Chapter 1 – Coffee and Conversation

Coffee and conversation. It was literally the only item on the really quite long list that Keiko could genuinely say she enjoyed. She tried again, reading down the list, her brow furrowing and rising as she contemplated each item. It wasn't so much that she had no interest in the other items on the list, but rather more that she just didn't feel passionately enough about any of them to want to commit herself to them. She had a basic understanding of politics but did not feel strongly for any particular political party or belief; she was interested in visiting foreign lands but had no particular destination or journey in mind; she tried to walk where she could rather than take the bus but hardly felt that qualified her as a hiker or exercise enthusiast; even though her parents owned a restaurant she was far from fanatical about cuisine; she enjoyed movies and the theatre but had no special passion for either; photos were something she partook in; she had no burning desire to be a housewife or mother; she didn't care much for dancing other than occasionally when she out with her friends; and when it came to friends, she found that she had spent so little time with anyone since starting at Kyoto University, she felt checking friends as an interest would seem dishonest too. And finally, her last two options of "interests" were "career" and "coffee and conversation": the latter was a warming and comforting idea and the former was terrifying.

Keiko had no idea what sort of career she wanted.

On advice of her teachers in high school, she had entered into a degree in politics – which, as she eyed the unchecked option of "politics" as an interest on her form, she began to feel ridiculous about – simply because her teachers had advised her that she was a good all-rounder, good in debating exercises and diplomatic in her dealings with staff and students. At the time, she had felt flattered by that assessment, but, as she embarked on her second year of studies and found herself feeling increasingly lost and detached, Keiko had begun to think that maybe what her high school teachers had really meant was that she was adequate in all subjects, but not enough of a stand-out in any particular area to merit studying something more specific like medicine, engineering or law. It was like they saw her as someone non-exceptional and non-spectacular, and so sent her on the route of becoming yet another non-exceptional, non-spectacular politician. They had seen her then exactly how she felt she had become in life: bland. As bland as coffee and conversation.

And maybe her old high school teachers weren't the only ones who thought Keiko was bland. Maybe all her old friends thought of her that way too. Maybe Yusuke thought of her that way. Maybe that was why his visits were becoming less and less frequent, shorter in duration each time, with a distinct air that he felt visiting her had become a chore and always ending with the two of them arguing. Maybe the sense of encroaching blandness in her life was why Keiko had gone out across the campus seeking an extracurricular activity to participate in. Maybe she wanted to start something new so that she wouldn't always be checking only coffee and conversation. Maybe all of it was why instead of choosing an activity, Keiko had accepted an application form for a student-based, student-run, dating agency.

It wasn't that she wanted to find a new boyfriend – after all, she had Yusuke, same as always – it was just that the girl handing out applications had been so lively and Keiko was at least curious to know what the dating scene would be like, were she ever to become single.

But what sort of match was "coffee and conversation" going to find her?

With a sigh, Keiko neatly folded the form in two, put the lid back into her pen to save the ink from drying out, returned the pen to the appropriately sized section of her stationery organiser, left her room, walked down the hallway, and posted the form into the handmade, heart-shaped wooden box hanging on the wall.

Walking back to her room Keiko smirked to herself as she thought about how there ought to have been an option for "curiosity" as an interest.

Kuwabara inhaled sharply through his nostrils, his hands forming into fists, the one bunched around the strap of his backpack at his shoulder crushing the strap until it squeaked in complaint. He had passed several overly-enthusiastic girls since the start of the semester all trying to force forms for their "dating agency" onto him, and he had almost grown weary of telling them (as politely as he could) to back off. He thought the idea was just an excuse to bring together students who met up at parties anyway, in what they probably thought was a more sophisticated setting – or simply a more efficient way for them each to separate their wheat from the proverbial chaff – and even if he had thought it a good idea, he would hardly have indulged in it, since he had already met his dream girl: the lovely Yukina.

