Chapter 3 - A Truth Comes Out

Disclaimer: I don't own a bloody thing.

Booya! New chapter up and I'm so proud of myself! Thanks a million to all the wonderful reviewers who bothered to review. Y'all rockz!

To xabie: erm… I wouldn't call Fuuko and Ganko pedophiles cos they actually knew that Tokiya and Kaoru were actually grown-ups, and if they fall in love they are falling in love with them cos they're them, not because they're children. And Ganko already liked Kaoru before he turned into a kid. But those other people were interested in Tokiya even when they had no idea that Tokiya was actually an adult! Yea, um… does that make sense? Hope it does, haha.

To desrinee: Yea… sorry about 'The Sweetest Feeling' but I'm kind of at a writer's block for that one, hehe. But I'll definitely finish it after I get back my draft I left back home overseas. My sister still hasn't emailed it to me yet ;P

And special thanks also to linda and lingling for your reviews! Love them!

Longest Review of the Chapter Award goes to… (drums roll) Mouse-chan! Aka tikus. (sign in next time, will ya?) This chapter is for you dear! Enjoy everyone!

Koganei Kaoru leaped off the last few steps of the stairs and raced into the dining room. He heard a lot of voices, so everyone must already be there. But… something about the dining room seemed different somehow...

"Um… where's my chair?" Koganei looked around. There were only three normal chairs, and the girls were sitting in them. Where the rest of the chairs used to be, there were several extra stilts from some other furniture. But what they were, he couldn't tell from his height, which was below table surface.

"Your place is up here, with us," came an unenthusiastic mumble. It was Recca.

Kaoru looked up, and to his utmost horror, saw that his friends were all sitting on–

"HIGHCHAIRS?" A strangled cry escaped Kaoru's throat.

"Yes, Kaoru-chan. Now come on, I'll help you up," Yanagi smiled sweetly and held out her hands to a terror-stricken Kaoru. He backed away a few steps.

"Uh… wait, I… ah…" he stuttered incomprehensively.

"Oh, come on, we're 20 and if we aren't even making a fuss I'm sure you could handle that bit of humiliation too," Recca stated sedately from his higher vantage point.

Kaoru glanced suspiciously at the pieces of cloth binding Recca's hands and feet firmly to the chair. He turned and saw the same thing with Domon, and to his horror and amusement, even on Mikagami Tokiya! Feeling the boy's gaze on him. Tokiya cleared his throat and "hmph-ed" coldly before turning the other way.

"Come on now, everyone's waiting so we could start dinner," urged Yanagi gently, holding out her hands further. Kaoru jumped another step back.

"There's NO way I'm getting on THAT!" he cried decidedly and prepared to run for his life, but someone else was just a tad bit quicker than him.

"There IS a way you're getting on that! Like THAT!" And with that 'THAT', Kaoru was suddenly attacked from behind and felt himself being roughly swept off the floor by his collar and dumped squarely onto his highchair.

"Hmph!" Kirisawa Fuuko dusted her hands coolly after her fourth job in a row.

"Ok Domon, pay up! You lost," Recca cried in a sing-song voice and nudged a sulking Domon beside him.

"How come you knew he'd be sent into his seat the same way as us?" grumbled Domon complainingly as he handed over a few dollar bills.

"Because I also happen to know that he has an ego bigger than his head!" said Recca, still feeling victorious.

Fuuko slapped her hands down on the arm-rests of Kaoru's chair. Kaoru drew back as if he was face-to-face with a monster.

"Now you can either choose to be in bondage like the others… OR! Promise that you wouldn't run off halfway, and eat your dinner like a good little boy," she said in a seemingly sweet voice. Petrified by her stare, Kaoru could only manage to nod rigidly. Suddenly, Yanagi remembered something.

"Oh yes, and all of you must put on…" she reached behind her back. "These!"

All of their eyes widened.

…...

"NOOOO!"

O+O+O+O+~ B R E A K ~+O+O+O+O

"For as long as I can remember…" said Recca disbelievingly. "I've never worn anything as embarrassing as THIS!" he yelled, pulling up his huge yellow bib with the colored print of a little yellow chick in the middle saying: "Piyo!"

"Well, mine has "Wash your hands before you eat" on it, how dumb is that?" mumbled Domon unenthusiastically.

