Shortly after arriving in Japan, Will Graham decided something almost immediately. Although he didn't believe he could ever become fluent in such an alien-sounding language, he genuinely loved the sound of Japanese being spoken. He imagines that it has something to do with the lyrical, percussive quality being like woodland birdsong; the soft, abrupt 'chi' sounds and 'esu' endings like the calls of cardinals and rock pigeons, the low-pitched exclamations like red wing pheasants. Stood in a crowded marketplace the first evening they arrived in Tokyo, he surprised himself with how little the noise of the crowd around them bothered him. Something to do with being in a kind of language bubble, he supposed, untroubled by the expressed thoughts and feelings of the people around him. Curiosity soon got the better of him however, and he found he had to ask Hannibal the meaning of one particular word he heard repeated wherever they went.

"Sumimasen? This is the first word anyone needs to learn in Japan."

Seated in a cab headed for the central station, Hannibal's eyes had reflected the multi-colored neon all around them.

"And it means what?

"'Excuse me'."

"But they say it everywhere, for everything!"

"Maybe because they are profoundly sorry for everything we must all endure."

In another cab now, in another city months later, Will considers that perhaps Japan was and has always been Hannibal's true spiritual home. For a man who so abhors rudeness, and who so prizes balance, symmetry and beauty, this reserved, self-contained country is the balm he imagines both of them needed after the events of the last year, after all the wounds they had dealt each other. Half a year and thousands of miles from the bluff where Will had almost cost them both their lives, he can't help but feel profoundly grateful for their survival. Hannibal has never asked him why he did what he did, and he's grateful for that too. Trying to put into words the impossibly blurred feelings of elation, inevitability and despair he had felt that night they killed the Dragon together seemed both pointless and crass. Hannibal had understood them all after all. He had allowed himself to be taken willingly. Glancing over at him, Will studies the angles of his face. He has aged so little in the time that he has known him, while he himself feels decades, centuries older, covered in scars and marked by all their experiences. And yet, he considers, the opposite might also be said to be true. He also feels regenerated by them.

Hannibal speaks a couple of words to their driver, who nods abruptly in reply.

"This is our destination on the right I believe," he says and Will leans over to see.

The modest inn they are pulling up in front of is not entirely what he is expecting, and he casts a look at Hannibal to define his thinking.

"Two academics living on a stipend can hardly be expected to live the high life."

Will grimaces, "Does it at least have an onsen?"

"But of course," shouldering his bag, Hannibal gives him a look that can only be described as one of playful admonition, "We may be poor academics, but we're not animals Professor Phillips."

The room is simple but elegant, like so much of Japan, and after they've both showered and enjoyed a leisurely but superb dinner of softshell crab tempura, Will makes the call he has been alternately dreading and eagerly anticipating. Calling Inspector Nakamori on the direct number he left them at the cabin, he's in the middle of explaining that he and his colleague Mr. Falques are now in Aomori city, when he realizes that the elderly Inspector seems somewhat flustered and upset.

"Maybe…are you in your hotel now Mr. Phillips? May I bring someone to you?"

Will glances at Hannibal, "It's late Inspector. Can I ask who?"

"My assistant, Kaneshiro. It was his suggestion in fact that I make contact with you, and I know he is eager to make your acquaintance," the Inspector clears his throat, and Will's impression is one of barely masked embarrassment, "Kaneshiro has a theory which I believe he…desires your opinion on."

"Who exactly is James Phillips?" Will has to ask Hannibal when he hangs up the phone. A low-level feeling of anxiety is moving inside him now, like bugs crawling under a dead log, and he suddenly finds he needs reassurance that they are not about to be unceremoniously exposed. But as usual, Hannibal seems uninterested in reassuring him, preferring instead to watch Will spin out a little.

"An old dinner guest perhaps?"

Hannibal tilts his head to one side. He is finishing the tempura and seems loathe to be disturbed by such a prosaic line of conversation. "Not so old."

"A friend?"

"Not so friendly either."

"Hannibal..."

"Sebastian."

"Sebastian," he sighs, "Are we really going to spend the whole of the next hour roleplaying academics?"

