A/N: ZareEraz here! I've got the next update for Addiction! Hooray! I'm taking a little interlude before I go to the second season and since the XxxHolic movie takes places in summer and I figured the end of season one is in spring and the beginning of season two is near the fall (since the characters have their jackets) I'd used the movies as a bridge of sorts to expand Doumeki's and Watanuki's relationship. I'm also skipping the 24th episode of season one because it mostly reiterates a lot of what I covered in the last chapter, so I'm not writing that one, sorry about that! :3 Now, enjoy and let me know what you think! Happy reading!

Interlude: A Midsummer Night's Dream Part 1 – The Invitation and The Mansion

It was hot, startling so, as Watanuki walked down the road, the streets echoing with the voices of children freed from the confines of school, their summer stretched out before them like tantalizing dreams just waiting to be fulfilled. Only…Watanuki didn't have any other that. The girl shlumped along, her head hanging down and bobbing with each step she took on the hot pavement, her school bag held limply in her hands. With sweat running down her neck and dribbling into the perfectly starched white shirt (if slightly droopy with the heat), the girl sighed, her head dropping even lower.

"And the school year's…over." She sighed, stopping in her walk on her way to Yuko's. She took a deep, frustrated breath in, her eyes screwing shut, her mouth pulling itself into a angry snarl as she snapped, "Would you just leave me alone already?!"

Unseen by everyone around her, there was a massive, eye-filled spirit pressing down on her neck and back, swarming its smelly, revolting and squirmy body all over her, the girl's ability to attract spirits drawing it towards her. Watanuki pushed against the tormentor, her hands coming up through part of its transparent body and as she struggled to throw it off of her. It didn't work and the girl felt herself having trouble breathing and moving, as if a pair of hands had come down on her shoulders and was weighing on her body heavily. In fact, there was a pair of purple hands on her shoulders, squeezing tightly enough to almost bruise her skin. The raven's breath was coming short now, the press of spirit on her body forcing everything but the lack of air and the heat out of her conscious thought…that is…until it disappeared. The spirit lifted off the girl suddenly, pulling every icky feeling that it was carrying around with it away as well and Watanuki stumbled in the street as the spirit float up until she couldn't see. She stared, breathing heavily now that the weight was gone and shocked that it had left without her doing anything. It was gone!

"It went away!" She gasped gleefully…right before something solid smacked into her back and sent her spinning and falling down on her butt after she'd lost her footing. Watanuki had spun around to face whatever had bumped into and she spun and the girl got her best glare ready to chew out however had done it. Doumeki was staring down at her, his face set in his usual dead pan and the pair just looked at each other for a moment. Watanuki's glare turned into a snarl and a cross vein popped out on her forehead before the archer said anything.

"I didn't see you there, Watanuki." He stated. The girl was on her feet in an instant, her nails snagging his shirt collar and trying to strangle him.

"WHAT?!" Were your eyes closed?! You ran right into me, you moron!" Watanuki shouted, getting right in her boyfriend's face. It was astounding how much nothing had changed between them. He still ticked her off like he always did and she blew up at him like she always did. They were not a normal couple by anyone's standards, in fact, they hardly seemed like a couple at all!

"You really shouldn't stand in the middle of the road," Doumeki replied. Watanuki's face dropped a little, seeing as he had a point, but it wasn't her fault! It was the spirit's! "You're in the way." And that next statement pissed her off again.

"You-!" She started, her fury getting in the way of her words. "My FIST is about to get in the way of your FACE!" And before she could come up with anymore violent threats, Watanuki's gaze locked onto a cute boy walking up the street behind Doumeki. It was Wari!~

"Watanuki! Doumeki!" Wari called, walking up to the pair, the boy's usual brilliant smile on his face. Doumeki's eyes slid to the side slowly as the boy walked up, making a sort of "why is this bastard here" sort of face if anyone had been looking at him. It's not that Wari was a bastard, but Doumeki had been interrupted while talking to his girlfriend who seemed way to attached to the curly-haired boy for someone who already had a significant other. And Doumeki liked Wari, he just didn't like Watanuki's attention being drawn away from him and they were all friends…it was an odd situation to say the least but the archer just went along with it. "Hey you guys!"

"It's my sweet Wari!~" And just like Doumeki knew was going to happen, Watanuki got that idiotic look on her face and scooped up her bag that had fallen on the ground, blushing like the school girls she was, before running up to the boy.

"So, summer vacation starts tomorrow…" Wari said, opening up a conversation.

"Yeah, but it's not much of a vacation. I have to work the whole time." Despite the happy look on her face, Watanuki's voice sounded very bitter and disappointed.

"Do you have any plans this summer, Doumeki?" Wari asked, looking at his classmate.

"Nothing interesting." He replied, but he was pointing at Watanuki where the girl couldn't see him and Wari's smile got a little more mischievous.

"Oh, I see." He said, his voice dropping a little and smoothing out. Wari had been the first person to find out about their relationship when Doumeki blurted it out calmly as Watanuki sputtered to explain why they'd been holding hands on the way to school (Watanuki had lost a bet), and to the girl's great disappointment (and relief) Wari didn't seem to have a problem with it at all. He was just so sweet and supportive it almost made their raven's heart burst! (Which is probably why she still had a little crush on the boy even though she was in a more rooted and serious relationship with Doumeki.) And in the girl's defense, they'd been dating since the spring which was a fairly long time, but Watanuki had had a crush on Wari for years, so it was going to take some time for her to get over it, or dump Doumeki and start trying to get Wari to like her like her again (which had never yielded any results in the first place). Either way, the girl still acted very much the same around Wari whether Doumeki liked it or not. And speaking of Watanuki…

"What about you Wari?" Watanuki asked. Doumeki swore if the girl had a tail it would be wagging ecstatically.

"Oh, nothing much. I'm staying with my aunt to help her with my little cousins during the Obon Festival. It'll be really fun but I'm going to miss seeing you every day, Watanuki."

"Mmm hmm." The girl nodded, her face collapsing into sadness. "I'll think about you every day while I'm working at my stupid job- "

"I won't miss you." Doumeki interjected.

"No one was talking to you!" Watanuki wailed, stuck somewhere between sorrow and annoyance. "Why don't you just go on ahead?! Wari and I would like a little privacy-" Doumeki raised an eyebrow at the statement, silently telling Watanuki that he would've been a bad boyfriend if he left her behind, but she didn't see that (or refused to, more like).

"Actually, I should probably get going." Wari said, derailing Watanuki's rant like he always did.

"Okay, we'll see you later." Doumeki said nonchalantly.

"Awwww…." Watanuki sighed, her face dropping again.

"You guys have a good summer!" Wari called, smiling as he walked away.

"You too!" Watanuki called, happy again as she waved goodbye and then she was back to depressed. "And there he goes, my sweet one, out of my life for a whole summer! I must be the only one in the whole school who doesn't look forward to summer vacation. This is a cruel and painful separation!" Okay, now she was just being dramatic.

"Are you sure you're not bipolar?" Doumeki asked, watching the girl's severe mood swings.

"Shut up!" Watanuki snapped, her mood changing yet again. Doumeki was done for the day, she was too much to handle sometimes.

"See you later." He said in goodbye.

"That's right! You go home alone!" The girl called after him as he walked away. "You don't understand my pain!" She wailed, flailing all over the place with her crazy arms and legs. As soon as Doumeki was out of sight Watanuki heard something behind her. She gaped in horror as the spirit from before swirled down from the sky towards her.

"Shit, its back!" Watanuki started running "These spooks stay away when Doumeki's around but sometimes it's not worth it!" The spirit finally got a hold of the wiggly girl again, wrapping itself around her body until she couldn't breathe again and just started stumbling down the street to the one other place where the spirits couldn't bother her. "It's a curse! It's a curse being the only one who can see and feel and be affected by spirits!" She rasped, shumpling her way down the street again. Twenty minutes later, she was finally close, almost to Yuko's shop…almost to freedom! But the damn spirit was still hanging onto her!

"Get off…get off…get off…get off…" She chanted trying to push at the partially solid body with no effect. "Get off! Get off! Getoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoffgetoff!"The girl swung her back around and around and around, faster and faster until the spirit pulled back just to get away from her craziness. And then she got so dizzy that she had to stop spinning and get her feet again, tripping this was and that before finding her balance and stood on shaky legs in the middle of the street. And that's when the spirit pounced, latching back onto her as people on either sidewalk avoided the crazy girl pushing at thin air. Watanuki ignored them, used to the stares by now and just pushed the spirit off of her enough to tromp the rest of the way to Yuko's, holding what felt like tons of spirit on her back.