Kuwabara's love for Yukina was pure, noble, unwavering and beyond all doubt: something he had once thought also applied to the love shared between his good friends Yusuke and Keiko. And yet, despite that, despite the fact that Yusuke and Keiko had been side-by-side since before Kuwabara had even met either of them, despite the burning memory of how attuned to Yusuke Keiko had been during the Dark Tournament and their battle against Sensui, despite memories of multiple times Botan, Shizuru and even Kurama had voiced their beliefs that Yusuke and Keiko were soulmates, destined to be bound together in love forever more, despite all of that, Kuwabara had just witnessed something that shook his entire belief system regarding eternal love.

Keiko was even smiling, her head held high, a skip in her step, as she walked away from delivering her form to the student dating agency.

Kuwabara slunk back a step to avoid falling into Keiko's line of sight, pressing his back to the tree he had been spying on her from behind, drawing in a deep breath and sighing it back out before leaning around the other side of the tree, peering around the trunk at the glass-walled hallway behind him, watching as Keiko continued back along the corridor beyond with no sense of hesitation or doubt, apparently sure and in fact also quite pleased with her decision to seek out a new boyfriend.

Kuwabara sighed again and moved around to once more rest his back against the tree trunk, readying himself to contemplate what he had just witnessed, what it all might mean, what he ought to do next (should he approach Keiko, challenge her on what he had witnessed her do, should he warn Yusuke or should he seek advise from someone wiser on such matters, like Kurama or his sister?), but before he could even begin to weigh up his options, he found himself suddenly facing a girl dressed in the uniform of the university track team: a disguise that might have actually made her inconspicuous had she not decided to furnish it with a pair of over-sized, round, mirrored sunglasses and a large knitted scarf she had haphazardly thrown over her head, clutching it in place with one fist bunched by her chin.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" Botan asked Kuwabara, somehow managing to peer at him over the top of her enormous sunglasses, which had slipped down, barely held in place by the very tip of her nose. "Keiko just completed a form for the dating agency and posted it into the application postbox. Do you think she wants to enlist the services of the agency?"

Kuwabara groaned.

"Could Keiko be looking for a new boyfriend?" Botan continued. "Might that be why she's completed a form for the dating agency and posted it back?"

Kuwabara tried to give Botan the flattest, most admonishing look he possibly could. She frowned slightly, before making a small "oh" sound and whipping off her dark glasses and scarf.

"It's me, Botan," she said, pointing at herself as her sunglasses landed on the lawn with a soft clatter and her scarf floated away in a warm breeze. "I'm in disguise."

"I knew it was you, Botan," Kuwabara grumbled.

"And I've come prepared."

Kuwabara yelped as Botan deftly slipped a hand down her top and – seemingly from between her breasts – retrieved a screwdriver. She grinned and wiggled her eyebrows at him as she twisted it in the air between them, but her grin vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced instead by a perturbed pout.

"I do hope a flat-headed screwdriver is the right instrument for the job," she pondered aloud. "Perhaps I should have packed both types of screwdriver, and a couple of different sizes…"

"Put it away, Botan!" Kuwabara snapped, making a grab for the tool, which Botan somehow, surprisingly, moved out of his reach with little effort.

"Calm down, I know what I'm doing!" she retorted. "I've done this sort of thing many times before."

Kuwabara gulped, his hand moving away from the screwdriver and slowly falling to his side.

"Wh-what sort of thing before?" he asked nervously, his mind spiralling rapidly beyond the realms of logic as he tried to count the many ways Botan might want to use a screwdriver.

"Removed the door from a postbox and stolen the contents of course silly!" she replied, as though her answer was both obvious and a minor affair.

"Botan, don't!" Kuwabara warned hurriedly, making another failed attempt to take the tool from her hand. "It's none of our business! We can't go around stealing other people's mail!"

"Well excuse me Mister, but the steadfast romance between two of my very best friends being potentially at risk is very much my business," Botan snootily replied. "And you ought to make it yours too!"

