"Ronin, what happened to you! Tell me what happened!"

"Leigh, even if I took the time to explain, you wouldn't understand," Ronin calmly insisted. There was no way he could spill his guts to another person.

"Don't you owe me something, Ronin? How about an explanation?"

Well, Leigh was persistent, he'd give her that. Though she was apparently also pretty ignorant, considering she hadn't noticed his sword's sheath sitting at the edge of the bed.

"Fine! If you're not going to tell me exactly how you got those wounds, tell me what you were really doing around here!"

Leigh screaming made Ronin want to scream right back at her. Fortunately, he was able to keep his voice level. "What the hell do you mean?"

"Why are you here really! That's what I want to know! You can't honestly be looking for that girl! So why—"

"That part was true, Leigh."

"Don't lie to me, Ronin!" Oh God. Her eyes were wavering. That threatened either tears or a slap across the face.

Sighing, Ronin took her hand. "Leigh, look at me. I'm not lying, I swear. Toklata is in an awful situation, and it's all my fault."

Leigh blushed and pulled her hand away sharply. "Don't try to charm me! If it was true, you'd have a story to tell me!"

"Leigh, I do have a story. But if I took the time to tell you, at the end you'd either think I was crazy or you'd be running from me."

"You don't sound crazy, and I don't scare easily," she insisted. "Ronin…"

Suddenly there was the soft sound of a service bell from somewhere downstairs. Leigh looked a little surprised at the sound of a customer, but had no choice but to answer it. She mumbled something foul under her breath and left the room to a smirking Ronin.

This time, he had the good sense to lock the door, with only a slight pang of guilt. After all, Leigh was letting him stay here, in her home, at no cost (of course, after their recent conversation, he felt his sleeping place was no longer guaranteed). He looked over the small room with slight interest, before his sharp ears registered a light giggling sound.

Curious, he unlocked the door and lightly padded out, towards the noise. It was coming from Leigh's room. He could hear her voice and several other voices drifting up from downstairs as he quietly opened the door to her room.

In the corner there was a smallish nightlight, and set against the wall was a single bed, with a lump in the covers.

"Ee?"

Ronin raised an eyebrow at the speaking lump, lifting up the covers to find a boy, maybe two years old, looking up at him with round brown eyes.

"Not Ee. Mean doggie."

"You mean a wolf?"

"Woof."

"Yeah, I get that a lot." Ronin lifted him up so they were eye level. "You got a name?"

"Kam," he said matter-of-factly.

"Yeah? I've got one too. Ronin."

"Woof."

"No. Ronin. Ro-nin." He scowled at the boy, but put him back on the bed when he heard Leigh's feet tromping up the stairs.

She first went to Ronin's room, peeked in, turned around, went into her own room, and nearly bit Ronin's head off upon finding him there.

"What do you think you're doing!"

Ronin backed away from her (slowly). "I heard a noise and I thought I should—"

"What made you think we're that close, huh! You can't just roam around people's houses half an hour after you've met them!"

Now pinned against a wall by Leigh, he closed his eyes and sighed. "Alright. Sorry. But if you thought I was a murderer or something, you wouldn't have let me into your house, now would you have?" How funny. She could call him that, had she noticed the—

"Well…hey…what's this?"

Too late. She grabbed for the sheath sticking out of his belt. He kind of stumbled out of her reach, but the conversation certainly wouldn't end there. (Kam watched from the bed in amusement.)

"Well!" she demanded, clicking a heel on the ground. "What is it!"

"You really want to know, Leigh?" This certainly was tiring. Konosuke had stolen his sword anyway. What harm could showing her an empty sheath do?

She nodded fiercely, her hair bobbing with her head, and Ronin pulled the scabbard out from his belt, handing it to her.

Leigh looked slightly surprised, but regained her dignity soon enough and began to look it over. "What…what is this thing, Ronin?" She smiled tensely and gave a nervous laugh. "It almost looks like a…"

"It's a sheath," the vampire replied calmly. "For a sword—a katana, really. Okay? And no, I'm not going to give you the tear-jerking story that goes with it, so don't even bother asking."

Leigh looked a little shocked, and was about to send him back to his own room, or kick him out of the house completely, when Kam laughed.