Kaoru glanced over at Tokiya's second bib, which was sickly pink, with the faggot face of Hello Kitty printed all over it. Tokiya had his arms folded uncomfortably in front of it in a silent, vain attempt to cover up the shameful thing. Kaoru looked down at his own bib which Ganko had chosen and tied up for him –not as gently as she was with "Kondo", but at least she didn't attempt to strangle him, like Fuuko almost did to Tokiya for destroying his first purple bib with his Ensui (Where did Yanagi find so many bibs I don't know). Kaoru looked down at his own. It was blue with some pictures of fruits on it. He peered over at Ganko, who was eating her dinner silently, ignoring the shouts and bickers, leaving them to Fuuko to handle.

Hm… maybe he should be thankful after all… at least his didn't look as embarassing.

O+O+O+O+~ B R E A K ~+O+O+O+O

Later in the evening, when Kaoru thought the time was about right, he excused himself to bed when Ganko was about to finish her homework and rushed up to her room to retie the madougu to his neck.

As he sat on her soft bed, he observed the pretty, feminine room he was in, and had to admit that Morikawa Ganko had one of the best tastes in any girl he has known. A few posters of famous pop stars, which complimented the wallpaper, were stuck onto a blank part of the wall, and the decorations were all the right colors and in the right places. Though not the neatest girl in the world, thought Kaoru, spotting a few unfolded clothes on her bed and one or two pieces of undergarments and her uniform strewn on the carpeted floor, she still kept her room reasonably clean.

Lying back on the cool, velvety folds of her bed quilt, he inhaled the mystifying but sweet and appealing feminine scent in her room. It wasn't perfume, just a naturally delightful smell that spelt G-A-N-K-O. Then, his face turned solemn with thoughts.

Why was he here in the first place?

Of course! It was to cover up for "murdering" Kondo. That one he had an answer to. But he realized that the truth was going to come out sooner or later and he was going to get it, and get it good from Ganko. So… why was he putting his life at such a great risk? He could've just told Ganko about the scuffle and everything, and get maybe only a hostile comment or insult. After all, Ganko couldn't possibly blame him if Kondo was the one who showed himself to him and taunted him in the first place. She can be snappy but she wasn't unreasonable.

Kaoru sat up abruptly and shook his head violently. Why was he arguing with himself now?

He lay back down with a sigh. It seemed like he was finding himself excuses to carry on with this act. Why? What was his purpose? He asked himself these over and over again for some time, then soon had some sort of vague answer.

Curiosity.

He had to find something out. Well, he still had yet to figure out what that 'something' was but he was sure there was something, and he was sure he would figure it out later. He had questions to ask -questions whose answers he wouldn't normally get out of Ganko if she knew he was Koganei Kaoru and not Kondo, whom he had a feeling she always confided in. Kaoru frowned. He felt like how he was sure someone would feel if they were reading someone else's diary without their consent. A really selfish and wrong thing to do. He knew. And this wasn't like Koganei Kaoru at all… Then why? Why was he–

Just as he was immersed in his own thoughts, he was interrupted by the door creaking open, and the next moment, Ganko came in. Kaoru immediately shook off all his confusing thoughts and sat up as the girl stretched lazily.

Landing heavily onto her bed beside Kaoru, Ganko let out a soft sigh of contentment. "Alone in our room at last…" she said, then abruptly turned to lie on her front and face Kaoru, propping her head up with her palms. "Ne? Kaoru-chan?" She gave him a sweet smile.

Kaoru froze. His body froze, his blood froze, his heart froze, and so did his brain. He couldn't think, couldn't react. Time must've frozen too.

Oh my god, did she somehow guess who he was? But how?

Ganko laughed a silvery, delightful little laugh. "Don't look so shocked, Kondo. We agreed that we should call you Kaoru when we're alone together, remember?"

Kaoru let out the breath he had been unconsciously holding for the last ten seconds. Of course... pretence! She pretends that Kondo is the real him when they're alone. Obviously, what other purpose of changing the fox doll's form? He should've thought of that!

"Yea… I haven't forgotten, Ganko-chan," he added an address form he wouldn't normally use. "So, uh… what are you planning to do if Kaoru's schoolmates are still coming tomorrow?"

Ganko let out a defeated sigh. "I think I'll just have to work something out with Kaoru tomorrow. Hopefully that smart brain of his will figure out something to worm our way out of this." Turning again to lie on her back, she absent-mindedly pulled Kaoru on top of her and wrapped her hands around him like how a girl would hug her favorite stuffed toy, gazing up at the ceiling full of silver glow-in-the-dark stars.

Kaoru, temporarily devoid of all ability to think due to the pulse-quickening fact that they were now so close together he could literally hear her heart thumping gently against her soft chest just beneath his left ear, stared straight ahead at the ceiling, not daring to even take a loud breath or make any sudden moves.

