "I suppose there's no help for it." He grimaced at the ghostly rain, pouring down less than a step away from us while it kept showering us with lazy drops. With a nod in my direction, he added, "I can't maintain this kekkai much longer without disturbing the balance of this place, and neither you nor I want that to happen. Once I release it, brace yourself and follow me."

The look I returned him was a blank one. Nothing of this was making sense, and the word he had used was just one more absurdity to pile up upon all the others that had flocked to my banner since sundown.

Rain splashed over me, violent, and thunder rushed in to fill my mind, no longer a faraway sound but a roar so powerful I reached up to plug my ears and winced. "Come, quickly!" Through a thick curtain of water, I noticed Sumeragi Shuusuke was now gripping my left forearm, then I felt his pull upon me.

Rain was pouring down over us. Real. Warm and liquid, and real. It was falling so hard and so fast that I could hardly glimpse the luminous signs of Kabukicho's bars, and that I had to gasp to draw air inside my lungs.

Kabukicho.

The Petit Paradis Perdu.

"I can't," I started, then lightning drowned the place, and revealed a sight that made my flesh crawl.

Shadows, hundreds of little puddles of them were sparkling around us, rippling with the raindrops. With all the strength I had, I pushed back. It was instinct, panic and madness all at once; it was a quiet, quiet pearl of ice purring inside my heart as well. Without a word or even a glance my way, Sumeragi Shuusuke pulled me forward, and I yielded just before the pressure of his fingers could twist my wrist and break the fragile bones there.

Splashes echoed in my brain as we ran, sounds that resounded into emptiness. At some point, he came to a stop and I imitated him. When lightning once more broke the night, I saw we were standing next to the sleek silhouette of a luxurious car which looked like its designers had had racing in their mind rather than producing a limousine. In silence, the rear door slid open, and Sumeragi Shuusuke pushed me inside.

I barely registered the hiss of the door sliding shut or the slight sinking of the seat when someone sat beside me. "I'll need speed," Sumeragi Shuusuke's voice was still calm and indifferent, as if nothing weird or surprising had happened. "Everything you can give me, Takashi." There was no answer, but at once the car's engine started. Like a plane right before take-off, I felt it gathering power and then rushing forward.

Arrow of steel cutting through the storm in utter silence.

There was no light inside the passenger compartment, not even dim ones. This meant that there weren't any shadows dancing around me. Water was dripping from my hair, my face and my clothes, and I could feel it shaping puddles around the palms of my hands in what must be costly leather seats. Unable to help myself, I laid my head back against the seat's top, and the world around me--tripped.

    Stuck.

With mental hands, I groped for it,

        ...low though *that* fire seemed to be--

for the tidbits of Time drifting

            nothing but a lie. A trap.

free through the narrow space between my fingers.

                A deception a bit too obvious for one who watched empires rise and fall, while the

Sucking in air in muted gasps as I clawed at Time's delicate fabric.

                    imperceptible unbalance gently, so gently led the line of arrogant men and women astray.

"...here." The words were strangely distorted, as if Time was wavering between stopping, or staying its course. With difficulty, I concentrated on the sounds, and felt a distant sting in my right cheek, as if I had been slapped there. "Focus!" the same voice commanded, while I was pulled to the right, out of a car--a limo.

Wind.

The scent of grass, and leaves, and wet earth everywhere.

"Not a word to my dear onee-sama, but then you know that. Sorry, and thank you, Takashi," the voice next to me chuckled--Sumeragi Shuusuke's voice. He had brought me all the way to the Sumeragi mansion, but all I remembered of the two hours-long trip was--

Patches.

Pieces that could never match.

Chaotic.

"Lucky for you she never did bother with the wards of the side gate," my companion told me as if I was supposed to understand what he meant. "Not so far now." The pressure of his hand on my right shoulder was a gentle one. "Come on." With that, he dragged me into the gardens of the Sumeragi mansion through what looked like an abandoned back door covered with vines, and I let him. I was too exhausted, too lost to care or to even remember I ought to be terrified, frantic after what had happened--was happening still.

Feet lightly tapping on a path of stones.

Glimmers of ponds inside which hungry koi fishes were sound asleep.

A soft glow before me.

A wall.

A translucent wall without substance, a border that nothing could breach.

A wall traversed by irised currents, as if its surface was that of a lake caressed by the gentlest of breezes.

    No. Not soft.

When my feet stopped, Sumeragi Shuusuke dragged me onward.

