First, Do No Harm
A Weiss Kreuz fanfiction by laila


Chapter Two – Provings

It was quiet in the basement, quiet and cool and gloomy – the still not of a tomb but of a library, a living, breathing silence made all the thicker by its calculated nature. There was nothing to hear but the usual flurry of soft clicks that accompanied Omi's typing but, if he lifted his hands from the lozenge-smooth keys and listened, the boy could just about hear the ting of the shop bell, the grumbling purr of passing cars on the street above his head, and the whisper of the storm, and the soft, almost tidal sound of Ken's breathing, slow and deep and even.

Ken, Omi knew, had meant well: that was his problem. Ken always meant well. He had wandered downstairs a half-hour ago, dazed and feverish and sleep-tousled, clutching a check blanket in one hand. I want to help, he had said hoarsely when Omi had asked why he was up. It's not right, all of you busting your asses while I'm doing fuck-all. It's just a cold, I'm fine, there are only so many wide shows you can watch. I just want something to do… Now Ken was curled up on the couch beneath the blanket, a scattered slack of printouts from clinic records spread out on the table before him. He held an uncapped highlighter loosely in one hand. He could almost have looked diligent, if only he had been awake.

Omi didn't want to wake him, but he didn't have much choice.

It would embarrass Ken to know that he had been sleeping – not only sleeping, but caught at it. Omi turned in his chair, gazing at Ken's blanket-shrouded form for perhaps a fraction too long, and then cleared his throat.

"Ken-kun," he said a little too loudly, "are you getting anything?"

Nothing. No response. Ken, of course, was perhaps the only one of them who had absolutely no trouble sleeping. The old joke about being able to sleep through bombs going off next door might, Youji had quipped once, actually have been true where it related to Ken. And you should be glad it does, Ken had retorted, God knows nobody else would put up living next to your noisy ass for any time at all…

It was really no wonder he hadn't so much as stirred. Oh well, forget Ken's pride… Omi got to his feet and, bending over Ken, gave his friend's shoulder a small shake.

"Ken-kun, wake up. I need to ask you something. Ken-kun, can you hear me? Ken-kun." Ken muttered something small and irritable that sounded very much like go away and tried to bat Omi's hand away, and "Ken-kun," Omi said again, "I'm really sorry, but I'm going to need you to wake up now. I want to talk to you." He smiled, sitting back on his heels and letting his hands fall back by his sides, when Ken opened his eyes and glowered blearily in his general direction.
"What?" Ken asked. Shades of, and this had better be good. The cold, Omi thought, was definitely not bringing out the best in him, but Ken never had been a very good patient.
"You were asleep, Ken-kun," Omi said apologetically. "I'm sorry to wake you, but the mission…"
"Shit," Ken said, "I was sleeping? Oh, God, Omi. I'm really—"

And Ken had that look on his face again, as if he were wondering how many Hail Marys would get him out of this one: Omi cut off the apology before it could start. "Never mind that. Are you getting anything?"

"Getting anything?" The boy sounded dazed, as if he still couldn't quite work out where he was, still less what the question might mean. "What'd you mean, getting anything?" he asked, and coughed briefly.
"I mean," Omi said patiently, "how are you doing with the records, Ken-kun. Is there any sign of a pattern?"
"Oh, that. No." Ken rubbed at one eye and yawned, pushing himself into a sitting position. The heavy check blanket slipped from about his shoulders, falling to pool about his waist.

Omi reached for the printouts on the table, retrieving – and how the Hell did that get there? – a slightly crushed piece of paper from where Ken had been lying, and a highlighter of his own. Shuffling them together he sat back heavily on the vacated end of the couch and flipped through them for a moment

"I couldn't see anything," Ken volunteered. "I mean, I looked, but"

But. Omi sighed. Apart from the clinic, what was there? It was so much easier in detective stories, where the killers were stupid enough to choose the same kind of victim over and over and over again – blonde teenagers at Catholic schools, older men cruising for sex, or young couples, or anything at all as long as there was a pattern – or, failing that, the victims could at least be counted upon to have spoken to the same 911 operator or been tended to by the same nurse, or to have left a bar with the same too-friendly man with the useful distinguishing mark.

It's not like you to care about motive, Omi – but how else were Weiss going to force the target to reveal themselves, if not by providing them with the perfect bait? Weiss didn't know who did it, and with the stakes as high as life and death, they couldn't afford to get it wrong. Any deaths outside the mission parameters would be murder.

And Weiss, Omi thought, are not murderers.