"You're so warm tonight, Kondo," said Ganko, gradually feeling Kaoru's body heat. "Is the heater too hot?" She got up and reached over to the heater next to her bed. "Hm… it is a bit warm, isn't it?" She turned it down a few degrees, then got up and stood on the carpeted floor.

And to Kaoru's enormous surprise and horror, she reached down, pulled off her denim shorts and started to unbutton her shirt! The white cotton top immediately revealed a sexy black bra underneath and also a pair of matching panties. Eyes as wide as dinner plates, Kaoru inhaled sharply and clutched his nose. It was all he could do to keep from getting a mega nose-bleed right then and there.

With her hands already behind her back, ready to unhook her bra, Ganko noticed his odd behavior, and blushing slightly, she chuckled. Clambering onto her bed on all fours, she came face to face with Kaoru. Kaoru backed away into the wall as if she were some kind of monster. Smiling, she said. "I do that in front of you every night, Kondo, whatever form you happen to be in. You don't need to entertain me like that by acting so realistically like him," she knocked his head playfully. "You know it always makes me blush!" Then, she sat up, reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, then pulled off her panties and threw them across the room right into the laundry basket against the wall.

After a split moment of gazing at the rare and beautiful scene in front of him, Kaoru finally managed, with every bit of self-control he could ever muster in his entire life, to drag his vision away from the heart-stopping sight in front of him and turned to look determinedly sideways. His thoughts were going haywire. Even his heart... She might not hear it, but heaven and hell knew his heart was hammering like crazy!

He never knew, never noticed. That the little munchkin he used to know had already long grown into a young lady with beauty to rival that of Venus. And man did she have a hot body! All the curves and bumps in the right places, just the right, healthy skin color, and only now did he realize how perfectly her long golden hair complimented her entire figure.

When he finally dared to venture another glance at Ganko to see if she was properly dressed, he was relieved to find that she already had on a set of pale yellow pajamas and was rummaging about in her schoolbag. It's a bit of a pity those cloths had to conceal such a wonderful work of art beneath them, Kaoru thought rather wistfully. Soon, Ganko scrambled onto her bed with a few books tucked underneath her arm. "Ok, a few more stuff to do then we can hit the hay," she said, propping her fluffy pillow up behind her against the wall and leant back against it. She reached over to Kaoru and lifted him onto her laps. "And you can help me by holding this and turning the page when I tell you to," she instructed, putting one of two notebooks on his lap, and started turning the pages of the book in her hands to a certain page and immediately started writing.

Kaoru's eyes widened with surprise when he saw the books' contents. These weren't what Ganko was supposed to be learning. It looked more like his syllabus! Eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement, he tilted one side of the book he was holding to squint at the cover. Sure enough, it was a notebook with notes given to pupils his grade. Was Ganko doing something beyond her syllabus? Couldn't be; Ganko wasn't particularly bright like him or Mikagami.

Then, he caught sight of the name on the book cover.

SATOU AIKO.

An eyebrow raised. Aiko-san?

Satou Aiko was one of his female classmates.

His thoughts were disrupted when Ganko lifted up the other similar notebook she was holding to check the one Kaoru was holding, her pen landing briefly on a particularly complicated physics illustration. "Hm… I wonder how you draw this silly diagram?" she muttered absent-mindedly to herself. It was then that Kaoru spotted the name on the book cover she was writing in as well!

KOGANEI KAORU.

Kaoru gaped at his name printed in his own handwriting on the front cover. The notebook… was his?

All at once, a hundred guesses and suspicions popped into his mind. What was Ganko doing? Messing up his work? Keeping his assignments from him? Scribbling nonsensical stuff in them? To get him in trouble at school?

"Ganko-chan?" he asked hesitantly. He needed to know.

"Hm…?" she gave a distracted reply, her pen flicking rapidly across the book's surface.

"What are you doing?"

It was a while before she spoke. "Kaoru's kind classmates lent him important notes they had taken during lessons at school, and made me bring these home…" she explained briefly, but trailed off as a another new equation caught her attention.

"And then?" Kaoru continued to urge.

"He's going to need to copy these into his own notebook later on anyway, so I'm doing it for him now," she said, then added. "Since it's only copying, it's pretty easy. All he'll have to do after this is read up. I might not understand what the heck all this is about but at least I'm not blind or stupid."