"Little…further…" She huffed and panted, straining under the spirit's presence, passing the girl office building that framed Yuko's shop, the trees of her property coming into view. She made it! The girl slapped both of her hands onto the fence, whatever barrier that Yuko had put up repelling the spirit and sent it packing with a last few grabs at Watanuki's clothes. The girl watched as it disappeared, grateful to an extent that Yuko was weird and had the power to set up such a barrier. The girl then picked up her school bag from where it had fallen and walked towards the shop.

Once inside the shop, Watanuki shut the door behind her, and found something out of place. The mail box door was open and there was a letter inside. Yuko hardly got mail – it's not like the mail man could just walk up to the shop, only people with wishes and desires that could be granted could see the shop at all, so letters were almost unheard of. But that also meant no junk mail to sort through, yay! It was intriguing, getting a letter and Watanuki reached into the mail cage to grab the envelope. It had a daffodil on the front of it and all it said was "Invitation," even when the girl looked on the back there was no name or address. And then something else grabbed the raven's attention: Maru and Moro were standing by the end of the genkan, wearing their respective, short, summer dresses, gesturing towards the hallway.

"The mistress has been waiting for you" They said, their voices in perfect sync.

"She needs me now?" Watanuki asked, taking off her shoes.

"Yes." The girls nodded.

Watanuki stepped into the shop proper and turned the corner, grabbing her apron before following the twins to Yuko receiving room and pulled back the moon-screen doors.

"Yay! Watanuki's back!" Mokona shouted gleefully, bouncing all over the room. Yuko was lying on her couch in her red and white rose kimono with the huge yellow bow in the front, her head turned away from the door with her hair cascading down onto the floor. There was a tipped over sake bottle next to her on the floor. "Haha! Watanuki's back! Hehe! Welcome home!" Watanuki ignored the pork bun as it zig and zagged around the room and watched Yuko. She didn't look to energetic.

"Yuko?" Watanuki said, leaning over the couch to try and look at the witch's face.

"Hello, Watanuki." Yuko said despondently, turning her head to look at the girl. "Sake." She ordered, her voice brisk and grumpy.

"HUH?!" Watanuki's mouth dropped to the floor.

"Sake!~" Maru chanted, raising a hand cheerfully.

"Sake!~" Moro repeated, raising a hand of her own before grabbing her sister's and skipping around.

"Sake!~" Mokona finished, jumping into the picture and then falling out of sight.

"Geez!" Watanuki stomped angrily. "It's only the middle of the day and you're already out of sake?!"

"I've run out of my favorite Junmai Daiginjo, be a dear and go get me some!" Yuko whined, turning over the lean her arms and head on the armrest of her couch, her eyes following the seer as she stomped over to the huge bottle and picked it up, waving it in the witch's face.

"Maybe you should learn to pace yourself once in a while!" Watanuki huffed. "Anyway, I'm going to have to special order this so it'll take a few days. I hope you can wait that long." The girl switched into "take care of Yuko's neediness" mode and got ready to work, setting the bottle upright on the floor and throwing her apron straps over her shoulders and tying it securely in the back. "Now, I'm here to serve you for the rest of the summer. Cooking, cleaning, gardening, which of these enjoyable tasks would you like me to start with?"

"All of them." Yuko replied smoothly, her Cheshire Cat grin on in full display.

"WAH! I can't do all that!" The girl shrieked, apparently starting a ache in Yuko's head. The woman sat up and leaned against the armrest, her free hand coming up to rub her pounding temple.

"Quit shouting, Watanuki, you'll give me a headache," she sighed. "Now isn't it true that I've granted your request. I've found a way of getting the spirits to leave you alone, isn't that right? You've been bothered by them a lot less lately haven't you?" Watanuki made a face and didn't answer. "And in exchange, you've agreed to do whatever work I need. This is the deal we made, wasn't it?" No answer again. Yuko smiled, knowing that she was always right. "Alright then, you can start today by tidying up my treasured storehouse." Watanuki's moody expression dropped even further. She just had to pick the most horrifying and tedious tasks she could think of couldn't she?

"All get right on it," Watanuki sighed. "Oh, I forgot!" The girl reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out that letter that had been in the mail box and handed it to her boss. "Here."Yuko took the letter and opened it, reading in silence while the girl watched her, curious to know what it said.

"Well, I must say that this letter seems to me more like a demand than an invitation." Yuko commented at last.

"Seriously? What does it say?" The girl asked. Yuko gave her "that look," the look that looked like she was a cat who'd just eaten a bird.

"You want to know?" She asked, twirling one finger around a section of her hair.

"No way!" Watanuki reconsidered, shaking her head. "You'd probably demand compensation for telling me. I'll just go clean." The girl rushed off to do her first chore of the day.

"My, my…they learn so quickly." Yuko chuckled, tucking the letter into her kimono. "But make me some snacks and tea first!" She shouted after the girl, earning her some choice curses referring to the witch's mother and several of her body parts before Watanuki calmed down again.

Snacks made, it was time to get to work. Watanuki went into the storehouse and dragged objects and vases and boxes and things she didn't even knew existed out onto the lawn where she'd set several blankets down on the ground. There was even a piano (which she had to move all by herself while Maru, Moro and Mokona all laughed at her)! Once everything was outside, The real cleaning could begin. Watanuki tightened her pony tail and wrapped a headscarf around her hair to keep it from getting too dirty and got to work slapping the dust out of the storehouse objects.

"Gross! When was the last time you dusted?!" She snarled at Yuko as the witch sipped her tea.

"Never." Yuko replied.

"Never!" Maru added.

"Never!" Moro finished.

"This is ridiculous!" Watanuki wailed and did an angry little dance. "You don't even need all this stuff! Why do you keep it!?" And then she went back to venting out her frustrations on the dust covering everything.

"In my line of work, one acquires many things. I never got around to throwing anything away and so it became…a collection of sorts. Besides, these things all pass onto other people eventually, remember?"

"There's no reason to hang onto all this stuff! You're a pack rat!" Watanuki's duster hit something round and black and the girl stopped to look at the odd thing. "Huh? What's this?" She tapped it again and the thing giggled!

"Hahaha! Hey, that tickles!" Mokona jumped out of the box it was hiding in and leapt up onto a vase. "You found me! Now close your eyes and I'm going to hide again!"

"No, you little rodent!" Watanuki swung her duster at the furball and missed when it jumped, landing on her face and trying to suffocate her.

"Geoff! Ian'teeth!" She tried to shout but the Mokona muffled her voice. Watanuki grabbed the thing and pulled as hard as she could but Mokona held on, pulling her face with it. Finally, with a pop, Mokona let go of the girl's face and flew across the yard as Watanuki collapsed on the ground. Mokona rolled and rolled down the cobblestones and came to rest next to the feet of a young woman, pretending to be a stuffed animal.

The woman was in a blue strappy dress, and her eyes looked very sad. She had short, brown hair and carried nothing else with her. She looked down at the Mokona and then looked at the shop as if she couldn't understand why such a thing was there. Watanuki had seen that look many times, and knew that this woman was here to see Yuko. The girl walked up and was about to greet the woman when she spoke first.

"Are you the one?" The customer asked.

"Huh?" Watanuki answered dumbly.

"They said if I came here, someone would help me."

"Oh, um…Yuko's the one you want to see." The raven explained, looking back at her employer.

"Watanuki, let's go inside." Yuko called, standing up gracefully and walking into the shop, trailing her kimono behind her. Watanuki led the woman inside and set both of them up in one of Yuko's rooms with a table and two chairs so she could set out tea. The women didn't talk as the girl prepared the tea or served it, but the customer watched the girl do everything, even following her hand as she set a teacup and saucer in front of her. Watanuki gave her a small smile.

"What is it?" The customer looked down at her hands in her lap.

"Is it true, what I heard?" She asked in a whisper-voice that seemed to be her normal voice. She was timid and shy it looked like. "Can Yuko really grant any wish? No matter what?"

"Yeah, she can." Watanuki nodded.

"What you've heard about me is true: I can grant any wish that you might have." And now that they'd gotten to the business part of things, Watanuki picked up her serving tray and left the room, fully expecting to go back and finish cleaning the storehouse, but was stopped by Maru and Moro who were eavesdropping. And so she stayed, leaving the door open a crack to listen in. "However, I always require suitable compensation for my services." Yuko continued, adding the catch that always got everyone.

"And there she goes," Watanuki said quietly, rolling her eyes. "Getting sucked in just like I did. She has a wish and now she's caught in the trap."

"Caught in a trap!" Maru repeated gleefully.

"Caught in a trap!" Moro repeated.

"You three!" Yuko snarled, pointing and glaring at her servants. Watanuki shot to her feet and tipped against the door, throwing her tray into the air for it to be caught by a giggling Moro as the seer sank to the floor.

