Prüfung
earth, after rain

A Weiss Kreuz fanfic by laila

Part 2 – Ahnung: Sowing a storm

"Moth?" Ken pulled a face, unsure he'd pronounced the English word correctly. Unsure Youji had done. "That's never her real name."
"Of course it isn't," Youji said, as if it should have been obvious. "But—" using his teeth, he pulled a cigarette from the pack he was holding, "Kenken— that was what she said she was called."
"Who the Hell goes around calling themselves Moth?" Ken protested. "It's not even like she's foreign! Is she?"
"No, she isn't." Youji's Zippo flickered and flamed briefly as he lit his cigarette with, to Ken's eyes, an entirely needless flourish. "But you know girls, Hidaka. Or you should by now. She wouldn't be the first to give herself a silly foreign name because she thought it sounded cute. I knew a girl—"
"Of course you did, Youji."
"I knew a girl swore up and down her name was Carmilla…"

A key scraped in the back door's lock, the door creaked open, slammed shut, and there was the sound of footsteps in the passageway. Omi was home, dropping his helmet and his bag at the foot of the stairs, walking into the shop, but it wasn't that which had Youji breaking off, a startled look in normally-lazy green eyes and saw a greeting – hi, Omi or how was school or anything at all – dying on Ken's lips. Even Aya lifted his head, taken aback.

Omi, a small, almost delicate figure framed in the stockroom door, hadn't made a sound, but everything about him demanded attention sure as a sudden scream. His face was pale, almost pinched, his eyes were cold and determined and his clothes and skin were spattered with grim, copper stains that could only have been dried blood.

Ken found his voice first. "Christ! Are you okay?"
"I'm not hurt." Omi's voice was tight as his features, a small, cold, composed thing that spoke only of his own hard-repressed anger. "If you don't mind, there's something I need to look into."
"I'm going to help," Ken said, quick and unthinking. "Let me…"
"What," Aya said suddenly, "exactly happened?"
"Sayu-san's dead," was all Omi said. "I'm going to take a bath."

And with that he was turning away, vanishing back through the door and starting up the stairs, breaking into a run before he was more than halfway up the first flight. Almost instinctively Ken started after him, one hand raised as if to try and catch the boy by the arm.

"Omi—"
"Leave him be, Ken," Aya cautioned him.

And Ken stopped short. Though he spared Aya an aggrieved look, he had to acknowledge he saw the logic of it. Much as he hated to admit it, Aya's hunches on how to handle situations like this often turned out to be correct and most likely Omi really wouldn't have appreciated the company. Sighing and shaking his head, Ken settled for closing the door behind his friend, controlled and quiet as an undertaker.

"Who's Sayu?" he asked.
"Probably a classmate," Youji said quietly.
"Well, shit." Ken gave the door a quick, irritable kick. "And I guess Omi must have seen it."
At that, Youji's lips quirked. He looked as if he wanted to make some arch remark – Ken guessed it was only for the sake of the dead girl that he refrained. "Must have been a car accident or something," he said almost experimentally, as if he were testing how the words felt on his tongue, as if even he didn't quite believe in what he was saying. "Damn, that poor girl…"
"Must have," Ken said uncertainly. Well, sure it must've been an accident, but – something about this didn't feel right. "I guess he'll tell us later, when he's ready?"

But, three hours later, when he knocked on Omi's door with a tea tray in his arms, Ken was still none the wiser and beginning to lose patience with the waiting game. Leaving Youji slumped in front of Tombstone and Aya cloistered in his bedroom doing whatever it was Aya did alone in rooms, Ken had gone to the kitchen to make tea, then to Omi, the tea tray serving as peace offering and shield all at once.

"Omi? Can I come in?"
For a moment Ken heard nothing, and he frowned at the door – was everything okay in there? – but then there was a sudden flurry of movement, and then the sound of Omi's voice saying, "All right."

Ken smiled in relief, and nudged open the door with his foot.

He was hardly sure what he'd expected Omi to be doing. It wasn't exactly as if Ken had expected the kid to be in tears or anything – Omi was a tough guy, they all knew that – but he'd been imagining… well, something more contemplative than what he'd ultimately opened the door on. What he'd got was Omi sat on his bed hunched over his laptop, fingers flying over the keys and a stack of printouts and floppy discs scattered over his sheets and piled carelessly on the nightstand. It would only have needed a few textbooks lying about for it to look for all the world as if Omi was buried in a term paper. Without them? It looked like he was planning a mission.

Curious, Ken set the tea tray down on Omi's mercifully uncluttered desk and reached for the nearest printout. He skimread it quickly, frowning in concentration: it was an article, by the looks of it from a medical journal. Fighting through the thickets of needlessly incomprehensible medicalese, Ken realized that the story was about some strange new illness, some weird hemorrhagic thing that had suddenly started killing Tokyo schoolgirls…

"Is this about Freude?" he asked.
"Freude?" Omi's head snapped up; he blinked, momentarily thrown, though whether it was by the question or Ken's presence Ken wouldn't have liked to try to guess. "You mean that health drink? No, this is a new thing. This is very, very new… sit down, okay? I'll show you."

Ken nodded, first handing Omi his tea and damn whether or not Omi actually wanted any, then dropping down onto the couch He settled in a comfortable adolescent slouch, his own mug held in both hands, and turned to look at his friend. Only totally serious.

"Is this about… you know, what happened?"
"Sayu-san," Omi said tightly. "Yes. This is about what happened to her. And by the looks of it, she wasn't the first."

