Sorry for the super-long wait! I've been having some trouble with of late, and I just lost a good friend through suicide. I've got finals this week, but to make up for it, I'm going to put four chapters up! Really! If cooperates, that is…

Really, I know who Shiori is. I do. I just like calling her Kaasan! Someone emailed me about it. Just to clear that up…

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize, I don't own. There. I said it. Can I have my cookie now, Kurama-sama?

Kurama: Of course not. You're a bad kitty.

UK: pouts Puh-wease?

Kurama: No.

Chapter 4: Sammy's Pizza

Bridget

I announced my return to Kaasan, and then descended into my new room again. It was bare and plain, but I rather liked it so far. I rifled through my backpack and pulled out my journal in hopes of placing exactly my thoughts on the people I'd met so far on the page before seeing them again for dinner.

Instead, this is what I wrote:

When Keiko and I were younger, we'd always wanted to go to Keiko's father's native land of Japan. He gave us pictures and trinkets, but we always hungered for more. I was intrigued by this nation that was comprised entirely of short people (I was seven!). These people who wore pretty things to celebrate a child's health and the fact that two stars came together once a year.

I wanted to know more, I needed to know more. I wanted to taste sushi and okonomiyaki, wear a kimono for the summer matsuri, and watch the cherry blossoms float down from the trees. Keiko wanted to go there for different reasons.

She wanted to learn. She always wanted to learn, and Kansas's schools liked students who sat in their chairs and stared dumbly at their teacher as they repeated information from the year before. Keiko and I both wanted it, to an extent, but I was more interested in the people than the schools.

It's rather sad that Keiko lost herself in learning so much that she went and did…what she did.

So here I was, finally in Japan, ready to learn about the people.

But Keiko wasn't here.

She was dead.

And I guess, even though I lived on, I was dead, too. I was living what Keiko wanted, and what I wanted, too. Living two lives at once, with a dead heart. Death is such a fickle thing. You dance around its edges and still you can't see in until you're there. I guess that's why I didn't follow Keiko to my own real death. My heart had stopped beating, but I was still walking.

I stopped writing about there and set down my black BIC pen. Slowly, I closed my journal and set it back inside my bag with I hoped was a practiced ease. I hoped he didn't think that it was a journal. Just something I was writing, nothing more. I hadn't even told my adoptive mother that Keiko was dead.

My adoptive mother had always been, if anything, oblivious to the world.

I, however, was not.

"Hi, Shuichi," I said. "Did you find Hiei all right?"

"Yes." I could hear the surprise in his voice, though he tried to mask it. "I did. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"It's all right." Even in my own ears, it sounded rushed. "So, what time are we meeting the others for supper?"

"Six o'clock. It gives Yusuke ample time to find and protect Yukina from Kuwabara."

"I think I don't want to ask."

"That would be wise."

I laughed to myself and heard a small chuckle come from the quiet Shuichi. The little girl had been correct about my new "brother". He was quiet, but very, very nice.

"So, tell me more about the school we are to attend," I said, offering him a seat by me on my bed. "They tried to tell me more about it, but I snoozed through most of it."

"You sound more and more like Yusuke," he chuckled.

"Don't compare me to the loser," I said, laughing, too.

"Meikou is a prestigious high school, fairly new to Tokyo. They opened to entering freshmen in 1999, and this year they will have their first senior class from that year. They have a very interesting curriculum, which includes at least one mode of self-defense during the second semester of freshman year. That is why I chose it."

"Why?"

"I know several forms of martial arts, though many of them I have not practiced in quite some time. It's an opportunity to improve."

I chuckled. He sounded like Keiko. "All I wanted was to come to Japan. This was the only program that paid for itself."

"They obviously saw something in you that they wanted, or they wouldn't have picked you." It sounded a bit forced. I could tell Shuichi didn't trust me.

Our conversation about Meikou continued for a long time. I found out more about Shuichi as time went by. Like he had an entire group of girls who called themselves his "fan club" and followed him around at Meio. And how he and Yusuke had met when Kaasan was really sick. I couldn't believe that Kaasan had been on the brink of death not a year ago. She seemed to be in perfect health now.

When at last we stopped talking about it, it was not by choice. Kaasan had informed us that it was five thirty. It would take twenty minutes to get to Sammy's.

I was getting used to getting on the trolley without much difficulty by now. However, I still had some trouble with the bullet trains. Not because getting on one was very difficult, mind, but the maps are the things. They're written in all Japanese, hiragana. I had more experience with katakana and romanji, though I knew I would have to switch to hiragana once school started. To a foreigner, those things are darn near impossible to make out. Luckily for me, Shuichi knew where we were going.

Sammy's turned out to be a restaurant that an American family from New York had opened two years ago. The sign was written in regular vertical, but in katakana. Most people wouldn't know how to say "Sammy" in kanji.

I don't think there is such a thing.

The restaurant had a homey sort of atmosphere, with soft lights and dark red seats. I spotted the familiar arcade faces at the two largest tables near the back of the restaurant, the ugly Elvis (Kuwabara), Yusuke, and Keiko. Botan was nowhere in sight.