"I'm willing to pay you anything you want." The customer woman said, ignoring the commotion of the three girls eavesdropping. And then she was smiling. "I'm so relieved. When I first heard about you I didn't think it could be true, I didn't believe the man who first told me about your shop. I wasn't going to come, but then I happened to pass by and thought I'd take a look."

"I don't believe in happenstance or coincidence," Yuko started, repeating the same mantra that Watanuki had burned into her soul at this point. "You didn't just 'happen' to pass by – your coming here was inevitable, whether you know it or not. Similarly, it is inevitable that I grant your wish and so I shall. Is that understood? Tell me your wish."

"This is going to sound strange…I left my house a long time ago and when I came back I couldn't get inside." The woman sounded a little frantic and confused. "I have my key and everything!" She took out a golden key with a Celtic knot sort of decoration on the top, twisted into four loops, like a clover, and the cuts in the key didn't look normal, like they'd fit better in a complicated puzzle box than on a key. Watanuki leaned around Yuko's head to study it, intrigued by what kind of house would have this strange key attached to it. "Oh, please…please help! I need to go home!"

And before the girl knew what was going one, she got roped into more trouble. Yuko agreed to grant the woman's wish and by the end of the day, the storehouse was cleaned and packed away and Yuko and Watanuki were packed for their trip. They were at the house the woman had talked about by mid-afternoon the following day, staring at the corroding gate with the same symbol on it as the key had. The mansion behind the gate was huge and…kind of ugly, in Watanuki's opinion. It wasn't normal and looked like several styles of architechture had been slapped together by a crazed madman just for fun. One part was eastern style, tower looked like a Gothic cathedral, another looked like part of the Taj Mahal, the front level looked like a French chateau…it didn't fit at all. The only thing normal about the house was the huge front lawn.

"Well, this seems to be the right place." Yuko stated, pushing open the gate and walking inside. Watanuki followed her in, slyly thinking that Yuko looked just as gaudy as the house, dressed in a dress somewhere between maroon, fushia magenta and violet with dangerously high slits in the skirt and a huge choker necklace made up of rectangle chunks of purple-blue stones that crawled up her neck. As least Yuko can make gaudy look sexy. Watanuki thought as she stared at the foreboding mansion. Watanuki on her side, was wearing her school uniform, grey jacket and all, just like normal. "We found the girl's house, now all we have to do is get in."

"Wow! That house is so huge!" Mokona cried, popping out of Watanuki's tote bag (which mostly had Yuko's stuff in it).

"It certainly is, and the architecture is quite fine."

"It doesn't strike you as a bit ominous?" Watanuki said warily, still eyeing the house. And then she remembered the other questions she'd had throughout this entire trip, "I've been meaning to ask you something…what is Doumeki doing here?" Watanuki flipped her head around to glare at her boyfriend.

"Yo." Doumeki said, lifting his hand up as if to wave. Watanuki growled.

"Why?" Yuko asked, her voice turning seductive as he gloved hand came up to slide one of the dress straps off her shoulder. "Were you thinking that it would be just you and me?" She finished with a mischievous grin. Watanuki blushed at the innuendo (and at the mere suggestion that she'd get sexual with Yuko of all people!) and recoiled.

"You know that's not what I meant!" She shouted, her voice echoing off the mountains around them. "GEEEAHAAAAHAH!"

"Oh, well." Yuko grinning, replacing her strap. "Maybe you could do that with Doumeki." Watanuki's brain short circuited, ceasing all body functions except the furious blush crawling up her neck and face. Me…and Doumeki…doing…GAH! No fucking way! We aren't ready for that. Are we? No! I'm not doing it with Doumeki! And even if I was I wouldn't do it in a place like this! She was standing there so long that Yuko and Doumeki started walking up the path to the house without her.

"Hey! Wait up!" She yelled as noticed she was being left behind.

"You'll have to come faster if you want to catch up." Doumeki replied, a small smile on his lips. It sounded like an innocent enough comment, but now that Watanuki's mind was in the gutter, everything he started saying seemingly had a dirty double meaning. And it ticked her off. Watanuki growled again, holding up a furious fist.

"One day I'm just going to nail you for that annoying attitude of yours!" She snarled.

"I think he hopes you do." Yuko replied flirtatiously.

"Yuko! That's not at all what I meant!" The seer was blushing again and now she realized that they weren't going to give her a break on this one. The girl slumped down, her walk turning into a trudge. "This is why you should've invited Wari…" She whined.

"Speaking of invitations," Yuko interrupted the girl's pity party and got back to business. "I found it rather odd that I was invited to this mansion on the same day that we found out the owner couldn't enter it. Interesting, don't you think?"

"Actually I find it pretty freaky!" Watanuki retorted.

"Just like you are in the bedro-" Doumeki started.

"Shut up!" Watanuki cut him off.

"Oh, and to answer your question," Yuko continued, ignoring both of them, "I invited Doumeki along to keep you company."

"Hopefully not the wrong sort," Watanuki grumbled.

"See, you do it too." Doumeki pointed out.

"Fuck off!"

"I can't do that right now."

"I know you hate to be alone," Yuko teased, smiling at the pair.

"I'm perfectly fine being alone with myself!" Watanuki huffed, crossing her arms.

"That's what she said." Doumeki interjected.

"Now you're just being juvenile!" Watanuki snapped. Yuko ignored them again and continued talking.

"Of course, you'll need to compensate him for his help and express your gratitude." The witch finished.

"We could do-" Doumeki started in again.

"NO!" Watanuki shouted so loud that Doumeki had to plug his ears or risk losing his hearing. "I'm not doing it!" And that's when Watanuki realized that without realizing it, she'd made her third innuendo without thinking.

"Well, we'll see about that." Yuko looked back at the girl and smiled. Watanuki paled but before they had time to make the girl even more uncomfortable, they arrived at the door.

Yuko took the door knocker in her hand and tapped it a few times. A few moments passed and then the door swung open without anyone pulling on it. Watanuki stared in horror but Yuko and Doumeki both started walking to the door like nothing was wrong.

"What the-!?" The girl gaped.

"What's wrong?" Doumeki asked, turning to look at his girlfriend.

"That woman we talked to earlier said she couldn't get into her own house so how is it that we can walk right in?" Watanuki was shocked that they weren't thinking this was weird at all!

"Interesting." Doumeki replied.

"No, it's frightening! We didn't even use a key!"

"So the house doesn't recognize its owner, but it recognizes guests just fine," Yuko mused. "Very hospitable when you think about it." And then she and Doumeki both walked inside.

"Wait!" Watanuki yelped, taking a step after them, severely creeped out. A creaking noise startled the girl and she flipped around to see what it was. It was a single-seat chair swing hung up on a tree branch, the wind rocking it back and forth, causing the creaking. The chair itself was made up of twisting metal formed into swirls that would've been pretty if the house hadn't given Watanuki the shivers. She hurried inside after her companions, the door shutting all by itself.

Inside the house was just as strange as the outside. The front room was designed in an octagon shape with four staircases that led to balconies that led to the other staircases in a looping pattern. In between each of the staircases on the other four walls were doors and stain glass windows rose above them. The floor was mosaic tiles and there was a single small table in the middle of the room. It had a note on it, one Yuko picked up and opened while Doumeki and Watanuki were still staring around the dimly lit room.

"'Welcome and thank you for coming.'" She read out loud. "'Please proceed down the hallway directly in front of you.'" The witch looked up and found that the door in front of her was, in fact, open and ajar. "I guess we go straight then." She smiled and started striding towards the door singing, "Is anybody home?"

"Hey! Hold on a second!" Watanuki yelped, watching Yuko and Doumeki both follow the note's instructions without a second thought. "This is weird!" But in the end, she ran after them, not wanting to be left in the creepy house by herself. They entered into a really long hallway, one that seemed to be made of some kind of rock, maybe granite, because the walls were a mix of marbled while and gray with little alcoves holding flower vases and was lit by bluebell shaped lamps. Watanuki caught up to Doumeki and Yuko, still trying to voice her fears. "Am I the only one who's freaked out here?! Is it just me or did you notice that the door opened all on its own just a minute ago!?" The girl pointed back at the door but neither of them were looking.

"Don't get so worked up." Yuko replied, still calm and unaffected.

"Worked up?! Why would I be worked up? This is all completely normal!" She replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I'm glad you see it my way, Watanuki." The girl could hear the smile in her voice and knew that she was fighting a losing battle.

"Yuko!" She growled. "Doumeki," She said turning to the only other person she could, "Would you say something to her!?"

"You'll give yourself gray hair if you worry too much." He replied. Apparently that was a losing battle too.