        Never soft.

            Hard as diamond.

                So powerful that not even I--

A snarl came through my lips while I wildly fought Sumeragi Shuusuke's hold on me. "Release me! I growled, "Release me! Re--" That ended in a shrill cry of pain as he pulled at me, twisting my arm so harshly there was a sickening pop, and he wrenched my right shoulder out of its socket. My knees buckled under me, but before I could slump to the ground, he came to my side and held me up, merciless.

"Enough with this game!" he snapped. The hazel eyes were looking at me without seeing me, as if I no longer existed. Again, I cried out when he yanked at my torn shoulder and pain blinded me.

The wall--

    Strong.

The beautiful, gently shining wall--

        Too strong! Too powerful, and masterfully wrought.

"No," I pleaded, cold exploding inside my stomach and spreading to my guts, worming its way up my spine. "No, I--"

Ice.

Needles pierced through my skulls while tiny crystal bells chimed all around me.

A blanket of pure white snow.

A cloak of rainbow.

Laughter like the rain in Spring.

"There," said the voice of Sumeragi Shuusuke beside me, "that wasn't so hard, was it?" Through a haze of pain, I squinted to get a look at him, intending to tell him he was madder than I was, but he was nowhere to be seen. For a few seconds, I stood where I was, swaying like a man made weak by hunger, then I reached up with my left hand to my wounded shoulder. That was a bad mistake. The tearing sensation in my shoulder flared up, excruciating, and robbed me of breath.

"Hell!" The muffled hiss had come from me. It was hard to think with the pain drowning my mind, even though I knew a torn shoulder was nowhere near a grievous wound. In my back, I could still feel the backpack and its precious treasure. That meant the delivery at the Petit Paradis Perdu hadn't taken place.

No. No, of course it hadn't taken place. I had--fallen through time's sieve, prey to a shadow on a wall.

No, not a shadow.

A thing. A part of me. A presence, inhuman and cold. Strong and deep and dark, it had looked down upon the choking guard in Mori Tower and it--and I--

"Steady." I bit my lower lip as hands closed around my shoulders, grateful for the pain which smothered the memories of Roppongi Hills. "What the...?" Sumeragi Shuusuke sounded puzzled. "Oh, I see." The pressure of his fingers lessened, and I gulped air inside my lungs. "I'm sorry," he added softly, "but I had to get you past my wards."

Absurd.

There was nothing I could reply to a pronouncement like that. All of a sudden, he put something over my head--soft, familiar. A towel. The word came to my mind just as I felt him carefully start kneading the sides of my skull with the delicate fabric. Drying my hair. He was--

But the storm...was gone. I shivered, realizing. It was gone. We had left it in Kabukicho, and the place we were now standing in--

His domain.

His beautiful garden.

Safe.

"Yes," he whispered, close to me, "it's safe. Relax." Unable to help myself, I focused on the wonderful sensation of his drying my hair and massaging my skull. "It's all right," he chuckled, a gentle sound which enfolded me whole. He was smiling, I knew he was without having to turn to see his face. He was smiling, and it was good. It doused the pain in my shoulder and silenced the lingering touch of the storm.

"Close your eyes."

Fleetingly something inside me shuddered when those words roused an echo of things once murmured by the wind, woven with my soul. "Close your eyes," he repeated, this impossible lord of a garden hovering upon the edge of the world, hidden behind high walls of morning dew that bound earth and sky together.

Surrendering to instinct, I did.

A faraway noise like an army of cicadas desperately scratching their flanks in order to evacuate some of Japan's stuffy Summer heat reached me in spite of the fog clogging my brain. With it, the constant, droning sound brought the feeling of a soft fabric beneath my body, and the sensation of a dull ache in my left shoulder. Reluctantly I acknowledged the light filtering through my closed eyelids, and the fact that sleep was leaving me in small waves of wakefulness. A deep sigh escaped me while I clutched the pillow I was holding with my left hand. Exhaustion might have released its claws over me, but still weariness flowed in my veins. I could feel it weighing on my bones even though I was lying in a bed.

A presence.

Warmth was radiating from insubstantial filaments like a net of light cast over me.

The abrupt tension in the muscles of my back and my shoulder sparked the ache into a sharp blade of pain that I found hard to ignore while I opened my eyes.

"Well," Sumeragi Shuusuke's light brown eyes were set on me. "Good morning." Even though I was now fully awake, I could still dimly glimpse what my mind could only associate with a net of shimmering, unreal filaments of dawn. Blinking didn't help the weird illusion to vanish. "I hope you managed to find some rest, because your sleep was even more troubled than that of an antelope," he added, pursing his lips.

