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"Maria-san. Maria-san." Mineko waved around the door, asking the caretaker to hurry with each flick of her wrist.

Maria paused halfway down the hall and changed course, glancing from room to room with a troubled frown as though she expected to find something out of place. Mineko pulled the door open farther for her to enter the washing room and peered down the hall after her.

Empty.

"What is it? What's wrong?" She shut the door before turning to face the questioning woman, imagining what the expression on her face must have looked like for Maria to assume something bad had happened.

"I know it i-i-isn't really my business… Um…" She broke eye contact to watch her hands pinch one another. Figuring she needed to start over after such a weak opening, she squared her shoulders and side-eyed the wash. "It's about Sakata-san's guests." There was no polite way to say the next part.

"I thi-ink they should leave." She swallowed, glancing at Maria's face.

"What I mean is," she continued, trying to explain her reasoning without sounding insulting, "the man in the guest room should be moved. The man i-i-in the bed. He's sick, and he needs to be in a hospital wh-where doctors can take care of him. If something happens to him—i-if his condition worsens—I don't think w-w-we—you and I, the nurse, or anyone else here will be able to help. And I don't want to be responsible if…" Her hands moved in small circles in front of her, finishing her thought without words.

"I'm sorry, I—," she gestured to the wash and the container of bleach beside the empty laundry basket.

"Mineko—"

"I don't mind this—"

"Mineko-chan." Her superior's sharp tone scooped her out of her pooling thoughts. She turned her head and was caught by her gaze, dark eyes staring pointedly at her as though they had been trying to make contact for a while.

When Maria spoke again, her tone was gentle. "You're right, Mineko-chan, that man is sick. But there is nothing more the hospital can do for him."

Her mouth fell open, and after a moment without speaking, she shut it, listening. It seemed as though the caretaker knew more about their guests than she was letting on. Would she be willing to answer more questions?

"That's why he's here: to rest. When he is well enough, everyone will pack their things and be on their way."

Mineko glanced at the closed door, wondering if there was someone standing on the other side. "Is he dying?" she asked, voice quiet with the shame of pressing about their infirm guest. Truly, his condition was none of her business, but if Sakata continued to call her into the suite and have her assist in his care, she deserved to know something.

Maria sighed, a small, sad smile on her face. "No, he isn't dying." She picked up the bleach container and set it on the shelf, the humming of the washing machine filling her brief pause. "You shouldn't worry about him, Mineko-chan; you don't need to. He's not your responsibility. There's a nurse—an educated, capable, private nurse—looking after his health. We're here," she brushed her hands over the waist of her outfit, "to make sure everyone is comfortable. That's the most anyone could ask for, right now."

Mineko tugged her braid and nodded. The tension left her shoulders, her posture deflating slightly as she breathed out. "Okay."

Maria slowly crossed her arms. "Did…" Her movements stilled, and then resumed when she asked, "Did someone ask you to do something that made you uncomfortable?"

"Wh—no. No! Sakata-san wanted the w-window screen." She hesitated, then added, "The laundry, too." Maria blinked at her. "I'm fine. I just…he… I didn't know—about him—the man—w-wh-what was happening, and I was upset…" She chuckled nervously and looked away, absent-mindedly pulling at one of her sleeves. "You put me on the spot, Maria-san. Now-w I can't answer straight." Her cheeks felt warm.

"You'll be okay." Maria smiled at her embarrassment, a teasing glimmer in her eye. "Your heart is in the right place, Mineko-chan. There's nothing wrong with that. Thank you for being honest with me." Her face grew hotter, and Maria finally laughed as she stepped out of the room, leaving her alone to struggle with the compliment.

Mineko sat up in the near-dark, a chill tickling her arms as the blankets fell away from her shoulders. The room was quiet except for the clock on the wall, which softly ticked every other second and chimed on the hour. It was rhythmic, monotonous, and it should have put her straight to sleep. However, the beat of the seconds' hands had become an unyielding reminder that she was awake nowhere near a good night's rest.

The clock struck one.

Throwing the blankets off of her legs, she touched the ground and blindly felt for her slippers. Having secured the borrowed robe over her borrowed night gown—which was not only one size too big, but also reflected the fashion-sense of a middle-aged woman—she opened the bedroom door and leaned into the hall. Seeing no one, she stepped out and shut the door behind her.

Only on two other occasions had she spent a night at the manor, and neither of those instances saw visitors in the guest suites. The hallways, long and dimly lit, seemed the perfect place to see shadows dance and feel the menace of spying eyes. Portraits moved ever so slightly, but never when one was looking at them. And there was no question about avoiding the bedroom with the shelf of sculpted geishas and kimono-clad dolls. She expected to be more at ease having a larger group of people spending the night with her in the old estate, but found after every step on a creaking section of floor that she was much more conscious of the disturbance she was creating than the threat of any phantom. How far would the sounds carry? Did she look like she was snooping? Would one of the guests, such as the man stationed at the front doors, confront her?