It had started, as best as Omi could find out, just over a month ago. There'd been a seemingly inexplicable rash of sudden deaths in the Tokyo metropolitan area, mostly of young women and teenage girls, but there'd been confirmed cases in older women and men, too. The victims, most of whom were otherwise in good general health, typically presented to clinics and ERs with sudden and uncontrollable internal bleeding, discovered on autopsy to have been caused by rupture of major blood vessels or organs. Surgical repair of the ruptures proved almost impossible due to the general damage to the body tissues, which had become friable and difficult to suture: the victims, almost without exception, died within 48 hours from blood loss and shock.

"Yuck," Ken said. "What's wrong with these guys, Ebola?"
"That's the strange part, Ken-kun. This isn't contagious."
"It isn't?"
Omi shook his head. "If it was hemorrhagic fever, we'd all know about it by now."
"So if it's not a disease," Ken asked, "then what the Hell is it?"
"The best theory so far is it's some kind of tainted drug. Specifically, this."

Omi hit a couple of keys to call up a browser window, then turned the laptop to allow Ken to see. It showed an online advertisement: a purple-on-white banner showing a slender, pretty young woman holding a box of pills, and a line or two of purple characters – see results fast, it really works! If the thing had shown up on top of a movie review or an email inbox, Ken wouldn't have thought anything of it. It looked like any other banner ad, like something a guy noticed without really seeing.

"It's called Charme," Omi said. "It's sold as an appetite suppressant and there's nothing all that unusual about it, except that a lot of the victims' families reported that they'd been taking it for months. Most appetite suppressants are only really effective for a few weeks. The theory so far is that in the short term it worked like every other diet pill, but the victims became addicted and it was long-term use that did all the harm."
Ken frowned again. "Who'd bother, though? That seems like a lotta effort for not much payout." God knew there were quicker ways to kill.
"That's the issue," Omi said, taking a sip of tea. "But whatever the reason, it looks like we'll have a new mission soon."

It took less than a week for Omi's theory to be proved correct. A slow Saturday morning with the sun skulking half-heartedly behind thin veils of clouds, and the store had barely been open for an hour before a familiar woman strode through the door as if she had far more right to be there than Weiss themselves did and, who knew, in her mind maybe that was only how things were. Red corkscrew curls, a tight, neat little suit, long legs still recklessly bared and to Hell with the turning of the seasons: Manx, serene and self-assured as ever.

Ken, a plant mister in one hand, raised his head; he glanced over at Omi, and realized with a sudden unpleasant thrill that the boy was smiling. Far safer to look at Youji, sidling toward Manx and giving her an expansive grin.

"Well, well, if it isn't Miss Manx. I knew you couldn't stay away forever."
"Now that, Youji," Manx replied, "is a far friendlier greeting than I was expecting. Unfortunately, this isn't exactly a social call." Not that she'd needed to point that out; the slim manila folder tucked under one of her arms spoke for itself. "Since you're all here, I see no reason we shouldn't begin…"

And she strode off to the basement, heels clicking confidently on the tile, without so much as a backward glance.

They formed a strange little group down there in the basement. Here Ken was shoulder-to-shoulder with three guys he should never have met: Omi, straight-arrow high-achiever, dividing the world into the innocent and the guilty and God help you if he decided you were with goats; Aya, son of a banker, discontented and isolated but self-consciously so and more so than ever now his sister was awake; Youji, drifting restlessly from girl to girl in search of Christ alone knew what, taking in everything and letting on to none of it. Where the Hell, Ken wondered, do I fit in? Where did any of them? Add Manx, every inch the prototypical executive assistant, and they only looked all the stranger.

Manx straightened, stepped away from the television. A single suspended moment later, the screen flickered into life, revealing the silhouette of a burly man sat behind a desk: Persia, or at least his digital ghost.

"Men of Weiss, a dangerous drug is being distributed in the city. Charme, sold as an appetite suppressant, is highly addictive and has already led to several deaths. Your targets are Professor Morimasa Andou, the drug's creator, along with his assistants Doctor Yaeko Nishida and Doctor Seihachi Watanuki, and distributor Tetsugo Kasamatsu."

Then the targets. First a head-and-shoulders shot of a middle-aged man, smug and well-fed and unremarkable in collar and tie: Professor Andou. Nishida was revealed as a dour woman in narrow-framed glasses with a scarred throat; Watanuki a sly, arrogant young man with a supercilious smile Ken itched to punch. Kasamatsu – tall, slender, dressed like Andou in a dark suit and the kind of tie a wife would have chosen to match – would have been just another fifty-something businessman, if not for the broken nose that made him look rather like a retired wrestler.

"Hunters of Light," the dead man said, "deny these dark beasts their tomorrows!"

The transmission died, the screen winked off. Manx, standing by the television with her arms folded beneath her breasts, switched off the television then snapped on the lights, turning to face them.

"I take it I can count on all of you?"

Ken thought of Omi standing in the doorway with his clothes spattered with blood, he thought of the girl Sayu, who he might well have seen coming to and from school or gossiping with her friends and now was dead. He nodded, quite unthinkingly; he stole a glance at Youji, and saw all the confirmation Manx might ever have needed in his face. Andou could have chosen no better way to earn Youji's disdain than dragging young women into his stupid science project. We're in, Manx. Now what?

"Manx," Omi was saying, "do we have any leads?"
Manx nodded once, handing him the data folder. "Professor Andou," she said, "is a former government pharmacologist. He was last employed by the JSDF, working on a project codenamed X-308."
"What's that?" Ken asked. "It sounds like some kinda robot."
"X-308 was a drug intended for military use," Manx said, as if the interruption had never happened, "but we have no way to find out what the project involved aside from that. It seems that Andou dissolved his team and left his position without warning early last year, taking his research data with him. After that he went underground. It's theorized he's now operating from a laboratory somewhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Our agents suggest the bay area as the most likely location, but we may be wrong."~
Aya pushed himself away from the wall, looming stern as a schoolmaster over Omi's shoulder. "You've nothing more precise?"
"I'm afraid not. We don't have much that's relevant on Andou's assistants so your best lead is Kasamatsu, the link man. He's the managing director of Shin-Akegata Logistics. Don't concern yourselves with his company. We had our agents check them out a week or so back, they're legitimate."

