Hey, sorry for late updating. I'm studying abroad right now (In Japan, ironically enough XD) and my host family doesn't have internet at home and sometimes things get a little hectic when I'm at school so...well you can imagine. At any rate please enjoy the next installment. ^w^ Reviews are greatly appreciated.

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Luze stepped toward the house, glad to be back in his uniform. Fen had reverted back into the large wolf he truly was, his black fur swirling about like tendrils of smoke. Luze rested a hand on Shadow Hound as he waited for the family's car to pull out of the driveway. The Opast noticed that they seemed to have left a light on, but he shrugged it off as an accident. After a couple moments, he stood and went to carry out his mission.

The young woman from earlier that week was asleep, her head and arms resting on the couch while the rest of her body was spread out gracefully on the floor. Her hair was now pulled back into a low ponytail that was braided up the back of her head, but Luze noticed that, like the first time he'd seen her, she had gently swept her bangs over her left eye. He shrugged off his slight pang of curiosity and silently entered the house, careful to avoid stepping on the music sheets at the girl's side. He whipped his head around, wondering where to begin.

He started as the girl let out a small groan and woke up, prominent grey eyes fixing themselves upon him almost immediately. She leapt to her feet, tensing in preparation for an attack. Luze couldn't help himself, he was impressed that she had such prudent instincts.

She stared at Luze as she recognized him, "You're that guy from the bridge," she said, "Yura."

"As you can probably guess," Luze said, "That's not actually my real name." He surveyed her for a moment, weighing his options, "Yes, I suppose you will be able to help me," he mused, stepping toward her, "You are the daughter of Kirihara Sayuri, are you not?"

"Yeah, so what if I am?" she demanded, standing her ground, not once moving her eyes from him.

"Are you aware your mother had a rather intimate relationship nearly twenty years ago?"

The girl stared at him, "How did you…?" she took a step away from him, "How did you know that?"

Luze smirked, "Her lover once worked in the same profession I do now," he said, " hard as that may be for you to understand, I assure that it's true. But I digress." He stepped forward until he was mere inches from her, looking down at her, his gaze one of intimidation, "Now, I know he's had correspondence with your mother through letters and I'd like to see them," he cupped her chin in his hand, "and I'd suggest you behave and bring them to me, there's one in particular that I'm searching for. If you don't cooperate or if you try and draw attention to us, you can kiss your vocal chords goodbye."

She swallowed thickly, though she continued to glare at him, "They're gone," she snarled, "My mother got rid of them."

Luze narrowed his gaze at her, moving his hand down to grip her neck. He smirked as fear flashed through her face and leaned in to whisper, "I'd hate for your family to come home to your mangled corpse, wouldn't you?" He tightened his hold on her throat as she attempted to struggle, lifting her a few inches off the floor with ease.

"I wouldn't do that," he said dangerously. He sighed as she continued to tug at his hand, "Telling me what you're hiding would be a far more rewarding pursuit than continuing on like that. Come to your senses, girl, and tell me what your mother did with the letters."

"I…told you," she gasped, "She… got rid of… them."

"How?" Luze demanded impatiently.

"Why… the hell should I… tell you?"

"I thought I made it very clear to you that your life is on the line," Luze replied, "And if you're going to be noble and willingly sacrifice yourself, then don't think I won't just ask your mother myself." He smirked again as she stared at him, "I'll make you watch as I kill them and I assure you their deaths will be slow, agonizingly painful. You wouldn't want little Kanto to go through that, would you?" He let go of her, watching contemptuously as she fell to her knees, her face pale. He knelt down in front of her, forcing her to look him in the eye, "Choose wisely," he said, "and I suggest you do it quickly."

"She burned them," the girl said bitterly, "they're nothing but ash."

"How long ago?"

"Almost a month now," she said, refusing to look at him.

"Good girl," Luze said, turning to his familiar, "Fen, make sure she doesn't move. It'd be annoying if she tried anything."

The great wolf nodded, moving to stand over the human, effectively pinning her to the floor. Luze ignored the glare she gave him as he approached the fireplace, stretching his hand over the ashes and murmuring the incantation in his native language. A soft purple glow enveloped the charred debris as the spell took it over. After a few moments, he was holding an ornate box filled with stacks of letters, all sealed with Shouyomi's crest. He turned away from the fireplace, tucking the box under his arm.

"Let's go, Fen," he said, "these will take some time to sift through and I'd rather not stay in the human world any longer than absolutely necessary. This place makes me want to vomit."

"What… what the hell are you?" the Opast looked over his shoulder to see the girl getting shakily to her feet. He weighed his options and the consequences of each one, then decided on the course of action he would take.

"I should erase your memories of this encounter," he said, "but you don't seem like others of your kind. I'll let you suffer, knowing full well that there's no one you can tell about this night. I'm interested to see how you handle that prospect."

"My 'kind'?" she said, "you make it sound like you're not human, which, judging by what I've seen so far, I don't doubt. That still doesn't answer my question, what the hell are you?"

"A young woman shouldn't raise her voice, no matter how vulgar a race she belongs to," Luze said coolly, "and perhaps, in due time and if I feel like it, I will answer your questions. Patience is a virtue, but until, rather, if I tell you, I suppose you'll just have to go mad with curiosity." He stretched his hand out toward her, "For now, sleep, let your mind sink into darkness."

