"Emi-chan!" yelled a familiar voice from outside Emiko's new office door, reverberating like a gong shattering the previous stillness. Since it was a relatively quiet morning at her office, she twitched slightly at the sound of her name being shouted so suddenly.

A look to the doorway told her that it was Juuzou Suzuya, the patient she had been seeing for a few years now standing there and smiling stupidly from the doorway. For a long while now they still visited regularly, on and off, although now less frequently.

"Koen-san, how are you?"

"Oh?" she replied to Shinohara, raising an eyebrow at her former sensei. "What's with the formality?"

"Err, you know, I just..." he trailed off. "Now you're a fully-fledged shrink, aren't you?" He pointed at the new plaque on her desk with her name on it, glittering in brilliant gold letters.

Emiko turned her nose at him in a playful way. Still her same old Shinohara. "I've received a promotion now, yes. But I'm a Psychotherapist, not a 'shrink.'"

"Well congratulations," he said with one of his big smiles that could light up a whole room.

"Thank you," she said. The pair then proceeded to poke around her new, upgraded office space in the thirteenth ward, making themselves at home. "So... what brings you both here? I didn't think I had an appointment scheduled with Suzuya today?" She glanced over her agenda once more, just to be sure. It would not be the first time she had forgotten a meeting.

"Actually, we've come to share some good news of our own."

"Oh?" she asked. An eyebrow raised as the two stood in front of her with wide, stupid grins on their faces.

"Juuzou, you tell her. It's your big news after all!"

The boy looked over to her with large, expectant eyes. "Well, you know how I didn't do well at the Academy, right?" Emiko nodded her head. Pretty much as to be expected. As long as the youthful 19 year old tried his best however, that was all that counted, and luckily he never dwelt on his barely passable grades too badly. "Well guess what? The CCG just accepted me as a Rank 3 Ghoul Investigator anyway!"

"Really? Wow! Congratulations to you, Juuzou-kun," she said praising him. She wouldn't tell him that her and Shinohara had been trying their best to pull strings with the higher ups, even though the boy might have already known about their efforts. He was something of a special case after all. The boy needed some direction in his life, and the only place that could possibly accept him was the CCG. "Although, I guess it's now Special Class Shinohara-san and Rank 3 Suzuya-san," she said, noting Shinohara's promotion a few months ago as well.

He gave her a wide smile, parting his thin lips that were lined with red stitches. "That's right, and I'll even be on Shinohara's team!"

Emiko had to stifle a laugh. Shinohara's heart was too big - heavens knows she could never do all the things he did out of pure kindness. "You better be respectful to your superior, now," she said. "Oh and that's right, I have a present for you!"

"Present?" echoed back Juuzou, wondering what it could be. He had never received a present before, except from Shinohara, but heard that if someone gave one to you, you should always accept it. Emiko took a moment to rustle in her new desk drawers before pulling out a small box wrapped with a silver bow. Juuzou took it gently in his hands and examined it closely. Emiko decided on buying him a gift anyway, even if their efforts had failed and he wasn't accepted into the CCG. The gift box had been lying in her desk drawer for the past two months, waiting to be received.

"Thank you very much for this gift," Juuzou said after a few moments of inspecting the outer wrappings thoroughly. He bowed down low like Shinohara taught him. But maybe a bit too low.

She laughed. "No silly, the present is inside the box. You have to open it!" He looked curious as he followed her instructions, eyes wide and unassuming. They must have widened to the size of golf balls however, when he saw the little present sitting in the center of the box. It was a shining silver chain, with the number 13 hanging on it. "This is a 'congratulations on becoming a Ghoul Investigator' present. I had it custom made just for you, so you can remember me by it, waiting here in the 13th ward for you and always wishing you the best." Juuzou's wrinkled face was deep in thought, but Emiko didn't take offence by it. "I guess in America," she continued, "The number 13 is unlucky. So I guess I figured this could mean that you write your own future. If you wear it on your first mission, I'm sure it will bring good luck and great success."

For a second, Juuzou had an unreadable expression on his face. His eyes were blank and looked very far away. His face was surprise, but also contentment; sadness, but also happiness. A whole well of emotions sank deep into his face, but most of all, uncertainty. "Can I help you put it on?"

