[Summary: Kanji learns detective skills, the team studies together, Nanako confronts Morooka, and Souji colors.]

[7/3: Sunday]

"Senpai, what are we doing here?"

Nanako and Kanji were at Okina City, barely five minutes in and already breaking the law by sitting cross-legged in the grassy area next to a fountain. At worst, a cop would show up and shoo the pesky teenagers away, or so Nanako assured Kanji when he seemed reluctant to sit down. For all his delinquent looks and language, he really was a sweet boy, wasn't he?

"Normal and abnormal," Nanako said. "I'm going to prove to you that there's no such thing."

"Uh, a'ight."

They sat there for nearly five minutes before Kanji finally coughed and asked, "And how are we gonna do this?"

Nanako turned to him with eyebrows raised. "By watching, Kanji-kun."

Kanji scratched his head but said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

"My dad is a detective," she started, scooting closer to him. "He's everything a detective's supposed to be, y'know? He even has a permanent stubble. I once tried to shave it while he was sleeping and it grew back after breakfast."

She paused, reminiscing for a second, before continuing. "Anyway, he's that kinda guy, and he's taught me a lot. This is... this is something he taught me when I first noticed I was different. He knows less than you do," she clarified, "but I was a kid and confused and angry. It was stupid..."

"What happened, Senpai?" Kanji asked, letting Nanako lean on him without protest.

"Don't laugh, okay? I, uh... I sneaked into the boys' locker room in middle school."

"That doesn't seem so bad."

"Twice."

"Oh."

"I wanted to see them changing! There were some really cute ones in my class, and during spring cleaning they'd take their shirts off and wear their P.E. shorts, and hnnnng. There was one of those tiny windows on the wall and you could see the lockers from there if you put some boxes outside to stand on. I thought that, hey, usually it's the boys peeking at the girls, so no one would notice me, right? But boooooy, they did, they so did! Everyone was blushing, it was so funny.

"That was the first day. That night, I watched Loveline and the culprit used a trick with mirrors to fool the magical witch detective and—"

"Oh! I remember that episode," Kanji interjected. "It was so cool how she was talkin' to him and he said he'd keep doing crimes and then her only choice was to shoot him with her magical beam, but she'd been talkin' to the mirror and shot that instead and he got away."

"Doki!" Nanako exclaimed, holding to Kanji's arm tight. Her smile went from ear to ear. "That's the one! Yeah, so I watched that and had an idea. The next day, I got a few things from the warehouse at our home and raided Mom's jewelry boxes for mirrors. We had a few old ones too, but I couldn't take the big ones with me, someone would notice.

"Anyway, before P.E. I lockpicked the locker room door—oh don't look at me like that, I'm resourceful!—and set up the mirrors there. I nailed some to the walls too. There was this really cute kid I wanted to see changing the most, so after that I hid in the locker next to his, since there was nothing inside. I checked and I could see most of the room through the mirrors, including the showersssss~" She purred and pawed lightly at his forearm.

"Wow, Senpai..." Kanji said. "I'm not sure whether to be scared or amazed at your dedication. I mean, musta been some trouble having the mirrors all face each other somehow."

"Heh heh heh. Resourcefulness, Kanji-kun! That's my middle name. So yeah, when P.E. came I got to see a whole lot! Sadly, there was this stupid weenie that was super pleased by the new mirrors and kept adjusting his hair with them, and he saw me... I will never live it down. Mom doesn't let me forget, though she was pretty amazed with how far I went. And Dad... man, Dad gave me the lecture of a lifetime."

"You said he taught you somethin'?"

"Oh! Right! Sorry, Kanji-kun, I got carried away.

"Yeah, Dad was pretty pissed, but when so many people lectured me that what I'd done was wrong and blah blah blah blah blah b-l-a-h blah, I got pretty pissed myself! I started getting into fights at school... well, so they said, but it was mostly me kicking ass, 'cause see, the boys were all calling me a pervert. I punched and kicked for a whole week and then when they still kept saying it behind my back, I went and pulled their pants down—which was not all that unpleasant, mind—and then Mom and Dad had to be called in for like the tenth time, and suddenly Dad wasn't pissed anymore.