Well, that sucked. Ken sighed, essaying a look at Omi: he didn't look phased, just carried on flicking through the data folder, head diligently bowed, but that hardly meant the kid was happy to hear it, did it? Ken supposed it would have been a bit too easy if Kasamatsu's employees had any idea what their boss was doing with his down time; he supposed that Persia, whoever he was these days, wouldn't have bothered calling them in if there'd been the proof to haul the guy before the courts. But Christ he was sick of Persia shoving half-finished missions at them because he just couldn't be bothered to do any more leg work.

He said, "This hasn't got anything to do with the last lot, right?"
"Esset?" Manx asked. "No. Someone's clearly backing this project, but it's nobody you've dealt with before."
"And there's only one laboratory making the drug."
That was Aya, his tone too flat for it to be any kind of a question, but Manx nodded all the same. "It's all coming from the one source, that much we do know. The Tokyo market is, officially at least, being used as a testing ground to determine Charme's popularity. This is merely my own opinion—" Manx tossed a curl over her shoulder, her expression as carefully neutral as ever, "—but I don't believe Andou or his backers are remotely interested in keeping the drug on the market."
"So he's interested in the side-effects," Aya said.
"And," Youji added tightly, "he's using women as guinea pigs."
No prizes for working out what about this mission was eating him. "Hey, Omi," Ken said, "you got any ideas how we're gonna find this guy?"
Omi nodded. "I was thinking that maybe I could find the target by following the distribution routes. The drug's got to come from somewhere, hasn't it? If we trace the paths back far enough, it should lead us straight to Andou's laboratory."
"Whatever it takes." Manx smiled, then snapped her briefcase closed and headed for the stairs.

Before that, though, there was another avenue Omi wanted to investigate. If it turned out to go nowhere… well, that really couldn't be helped.

Mizuki Yoshiya hadn't been to class once since the day Sayu died. It was nothing at all, that following Monday, for a student as diligent as Tsukiyono-kun to offer to take some work round for her. The class captain, a girl called Sasaki, had thanked him distractedly, passed him a handful of preparations: Yoshiya-san lived in Suginami with her family, that wouldn't be too far out of his way, would it?

Of course not, Omi had told her. I'll drop these round after school…

(It was a lie, of course, but for a mission he'd have gone to Kyoto and hardly minded.)

The Yoshiya family's home in Nishi-Ogikubo, in a blank-faced, low-rise apartment block like so many of the others in the city, was a trim and tidy little place, tastefully but fussily decorated in neutral shades. Mizuki's mother – slim and bespectacled, with the air of a woman who was carried through life on a current of anxiety – answered the door, ushered him in through a perfect flurry of apologies for everything from the length of the journey and, with it, that he'd had to make it at all, to the fact she had something on the stove. Omi smiled through it all: honestly, it was no problem, no problem at all. He was happy to help, he didn't need a drink, really! Oh, and how was…

Mizuki's room was at the end of a short, narrow corridor. Her mother knocked tentatively, as if the girl were an invalid; tentatively, she called to her. Tsukiyono-san, bringing some classwork. Is it okay if he comes in?

She had been crying. Her lashes damp, eyes shadowed by lack of sleep, the girl who answered the door was barely recognizable as tall, confident Mizuki Yoshiya and, if anything, the hastily-brushed hair only made her look all the worse. Nothing could have hidden the exhaustion in her face, or the hunted, half-fearful look in her eyes. For a moment (Mrs. Yoshiya apologizing again as she ducked out of the room, closed the door on them) it left Omi thrown, unsure how to proceed or if he even wanted to, if he shouldn't have left the notes with her mother, and wished Mizuki well and left…

The mission, he cautioned himself. Remember what you're here for.

"I brought your notes," he ventured. "And Sasaki-san asked me to pass on her best wishes."
"Thank you," Mizuki replied. Her voice was low, and shook slightly, and she must have spoken more because she felt she ought to than because she could honestly think of anything to say. "Tell her…" She hesitated, a look of confusion momentarily flickering across her face. "Tell her I'll be back soon."

Omi nodded sympathetically. He didn't doubt she meant it. He just didn't think Mizuki would be able to do that, that was all. Even to him the little white flowers placed on Sayu's empty desk were both an accusation and a reproach. How much worse would it have been for her?

"Of course," he said. Then, "The gym team asked after you, too."
Mizuki simply nodded. She said, "All right. I… have I missed much?"
"Not too much. You'll be able to make it up easily."

It wasn't as if the rest of 3-C had felt particularly like studying these past few days, either.

And that, for a long, uncomfortable moment, was it. The pair sat in silence, Omi shuffling the notes in his hands and thinking, should I really want to do this? Did he even need to? He shouldn't push it. It wasn't right of him, wasn't fair in the face of a bereavement still so recent – but what, he wondered, if Mizuki wanted to talk and simply didn't know how to ask? He'd seen—

"Mizuki-san?"
"What happened?" She hadn't meant to cut him off. Had hardly meant to speak at all – the look on Mizuki's face told Omi that much. She looked awkward, shamefaced even, and yet… I need to know this, Tsukiyono-kun. You don't think that's terrible, do you? "I mean…"
"They did all they could," Omi said. "Everyone did. Try not to blame yourself. There was nothing you could do—"
"I didn't stop her!"
"Mizuki-san?" Didn't stop her doing what?