She picked up her pace, her eyes wandering to the bottom of the staircase when her feet reached the top step. She could not see the front doors or a sentry, her perch too high to obtain a decent view of the hall without the sloped ceiling getting in the way.

When she had nearly reached the ground floor she turned, meeting the gaze of the woman by the front doors. There was no mistaking the unearthly pale face she had encountered a few days ago, the woman's expression just as unopen now as it was then.

"Good evening," Mineko muttered awkwardly when she did not speak, and cast her gaze down to the last few steps, her slippers clapping as they finished the descent in a hurry. Whether the woman decided to humour her with a response or not, she had already made up her mind to avoid looking at her doll-like complexion again. Pretending to adjust her robe, she turned her back on her and proceeded to the kitchen, relaxing when she could no longer sense a pair of eyes on her.

Closing the kitchen doors with a small sigh, she flicked on the overhead lights. The vents hummed quietly as she poured herself a glass of milk and leaned against the cool counter, her robe cushioning the press of granite against her ribs. She sipped at her drink.

Sunrise was hours away, but she did not doubt that it would come too soon to her weary mind. Staying the night had been Maria's idea. It would have been risky to take a taxi out at night with so much standing water on a less-travelled road. Given how unlikely it was for water levels to have significantly receded over the past half day, the chances of a cab making it to the front gate were slim, and she had needed little convincing from Maria to wait until morning before setting out. With any luck, the trains might be running on a more normal schedule when she returned.

She tilted her hand, the milk creeping up the side of the glass with the motion. Now that the rain had stopped and people began to cautiously venture out from the shelter of their homes, the rehabilitation center would be inundated with calls about injured or sick wildlife—and strays. And with poor road conditions, the majority of callers would no doubt rely on someone else to collect an injured animal rather than transport it themselves. "That's going to be fun," she mumbled sarcastically and downed the remainder of her beverage.

She put the glass in the sink and turned on the faucet, waiting for the water to heat as she added soap to the sponge. Washing dishes had always been a chore that required little effort on her part, and so as she began to scrub the glass, she was vaguely aware of her thoughts drifting, her hands moving from memory while she stared at the lip of the drain. The glass on the door rattled, and Mineko started.

"Yes?" She looked up from the sink, expecting the person on the other side to let themselves in.

"Maria-san wants to speak with you." The figure on the other side of the door shifted his weight forward.

What? Her lips formed the words as she frowned.

"She's waiting in the guest suite."

It was—she turned to the blinking light over the stove—almost one-thirty in the morning. Maria wanted to talk now?

"One moment," she called, rinsing the glass one final time under the faucet and setting it on the rack to dry.

It didn't sound right. Perhaps she had misheard the man?

She wiped her hands on the closest towel and checked her appearance before opening the double doors. The messenger was gone.

"You couldn't wait a moment?" She grumbled and turned off the lights. She hadn't recognized the voice, but the abundance of black visible through the frosted glass hinted at the man's position.

Guided down the hall by the warm glow of lamps above her head, she surreptitiously glanced towards the staircase as she passed the front hall, its architecture made a cold and forbidding black in the absence of light. But it wasn't what she saw that stopped her in her tracks—it was what was missing.

The pale woman was gone.

She took one step towards the front hall before catching herself. She had someplace she needed to be, someone who was waiting for her. She returned to her intended path. Ten steps in, she started walking faster, her muscles tensing as her eyes swept to her peripheral, head still facing forward.

Something was behind her. At the end of the hall, peering out of the tea room, trailing a couple of paces—she didn't know precisely where, but she could feel it at her back: a familiar sensation she had experienced only once, while walking home in middle school.

There had been something large on the road, its girth too great to keep it from straddling the edge of the sidewalk and the pavement. Unrecognizable, it moved noiselessly between two lampposts flickering to life, crawling slowly as if its mass was almost too much to support. It had trembled in her direction.

The memory was enough.

Her feigned composure dropped, and Mineko ran. She did not scream, did not turn to look behind, terrified of what she imagined she alone would see. The left turn in the corridor was coming up fast. There would be guests—black suits—when she turned down the guest hall, people she was fairly certain were more suited for handling emergencies and security breaches.

She nearly tripped on a rug and lost a slipper, staggered, and knocked her elbow as she cut the corner.

Where were the sentries?

Throwing etiquette aside, she collided forcefully with the first door and twisted the handle, a gasp of relief and exertion rushing out of her when it granted her access to the room within. She shut the door behind her, fidgeting to secure the lock.

"Maria-san." She nearly coughed and pressed her back to the door, trying to think over the sound of blood rushing in her ears. No one answered. Sweeping her eyes over the room, she realized there was no nurse or caretaker at the bedside.

"Maria-san? Nakamura-san?" Her voice was a breathless hiss, instinct warning her to keep quiet. She looked at the open door to the bathroom and darkness stared back. "Oh no. Oh no."

She inhaled sharply through her nose and scrambled away from the door as something knocked once from the other side, the vibration tingling against her spine. Adrenaline lending itself to her aid, she dragged both armchairs in front of the door and managed to scoot the carved dresser a few feet before her shaking limbs began to give out.

