I'm sorry for how long this took, but now that I am free I can update weekly. Hope you all enjoy this chapter. I personally love it.


===Pawn===

I reach my apartment just in time to find Namie getting ready to leave. No, no, I can't let her leave just yet do I? Smiling I ask her nicely to make me a cup of coffee and order some food for my dinner, of course she must wait until the food is here to pay for it. How much I love to mess with my lovely assistant.

Sitting in front of my computer I start to get into the information network. I can't wait to find more about that interesting new monster I saw today. I guess the first thing to do is check the videos of the buildings from the street I meet her. Once I have a good pic of her everything will be easier, just a few question here and there and then I'll be ready to see just how far I can push her!

The screen show different windows open, I easily slip inside the security system of the building in front of where I meet her. It takes me only seconds to find out the perfect angle and the exact time when it happened. What I see leaves me speechless, Namie notices this and sends a surprised look my way, I have no time to pay any attention to her, all I care about right now is what is going on in the video.

The crowded streets of Ikebukuro with all their interesting humans is what I see, I easily find myself even if I am mixing with all of my lovely humans, I can see the exact moment when my sight falls in the figure in the other side of the street, but there's no purple haired girl on the other side of the video. I see myself continue walking, slowly, following the tracks of the girl, when I get ready to close the street I can see my back, I can remember the smile I had in that moment and how I can't wait to get closer to her, at least a little. But there's still no one in the other side of the street. And I see when I run, after she had disappeared, I see how I stop right where she should have been and I know this time there was no one supposed to be there.

What had happened? Why didn't she show at all? I can't believe it, quickly I get into the systems of other buildings, I download all the videos from the cameras that point to that place but it's always the same. I see myself, I see my excitement, my happiness, my bewilderment when she disappears, but she's not there, nowhere. She doesn't exist in those videos.

The doorbell sounds. I stay quiet, lowering my head I start to repeat everything that happened today. Let's approach it from a scientific point of view. We have the variables: the girl, the videos and I. Hypothesis: it was my imagination? Denied. If it had been a story from someone else I would doubt it, but I can't doubt something I saw with my own eyes, there's also the way many people bumped in her, I am sure I saw how she was pushed around, that is what first made me get interested in her, but in the videos… Looking back at my monitor I watch again and surely I see people pushing around each other, but no one is that girl. Still I have to deny it, there's no way I had imagined it. I could have confused her with someone else in the videos? Denied, again. There's no one in there that looks like her, not even with the same hairstyle or hair color. Video alteration? If it had been in only a few of the security systems it is possible, but it had been over 15 videos that I have checked, even from before I had noticed her, and in none of them she appears. If there was anyone capable of doing that they would have left something behind, a mismatched code, a pixelated image, something. I didn't see anything like that. The videos had not been altered in any form.

-Here's your food. Can I leave now or do you need anything else?

What had been it? Why can't I find her? This is…

-Orihara? Can I leave?

I can't be wrong, I am never wrong!

-Do you want something else or…?

I laugh, I laugh until my sides hurts, I can't breathe and even when I stop I can't made the smile leave my lips. Namie stares at me with worry for a few seconds then she takes a step back. She must think I have gone crazy, not that she cares about me but more like she cares about her safety.

-Namie, Namie, Namie! What would you say if I told you someone I meet today disappeared from the earth?

She blankly stares and finally gives up.

-I would think that you killed that person, or made them commit suicide.

-Awww~~ How little imaginative. No no, you are totally wrong. I saw someone today, someone interesting and right before my eyes they just *plop* disappeared! Ne Ne! What is it then?

-…you have finally gone crazy Orihara.

Dropping the smile I turn around on my chair and leave my desk. Walking to the table on the middle of my living room I take one of the white pawns of my game board.

-Namie. You have been working with me for a while; you know what kind of people I am interested in. And yet you don't understand me at all.

Walking back to my desk I took one of the black markers, the smile comes back to my face. Ignoring the annoyed expression on the face of my assistant I start to scribble on the pawn.

-I saw her, I saw her being pushed around, I saw her about to cross the street and then she disappeared. And when I checked the videos there's nothing, no one. She's gone, just like that.

I do my best to keep my laugh back and looking up at Namie I give her the pawn and get back to sit behind my desk. She looks at the pawn and me, walking to her desk she stops briefly to leave the pawn back in the game board. Taking her jacket and purse she leaves me for the day.

I can't suppress my laugh anymore. Spinning in my chair over and over I laugh until I can't anymore. A single white pawn sits at the end of the game board, the word "Ghost" written with black ink on it.