"That's not helping!" They came to the end of the hallway, a single door waiting at the end with another small table and another note resting on top of it. Yuko grabbed the note again and read it out loud.

"'Please open the door and enter.'" She set the note down as Doumeki reached for the door handle and pulled. There was nothing behind the door, just a black wall of stone.

"A wall." Watanuki stated, giving Yuko sarcastic eyes as she pointed at the obstruction. "Oh, shoot. I guess we have to go back." Yay! We get to leave this creepy place!

"Why don't you try opening it?" Yuko said slyly.

"Me?" Watanuki pointed at herself. What could it hurt? There was obviously no other exit than where they'd come from so she could amuse Yuko. "Okay." Watanuki gently pushed Doumeki out of the way and shut the door, immediately pulling it open again. When the door opened, the wall was gone, replaced by a parlor looking room full of tables, chairs, couches, drinks and people chatting. Damn! Why did that happen!?

The room had a dark wood floor and ceiling and the walls were a beige-ish, tan-ish color and was decorated with green cushioned chairs and couches and wooden tables. There was a fireplace in one corner with a picture of the mansion hanging above it and on the other walls there were windows. The windows didn't face outside but instead showed the inside of the house apparently, which was odd in and of itself. Who designed a house to have windows on the inside?

Watanuki look a look at the people in the room. There were seven of them: a porky, older man in a suit that was sitting at a table with a skinny guy in glasses and a kimono, a tall blonde woman in an orange dress, a tan-skinned man in a frilly purple shirt, a short, unattractive woman in a pink dress, a skinny old man with white hair wearing a blue robe over a white long-sleeved article of clothing all at another table and a laid back, scruffy-looking guy in a red jacket lounging on a couch by himself. And they were all talking.

"It was chilling to think he would pass off a piece to me…" Said the porky man in the suit.

"And that piece that I got last year leaves me just short of completing my collection." The tan in the purple frilly shirt said to his companions.

"And how's your collection coming along?" The blonde woman asked the woman in the pink dress. She had to swallow all the food she'd stuffed into her mouth before answering.

"Oh, it's coming along find. It should be finished soon." And that's when Watanuki realized that all these people were similar and her and Yuko and Doumeki did not fit into the rest of the group.

"What are we doing here? You realize that we don't collect anything, right?" She turned to Yuko but the witch looked unconcerned, shutting the door behind them and then folding her arms demurely.

"Why don't we just go talk to them? It never hurts to make new friends." Yuko replied walking past the girl.

"Huh? What are you talking about?" And then she was pushed into the room by Doumeki who just walked into her without saying a word and shoved her along. Refusing to make a ruckus and be labeled the weird one right off the bat, Watanuki vowed to make him pay for it later.

"So, tell me about this collection of yours." The old man in the suit asked the skinny man in the kimono and glasses. "Have you been working on it very long now? Is it close to being complete?"

"I'd rather not say." The kimono man replied, brushing some of his brown hair out of his face. "I'm working on a rather difficult acquisition right now, you see."

"Looks like we have some new comers with us." The old man said, noting Yuko walking up to the booze table next to theirs that was filled with glasses and bottles of champagne and sake. "And I'm sure I've never seen this lovely face before. What's your name, little girl?" Yuko picked up a flute of champagne before turning to answer.

"You can call me Yuko." She stated, but Watanuki knew that that name was a lie, but she was never going to drag Yuko's real name out of her. "And I'm no little girl, old man."

"I like a girl with spunk!" He laughed. "So, tell us what it is you collect, Ms. Yuko." Yuko took a sip of her drink in response. The old man scooted over to the end of the couch, getting closer to the woman to have a conversation. "I can only assume that you've been invited because you are a serious collector. Everyone here has a well known collection." He nodded to the others at the opposite table. "Many of us convene regularly to compare notes and such. Surely we're all here in response to the same invitation." The old man reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the same invitation that Yuko had received. "Read!" He offered. Yuko took the note around the time that Watanuki walked over and they both leaned over to read it, which Watanuki did out loud.

"'You're collection is not yet complete. If you wish to complete it as any true collector does, please accept this invitation to a gathering at my home.'"

"Imagine the nerve! Insinuating that we weren't true collectors!" The old man started again. "Naturally, we felt compelled to come here and set this man straight. And if doing so adds to my collection, well I won't complain." He seemed all smug as he was talking and it really rubbed Watanuki the wrong way. Doumeki on the other hand, wasn't even a bit worried as he listened into the conversation, just looking at the painting of the mansion and eating the hors d'oeuvers. "Now what is it you said you collected?" Geez, this guy really wants to know! How nosey can you get? Watanuki looked at Yuko and expected her to tell him about her storehouse, that seemed to be the only thing that she collected (besides hapless, ignorant slaves that didn't understand how she operated when they made their deal in the first place), but Yuko said nothing, so Watanuki started panicking, thinking that if the collectors found out that they didn't collect anything that they'd mock them right out of the mansion, (which would've been great because she wanted to leave, but Yuko wasn't having it). So Watanuki came to her rescue when Mokona popped out of the tote bag unexpectedly, first causing the girl to try and hide it, but then the furball gave her an idea.

"Well…she…" She started. "Yuko collects stuffed animals. See? This is one of them." The girl held up a toy-like Mokona for them to see. A moment of quiet passed before the old man and the skinny guy burst out into laughter, and not the good kind.

"What an embarrassingly common collection." The kimono guy with glasses commented, his smile icky. "Everyone knows a truly expert collection is judged by its uniqueness."

"And what is it that you collect, boy?" The old man called to Doumeki, who was still staring at the painting.

"Old stamps." He said immediately, not even batting an eye. The laughter continued, louder and meaner this time.

"That's even more boring than hers!" The old man mocked. "And what about the girl there?" He pointed to Watanuki. Now she had to do some more quick thinking and save her own butt!

"Well…its…" The seer thought on her feet, looking around for inspiration until she remembered a paper that she had in her pocket. She grabbed the booklet and opened it up, displaying her nearly full booklet that kept track of the purchases she'd made at the store. "Supermarket points."

"AHAHAHAHAHA! Supermarket points!" The laugher was definitely mean this time, they couldn't even catch their breath they were laughing so hard. "Who invited them?!" Watanuki blushed. She felt silly after saying that, all their made up collections seemingly pointless and trivial, but those supermarket points were really the only things she collected besides unwanted trouble and annoying pests. Watanuki glared at Doumeki from the corner of her eyes, staring down the one pest that wouldn't leave her no matter what.

"Huh?" He said, looking up with his mouth full of food.

"Oh, forget it! What are you looking at?" Watanuki tucked her booklet away again and walked over to her boyfriend, looking up at the painting he was observing. "Nice painting. Looks like a party at the mansion." Watanuki stood next to Doumeki as her eyes flitted around all the people in the painting. Some were standing, some lying down, some of them were really close to the observer and others were almost hidden by the porch. "Looks like fun." She commented, not really caring.

Doumeki's eyes narrowed on the painting, not having the same opinion as Watanuki. He was looking at the faces of the people in the painting, noticing that all of them weren't happy in the least. One man was frowning, another had a grimace on his face, another was angry, and a woman had a fake smile slapped on her lips. It was unsettling actually, how strained the tension was in the mood of the painting. Doumeki was about to say so when he noticed that Watanuki wasn't looking at the painting anymore, instead, she was listening to the lady in the pink dress with the white collar.

"I wonder how the owner of this house knew who we were and how to contact us." She started, her hands gesturing to the people around her. "Very strange. We've never even met him and out of the blue we get this cryptic invitation to a place we've never been."

"I don't understand it either." The tan man in the frilly purple shirt shrugged.

"Do you know what's going on?" The pink dress lady asked Yuko. She shook her head in response. "I just wish I knew what to expect."

"Listen to all of you!" The man on the couch by himself, the one in the red jacket, started talking. "If you ask me, the strangest thing is that you all showed up here to some random guy's house just because he sent you a little note." There was a pause as the rest of the guests considered the red jacket man's situation as well.

"Well, you showed up too." Purple Shirt stated, his voice a little miffed.

"Correction, my friend," Red Jacket started again, taking a sip out of his tumbler, "I'm just here for the entertainment. But if the owner of the mansion does show his face, he insulted my collection, we'll have a chat."

"Oh, my." Pink Dress sniffed.

"Don't pay any attention to him." Purple Shirt waved off Red Jacket. "Everyone here is an outstanding collector! That's certainly why we were invited here tonight. Why, when I think of the company I'm in, I'm nearly breathless in admiration!"

"Oh now, you're just saying that!" Pink Dress waved him off, but she was smiling nonetheless.