He nodded slowly, still trying to process his plethora of emotions.

She gently picked it up out of his hands and stood behind him, brushing his messy hair off to the side as she clipped the chain around his neck. This was all done very slowly and deliberately, as she knew Juuzou rarely ever let people touch him. Even Shinohara gave a look as he watched this all go down, as if trying to read his new subordinate's expression as well.

"It looks great on you," she said to him, smiling as she stood back to admire it. Afterwards there was a heavy silence in the room, as if somebody had pressed mute on their cheerful celebration.

"Th-thank you... Koen-san," said Juuzou after a while, quietly breaking the mould. "I swear I'll wear it all the time!"

She frowned. "That's no good - you can always call me Emi, ok?"

Suzuya tilted his head to the side. "Alright." They exchanged smiles.

"I'm afraid it's time to go now," chimed in Shinohara. "I know we just got here, but we are on our way to the branch office. We only wanted to stop by quickly to congratulate you and share Juuzou's good news. In fact this whole stop was his idea."

Emiko couldn't help but feel a warmness in her heart as she waved the two goodbye. It had been a long road, between her and Juuzou. There was a lot of blood, sweat and tears involved, quite literally, but she guessed in the end it all turned out… passable. Just like Juuzou's grades. Her patient certainly wasn't one hundred percent better, one hundred percent sane, but was anybody really?

Working with Juuzou was something that became very familiar to her, something that she even came to enjoy and looked forward to - near and dear to her heart. It had been a joy to see him grow as a person and watch him slowly learn to adapt to live with humans. Watching her patients learn to move on past a difficult trauma was one of the most rewarding experiences for her, and that was especially true with Juuzou. But of course, their journey was still not over…

Try as they may, they could not stop all of the boy's violent tendencies, which seemed a scar of the past left on his heart that would take more than any allotted amount of time to heal. His schizophrenic bouts and lapses into insanity were becoming fewer and far between. He was not fully social and stable, but the files seemed to prove a progression, and that was all anybody could hope for, no matter how small. Shinohara hoped that things would get better for him once he had an activity to help channel his anger and passions - like being a ghoul investigator - and Emiko couldn't agree more.

About four months after Emiko's arrival in the thirteenth ward, she received word that Shinohara and Juuzou were coming back from a long mission, and were stopping by the ward before heading back home. They all decided to meet up for dinner, and for the first time in a long time, she wasn't really that busy anyway.

The station that evening was filled with noise and clanging as people rushed to and fro from the dozens of trains surrounding the place, all heading in different directions. It was a tangled mess of confusion and mayhem, and luckily the young therapist heard a -

"Emi-chan!" shouted Juuzou as soon as him and Shinohara got off their train at the station. It was a wonder she heard him through all the clanks, bells and whistles filing the place. His thin body weaved its way in and out through the people with miraculous ease, until he was standing right next to her. Unexpectedly, he threw his arms around her and squeezed her tight. her body tensed, and it took Emiko a long while to recognize what he was really trying to do to her - it was a hug. Him and Emiko had never hugged before, at all, but she accepted it now as a friendly gesture. For some reason he smelled of flowers and fresh air, and it was a refreshing contrast against the rotting structures of the busy train station.

"The good luck charm you gave me!" he said excitedly as he took a step back from her, barely giving her a chance to breath. "It worked! I took it to all my missions and it worked! It brought be good luck!" He was tugging at the 13 and swinging it around his neck, dotted with red ticks.

Emiko smiled at him. "I'd like to hear all about it in the car! Shall we?" Surprisingly, he allowed her to take his arm.

"That's classified information now!" said Shinohara, finally making his way around to where they standing. There was a smile on his face and his voice was light-hearted.

"It's all right if he tells me. I'm his 'shrink', you know," she said sassily as she led the pair out of the station to the Bureau's car. Just like her new office space in the 13th ward, the Bureau's vehicle was upgraded here too.

Although Emiko was just being polite in asking Juuzou about their mission, he took her intrigue to mean she was deeply fascinated by the subject, and plagued their entire car ride and nice dinner out with grueling and explicit details. When the food finally arrived and he got to the part about 'mince-meat', she had to cut him off. "Well it sounds like you're having a great time as a Ghoul Investigator!" she loudly over him as their plates were being brought out. Luckily her comment served to break them away into other, more pleasant conversation.

