He was right. Aya said nothing and Yohji merely glowered, but Omi was FURIOUS.

"We were worried about you!" he announced when Ken slipped into the flower shop through the back entrance. "What happened? What were you thinking, staying behind in that building?"

Ken blinked at him, then glanced up to see Yohji's cool green eyes fixed on him and Aya's back presented to him. He smiled weakly at Omi. "I wasn't thinking," he confessed. "I'm so sorry, guys. I just . . . lost it, I guess." His face fell slightly. "Sister . . ."

Omi blinked and immediately switched to sympathy. "Oh, Ken-kun," he murmured. "I'm so sorry about that. I know you cared about her. She practically raised you, didn't she?"

Ken just stared at him quietly, not trusting himself to open his mouth. Yes, she'd practically raised him. Like Ruth had done for Farfarello. A mother figure, a symbol of incorruptible purity, proven false. "It . . . it doesn't matter," he told Omi quietly, looking away. "She was a Dark Beast, right? So it's good that she's dead. I . . ." He swallowed. "I'm going upstairs now."

"Ken-kun," Omi murmured faintly as Ken turned and ascended the steps to the second story.

He wasn't tired, so he didn't sleep. He'd gotten plenty of sleep at Farfarello's. Strange, he realized when he reflected on it. He'd been so tired, and so emotionally worn out, he'd practically fallen where he was thrown, but normally he couldn't stand to sleep in strange places. How weird was it to feel safe in the home of a murdering psychopath?

He remembered the sight of Farfarello cooking breakfast, and smiled. A murdering psychopath that made good miso.

He stripped off his mission clothes and pulled on civilian ones, then went downstairs. If he wasn't going to sleep, or mope, he might as well work, he decided. The others said nothing when he took his place beside them, caring for the flowers. Customers were few – it wasn't quite time for school to be out yet. He found it was easy to smile, easy to be cheerful, and it didn't stretch his face as it had been doing lately. He felt calm, strangely serene. He knew his teammates wondered at it.

The flood of schoolgirls came and went. He took orders, wrapped them, and handed them out contentedly.

"Ne, Ken-kun," one of the quieter girls, Mitsuki, murmured when she wound up standing next to him. "Did you find a girlfriend? You look so happy." She blushed furiously upon asking him that, but he offered her a grin and a pat on the shoulder.

"Iie. I don't know what it is," he said honestly. "But I just feel like I could climb mountains today." He gave her a single sprig of flowering bluebell, which he knew was her favorite, and she lit up like sunshine.

They closed the shop as the sun began to sink behind the buildings, and Ken helped clean up, finding satisfaction in the simplicity of working with his hands. He'd liked this cover job when they'd first begun it, for this satisfaction, but he'd been missing it lately. When he was done cleaning up, he returned to his room.

Ken wasn't half the hacker Omi was, but he knew how to use a computer to track down subjects he was interested in. Finding Yuriko wasn't necessarily hard – her passport had left a trail behind her, as had her request for citizenship of Australia and several purchases made in her name. And a marriage license. That bit of information gave him serious pause, but he decided it wouldn't hurt to call anyway, just to see how she was doing.

He found her phone number and dialed it, refusing to think what Omi would say when he got the phone bill. The accented English was difficult to understand, at first, and a male answered.

"Yuriko," he said as clearly as possible, and there was a shuffle as the phone was handed over.

"Hello?"

Ken's knees went weak. It was her voice, definitely, and so full of cheer it made him tongue-tied. He pressed on. "Yuriko-san," he said quietly. "Ken desu."

There was heavy silence for a moment, then, " . . .Ken? Is it really Ken?" She sounded close to tears.

"It really is," he assured her, feeling tears threaten himself. "I just wanted to call you, Yuriko, to make sure… to make sure you're happy, and that your dream was everything you'd hoped."

"It is," she told him. "It's wonderful here. I love this country, the people, the roads. Why didn't you come with me, Ken? You would have been so happy. This beautiful place would have taken that weight out of your eyes."

"I can't really explain it to you," Ken told her. "I had people who I have to take care of and protect, and I can't leave them. I'm sorry, Yuriko. I wanted to go with you. I wanted that… more than anything," he finished in a whisper.

"I met someone," she told him, also in a whisper. "He's not as perfect as Ken-kun, but you can't always have perfection, right? We're getting married next month. Did you find anyone? Anyone at all? Please tell me you have. I hate to think of you being lonely and unhappy like you were when I met you."

"Not yet," he told her wryly. "There won't ever be anyone as perfect as Yuriko."