"He took me to a square just like this one and sat down, just like we're doing now. And he said..."

"Nanako!" she said in an exaggeratedly gruff voice. "In the field, all you have to rely on are your senses. Tell me, what's the sense that lets you take the most information in?"

Nanako closed her eyes. She could remember it perfectly...

"Uh... sight, I guess," the little but not at all innocent Nanako answered.

"That's right. Look at these people and tell me what you see."

Nanako looked for a few minutes, but there was nothing special. "It's just a bunch of boring people, Dad."

"Is that so?" Her dad laughed softly, then pointed to something. "What is that man doing?"

Nanako looked where her dad was pointing. There was this extremely suspicious-looking man with a bizarre mustache looking at every butt that passed by him. He was drooling.

Nanako was alarmed. "Dad! Shouldn't we call the police?"

Her dad smiled at her. "I did it when we got here, sweetheart. If he does something more before they arrive, I'll go over there myself."

Her dad was so cool.

"And there," – he looked at something else – "what are those two women doing?"

Nanako followed his gaze to two women sitting together in a café. They were smiling and talking animatedly.

"They're hanging out," she said.

Dojima nodded. "Are they friends?" he asked.

"Yeah, of course."

But then she kept watching and noticed they were holding hands under the table. The taller girl kept glancing around, even as she laughed. They were uncomfortable...

"I saw that and so much more that day, Kanji-kun," Nanako said in her normal voice, "and ever since then, I've enjoyed watching people."

"Wait, that's it? Tell me the rest of the story, it was just gettin' good!"

Nanako smiled mischievously. "After we do this, I think you'll understand," she said. Being deliberately vague was so fun, no wonder old people did it.

"So!" she said firmly. "Get comfortable, 'cause we're people watching today."

Nanako was practically hugging Kanji, or his arm anyway, and this was his chance to push her away, but to her surprise, he didn't, nor did he show any hesitation when he said, "Fine, let's do it."

"Ever since we got here, that guy over there's been eyeing us up," she started, pointing to a man in a business suit messing with his cellphone.

"Want me to go punch 'im?" Kanji offered.

"No! Well, maybe... but not right now, that's not the point. Why do you think he's eyeing us up, Kanji-kun?"

"Because of how I look," Kanji answered gruffly.

"Maybe. But it could be because of how we look."

"What? What's so weird about the way we look?"

"We could be boyfriend and girlfriend in this pose, you know. I'm just doing it because I want to, but we could."

Kanji immediately blushed, but to his credit, he didn't try to move away. "Shit's comfortable, that guy can get over it," he said, earning a thumbs up from her.

"That's lesson one, though. People people watch too. And just as they can watch us and make up all sorts of stories in their heads, so can we. But that guy, he's not watching us close. He has this disapproving expression every time he lifts his eyes from the cellphone, so he just glances. That narrows down the list of reasons he might be looking at us. That's lesson two. If we watch someone closely, we learn a lot about them."

"Ain't that a bit creepy, though?" Kanji asked. Nanako stuck out her tongue at him.

"So let's move away from that guy," she continued, "to that guy."

Said guy was sitting on a bench also by the fountain. Nanako noticed a bunch of stuff, but she decided to ask Kanji this time. "What do you see?"

Kanji looked at the guy, a teenager with black hair and glasses, with what might have been interpreted as murderous intent from an outside perspective.

"His back's all stiff," he began. "He's sittin' all proper with his legs closed, don't his balls hurt doing that? Uh, sorry, senpai."

"Kanji-kun, please. I am all about balls. Go on!"

"Well, he's doing all that and he has that serious face on, but he seems nervous. He's adjusting his shirt a whole lot, gonna end up missing a few buttons if he keeps it up. And the way he picked up his cell, looked at it for one second and then pocketed it again, ain't that weird?"

"Hey, you're pretty good at this. Maybe you, Shirogane-san and I could open up our own detective agency!" Nanako tousled Kanji's hair. Sitting like this, it was way easier than normal. "So we know that he's uptight but nervous. And if he's checking his cell like that—oh, there it is again—then he must be waiting for a call or a text message, which means...?"