"At least there's one gentleman here." The blonde lady with the white and orange dress smiled. The white haired man in the blue and white robes at their table nodded as well. Blue Robe, Pink Dress, Blondie and Purple Shirt all seem to get along, Watanuki commented in her head.

"Nonsense! I'm merely stating the obvious!" Purple Shirt replied.

"We could say the same to you," Pink Dress said.

"Oh, stop it! I'm blushing!" Purple Shirt said back.

"No, really!" Blondie added.

"I agree," Blue Robe continued.

"Bunch of friggin idiots," Red Jacket muttered under his breath.

It was at this point that Watanuki started to lose all sense of the conversations around her as the collectors started all speaking and flattering themselves and each other all at once. The seer looked around the tried to make sense of everything, but a black haze had permeated the room, coating everything in sight and making it hard to see anyone clearly. The collector's faces had morphed into strange shapes, Kimono Man's lengthening into one that looked like a rat, and the Old Suit Man's face resembled a pig's. Blondie's eyes bugged out, Pink Dress was coughing up what seemed to be like smoke, Blue Robe looked liked he'd aged a million years, Purple Shirt's mouth was twisting and had fangs now, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and Red Jacket's jaw was lengthening and pinching.

"Uh, what's that smell?" Watanuki nearly choked as the scent of rotten food, spoiled eggs and excrement assaulted her nose. She clapped her hand over her face and pinched her nose shut, blearily looking around the room again. The collector's faces had deformed even more, making them seem like abstract painting material that was giving the girl a head ache.

"You're seeing something again, aren't you?" Yuko said through the rising noise of the collector's chatter. She was the only one who still looked normal. Well, her and Doumeki.

"Yeah, I've never seen anything like this before!" Spirits always looked wonky when they were pushing their influence onto her, but humans? No, she'd never seen normal people do this before. "It's like some sort of haze!"

"What you're seeing is their greed, vanity and pride. The collectors are so full of all of these things it's making you sick." And it was only getting worse and worse. Watanuki could hardly breathe anymore, much less see anything in the room very well, including the little girl peeking inside the windows at the gathering.

"What's wrong?" Doumeki asked, seeing the girl start to waver on her feet, hand covering her mouth. Watanuki looked at Doumeki, seeing that he was all distorted too, but only because of the collectors influence. But he was still stuffing his face with snacks that it almost made Watanuki vomit just to watch him. He really can't smell this?!

"You don't see it?" She choked out, regretting it when she inhaled some of the haze and stench.

"Uh, no." He replied, and then shoved more food into his mouth. He probably didn't look as disgusting as Watanuki was seeing him right now, but her stomach roiled anyway and she needed to get out before she lost her cookies on the floor and embarrassed herself further.

"I can' take this anymore!" She moaned, looking around in the haze as best she could to see if there was another exit or a restroom nearby, where she could quietly throw up in peace. The girl spotted a sign with a hand pointing to the left that said "Restroom," indicating that a restroom was outside the only other door in the room. The girl stumbled over too it and opened the door, leaving the gathering and the only people she knew and wandered into the strange mansion.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

The hallway outside the parlor was dimly lit, and Watanuki couldn't even find a light source that lit the hallway anywhere she looked, so she just stumbled down the hall, hand still over her mouth to keep her vomit inside her body until she had a sink to lean over. She kept following the signs on the walls, but things got a little weird as she kept walking. First, it was only one sign per wall panel, but then they multiplied by two and then three and then all of a sudden there were restroom signs all over the walls, ceiling and the floor. Watanuki followed them, no matter how strange they were, looking around at all of them and twirling to see the ones on the ceiling too until she came to the end of the hallway which turned right. The "Restroom" sign pointed to the right, so she turned right. The girl got about ten feet down the hallway until she ran into a wooden staircase that ran up into the ceiling…and then stopped. There was no place to go except back. The raven stood there for a moment, wondering what she should do.

"This can't be right." Watanuki's eyebrows furrowed, her hand dropping from her mouth, her nausea forgotten. She couldn't go anywhere. What was the point of dragging her this way if the hallway and the stairs were a dead end? Right before she was about to turn around and stop back, the panels on the front of each stair step started spinning, showing writing that hadn't been there before. The kanji kept changing as the panels spun, the whooshing noise accompanying it getting faster and faster until it stopped, all the stair panels reading, "The restroom is under the stairs." Watanuki looked at the writing for a few seconds, trying to riddle out why the hell someone would put a restroom under the stairs, but decided that she didn't much care anymore. The girl looked to the side and saw another "Restroom" sign and stuck her head around the stairs. There was a gap on the left side, just enough room to squeeze past. Watanuki tried to shove herself in the gap face-forward and then realized that she should've gone in sideways, her shoulders filling up the space just perfectly so she had to wriggle and squirm for a few moments before struggling free, falling flat on her face when she popped out of her squeeze.

"GAH!" She yelped, rolling onto her back and clutching her mashed nose. Thankfully her glasses hadn't broken as pain flared across her skull, but then as she was moaning, she found a small door tucked under the stairs on the ground. It was just about the size of a child's playhouse type of door and hand a flower carved into the center of a circle that split the opening. Watanuki grabbed a handle in each hand and pulled the little door open, ducking her head down into the passageway below to see what a door could be doing in such an odd place. It was a small crawl space that was lined with tatami mats on the floor and the girl spun herself around from the dead end part of the hallway to see how far it went. Pretty dang far – she couldn't even see the end!

"Do I have to do all of this just to get to a restroom?!" She grumbled, dropping herself down carefully and wriggling the rest of her body into the passage so she was lying on her stomach. And then the little door above her slammed shut without her doing anything.

The fear of being trapped in such a small space had the girl panicked, scrambling to flip herself around and get out of the doors causing her to try and fold her upper body under herself and hook her left arm behind her head and twist her legs the wrong was until she was so stuck that her back popped painfully, tears springing to her eyes. Watanuki sobbed for a minute before slowly, gingerly and carefully untangling herself until she was faced forward again. And then she commando crawled in a huff down the tight passageway, her back still pinging tenderly from her contortion. She crawled for a few minutes, leaving the little door far behind, glaring into the darkness of the hall until she came upon another sign. The passage extended further on, but this hanging sign pointed downwards…towards the tatami mats. Watanuki gave the sign a skeptical look and smacked both of her hands down on the ground, trying to see if there was a trap door or something right there. Nothing moved, but she could swear she heard the sound of the wind. The seer leaned down and put her ear to the floor, listening and then moving a little to the left as the sound got slightly louder in that direction. Suddenly, the floor she was on tipped to the left, dumping the yelping girl out of the hallway like a revolving door and closing shut again, leaving her in a room that seemed to be made up of tatami mats fitted together perfectly. The girl groaned, her sore back complaining from behind abused again and sat up, looking around at the walls and ceiling of the perfectly square room. It looked as if there were no exits, but the girl could still hear the sound of the wind coming from somewhere.

"Huh?" She said, to no one in particular, looking behind her. One of the walls was different than the others. Five of the six walls didn't have a square mat in the middle of it, they were in the corners, but the walls behind Watanuki had that square in the center, and the noise of the wind seemed to be coming from it. The girl stood up, eyeing the mat once before staking a few steps back and performing a running karate kick, taking out the mat to reveal a tiny doorway out. The girl crawled out of the mat room and looked around, finding herself in a door that resembled a Japanese shrine, the two candles lighting the room flickering. Watanuki looked around and found no other rooms than the one she was in and shrugged, walking up to the door and sliding it open. It was raining outside the little shrine, the girl somehow having gone to the top of the mansion while only going down hallways. It didn't really matter to her, so she just walked down the long staircase that passed two floors of balconies, all covered in sutras and papers with charms written on them. Past the first floor, the stairs ended up inside the house again, the second floor covered by the floor of the level above it. Watanuki was a little wet from her short walked, but she was starting to dry off already.

The room she was in now looked like an unfinished cathedral catwalk, the wood paneling floor missing planks on one side. The beams holding up the walls and ceiling all criss-crossed like a wine bottle holder. Watanuki also observed a few miniature shrines holding old looking Japanese kokeshi dolls, the wood figures' paint and faces fading as she made her way towards the door at the end of the catwalk. She opened the door and walked into the next room. This room looked like the outside of an old Japanese town, all the rooms lit up behind their paper screens and sliding doors with hallways splitting off in several directions. The catwalk she was on now was suspended over dozens of floors and it veered to the right before straightening out again. The girl looked down, finding plates displaced in alcoves with kanji scrolls that extended below her, all lit up and sitting next to black and red checkered doors that might lead somewhere and might lead nowhere. She kept walking, a feeling of uneasiness falling over here. She looked around, feeling like she was being watched, her spine tingling with trepidation.

