A/N: Hello again! I would like to once again offer a big thanks to everyone who followed and favorited my story, and a big thanks to my two Anonymous Guest reviewers and Fluehatraya, for your awesome encouragement. I am honored by your praise. /dramatic bow

Dean

"We're not the police, we're not the FBI, we're not anybody—no matter what disguises we use. We don't work for the law."

"Hey, I thought you wanted to come," Dean said as he heard Conan complaining. They'd reached the back door to the jewelry store and were about to go inside, and Dean had just taken out his lock pick.

"You didn't say we'd be breaking in!"

"Yeah, well, this is how we do things, so you'd best get used to it or get lost. It's the best way to get some more information on the ghost chick. It's not like we're gonna steal anything."

Dean ignored Conan's look of disapproval as he started on the lock. What did he care what this kid thought of his morals?

"Ah, there we go," Dean said after a few minutes. He pushed the door open. "For a jewelry store, the security on this place is utter shit."

Dean made sure to enter the threshold first, flashlight shining and iron bar at the ready. He'd figured that shotguns might be a little impractical, as shooting one off in a populated area was bound to draw some attention. Sam brought up the rear, brandishing a similar weapon, while Conan stood at the safest place, right between them. He had agreed to hold the EMF meter, but made it obvious that he'd rather not play into the brothers' "delusion." It spiked up and let out a burst of noise as soon as Conan stepped through the door, but Dean had been expecting that, so he ignored it.

The back door opened onto a small entranceway, with four doors leading off in opposite directions. One of them, the one directly across from the exit, must have lead to the main part of the shop. Sam nodded towards this door, saying, "I'll take the main room for now."

"Yeah, fine. Call if you see anything," Dean said. Sam crept out into the next room, leaving Dean to check out the other three doors.

One led to a bathroom. Nothing too exciting there. The girl hadn't died in the bathroom, after all.

The next door led to the most minimalistic office Dean had ever seen. There was only one window, opening out onto a side alley, and there weren't even blinds to adorn it, much less any art to decorate the walls. The only furniture in the room was a rectangular desk and a rolling chair. There was nothing on the top of the desk, so Dean checked out the drawers. They were locked, of course, but that hardly mattered to Dean. The inside of the drawers looked like filing cabinets, with records of purchases going back more than a decade, by the looks of them. The most interesting thing was Michiko Morikawa's signature as the seller on a lot of the receipts from a lot of the more recent receipts. There was nothing from this past year, of course. It was doubtful that one of these thin, impersonal slips of paper meant enough to her to attach her spirit to, though.

That left the final door.

Even when Dean unlocked it, he had some difficulty getting the door open. That, combined with the layer of dust settling over everything, made it seem like this second, smaller office hadn't been opened in a year.

Looks like the right place to me.

This time, the walls and shelves were covered in photographs. Most of them included one woman, a smiling lady with light brown hair and dark eyes. Dean picked up one of the frames. "This must be Michiko," he said. "This is that other guy, the dad, with her. Yosuke?"

Conan glanced at the picture and nodded. "He was her father, too, but from the way that Yosuke and Rintaro were talking before, it sounded like they had different mothers. Remember how Rintaro said she wasn't really a part of his family?"

"Huh," Dean mumbled. He returned the picture to its place on the desk. What kind of an asshole talks about his family like that?

Dean started out searching the desk while Conan checked out the shelves. He found nothing but more receipts and a couple of letters that were indecipherable to Dean. He was shoving these into his pockets for someone who could read Japanese to take a look at later when Conan called out, "Hey! I found a photo album. There's labels on it and everything."

Dean strode over and crouched next to Conan, offering him the light of their flashlight.

The first few pictures were old, and contained a smiling family of three: a man, Yosuke, an unfamiliar woman, and a baby that must have been Michiko. "Mom, Dad, and me," Conan read out from the captions. There was one picture, seemingly out of place, in the middle of this section, of an elderly woman sitting all alone and glaring at the camera. "Grandmother," Conan said. "Very formal, too."

Then, the pictures with the mother suddenly stopped. Suddenly, there was a wedding: of Yosuke and the woman Dean had seen with him the other day at the crime seen. "Daddy and Akiko," the picture said. Michiko didn't seem to be present.

"As interesting as this family study is, what exactly is useful about this?"

"If we can find out what happened in her life, maybe we can find out what happened in her death," Conan said as he continued to peruse the pages. Dean pulled the book out of his hands and shoved it into his jacket. "We'll have more time to look at this later, but we might not get another chance in here. Keep looking around."

Conan looked like he might argue, but then a voice called out from outside the room, "Dean!"

Sam was yelling, and he sounded like he was in trouble. Dean didn't hesitated as he burst out of the room and barreled into the jewelry store.

It was her: Michiko. Dean only took the time he needed to identify her as non-human before he jumped in to help his brother.

Sam was holding his own, swinging the iron bar with great precision and speed, but the ghost was re-forming as quickly as she was dispersing. Sam had to make the effort to dodge the various pieces of jewelry that she sent flying at his head, too.

"Stay away!" she yelled out. "Get away from me! Just let me do what I was meant to! It's their fault, THEIRS! I was never one of them. Never one of them. Never—"

Dean threw a fist full of rock salt at her. Dean's aim was spot-on; the woman disappeared as soon as it hit her. This time, she was gone long enough for Dean and Sam to catch their breath.

"You okay, Sammy?" Dean asked.

Sam nodded. "I'm fine. I guess I was getting close, though, because she came out of nowhere. But…" Sam's gaze caught on something behind Dean. Thinking it might be the ghost, Dean spun around and tightened his grip on his weapon. But there was nothing there. Nothing but Conan, standing in the doorway and staring at the place where the ghost had disappeared with wide eyes and his mouth wide open.

"Son of a bitch," Dean muttered. This is why I didn't want to bring him along.

"That's…that shouldn't be possible," Conan said. "That was…that was…"

"A ghost," Dean finished. Any normal kid would be screaming and running by now, but Conan seemed more in denial than anything else.

"Dean, we've got to get him out of here," Sam whispered. Dean nodded. He strode over to Conan and tugged at his shoulder.

"Come on. It's not safe here."

"Yeah…yeah, no, but what about the case?"

The case? That's what he's worried about right now?

"We can talk about the case somewhere safer. Now, let's go."

Finally, Dean and Sam together managed to convince Conan to follow them out of the jewelry store.