A/N: I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.

Since Shiro had been, to use the most gentle term, evicted from his dorm room, he had moved in with Kita. While he had argued that he was fine with sleeping on the floor in the corridor, or in the attic, or on the roof, the dorm regulations had not allowed that. And since Kita was in his class, and there had been one bunk vacant…

"I'll throw it out and say it was stolen. Or leave the window open while it rains…"

Shiro had asked Kita early on to turn his cassette deck off while they studied, and the only thing that had gotten him was a long and scientific explanation of how Mozart benefitted the learning process. It was also the first time he had heard anyone make footnote references in speech.

Shiro was pondering which would be most beneficial to his learning process – hauling the recorder out the window, or hauling Kita's crutches out the window – when somebody knocked on the door.

"Hello." Sen's big, empty eyes looked up at him when he opened. "Midori and I have been talking. We want to help you."

"Uh, with what…?" Homework? He sure could use somebody to spar with.

"Come."

Shiro had officially never been to the girls' dorm, and although he knew where the bathrooms were he had never actually been to one of the dorm rooms.

"I'm sorry about the naga on the exam", he said. There was no telling from Sen's face if she held a grudge because of that or not, but he suspected she might. He didn't want Sen to hold a grudge against him, in case he was the one that went over the edge of a crater next time and she didn't think it was necessary to bring him back. "Sometimes you have to make hard decisions and do things even if you don't want to. I think that might even have been what they were trying to teach us."

"You don't know what you did, Shiro-kun", she said softly. "One day you might, or you might not. We shall see."

Sadly, the girls' dorm rooms looked exactly like they did in the boys' dorm: two bunks, two windows, two desks. Though it was a bit unusual to see all the bed linens on the floor.

"Pillow-fight…?" he inquired.

"Midori doesn't like beds. She says she feels like the mattress will swallow her at night."

"Huh…" Well… if you've spent most of your life sleeping on the forest floor… "Where is she now?" he leaned on the desk, hands in his pockets and tried to smother the nagging thought that maybe Sen did hold a grudge for the naga, and that she had lured him here to avoid witnesses. "What kind of help were you talking about?"

"She's practicing for Knight. She told me about the tengu." Sen seated herself on a flower-patterned zabuton and produced a tissue from the box on her bed table. She didn't blow her nose, just wiped it. "I told her about the yuki onna. She asked me to help you."

"With…?" Shiro led on.

"With your problem."

"What problem?"

"Only you know what your problem is", she said dreamily. "What I know is that you have one. Demons live in the human heart. That is how they possess us." Sen placed a hand over her chest where her tattoo was. "Demons always see the truth, Shiro-kun. You can't hide the darkness in your heart from them as you do from us."

"Oh, I see. My problem." He shifted his weight to the other foot. He wouldn't deny that he had… darkness. He wouldn't deny it was a problem, especially if it attracted demons. Yet Sen wasn't a person he felt like talking about that with. "So what do I do? I root it out, like a weed?"

"No." Sen's head shook slowly from side to side. With the tissue covering her nose and mouth she looked like a ghost owl: the big, eerie eyes never left Shiro. "Darkness is part of the human soul. It doesn't go away. Pretending it's not there only lets it to grow stronger, and then it will control you. Acknowledge your darkness, and let it be part of you: that way, it is under your control. That way, you can at will open or close the door for demons that would possess you. That is how we, the Futotsuki, bond with our familiars. We let them tap into our darkness, be part of us without controlling us, and through that they come to understand us. And we them. We were not always exorcists: only when there was a need. Before that, demons were our comrades, our friends, our family. We lived in peace together because we understood each other." An idle smile skimmed her lips. "A human can never see into the heart of another, never fully know or understand another human being. A demon can."

"So what should I do about my problem? I understand the theory of it, but I don't see what I can do."

"Look it in the eye. Go to the things inside that you don't want to see and look at them. Look until they lose their power over you."

Shiro grimaced. Sen's words had sent his thoughts that way already, and they recoiled from the memories like a child burnt by fire.

"I think I get it." Silence. She didn't move, hardly even blinked. Shiro could feel at ease around almost anything – hostility, friendliness, nervousness, fear – but this utter lack of emotional display…? It made his skin crawl. "Um, anything else, or should I go…?"