"He's waitin' for someone," Kanji guessed.

"Pin-pon! Bet you he's waiting for his boyfriend."

Kanji nearly got up from the grass, but Nanako held on to him. "What? No way, Senpai!"

"Whoever loses has to buy the other something at Aiya's, aaaaand... take the Rainy Day Mega Beef Bowl Challenge!"

"F-fine! I'll take you on that bet."

"All right! Now let's get back to work. Look at that couple over there. Are they dating?"

She pointed to a high-class looking girl about her own age. She had fair, wavy hair and wore a pink dress with a big ribbon across her chest and matching pink heels. Even from their distance away, Nanako could see she was accessorized with earrings and a bracelet. She was followed around by a boy laden with several shopping bags. He seemed to be struggling with their combined weight and bulkiness.

Kanji shook his head. "Nah, they're not dating, though that guy might hope so! That girl is Ebihara-senpai."

"Oh, so you know her." Nanako frowned in annoyance since that ruined the point of this exercise. Then she paused. "Wait, Ebihara? As in Ai Ebihara?"

"Yeah."

Nanako looked closer. This was her competition for the Balls Club manager position, after all! "Tell me what you see, anyway."

Kanji explained how Ebihara never looked at the boy when he spoke to her, how she hardly waited for the boy to catch up to her when she strode down the sidewalk, and how she continuously looked at other boys in the area as if gauging whether they could carry more bags than he could. "Senpai, she's not into him at all."

"But she's totally got him wrapped around her little finger. That's pretty funny." Nanako suddenly pulled on Kanji's arm. "Puppy!"

"Puppy!?" Kanji cried. "Where!?" He looked around frantically until he spotted it. A woman in heels was walking a dog along the edge of the grass. It was a small dog, but not actually a puppy. Nanako couldn't identify the breed.

"Tell me about her," Nanako requested.

"She's an older lady," he began, "maybe mid-thirties..."

"That's not old, Kanji-kun, but go on."

"Older than us, anyway, Senpai!" he defended. "I think... she doesn't want to be here."

"Hmm? What makes you say that?"

"Just... the look on her face. She keeps scowling."

"But what is she scowling at?"

He paused, watching the target shrewdly. "The dog."

"Why is she scowling at the dog?" Nanako pressed.

"Well, she's taking it for a walk. Maybe she's waiting for it to use the toilet and it's way too busy havin' fun sniffing everything instead of doin' its business and she just wants to go back home." He paused. "Or maybe she doesn't like dogs but it's her family job or somethin' to walk it."

"Can you think of a way we could confirm that? Without, y'know, going up and asking her."

"We can wait for the dog to go and then see if she's happier after it."

They waited, and the dog-walking lady moved close enough to them that they could overhear her talking to the dog. "Oh, just go, already!" she hissed.

"I think you got that one right, too, Kanji-kun!" Nanako whispered at him.

"Dog better not go near us or we're gonna be stuck smelling it," Kanji muttered back.

Fortunately for them, the dog saw a lizard and began to chase after it across the sidewalk. Its exasperated master was forced to chase after it herself. It was amusing to see her trying to walk fast in her heels.

"It's called a leash," Nanako remarked. "Might wanna invest in one."

They spent the rest of the afternoon watching several different sets of people in the area. When the sun went down, they finally got up from the grass. "My butt feels like a damn rock," Kanji complained.

"Mine too, ugh," Nanako agreed. Then she noticed something. "Hey, Kanji-kun, look over there."

Kanji looked, and his eyes widened in surprise. The guy in glasses from earlier was holding hands with another boy on the same bench. They leaned closer and, after looking around, kissed. Nanako saw their lips moving before and after. They'd confessed, for sure.

Kanji was silent for several moments.

"I think..." he finally said. "I think those guys are from our school."

Nanako looked again. Oh shit, it's true! She recognized them both from the corridors. In fact, she was pretty sure one of them was even from her class... More satisfied than ever, she smiled at Kanji.

"See? We're all normal."

"...Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are, Senpai."