After spending nearly two hours together, laughing and talking in the restaurant booths, catching up on old times and telling new stories to add to the list, they finally looked at the clock and noticed it was a bit too late. They all packed up from their booth, guiltily noticing the poor restaurant workers stacking the chairs on the tables and cleaning up around them. Once outside however, they all laughed once more, at the awkwardness of the situation. Politely she offered to drive them all back to their hotel with the bureau car, and Juuzou quickly climbed in shotgun, beating his squad leader to it.

The engine fired up, and she pulled them out into the main road.

"Hey... aren't you going to tell her about that ghoul?" asked Shinohara after a few moments of silence being filled only by the dancing city lights. He poking his head out from the back seat to get a better view of the conversation, which was almost comical given the man's size. Oh great, another story about killing ghouls, she thought, silently cursing Shinohara for his question, although glad they were almost to the hotel. What the boy was about to say, was an incredible surprise.

Juuzou glanced nervously at her before beginning his tale. "Back… during the Whack-a-mole investigation, I found this... ghoul. Who had two different colored eyes."

Emiko nearly stopped the car in the middle of the street. Two different eye colors? She had only met two people in her whole life who had two different eye colors. One was a girl she knew from kindergarten, who now worked at as a waitress at some back country grill. The other, was the ghoul who killed and ate her father right in front of her. But… could it be? The CCG had long since closed their investigations on that particular ghoul, after years of no documented hunting activity. The ghoul was presumed dead, although Emiko always believed he was still out there somewhere.

"Two different eyes?" she asked, beckoning him to continue. She had to know.

"He was fighting this group ahead of Shinohara and I, and I heard him mumble something about…"

"Yes?" Emiko was having a hard time concentration on the road. Could this ghoul they found really be that one? She held her breath.

"The ghoul was trying to taunt us, telling us about the different CCG Officers it had killed. And then I heard him… he mentioned your father, Koen. That's when I remembered the story you told me about... that ghoul."

Emiko kept holding her breath as they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, and thank goodness they had arrived, because her hands were shaking so badly and tears that were forming were clouding the vision of her one good driving eye. Somehow as a CCG employee, she had the the right to keep driving the Bureau car, regardless of her limited depth perception. CCG cars just never got pulled over.

"He ended up getting away," he carried on. "But I tracked him for a few days and found him again in a deep part of the tunnels." Seriously, what were the odds that it was Suzuya who found him?

"Suzuya! Where are you going!" shouted Shinohara from where the group was fighting off the ever present ghouls, left and right. They were surrounded, but not outnumbered. Plus, they had their trump card - the Reaper. It was so dark in the place, that it was difficult to know if they were stepping in mud water, or blood. "Suzuya! Get back here!" he tried to shout at his subordinate, but it was no use. He saw the small mop of white hair disappear behind a wall, following that strange eyed ghoul who had been giving them the most trouble. "Damn it!" he cursed.

"Go get him and bring him back," said a voice stepping out from the shadows. The murkiness of the tunnels made everything much more ominous than necessary. The voice stepped out into the dim light of the CCG lamps, showing itself as belonging to Arima. And thank God he finally arrived. Assuming the order, Shinohara retired his Arata armour and took off after Juuzou, splashing through the piles and soaking the bottoms of his pants. All he hoped for was that his subordinate was still alive.

The whole ordeal turned out to be quite the game of cat and mouse, with Juuzou running after the ghoul, and Shinohara running after him. None of them got any sleep that night, and it wasn't until presumably noon the next day when he finally made his way up to a dead end, and noticed two shadowy figures discussing something in the distance. The ghoul must have underestimated Suzuya's stamina and strength, as most ghouls were prone to doing.

"You know Kouen-san, right?" Juuzou had said. These words echoed off of the damp walls, reverberating throughout the cellar. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that the two had gotten into a previous fight that Shinohara had missed - with torn clothes and blood stained, trembling bodies.

"Oh yes," the ghoul responded, staring calmly, dreamily into a puddle. Whether he was doing this to taunt Juuzou, Shinohara did not know. "I take it you knew him then? He was so… tasty..."

At this the fight commenced, a bright kakuja clashing and grinding against Bikaku knives, which were his subordinate's specialty.