Unnecessarily, the Elvis decided to wave us over, shouting both our names clear across the restaurant. The other two or three people there stared at us. Needless to say, I hit Kuwabara over the head the minute I was near enough.

"Hey! What was that for!"

"For being an idiot," I said bluntly.

"I like this girl," said an older woman with long brown hair. "I'm Atsuko Urameshi."

"Bridget Wolf," I smiled. "Call me Bri."

The others introduced themselves as Yukina (a lovely girl with mint green hair and a shy smile), Shizuru (Kuwabara's significantly better-looking sister), Genki (an elderly woman with a glare that could incinerate an iceberg), Hinageshi (a spritely younger girl with hair a bit redder than Shuichi's), and Hiei (a really short guy with defying-gravity black hair and red eyes. He wore a white bandana). With them, Yusuke, Kuwabara, Shuichi, Kaasan, Atsuko, and me, we took up two tables. The waitress looked pleased as she made her way toward us.

And spoke in perfect English.

"Hi, what can I get for you?"

"Can we have a moment to decide?" I asked, and then switched back to Japanese. "Um, Keiko, exactly how many people here actually understand English?"

"You, me, and Shuichi," she said, blushing. "I usually order for everyone, but you know what you're doing…"

"Okay. Yusuke's paying the bill, so what does everyone want?"

We ended up getting two cheese pizzas, two veggie pizzas, one supreme pizza with octopus ink (a Japanese addition), and an unlimited breadstick deal. Yusuke had to shell out about seventy dollars, according to Shuichi (I still hadn't figured out yen). Since I'd arrived, I'd never felt more at home than right then and there.

Talk soon turned to separate people. I spoke with Keiko, mostly, about what we did for fun. When I told her I liked American Rock, she kind of gave me a funny look before admitting that she liked older German and British rock n' roll.

"Hey, why don't we go shopping tomorrow?" she suggested. "I can take you to get your school uniform and supplies."

"That'd be great!" I grinned. "Uniforms sound pretty nice, to tell the truth. I mean, set them out the night before, put them on, eat breakfast and go, right? Not even twenty minutes, tops. Unless you take a shower, then it's thirty. I used to have to wake up an hour early because I had to root through my closet for something to wear, even as simple as my clothes always are."

"I've been wearing them since I was a junior high freshman," Keiko said. "It never bothered me at all. Of course, Yusuke never wore the uniform. He always was getting into trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" I asked, glancing at the scarfing hog. "Like forgetting his homework kind or getting into fights kind?"

"Fighting," she said quietly. "Especially with Kuwabara. They're always fighting."

"I've noticed," I said dryly. She laughed. "So, when did they become friends like that? I mean, when you fist fight all the time, it's kind of hard to discover something about someone, right?"

I sort of knew what I was talking about. Keiko S. and I used to be all "battle of the brains" and we never actually got to know each other until later. I sort of drifted away from that battle in favor of other types, though. Battling against myself was sort of more important.

"Well…it kind of started out when Yusuke helped Kuwabara out against another guy who was holding a hostage."

"Hostage?" Whoa, this was good.

"Well…it was a cat."

"Hey, cats are cool!" I said, scowling. "My nickname's Neko, ya know!"

"Oh, oh, sorry," she grimaced. "Well, Yusuke helped him out of that scrape then Kuwabara helped him out of another…Slowly, they became friends. I was kind of absent for the majority of it."

"Oh. Well, that's okay. They're friends now, even though they still kind of…fight…all the time." The two idiots hadn't heard a word. They were currently fighting over who would get the last slice of cheese pizza.

"Yeah." Keiko sighed.

I stealthily reached out and grabbed the last slice. By the time they realized it was gone, I'd already eaten it. Both stared at the platter, dumbfounded. Keiko and I giggled, but neither boy really connected it to what had happened to their pizza.

Boys.

Kurama

"What do you think of her, Hiei?" I came to a stop beneath one of his favorite trees. I knew he was there, even though he still hadn't spoken. Patiently, I waited for his response.

"Odd."

That's all he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Hidden. Secretive. Just odd."

"You're describing yourself, Hiei," I chuckled softly.

"Then we had best be on alert. She's hiding something."

"But what?"

"Hn."

That would be an "I don't know" in Hiei-ish. I sighed and walked back toward the station to get home. If my mother found me gone, she would wonder.

"Watch her carefully, fox."

And then Hiei was gone.

Come on, cue the eye-roll. Who knows boys are just that stupid to not figure out that Bri had taken the pizza? (Sorry to any guys who are reading this, I'm on a girl-power trip right now.) Now we've got a pretty good idea on who Bri is, how Kurama feels about her (mistrusting), and the others have all met her (save Koenma. That will be fixed soon enough).

So…what does everyone think?

Okay, to whoever asked about why Kurama didn't trust Bri… Even though she's really nice, she's very secretive-like, right? It's like she's covering something up, and she is. And Kurama always seems to know when something's wrong. He just kind of jumped to the wrong conclusion, is all. He has done that before…I think…I know he did it once, I just can't remember when. Gomen ne!