She blamed the diet, of course. That and herself, for not talking Sayu out of it. Mizuki had warned her, hadn't she? Told her that she had to take things slower, that she'd never been fat to begin with! Told her that no boy was worth this, that she'd make herself ill if she carried on – Sayu hadn't listened. She had never listened at all! And if she could just have done better, tried a little harder to make her friend see sense, then maybe Sayu wouldn't have—

"It's not your fault," Omi told her. Quietly, firmly, only utterly serious; just for a moment he thought of Ouka again. "You can't blame yourself for this."
"She should never have died!"
"No," Omi said. He hoped he said it firmly. "She shouldn't have. But, Mizuki-san, it's not your fault she did. You did all you could for her."
Mizuki shook her head. Whispered, "I should have stopped her."
"But if she was really that determined to lose weight," Omi told her, "I don't think anybody could have."
"I should have known!" Mizuki cried, and there were tears standing out in her eyes. "She… she just stopped eating, Tsukiyono-kun! I thought she'd soon start again, she felt so terrible, but then she started taking these pills and they… she didn't even notice she was hungry any more after that! And I begged her to stop but she said they really worked and if she stopped she'd get fat again, and… oh, God, Sayu!"

She covered her face with her hands and wept. Behind her, the door swung open with a soft creak.

"I think," Mrs. Yoshiya said quietly, "you should leave now, Tsukiyono-san."
Omi swallowed and nodded. "Of course, Mrs. Yoshiya. I'm terribly sorry."

He bowed, picked up his bag and slipped from the apartment, stepping into his shoes at the door. Then, for a moment, he simply stood in the corridor, head bowed, hair hanging in his eyes, gazing at his feet. He supposed from the outside he might merely have looked upset, but his jaw was set, his blue eyes burning with hard-repressed fury. Just beyond that door Mizuki Yoshiya lay weeping on her bed, lost in her own guilt and grief; her mother stood by her side, powerless to help, unable even to reach her.

What kind of a person did this to the innocent?

Professor Morimasa Andou, Omi vowed, would pay dearly for it.

It wasn't like Ken couldn't have made the miso if it had come down to it. It was just that at quarter past seven in the morning, with the whole day stretching ahead of him, it was a Hell of a lot simpler to go the Just Add Water route. At least this way he knew roughly how long it'd take to prepare and, with it, that Omi would have eaten something before he left for school. What with the kid up to his eyes in the usual pre-mission crap and acting like beds were something that happened to other people, it was the least Ken could do to make life easier for him.

Monday morning and, heading out for his run, he had found Omi asleep in the basement again, head pillowed on his folded forearms, a half-finished can of long-since flat soda by one elbow and the computer idling before him. Curious, Ken had knocked the mouse, blinked at the screen; he had wished, not for the first time, that Omi's lines of logic weren't so totally bloody impossible for anyone who wasn't him to follow. What the Hell did distribution records have to do with Ebola capsules? Sure Ken wished the best of luck to him, but Omi was on his own with that one…

So he sighed and shook his head, and draped a blanket about the kid's shoulders: what point was there in chasing Omi upstairs to his own room now? All that would mean was half an hour in an actual bed and disturbing what little sleep he'd managed to snatch. Apart from a slightly less stiff neck, it simply wasn't worth it.

Besides, if he'd woken him up probably all Omi would have done was bury himself in distribution records again.

So there was rice from the cooker and pickles on the table, and nori and miso soup, and for all the soup came from powder and Ken had bought the pickles at Tokyu, it was food. Omi, or so Ken told himself as he walked to the basement and stuck his head round the door, would eat it and like it or else.

"Oi, Omi! Breakfast!"

Now get your ass up here or I'll come down and fetch it.

It only took five minutes for Omi to drag himself away from whatever he was doing and make it to the table and even if he had brought his notebook with him, Ken still counted that as a partial victory. More unusually, Aya and Youji both made it down before the kid could vanish again, Aya quietly helping himself to the food and settling down at the head of the table with a newspaper spread out before him; Youji tousle-headed and bleary-eyed, only just alert enough not to miss his mug with the coffee, but present.

"Breakfast," Ken told him, dumping a bowl of rice down in front of him. "Coffee's not a food group, Kudou."
"Says you," Youji muttered. Added, no doubt feeling that was rather below his usual standards, "You're gonna make a wonderful wife, you know? One day, Kenken, you will make some lucky man very happy."
"Get bent," Ken suggested, raising his middle finger in salute. "Good night, then?"
"Better than Omi's, by the looks of it. What is that, kiddo, homework or the other?"
And Omi started, very nearly knocking over his soup. "Huh? Oh, uh… it's the mission. It's been a bit…"
"They're always a bit," Youji said. Then, to nobody in particular, "Kids these days."
"Oi, Youji-kun! What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, nothing. Just that if I'd had hot and cold running pornography at the touch of a key when I was your age, I wouldn't have been up all night reading about shipping companies."
It wasn't even the first time Youji'd made that crack, but Omi colored all the same. That was probably why he kept on making it. "Youji-kun—!"
"What," Aya asked, effectively cutting the argument off at the pass, "did you find?"

And Omi hesitated, as if that was a good question: like it or not Ken thought Youji had a point. At least the scruffy stuff would have been interesting. You didn't have to be a boy genius to know when an investigation was dying on its feet – if Omi had been up all night he either had a hot lead or no clue, and he wasn't excited enough for it to be the former. Weiss were stuck on shipping ledgers; the investigation was spinning its wheels. Simply, they needed a break.

