A/N: This chapter is just some wild speculation on my part, since I am in no way CLAMP, or come near to their story telling genius! This is the day after chapter one, and Doumeki is reminescing, or something like that.

Also someone pleaseclear this up for me. Watanuki is his last name right? Because they always place Kimihiro at the front and with that whole Meiji-westernization thing, Japanese people now place given names before and family names after. Plus the fortune teller lady had said Watanuki's mother had given him(Kimihiro) this name. This also goes for Domeki right? His first name is Shizuka, right? Because Watanuki doesn't add honorifics when he calls him Domeki. I would really appreciate an answer to my stupid question.

At some point in time, I don't know when, but Watanuki had been given the title of "One of the Seven Wonders" of Cross Private.

At the time, I didn't understand what they were alluding to. I had known of Watanuki as just a fellow classmate, who was a good athlete, whose cooking skills were exceptional from the average high-schooler as noticed by our Home Economics teacher, and who had, as everyone in his vicinity put it, a serious, one-sided crush on Kunogi of class 2A.

Those were the things I knew about Watanuki, and from that, it was still baffling to me, why everyone called him a wonder. To me, he seemed pretty commonplace, if a little mental, when it came to Kunogi and the way he fawned over her and shrieked at me anytime I had any business with her.

To me he was just a guy with a crush, albeit an obsessive crush. I guess there was nothing unusual about that, nothing that warranted the nickname and some people's avoidance of him.

I was starting to think that the kids at my school were just making an excuse to ostracize Watanuki.

That was, until the day I was coming back from archery practice, and I ran across him in the middle of the road, screaming and flailing about. Even at one point, flat on his stomach on the ground, looking for all the world like something was crushing him. I hadn't come from behind the corner to help him, because quite frankly, his behavior disturbed me. No one else had been in the area at that time; it had just been me and a thrashing Watanuki, rolling on the ground and squealing like he was on fire.

I'd left with that image in my head, and that night, in my bedroom my mind kept going back to the sight of Watanuki. There was something so distressing in the way Watanuki had appeared, something that kept me from dropping the subject and just going along with the whole school in calling him a nutbar.

There had to be a reason for his behavior…well other than him being a psychopath. So the next day, when I'd come back from school and was having dinner with my grandfather, out of the blue, I'd asked him what he thought would make someone lie on his stomach in the middle of the road and scream.

My grandfather stopped eating, put his chopsticks down, and then asked me what brought this question on. I shrugged my shoulders.

He didn't ask anymore questions, just told me it was…maybe due to stress, mental breakdowns were common among high school students sadly, especially during exams. He asked me if he wasn't being too presumptuous to assume that this was someone from my school. I nodded my head.

"Do you know this student?"

"Sort of."

"Then what do you think? Do you believe it is a mental breakdown?"

I didn't have much proof to say otherwise, but there was this feeling in my gut that told me that wasn't the case here. I thought Watanuki was kind of loopy, on account of his behavior toward me--he pitched one hell of a fit any time I walked into a room, made snide comments behind my back, and tried to trip me during soccer matches--but that was loopy and not plain out penitentiary-insane.

"No." There was this feeling, when I watched Watanuki roll around on the ground and screaming obscenities, that he wasn't alone. Like there was something else there with him. I don't know why I felt this way but…

I groped for the words to explain this to my grandfather without sounding like a complete nutbar myself. "I thought…maybe he was being…" possessed. Manipulated by the ghosts my grandfather always talked about in his spare time. Grandfather had always said there was a world outside of this one, where unfathomable creatures lay in waiting, watching us and bidding their time until they could use the darkness within our hearts to attack. I believed those stories because they had come from my Grandfather, because I knew he was a kind and honest man, and that I was only a child, alive for so short a time compared to him, and that I'd never seen everything in this world worth seeing.

"Possessed?"

My Grandfather closed his eyes. "Is that what you think? It could be something else, something more ordinary…"

Grandfather might be a monk, but he was also a man, a man who wasn't too caught up in the spiritual world where he couldn't see the real world as well. I respected him for that.

"What is this boy's name?"

"Kimihiro Watanuki." My grandfather had served many people in the community; I hoped he would know something about them too.

"Watanuki!" I guess he did know. I'd never seen a name startle my Grandfather.

"Doumeki, how do you know this boy?" He sounded a bit worried. What was going on?

"In school, he's not in any of my classes really, but we see each other sometimes." I replied easily, and my Grandfather had fastened his black eyes on me.

"That boy…there is a horrible curse that follows that family. A while ago, I…had been called upon for an exorcism, nothing that a priest like myself couldn't handle, it was quite easy, and probably the easiest one I'd ever done. The couple that had hired me was very nice, kind, and I was invited to stay for dinner. They had a little boy, just as kind as his parents. I'd had dinner with them," There was now a small smile on my Grandfather's face, "It was the best meal I'd ever had, more sufficient in payment than if all the gold in the world had been dumped in my lap." The smile vanished. "I was quite proud of that exorcism, but imagine my shock when the very next day I was called upon again by the same family. The Spirits, they had come back, but instead of the simple haunting they had done previous, they were now centering themselves in a specific room."