Again I blinked, as memories of the previous night returned, and reflexively I clutched the pillow, hard. "I'm," I began, then I noticed an almost imperceptible twitch in his expression and froze. The pillow I was holding was his left knee.

In a brusque motion, I jerked my hand away, which sent a nasty jolt of pain coursing down my shoulderblades. "Sorry," I hissed between clenched teeth. "I'm sorry." He was sitting right next to my head on some weird kind of almost legless chair, his right leg extended before him and his left tucked under it, bent so the knee touched the lower edge of the real pillow. How long had he been sitting like that, unmoving even though staying that way would send cramps through one's legs and back after only a few minutes?

Long enough to tell me my sleep had been a troubled one.

Long enough, if I had unconsciously reached out to his knee while assuming my usual sleeping position on the right side.

Heat rushed to my cheeks and he laughed, a clear, carefree sound that echoed around us. "It's all right," he grinned at me. After all, I accepted the risk of being clutched to death when I sat down here." Small flames of mirth were dancing in his eyes as he said this, then he sobered. "Your clothes should be dry soon. In the meantime, I can lend you some," he indicated what looked like a worn out pair of hakama and an old jacket piled against the edge of the room's sliding panel. "Why don't you get dressed, and then come to the terrace. We'll talk."

For a moment I stared back at him, uncomprehending. Then, all of a sudden I realized I was very much naked under the sheets and blanket, which stood to reason considering how the last night's thunderstorm had soaked the both of us through, but-- "You'll be able to manage that on your own?" There was an inquisitive look in his eyes.

"Yeah," I bowed my head and focused on the deep blue of the blanket covering me. "Sure. My shoulder still hurts, but it's easily bearable, thanks." My cheeks were burning me.

"Least I could do," he chuckled, "setting that shoulder after putting it out." A process even more painful than wrenching it out of its socket, that sleep certainly couldn't shield me from, and yet--

Black.

A shining flow of black spheres and a few white ones was encircling my left wrist.

Beads, like that of a Christian rosary.

"What--?"

A hand pressed on my right thigh through the blanket. "Later. Get dressed, then join me outside." With that, he stood in a lithe, fluid motion in which there wasn't even the faintest hint of stiffness, and then left the room.

During a long minute, I considered the strange bracelet upon my wrist. He must have set it there, even if I couldn't begin to fathom the reason why. Perhaps there was none, perhaps it was just a random whim of that eerie, fickle figure--just as his dragging me out of Kabukicho and bringing me here might be.

Too simple.

Too easy.

A long shiver ran down my spine while memories twirled inside my mind. Sensations, feelings I wanted nothing to do with, but which screamed at me they were mine, no matter how I tried to deny them. At last, I pulled the blanket away, noticing there was one piece of clothing still on my body: my boxers, which thankfully he had left where they belonged. "Fool." My faint whisper was less than steady. "I'm a stupid fool." I laughed, all too much aware that the smile on my lips was a trembling one. With slow, careful movements, I stood up, and proceeded to get dressed.

As luck would have it, his clothes were only a bit too big for me, not enough for me to trip on the end of the hakama. Putting on the jacket wasn't the most pleasant part of the process, but I got it done without putting too much strain on my shoulder. Instead of stepping outside the room at once after I was done, I pivoted and watched my backpack. It had been set down in the room's far corner. The protective tube was still sticking out of it, but there was no way to know whether it had been tampered with.

Unlikely.

Groundless though it was, there was no ignoring the quiet certitude spreading within--it, and the nagging little voice that kept telling me I was stalling, looking for excuses to delay having to leave the room and join Sumeragi Shuusuke on the terrace as he had bidden me do.

Eventually I turned away from the backpack and walked to the sliding panel in slow, reluctant steps. "Oh stop it," I willed myself, and I opened the Japanese version of a door.

The sky's deep blue was beautiful and pure. There wasn't a trace left of the storm, as if the dawn had shooed it away and chased it beyond the mountains. Even the air was cooler, the humidity that had saturated it until now greatly reduced. I went to sit on the edge of the terrace on my host's right, and wondered if the rain season had at last come to an end. Before my eyes, the garden was even more beautiful than I remembered it.

Real.

More real than anything else in the world.

Alive as the crisp air around us was.

Bright and true, the colors of stones and grass and butterflies.