"Well," Omi said, giving Aya a grateful smile which the redhead seemed totally immune to, "I've got something, but it's not a lot. Manx really wasn't kidding when she said Professor Andou went underground. There's nothing on him since he left his job. Bank data's a no-go, he cleared his accounts last March and there's been zero movement since."
"So that's well and truly out, then," Youji said. "Got any good news?"
"It depends how you define good, I suppose. We weren't wrong in assuming Kasamatsu's company was handling the business end of things, but there's a problem. Shin-Akegata's involved, but only up to a point."
"Up to a point?" Ken echoed. "What does that mean?"
"I'm coming to that, Ken-kun. Charme is officially on a market trial and currently only available in a few hundred stores, so Shin-Akegata distributes it direct to the retailers. The catch is that the delivery agents don't make their pickups from a factory. The drugs all come from a warehouse in Shin-Kiba, and after that the trail goes dead. However the drugs end up in that warehouse, it's not through the target's company, or any other distribution company either." Omi rubbed at his temples, hoping to stave off an incipient headache.
"The trail just goes dead? That's kind of odd," Ken said.
Omi nodded. "I'm starting to think we've found out about all we're going to this way, at least for now."
"Agreed," Aya said. "Omi, where is this warehouse?"
"I took its address." Omi flipped open the notebook and tore out a page, stretching across the table to hand it to Aya. "I figured… well, the drugs have to get there somehow, right? If another company isn't taking them, it might well be one of the targets, or someone who can lead us to them… Aya-kun, are you going to go there?"
Aya merely nodded. "I'll handle it."
"And," Youji said, "I'll handle it too," then smiled at Aya's frown. "You'll need someone to watch your back."

And, Ken thought, you don't want to go to work. He gave Youji a disapproving frown; Youji, an innocent smile planted firmly on a face that didn't suit it, pretended a sudden fascination in his coffee cup.

Omi turned back to the pickles and rice. Quick and neat as a cat, he finished up his bowl and, stacking his plates in the sink, vanished to his room to shower and dress. Youji poured himself another coffee and lit the first cigarette of the day, picking diligently at his food without ever actually seeming to eat any. Aya buried himself in foreign news, looking for articles about America.

Ken sighed, chin propped in his palm, and stared out the window. Said, "Why don't we buy the pills?" then wondered why his companions were giving him such strange looks. Had that come out weird or something?

"What?"
"Why," Youji asked, slowly and carefully as if he were trying to talk Ken down from the edge of the roof, "exactly do you want poisoned diet pills, Kenken? You're not thinking of losing weight, are you?"
"Fuck off, Youji. No I'm not thinking of going on a diet."
"Then what's the point of having them?" Aya asked, and even he sounded a little lost.
Yeah, that had come out weird. "I mean for the leaflet thing," Ken said uneasily. "You know. When you buy headache pills there's this leaflet which tells you how to take them, and it's got… oh, fuck it!"

And jumped from his seat, and ran from the kitchen.

It took far longer than he thought it would to locate the painkillers. (Shouldn't they have been someplace accessible? Never knew when they might need them again in a hurry…) Five minutes of turning out drawers and closets and Ken finally located a box of Tylenol somewhere in the bathroom. A quick check to see that the leaflet was still there and he was running back down again, the box in one hand, almost tearing the leaflet in his haste to tug it free – back into the kitchen, to Youji regarding him coolly over the rim of his coffee mug, and Aya back behind his newspaper pretending he'd heard nothing at all. Honestly, one of these days he was just going to stop helping and see how they liked that.

"Are you going somewhere with this?" Youji asked after a long, pointed pause
"Look," Ken said. He shoved the paper into Youji's hands, pointing a few tiny lines of text out to him. Yes, Youji's raised eyebrow said, that's a pharmacy leaflet, Ken… "There. These things have addresses on them. And phone numbers."
"And you think knowing this'll help?" Youji asked.
"They won't print the laboratory's address on a pharmacy leaflet, Ken," Aya said from behind his paper.
"They'll have to lead to something," Ken countered. "I'm not saying that professor's going to be stupid enough to print his address on the box but if there's a phone number it's gotta be genuine or someone'd have said something. There's gotta be something at the address for the same reason." He folded his arms. Said, stubbornly, "I wanna look into it."
All Aya said was, "Suit yourself." Undercurrent of, you're wasting your time. Ken set his jaw against it.
"Yeah thanks for that, Aya, but I wasn't asking your permission. And it's your turn to wash up."

He swore it was a good idea in theory, and certainly way more useful than stranding himself in the shop making lily and rose arrangements until he fantasized about hanging himself with gift ribbon. The problem was Ken hadn't really anticipated quite how embarrassing trying to buy diet pills would prove. If he had any idea quite how difficult the whole process would turn out to be, he would have kept his mouth shut about addresses and pharmacy leaflets and pushed the thought aside…

He certainly wouldn't, once Aya and Youji had left for Shin-Kiba and a day sat outside a warehouse trying not to look sinister, have headed for a drugstore.

The minute he'd got there Ken realized he'd made a terrible mistake. He hadn't had the first idea where women went to look for all that stuff they used and, stranded between shelf on overloaded shelf of mystifying creams and infusions and sinister-looking stainless-steel devices for doing who knew what, and (did women really have a use for all this stuff?) endless bottles of multicolored goo, he had felt self-conscious and stupid and horribly, horribly out of place. He could hardly have felt less conspicuous if he'd showed up dressed as a panda or something.

It took far too long to find the diet products and he must have looked a bit too pleased when he did. One of the shop girls, who'd been hovering a few feet away like she was worried he was going to start stealing or breaking things, gave him a very strange look which, for a moment or two, Ken was too startled to return. Sure he was on the skinny side if he was anything and obviously in shape and the only way he could have been a less likely candidate for appetite suppressants was if he'd been a sumo wrestler, but he was trying to pay these people for stuff, wasn't he?