Pulling back the curtain, Will looks down at the street and asks himself for maybe the fourth time that day what on earth they're doing here. Back in a large city, surrounded by televisions and newsstands and any number of tourists who might have travelled to the US in the last year, and seen one or either of their pictures somewhere. Clean-shaven, with longer hair and no glasses, he's fairly sure no-one would give him a second look, but Hannibal was another matter entirely. Will wasn't entirely sure how much cover the story of 'Hannibal The Cannibal' had gotten in Japan, or how many copies of Frederick's tawdry book had sold there, but he was willing to bet there were at least a few hundred Tattle Crime subscribers in the north of Japan.

"We should go home," he says softly, partly to himself and partly because he badly wants to hear Hannibal say something comforting, but where he turns around the room is empty. Hannibal has left again, noiselessly and without explanation, and Will gives his head a small shake of irritation and sits down on the bed.

The slim manila evidence folder Inspector Nakamori left with them at the cabin is visible inside Hannibal's unzipped backpack and, drawing it out, Will pulls out the photographs again and lays them out side by side. It's not the same as being there, nowhere near as powerful a sensation as standing at the feet of the bodies, smelling the wet cold grass and warm flesh and blood, and yet it isn't remotely difficult for him to achieve the mind-state that feels immediately familiar and deeply, disturbingly seductive to him.

Turning the last picture, the girl with the perfectly arranged hair, towards him, he lets his eyes drift over her slowly, studying her like the subject of a painting he is about to make from memory. And then Will closes his eyes.

I lay her out on the grass.

She's already dead and drained of all her blood.

I took it from her quickly, every last ounce,

while was sleeping

but her heart was beating

so fast,

so fast,

so fast.

It's important she is pale.

As pale as the moon I lay her out under.

As pale as the moon I cut in her throat.

Will turns the picture sideways and places the detail of the dead girl's belly alongside at an angle, like he is reading her tarot cards.

I measure her and then I cut open her belly with

perfect

precision.

Not one drop of blood can be spilled.

I place the sample case inside her and I close the door.

Because I need you to be the one to discover this.

I need you to open the door

and finally see the truth for yourself now.

No-one else knew what she was.

Knew what she really was.

Except.

For.

Me.

Will opens his eyes again, and frowns with confusion. Something feels different about this monster, something he can't quite put his finger on. Turning each girl to the side he examines their hair, so perfectly arranged, fanned out to the side like a Barbie doll in a box. A perfect, little Japanese Barbie doll.

Who are you, adult playing with dolls?

Playing cruel games with dolls.

Who is it you need to show your display to?

Who needs to know what these girls really were?

All the same girl really.

This girl.

Who was she?

What did only you know she was?

And why these particular insects?

A soft knock startles him, until he checks his watch. 45 minutes has elapsed since he called the Inspector, and Hannibal has still not returned from wherever he felt the sudden need to disappear to. Taking a deep breath, Will slides the pictures back into the folder and goes to answer the door.

Outside in the hall, the florid Nakamori looks as if he is at the end of a very long work day. Pale and sweaty, the deep shadows under his eyes tell a story of a man who is nearing retirement, and is completely unprepared for the kind of case that he's had dropped into his lap.

"Mr. Phillips. I am so very grateful for you being here. I must thank you so much for helping us with this."

Behind him a much younger man stands, awkwardly tall and dressed far more casually than Will imagines Japanese policemen are expected to dress. Sticking out his hand at an oddly comedic angle, he moves with far more enthusiasm than seems appropriate for the late hour, and when he speaks his accent is unmistakably North American.

"Professor Phillips, so good to meet you finally! I have to tell you sir, I so enjoyed reading your monograph!"

His eyes are sharp and clear, and Will feels a chill of unease begin at the base of his spine that he really hopes is baseless. Smiling at him Kaneshiro, tilts his head to one side,

"I hope you don't think me rude sir, but with the body of work you have behind you, I thought somehow you'd be much older!"

It's after 1am when Hannibal finally returns, although Will is not asleep. Sat up in bed, in a t-shirt and boxers and on his third tumbler of single malt from the mini bar, his eyes drift only momentarily to the door before they drift back to the TV set that is on now at the foot of the bed. The volume is on low, and the channel he has chosen appears to feature some kind of brightly coloured gameshow where young men dressed as animé characters are smearing each other's hair with banana cream pie.