Unblinking I stared at it, even though my vision blurred and a lump hurt my throat. It was too beautiful, something inside me knew, too beautiful for human eyes, so much so it summoned memories, ancient and nameless, a nostalgia for things which could never have existed, magic or Faerie or paradise--an emotion so sharp and strong it was a knife piercing through my heart.

A cup of tea intruded into my field of vision and I eyed it for a moment before taking it with a small bow of the head, as silent as he. A gentle breeze enfolded us while I took a few sips of the drink, then it left us to tickle a bush of sakaki trees on our left. The silence wore on, peaceful, soothing, until I caught a glimpse of the garden's border, a bit more than a furlong away. That shimmering wall of unreal crystal was truly there. It didn't care that there were things which should know better than to have the presumption to even exist in a world of science and economic laws--a world from which legends and fantasy had been banned long ago. It cared nothing for Shrodinger's equations or dynamic boards of probabilities; it cared nothing for cars or planes, or for the insanity of people who let themselves be sucked dry by theoretical laws which applied to their lives only because they allowed them to--willing slaves in a society that had started rotting away in the very moment of its beginning.

No, that absurd wall didn't give a damn about such futile things. It simply stood there, a harmless barrier of morning dew which had sent a tingling sensation through my blood once, its irised currents full of musical laughter--a wall of blades and needles which had speared my skull last night.

Hissing in fury.

No--no, that wasn't true. It had been I--inside me.... I set the cup of tea down beside me and clasped my trembling forearm. The hazy, ghostly wall flickering in the air a furlong away had let me pass, and now it was just glowing there, shielding this place from the world. From Kabukicho and the Petit Paradis Perdu, where I had failed to show up at the appointed time.

From things which gathered in dark little puddles of dread come night.

From lapses and hiccups in Time's flow.

My mouth drawn in a taut line, I stared at that insane border, remembering all too well the anger and contempt I had thrown at it and at its eccentric maker when last I had come to the Sumeragi mansion, less than ten days ago. Nothing had changed since that furious night, no new breakthrough in physics could account for things as elusive as that wall was--or for the almost imperceptible net of light hovering around me.

No scientific law could explain the odd string of beads tied to my left wrist.

And yet, there was no ignoring the sick feeling that drowned my memories of the disaster in Roppongi Hills, or the cold spreading in my chest at the thought of what I had left behind Sumeragi Shuusuke's wall.

What I had shed.

"What," I asked in spite of the thing crawling in my stomach and twisting my insides into tight little knots, "happened?"

Lazily Sumeragi Shuusuke turned toward me, and he considered me in silence during what felt like an eternity. There was a look of cold appraisal in his gaze, one which was hard to whistand. Thanks to a furious effort of will, I stared back at him, until at last a thin smile curled up his lips. "An unsettling question," he replied, even though it didn't seem to trouble him in the least, "and a vast one as well." Had that been scorn tainting his voice?

In a brisk movement, I bowed my head and hissed out air between clenched teeth. There was no obligation for him to answer me. He owed me nothing at all, or perhaps a few blows and a good measure of contempt for the insults I had thrown in his face at the end of my last visit here. Clasping my hands upon my knees, I focused on my intertwined fingers, and gathered the strength to get up.

To walk away.

To leave these gardens.

To go and drown into whatever it was that was waiting beyond the wall of shimmering lights.

"There were many families involved with Shinto, back when Tokyo was called Edo and the city was young." Sumeragi Shuusuke was still watching me with that remote, assessing gaze of his. He had laid a hand upon my left forearm, as if to tell me not to leave. "Many families," he repeated, "and most of them small. Insignificant. A few, however, wielded power. True power that had to be reckoned with. Power," he sighed, "which they had found how to harness, by the sheer strength of their wills and a good amount of luck. The kind of power that comes with a price. But as the years passed and the world moved on," the smile frozen on his lips was a cold, cold one as he went on, "almost all of them forgot the terms of the old bargains they had struck. Trapped, ensnared by their own foolishness, they dwindled, little by little, until their names sank beneath earth, stones and roots. Almost all of them." He looked away from me. "There are few who remain. Some," haughty, somber mirth poisoned his next words, "don't even remember who they were--who they are still, whether it pleases them or not."

The pressure of his fingers on my forearm grew all of a sudden. "I haven't released you," he stated without the slightest trace of amenity in his voice. As his words registered in my brain, I realized my whole body was tense, the muscles taut as if I had been on the verge of jumping up and then running away from him as fast as my legs would allow.