Kuwabara turned his head, looking back out across the lawn at the offending postbox, mounted on a wall just inside a set of doors that opened out onto a small patioed area, sheltered from the warm sun by a stylised wooden awning, under which laid a plain table with four chairs: the two chairs facing out across the lawns of the campus were occupied by two girls who were presumably agents for the amateur dating agency, and the two chairs opposite them laid vacant, awaiting their next potential client.

"So, shall I distract whilst you dismantle the box, or will you distract whilst I retrieve Keiko's application?" Botan asked, bringing Kuwabara's attention sharply back to her. "I do have more experience at jimmying open postboxes than you do Kuwabara, but I am also better at lying to women than you are… Hmm, now that I think about it, you're not really my best accomplice for this task…"

"Botan, we can't dismantle the postbox and steal Keiko's application!" Kuwabara wailed.

"It's not "stealing", Kuwabara," Botan replied with a frown, shaking her head almost admonishingly at him. "You make it sound like I intend to commit a crime here!"

"You're the one who said you need an "accomplice"!" Kuwabara pointed out.

"Yes, I do need a better accomplice," Botan continued obliviously, rubbing her chin and rolling her eyes skyward in thought. "Yusuke would really be the best accomplice for an act of larceny such as this one, but I can hardly ask Yusuke to help me here, since the whole point of this exercise is to stop Keiko from finding a new boyfriend without Yusuke knowing she was looking for one in the first place…"

"Maybe it's not what it looks like. Maybe Keiko was just posting an application for her roommate, because she was too shy to do it herself."

"Kurama would be good for this task also, he has a long and colourful history or deceiving others, and those daydreaming girls would surely be charmed by his gentle voice, his disarming charm and his inoffensive good looks…"

"You can't tell Kurama about this, Botan! You can't tell anyone! It's between Keiko and Urameshi, it's nothing to do with me, you, or Kurama!"

"I wonder what Yukina is doing this time of day…"

"Hey! You leave Yukina out of this!"

"Hmm, I could bring her here on the ruse that I was just taking her here to visit her good friends Keiko and Kurama… And also Kuwabara, I suppose…"

Kuwabara opened his mouth to again object to Botan's desire to involve Yukina in what was already possibly quite a messy affair, but his voice failed him as the implication of her words truly sank in. Slowly, he closed his mouth again and his shoulders sagged as his brow furrowed.

"Those really are our only options," Botan concluded, meeting Kuwabara's eyes again. "Well now, don't look so downtrodden that I didn't choose you to assist me in this task!"

"Is that really what you think?" Kuwabara asked in a low voice, Botan's that remark having barely even registered with him. "About me and Yukina? You think we're just friends?"

Botan opened her mouth and held up a finger as though to reply, but remained frozen in that position for some time, her uncharacteristic silence only making the moment seem longer and more strained than it already was. Kuwabara slowly and solemnly nodded his head.

"Oh, well, no, not exactly," Botan hurriedly recovered, forcing a smile despite her eyebrows being awkwardly bunched together in a frown. "It's obvious to anyone that you care very deeply about that sweet, sweet girl!"

Botan took a prolonged look over at the dating agency's table before brightening as a new idea occurred to her. She turned back cheerfully to share her thoughts, but suddenly found herself alone.

"Kuwabara?"

She barely spoke his name loudly enough that he would have heard her had he still been standing where he was, but a part of her had already resigned itself to the fact that he was long gone.

"Well that was odd…" she muttered. "And now I'm going to have to do this all by myself…"

She gave one last look about herself to confirm that she was alone before starting across the lawn towards the offending postbox, screwdriver in one hand and her flimsy disguise in the other.