"You may go", she chimed. A soft smile spread on her lips. "Midori said that next weekend would be good for going out, if that is okay for you."

"Oh." Shiro grinned wide. "Tell her next weekend will be perfect. And thanks for the help."

Best news of the week, man. Shiro cleared the corridor with a bounce in his step - and barely had he rounded the corner for the exit when he met Agari. She had just come back from training too, judging from the sweat on her brow and the wooden sword in her hand. Her nose was a painful red.

"What are you doing in the girls' dorm?"

"Why, nice to meet you too", he smiled good-naturedly. "Should you be training hard with that cold?"

"I don't like sitting idle. And I asked you a question."

"I was just paying my date a visit."

"Date? The half-breed girl?" Agari's face set in stone.

"Don't say it so Sen-chan hears you", he warned with a smirk. "By the way, how are things with your secret admirer?"

"My what?"

She didn't know? Shiro's grin grew wider.

"Oh, I shouldn't spoil the surprise, then. See you 'round~"

He sauntered past her, waving over his shoulder.

It was colder outdoors now. The snowstorm in Hakkoda had been an early one, but autumn had definitely given way to winter. The few students he met all wore coats and scarves, huddling close together and glancing furtively at the grey sky.

"Acknowledging the darkness?" He pulled his school uniform blazer tighter around him, coughing into his sleeve. "Sounds like something out of a manga. And it's advice from Sen-chan – what to make of her? I can't even tell if she hates my guts for the exam or if she's made her peace with it." He would have to try her advice, though. There was no helping it. An exorcist couldn't be wide open to demon influence. "Pff, as if I'm not already", he thought, a certain pair of heavy-lidded, forest green eyes coming to mind. If demons could see into one's heart... Yeah, he definitely needed to try out Sen's advice. Another train of thought spawned from the same source: "Am I starting to consider becoming an exorcist...?"

It wasn't that far-fetched, really. He was a good shot, he had a familiar, he could keep his head cool - well, maybe not around humans... One step at a time. Deal with the demons first. His steps were small and unsteady, like a kid who's fallen off a bike once hesitantly puts his feet back on the pedals. Where to start? At the beginning or the end? Where it burnt the most or the least?

He couldn't remember his mom's face. The realization made him stop dead in his tracks, in a misty cloud of breath that covered his glasses. He could see her back when she stood by the stove, hear her voice and see her hands when she moved the chopsticks during dinner, but he couldn't see her face. Had it been that long…?

Shiro resumed walking.

His dad's face brought the first seething ember to life in his chest. The ruffled hair that matched his, and the laughing lines around his mouth and eyes… He had friendly eyes, honest eyes, eyes that made Shiro's shoulders stiffen. He held that image in his mind, looked at it, but the anger only burned fiercer. It was outside his will, he realised: anger was his automatic response to this, as instinctive as swatting away a knife stabbed at him. And the Futotsuki way was to let that knife strike home…?

"Dammit…"

He left his dad, sought his mom, found her on the futon: sleeping. Yes, he'd thought she was sleeping. He'd only been ten, it hadn't yet become a possibility in his world that people could kill themselves. That ordinary pills from the bathroom could make you fall asleep and never wake up again. He didn't see her face then, either. He felt the weight of the blue and orange backpack he was carrying, and the fibres in the tatami mat under his feet; everything from that time was clear and sharp, except her face. He saw her wedding ring, saw her hand resting on a chest that didn't rise and fall as it should have. And he should have cried, should have mourned, but the lump in his chest had caught fire and instead he'd screamed… broken things, beat other kids up…

"She shouldn't have died", he thought, feeling his teeth clench as his body remembered. "Damn you for dying without even putting up a fight. I hated her for giving up, for being so weak…" Shiro closed his eyes, tasted the bile of old resent and pent-up disappointment. "I hated her for accepting what he did. Quietly. Looking the other way. Pretending everything was fine."

He held on to the memories of his mother as long as he could, but it was like holding your breath underwater: the burning tightness in his chest, his heartbeat thumping against the inside of his skull, the claustrophobic feeling of being trapped.