(Didn't they want his money or something? Wasn't guy money good enough for them?)

Selecting a toothbrush and a bar of soap he didn't really want in the hope that it'd somehow offset the painful girliness of buying purple diet drugs, Ken picked his way through the shelves of stuff to the registers, nearly running into a pigtailed college girl. She smiled, and Ken grinned back in sheer embarrassment and murmured an apology.

"Are those for your girlfriend?"
"Huh?" Crap, she'd seen the pills? Ken smiled at her again and his smile was now very definitely awkward. Dammit what the Hell was he supposed to say to the girl? Lie and say he did have a girlfriend because it beat being the guy out buying purple diet pills because he wanted them, or tell the truth and say he didn't and have her think he was some kind of weirdo? "Well… yeah, yeah they are, she, um… she's on a health kick?"
"And you're buying them for her? That's cool, you must be a real considerate guy! Most of the guys I know wouldn't dream of doing something like that…"
"Uh. Thanks?"

If only he had been Aya. Or Youji. Either would have done – girls didn't mess with Aya, or at least they didn't expect him to mess with them back, and Youji knew how to handle it. Ken? He just had to make it up as he went along and usually fucked things up.

At least he supposed he'd use the toothbrush sometime. As for the pills, it wasn't even as if they'd led him to anything, or rather not to anything significant. Once he'd finally escaped from the drugstore and followed the address given on the leaflet he wasn't totally sure what he'd been expecting the visit to tell him. Not that Ken was about to admit anything of the sort to Aya, of course, but it looked like he had been right all along. Man, he hated it when Aya had a point.

The sea breeze tugging at his hair, Ken sighed and slumped down onto the handles of his motorbike, resting his chin on his crossed wrists, the leaflet crumpled in one hand. Well, sometimes hunches took a guy nowhere…

Yeah. Nowhere, Kawasaki. Charme, said the leaflet, is manufactured and distributed by Tellus Pharmaceuticals— Ken had never heard of them but if they could afford all this stuff they could hardly be hurting for money. Here was the factory, on an industrial estate in Kawasaki-ku built on land that had probably been under water fifty years ago. The head office was in Tokyo proper, in the Maranouchi business district in Chiyoda. It sounded like a fashionable location insofar as Ken was any judge, which he admitted he probably wasn't.

He had parked the bike across the street from the factory complex: a large, busy and seemingly prosperous concern. Steam poured from the chimneys; cars and lorries buzzed around car parks and loading bays like bees round a hive; the occasional person crossed the yards and winding pathways between the buildings, from warehouse to factory, factory to plant office, plant office to laboratory and from there back to the warehouse, hurrying from A to B and back again on very important errands whose purpose a bored florist with an interesting night job couldn't even begin to divine. From here it seemed to be more about looking busy than because there was any real need to hurry. It couldn't be that difficult to convince people they didn't want to be sick.

The chances that Andou and his twisted buddies were hiding out here were not just minimal but nonexistent. It was too large, too busy. Too many people who might have noticed a stray Government scientist. Too many people who could have recognized him: hey, didn't you used to be Morimasa Andou?

The catch? If Charme was bloody death in capsule form then why would Tellus want to claim they made it? Obviously they weren't doing anything of the sort; if Omi said the stuff was coming from a laboratory then he would no doubt have damn good reason for believing so. They wouldn't make something like that here for the same reason Professor Andou wouldn't have tried to lose himself here. What the Hell'd they get out of saying that they did, except for bad PR?

This, Ken thought, is weird.

The warehouse was, Youji thought, a distinct disappointment.

After all the build-up he'd expected something search-lit and heavily-guarded but all it was, was a warehouse. Sure he'd been watching too many terrible movies. Sure the guys from the distribution company weren't to know there was anything the matter with the drug they were shipping out to the stores and there was no need to make things look any weirder than they had to. Sure, there was no way a busy street in Shin-Kiba was going to turn itself out like something out the finale of Tango and Cash, but at least that would have had a certain flair.

It stood in an ordinary street with another warehouse on either side, all three long and low and utterly aesthetically uninteresting. The buildings faced onto in a wide expanse of tarmac that probably served as a combination of car park and loading bay, which was, if possible, even more boring than they were. The only interesting thing in sight was the round tower of the building just behind them, with a slate-gray mushroom-capped roof and some kind of dovecote construction perched foolishly on top. What was that, some kind of silo? An extremely half-assed lighthouse? As for security, all there was was a single uniformed guard drowsing in a cramped cabin.

The most interesting thing that had happened so far had been trying to find a parking space, and even that had a tedious solution in the form of the wood museum across the road. What kind of guy seriously visited a wood museum? Hell, who thought it was a good idea to open one?

"Next time, Fujimiya," Youji said, "we're hiring a van. The only way this wheelbarrow of yours could stand out worse is if you painted it pink."
Aya's look said one more crack like that and he'd be walking home. "I don't see your car holding up any better."
"That," Youji told him, giving him a smirk Ken had assured him was utterly infuriating, "is why we're not in it."

Not that the guard noticed. He probably wouldn't have cared if they had shown up in a clown car and stood by it taking photographs. The man was too caught up in the day's Sudoku to pay much attention to the assassins across the way. Figured, really. Guy probably dreamed of the day something vaguely exciting happened on his watch and when a pair of assassins show up hoping to kill his boss he's doing a damn Sudoku. It would make for a pretty good parable if only he could think of a moral…

"Hey, Aya," he said, because if he didn't say something he thought he'd go crazy, "what kind of guy thinks it's a good idea to open a wood museum in the middle of an industrial estate?"
"Why," Aya said stiffly, "are you asking me?"
"I don't know. Your family were rich, some of their friends must've been rich and nuts. Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke in my car." Suggestion of, and you won't either if you know what's good for you.
And Youji sighed. "Aya," he said, tugging a battered packet from his jacket pocket, "I am offering you a cigarette. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bum a smoke off me without me making a production number of it. If I were you I'd open the window and make the most of it. Now, taking this from the top… do you want a cigarette?"
"All right."