"Woof!"

"He your son?" Ronin asked. His voice was its usual rough tone, but his eyes seemed to soften.

Just the opposite, this sparked quite a reaction from Leigh. "He's my nephew! My sister passed away! Do I look like the kind of woman who would be a single mother! And at this age!"

Honestly, Leigh was plenty old enough to be the boy's mother (mid to late twenties, Ronin guessed), and he didn't think single mother looked like anything in particular. He didn't say this to Leigh though.

"Hey, don't come down on me, woman! After all, I'm from a time when it was normal to have a family by your late teens."

"E-excuse me?" Leigh stuttered.

After realizing exactly what he had said, Ronin groaned right out loud and took himself back to his room. Leigh tried to follow after him, but he again managed to slam the door in her face and lock it before she could get to the doorknob.

--

"Hey, you gonna sleep all day!"

"Geh…Stop doing that!"

Konosuke looked both surprised and amused at Toklata's sleepy outburst, and even more amused at her awful bed-head.

"Do you need a comb?"

Toklata couldn't tell if he was really offering, or if he was just mocking the way her hair liked to stand up in the morning, so she kept quiet.

"No? All right, then." He took a more serious tone. "I've got things to do today, so just keep yourself occupied for a while. I don't care what you do. No scheming, though, got it? "

He didn't seem to have any intention of mentioning the night before, and Toklata preferred it that way. Bringing it up again might just remind him what a good idea killing her actually was.

He left the room soon after, blowing off her reply, as usual. Blowing a stay lock of hair out of her face, she decided exactly how she would spend her day.

Toklata first snuck into Konosuke's room and stole a shirt from the wooden dresser she had noticed the night before. She took off the clothes she was wearing and put the slightly ragged shirt on. It went down to just above her knees, but that worked just perfectly.

She threw the clothes that she had been wearing for several days now into the washing machine, glad to be rid of them, then pranced into the oceanic looking bathroom, locking the door behind her.

She stepped into the shower, turning the hot water on full blast and carefully washing all of the new cuts and scrapes she had acquired over the past week, thinking how good it felt after working in that dirt the day before and then sleeping like that. In fact, she used every kind of soap she could get her hands on.

She cleaned her hair, too. It was naturally thick and uneven, so a few days without a good brushing left it a tangled mess. After shampooing and stepping out of the small shower, she dried it partially with a towel and brushed it in front of a mirror with a comb she found lying by the sink (a very tedious job).

The wash was done, so the (now much less grumpy and sore) girl shoved the clothes into the dryer and went again to Konosuke's bookshelf, this time taking out one of the vampire books to see how accurate it was. She plopped herself down on the couch and attempted to read, but most of the words were at least seven letters too large for her to understand (or pronounce). Her laundry was dry within a half hour, so she changed back into it and just ended up napping until Konosuke came inside from whatever he had been doing.

"You look like you're having so much fun."

Feeling refreshed, Toklata just smiled and rubbed her eyes a bit. "I'm hungry, Mister Konosuke. Can you cook?"

He considered her mood for a moment, perhaps thinking she was up to something, but replied, "No. I can't. Not worth shit, anyway. Can you?"

"No sir, not without blowing something up."

"Damn. Canned soup again."

--

"I really think you should call a doctor, Ronin!"

"And I said I don't need help! Leave me be!"

Ronin hadn't anticipated that Leigh would continue her argument with him, even with a shop top run and a locked door in between them.

"Ronin!"

"I'd be fine if you'd let me get some sleep!"

"Ronin, you're a stubborn, proud asshole, you know that!"

"I do!"

Leigh pounded her fists on the door, and Ronin simply listened with tired amusement. They said redheads were supposed to have such firey tempers, but that was such a cliché, that Ronin had never really paid attention to it. He'd met plenty of cool-headed-red-heads.

But Leigh…she lived up to the stereotype quite well. She sounded as if she might just break the door down and attempt to strangle him.

It was going to be a long, sleepless day.

"How old are you, Ronin! With a face like yours you can't be a day over thirty-five!"

That could have been considered a compliment. Maybe Leigh wasn't that bad after all.