Author's Note: I think Seishirou fans will like this chapter. :D

That teaser aside, I want to bring up another note about sociopaths that I don't think I've mentioned yet and that is the fact that they are often very aware that they are sociopaths. In Tokyo Babylon, Seishirou brings up the fact that he has never felt anything toward his victims, including his own mother and that scene actually is pretty plausible, at least insofar as his own recognition and acknowledgement of his own psychopathy is concerned. That said, I always wondered when he realized that and that I needed for Seito to do so as well. He doesn't have the vocabulary or psychology background to know exactly what it is yet, but I did want to show the beginnings of his own self-awareness here.

Also, the name Koemi means "little laugh". I just picked it because I thought it was a really cute name and I thought it would be ironic.

Okay, shutting up now and getting to the story!

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"Alright, got it?"

Seito nodded eagerly.

"Then let's head out, shall we?"

They had spent most of the day preparing even though Seito had picked up on the spell almost immediately. It still shocked Subaru what a fast learner he could be when he was interested in something. However, most of what they had done had simply been in theory and practice sessions. This would be the first time he had taken Seito out in the field. He hoped the venture was a success, for both Seito's sake, and for the girl's.

They made their way to the schoolyard without much incident and Subaru realized that Seito had an unnerving knack for appearing to belong out on the streets in the middle of the night, despite clearly being a primary-school aged child. When they got near the school grounds however, he knew that their prolonged dallying and apparent talking to no one was sure to draw attention and land them in a difficult situation to explain to authorities. So once they arrived, they both carefully cast the spell that Subaru had taught him earlier that evening and made their way, unseen and unheard, to the sakura tree.

The girl from before was still there, curled up in a crook between two branches, staring at the stars. She stirred however as they approached and jerked her head around. "Who's there?" she called, her voice wavering with startled fear.

Subaru dropped the shield just enough that she would be able to see and hear him. He had already warned Seito not to do so immediately, in case the girl was frightened enough to attack. It was unfortunate how often spirits seemed to still cling to the idea that they needed to inflict harm upon others to protect themselves. Almost as unfortunate as how often the living believed the same.

"My name is Subaru Sumeragi." Gentleness came so naturally to him that he had never had to struggle to soften his voice to coax others into trusting him. It had proven to be a major advantage in his work on numerous occasions in fact. "I'd like to talk to you if that's alright."

The girl did not respond for a moment and he was afraid that his words had been carried away by the breeze but at long last she replied softly. "About what?"

Subaru took a step forward so that she could see him clearly in the moonlight. "Well why don't we start with your name?"

"It's Koemi.[1]"

"That's a pretty name."

It was difficult to tell as she was mostly transparent but it looked as though the girl blushed slightly.

"There's someone else here with me, is it okay if he talks too?" He placed a hand on Seito's shoulder, silently commanding him to drop his own shield as well.

The girl peeked between two branches, leaning closer to take a look. "Oh it's you." She remarked upon catching sight of him. She gave Seito a shy, clumsily flirtatious smile which he appeared to take no note of and Subaru suddenly wondered how many other girls had had crushes on him and received the same cool, somewhat uninterested look.

"What do you want to talk about?" the girl adjusted her skirt and smoothed out the translucent wrinkles in her dress.

Subaru settled down on a low root within easy view of the girl. "Whatever you like."

.

.

Seito had never really seen Subaru interacting with a ghost before. Of course he knew that he did but seeing Subaru in action was far different from what he had imagined. For one thing, it seemed to take an unnecessarily long time.

"..and that was how we wound up moving to Tokyo."

"It must have been hard to leave behind friends." Subaru remarked gently.

It was kind of amazing really how he could take an already soft-spoken and tender voice and make it even more so. Seito imagined Subaru wearing a pair of kid gloves and felt a niggling memory briefly glow then fade away at the back of his mind. At any rate, he wondered why Subaru was bothering with all of this. Who cared what the girl's life story was? Who cared how many times she had moved as a child or how a friend had stolen her favorite teddy bear and pushed her in the mud? Seito certainly didn't. Why couldn't they just get the job done already?

"It wasn't so bad, they weren't very nice anyway." Koemi childishly kicked her heels back against the tree trunk. "Have you ever been picked on like that?"

Seito nearly snorted at the ridiculous question.

Subaru gave her a wry smile. "Yes, I was teased a lot when I was your age."

"Really?" The girl voiced Seito's thoughts. "Why?"

"A lot of people thought I was strange."

"But you're so nice!" Koemi objected.

