Alright guys, the final chapters are gonna be up within the week! It'll be a final sprint before Christmas Eve, before all the Christmas fics start pouring in!

Lucky Twenty-One

Ene has been playing hide-and-Shintaro-won't-seek for a total of two days. Shintaro thinks he should be more worried about the cyber girl's sudden disappearance, until he remembers how suddenly she entered his life around two years ago, and he realizes Ene has the right to leave just as suddenly as she came.

Joke's on you, Ene, Shintaro muses. I like this peace, so you'll have to play by yourself.

With Ene gone, he can browse Momo's official and fan sites without the cyber girl commentating about how stalker-like it is. He's scrolling through dozens of excited comments about Momo's upcoming concert, when there's a knock on the door.

Just as he puts his hand on the doorknob, Shintaro realizes the knock wasn't in a specific rhythm. A thousand crazed scenarios run through his head, and he accidentally twists the doorknob in panic.

Luckily, it's just Kido on the other side.

"Is Kano in?" she asks. Shintaro shakes his head. He notes Kido's heavy breathing, her flushed cheeks and frazzled ponytail, and the little voice of conscience tells him to let her in. So he offers.

"No thanks," Kido refuses. "There's no point if he's not in."

Shintaro thinks it's a very fair point. "I thought he was at your dorm," he tells her. "If he's not here or at a lecture, he's usually at your place."

Kido's eyebrows furrow. "He hasn't been at my dorm since last week."

Shintaro feels like a parrot for furrowing his eyebrows too. "Didn't he take you out for a walk yesterday?"

"You make me sound like a dog," Kido sighs. "No, he didn't. The only time I saw him yesterday was when we dropped off the carrots here. Kano didn't seem to be visiting us anytime soon, so we visited him."

Shintaro stays quiet, mulling it over. None of it adds up – he thinks back to the nights Kano wasn't in their room, only returning near midnight. Shintaro had brushed them aside, thinking the freshman must have been in Yen Hall; now he isn't so sure. Where does Kano even go on his late night walks?

"Kisaragi," Kido waves her hand in front of Shintaro's face, and she manages to bring him back to attention. "Give me a call if Kano comes back, okay? Thanks."

She disappears around the corner before Shintaro can remind her that he doesn't have her number.

He has a solid few hours before nightfall to try to figure Kano out. Kano's stuff can probably offer some clues, but Shintaro firmly believes in privacy rules, and so decides against rummaging Kano's drawers. He tries his memory, looking back from the first day he saw Kano looking at his family picture on the desk. Nothing, apart from Kano's late night walks, particularly stands out.

There are only a couple of things that happen late at night, Shintaro thinks. Murders, drug deals, and parties. And if it's one of those…

"Don't assume, Shintaro," he suddenly recalls his mother's words to him, when he was younger and just about ready to beat up the boys who went anywhere near his sister. "I know you're a clever boy, but you don't always know people's reasons. What if those boys only want to be friends with Momo, right? You have to either ask them or wait for them to tell you."

Shintaro realizes the likelihood of Kano willingly telling him, after he's kept it secret all this time, is around 3%. He'll have to take matters into his own hands.

He watches the sunset as he impatiently waits for Kano. The view from his room isn't the best – trees hide most of the darkening orange sky – but Ene always blackmailed him into allowing her to watch it for a while. He never really understood.

The 3-3-2 knock interrupts his reminiscing, and he watches Kano enter the room, surprisingly before nightfall. Kano seems equally surprised to see him not in front of his laptop, but dismisses it with a smile. The blond picks up his wallet on the desk and tells Shintaro that he's off on another moon-viewing journey.

When Shintaro musters up the courage to say, "I'm going with you," Kano whips around, and Shintaro revels in his look of surprise. Disproving people's expectations of him is quickly becoming one of his most enjoyable pastimes – though he isn't sure what exactly that says about his other pastimes.