"What are you…?" she never finished her question. Luze caught her limp form and placed in on the couch, shifting her into a more natural sleeping position. It would cause problems for him if her family suspected a break-in, they'd raise their guard and it'd be difficult for him to return to the house.

He vaguely considered healing the bruise he'd left on the girl's neck, but thought better of it. After all, it wasn't proper to shield people from reality, not even humans.


Kai awoke the next day to find sunlight shining in through the large floor-to- ceiling window behind the couch. She vaguely wondered how she'd gotten on the couch in the first place before pain shot through her neck. She jolted upright, clutching her throat as the skin continued to burn and stumbled to the bathroom. Her eyes widened in horror as she saw the large, purple bruise that had formed, even her necklace failed to hide most of it.

She clutched the sink, her shoulders shaking with frustration and anger. She hadn't imagined it, the events of last night really had happened. Some godforsaken bastard had broken into her house and gotten the best of her, it made Kai's blood boil just thinking about it. She'd lived in Osaka for years now, it was filled with gangs and yakuza ready to take advantage of young women like herself, so naturally she'd learned how to fight and protect herself. But that… that person had come in and taken her down like it was nothing!

A knock on the door made Kai jump, breaking her out of her thoughts. She opened the door to find her mother standing outside.

"Finally awake are you?" she said, then raised her eyebrow questioningly, "Does your throat hurt? Why are you holding your neck like that?"

"Oh… it's nothing really," Kai said, inwardly cursing the hoarseness of her voice. She cleared her throat, "I think I slept on my neck wrong, that's all."

"I don't buy that for a second, put your hand down!" Kai couldn't help but obey, waiting for the slew of questions that was sure to come her way.

"Hmm… maybe you did just sleep on it wrong, though you still sound hoarse. Stay here, I'll be back with some painkillers." Kai stared as her mother left the room. Turning back to the mirror, she saw that the bruise was indeed there, so why hadn't her mother said anything. Even a moment later, when Kanto came down to give her a good-morning hug, he didn't seem to notice.

It was then that Kai began to wonder, was she possibly the only one who could see the injury? After all, she'd always been able to see things that other people couldn't, maybe the bruise was just another one of those things. That guy had said quite openly that he wasn't human and Kai had to admit that the things she saw didn't qualify as anything "natural", at least, not in the everyday sense. She sighed to herself, just one more thing that set her apart from the rest of the family.

"Here you are, Kai," her mother said as she came back with the medicine and a glass of water, "drink up and I'll fix you something to eat. You're recital's tomorrow, so why don't you stay home and rest, you've got all your pieces done right?"

Kai made a noise of assent as she downed the pills, "Yeah, I've got them all memorized too," she said, handing her mother the empty glass, "I just need to run over them one more time this evening and then I think I'll be ready for tomorrow."

"Good, well, Kanto starts school late today because it's just the closing ceremony before break starts, so Haruka and I will be taking him in a little bit. I'm sure he'd like you to come, but I don't think you should stress yourself much today."

She nodded, "okay", she replied, slightly disappointed that she'd be missing Kanto's ceremony. Then again, it'd be a good opportunity to think over what had happened last night. After she ate her somewhat late breakfast, she retreated to her bedroom and did just that.

"First things first," she said to herself, taking a sketchbook and pencil from her desk. and drawing a picture of the man. Kai's forte as far as her art went lay in her ability to recreate the images in her head on paper in almost exact replicas. It was the same for the person from last night. She glared down at him and the strange wolf that she'd put beside him, wondering what both of them were. After a few moments, however, she gave up, unable to come with an answer other than what he'd told her himself: he wasn't human.

Kai then proceeded to take out her laptop, researching through all possible variations of Kami and Youkai, Japanese and otherwise, yet she still failed to find a satisfactory match. Sighing in defeat, she switched to more idle practices, including checking her email to find that her favorite author on a story-sharing website had put up a new original fiction. At first, Kai merely skimmed the summary, but read it over again with interest when she realized what it was talking about.

Humans have remained blind to the presence of faeries for centuries, with only a few being born with the ability to see them and all they do. What will happen when a young man with this power finds himself the key to a conspiracy, one that will alter the fate of human and faerie alike?

Faeries… she'd hadn't really looked into that probably, mostly because that guy had struck her as more of a demon that any sort of faerie. All the same, she looked through some articles on it and discovered that the author had done research. There were countless sites that described the relationships between faeries and humans over the years as well as they unique ability called the Sight. It said in one article that the Sight existed in one out of every thousand humans.

Despite the uncanny similarity between these accounts and her own situation, Kai still had her doubts. Try as she might, she couldn't bring herself to believe the man was a faerie. He was too… dark, too dangerous to even fall into the darker categories of faeries. Of all things, Kai would probably call him a demon, though even that didn't see to be quite right. She shook her head, annoyed that she still couldn't come up with an answer. Why was this so difficult?

I suppose you'll just have to go mad with curiosity…

No, Kai shut down her laptop and walked over to her canvases, determined not to think about it too much. She wasn't going to give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing her obsess over this. Instead, she decided to make the best of it. After all, the sketch she'd done was a pretty good one and it'd be best not to let it go to waste. Still… there was the fact that she currently despised the man in it… well, best not let the wolf go to waste.