Disclaimer:

Let's just skip the giant disclaimer you can find in Chapter 1!


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FS

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x. ENCOUNTER in VENICE x.

(new version)

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He kills with total cruel efficiency

Leaves no traces

His evil past is still a mystery

So evasive

Behind his smiling face

There beats a heart of steel

As sharp as any blade

Don't let it touch you

("Moriarty", from Holmes Sweet Holmes, by John Debney (score) and Carol Mendelsohn (lyrics))

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The wedding was, to…

(Saturday, November 3rd 20xx, from different points of view)

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The wedding was, to all but three guests, the quintessence of splendour. To koneko-chan and her Mamo-chan, it was a dream come true. It wasn't only the abundance of exquisite food, the polished vintage silver, the sculpted decoration on the restored French Renaissance style walls, the flowers, the flickering candlelight—it was the joint effort of the pair's friends and acquaintances, who had made the impossible happen.

It was all the more disturbing that, among these amiable, supportive guests, there was one who had used the occasion to terrorize Haruka with "Charade". Who could have been so malicious and sneaky, so adept at hurting another person that they knew exactly where (and how) to strike? Someone—one of these people—had been observing Haruka carefully, had discovered the weak spot in her almost unconquerable fortress, had waited until Haruka let down her guard and felt safe among her friends to attack her in the most perfidious manner.

It wasn't "Charade" per se which disturbed Haruka—it was the knowledge that whoever had done this must be one of the people close enough to her to predict her emotional reaction to "Charade". Haruka had only told her dearest friends about it—none of whom were the type to blabber when they knew they shouldn't. Even the two blonde koneko-chan's, the most vivacious, most gregarious, knew how to keep their pretty mouths shut when it came to handling a secret which wasn't their own.

Returning to the hall, where "Charade" had ended and where the guests were now singing karaoke to the film music of Detective Boy Holmes, Haruka let her gaze roam the faces of all the people who could have played this nasty prank on her. Could it have been Ami-chan—one of the few people with the brains to plan the stunt and the patience to wait for the opportunity to arise? Feeling Haruka's gaze on her, Ami-chan flashed Haruka a compassionate smile. Could this cute, innocent face lie? But "still waters run deep", as they said, and Ami-chan—the shy scholarly nerd—had once slapped a stranger who flipped her skirt before Haruka, as her gallant friend, could punish the jerk.

What could Haruka have done to incur Ami-chan's resentment? Haruka could recall joking that it was no wonder that bookworms couldn't run when she witnessed Ami-chan during a race at Juuban highschool. With their gaze perpetually fixed on the same spot (thus limiting the movements of their eyes and heads) and their legs and feet used for nothing but sitting or squatting… with their attention held by whatever they experienced in their imaginary world, blending out their surroundings, it was impossible for bookworms to develop the necessary physical and spacial awareness, much less the required athleticism, for a sprint. Haruka remembered delivering the sentence in a friendly teasing way, not meaning to insult Ami-chan in the least since Haruka knew from Michiru that this particular bookworm could swim like a fish. It was a general observation, a lighthearted joke on the spur of the moment—but Ami-chan, ever the self-conscious overachiever and sour loser who couldn't laugh about her own weaknesses, proceeded to give Haruka the cold shoulder (or rather the cold back) for the whole day.

Still, Ami-chan had planned the whole wedding, had spent months choosing the music collection, the ingredients for the food, the fabrics for her friends' costumes and masks. Haruka was sure that Ami-chan had set her mind on making this day unforgettable. Makoto-chan had told Haruka that Odango atama was the friend who had introduced Ami-chan to all the other girls when Ami-chan was the weird geek no one liked. It was most improbable that Ami-chan, the perfectionist, had ruined her own project just to put Haruka in her place. Haruka must have let her emotions override her logic since Ami-chan, cool and mistrustful, had always been the one Haruka liked the least.

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Pondering on who could be responsible for the taunt saddened Haruka, so she mentally went through the list of the people she would never suspect instead. The culprit couldn't be Makoto-chan, who would never backstab an enemy, much less a friend. During one of her morning drives on her beloved Suzuki Hayabusa, Haruka had almost crashed into Odango and Makoto-chan and barely hit the brakes in time, but all of them had come away from the accident with just a few scrapes. Taking revenge like this for such an insignificant incident would require a sick level of pettiness.

Odango-atama... Suspecting her would feel like sacrilege. As corny as this sounded: if there was a messiah on earth, that messiah would be her. Haruka couldn't think of another friend she had wronged in her life, but when the only friend who would have had a legitimate reason for desiring a payback was Odango, who was immune to spite, the mystery was perfectly impenetrable.

Rei-chan was just as unlikely to stoop so low—she might have attacked from afar and known how to hurt, but she would have challenged Haruka first. For a moment, Haruka lingered over the thought that Rei-chan could have blamed Yuuichirou-san's death on her… Back then, Haruka would have prevented Yuuichirou-san's death if Haruka had been able to, but Haruka hadn't talked with Rei-chan about this. Whenever circumstances prevented her from telling the truth, Haruka had delayed it and then forgotten about it, relying on their friendship to prevent possible misunderstandings. Haruka herself had depended on her friends after they had earned her trust—and never had she doubted her own judgement or dwelled on the thought that humans were prone to change with time and circumstances until now.