[7/4: Monday]

Exams were two weeks away, but they'd had a lot to learn since the last set. Nanako wanted her summer to begin with a bang, or at least on a high note, with no worries about her scores or any of that, so she gathered her squad and they formed a study group just like before. Kanji declined to join them; as an underclassman, he didn't want to confuse his own subjects with those of his senpai.

It had been a while since they'd gathered together like this at the secret headquarters at Junes. Nanako immediately looked at Yosuke when she took her seat at the head of the table, and though he frowned at her, he went and got drinks for everyone without comment. Nanako's drink had a lot of ice in it, though—more ice than cola. If he was trying to get back at her somehow, this was totally the wrong way to do it. All she'd do is make him get her a refill!

"'Man is but a reed,'" Yukiko quoted. She lifted her head skyward. "Such a powerful thought..."

"No, it's a depressing thought!" Nanako exclaimed. "I mean, do you really wanna compare yourself to a reed?"

"If it gets windy enough out here, maybe we'll be blown away like little reeds!" Chie commented. The food court was on the roof, after all, and exposed to the elements. "Then it'll be true."

"I'd rather compare myself to, like... a god or something," Nanako continued on her own line of thought.

"You would compare yourself to that," said Yosuke, rolling his eyes and grinning. "But you didn't let Yukiko finish. There's more to the quote. You know, that man is a thinking reed. The 'thinking' makes all the difference in the meaning."

"Was I a man dreaming about butterflies, or am I now a butterfly dreaming I'm a man?" Nanako said. "That's what I get out of this."

Yosuke shuffled through his notes, then stared at Nanako. "Where did that even come from?"

"That's Zhuangzi, Yosuke-kun," said Yukiko. "Although misquoted. We learned it last year."

"Yeah, I never understood that one," said Chie. "No matter how many times Yukiko tried to explain it to me. I mean, if you pinch yourself, you'll know if you're dreaming, right?"

"Yeah, me neither," Nanako admitted cheerfully. "I just like butterflies. Especially the yellow ones we get by the river. One time one landed on Souji-kun's nose and—"

"And I'm gonna cut you off," said Yosuke, "because although it's cute, we need to focus."

"Your attitude is cutting into my morale, Yosuke!"

"That's a great use of the word 'morale,' Nanako!" Yukiko said in encouragement. "Mr. Morooka would be proud. Well, maybe."

"Yeah, Yosuke!" Nanako continued. "Are you feeling 'ressentiment' towards me yet?"

"Hate to tell you this," – Yosuke looked smug – "but 'morale' is the cheerfulness of a group, not a single person. Soooo..."

She stuck her tongue out at him.

He snickered. "Anyway, smarty, who's the person who said that thing about reeds?"

She tried to refer to her notes, but he put his hand over them so that she couldn't flip the page. She had no choice but to guess wildly, because really, all the names she'd learned sounded the same to her. "Some foreigner!" she announced.

"Well, if you think King Moron will give you credit for that, sure."

Nanako scowled, because he definitely wouldn't. "...Let's just move on to math, okay?"

They struggled with the unit circle until Nanako regretted ever switching to that subject. Well, Yukiko didn't struggle. Was there any subject she wasn't good at? How the heck was she so good at math? Literature, okay, she always seemed the bookish sort, but…

"I often handle transactions at the inn," Yukiko explained. "I had to learn quickly, or else my family would end up cheated. I shouldn't speak ill of customers, but some will try trick you into giving them more than they paid for."

"Yukiko's astonishing business acumen," Nanako murmured. "Hey, Yosuke works for Junes, so he should be good at math, too, right?"

Yosuke shook his head. "I have a calculator that does it all for me! But I am pretty good at saving money. That's hard when you work at Junes. There's always a tempting sale. Sometimes I think half of our profits come from the employees."

Nanako supposed it was a good thing she didn't work there part-time. Funny, he always complained about part-timers calling out, but never attempted to recruit her. Maybe he knew she'd just laugh at him. "Half the soda sales come from you, heh heh. Speaking of, gimme a refill."

Surprisingly, he didn't seem bothered by the request this time.

