(One quick note: This part contains minor spoilers for facts relating to Doumeki's childhood revealed in volume 9 of the manga. May not make so much sense to people who haven't read that far - though a quick google on 'xxxholic' and 'msn' should get you to scans pretty easily.)

Four

Actually, the very first time they met was a lot longer ago than either of them realise.

It was the week after the car accident that would change Watanuki's life. The funeral was a small affair, the only persons in attendance himself, and the couple who owned the apartment complex where he would be living alone from today. They meant well, but Watanuki was to discover that, no matter how good their intentions, when such people are all you have left in the world, even at a funeral there will come points towards the end of the proceedings when there will be no-one to spare to keep an eye on you, and you'll be left to your own devices. Tired in a way he had no words for and feeling more alone in the world than ever before, Watanuki's only instinct was to find somewhere behind the old shrine that was quiet and dark where he could sit for a while on his own.

Lost in his own head as he had been when he sat down in that corner, Watanuki did not realise there was anyone else there sharing it with him until he heard a small voice say, "'m not crying."

Startled, he looked up to see that only a few feet away sat a girl of about his age, curled up in an old fashioned kimono. She was not the prettiest girl he had ever seen, perhaps because, assuming she was telling the truth about not crying, she had managed this only by screwing up her face a lot. Puzzled by such an out-of-the-blue declaration by a complete stranger, the only response Watanuki could immediately come up with was, "Okay?"

"'m not," the girl repeated sullenly.

"I'm not crying either," Watanuki offered – and it was the truth, he wasn't anymore.

"Why would you be crying?" the girl asked, sounding grumpy.

"I'm here for a funeral today," Watanuki explained, as clearly as his voice would let him.

"Who's funeral?" the girl wanted to know.

"My mother's," said Watanuki, and had to pause to swallow around a lump in his throat before finishing, "and my father's."

The girl's mouth made a small 'O' of surprise at the discovery that there was someone else in the world with more reason to cry than herself.

"You can cry if you want to though," said Watanuki. "If you're sad about something too, I mean. People say it makes you feel better afterwards."

"My grandpa's funeral was yesterday," said the girl. "I don't want to feel better yet."

It says a lot about the sort of boy Watanuki was – and would grow up to become – that even with the death of both his parents resting so heavily on his mind – he still found it in himself to feel sorry for this girl. Her grandfather's death had obviously hurt her so very much.

"I don't think I'm ready to feel better yet either," he admitted.

"Mum and Dad say that Grandpa wouldn't want to see me unhappy like this," said the girl, grumpily, "but here it's dark and he won't see me, so I can feel like what I like. You can stay too, if you want."

"Who won't see you?" asked Watanuki, momentarily lost in pronouns.

"My Grandpa," said the girl, matter-of-factly. "People who die become spirits and keep watching us. Maybe Grandpa too."

Watanuki's eyes widened. "You can see spirits?"

"Only my Grandpa can see spirits," said the girl, in the voice of someone stating a fundamental truth of the universe. "But he told me they were there."

"But – I can too!" Watanuki blurted out. "It's not just your grandpa, I can see spirits too."

The girl gave him the scrunched look of a child too young to know a word like 'scepticism', but old enough to need it. "Really?"

"They're not around all the time," Watanuki amended, glancing around their safely spirit-less corner. He hadn't seen any since they arrived at the shrine that morning and only had a vague idea why this would be, but today was the exception rather than the rule. "But I always know when they are. Even when no-one else can see them. Sometimes they chase me around."

The girl looked around suspiciously, as though Watanuki's mere presence might have attracted some of these mysterious, invisible spirits. "Have you seen my Grandpa?"

That was a take on the situation that hadn't occurred to Watanuki. "What does he look like?"

"He's a priest. And he smiles a lot. And sometimes he carries a bow."

"I haven't seen any spirits that look like that," Watanuki had to admit. "Sorry."

"What about your parents?"

"I haven't seen them anywhere either," said Watanuki, but he couldn't bring himself to feel disappointed by this. Then he realised why. "But the spirits I do see – they usually look all angry or sad. I think… I think people who aren't unhappy… something else happens to them when they die."

"Is that what happened to my grandfather?" wondered the girl. "And your parents too?"

"Maybe it is," Watanuki concluded. "But if that means they don't have to be unhappy or hurt, that's good, right?"

"I guess," said the girl.

"If you want to cry," Watanuki started again, "I mean, if you still feel like it, you know your Grandpa isn't watching now, so…"

"I'm not crying," the girl sniffled, with a hiccupping sob.

By the time the adults found them again, they had both cried themselves to sleep, but it seemed like a more peaceful sleep than either had been in for a while.

Now, it would be nice to be able to say that this was an incident that made enough impression on the both of them that it was something they'd remember for the rest of their lives, but the truth of the matter is that within a few years, this would become one of those memories that got lost in the whirlwind that was that week for both of them, and faded the same way so many other childhood memories do. So when the day came many years later that when, not fifteen minutes after being officially introduced, Watanuki found himself referring to Doumeki as a 'she', he hadn't the faintest idea why he'd done it.

This would all have gone down as no more than one of those random slips of the tongue, had Doumeki not been listening – however, he did hear, and he didn't find this error very amusing. Watanuki, for his own part, was far too baffled that he'd made such a mistake in the first place to come up with any sort of reasonable excuse, and the resulting yelling match was quite a sight to see.

By the end of it, the subject under debate had diverged far enough that neither of them even remembered or cared much what the original problem had been, but that didn't matter. The incident had already achieved the status of The Argument – and that, at least, neither of them were going to forget any time soon.