Kurama sighed almost silently and closed his eyes just long enough for the ball of crushed paper to tumble through his hair, over his shoulder and finally land on the desk by his wrist. He calmly opened his eyes again, the brilliant glare of the large screen at the front of the lecture hall stinging his sensitive vision against the otherwise dark of the cavernous room. He slowly moved his eyes down to the crumpled paper, his slender fingers silently unfurling it. As he revealed the message within, he was even less amused and more than a little concerned: Kuwabara's first three missiles had missed their target and landed in the hands of other students, and Kurama could only hope they would not understand the meaning within.

'KY joined dating agency, B knows, do you think Y really loves me.'

Kurama swallowed hard and crushed the note in the palm of his hand, forcing a tight smile over his shoulder at the two girls leaning over him attempting to make out Kuwabara's note. Although his glance backwards had been aimed at the girls and had been brief, the fox demon had still noticed, on the very edge of his vision, Kuwabara agitatedly fidgeting in his seat.

"Excuse me," Kurama said softly and quietly to the student sitting next to him.

Sweeping up his notes under one arm and using his other arm to ease his way past the three other students between himself and the steps, Kurama freed himself into the aisle, without drawing attention of the teacher or even very many of the students. He started up the steps towards the row Kuwabara was placed in – some habits really did die hard, and Kuwabara, despite being long removed from the high school delinquent he had once been, still always chose to sit at the back of every class – his intention being simply to sit down next to his friend and encourage him to be silent until the end of the lecture.

"Kurama!" Kuwabara blurted out, shooting to his feet and lumbering awkwardly over chairs and bodies alike to reach the aisle.

Kurama cleared his throat and forced another smile as a ripple of whispers spread across those immediately around them. Finally sensing the ruckus he had caused, Kuwabara paused, looking about himself with wide eyes, before taking a more considerate approach to exiting the seated area.

"I mean uh… Shuichi," he said, far louder than was necessary. "Hey, buddy."

He slapped Kurama on the shoulder a couple of times and Kurama bore it patiently before ushering him out of the lecture theatre altogether. After slipping through a heavy door, they stepped out into a brightly lit hallway that felt welcomingly cool and open after the stuffy atmosphere of the crowded lecture hall.

"Kuwabara, the latest topic of Botan's gossip is a matter that can surely wait until after class," Kurama said, holding up the ball of paper between them.

"No, you don't understand, Kurama!" Kuwabara responded, taking the paper from him and smoothing it out. "I was using everyone's initials so's nobody else would understand the note! It says "Keiko Yukimura joined dating agency, Botan knows, do you think Yukina really loves me"."

Kurama blinked, his initial feelings of agitation giving way to compassion – something his human side had brought more and more to the fore of his character over the years – and he softened a little as he gently took the note back from Kuwabara and crushed it in his fist.

"Kuwabara, Keiko is taking a class in psychology, specifically in the psychology of cults and radical political groups," he gently explained. "I have no doubt that, if she has indeed joined United Hearts, she is merely doing so as research for her latest paper. Botan will be panicking about it because she has an unhealthy obsession with what she believes is the romantic relationship between Yusuke and Keiko. And as for Yukina–"

"United Hearts?"

Kurama paused, finding Kuwabara was looking at him in a manner that appeared as curious as he himself felt.

"That's the name of the dating agency," Kurama flatly replied.

"It is?" Kuwabara muttered. "That's weird, some girls were trying to get me to sign up, but none of them said it was called that…"

Kurama swallowed a little louder and a little harder than he had intended to, but Kuwabara appeared not to have registered the gesture as a gulp, and so Kurama inhaled smoothly and continued.

"Yes, they do call it that. And you shouldn't worry about it. As for Yukina, you must know that she – much like almost everyone else, human and demon alike – may not be as demonstrative and vocal about her feelings of love as you are, but that doesn't mean she feels it any less."

"Yeah, that's right."

Kurama paused long enough for Kuwabara to offer a more convincing answer or tone, but when neither came, he found himself forced to say something he already knew would fall on deaf ears.

"Don't do anything rash, Kuwabara."