Youji nodded. Lit the cigarette he was holding and passed it to Aya, then took another one for himself.

Even with cigarettes, surveillance was a chore. It had always been his least favorite part of detective work; no surprises that being with Weiss hadn't changed that when all it meant was the same old tedium in far less appealing company. Might as well have gone to the wood museum and at least been creatively bored. Youji slumped down in his seat again, hands propped behind his head, and stared out of the windscreen at the security guard in his cabin, caged in his little box like a specimen in a tank. Guy hadn't even looked up yet. Either that was a damn difficult Sudoku, or he was just really bad at them…

Next to him Aya gazed tirelessly out of the window, his expression as attentive and composed as Youji's was sleepily uninterested; too bad Youji had a sneaking feeling he wasn't really paying attention. Thinking of whatever it was Aya did think, when he wasn't thinking of anything very much… Should have bought a book, really. Or got Omi to check the company's delivery rosters, but he realized that if things really did become as vague as the boy claimed beyond this point perhaps there wouldn't be one. It was a bit late to be thinking of that now.

"And if they don't show?"
"Huh?" Youji started. Hadn't expected Aya to break the silence. "We come back," he said simply. You know that. "And back and back and back until Kasamatsu shows his face or we get a better lead. Maybe Omi'll turn up something…"
Aya didn't quite sigh, but he looked like he wanted to. "Then here's to better leads."

Cars and trucks drifted into view, then back away to more interesting prospects; a lorry pulled into the warehouse next door and made a moderately entertaining hash of it. The dust blew in eddies across the warehouse forecourt. The smell of the sea wafted in through the Porsche's open window. And nothing happened, nothing at all.

Some days school was only a distraction. Impatient, frustrated, unable to concentrate, Omi had watched the clock and willed the day to pass; he'd gazed over at Sayu's empty desk then at Mizuki, pale and distant, worrying at a tissue beneath her desk; how on earth was he supposed to concentrate on English grammar when the target might as well have been tapping on the window? He'd spent the brief lunch period in the library with his laptop, working far harder and with more focus than he had given to any of his classes, and going hungry seemed a small price to pay for it.

Missions always came first. They had to. It was a relief to be home, to be able to think again.

Ken wasn't in the shop, which straight away was odd. What was odder was what he was doing when Omi found him. Stepping into the break room, he spotted Ken sat on one of the couches, a small purple-and-white capsule between finger and thumb: as Omi watched – had Ken even noticed him coming in? – he held it up to the light, frowning at it as if he wanted to ask it a question, but couldn't quite work out what. Another identical capsule had been split open, the white powder it contained poured onto a sheet of paper.

"Um," Omi said, "I'm home. Ken-kun? Is everything okay?"
"Huh?" Ken started, dropping the pill. "Oh, hi, Omi… yeah, yeah, it's fine, I was just… Shop's kinda dead so I took a bit of a break. How was class?"
"Oh, okay, I guess," Omi said noncommittally. "You've had a good day?"
"Total wash. Went to check an address, but there was damn-all doing. Youji and Aya better get something…" Ken slumped slightly, settling back into the couch cushions and closing his eyes – he opened them again a few seconds later, a frown creasing his brow. "Hey, Omi," he said, "ever heard of a company called Tellus Pharmaceuticals?"
Maybe his day hadn't been such a wash after all. "Tellus? Huh… no, I don't think so, Ken-kun. Why do you ask?"
"Well, it's just—hang on a minute, I got it somewhere."

Ken straightened, digging in his apron pocket then, with a curse, in the pockets of his jeans, finally retrieving a small, crumpled piece of paper. He tried and failed to smooth down the creases, carefully underlined something on it with a ballpoint pen, then (are you going somewhere with this, Ken-kun?) he handed it over. Omi could feel the weight of his friend's gaze as he peered at the tiny print, first in confusion, then in naked curiosity. Could tell he was waiting for something, as if he wasn't quite sure what he thought of all this and was hoping Omi would tell him.

"It's kinda weird," Ken said into the sudden silence. "Isn't this stuff dangerous?"
"It is rather strange, isn't it?" Shrugging his bag off his shoulder, Omi sat down, frowning at the leaflet. "I can't imagine why any company would want to put their name to this. Maybe… perhaps Andou cut a deal with them? He could have offered them something else if they agreed to sign off on Charme that made the bad PR worth it, I suppose…"
"Maybe," Ken said dubiously. "Man, I dunno, Omi. This doesn't feel right."

No. No, it didn't. What could Andou have to trade to make Tellus think courting disaster by associating themselves with a tainted drug was somehow okay? Companies and businessmen didn't do anything just because, they wouldn't lay themselves open if they didn't think there was something to gain…

Not that this got them any further. Omi put the paper on the break room table, resting his hand on it for a moment, then sat back. It was nothing to do with Weiss what Tellus wanted. All they had to do was see that Andou was stopped.