Hardly able to believe his ears, Kaoru bent over Ganko's work. And sure enough, she was attempting another graph that looked, to Kaoru's surprise, every bit as neat and as accurate as the one drawn on Aiko's book. Scanning the page she was finishing and the page before, all he could see were the tidy and elegant handwriting of Ganko, copying down all the exact words from his classmate's book without a single mistake. She'd even high-lighted and underlined the important quotes and key points for him.

Ganko glanced up at her companion, and saw Kaoru gaping at the book, then at her wordlessly. She giggled. "Pretty complicated stuff, isn't it? I'm not sure I even know quarter of the stuff I'm writing."

With difficulty, Kaoru swallowed a lump in his throat –which he suspected was guilt. "Why are you doing this for him?" he asked in a small voice.

Ganko clicked impatiently as she spotted yet another difficult chart on the next page, and looked up a bit later. "Well you think that kid would be able to write much in his current condition?" she rolled her eyes as if it was most obvious. Kaoru looked down at his own toddler's hands. True, he'd most probably be able to write some stuff, but drawing diagrams and charts and equations? He wasn't that sure.

"And besides," continued Ganko with a slight sneer, flipping back a dozen pages to where they were still full of Kaoru's own handwriting, which was more or less a mass of untidy and almost undecipherable scrawl.

"I'd be really surprised if he could make out half the stuff he'd written himself. It looks like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics."

For another one and a half hours, the room was silent, with only the unceasing sound of pencil and pen scratching on dry paper.

"Uh… have you finished?" Kaoru had long gotten tired of lying there thinking and trying to puzzle out everything, so he sat up in bed, legs crossed. He wanted to know a lot of things, and he has decided that he couldn't wait anymore.

Stifling a tired yawn, Ganko stretched lazily. "Ah… almost," she answered shortly, and went back to the model chemistry lab report she was copying. Kaoru decided to shoot his first question.

"What do you think of Kaoru?"

"Koganei?"

"Yea."

Ganko stopped writing and chewed her pencil, pretending to think. "He's a flirt, end of story," she said decidedly. Then, catching the look on his face, she laughed out loud.

"Come on…" Kaoru urged beseechingly. Ganko suppressed her laughter.

"Oh well, he's bloody smart," said Ganko matter-of-factly because it was the truth. "And a really popular kid too cause he's really nice to people." She paused to think, then continued. "He's awfully brave, witty, and good looking too." And as she continued to admit all those things she would never say in front of Kaoru, a gradual tinge of pink surface on her cheeks. And to hide her embarrassment, she continued to write furiously.

He frowned in his head. She never told him all that face to face before. But on the other hand, why should she?

Kaoru took a deep breath.

"Ganko-chan."

"Hm…?"

"Do you like him?"

The scribbling sound stopped, followed by a moment of utter silence.

"Who's him?"

"Koganei Kaoru."

Another pause. Then a soft, light-hearted chuckle.

"Well, he could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but if I hate him I wouldn't be doing this for him would I?" Ganko questioned, holding up the half-finished lab report. "So, of course I like him," and with that, she lowered her head and kept on writing.

"No!" said Kaoru. That wasn't what he meant! She was purposely misinterpreting his question. "I didn't mean that kind of 'like', what I meant by 'like' was as in the 'like-like' kind of 'like', the kind of 'like' that would eventually lead to love." After all that, even he wasn't quite sure what he meant.

Silence again.

"Kondo…" said Ganko slowly. Kaoru could tell that she was trying to be patient. "We've already gone through that, and I'm still not telling you. So don't push me."

"But Ganko…"

"I think we'd better sleep," Ganko cut him off and immediately pushed all the books and stuff back onto the study table and turned out the lights. The room was instantly plunged into immediate darkness. Unaccustomed to the sudden lack of light, Kaoru rubbed his eyes, then reached out, and his hands touched Ganko's soft cheeks. To his horror, he felt wetness beneath his fingers.

Ganko was crying.

Dumb-stricken, Kaoru didn't know what to say. But he needn't have worried, for before long, Ganko spoke up.

"Didn't it ever occur to you, Kondo, how I managed to alter your appearance and make you look like him?" she said slowly, and without waiting for an answer, she continued. "You know how the Kata Kugutsu works. It wouldn't function without extremely strong emotions, like desire, affection, anger or grief to control it. Like me with my mother…" she said, her voice grew distant as her memories drifted slowly back in time. "My agonizing distress from the loss, and the desperate desire to bring her back, to see her again no matter what, enabled me to wield the Kata Kugutsu, and that was what Kurei had wanted in the first place."