"That doesn't matter," she told him with sudden ferocity. "You wallow too much. Don't let your sad feelings overtake you. Be happy, all right? Search until you find it and don't give up."

"Thank you, Yuriko-chan," he murmured, deeply touched. "I'll do that. Please be happy too, all right? I hope he loves you and takes good care of you."

"He will," Yuriko told him, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "You find someone like that too. You need taking care of sometimes. Find someone who cooks that miso you like so much," she teased mildly.

Ken froze, feeling like a ten-ton weight had just dropped onto his head.

"Ken? Ken-kun? Are you still there? Is it a bad connection?"

"No!" he blurted out. "I'm still here. Sumimasen… but I do have to go. Thank you for …" he paused. "For not hating me. And for wanting good things for me."

"Thank you for calling," she said shakily. "I was afraid for you. But now I know you'll be all right. Take care, Ken," she whispered.

"Take care, Yuriko."

He hung up first, and the phone was as heavy as lead.

For a long moment, he sat with his back against the desk and his knees drawn up to his chest. She'd found someone. She was happy. He didn't belong in her life anymore, but somehow that blow was softened by knowing that she was not alone. Of course, he still was, and nothing would change that anytime soon. Who could understand his lifestyle? Who would be able to look at him with his claws out and stained with blood and not be afraid?

Find someone who makes that miso you like so much, Yuriko had told him, and once again the vision flashed of Farfarello in civilian clothes, swaying slightly in front of a stove, making miso. The train of thought that connected those events was bizarre and he wasn't sure he wanted to be thinking it. He let his head fall back against the desk with a slight thump, and took a deep breath.

So. That was it, then. He couldn't go to Australia. Yuriko had someone else. But he was glad she was happy, he told himself fiercely. He was very glad. Better for her to have someone without so much blood on his hands. Suddenly, his apartment seemed far too small. With a sigh, he pulled his jacket on and found his wallet.

His motorcycle was waiting quietly for him when he got down to the garage. So was Aya.

"Where are you going?" He demanded. "You've been disappearing a lot. It's suspicious."

"To the book store," Ken told him, frowning. "Why? Do we have a mission?"

"No," Aya told him, advancing until he stood only a foot away. "You've been strange lately. Everyone's noticed. If something's wrong, you had better tell us. We can't afford the way you've been acting on missions lately. You'll get yourself, or one of us, killed."

"I'm not like you," Ken told him, angry suddenly. "I can't have one thing in the world that I focus all my attention on that keeps me from losing it. I don't have an Aya-chan, or an Asuka, or even an Ouka. Everyone I loved, I killed. With my own hands. Don't lecture me. I won't stand for it," he told Aya darkly. "I'm not a child who needs to be scolded."

"If you're slipping, you should be taken off active duty. I won't let you risk our lives," Aya said stonily.

Ken swallowed, then turned on his heel and climbed onto his bike. The roar of the engine drowned out whatever else Aya might have said, and then he kicked the stand up and sped out of the garage, leaving the redhead alone. He drove for twenty minutes before he could unclench his hands on the handlebars, and before he remembered that he'd been going to the bookstore. Turning, he changed course for the nearest one and dodged traffic, pulling up in front of it and hanging his helmet on the seat as he stared through the glass front.

Light. Warmth. Serenity. He didn't often frequent book shops. Reading was not one of his favorite hobbies. There was a small coffee shop within, and a young man with a guitar was sitting quietly in a chair, strumming. He could hear laughter. He went inside.

At first he didn't know what he was looking for, but after browsing idly for a while, in wonderment that there were so many books in the world, he wandered into the literature section and froze.

The book sat innocuously with several others of its kind, abridged versions meant to be easy for students to write book reports about. Cliff-notes versions. He reached for it, innocent in its yellow and blue striped cover. It felt surprisingly light. Before he could change his mind, he tucked it under his arm and stepped hurriedly away from the shelf.

He thought a moment, then turned on his heel. Might as well be damned for a sheep as a lamb, he thought ruefully as he circled toward the religious section. But the display in front of him brought him to a halt. There were so MANY. How could he choose? He studied the covers until he found one that said "New International Version, the Scriptures in plain words". Yeah, that sounded about right. He picked that one up too, and browsed that section a little idly, feeling the weight and stiffness of those books against his chest. One author predominated, but his books were all in English. Ken could read English, but with difficulty. None the less, his hand found one of the paperback tomes seemingly all on its own.