[7/6: Wednesday]

During their World History class, Ms. Sofue mentioned that in many ancient societies, clean water was hard to come by, so people often drank alcohol regularly—even the children.

The mention of alcohol reminded Nanako that she'd never spoken with Mr. Morooka like she'd planned to. She'd been putting it off partly because she knew Yukiko had gone to see him more than once. But today Yukiko and Chie were going somewhere together—she didn't ask where—so the man was possibly free.

Yep, Morooka was the only one in the office after school. "Dojima?" He leaned away from his desk in surprise and turned from his seat to face her. Was he... happy to see her? "I haven't seen your face in here in a while. Don't worry about Amagi. I'm not feeding her any twisted tales. I save those for you." He laughed—it sounded like 'hyeh.'

"I sure do appreciate them," she said, and she wasn't lying. "The twisteder, the better!"

"'More twisted,'" he corrected, shaking his head. "Making up words now? Do I have to add that to your criminal record?"

Oh my god, she thought. Criminal record? Had Morooka found out about her locker room adventures in middle school? Please, please, no. If he was going to lecture her on that, she'd just die. Heck, if he even knew about that...!

But he was just watching her. "So? You had a reason for coming here, I presume?"

She breathed out a huge sigh of relief. "Good. Err, I mean," – she told herself to focus – "I wanted to talk to you about the camping trip."

His face scrunched into his common scowl. "Did something happen? You should have talked to me sooner, Dojima."

"Yeah, I really should have," she agreed. "And I don't have an excuse. Well, not a good one, anyway. At any rate, Mr. Morooka, why the heck were you drunk?"

Morooka's toothy mouth opened and closed a few times. "Dojima," he growled.

"Sensei!" she said quickly. "I'm not trying to get you in trouble or anything. But it's just not right that you're all worried about us—me, and Yukiko, and that third year artist girl—when you aren't necessarily taking care of yourself!"

"Are you saying you're worried about me?" He gave her a very hard look. "Damn, Dojima, that's the most amusing thing I've ever heard."

"Wh-what's so funny about it?" she said, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

"Sit down, sit down." He waved at a chair at another teacher's desk, and she stiffly took a seat on it. "Now, that alcohol at the camping trip was brought in by one of the other teachers, whom I won't name for his own protection. I could see you hounding him."

"Well, you said 'him' so that narrows it down—"

"Shut up, Dojima," he growled. "I know your father's a detective—you announce it every chance you get. And you don't need to show off to me."

"Noted," she replied.

"Anyway, we all got piss drunk. All of us teachers, all right? Don't go thinking I make a habit of it, you delinquent!"

Delinquent? Nanako liked the word. She'd been called a pervert and a deviant, but surprisingly, never a delinquent.

"All you're missing is the long skirt," he added in a mutter.

"Nah," she said breezily, "the long ones are harder to walk in. If I'm anything, I'm practical. A practical delinquent."

"No wonder your uniform scarf is in your hair."

She patted her ponytail self-consciously. "Yep, yep."

"I should write you up for it. I should."

She was having fun bantering with him, but they were totally getting distracted. "Mr. Morooka. You can write me up. I don't really care. That's not the issue I wanna address today. Umm."

"'Umm'? It's not like you to hold back. Out with it, girl."

"When you were drunk at the camping trip," she rushed on, "I was worried about you. Yeah, I was. Because... you obviously know your subject really well, and probably love it a lot, but it's also obvious that you don't like teaching. I don't know why, and I'm not going to try and guess. But sometimes you act like the most horrible person, but I can't believe you're really that horrible or that you even believe half the horrible things you say, but all I can think is that you don't want people to get close to you, or something. And when you got drunk, all I could think was that you wanted to get fired."

He'd endured her entire lecture without his expression changing. She could tell he wasn't angry at her—there was a particular vein in his forehead that popped out when he was enraged. He was now regarding her carefully, like a cat watching a fern blowing in the breeze.