Minako-chan—lovely in her translucent Aphrodite costume with the gold girdle and dove-patterned silk lace—was singing a ribald drunken love song now, and blushed when she met Haruka's gaze. The two of them had spent many an afternoon together in the Juuban Game Centre and enjoyed not only some of the best gaming sessions but also some of the best conversations and flirts. Haruka would rather believe in fairies and ghosts than suspect that this koneko-chan was capable of hurting her.

Haruka recalled a long walk home from the gym, where Minako-chan had been practising volleyball, and Minako-chan's questions of whether there had been past decisions Haruka regretted or whether Haruka knew the wish to be someone else, to be somewhere else. Haruka had to tell her (quite truthfully) that Haruka was content to be herself, had always been. Not every decision had been a good decision, but Haruka had learned from her past mistakes. It had seemed obvious to Haruka that her actions had shaped her reality and turned her into the person she was now.

She knew she had her faults as well—some of which were hard to change after they had turned into habits of a lifetime. That didn't mean she felt obligated to debase herself in front of other people, to expose herself to the public with masochistic, exhibitionist glee like many people seemed to enjoy doing nowadays. Her perceived air of invincibility had made her appear distant and arrogant, and since she didn't value other people's opinions too much, she didn't bother to fix their perception of her. She didn't crave other people's understanding and superficial attention despite enjoying their admiration at times—a combination of self-sufficiency and gregariousness some people mistook for coldness and egocentricity. And whenever Haruka liked someone and warmed up to them, the intensity of her sudden enthusiasm led to misunderstandings…

Could she have unwittingly made herself enemies with her impatience, her inability to hold back criticism? The last time she gave Mamoru-san piano lessons, Haruka had complained that his playing was robotic and bland, that in music, expression mattered more than accuracy. The right notes would reliably come with time after one had practised a passage for a hundred hours, but the soul of the piece could never be awoken unless one dared to let go. Listening to his lacklustre playing was painful at best—it hurt to see so much potential wasted. She would have preferred a few wrong notes in a sweeping gesture, a few important keys missed in what sounded like a deliberate caress—in that case, she would have expected him to hit the right keys someday even if it took him a year or two. (As things were, she might as well have entered the score into an app and let a virtual piano spit it out. His playing was, on average, on the same level.)

It wasn't the first time that Haruka had informed someone of a thought everybody else in the room must have entertained but hadn't dared to express. She had certainly not derived any satisfaction from doing it, and she had chosen her words carefully enough to believe that she had expressed precisely what she wanted to say.

Ever since she could remember, she had been the one to get the hot stuff out of the oven lest it burned, because she cared deeply while most people didn't. Her harshness wasn't the result of naiveté or ignorance as many of her acquaintances believed. She acted out of responsibility—because no one else seemed to react in time if she didn't. But even when the outcome proved her right, her actions weren't met with other people's approval.

Who else could she have offended? Haruka tried to recall more possible slights but couldn't come up with any. Now that she had gone through the list of the friends who knew about "Charade" (she naturally didn't consider Setsuna-san, who was part of her family like Michiru and Hotaru were), Haruka proceeded to the list of the best friends of her best friends—people who could have gained the knowledge from one of her friends' babbling, as unlikely as it was. Seiya could have learned about "Charade" from Odango atama—but Seiya wouldn't terrorize Haruka with music, which he loved. Wasting a good piece like "Charade" for a revenge wasn't his style; and the practical joke, resembling a slow-cooking clay-pot dish more than a hamburger or instant ramen, required too much of careful planning for too mean an achievement for Seiya to be bothered with it. Haruka also trusted Seiya to be above such pettiness on Odango's wedding day.

Yaten, who could have learned about "Charade" from Minako-chan, looked genuinely surprised by Haruka's distress. Driven into a corner by his latest fan, whose perfume would haunt the castle for days to come, he had been studying Haruka with the expression which Luna wore when she saw a puma on Haruka's TV screen. Expecting trouble for him and his siblings, Yaten was prepared to fight tooth and nail—but he was at a loss to explain whom or what he was supposed to fight, and why…

Yaten would have done anything for Seiya—but Yaten would have lacked the patience for this. The oldest Kou brother would also have insisted on indulging in a self-satisfied sneer and a verbal taunt after a work well done—and he would certainly have been too proud to hide. No… Haruka realized that this prank required a more subtle, more nimble, cooler mind and a personality that preferred the safety and silence anonymity offered. The culprit must be someone quiet, unobtrusive, impeccably polite, someone pleasant and perfectly balanced on the outside—someone who possessed an elephantine memory, which enabled them to hold on to a grudge after it had long faded from other people's memories…

Someone who would operate "like a spider at the centre of a web", a web with a thousand threads, whose dance they knew precisely…

Ami-chan must have come to the same conclusion as Haruka did, as she had walked up to the suspect and was now regarding them with an icy blue glare. For the first time, Haruka acknowledged the girl's understated confidence and poise, the amazing courage she only displayed in the few moments when her social, submissive peacemaker persona made way for the stronger, harder one, who seldom saw the light of day.

"It has become quite late for you, isn't it? You must be eager to get away! I'm sure Usagi and Mamoru-san will understand…" And then, as though she could no longer contain her anger and disappointment, she turned her face away and murmured with tears in her eyes, "I'd never have expected you to be like this… M."

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A/N: Since I'm holidaying, I've finally had the time to type up this chapter and the first chapter for Beginnings, Endings, and the Corridors In-Between. I also had to edit so much in both fics… *weeps into her pillow* (Someday I am going to study grammar!)