"The Problem of Pain," he murmured. "Or, If God Loves Me, Why Can't I Get My Locker Open?" He flipped it over and struggled to translate some of the script on the back. It didn't interest him particularly much, but what he saw struck a certain cord. He'd added it to his pile before he even thought about it.

Abruptly, he realized places like this were dangerous, and took himself to the counter with due haste.

He slid the books into the compartment under his seat and resisted the lure of the coffee shop, driven by something, he knew not what, to get home and crack open a cover. He was curious, very curious, and it was a kind of curiosity that would not simply curl up and go away, he could tell.

He had a lot of reading ahead of him. He was a bit surprised when the prospect was not entirely unpleasant.

X-X-X

"I'm worried about Ken-kun."

"We're all worried about him," Yohji told Omi negligently, drawling around his cigarette. "What is it now?"

"I was looking through his records," Omi said sheepishly. "Don't LOOK at me that way, Yotan, he's been acting strange lately, hasn't he? I just thought maybe there'd be something that would tell me what's bothering him. There isn't much of anything save this." He tapped the screen. "He made a purchase at a book store two days go."

"Well, he's not a big reader," Yohji said, sauntering up behind Omi curiously. Omi knew that tone, and was relieved – Yohji had spotted an incongruence and was intrigued. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. He could have just picked up something he was interested in. It isn't a crime to buy books."

"I know," Omi told him solemnly, mouse clicking. "But look at what he bought. A Bible, something called The Problem of Pain by a Christian theologian named C.S. Lewis, and Dante's Inferno."

"That nun was someone he cared about," Yohji pointed out. "Maybe he's having a crisis of faith."

"Have you ever noticed Ken to be particularly religious? There's something else," Omi said, switching windows and pulling up what looked like a poem. "This is an e-book, a transcript of the Divine Comedy. It's in English, but you'll recognize this – take a look." He clicked in the search box and typed in a name. Yohji's eyes widened, then narrowed suddenly as the text changed and popped up, that word highlighted in yellow several times in the passage.

"Just the Bible wouldn't bother me," Omi said quietly. "But this, in conjunction with it, and that book about pain…"

"I see your point," Yohji said quietly. He drew in a smoke-laden breath and exhaled through his nose. "It's creepy, especially considering…."

Omi blinked up at him. "Considering?"

"Remember Ruth?" Yohji asked quietly. "She raised him, then it turned out she'd lied to him, and he killed her. Just like the Sister raised Ken, lied to him. . ."

"And he killed her," Omi finished in a hushed voice. "I hadn't thought of that. But Farfarello's dead, isn't he? The rest of Schwarz survived – we got a report on it, but he went down with the temple."

"I don't know," Yohji said honestly, fixing solemn jade eyes on Omi. "But that guy was more than just a man. They were right to call him Berserker. I have a hard time believing he could just drown like that. Too much symbolism, and symbols don't die easily."

"What should we do?" Omi wondered, staring blankly at his computer screen.

"Watch Ken," Yohji said with a sigh, "and drop Kritiker a hint to maybe look a little harder for Farfarello, just in case."

"He kills without remorse or hesitation," Omi said slowly. "He enjoys it. And his style is sort of hard to miss. If he was still alive, wouldn't we have heard something about it? Suspicious deaths?"

"Not if he hid the bodies," Yohji said darkly, turning away and heading for the stairs. "People disappear in Tokyo all the time."

Omi didn't like the implications of that statement. He bent over his computer and opened an e-mail window. Alerting Kritiker was a good idea. But, he thought, perhaps he ought to do a little searching himself. He didn't know what Yohji thought Ken was up to, why the man would be involved in any way with Farfarello, of all people. But Yohji still had a detective's instincts and Omi trusted them, for the most part. And Ken had been acting strange lately. Almost as if . . . almost as if . . . he was enjoying the missions.

No. No. That wasn't like Ken. Omi shook the thoughts away and began composing the letter. Something else might be up, but Ken wouldn't crack. Besides, hadn't he seemed happier today, more at ease? Though it was strange that he'd feel that way after the death of the Sister. If anything, he should have been grieving.

That was it, Omi realized suddenly. Ken wasn't grieving. The Ken who'd come home to them a few days ago after the collapse of the church was not the same Ken they'd been forced to leave inside the building. He'd been cheerful and serene since then, no grieving at all. So was he stuffing it?

Omi didn't like it, either way. Whatever's going on, Ken-kun, he vowed silently as his fingers danced over the keys, We won't let you self-destruct. We'll protect you, even from yourself.

He clicked 'send' and hoped he was doing the right thing.

X-X-X