"I thought things would get easier once I'd got the victims' data collated," he said, more to himself than to Ken. "But it's got me absolutely nowhere."
"The database thing's no good?"
Omi shook his head. "None at all. I thought there'd be a link between the victims… you know, some kind of reason the target would choose them aside from everyone else who walked through the door, but aside from all being in basically good physical condition there's nothing."
"Well, isn't that something?" Ken asked. "Being in good condition? If they're seeing a doctor…" And he was coughing again.
"Not really, Ken-kun. The people who go to homeopathic doctors are mostly what I suppose you'd call the worried well. They tend to have the kind of illnesses regular doctors can't diagnose… they've probably got symptoms, but no organic signs of disease. There's nothing for a doctor to get hold of. I'd guess at least fifty percent of the patients who go to this clinic don't have anything significant wrong with them. No, that's part of it, but it's not something we can count on."

There's something else, Omi thought. I know there's something else. This looks random but it doesn't feel random, nobody calculating enough to make their victims' deaths look utterly natural would pick their prey with their eyes closed. There's got to be another connection. I just can't find it. I can't find it, but that doesn't mean there's nothing there.

"Is Persia sure all this shit's connected?" Ken was asking. "I mean, really, really sure?"
"He assigned us the mission, Ken-kun. He must be sure." Omi winced inwardly. The answer sounded pat, almost insulting; it was the same kind of nonsense a parent would use to fob off a child. It was one step away from because I said so and by the look on Ken's face he knew it. "Persia's never steered us wrong before," Omi said to the papers he held. "I know it all sounds crazy, but he must have some reason for it, right?"
Ken said, "I guess." He sounded unconvinced.

But that didn't get them any further. Omi sighed, and handed the printouts back to Ken, and sat back down at the computer, dropping heavily into the chair and feeling it give sickeningly beneath him. He was looking in the wrong place, but where else should he be looking? There was only the clinic.

Sighing, he turned back to the database, clicking through screen after screen of data: he fancied he could almost see the faces of the dead, caught somewhere behind the bland lines of type. Housewives and businessmen; the guitarist of an Indies band Omi had never heard of; a PA, a girl from a good family who had been engaged to be married and had only wanted clear skin in the wedding photos; a disabled builder injured on the job sometime in the eighties, who had presented with chronic pain then collapsed with an aneurysm. The Olympic hopeful, a teenage gymnast who'd baffled her doctors by dying of hypoplastic left heart syndrome – where did she fit in? Where did any of them?

"Ken-kun, why would a gymnast with headaches see a holistic doctor? Wouldn't she have seen a regular doctor?"
"What good would he do?" Ken asked incredulously. "Do you know how many drugs are banned in sport?"

It was a fair point. Omi sighed, and gazed back at the records, and they told him absolutely nothing. Nothing save that once again innocents were dying, and nobody understood why. Maybe there really was no connection. Maybe there was just the clinic, and it was just a matter of chance…

Maybe Aya would have something, when he came back. Omi hoped he would be okay.


As Doctor Amano closed the consulting-room door behind him Aya slipped his hand into his coat pocket, letting the click of the latch conceal the softer sound of the tape recorder clicking on.

Amano's office was every bit as unremarkable as the waiting area had been. A couch, a patient's chair, sinks and closets and a heavy wooden desk with an idling computer perched upon it; it wasn't at all what he had expected from a homoeopathist but doctors, Aya supposed, were doctors everywhere, whatever their remedies were.

If the clinic truly was a cover, it was a very big and expensive one. It was a very convincing one.

The only false note was Amano. He reminded Aya what an inadequate thing a photo could be, and how much the camera could miss. Aya had been like that—is like that, Ran, she is like that, can't you even remember a single word? No matter how skilled the photographer or how beautiful the composition, she had always photographed incredibly poorly: she would look pretty, she had always looked pretty, but she simply wouldn't look right. Ken was the same, to a point – and now here stood Doctor Amano. His picture, head and shoulders, had given the impression of size but in person he was a bear of a man, burly and gruff and uncomfortable in collar and tie. In the flesh, he was startling.

"Nagata-san, isn't it? Please take a seat," Amano gestured with one huge paw to the patient's chair.

Aya would rather have stood but he knew the doctor's request was no request at all, for all it had been veiled with standard medical politeness. Doctors were doctors everywhere… Amano took the questionnaire from him, gave him a reassuring semi-smile as he crossed to his desk. The overstuffed chair creaked slightly beneath him as he sat. Even there he looked comically out of proportion, uneasy as an adult trying to use a desk and chair designed for a grade-schooler. The slim black fountain pen in his hands looked like something one would give to a child.