He finally spoke. "Is this your detective's instincts at work, or are you naturally this nosy? Don't answer that." He paused, staring unblinkingly at her. "Everyone has a different role in this farce that we call life, Dojima. You kids are all starry eyed and naive. But when you've seen what I've seen, you become cynical, cantankerous, and curmudgeonly."

"You can be a loveable curmudgeon if you try!" she said brightly, but she knew it was hopeless even before he snorted and rolled his eyes at her.

"Yeah, right," he rumbled. "Dojima. You have a bright future ahead of you. Don't waste your valuable time being worried about me. Got that?"

"But—"

"The best thing you can do for me is not burn out. Which, if I'm not mistaken, you seem to be about ready to do, Miss Falls-Asleep-in-Class."

"Hey, that was just the one time—"

"You've done it three times since, Dojima. You damn students always think teachers are blind. Some are, but most just turn a blind eye, especially when they realize it's not all it's cracked up to be. But I digress. If you have a sleep condition, that's one thing, and if you have a boyfriend keeping you up all night, that's another, but I highly, highly doubt your sleepiness is due to studying all night."

"I have too been studying," she protested. "My friends and I went studying after school on both Monday and Tuesday. We're just taking a break today!"

"Issat so. I suppose your scores will tell me if you're trying to pull a fast one on me. You didn't do all that well on the previous set of exams."

"Hey, I passed! And I did better than both Yosuke and Chie, to boot!" She was starting to get annoyed with how this conversation was turning into another of his lectures. "I'll do better this time, I'll show you. But—"

"Then what should you be doing right now instead of wasting time with me?"

She glared at him, but he glared right back at her. Oh, he was such an experienced glarer... She broke it off first, muttered a frustrated goodbye, and left the room.

She was barely five feet from the door when she'd realized she'd been played. Damn that Hierophant link! He'd so swiftly turned the topic from himself to her, and then railroaded her into leaving by constantly interrupting her. She needed to get on his level!

She nibbled her lower lip in thought. She needed to know more about him, find some sort of chink in his armor. Maybe one of the other teachers knew something. He... he did get along with the other teachers, didn't he? He couldn't push everyone away! Where was he from? Where did he go to school? Did he have family, a wife, children...?

Well, that could be a task for later. For now, she needed to focus on her schoolwork, just as he'd said... ugh!

When Nanako went home, she realized it was an Adachi Wednesday because Aunt Seta was there, hard at work in the kitchen. It was an interesting sight. The woman wore more casual dress than her usual business suit: a nice dark blue blouse with a darker-hued long dress skirt and stockings. A cooking apron was tied about her waist. She hummed absently to herself while she worked. It seemed she liked cooking, and, in Nanako's experience, she was a decent chef, too. It was a shame she couldn't do it more often.

Aunt Seta always had an audience when she cooked on these nights; Souji watched her attentively from the kitchen table. It was rather cute. Maybe that's how he'd learned to cook eggs and use the toaster.

After greeting her family, Nanako spread her books out on the tea table in the living room and spent the rest of the afternoon before dinner studying.

She was struggling with Japanese literature—the historical and linguistic significance of the Man'yoshu in particular— when Aunt Seta's cell phone rang. The ringtone wasn't anything special, just the default, and Nanako was too far away to hear even Auntie's half of the conversation, but it didn't last long, and after hanging up, the woman let out a huge sigh.

Worried it might be the office calling her up, Nanako walked into the kitchen, absently patting Souji on the head in the process.

Aunt Seta had taken a seat at the table, her cell phone resting conspicuously in front of her. "That was Adachi-san. He can't make it this week, but he said he'd definitely be here next week if I could manage."

Nanako bit the inside of her mouth. This was a pretty difficult courtship (if that's what it was, she still didn't know) for both of them due to their work lives. She wondered how Aunt Seta had ever married Sachio Seta in the first place.

Then she realized Souji was looking kind of forlornly down at the table, and she blinked. Was he... was he disappointed that Adachi wasn't visiting tonight?

Aunt Seta proceeded to turn off her phone anyway. "I won't let it ruin my night."

"Yeah," Nanako said encouragingly. "You should relax. And like, I need a break from studying. Why don't we make it a Souji-kun night instead, huh?"