"No… You probably won't like this either, Ken-kun."
What, there's more? Damn, Ken's frown said, that really is just great. "I won't like what?"
"I've started looking into Andou's associates," Omi said. "I thought since Kasamatsu wasn't a certainty one of the others might have something we could get him on, so…"
Ken nodded. "Yeah, makes sense, ain't like we got any better ideas. What happened?"
"Well, there's not much on Doctor Watanuki. He graduated from Kyushu University, did a couple of internships after moving home to Tokyo and vanished about four months back. All his old workmates thought he must have found a job elsewhere and left town, I'm afraid I've no idea how Andou got hold of him. The real issue's Doctor Nishida."
"Nishida? She's the woman, right?"
"Mm. She used to work for Waseda University. This might be coincidence, but Nishida took sick leave shortly before Andou left his job. She said she was going to have a throat operation and retired on medical grounds afterwards. I thought maybe that was a cover story, but I got hold of her medical records to double check and apparently she had a thyroidectomy in January 1998, so I'm not sure what to think now."
"I think she had a throat op," Ken said; Omi supposed he must have looked dubious because Ken smiled at him, and shook his head. "Oh, come on. It's not all gotta be some giant conspiracy. Can't she just have gotten sick?"
"But that doesn't explain how she took up with Andou."
Ken just shrugged. "Well, cancer makes people think. Guess she must've thought to Hell with being nice."

He got to his feet, brushing off his jeans, headed back to Momoe and the shop. Clearly the conversation was over.

For a moment Omi simply sat there – jacket still on him, bag by his side – and gazed at the door and thought, well, why does it have to be significant? Why should Nishida's illness imply anything at all? Most likely Ken was right and he couldn't find the meaning because there was no meaning to find. Just a sick woman with nothing to do but think and wait, lying in bed listening for the surgeon's footsteps and wondering was it worth it, if this really is it?

Nobody said that re-evaluations had to mean a change for the better, but that didn't get them anywhere either. It was time he got back to work.

Dusk fell, the sky purpling like a new bruise. Across the waterfront, streetlamps and floodlights and loading bay lamps flickered on, routing the gathering darkness, bathing the area in a sickly, bluntly artificial glow and casting grotesquely attenuated shadows across the largely empty goods yards. And nothing happened.

Youji yawned, tried to stretch; it wasn't advisable for a six foot man in a sports car, but there were times when it couldn't be helped. Next time he'd bring a book. It'd beat trying to talk to Aya… Man, stakeouts in industrial zones really were the worst. At least in the heart of the city there'd have been plenty of other things to see and plenty of places to keep watch from, cafes were always a good one. Here? Sit tight and watch the steady ebb and flow of cars and covered trucks roll past the windows, and hope like Hell the target shows before you give up the will to live. And then come back tomorrow and do it all over again…

"Maybe we should be casing his house," Aya suggested as the light began to fail.
"Hold that thought," Youji told him. "Guess we can give it a go tomorrow if we totally strike out here."

There'd been a shift change a couple of hours back. Oh, hooray. The Sudoku aficionado had gone; his replacement, tense and lean and watchful, was far younger, and still new enough at the job to take it seriously. He'd cast a couple of suspicious looks in their direction; Youji had very nearly given him a wave. No Kasamatsu, though. Nothing like him.

Sighing, Youji lit another cigarette, and hummed a verse of Road to Nowhere under his breath as he smoked.

"Either put that out or give me one."
"For Pete's sake, Aya," Youji griped, reaching for the packet again, "why don't you ever buy your own cigarettes?"

But they were both in the same boat. Car. Whatever. Either way Youji wasn't going to make an issue of it. Bad enough being here at all without making matters worse by picking a pointless fight. Whatever happened next he was going to be stuck with Aya for the next couple of hours. Being stuck with a nicotine-deprived Aya? No thank you.

Aya didn't look around at the sound of a car engine in the distance, though Youji's eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze flickering briefly along the evening-quiet road more out of habit than anything. Just another car; what else was old? They were both slipping easily back into lassitude when the car – a large, sleek company sedan – swung round the corner and purred down the road toward the wood museum, engine barely ticking over as it pulled up in front of the Shin-Akegata warehouse.

Youji's eyes widened, then narrowed; Aya hastily ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, sitting up straight as, across the road, the security guard pushed open the window of his cabin. He leant out to exchange a few words with the sedan's driver, then the gates swung slowly open and the car turned into the goods yard, coming to a halt just before the warehouse doors. The sedan's door swung open; a tall, slender individual in a suit and tie stepped out, spotlit in the halogen lamps as if he were stepping onstage.

The man's skin was bleached to a sickly pallor; his shadow stretched out across the yard, monstrous in its elongation. Stood like that, profile picked out by the questing lights, the broken nose was only too obvious in an otherwise almost delicate face.

"Target," Aya murmured.
Kasamatsu. Youji nodded, stubbing out his own cigarette, flipping the butt through the open window. "That's our guy."

Now this was more like it. All they had to do was wait for him to come back out again…

Until then? Only another stretch of nothing at all. Youji sighed, settled back in his seat and if anything the wait was only going to be all the worse now for knowing that they were watching over more than a potentiality. He had just started to regret stubbing out the cigarette when the warehouse door swung open again and Kasamatsu stormed out, back set and head up, with a younger man – some kind of warehouse manager, by the looks of him – dogging his heels, a clipboard in one hand.

"Whoa," Youji said. "Someone doesn't look happy."

Possibly that had been an understatement. As the two assassins watched, Kasamatsu hurried back across the yard toward his sedan. The young man called something to him, reached out to catch at his boss's shoulder, holding out the clipboard as if for him to inspect; Kasamatsu turned on him, shouted something Youji couldn't quite hear. From the manager's reaction, from the way he fell back, cowed, clutching the clipboard to him as if it were a kind of shield, it had been nothing good. Youji reached for his seatbelt.

He looked up again at the slam of a door: Kasamatsu, back in his car. Leaning out the wound-down window, he was calling to the manager as the sedan's engine roared back into life. The man might have said something, might have nodded; he was already hurrying back to the warehouse as Kasamatsu's car lurched forward and sped out of the lot.

Aya didn't say a word. He simply fired the Porsche's engine and took off after their prey.