"This would be your first consultation, Nagata-san?" Amano asked. It wasn't a question, just another medical courtesy. The questionnaire on his lap was all the answer he needed.
"That's correct," Aya said. Scrupulously polite.
Amano nodded, glancing down at the questionnaire. "And you're… you said a student. May I ask what you're studying?"
"Economics." If it wasn't the truth, it wasn't quite a lie either. That, once upon a time, had been the plan… "My father," he volunteered, "wants me to work for him after I graduate."
"He's in business?" Amano asked, and Aya nodded. "Would you mind if I took a quick look at your questionnaire?"

Of course Haruki Nagata wouldn't mind. (Aya didn't mind. It wasn't as if it was him who was being examined.)

Yet he felt troubled. Back straight, hands folded in his lap, Aya appeared as scrupulously composed as ever but, as he watched Doctor Amano flip through the pages of the questionnaire, occasionally pausing to scratch something in the margins with his toy pen, he was uncomfortably aware that he felt a certain disquiet. Was this what the receptionist meant when she said the doctors here were holistic practitioners? Was Doctor Amano trying to put him at his ease, or had even the opening small-talk been part of the examination?

"You mentioned suffering from headaches," Amano said. "Would that be why you're here today?"
"Yes," Aya said; he nearly left it there, but say something about western medicine, Omi had urged, say normal doctors are no good – flatter Amano's prejudices, in other words. Put him at his ease. Added, "Yes, I've had them since I was in high school. I've seen other doctors, but they couldn't find anything the matter."
Amano merely nodded, as if he expected nothing else. "I see. That must be very trying for you." He said it well, he looked genuinely sympathetic. "Would you like to tell me a bit about these headaches?"

The doctor was watching him: every tic, every mannerism, all the small, telling gestures that added up to Ran and that Aya hadn't quite managed to school himself out of. That was holism.

And Aya, as he lyingly re-created his symptoms, watched Amano back; the bow of his head and the soft skritch of his toy pen over the paper, the serene, self-confident little doctor's smile, the way the man nodded in all the right places, looking suitably grave, and made a little note before firing off another of his increasingly irrelevant questions. The usual smugly ingratiating bedside manner, relic of his days walking the wards – but there was nothing particularly strange about that and, beneath it all, Doctor Amano seemed to be taking him seriously. Perhaps a little too much so for Aya's liking. Haruki Nagata did not, after all, have very much wrong with him. They were just headaches; he just wanted them to go away.

The headaches were worse in the evenings, and after reading. No, they weren't affected by drinking coffee or by the time of the month, or the phases of the moon, or by sex. Yes, lying down in a darkened room helped but who had the time to do that, every time their head was a little sore? How did the headaches feel, asked Doctor Amano solicitously. Like a needle? Like a knife? Like a bruise, Aya said, like a bruise on the brain. No, he wasn't sleeping well.

"You're in your final year of college?" Amano asked suddenly.

Taken aback, Aya nodded; he had been expecting another question about the distinction between a pain which cut and a pain which stabbed, or whether or not he could eat chocolate, or if his head hurt worse at four in the afternoon or half past two at night.

"Yes… I thought as much." Another little note and Amano was putting his pen aside, turning in his too-small chair to regard Aya with a sympathetic eye. "Nagata-san, I know it might be difficult when you're under such stress, but you really need to try and make more time for yourself. You're in a sport society?"
"No," Aya said. Added, as an afterthought, "I used to take kendo."
"I'd see about starting again, regular exercise is very good for sleepiness. In the meantime, I'm going to give you some pills… Lycopodium Clavatum. Give this to the receptionist on your way out, she'll know what to do. And I'd suggest that you stop drinking coffee. I know you said it didn't affect your headaches, but the caffeine can't be helping the insomnia."

Amano got to his feet, handed Aya a small slip of paper covered in the scrawled black hieroglyphs that were his handwriting and how the girl would know what that scarcely-legible scribble said Aya had no idea. Here's your prescription, please pay the receptionist before you leave. The standard medical sign-off.

That was normal, too.


"Nothing," Youji said as he walked back into the basement, casting a sheaf of papers down onto the still-cluttered central table where they almost immediately slipped off and cascaded to the floor. "Either the old man's one Hell of an actor or he knows zip fucking squat."
"I'd go with zip fucking squat," Omi said to his computer, smiling absently at Youji's turn of phrase, and how odd it must have sounded on his own lips. "That was what we were expecting, right, Youji-kun?"
"Not like this I wasn't," Youji said wearily. "Budge over, Hidaka, if you want to sleep your bed's upstairs."

And he slumped down at the far end of the couch, closing his eyes and settling back with a contented sigh. Ken gave him an affronted look and tugged the edge of his blanket out from beneath Youji's thigh with slightly more force than was entirely necessary, then curled up as far away from Youji as he could without running the risk of falling off the couch. He probably should have been in his own bed.