Adrenaline was filling my blood.

Obscuring my vision.

He didn't know. He couldn't know. It was all absurd and insane, as the very name Ichinomiya was insane! Struggling against the incoherent cry clawing at my throat, I dragged in a shuddering breath, and willed myself to remain seated where I was, no matter how hard that was.

"I don't understand," I heard myself murmur. "I've tried to, but I don't. I know something happened. I felt it, I--" biting my lower lip, I looked up at him. "I tried to fight it, and I failed. Perhaps it was something other than madness tearing my mind apart and claiming me, perhaps--" I shook my head. "All I know is that you've helped me, that you've given me a shelter, and that I..." my voice broke, but I made myself sustain his steady, prideful gaze, and resumed, "I deserve none of what you've done for me. I scorned this place and you. I don't know how to believe any of the things I feel." With a helpless shrug, I added, "I don't understand how you can still be willing to talk to me, much less why you would inconvenience yourself and help the fool that I am, Sumeragi-san."

Laughter greeted my rather pathetic tirade, and it was all I could do not to wince, even though I could hear kindness in it beside the well-deserved mockery. "Calling me Shuusuke will do," he nodded once his amusement had subsided, "but don't expect me to ever call you by the deception you use as a firstname, Ayné-san." There was no mistaking the emphasis he had placed on my name. Once more he was hinting at things he had no way of knowing, as if he could somehow peer into people's souls.

"As to the rest," gentleness seeped into his voice and softened his expression as he went on, "I know. It's a sad, painful thing when that," with a lightning fast motion, he touched the tip of his right forefinger to my brow, "is at war with this." For a fleeting moment, he palm of his hand rested against my chest, at the heart's level.

I sat very still through the brutal lurch in my heartbeats, then he withdrew his hand, and heaved out an almost inaudible sigh. "Expecting reasons and rational understanding are a mistake. As bad as entertaining the illusion of control," he sniggered. Then he looked me right in the eyes and said softly, "You touched my wards, and they drew you in." Again, there was a mysterious smile hovering on his lips.

It didn't make sense.

He didn't make sense, and he probably never would.

Anger didn't rush in the wake of that realization. It was futile to expect him to be what my western-educated mind insisted on willing him to be--to think or to feel the way I did.

"Now this," he indicated the bracelet he must have fastened to my wrist during the night, "think of it as a keepsake, a gift made on a whim of mine, or a talisman if you will. Just," he added in a very quiet voice, "never take it off. Not while you roam places and moments when shadows and spirit dance."

I didn't laugh at him. I had no right to, and besides the laughter would have been a lie, a ridiculous attempt at denying the echo his words were finding within me. So I held the sound of his voice close, and refocused on the gardens spreading before us.

I closed my eyes.

I felt the breeze caress my face and heard the rustle of the fragile sakaki trees' leaves.

I inhaled the scent of the grass and flowers surrounding us.

I wished that I could somehow embrace this place and be embraced by it.

I drank into the wonderful sensation of the life pulsing everywhere.

I reveled in the feeling of the luminous presence next to me.

And I let go.

For a while, I released my grip on reality and Time.

For a while.

Longer, just a bit.

Just a bit.

"Would--" I stopped myself before I could go any further. My jaw set, I took in the too real, too magical world around me, and banished the absurd sensation of a weight crushing my chest. Almost, I had asked him if I could stay--almost. The words of that crazy plea were still crowding my throat, begging to be uttered.

"The wind you're riding isn't done blowing." Sumeragi Shuusuke nodded at me. Watching him in silence, I shuddered.

I knew that.

I knew.

Madness was waiting at the road's end, Ichinomiya Masami's murderous folly.

Schizophrenia.

"Hush." I blinked as I felt his fingers comb my hair in slow, slow motions. "Ran-neesama left the mansion shortly after dawn," he added in a breath, his fingers still stroking my hair. "She'll never know. Watch out for her, though. She has turned her gaze toward you." Eyes closed tightly shut, I refused the words that meant dismissal, and focused on the gentle, careful touch of his hand in my hair instead. I focused on that with all my will, and wordlessly ordered Time to stop.

It didn't.

"Go," he whispered in my ear. His hand had left my hair, and was giving a careful push on my left shoulder. Staring at the garden's unreal boundary, I stood up and obeyed, never once looking back. There was nothing else to do.

Nothing, but to see this to its end.

End of Chapter 4.

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