"The beast." A short, disbelieving laugh faded to a whimper. Retreating from the barricaded door, she knelt next to the bed and began searching for a pair of scissors, a scalpel, or anything else the nurse carried that could be used as a weapon. "Beast, beast, beast…" she whispered as she flipped up the lid of an unmarked box.

A wet cough punctured her mantra and she sprung to her feet. The covers rustled as the bandaged man stirred beneath them, slowly snaking one arm out from their warmth until it bumped a pillow beside him and stilled. His head tilted to the side, eyes blinking sleepily. In her haste to throw a plan together, she had forgotten that she wasn't really alone. She braced her arms on the mattress and leaned towards the center of the bed where the man laid, his upper body propped on an island of pillows.

"Hey. Hey, can you hear me?" What was she going to do about him? Could she do anything about him? Someone shouted in the hall, but she couldn't make out what was said. "Are you awake?" Bright green eyes opened further, searching for her voice. "There's… There's somethi-i-i—," her voice cracked and went silent, and she closed her fists on handfuls of blanket. She swallowed, struggling to speak audibly and steadily. He needed to know what was going on. He deserved an explanation for her intrusion and outburst, at the very least.

"W-w-what beast, i-it's hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem…" The words tumbled out before she could catch them. Abruptly shutting her mouth, Mineko turned her head to look at the foot of the bed. "S-sorry. I'm not good at thi-is." About to lean away, she hesitated at the stutter of breath, reluctantly letting her gaze return to the bedridden man's face. A trickle of blood rolled down his exposed upper lip and slipped into his mouth, blurring a second later behind a foggy exhale on the plastic mask.

"Uh…" She watched another dribble of blood leak from his other nostril. Why was his nose bleeding? Was that to be expected? What did it mean? "I… Hang on, hang on…" She stopped talking, her mouth dry as bone.

A stack of folded hand towels was perched on the corner of the nightstand, pristine, white, and waiting to be spoiled. Clean towel in hand, she clenched her jaw and tried to avoid looking the man in the eyes, which, as it turned out, she could not refrain from given what she was about do.

There was something eerie about those eyes—beyond the unnatural shade; some brilliance that said the man beneath the wrappings, inside the emaciated husk, was anything but near the end. His left arm slid towards her but did not come close enough to touch, the meaning of the gesture lost without words to accompany it.

"Commander!" A pounding repetition on the wood startled her from her task. A pause followed, and then the door was hit hard, a splintering crack ringing sharply to the high ceiling and echoing in her ears. Another impact sent it colliding into the back of the dresser, the furniture sliding a few inches on the floor.

Let it be a black suit. Please, be a black suit. A soft material touched her knuckles and she snatched her hand away from the bed, pressing it firmly against her chest as her gaze fell to the wrapped appendage lying motionless atop the blanket.

"Oh," she breathed out inaudibly. The dresser and armchair scraped forward, providing enough room for someone to squeeze inside. Having assumed it would be a person of small stature, she was surprised to see the blonde man muscle his way in, his head coming within a hair's breadth of the top of the doorframe.

"Move away from him." His expression was stern as it moved from the bed to her, his voice low and threatening. A second man wearing the same blue and white uniform entered the room, his appearance identical. She did not recognize them.

"He's bleeding."

"Step. Away."

Hiding the towel behind her, she took a step back from the bed, suddenly wary of the medical equipment around her. One of the twins approached her and she froze in place. "W-w-what's going on?" she whispered.

"Show me what you're holding." Mineko stared at him as though he spoke a foreign language, and then brought the towel out for him to see.

"I didn't know w-what else to do," she explained, watching the man take it and open it, inspecting the ordinary cloth as if it was something unordinary. His brother stood on the opposite side of the bed, pulling aside the blankets in places and readjusting them in others when the nurse stepped up beside him.

"What are you doing in here?" Her head whipped towards the broken door as Maria navigated around the cluttered furniture, the woman's face bright in anger and eyes wide with worry. "What are you doing in here?" Not knowing how to adequately explain what had happened in the past five minutes, she said nothing as Maria stomped her way. The guard put out an arm to block her path when it became clear that caretaker intended to grab, hug, or throttle her.

"She is employed by the Sakata family." Maria addressed the blonde with fists at her sides. Although she appeared ready to knock the man's arm away, she made no move to touch him. "I am responsible for her, not you."

"And I am responsible for what happens to him," the man answered without missing a beat. Mineko watched the tension flare between the two, neither willing to give, and then the white towel was tossed at her and she was fumbling not to drop it. "She's not allowed to leave the premises. The Captain will want to speak with her, and I'm sure she'll want to speak with you, too."

There were more people in the room now, black suits, blue uniforms, faces she did not know, moving about the cluttered space in a pattern that could only be described as organized chaos. Mineko followed each with her eyes, paying particular attention to the men wearing black, her attention returning to the door every time someone entered or departed. She strained to pick up individual voices in conversation, ticking her head one way and then another as she listened for a voice that sounded familiar.

She couldn't find the messenger.