"How's it going here?" Youji asked.
Omi shrugged. "Not a lot better, I'm afraid. I was rather hoping that you'd have something." Lifting his fingers from the keys, he glanced up and over his shoulder. "Aya-kun…"

There was tension in Omi's voice, speaking in whispers of a certain balked anxiety. He caught sight of Aya hesitating at the foot of the stairs to fish the tape recorder out of his coat pocket, and heard himself release a breath he hadn't known he was holding. Omi had hardly realized how tense he must have been until the moment that tension broke, and it flooded from him; he must have been waiting all along for Aya to return. Idiot, he chided himself, no wonder you couldn't concentrate—Omi let his gaze linger on the redhead's form – the set of his shoulders, the cant of his head, the grave look in his Egyptian eyes – and he only wished he knew what it was he was looking for.

There was nothing to see. Aya looked absolutely fine.

Omi hardly knew what else he had expected Aya to look like. Whatever was happening to the patients at Thousand Leaves it clearly wasn't happening in the consulting rooms, in broad daylight – and yet, somehow, he had imagined Aya would come back changed. To look pale, pained, ill… Ridiculous. This was Aya, and Aya wouldn't be caught off-guard so easily.

"What happened?" Omi asked, gazing anxiously up at Aya, his eyes wide and troubled. "Did they—"
"No." Aya cut him off. "Nothing. I saw Amano—"
"Now, we didn't see Miss Venice Beach," Youji chipped in, "which is a pity, 'cause I'd have liked to…"
Aya ignored him, carrying on as if the interruption hadn't happened. "Amano asked me a lot of questions which didn't have a lot to do with headaches, advised me to start exercising and gave me some pills." It was, the implication went, as bizarre as a trip to the corner store, and disconcerting as a toddlers' group. He placed the little pill box down on the computer table by Omi's elbow, letting his fingers rest on the surface for a moment before turning away, drifting over to his usual spot by the wall and leaning back against it, his face as closed-off and unreadable as ever.
"I'd say you were both going to be fine," Ken said dryly, then succumbed to another fit of painful-sounding coughs.
Omi picked up the pill box, turning it over and over in his fingers. It looked genuine enough, the seal unbroken. "Lycopodium clavatum. Do you reckon we should get these analyzed, Aya-kun?"
"There's no point," Aya said. "Whatever's causing these illnesses, it's not a diluted plant extract."

It wouldn't be anything that simple. Omi nodded, setting the box to one side. Of course, no known drug could do even half of what Persia claimed had been done to this target's victims, and if there'd been any unknown chemicals in their bodies, it would certainly have been picked up on autopsy… Why drive up a blind alley?

Or another one. Amano was only exactly what he appeared to be, and knew nothing – if, Omi checked himself, he wasn't a very convincing actor, or if Aya simply hadn't been what he looked for in a victim. A young loner was normally a sure bet for a target like this, someone only their family would miss and even they would likely not miss very much—but of course there was no pattern (or none that they could see, which didn't mean there was none). Maybe Amano just hadn't been interested. It could have been that, of course. It could always have been that.

"What's your hunch, Aya-kun? Do you think Amano's hiding anything?"

(And Youji, who had been leaning over Ken's shoulder to read the printouts the boy was still holding in his lap, raised his eyes heavenward in time-honored oh brother mode. "Oh," he murmured parenthetically, "so we're relying on hunches now, well that's just great.")

"I think Amano is just a doctor." Aya folded his arms, regarded Omi levelly out of the corner of his eyes. He ignored Youji's theatrics altogether. "He struck me as utterly harmless. Of course, a lot of targets do that, but this one seemed genuine. He's all wrong for this."
"Which is pretty much what we expected," Omi mused. "Youji-kun, what do you think?"
Youji shrugged. "From what I heard the guy's just a bit of a kook, and if there were as many murderers as there were middle-aged guys on New Age trips we'd all be in a lotta trouble."
"Let me guess," Ken said, "you got talking to the receptionist, right?"
"Guilty as charged, but what else did you expect me to do all morning? Now the other one—" Youji leaned forward in his chair, resting his forearms on his knees; when Omi looked over at him, his green eyes were unusually alert, "—the other one, Doctor Takagawa? Might mean nothing but Honoka – that's the receptionist – Honoka said she sometimes sees certain patients out of hours, the ones she thinks could benefit from quote-unquote extra therapy. She's got an interest in some other clinic way out in the suburbs, so Honoka says. I don't think she likes Takagawa much… Omi, could we run a check on that?"