"It seems like…someone's watching me…" She said, once again, to no one in particular. The next room she entered had only stone catwalks that looked like the Paris catacombs, the cathedral stain glass window that Watanuki had seen outside lit up on her right hand side. The next room had only three walk ways that formed and image that looked like the Pisces zodiac symbol, the spaces outside the walkways filled with water and hydrangea plants. The next room had red sitting cushions placed around various well-looking ponds holding exotic fish, but they extended underground so far that Watanuki couldn't see the end through the darkness. She leaned over one of the ponds, counting the fish she could see, completely forgetting about why she'd come down here. The feeling of being watched hadn't faded, but she was content to count fish for a moment.

"Five…six…seven…eight…" The girl straightened up, thinking hard about why she was counting fish. She hadn't come down here to count fish…had she? "Huh…I can't remember why I came down here…oh, yeah! That's right!" The girl dashed out of the fish room and into a hallway , which thankfully held the bathrooms. The doors were very modern for the house, especially since most of the rooms Watanuki had been in looked ancient or old fashioned. The ladies' room had a red door with a single bar for a handle that tipped to the left and the men's room was blue and had a handle that tipped to the right, each door having a little man symbol or a woman symbol on them. Watanuki opened the door to the ladies room and ran to the sink, leaning over it to throw up the disgusting feels from the parlor room that she'd forgotten about and had been holding in this entire time.

Once her stomach was empty, she went to the restroom for good measure and washed her hands afterwards, the dim red lighting of the room turning her hands pink under the water. She hadn't noticed it when she walked in but all the lights in the room where either little square ones built into the wall or they were long bars that made diamond shapes on the ceiling, which was interesting in its own right. The girl finished up washing her hands and looked at herself in the mirror, sighing at her haggard appearance. Throwing up was never fun. Just as she was about to dry her hands and leave, something fell on her head and she jumped in surprise.

"Huh?" The girl saw that a note had fallen from the ceiling, probably from the air vent above her head and it had landed on the counter. Watanuki wiped her hands and picked up the note, opening it to read what was inside. "'Dinner is served in the main dining room. The others have already been seated and your immediate presence is requested.'" There was also a map of the building that would come in handy when the seer headed back to the dining hall. The girl looked up at the vent, seeing if someone was in there but it was too dark to see. But one thing had been confirmed. "I was right," She looked around suspiciously, "Someone is watching me."

But despite her trepidation, Watanuki needed to get back to Doumeki and Yuko…and she was hungry, her stomach punctuating this by growling as she stepped out into the hallway. Watanuki followed the map as best she could, the strange construction of the house making it difficult to follow and she did pass through rooms she hadn't been in on her way here, but others she recognized. The whole time she was walking, Watanuki felt a pair of eyes on her, fear prickling up her spine ever so slowly as she continued on. By the time the feeling of being watched because unbearable, Watanuki was almost to the dining room, walking down a hall with paper screened windows on her left, lit up by something on the other side, and actual bamboo stalks lined up against the wall on her right. The lighting of the windows threw weird contrasts across the floor wall, dimming the far ends of the passage, but leaving the section that she was walking through fairly lighted. It was creepy, not being able to clearly see where you were going. Watauki stopped, her hand gripping her note tightly as she thought she'd heard something in front of her. Her heart leapt into her throat, as disembodied sobbing quietly floated down the hallway.

"W-who's there?" She asked, stuttering in dread.

The sobbing continued, echoing in the hallway, getting louder and louder with each passing second, and then it started coming from behind the girl too, and now she had no clue which way she should run should something come at her. Then the floors started to creak as if someone where walking on them, but she was standing still! Watanuki jumped, her dread turning into terror and panic, like a horse ready to bolt at the slightest danger but not before the threat showed itself. Then floors creaked again, the walls moaned and the sobbing got louder still, the noises created a disjointed symphony that had the girl sweating. Where is it?! I'd rather see the thing than listen to it! Watanuki was just about ready to run, her eyes wide in terror, when suddenly, all the creaking and moaning and sobbing faded away unexpectedly. The raven swiveled around looking in all directions to see if something was going to show up, or if the episode was over. She was looking at the paper windows now, getting ready to steel her nerves and finish walking down this creepy hallway when a giant silhouette appeared on the other side of the windows and smacked its hands against the screens, screaming loudly enough to wake the dead, its hair or tentacles or whatever was coming out of its head billowing in an invisible wind. And then it started pushing through the windows, its face morphing to the other side, mouth gaping and eyes vacant like a creepy Noh mask without paint. Watanuki screamed, utterly terrified and bolted, sprinting down the hallway, across the Paris catacomb room, through the first hallways, all the while screaming her lungs out and flailing in her desperate attempt to get away. She didn't even have Doumeki to ward off whatever it was this time! Her luck really sucked and she was probably going to die if she got caught and she didn't want to die so she kept running and screaming and nearly crying until she burst through a door, tripping over her clumsy feet, fell on her face, flipped to her butt, rolled out of control across the floor and skid her a halt, her everything on her body aching and throbbing in pain.

When the girl finally looked up, she was in the dining room, everyone sitting and eating at the hugest table the girl had ever seen, a decadent meal sitting on top of the pristine, white table cloth. On the left side, starting from the furthest seat away, Red Jacket, Pink Dress, Kimono Man, Old Suit Man and Purple Shirt were stuffing their faces inelegantly, and one the right side, Blondie, Blue Robe, Doumeki and Yuko had much better table manners as they ate (but only marginally in the cases of Blondie and Blue Robe). There was even an empty seat for Watanuki, her place held between Doumeki and Yuko by the tote bag she carried around that had Mokona in it.

"Oh, Watanuki." Yuko greeted the girl, pausing in her meal. "Why don't you come sit down?" Watanuki, completely ignoring the meal not matter how hungry she was, dashed up to the table and cowered behind it, pointing down the hallway she'd just been in, her breath still hitched and voice panicked.

"Listen to me!" She gasped out. "There's something really strange going on in this place!" And then she realized that that sentence was exactly what she'd been saying the whole time they'd been in the mansion, and just like always, Yuko didn't seem to care.

"You don't say?" She said, disinterested. "You should try this; it's delicious." Yuko cut into whatever meat was on her plate and took a bite. Watanuki, still flustered, did as she was told because she couldn't think of anything else to do but her brain kept going back to the strange things in the house and she asked rapid fire questions, hoping to get a logical answer out of somebody to help calm her down.

"Where did all this food come from?!" The girl babbled, pulling her chair out and sitting down in it, kicking Mokona's bag out of her seat. Doumeki peeked over at her girlfriend, noting that Watanuki's skirt had gotten folded up in her spectacular tumble and he could totally see her purple lacey panties. And she sat down without fixing her skirt, that's how frazzled she was. "Who man it?! Who set the table?! We haven't seen anyone who lives here!" And now her babbling was getting annoying.

"Just let it go." Doumeki said, still peeking at her panties. Watanuki wheeled on him, growling at her interrupted her rant.

"You don't have to eat it if you don't want it." Yuko said, referring to the food Watanuki was suspicious about. Actually, she was suspicious about everything of course, but the second she looked down at the delicious looking food (a roast of some sort, warm bread and a crisp salad along with a myriad of other dishes waiting in the middle of the table) her stomach growled, giving her hunger away. Even the cutlery and make of the plates was fine, the silverware unique and inlayed with red stones whose color complemented the meal. Of course she was going to eat at this point! All that running and wandering she'd done had made her ravenous. However, she wasn't as ravenous as to forget her table manners. The girl ate slowly, savoring a meal she didn't have to cook herself and watched in disgust as Purple shirt scarfed down the salad like a crazed rabbit, Old Suit Man slopped his drink down the front of his suit like an enthusiastic pig, Kimono Man nibbled on some sort of vegetable like a rodent, Pink Dress stuffed more rolls in her mouth like a fat chipmunk, and Red Jacket dropped his meat into his mouth like a mother bird would for her chicks. Yep, it was disgusting. Watanuki couldn't see Blondie and Blue Robe on the other side of Doumeki but the mess and spills around their places that she saw later indicated they had been just as disgusting. Only Yuko's, Doumeki's and Watanuki's place settings were in any sort of order or cleanliness when they were finished and there weren't any spills or accidents on the table cloth around their plates, something that, after seeing the way the others ate, Watanuki took pride in.

"So, anyone care to guess when our illustrious host is going to show up?" Old Suit Man asked loudly while everyone was sipping the last of their drinks quietly.

"Who knows?" Pink Dress answered, her mouth finally void of food. "Though I feel like I've heard a story like this before: a mysterious man who hosts secret for renowned collectors…does that seem familiar?"