"You want to kill me, don't you?" was the ghoul's last, crazed words, bleeding severely from the place he was cornered against a wall "Do it!" he spat. Shinohara wanted to step in to remind his subordinate of ethics and procedures, but was frozen in place. Maybe it was in seeing a genius at work. Maybe it was the coldness of the tunnels and the fatigue from running all night. "Take your revenge on me! Kill me! That's what I did after all. I hope you end up just like m-" it screamed, wallowing in it's own blood.

"Don't talk to me," said Juuzou, dealing the last fatal blow.

Emiko's knuckles were white – she was clutching onto the wheel too hard, trying to steady her trembling body. Tears streamed down her face uncontrollably and soaked her medical eyepatch. Angrily, she forced it off her head and tossed it aside, placing her hands in her lap to catch the drips falling from her eyes.

"Emi-chan... I thought you would be happy..." said Juuzou quietly, not knowing what to do. Shinohara placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, signalling him to be patient.

"You… you did it," she finally choked out, trying to wipe the tears from her face. Years worth of pain and fear she felt from that night seemed to be lifted slightly from her shoulders, hovering in the car above them. She realized there was no way to know these things for certain. Even Emiko didn't think she remembered how the ghoul's face went exactly. It was a dark night, without even the light of the moon. Even so, there was no traces of doubt in her heart as she looked into herself reflected in Juuzou's eyes. He had done it, and now her father could rest in peace. What other ghoul could there be with eyes just as she described to him? There was no description like it in any of the CCG's records and files, she herself had spent many nights scouring through them, over and over again.

"It's over now," she said, breathing heavily, trying to dry her eyes but failing miserably. "I can finally sleep peacefully at night now... knowing that my father's murderer has been brought to justice."

Juuzou looked at her, still not sure why she was crying if she was happy.

"Th… thank you Suzuya-kun." He didn't know why, but at the mention of his name on her lips he smiled and felt a deep happiness in the pit of his stomach.

"I think it was your good-luck charm that did it," said Shinohara from the backseat, placing a giant hand comfortingly on her back. "It was the thing that tied the strings of destiny together."

Emiko wiped her nose and smiled at the two men in the car next to her. She was probably a mess, with red eyes, mascara and the rest of her makeup making streaks running down her face. But for the first time, at that moment, Juuzou noticed how pretty she actually was. "Suzuya-san," she addressed him formally, straightening up in her seat as she wiped the (hopefully) last of her tears away. "You did this for me and for my father. To repay you, I would like to give you a kiss."

"Kiss?" he repeated, somewhat stunned by her sudden shift in attitude. In all his life, he could not ever remember being kissed, or knowing anyone to have kissed before. Except for maybe Shinohara and his wife and kids.

"W-would that be ok?" she asked, smiling at him through her tears that she just could not force away for any appropriate length of time. He nodded his head in acceptance, so gently, slowly, she leaned forward towards his right cheek, and kissed him softly there, lingering and taking in his scent once more.

As soon as she leaned back in her seat, Juuzou's hand shot up and touched the spot where her lips had been just moments before on his cheek, as if she had left something there for him to find. Emiko giggled.

Shinohara coughed, interrupting the moment and bringing attention to the fact that they were all still sitting in a parked car outside of a hotel. "Well, it was nice to see you again, Emi-chan. We should meet up again before we leave town!"

"Definitely!" she responded, and waved as the two got out of the car and unloaded their things. She put her seatbelt back on, and pulled out of the small parking lot once they safely disappeared inside of the building, and made her way back to her apartment.

"Shinohara-san?" asked Juuzou when the two men arrived in their hotel room. He was touching the spot on his cheek again with his index and forefinger.

"Hmm?"

"I feel… something..." he said, placing his free hand over his chest. Whenever he felt a new emotion, he would always go to Shinohara or Emiko to help him decipher what it was. "I feel it in here. My heart… I can feel it."

Shinohara laughed. "That's probably because it's beating."

Juuzou walked over to the window, overlooking the nightlife of Tokyo's thirteenth district. "Is this what... that feels like?" he mumbled quietly to himself.

Shinohara stepped over to the window by him, wondering what wise words he could say in this situation. "All hearts do that. They beat. That's what it means to be alive."