The clatter of keys was all his answer. Omi had turned back to the computer and slipped unobtrusively back into the clinic records; he was already working, head diligently bowed. Youji-kun, did you really need to ask?

"If she's made a note of the people she refers on," Omi said to his monitor, "then we could cross-check that with the names of the victims, see if there's any correlation. Just let me… yes. Yes, she's noting it."
"She is?" Youji got to his feet and walked over to the computer, hands in his pockets. "Really? That's pretty sloppy."
"It's nothing major," Omi said, pointing to the screen; a patient record was displayed there, belonging to something called a Kimiko Yamada, an uninteresting-sounding suburban housewife who had lived a blameless and unremarkable life for forty-seven years, and died because she had walked into the wrong clinic. There was nothing interesting about her notes, either, save the single telltale sentence that had marked her for death. "Look, that's it."

Referred for further therapy, Youji read.

That was it. A single naked statement that told them absolutely nothing, save that an unknown woman had been marked for death as off-handedly as she might have been advised to see a chiropractor or start walking more. Cold-blooded, Omi thought, wasn't the word for it. He hit a couple of keys and Kimiko Yamada vanished.

"Masahide Oki," Omi said, "he was a victim. So was Kouji Naka, but he survived. Mitsuko Sato, Yuichi Nagata, Juri Fukuda… they're all victims. There's a few nothing happened to, but all the victims got a referral." Omi stared at the screen, worrying at his lower lip. "Youji-kun, did the receptionist tell you the clinic name?"
Youji shook his head. "Sorry. I got the impression she hasn't been told it. She wouldn't even know about the appointments if some of the patients hadn't talked."
"Damn," Omi murmured, the obscenity caught and carried almost accidentally on his breath. "We need that clinic name—"
"What," Ken said unexpectedly, "has school got to do with it?"

The last time Omi had looked in Ken's direction, Ken had been sat on the couch with his blanket caught uncomfortably about him, seemingly deeply absorbed in reading a questionnaire of some sort. Now he raised his head and said, what's school got to do with it, and he was looking at them with all expectation that an answer was there for the giving: Omi (Ken-kun, what on earth are you talking about?) gazed back, unable to hide his own bewilderment, and Youji and Aya too – Aya quietly critical as ever, Youji trying very hard to suppress a smirk.

It was impossible to tell for sure when the fever had left his cheeks so flushed already, but Omi could have sworn that Ken had colored awkwardly. Another man in his situation might well have pretended he hadn't spoken, but Ken Hidaka wouldn't have been Ken Hidaka if he hadn't decided the best thing to do in the face of embarrassment was brazen it out.

"What?" Ken glared at them from beneath his messy fringe, as if their stares were an accusation, and waved the papers he was holding at the three of them. "It's on this bullshit quiz Youji brought home. You come in with a sore leg and they ask you where you went to school. That's holism? It's crap is what it is." And he made to cast the questionnaire disdainfully aside, only for Aya to pluck it from his fingers. Ken started: just for a second, his eyes went wide. "Aya, what the Hell—?"

Aya said nothing; he didn't even look back at Ken. He merely flipped the questionnaire open and quickly skimmed it only to stop short, raising his head slightly, before he had even finished reading the first page. He didn't exactly condescend to look startled but he hesitated all the same, a look stealing into his eyes which wasn't quite confusion, but came close enough to it to touch. A stranger might not have picked up on it; his teammates, attuned as they were to the subtle shifts of expression that marked Aya's moods, would hardly have known how not to.

"He's right," he said, handing the questionnaire to Youji. "There's a question about schooling."
Ken gave Aya a dirty look. "Did you think I was making it up? Of course there is!"

Once again, Aya didn't reply. Tearing the staple from the sheets and sitting down on the very edge of the couch – Ken gave him an affronted look and shifted a little further away, almost as if he were worried Aya might be contagious – he spread the pages of the questionnaire out across the table, bending over them intent as a student with their finals paper. He glanced up at Youji when the blonde came to stand by his side.

"Where did you get this?" Aya asked.
"Stole it," Youji said simply. "I took it from the reception desk while the girl was fetching something. I thought they'd both use the same form."
"The layout's pretty much identical," Aya said. "There's just a couple of extra questions. This one about relatives' health—" he jabbed one slender finger down, dagger-like, at a line of small tick boxes – do any of your relatives suffer from any of the following conditions? – then ran it quickly across the pages, coming to rest beside another section on the first page, "—and this one. Ken's right, it's about education."
Omi flicked back to the records again. "Huh. I didn't think so… There's nothing about education in her patient notes."
"Well, there is here. It asks when you stopped," Ken said, and he sounded as confused as he looked. "I don't get it. What the Hell does when you left school have to do with your health? Wasn't there…" He hesitated, his dark eyes uncertain, a frown playing across his lips that, on him, indicated nothing but thought. "You mean there wasn't a question like that on the other guy's? Amano's?"