Hannibal is wearing a long dark coat that he wasn't wearing when he left, and the sort of clothes that Will generally associates with classy nightclubs, but he's fairly sure he won't tell him where he's been even if he was interested enough to ask. And he isn't really interested. He is, however, kind of drunk.

"The assistant kid, Kaneshiro? He's a big fan of my work."

Will nods his head slowly. The game show has moved outside now and cows are involved.

"Big fan. Read all my monographs online. Did you know they were all online?"

Hannibal takes off his coat and carefully lays it over a chair, "I did know that."

"He's been studying moth larvae ever since the first murder in the summer. Then a couple of weeks ago he got convinced that the type of moth that the killer uses is significant for some reason. American moth. Japanese girls. Maybe the killer's American, or has been in America. Studies moths." Will shrugs, "Makes sense. He's a really smart kid. Really smart."

The third mini bottle of single malt he's just opened looks finished already, but Will tests it anyway, tipping it experimentally into his glass. Indicating with his head, he points to the fridge, but Hannibal is ignoring his requests.

"Weirdest thing though. He said he had this idea, and hit up a few forums online, trying to find out who he could talk to about American Moths - sesiidae - and then, out of the blue last week, he got a reply to one of his posts. Imagine his luck! A worldclass expert, a goddamned expert no less, in American moth larvae was living not 50 kilometers away from his very own city. The kid could literally not believe his good, good, amazingly good fortune."

Hannibal's face is impressively impassive, and Will can't help but marvel for a moment in his slightly drunken state, how even after allowing himself to open up so completely to him these last three months Hannibal is still capable of shutting off his emotions when he wants to. Reaching around on the bed for one of the vodkas instead of a whiskey, he finds one half under the pillow and begins to unscrew the top.

"The ridiculous fucking thing is, I'm not even angry with you…"

"You sound angry."

"I'm not fucking angry."

The vodka is proving harder to crack than the whiskey, but maybe it's just the loss of sensation in his fingertips. He doesn't even like vodka anyway, doesn't even really want it, and so he barely protests when Hannibal finally steps over and takes it from him. Will sighs.

"Ok, maybe I am angry. But the thing I'm angry about…it's not the manipulation…"

Hannibal cocks his head, "It's not?"

"No." He looks up at him, and the sensation makes him a whole lot dizzier than he wants to be right now, "You say you love our life, that it's all you want, we're all you want, but now here we are again. Not out of any free will or because of any choice we made together, not because fate decreed it. But because you did."

The gameshow has come to an end, and dissolved into a news show. Turning back to it, Will tries to focus on the screen, but he's painfully aware of the cramping in his stomach now, the hot, wide tension across his chest, the pain in his heart. From the corner of his eye, he sees Hannibal move his hand towards him, a suggestion of something tender, and he blinks.

"Don't. Not right now. Can you…" he can't look at him, "Just let's leave it ok. I'll get over it and we'll move past it. I just need a moment right now."

"Do you want me to go?"

His voice is low and, Will has to believe, pained. He jerks his head involuntarily.

"No. I don't want you to go."

There's a pause, then "I'm sorry Will."

"I'm sorry too."

The news murmurs on, and he feels his eyes starting to close. The anchor has a serious expression and, although Will can't understand the captions under the images beside him, he recognizes what it is that's being shown at a distance, through a huddle of blue lights and crime scene tape. A pale foot in the corner of the field. Another body, another girl, another murder, another fresh crime scene.

"More girls full of hummingbird moths."

As he slides sideways on the bed, he has a sudden singular thought that pinballs around the inside of his skull like something that feels important, that he needs to remember: the fact that a hummingbird's heart beats at around 1260 beats per minute.

"Moths don't though."

"Don't what?"

Hannibal's voice sounds far off, but Will can feel his weight on the bed beside him, and then the sensation of the quilt being pulled up over him. He burrows his face into the pillow.

"Have hearts. They have circulatory systems."

"They do."

"They look like hummingbirds, but they're not," he sighs, "They're bugs."

"They are."

A cool hand strokes his forehead and without caring what it means, he moves against it, allows the fingers to move through his hair. Because it feels good to let him. It feels better than not letting him.

"Don't break us Hannibal," he says. "I don't think we'll come back together another time, so don't break us."

It's the last thing he says before he passes out.