"I can't do this." He came to a stop outside his porch, trembling, feeling like he was in all places and all times at once. Fragments of memories bombarded him and stretched his thoughts thin over the yawning chasm, dismantling him quietly where he stood. "I can't go in to Kita-san like this. I can't go in there and pretend I'm fine and all is normal. Like they did. Day after day, like a theatre, with no secrets and no false promises…"

To his horror, closing the door once it was open wasn't as easy. Memories jumped out from every dark corner, dragging his struggling thoughts back to the graves he'd tried to bury them in. Sen was right: darkness grew stronger when ignored, and it would control him if he didn't face it. He would put up the fight his mother hadn't. He'd promised himself long ago he wouldn't be that weak, hadn't he? That he'd look the ugly truth in the eye, always – and yet he'd done the same. Pretended it had never happened. The most convenient way of handling an inconvenient matter is to look the other way and remain silent.

Shiro had learnt to fight people of flesh and blood and be in control of the world around him, but inside…? Inside, wits and knives and dirty tricks count for nothing. When the opponent is your own dark shadow, there is no other way but to fight fair and hope that you are stronger.

He started planning. Planning is great for organiSing thoughts. It brings order to chaos, herds the sheep in line, forms a thin red thread to hang on to.

He would study for all five Meisters and spy on his classmates as he did. Kita was the main suspect for now, but he was disabled and wouldn't yield anything but oral evidence, if he could be made to talk. If Mephisto told the truth about the Vatican's lack of trust – which did sound like truth – then Agari was a suspect, since she appeared to have or have had contact with the Vatican. A plot on their behalf to provide an excuse for getting rid of an unwanted ally, perhaps? Then Christmas could get quite interesting… Midori and Ryuuji had been found in compromising situations, but other than that there was nothing on them. Midori didn't like Mephisto, sure, but she didn't have the contact network to pull off an operation of this size. The ones who did were families and clans of influence, like Yaonaru, Todo, and Futotsuki.

Todo and Yaonaru definitely were candidates: strict, effective, proud, competitive, potentially ruthless. Yaonaru slightly more suspicious, since there was one in his class. Futotsuki? He didn't know what to make of them. Sen had the motives and the contacts for being part of a conspiracy against the academy, but her thoughts…? And if the Futotsuki weren't in the habit of instigating conflict… Shiro's thoughts roamed back to the camp, tried to recall everything Sen had said and done, tried to deduce…

"I wonder… if I've been doing it wrong all along…"

Shiro entered the dorm, hurried his way through the stairs and corridors. Among the shambles in his mind two pieces had connected, had formed a thought that burst into obsession, and he had to... Had to. Had to know. Kita was in, so Shiro just grabbed his books and went to sit in the empty dorm kitchen. Comprehensive Demonology for the 20th Century was left untouched, and instead he opened Clavicula Salomonis Regis, a dust-dry brick of a book that was basically all about seals and summoning circles. Sen had told the wrong seals from the right one by looking at the little details of the symbols in the circles. Futotsuki-sensei had stressed the importance of getting the details down correctly. Details, details, but what did the details add up to?

It just might be so that he had been looking at the details, not the whole.

Reaching the last pages of the book, Shiro turned it ninety degrees sideways and found it: Mephisto's ward. It wasn't a ward in itself, but a single symbol taken from a seal: the Secret Seal of Solomon. He turned the book again and read. "'...by which he bound and sealed up the spirits with their legions in a Brazen Vessel.' Why would he…?"

Shiro fumbled for Comprehensive Demonology, thoughts racing three steps ahead of his fingers. He flipped it open and retrieved the map he'd hidden there, then spread Mephisto's colourful rendition of the academy over the table. Clavicula Salomonis Regis next to it, he traced lines between the wards with a trembling finger. Two concentric circles… a horizontal strike through the inner one… a semi-circle, and… The seals were the same. Mephisto wasn't keeping anything out of the academy: he was keeping something in it. And whatever it was, it was powerful beyond imagination. The Secret Seal of Solomon could bind entire legions of demons, and this seal was large enough to cover True Cross Academy and parts of the surrounding town.

A/N: A bit of trivia that some might find interesting. I procured a copy of Clavicula Salomonis Regis for this, along with a few other works. Go back and check the seal Neuhaus uses to demonstrate summoning in the second volume: that is taken from Clavicula Salomonis Regis (though it's not a summoning circle, it's a circle to protect the summoner from the summoned spirits). I sqweed quite a bit when I realised Kazue Kato and I are using the same sources. x3

Yuki onna – snow lady. Keep veeeery far away if you're a man (though I guess women could be targets, too).