Almost by accident, Omi – are you thinking what I'm thinking? – met Youji's gaze, and was startled to realize that the young man looked almost as uncomfortable as he was feeling. As Omi watched, Youji wetted his lips, very deliberately, and tucked a hank of pale hair behind one ear: an entirely useless gesture, as it all fell forward again a few seconds later, but one which betrayed his sudden discomfort far more plainly than words ever could have done. Yes, Youji was thinking what he was thinking, and he didn't like it one bit…

Neither of them looked at Ken.

"No," Youji said slowly, "and it doesn't, Ken. It doesn't have anything to do with it. Omi, could you…"

Omi simply nodded. What else could he do?

For a long while there was nothing. Twenty minutes dragged dilatorily past, marked by nothing but the clatter of the keyboard and the click of the mouse, by Youji and Ken talking in furtive, guilty whispers, as Omi sifted through resumes and application forms and old school records. Searching – already knowing what he was going to find. A company president, a gymnast, builders and housewives and a bride-to-be, an aging real-estate broker arrogant and swollen as a dirigible, a scattering of salarymen, a beautician who ran her own salon—and, all of a sudden, the one thing their target's victims had in common was only obvious after all.

"High school," Omi said.
"What?" Ken blinked, glancing at Youji in consternation. Though he tried and tried hopelessly to hide it, Ken sounded spooked. Omi hardly blamed him. "What do you mean, high school? What's that got to do with this?"
"That's the connection, Ken-kun," Omi said, his voice low and hushed as a child talking during Prayers. "That's how she's choosing. None of her victims went to high school."


Which was why Ken Hidaka was in a lousy mood.

The fever hardly helped, of course. Nor did the stuffed-up head or the exhaustion or the dull aches in his limbs he wouldn't have minded if he'd only done anything to earn them. He felt dazed, dizzy, and when he walked the ground yawed beneath him like the deck of a ship: it was like being drunk, just without the fun. As if that wasn't bad enough he'd been blowing his nose too often and now it hurt. At least you won't have to fake sick, Omi had told him, as if it were some kind of a blessing…

"What do you want me to do," he demanded, "walk into this woman's office, say 'Hi, I'm stupid' and wait to have a stroke?"
And Youji just looked at him in that infuriating way he had when he thought Ken was being too dim-witted for words, and all he said was, "Have you got a better idea?"

Ken hadn't had one of those. Nobody had. And so Youji had led him off and driven him away, and left him stranded in the waiting room of Thousand Leaves Clinic clutching a handful of tissues, and shivering despite the heavy sweater he was wearing. Vindictively, Ken had told the secretary to clerk him in as Ayato Kudou, which had made him feel a little better for about thirty seconds; being handed Takagawa's questionnaire, with its ominous little additions, and politely asked to fill it out and don't worry, Kudou-san, it's all totally confidential, had very quickly left him feeling a lot worse. Ken faked a family history of heart failure, and wished he could go back to bed. He wished he'd been well so he could have hit Youji.

He coughed into the tissues and tried to ignore the pointed glances he received from the few other people sat in the clinic waiting area with him; a young woman, who looked impossibly slim and beautiful to be the mother of the small girl sat next to her, hustled her daughter a few seats away from him. The child's face was covered in small red sores that made Ken feel itchy just to look at them. Bored, the girl swung her legs, and pulled a face at him; she seemed frankly stunned when he returned the compliment.

"Kudou-san," said the receptionist, "The doctor will see you now."

Doctor Takagawa started when the door opened. She dropped her pen, and scrambled to her feet as Ken walked into the consulting room, giving him a wide, sunshiny smile that struck him as almost as false as her scatterbrained act did.

Up close, Ken could see why Youji had called her Miss Venice Beach. She was pretty, in the scrubbed and sanitized way some American girls had that spoke of sisterly kisses and brisk, hygienic sex, and supple and willow-slender and a clear four inches taller than Ken which left him, as it always did, feeling small and stupid and several years too young. She looked like an actress chosen only for her looks, who'd been woefully miscast as a doctor: she might have stepped into the clinic straight from a Hollywood backlot. The only thing missing was the smart-girl glasses she'd abandon twenty minutes into the first act. Doctors didn't look like her, not this side of the cinema screen…

Elizabeth Takagawa was young and sweet-faced and she dimpled charmingly when she smiled, her fingers brushing lightly against his own as she took the questionnaire from him, but she wasn't scatty at all and a pretty potential serial killer was still a potential serial killer. Ken really didn't appreciate the thought of being stuck in an office with her. He wished Youji could at least have stayed in the waiting-room.