Kaoru listened in silence. Strangely, his heart was tugging painfully. He knew all of this of course, and he didn't mean to bring up all these sad reminiscences. He realized that he didn't at all like to see her like this.

Ganko abruptly turned to face him. "What emotions do you think enabled me to shape you?" she said, her voice rising. Kaoru froze as he noticed her turbulent emotions. Frustration, confusion, and… something else. Yes, the wielder of the Kata Kugutsu must possess extremely strong, and easily provoked emotions. In other words, a weak and helpless person.

"Come on, Koganei. You're not that stupid, I already said earlier that I do not hate you, and what do you have in you that would make me grieve? So what else is left?" she said cynically. Kaoru winced, not missing the sneer, and was stung by the harsh words coming out from Ganko. He realized that she was now speaking to him as if he was the real Kaoru, not Kondo.

Ganko pulled her blankets over her head. "So what if I liked you? Every girl does! I'm no exception, the only difference is that I'm the only one unlucky enough to live under the same roof as you and endure facing you every other lousy day, tolerating your infuriating indifference and at the same time pretending that all this didn't matter!"

There was silence. Kaoru was totally at a loss for words. He had never before thought, or bothered enough to notice, that Ganko actually felt this way towards him. He always did what he felt like doing, said what he felt like saying. Now, he realized, he wanted to care.

A hand reached out without thinking, to stroke her soft silky hair gently. Ganko lowered her blanket and glanced up at him, gazing straight into his charming eyes. Kaoru saw her shook her head violently, as if ridding herself of certain thoughts. The next thing, he immediately felt himself being pulled into a tight embrace.

"I'm sorry, Kondo," she said chokingly. "I'm sorry I was being so horrible just now. I… I really didn't mean to… I shouldn'tve mistaken you for him and taken it all out on you… none of this is your fault. It's just me…"

"Shh… it's okay," Kaoru said as soothingly as he could, stroking her head. Soon, her breaths turned from slightly ragged, into a deep rhythmical breathing, and Kaoru knew that she'd fallen asleep. But he was sure that, at least for him, it was ordained to be a fitful and restless night.

O+O+O+O+~ B R E A K ~+O+O+O+O

Ganko gradually awakened to the bright sunlight shining through the opened window right into her eyes. She sat up slowly and saw Kaoru beside her, fast asleep and snoring a little. She smiled, remembering that "Kondo" had been so nice and understanding last night. So, after giving him a soft peck on the forehead and gently tucking him in more comfortably, she jumped out of bed to get ready for school. She made her way down the hallway and down the stairs in her pajamas, towards the bathroom where she hurriedly brushed her teeth and washed-up. Then, about to climb the stairs, Ganko thought she saw something behind them. Something familiar. Perplexed, she walked around behind the stairs, and saw–

"Kondo?" Ganko bent down and picked up the motionless dummy on the floor.

This wasn't right, Kondo was supposed to be in her bedroom this very moment, snoring his head off!

Hm… could he have come down looking for her and accidentally dropped the Kata Kugutsu?

No, she frowned, looking around. The Kata Kugutsu was nowhere around to be found. Besides, it wasn't loosely tied, so it wouldn't have dropped so easily.

Which left the explanation of…

But… but it couldn't be, right?

Staring at the lifeless dummy in her hands and unable to convince herself, Ganko pursed up her lips in determination and marched upstairs. Closing the door to her room behind her, she walked up to her bed where "Kondo" was lying. For a while, she stood there, gazing at the little figure snuggled amongst the folds of her comforter. She still wasn't entirely sure… but she desperately hoped and hoped that her assumptions were dead wrong.

Or else.

Taking a deep breath, she leaned down close to his right ear and whispered in an oh-so gentle voice.

"Kaoru… Kaoru-chan, it's time to wake up…"

Any normal person in this half-asleep state would naturally respond only to their true names, and Morikawa Ganko's worst fears were verified when the sleepy miniature figure of Koganei Kaoru mumbled a muzzy "Um… ok…", sat up and started to rub his eyes cutely.

Koganei Kaoru finished rubbing his eyes and looked up, and immediately found himself facing the face of the real Kondo! Yelping, he jumped back against the wall and lifted his gaze to look at Ganko who had been holding up the doll.

"Do you have to scare me to death first thing in the morning?" he complained.

At that, Ganko's eyes widened. "I scared you to death?" she gave a strangled cry. "Is that what you have to say after this?" she held up the dummy roughly.

"Hey, you were the one who kidnapped me into your den in the first place!"