And that is strange. Seito added silently.

"Being nice doesn't keep one from being picked on." Subaru replied softly and a shadow passed over the girl's face.

"No, no it doesn't does it?"

"What happened after you moved to Tokyo?" Subaru asked when the silence that had fallen stretched on for too long.

She kicked her heels back against the tree even harder and smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt more fastidiously. "Daddy was fine for a while. I thought…" the girl's voice hitched and Seito was momentarily confused, thinking it was a hiccup or something. "I thought that things were going to be okay from then on."

"But they weren't." Subaru guessed.

Koemi shook her head, sending a spray of hair over each cheek. "He got dumped again by another girlfriend and that's when he started to drink again."

Was it because it was late at night that Subaru's eyes looked so dark? Seito wondered.

A glistening pearly bead slipped down the girl's cheek and Seito realized that it was the ghost of a tear, long since wept.

"I don't think he ever meant to hurt me." Koemi hastened to explain.

But he repeatedly attacked you. Seito silently protested. That seems pretty intentional to me. He waited for Subaru to point out the obvious but instead, Subaru merely nodded sympathetically.

"I just… couldn't be around him anymore. I just wanted it to all go away." There were small rivers of shining tears slipping down both cheeks now and the girl's voice trembled nearly as much as her small frame as she wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as though holding herself together for fear of shattering then and there. "In the end, I just couldn't do anything." She was sobbing now, and the words were coming out soaked with tears. "I wanted him to be okay, you know?"

She looked to Seito first and Seito felt for the first time in his life, a bit like a deer caught in headlights. He had the distinct impression that she was expecting something from him but he hadn't the foggiest idea what.

"He was your father, it's only natural that you wanted him to feel better too." Subaru's voice was like a lifejacket tossed between them and the girl clung to it, pulling herself closer to him and turning her attention away from Seito, much to his relief.

"And sometimes, it just seemed like I was nothing but a burden to him." Koemi choked. "Every time he looked at me it was like he either saw Mommy, who he could never get back, or something he had to still provide for and that was keeping him from being able to find someone else to love him." She looked up at Subaru through watery eyes. "Was I wrong to do it?"

He gave the girl a look of deepest remorse. "I'm sad that you did." Then he did something that came as a complete shock to both Seito and Koemi and pulled the girl's ghost into his arms, wrapping them loosely around her translucent form. "But I understand why, and it was your decision in the end. No one else can tell you that you were right or wrong."

The girl's crying had stopped momentarily in her surprise at the hug but upon hearing these words, the tears redoubled and she threw her arms around Subaru's neck.

Seito shifted irritably, feeling his fists clench in annoyance. She didn't even know Subaru, who did she think she was, clinging to him like that? If anyone was going to be all over him, it should be Seito himself, not her. Not that he was liable to throw himself at Subaru in a fit of tears like that anyway. He still could not quite fathom why she was crying now, when everything was over anyway. He supposed it was a girl thing but still. That didn't excuse her from being all over Subaru.

"Thank you." The girl whispered after calming down at long last. She gave Subaru one more squeeze before slipping away, becoming more transparent with each passing second. "Thank you too." She addressed Seito in a voice far more ephemeral than it had been moments before.

"For what?" He asked, taken aback.

"For talking to me all those afternoons. Even though we never spoke for very long, it made me feel a little less lonely for once." She gave him a drifting smile as an unfelt breeze caught her, carrying her away toward the stars. "It meant a lot to me."

There was the faintest hint of a goodbye on the real breeze that picked up, frivolously tossing leaves in the air, a mock celebration.

"Well, I guess that was a success then wasn't it?" Seito asked, turning at last to Subaru.

Subaru did not respond for a moment, staring contemplatively up at the sky. It wasn't until Seito sneezed, his nose tickled by a passing dandelion, that Subaru looked back down, almost surprised to see him there.

"We should get home." He replied, standing slowly. "It's been a late night."

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Seito wasn't sure where he was but he was pretty sure that he was dreaming.

He was standing on what seemed like an island of light surrounded by a sea of darkness so impenetrable that it was as though nothing else existed. He stared out into it for a while, half expecting to see shark fins circling menacingly, just waiting for a tasty little boy to wander too close to the edge, but there was nothing.

So he turned around to find the source of the light and felt that he should probably be surprised to discover that it was a sakura tree but somehow he had expected that. On the other hand, now that he had confirmed his mysterious glowing light source as a bizarre sakura tree in the middle of the most literal nowhere in existence, Seito had no idea what to do with himself.