"Which way is the art department?"

Kurama was so taken aback by Kuwabara's bizarre question, he found himself pointing and answering it mechanically and on instinct, as his mind still tried to fathom why Kuwabara would need to know such a thing.

"But our class is this way, and not over yet," he added, pointing at the doors they had exited moments earlier.

"Take notes for me, buddy," Kuwabara called over his shoulder as he began jogging off in the direction of the art department.

Kurama inhaled and sighed softly before retreating back into the lecture hall, silently hoping that Kuwabara would not rush to Yusuke with what Botan had told him, but rather would simply pay a visit to Yukina, whose sweet and calm nature would surely ease his nerves and bring him back around to his senses.

"Ow."

"I didn't start yet."

"Ow."

"You don't even sound like you mean it."

"Well I do. Ow. Wait-ow!"

Shizuru smirked and let out a short chuckle as Botan snatched her hand back and stared down at her fingers with wide eyes.

"Isn't healing your deal, big blue?" Shizuru asked the ferry girl.

"Yes, and clearly gentle and considerate removal of splinters from fingers isn't your deal, Shizuru!" Botan sulkily replied.

Shizuru narrowed her eyes as she clicked shut the old ice cream tub she used as a first aid box – a tradition her mother had used, and, after her mother's passing, Shizuru had continued in order to allow her to tend to her younger brother's wounds over the years – and she waited until Botan's pink eyes had finally lifted from her fingers.

"Remind me again why you had a splinter in your finger, Botan," she asked, lowering her tone just enough to convey her sense of gravity.

"It was injury I sustained in the line of duty," Botan replied, her face taking on a vaguely feline quality.

"Duty, huh?" Shizuru asked with a lop-sided smirk. "Of course. I forgot ferry girl duties include ferrying the souls of the dead to the afterlife, spying on other people and occasional random acts of petty criminal behaviour."

Botan gasped and closed her injured hand into a fist.

"Is it a crime to care about love?" she asked.

"No," Shizuru replied, standing up from her seated position at the foot of her bed. "But it's generally considered not okay to go around hacking apart someone's craft project with a flathead screwdriver."

Botan pouted.

"I took the wrong type of screwdriver…" she muttered, sinking lower into the pillows of Shizuru's bed until she was almost lying fully on her back.

Shizuru nodded and started across the room to store her first aid box back on the top shelf by her window.

"It was for a very worthy cause," Botan mumbled. "I was acting in the name of love."

"I heard you the first time, sweetie," Shizuru flatly replied as she stretched an arm up to the shelf. "You thought you saw Keiko posting an application form into the dating agency postbox, so you broke the thing with a screwdriver, then you got caught before you got the chance to steal the contents."

"You make it sound like I did something silly," Botan complained.

"I'm pretty sure you've got nothing to worry about with Keiko and Yusuke," Shizuru assured her as she replaced the box. "And even if you did, it's none of your business."

Shizuru turned around and found her last statement had brought Botan up onto her knees in the centre of the bed, her eyes sparkling with outrage.

"It is none of your business, Botan," Shizuru repeated. "If Keiko wants to date someone else, that's her business, not yours."

"But true love lasts forever, and Yusuke and Keiko are truly in love!" Botan protested, punching her injured hand into one of Shizuru's pillows without so much as flinching, proving that the injury had not been nearly as bad as she had pretended it to be.

"People change, passion fades," Shizuru solemnly replied. "Trust me."

"I can't accept that," Botan responded, her tone suddenly as solemn as Shizuru's.

"Why? Because you care so much about Keiko and Yusuke, or because you're in denial about your own big romance?"

Shizuru softly sat down on the end of her bed again, watching as Botan crawled over and shuffled around to sit beside her.

"People express love differently," she said quietly, her eyes on the ground as she spoke.

"That's true," Shizuru agreed.

"Especially demons," Botan continued, wriggling her socked feet against the carpet. "It's more of a physical thing for demons – they don't care so much for words or grand romantic gestures."