"She's not doing anything in there," Youji had told him, "and she's not going to do anything, not in the middle of her boss's consulting rooms. For God's sake, Ken, I was only there yesterday. You think she wouldn't get suspicious?"

Of course, Ken had understood why Youji couldn't stay with him; that receptionist of his would certainly have remembered him, even if nobody else had done so. That didn't make Ken feel any happier when the door to Takagawa's consulting room clicked to behind him, and she politely ordered him to sit. Make yourself comfortable, the doctor said, but the chair she gestured to was made of hard plastic with a mean little cushion set into the seat, and the harsh morning sunlight slanting in through the overlarge windows left the room dazzling and washed-out as a room in an over-exposed photograph, and he hadn't been to high school and this woman was going to try and kill him.

She wasn't going to manage, of course, but she was still going to try. Ken wished he was at home.

But for now, all Takagawa was doing was smiling – settling herself back in her chair, and smoothing her tight black skirt. Somehow, it was almost worse.

"Good morning," she said formally: she had the precise, pedantic diction of someone speaking a language they'd learned too late, and spoke with an audible twang. "My name is Liza Takagawa, I'm the doctor in charge of your case here at Thousand Leaves. What appears to be the problem, Mr. Kudou?"
"I'm sick," Ken said: as if it wasn't obvious what was wrong with him just from looking at him! "I've got flu, or something."
"Ah, of course. Would you mind if I took a look through your questionnaire?"
"Fine by me," Ken said, and folded his arms across his chest as if he were cold. He was cold, and he shivered, and essayed a longing glance at the examining couch in the corner of the room. If only he could go and lie down on it. Just for a minute. He wouldn't fall asleep, he just wanted to lie down

Instead, Ken watched Takagawa frowning slightly as she flicked through the questionnaire, left to right: he wondered why she was frowning. He wondered if it was because of his half-assed attempts to answer the questions, or because of his handwriting, or if it was simply because he was Japanese, and wrote in it. He fancied she hesitated at his so-called familial tendency to circulatory disease; she smiled over the front page, and her smile was a small, darting thing, like a mouse skittering across floorboards. Ken wouldn't even have noticed it if he hadn't been looking out for it. She picked up a pen, and made a couple of small notes on the cover. Referred for further therapy?

Perhaps. But she would at least put up a pretense of conducting a consultation first. She took his temperature, shone a small light into his ears, pressed a stethoscope, its metal head uncomfortably cool as ever, to his chest – Ken could have been four years old again, sat blinking in his underwear on the side of an exam couch while his mother nodded in a straight-backed chair. Be a good boy, she had said.

Finally Takagawa nodded, tucking away the stethoscope, and giving him another too-wide sham of a smile. "Perhaps you could tell me a bit about your symptoms. When did all this start?"

"Tuesday," Ken said. "I went to bed Monday night feeling fine and I woke up like this." He sniffed and rubbed at his nose and caught Doctor Takagawa looking at him strangely. Just for a second, she had looked appalled.
"Feeling like…?"
"I've got flu," Ken said again, and the words seemed to stick in his sandpaper-scratchy throat and he coughed, and it brought him no relief. Do I need to draw you a picture? "My head hurts and my throat's sore and I feel really achy, and I'm cold." And I want to go to sleep and I really, really wish I wasn't here.
"Bryonia alba, maybe," Takagawa murmured, so quietly Ken could tell he hadn't been meant to hear. Then, out loud, "Could you tell me a little more? Your cough, for example – could you start by telling me a bit more about that?"
Ken blinked at her. "What about my cough?"
"How it feels," Takagawa explained. "It sounds painful. Does it hurt?"

Yes, he said, his cough was painful. It was dry, nonproductive, it hurt when he swallowed, he would want to sneeze and be unable to. And then she had asked, what time of day is it worse at? It's just there, Ken had said, and Takagawa told him that she understood that, but would he say it was worse at ten in the morning, or ten at night? She asked, do you find that anything brings your coughing on – does a particular food affect it? Tea? Coffee? What about chocolate? Stretching? Writing? No? Well then, what about emotion… surprise, or shock, or sadness? Do you find that affects your symptoms at all? Do you, Takagawa asked delicately, ever find that your cough is worse after sex?

"After sex? It's a cold."
"So it's not worse after sex."
"I don't want to have sex, I've got a cold!"