"I thought you were Kondo, you impersonating little Anki-creep!"

"Well, who's the Barbie-look-alike who made that fox-thing impersonate ME?"

"WHY YOU–!" Ganko stopped herself just in time, and tried to smother her rage. Beating up an under-aged termite isn't really something she'd be proud to admit she'd done. She turned her back on him swiftly and took a deep breath. Recalling what he had said earlier brought tears into her eyes, and they stung.

Those weren't exactly nice words, especially since she had let all and everything spill last night. It made her heart contort with pain and her mind swim with embarassment. She was as blank as a paper in front of him now. He knew everything! Biting her lip in anger at herself, she glanced at the clock, and realized that lousy as the day had started, she didn't really want to miss classes.

Kaoru's eyes opened wide as dinner plates as he stared in amazement and shock when Ganko, her back still facing him, started to pull off her clothes in front of him!

"Wh… what're you doing?" he stuttered. Ganko shot him a cold glance.

"If your commonsense has failed you, I'm changing," she replied cynically.

"Uh… but I…" with his tongue absolutely refusing to comply to his commands, Kaoru could only continue to stammer stupidly.

Ganko rolled her eyes coldly as she hooked on her bra. "Oh stop acting innocent Koganei," she flashed him a sardonically sweet smile. "Besides," she added, turning around abruptly and leaned down seductively at an angle so that Kaoru might get an interesting view of her. "I really haven't anything on me that you haven't seen already, have I?" she said. Kaoru gulped loudly, trying to swallow a lump in his throat. Then, letting out a self-mocking laugh, Ganko stood up and proceeded to put on her uniform.

"Ganko, that's not what I–" he began, but was cut off.

"I'm sure you've got your answers to whatever you came to find out, and I hope you're happy cause it really cost me a lot," she said with iciness enough to rival that of Tokiya's.

"Please, this isn't what I wanted…" he was surprised at the outright pleading tone in his voice.

"Well then what DO you want?" Ganko swirled around and snarled fiercely. Kaoru was totally taken aback by the whole new Ganko he was seeing in front of him.

"I've told you everything I thought about you, admitted that I had a crush on you, spilled all my feelings so now I'm as blank as a piece of dumb paper and hell, I even cried in front of you so now you'll know that I am such a weakling, not to mention all those free nude shows I performed in front of you! What more do you want? What more can I give?" Ganko bit her bottom lip hard to hold back the tears that were threatening to tumble pell-mell out of her clear blue eyes. She took another deep breath to soothe the heavy pain forming in her chest.

"Never mind," she muttered before slinging her bag onto her shoulders and left without another word.

Kaoru sat there for a long time, staring into space.

Why? Why had Ganko taken what he had said the way she did? This really really REALLY wasn't what he'd wanted. He'd never intended to make anyone sad, never planned to hurt anyone, especially her… It was all supposed to end with him admitting that he'd wrestled Kondo out of his madougu and have Ganko fix him back, and then everyone goes back to their normal daily lives and leave him to figure things out himself.

He needed to think. Something wasn't quite right about all this. Something was amiss… something he still couldn't quite put his finger on.

There was a missing link to why he had been finding himself behaving weirdly... and why was he having such a lot of worries all of a sudden, and why Ganko suddenly seemed… different to him.

There was an answer to all these why's. And he was determined to find it, one way or another, for his and Ganko's own good.

TO BE CONTINUED

Ok, all you guys who want to bash me for breaking my promise and not putting up Tofu can do it now. I'm SO sorry I broke my promise, I really am. It's just that after that last bit in the previous chapter, I had to follow up with the little Kaoru/Ganko episode first so I could get it out of the way before settling on full, hardcore Tofu stuff. But alas, what was MEANT to be a 'little' episode of the two, supposedly only taking up quarter of the length of a chapter I usually do (and leaving the rest for Tofu), to my horror ended up longer than ANY of my previous chapters, making it impossible to put in anything more! I had to include all those inner-thoughts and struggles or else it would all seem so lame and shallow. Unmeaningful. (is that even a word? Oh well!) As I said, for those readers who were really anticipating Tofu, I'm really sorry to disappoint you. And I promise, now that Kaoru/Ganko is out of the way (I had already planned earlier to leave this hanging until I get some Tofu stuff done) I have a FULLY planned Tofu episode coming up in the next chapter and I can assure you it's definitely going to be as good as, if not better, than this one. (And it'll probably take up about 2 chapters) So, be patient, and read and review this time round, k? please?