Souji blinked up at her. She loved it when she caught him off-guard like that.

Aunt Seta also looked thoughtful. "That does sound nice. How about it, darling? Is there anything you'd like to do after dinner?"

Put on the spot like that, the boy couldn't be expected to answer, could he? But to Nanako's surprise, after a long moment, he said, "C-color... I want to color... Out here on the big table... With you too, Mama..."

His mother smiled. "Yes... That sounds... fun..."

After dinner, then, saw the three of them sharing a box of crayons. Souji had long since colored all the dinosaurs in the book Nanako had bought him, but fortunately she'd picked up a few more books. Today they were coloring in wild animals from Africa. Souji had an elephant, Nanako a lion, and Aunt Seta a giraffe.

Aunt Seta, as could be expected, was a very careful artist, always sure to color within the lines. She wasn't satisfied with the crayons due to their imprecision, so she had dug out a set of colored pencils. Souji stuck with the crayons—they were his, after all, and Nanako switched between the two as the whim took her.

Souji showed some creativity—he drew a tree next to the elephant and a long branch connecting to the elephant's raised trunk. "He's hungry," he explained.

When he looked at Nanako's lion, he asked why it was on fire. She'd colored the mane and tuft on the tail a vibrant orange and red. "He's a fire lion, don't you know?" she replied. "You can't pet him. But you won't be cold during winter if he is around."

"I bet he can see in the dark too," Souji added. "He doesn't need... a night light..."

"Hey, here's nothing wrong with a night light," Nanako told him. "Right, Aunt Seta? You know, I miss having one. I do, I do!"

"W-was it... L-Loveline?" Souji asked.

Nanako leaned towards him until her nose touched his hair, and then rubbed it against him affectionately. She noticed Foxie nestled in his lap and picked the plush up. "Y'know, Foxie dreams of being a lion, but she'll always be a fox. You have to make do with what you got. But with her bib, she can pretend she has a mane, right?"

She moved the bib around Foxie's neck so that it was on the back side.

"Right, Aunt Seta? Isn't it cute?"

Her aunt was so absorbed in coloring one of the giraffe's spots that she wasn't listening.

"Auntie?" Nanako tried again. When there was no response, she rolled a crayon across the table to interrupt her.

Aunt Seta stared down at it and blinked. Like mother, like son. "Huh?" she said. "Oh, were you talking to me?"

Souji began to giggle, and Nanako laughed too, which led Aunt Seta to chuckle herself.

"Souji-kun!" Nanako announced. "Tell your mom about the elephant slide at Junes."

He stared at her and then shook his head.

"It was scary, wasn't it?" she said sympathetically. "But yeah, Aunt Seta, there's a playground at the Junes food court, and we went down the slide together. It's shaped like an elephant."

"I haven't been up there," Aunt Seta admitted. "The food around the shopping district has always been good enough for me."

"I wish I had an Aiya back home," Nanako agreed.

Since she was done coloring, Nanako took out a pair of scissors and began cutting her lion out from the paper. She wanted to hang it up. Not on the fridge: she suspected Aunt Seta wouldn't like that. So she had a different plan.

After cutting her animal out, she handed the scissors to Souji and helped him cut the elephant out. He was very careful about it, cutting exactly along the lines, and she suspected her aunt would be the same when it was her turn. She wasn't wrong.

When they were done, she grabbed the animals and marched over to Souji's room. Then she taped them to the inside of his door.

As she admired her handiwork, Souji came up to see what she'd done. She pulled him close and ruffled his hair, and the smile on his face let her know that she'd done right.

And she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Aunt Seta was smiling in approval as well.

[AN: Special thanks to the coauthor, herrdoktorat, for writing most of the 'Kanji at Okina' scene for me~

The chapter title, 'Detectoring,' is an homage to Terry Pratchett, who died recently. His work is an inspiration to me. My favorite book by him is 'Guards! Guards!'

Review comments:

Gilgamesh The King of Heroes - broken/reversed social links are definitely a possibility~]

Next Chapter: Balls and Bets

Nanako checks out the Balls Club, and Kanji lost that bet at Okina, so...