And your head? she inquired. Do you have a headache? And like an idiot Ken had said, well, yes, and the entire stupid process had started again. Ken could hardly have felt more uncomfortable if Takagawa had shone her desk lamp in his eyes. What causes your headaches, Kudou-san? Is it company? Well, yes, if it's yours. Yeah, I've got a headache. I got it from being dragged all the way to fucking Sumida-ku and asked a load of idiot questions by an insane bitch who thought it was open season on anyone who didn't have a high school diploma.

He didn't say it. (Be good when we're at the doctor's, Ken. He's just trying to help you…)

I tried, mother. I tried to be good – but the gentle cross-examination about his fever had been more than he could take. Ken was exhausted, he was aching and his throat hurt from talking, he was sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair bundled up in an oversized sweater, his hands resting on his forearms as if it were mid-winter and he were trapped in the snow – fuck, Ken thought, she took my temperature and I'm sitting here shivering, what more does she want?

"Oh for Christ's sakes!" Ken snapped. "I've just got flu! I went out in the rain and I got sick, that's it! Are you going to give me anything for it or aren't you?"

Takagawa shot him a single sharp glance, her full, shell-pink lips briefly twisting into a disapproving frown – you stupid boy, if all you want is someone to dish out drugs then go to a pharmacist and stop wasting my – and then nothing. She had caught herself, carefully schooling an expression of professional concern back across her face.

(And, though that look alarmed him, it was exactly what Ken had been aiming for. Make her angry: this was the plan. Lead her on, draw her out, make her think the world would be better off without another dull-witted, mean-tempered young man who meant nothing much to anybody, who would only go on to hurt himself, or someone else. Let her think she'd be doing the city a favor. Let her assume what she likes, just as long as it leaves her wishing you dead. He hated Doctor Takagawa, she left him cold and fearful: inside Ken wanted to cheer.)

"Very well," she said finally – and there was resentment trapped in her voice, for all it was balked and furtive, or was it just his imagination? "If you'd rather we stopped here, we can. I've enough information to work with, though I'd be able to prescribe more precisely if you'd only let me continue…"
"I'll take my chances," Ken said, and his voice sounded smoke-cured; he was hoarse as a lifelong chain-smoker. Something tickled at the back of his throat, and he wondered if he was going to start coughing again.
Takagawa placed one hand to her lips. "Oh, I do apologize. I've made you talk too much… would you like a glass of water?"
"No!" Ken said far too quickly. "I mean… you don't have to worry. I'll be fine."

(And of course there's nothing in the water, Ken… but do you want to take the chance you're wrong?)

All she said was, "If you're sure. Anyway, I'm going to start you on belladonna, from what you've told me of your symptoms it should have an effect. If that doesn't work feel free to call in for a follow-up, we can always try a different route when you're feeling less hoarse. And – please forgive me if this sounds strange, Mr. Kudou – I think," Takagawa said carefully, "that you might benefit from massage therapy."

Got you. She gave him a narrow, appraising look, up and under from behind a fall of strawberry-blonde hair, and it was all Ken could do not to laugh in her face. Massage therapy. Christ! Does she think I'm going to be that easy? Really? It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, just how stupid do you think I am? but he bit it back. He had to.

(You think all you have to do is hint that you might let me fuck you, and I'll come running.)

It was an ugly and unpleasant thought, saying nothing at all positive about either of them, and Ken was thoroughly ashamed of it – but Doctor Elizabeth Takagawa was a very ugly woman.

"Massage therapy? Really?"

Ken tried to keep his face impassive and his voice neutral, but he always did have indiscreet eyes – they were too wide, and far too expressive. Something of his confusion must have shown there, for she smiled. Smiled, and her smile was bright and playful and bluntly suggestive, but contained the same note of utter fraudulence that had been there from the minute he stepped into the room. You're coming onto me, he thought, and you don't even like me, because you think that's the kind of guy I am. Because you think that's all you have to do to keep me hooked.

"Certainly. I think your illness might be stress-related, and I'm sure you're aware that massage is very good for relaxation. Now, I know this is very short notice but I'm going to need to ask you to come to the Hahnemann Institute of Natural Therapy tomorrow evening… can you make that? I," she said, and Ken couldn't help noticing she hadn't even given him a chance to tell her no – actually, Doctor, I have soccer practice – "run a clinic there after hours."

And she was reaching for an appointment card and a pen, a simple black ballpoint. 8:30 PM, Hahnemann Institute, she wrote in Roman letters, and then an address in Nerima and, how weird, there was something sly and furtive about it, and it really did feel as if they were making an assignation.

I'll see you there, Takagawa said, and grinned, giving him a brief, predatory flash of her eye-teeth.

Ken could hardly claim he hadn't been warned.