"I heard that, but I thought it was nothing more than a silly myth." Blonde replied, smiling softly. Blue Robe wasn't paying any attention at all, staring at the spoon in his hand.

"That's all it is!" Red Jacket interrupted. "You people are ridiculous to think of it as anything else. This isn't a secret auction house."

"Whether it's true or not," Purple Shirt continued, "There's something strange about his place." Finally! Someone who gets it! Watanuki sighed to herself. Too bad it had to be one of the collectors that agreed with her. "I get the feeling that our mystery host is watching.

And as he was speaking, something moved in the corner of the room. It was the door in the right corner. It had opened all on its own.

"Hm?" Several people hummed at the same time, noticing the door.

"Well, I guess that's his idea of an invitation for us to leave the room." Old Suit Man commented, standing up with several of the other collectors. Watanuki was still lounging in her seat, the odd normalcy of the meal tempting her to stay in this room where nothing strange had happened.

"Watanuki, let's go." Yuko prompted the girl, standing up and starting to walk away as well, her red heels clicking smartly on the floor.

"Oh," The girl said, sitting up. "Right." She did want to stay someplace normal in the mansion, but if Yuko and Doumeki were leaving she was going with them, at least she knew they were perfectly safe, in their own strange ways. She wasn't being left behind this time. Watanuki stood and reached for her bag, noticing that she wasn't the last one up, but that Blue Robe was still sitting, and slipping the spoon he'd acquired during dinner into his robe.

They ended up back in the parlor room and half of the party started smoking, partaking in after-dinner drinks. Even Doumeki was drinking and he was underage! And Watanuki told him so and he just ignored her (and then Watanuki snatched his glass away and brought a pot of tea over for all of them when she spotted it on a vacant table). Yuko, Watanuki, and Doumeki all ended up at the same table with Blondie and Purple Shirt across from them at another, and Kimono Man and Pink Dress down from them, Red Jacket was at his usual spot on his own couch and Old Suit Man was on his right at his own table. Yuko was smoking her kiseru pipe and Old Suit Man, Pink Dress and Kimono man were all smoking provided cigars, exhaling smoke into the air that floated around, creating a different kind of haze than the one Watanuki had seen before.

"Well, Watanuki?" Yuko asked suddenly, startling the girl out of her observations. "Notice anything?" The girl looked around and spotted something off.

"It looks like we're one short!" Purple Shirt said, voicing what Watanuki had just discovered.

"Yes, where's the white-haired gentleman?" Pink Dress asked.

"Probably just got lost on the way here." Kimono Man added.

"I'm going to go look for him," Purple Shirt said stated, standing up and walking over to the left side door of the parlor.

"I'll come too." Blondie agreed, standing up. "I'd like to find a restroom to power my nose in anyway." She announced, even though no one was particularily interested in why she needed to use the restroom. Good luck finding it, Watanuki silently and mirthlessly wished the woman as she followed the man out. Watanuki sipped her tea quietly with Yuko and Doumeki, wondering when they were going to get to the reason they were all here and be able to leave. This place was bad news.

Time passed, the girl didn't know how much because she lacked and clock and she was too stubborn to ask Doumeki to see if he had his watch on him. But after a long while of relative quiet, Pink Dress spoke up, her mouth full of food again.

"It's been a while and no one's come back yet." She said, hogging a tray of snacks all to herself.

"Our host seems to know every move we make," Old Suit Man said, puffing his cigar. "I wonder where he's peeking in on us from." Through air vents, windows, cracks in the door…you name it and he's probably there, Watanuki answered in her head, refusing to talk to the man that mocked her.

"I'd guess that someone in this room is spying for him." Red Jacket insinuated, his crossed leg bouncing up and down impatiently.

"And what are you implying?" Old Suit Man asked, his voice turning harder than normal.

"I'm implying that it's probably you – you've been pretty relaxed this whole time." Red Jacket was just itching for a fight.

"I don't care for your tone." Old Suit Guy was itching for it too.

"Calm down, please!" Watanuki interjected. "This is no time to be fighting amongst ourselves!" Doumeki sipped his tea from a traditional Japanese cup, they're Victorian style tea set having been switched to Japanese style at some point, but Watanuki couldn't remember if she was the one who'd switched it or if someone else had.

"Nobody asked for your opinion, littlebitch. Come to think of it, it's a little strange to have a kid like you here!" Red Jacket hissed, standing up. Watanuki didn't see it but Doumeki's stared snapped into a glare, boring into the face of the man who'd insulted his girlfriend, especially when he was still trying to see her panties underneath her flipped up skirt. Watanuki was upset herself and nearly snarled at the man, but held her tongue and tried to act polite to her elder.

"How can you say that?" Watanuki replied coolly, her own glare narrowing at the man.

"And that woman you're with is a little suspicious too." Old Suit Man pointed his cigar accusingly at Yuko, who was still calmly smoking her pipe.

"Why don't you all be quiet and take a look around." Yuko said, turning toward the men and letting out her breath of smoke. "We've lost another one." All of them looked around the room and noticed that Pink Dress (and her food) were gone, like she'd been spirited away without a sound.

"What the-?!" KJmono man breathed, surprised by his companion's disappearance.

"Where'd she go?" Old Suit man asked. Suddenly, a folded note fell from the ceiling, a ceiling that had no hole or air vents from which to drop and note, and it fluttered down to the floor. Red Jacket walked over and picked it up, reading it out loud.

"'This concludes our evening. Rooms have been prepared for all of you to stay the night.'" The man's voice got confused at the end as he read. Old Suit Guy and Watanuki both walked over to him and looked at the note themselves. "'Please do not leave you room tonight for any reason.'"

"What's going on?" Old Suit Man was getting angry again. "I thought we were having an auction tonight!"

Movement to the right side of the room drew everyone's attention, the door swinging open by itself once again.

"What do you think we should do now, Yuko?" Watanuki asked.

"Our host says we're staying the night, so we stay the night." Yuko was completely going with the flow on this one and it scared Watanuki. The girl shivered. "Just try to keep your guard up. I have a feeling that something will happen tonight." Oh that's just great. You made me feel so much better about staying in this creepy mansion, Yuko. "Now you go to bed. I'm just going to stay down here a bit longer."

Red Jacket and Old Suit Man had stomped out of the room by now, slamming the door behind them in frustration of being in the dark about everything and Doumeki was up and leaving as well. Watanuki dashed after him, especially after noticing that Kimono Man had disappeared just like Pink Dress hand, without a sound or trace.

When Watanuki opened the door out of the parlor, the other two men had disappeared and a long, dark hallway stretched out in front of them, a single candle holder with a handle propped up on the wall, its candle already lit for them. Doumeki picked up the candle by its holder and started walking down the hallway, calmly leading Watanuki through the house as she quailed behind him, whimpering every once in a while. Her hands floated up behind his back, not quite ready to hang onto him but almost ready to do it should something jump out at her. They passed through the hallway and then a normal looking room filled with antique lamps all lit up and then into another dark hall that was lined with gray stone and had creepy statues all lined up in it. They looked like a child at formed their bodies, simple construction, no legs, some had their arms in a X over their chests while other's arms dangled and none of them had faces and all of them had red carved markings crisscrossing their bodies, the red seeming to glow like blood in the light of Doumeki's small candle.

"Why does Yuko want us to stay?! This place is bad news!" Watanuki whined, looking around at all the strange statues and cowering to their creepiness.

"Now that I think of it, I've heard of mansions like this before." Doumeki finally said, completely changing the topic. "There are houses like this in America, houses of multimillionaires that are haunted by spirits, so the owners keep building floors and rooms in order to confuse the ghosts. Maybe that's why this mansion is so big." Doumeki's last sentence was interrupted by Watanuki screaming and nearly leaping onto his back. The girl had been looking at the statues when Doumeki's weird fact was being told and she thought she saw a huge, bulging and bloodshot eye protruding out of the face of one of the statues, so she screamed and latched onto him, her fingers digging into his uniform jacket.

"That's cool, Doumeki, but do you think for now that we could change the subject?!" She was trembling, at her wit's end and exhausted from being scared all the time in the mansion.

"We could talk about having sex again if you want-" Doumeki teased in his monotone.

"No!" Watanuki shrieked. "I'd rather talk about the ghosts again if it comes to that! There's no way I'd do it with you in the creepy house!"

"But you'd do it with me, if we weren't in the creepy house?" Doumeki asked, twisting a verbal trap out of Watanuki's words,

"I…uh…I don't…maybe…" Watanuki couldn't find the right words to get her out of the awkward situations she'd created for herself. Doumeki stopped walking and looked back at the blushing girl, waiting for her answer. It's not like sex with Doumeki wasn't a possibility, but she really wasn't thinking about it right now and they'd only been dating a little while! If she wasn't so terrified of the scary spirits possibly wandering around the mansion, then she could probably logic her way out of this mess, but at that exact moment, something dark and shadowy slid around somewhere out of the corner of her eyes and she screamed again, jumping into Doumeki's arms (surprisingly not setting her clothes on fire when throwing her knees over the candle) and ducked her head into his chest so she wouldn't have to see anything anymore that could scare her or eat her.