Shizuru gently stroked a hand over the top of Botan's head and played her fingers down the length of the ferry girl's powder blue ponytail.

"Sweetie, I just don't want to see you get hurt –"

Botan stood up so abruptly she left behind several strands of her hair between Shizuru's fingers.

"You don't understand," she said tightly, summoning her oar and throwing open Shizuru's window.

"I do understand, sweetie," Shizuru replied, shaking loose Botan's hairs and rising to her feet. "You know I do. That's why you confided your secret in me. You didn't tell anyone else because you knew they wouldn't understand, but I do."

Botan turned her head, glaring back at Shizuru from the corner of her eye.

"What do you understand?" she asked.

"How it feels to be in love with a man who is incapable of loving you back."

Botan turned her head sharply back to the window. She lingered there for a prolonged moment, and during that pause, Shizuru silently hoped that the ferry girl would stay. That she would take her up on her invite to just spend the day drinking beer and watching hilariously awful foreign films. That she would not go. That she would not go out looking for him. That she would not go out, full of hope and excitement, and come back miserable and dejected again.

"Thank you for your help," she said softly.

"Botan, don't!"

Shizuru lurched towards the window and reached out a hand, but Botan leapt out and onto her oar with admirable speed and agility, and was shortly high in the sky and heading west: which was the exact direction Shizuru could vaguely sense the arrival of a demon presence within the living world.

Shizuru sighed and closed the window. She could only hope that Hiei would either one day actually develop feelings for Botan and return her affection or else let her go so that she could move on: because since the two had been conducting a passionate affair in secret, Botan had been losing an increasing amount of her cheerfulness and usual pep, and she was surely only headed for heartache.

Kurama knew that he really ought to have said or done something, but something held him back. Instead of intervening, he simply stood quietly and watched through windows as Kuwabara finished applying fabric paint to a long length of cloth and then said a few words to the art teacher before exiting the room. He moved out of Kurama's line of sight for some time, before emerging out onto the campus lawn, where, despite the fact that the fabric paint was still visibly glistening and wet even from Kurama's extended viewpoint, he tied the length of cloth around his head and paused to strike a rigid pose with squared shoulders, determined jaw and set eyes. The fabric paint spelt out "love's warrior", and in between the two words he had painted a blood-red heart.

Kurama just hoped that visiting Yukina would calm Kuwabara and not merely accelerate his insecurity regarding her feelings towards him: for as sweet and caring as she was, Kurama highly doubted Yukina would ever return Kuwabara's affections. It was a fact Kurama was sure Kuwabara was already aware of – and perhaps had been all along – but in recent years, he had become increasingly agitated by the fact that Yukina never did directly (or even indirectly) acknowledge his feelings, let alone show any inclination to return them.

Kuwabara had a big heart, and Kurama worried it might soon be broken.

And, as though as a physical representation of his thoughts, Kurama turned his head to see that someone had destroyed the postbox United Hearts had made for application forms for their services, scattering the contents. Seeing it that way, Kurama was silently glad he had not posted his application after all, lest his form end up in the wrong hands. It had not been that he expected much to come of it, but, some part of him (surely the human part, he told himself) had peaked his curiosity and so he had, in secret, collected an application form the night before. With a sigh of resignation, Kurama retrieved the folded paper from his pocket, opening it out, the sight before him reminding him why his human side would never truly be dominant.

After all, he had only felt compelled to check off one interest from the list of suggestions, one thing he felt he could possibly share with human woman: coffee and conversation.

Next Chapter: Kuwabara crosses the country (literally) to visit his love Yukina, and although she is glad to see him, he doesn't necessarily feel any more reassured. Botan has a similarly unsettling tryst with Hiei and Kuwabara is side-tracked on his way back from visiting Yukina when he stumbles across an opportunity to rescue a kitten. Chapter 2 – Her Alibi