Grandfather took a breath, and I couldn't help but hold my breath in return.

"The room of the child. They were relentless, so fierce and bloodthirsty. It was having no doubt an effect on the child, he was getting weaker and sicker by the day, and it was unbearable to carry out vigils and witness those kind people suffer so much."

He shook his head with a sigh. "I have never run across such an intense aura in all my life. I could do nothing, but watch, and wait for them to leave. Maybe a month after, when the boy was still recuperating, his parents, both of them, out of nowhere, had contracted sickness and…died."

Watanuki didn't have parents?

"To have died so young and to have left such a young boy to fend for himself. It was painful to have to conduct the funeral. I will never forget that day, all rainy skies and mourning in the air. I remember the child very well. He had not cried. Possibly because he had shed so many tears already. I remember watching him sit perfectly still, and watching the caskets solemnly."

He took another large steadying breath, "I had my eyes on him for the entire reception, and so it wasn't by accident that I saw something."

Something?

"Ghosts. Things that looked human…and things that did not resemble human form anymore. They were right behind him, circling him, making a mockery of the processions. The sad part about it…the truly heartbreaking thing was that he knew…that boy knew they were there and he didn't say anything. He just trembled and kept quiet."

Watanuki.

"I approached the family that had took him in, but they didn't want anything to do with me. They thought what I did was foolish. I do not blame them for wanting me to not bother the boy, he had gone through so much, so I had left."

I watched my Grandfather now, as he's lost in his past, and maybe his regrets that he could not help Watanuki. I want to help; I want to do something…for my Grandfather, and for Watanuki.

I didn't say anything; I didn't have anything to say. What could I have said to that? Nothing, so I had left the dinner table when I was finished, and tried to fall asleep without much success.

It was probably a week after that Watanuki approached me with a request to use my home as the site for the telling of A Hundred Ghost Stories. And then from there it all went downhill.

It's now, after months of talking and witnessing his pain that I finally and truly understand the meaning behind the title Watanuki has been given. Now I think the title "One of the Seven Wonders" isn't enough to describe how utterly amazing he is. How strong and spirited he is. What confuses me now though, is the fact that he's just one of the seven wonders and not all of them. There's nothing as interesting as him in school, and there will never be anything that could be more surprising.

He's the only person in the world that can keep you constantly on your toes, without pulling a gun on you.

Like now for instance:

"What the hell do you mean there's rumors?" He flails to the left, shimmies to the right, and then flails some more.

"Bastard!" He points at me. "What have you done?"

I shrug and he spazzes out like he's having a seizure.

To defend myself, I didn't know the rumor would spread…this fast. Yesterday hadn't been one of my best days; if anything it had been my worse. I'd practically just lost it, but I had good reasons. Very good reasons. That reason was now standing in front of me and cursing me out.

"Ho, ho. Look fighting like a married couple this early in the morning. Man you guys have got it bad." I recognized the boy from my class who just said this, and Watanuki, zooming in on him like a missile, threw one hand out and stopped him from going any further.

"What did you just say? I must not have heard you…because," Watanuki put his hand to his ear, insisting that this boy couldn't have possibly said what he thought he heard, "…you wouldn't say something like that." He grabbed the boy by the lapels of his uniform and then began to shake him like a rag doll. "It's not true! It's not true!"

There was a crowd, now gathering around the spectacle of Watanuki assaulting his fellow classmate. He was trying desperately to convince this boy, and the steadily growing crowd, that he in no way had anything to do with me, and that these rumors were just that, rumors.

Watanuki, when he saw that the boy wasn't paying attention to his shouts anymore, so much as clutching his stomach and looking like he wanted to hurl, Watanuki flung him without any disregard to the side.

He turned to the crowd. "This is all some big misunderstanding."

I can't blame him for being this way. It's just how he is. His need to please people and look a certain way in their eyes, it was intrinsic to his personality. It was the very reason why he had survived all these long hard years, hiding his secrets, never giving in for a second and blabbing to everyone. He was the kind of person that didn't see this as a right to brag that he was special, no; he just wanted to be normal. Wanted normal things, wanted a normal life.

I respect him for that.

"And you," He was now pointing at me, "Get that stupid look off your face!" He threw his arms up in the air, "But I know that's not possible. You'd have to peel off your face for it to stop being stupid."

And there was no way that this wasn't love, if I could take all his disrespectable snips without punching him in the one remaining eye he had.

He'd walked off then, making more noise than a train on bumpy tracks and one of the teachers, who had been sitting quietly in her classroom, had slid the door open and peered out to see if one of her students was being horribly murdered, because those sounds couldn't be coming from anyone else but a stab victim.

A/N: I plan to have more short chapters, just like this once...maybe even shorter. It's just fun to mess around with these characters. Oh and I, probably like many people here, believe without a doubt that the supposed accident that Watanuki's parents die in, isn't an accident. Bum, bum, bummmm. Probably got killed off by some ghost or something. Reviews are appreciated and eaten and stored away in my stomach, because I am a review monster: (Weak sounding) Rawww...