He wandered a little closer to the tree and found that on the other side there was a branch that hung low enough to be within his grasp. He glanced around, on the off chance that there was someone nearby to try and stop him, then reached up and pulled himself up onto the branch.

The view wasn't all that different from up here, but he breathed in deeply and the scent was like a lullaby to him. It was just the right mixture of fruit, flower and something else… ah yes, iron.

Longing to crawl a little deeper into the sakura's embrace, he pulled himself up onto another branch, and then another until he was in the middle of the tree, surrounded by so many blossoms that he could hardly see anything else. Not that there was anything out there to see, he noted.

He leaned back against the trunk of the tree and drank it all in, feeling like this must be as close as one could get to returning to the womb from which they came.

He half closed his eyes and thought that surely there was no greater peace than this.

"Ahem."

A man's voice startled him and Seito tumbled straight out of the tree, catching his balance at the last second before he could fall. He looked around and found that a few branches away and above him was indeed a man wearing a black suit and dark sunglasses that hid his eyes, and more importantly, his expression. Seito could not quite tell if the man was angry or amused at the intrusion.

"Who are you?" Seito demanded, not caring either way.

The man looked genuinely surprised by this question for a moment then chuckled. "I think you already know me."

Seito did not care much for people who spoke in riddles and he wrinkled his nose at the response. "I don't think so or I wouldn't have asked."

The man laughed and pulled off the mirrored shades.

Seito's eyes widened in surprise then narrowed in suspicion. "You."

Seishirou gave another mirthless chuckle. "You say that like you've just run into your arch-nemesis."

"But… Aren't you dead?"

"Quite."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because this place is mine." Seishirou waved a hand around the glowing island then paused, reconsidering his declaration. "Or rather, I suppose you could say that it is me."

"What?"

"This is a mabaroshi, an illusion if you will."

"If I will what?"

"Accept that I guess. It's just an expression." Seishirou shrugged.

Seito hummed. "Okay. But if this is yours then why am I here?"

Seishirou's lips curled into a perfectly menacing grin that Seito suddenly found himself longing to imitate.

"Why do you think?"

Seito narrowed his eyes, carefully considering his words. "Do I have access to this place because it recognizes me as its own as well?"

"You could say that."

"Am I you?" Seito asked more bluntly.

"Of course not." Seishirou replied just as flatly. "I'm right here. You're right there. We're not the same then are we?"

Seito shook his head and opened his mouth to ask another question when suddenly a loud crash startled him awake. He nearly rolled out of bed with the jump and found himself unpleasantly tangled in his sheets as he recognized the sound as having been that of Subaru dropping something in the kitchen.

Slightly frustrated at being jarred out of the dream before he had had a chance to ask for clarification, Seito made his way to the kitchen to find Subaru holding a hand under the cool stream of water from the faucet while a pot lay accusingly on the tile floor.

"Are you okay?" Seito asked through a yawn, grabbing a kitchen towel and folding it before picking up the pot and returning it to the stove.

Subaru nodded. "Just a minor burn."

Seito studied his face for a moment Subaru noticed out of the corner of his eye.

"I was a bit distracted." He explained.

"By what?"

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

Subaru sighed. "About Koemi."

Seito felt the corner of his mouth twitch down and he quickly turned away to rifle through the pantry. "What about her?" He asked in a carefully neutral tone.

"It's just always difficult to see someone so young suffering so much."

Seito glanced over his shoulder and took in the way his eyebrows knit together and the slightly lost look about his eyes, wondering how Subaru could seriously be that concerned. He had only met the girl the night before and it wasn't like he was going to again anytime soon.

Then it struck him that Subaru was saddened by the entire situation. Something clicked into place and Seito realized that the emotional display of last night wasn't just a girl thing after all. It wasn't just a thing that immature children suffered from. It was a people thing, and one that he seemed to have been mysteriously left out of the loop on.

I'm weird. He thought suddenly. He had always been vaguely aware of a silent gap between him and most people that the met but he had always assumed that was how it was for everyone. Everybody lived in their own bubbles didn't they? That was what he had believed at any rate. Thinking about it now though, he realized that other people seemed to have this strange ability to connect to other people, even complete strangers, and it didn't seem to take that much really. Why didn't he?

"Seito?"

He blinked and realized that Subaru was staring at him expectantly.

"Huh?"

Subaru gave him a strange look. "I just asked what you wanted for breakfast." He repeated slowly.

"Oh." He rummaged through the pantry, trying to decide, and trying harder to ignore the way Subaru watched him carefully the entire time.