"I'll take that as a yes." Doumeki replied, catching the girl easily and walking down the hallway like everything was normal. It was nice to know that Watanuki would throw herself at him now when she was spooked, his reliability something he knew she could count on. And in all honesty, he liked to coddle her sometimes, and just held her close until they got out of the creepy statue room and into a normal hallway, where Watanuki promptly jumped out of his arms with a furious blush on her face for being so scared. She mumbled something that could've been a thank you, an insult or an excuse for her behavior, but Doumeki ignored it either way, and just took her hand so the girl would at least feel a little safe until they got into their bedrooms.

Or bedroom, as it turned out, because they ended up in a hallway with an oak leaf pattern that had only one room labeled "Bed Room" and the hall was a dead end. There was no other place to go, so the pair assumed that they had to share a room.

"Is this it?" Watanuki asked, eyeing the door skeptically. By the handle there was another sign carved into the door that looked like the "Restroom" signs, the black carved hand pointing to the door handle. "Please pull the door," it said. Watanuki grabbed the handle and pulled the door towards her, but it wouldn't budge. She growled, sick of all the doors in this place and yanked harder, wiggling around and even placing her foot on the wall to help her yanked on the door. "Why won't it open!?"

"Oi." Doumeki said, interrupting the girl's frustration, even if it was funny.

"What is it?!" She snapped, baring her fangs at him. He just pointed to the sign and Watanuki glanced down, taking a closer look. In between the "Please" and "Door" kanji, there were a couple more characters that were so tiny that the seer hadn't noticed them the first time. The whole sign read, "Please pull the door to the right." "To the right?!" Watanuki shrieked, her voice rising an octave. "I really do hate this place!" She said dramatically as she threw the door to the right and stomped inside.

The room they had was nice, it looked like a hotel room once Watanuki flipped on the light. The little hallway had a bathroom and a closet in it and once she got out of it, she was two beds, a dresser, a nightstand with a lamp in between the beds and a little end table with a vase wedged in the corner.

"Ug." Watanuki sighed. "Why do I have to share a room with you?" Doumeki didn't reply and just blew out his candle and placed it next to the vase. "Everyone else gets a room to themselves. It doesn't seem fair, especially with how big this place is. But I don't think I'm going to mind the company tonight, as long as you keep your hands to yourself!" Doumeki wasn't listening to her and opened the closet, curious to see what was inside. Two sleeping yukata, that's what was inside.

"This would be a creepy place to be in alone. I wonder which room Yuko's in," Watanuki was still talking as she walked over to the curtained window and pushed the cloth aside to look out. This window was one of those weird inside windows and it just opened up to a view of the other rooms and windows across the way instead of looking outside. "I hope she's okay. All we can really do is worrying about taking care of ourselves. She said to keep our guard up. Doumeki, in case anything happens-" The girl was cut off by a yukata flying into her face, almost inhaling the cloth of the robe into her open mouth. "What was that for?!" She snarled, ripping the white yukata off of her head.

"You should change." Doumeki said, throwing his robe on the bed closet to the wall and starting to unbutton his jacket. He shrugged of his clothing, unworried about Watanuki seeing him undressed. She'd already seen him practically naked after the Demon Parade incident when he'd stayed over, so what did it matter? Well, it mattered to Watanuki who was still embarrassed about the whole Doumeki seeing her naked thing.

"Doumeki! Don't just strip in the middle of the room!" Watnauki was blushing again, averting her eyes as the archer's jacket and shirt came off, revealing his chiseled chest.

"You've already seen everything, mostly." He replied, going to unbutton his pants, watching her reaction. Watanuki threw her hands up to block him out of her vision, her blush deepening.

"Just go in the bathroom if you're going to do that."

"Prude." He jabbed, dropping his pants to the floor.

"Exhibitionist!" She shot back.

"You haven't seen that yet."

"I don't want to right now!"

"'Right now,'" He repeated a tiny smile on his lips at the twist he put Watanuki's words into again.

"Quit twisting what I say!" She whined and by the time she was done whining, Doumeki was dressed in his yukata.

"You can look now." He said, amused with his girlfriend. Watanuki put her hands down, still blushing and glared at him. They stared at each other for a moment. "Well?" Doumeki asked.

"Well, what?!" Watanuki snarled.

"Aren't you going to return the favor?" He asked, looking her up and down. "Change."

"Not in front of you!" Watanuki growled, grabbing the young man's shoulders in her rage and pushing him into the bathroom, slamming the door shut once he was in there. "And no peeking!" She pointed at the door angrily. She didn't get a response but she stomped back to her bed nonetheless and started undressing so she could go to bed. She tossed her jacket and shirt on the floor, kicking her shoes off in the process and then sitting down to take off her socks. When she got to her skirt, the girl finally realized that it had been flipped up for some time and nobody had told her. A cross vein popped out on her head, knowing that Doumeki had been staring at her panties ever since her skirt got caught. "Were you looking at my underwear all night without telling me!?" She shouted, getting angrier at Doumeki.

"Maybe." Came the muffled reply through the room. The bathroom door got a shoe thrown at it for good measure.

"PERVERT!" Watanuki yelled, pushing her skirt down and taking off her bra before slipping into her robe and tying it shut with a full not in case Doumeki got any funny ideas. "Useless, I'm going to bed." Watanuki grumbled, sliding under the covers and placing her glasses on the nightstand. "Turn of the light!" She ordered as she rolled over toward the window side and Doumeki flipped it off as he walked back into the room. Watanuki shut her eyes, angry and worried and exhausted and strung out after this weird day that she didn't notice at first that she had a guest in her bed. Doumeki had slid in behind her, spooning the girl's back as she grumbled to herself, his intentions completely pure and for comfort reasons but when the girl felt a warmth at her back, she flipped out, knowing exactly who it was.

"GET OUT OF MY BED!" She shrieked, flipping around and shoving the archer away from her.

"I wasn't going to do anything." He said.

"Of course you weren't!" She replied sarcastically, not believing him after the stunts he'd pulled that day. Just go to your own bed!" The raven huffed. Doumeki got up off of the floor and slid into his own bed, shrugging at the girl's actions. She watched him like a hawk, her head turned to the left as she lay in her stomach, making sure he didn't try any more funny business. A few minutes passed and Doumeki did nothing, seemingly just going to sleep, and that left Watanuki alone with her thoughts again, which wandered out of her mouth all on their own.

"I wonder what we got ourselves into, coming to this place." The girl mumbled mostly to herself. "I just hope we stay safe until morning." The girl's hand slid under her pillow in an attempt to get comfortable on her stomach when she felt something odd under there. She pulled it out, squinting to see the folded note in her hand. She frowned at it and placed her elbows on her pillow, her left hand reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp and grab her glasses. The girl slipped them on to read the note out loud. "'You're both safe. Do not leave the room. Enjoy your night and sleep well.' I'm sick of these notes." The girl grumbled.

"Why don't you go to sleep?" Doumeki asked, a little miffed that Watanuki had pushed him away but not miffed enough to really be mad at her.

"I'm going okay?!" Watanuki set the note and her glasses back on the nightstand and clicked the light off before lying back down again. Her eyes drifted shut slowly and before she knew it, the girl was asleep, despite the strange mansion and the prospect of spirits lurking around her. Doumeki was with her, and no matter how frustrating and annoying his presence could be, she was glad he was there to protect her.

Her dream looked like the salt and pepper screen of a TV that was turned into a dead channel, the specks of black and white writhing across her dream vision, but without the white noise that usually accompanied it. Instead, there was a man's voice, calling out to her.

"Are you ready?" He sang.

"Not ready yet!" A small girl's voice sang back.

"Are you ready?" He called again, playing hide and seek with a child apparently.

"Not ready yet!" She called back. The blankness of her vision cleared and Watanuki was able to see a brick wall take shape, even if the black and white specks didn't clear as well, they made up with entire picture, but the girl could make out the rest of the hallway as she walked down it and turned to the left when the hall came to a stop. She was the man, she realized, looking around for the child that was in her dream somewhere.

"Are you ready?" The man's voice called again.

"I'm ready now!" The girl sang back, finally hidden it seemed. Watanuki looked down the hall she was turned up it ended too, the window on the wall opening out to show her the single seat swing she'd seen in front of the mansion when she'd arrived. Watanuki turned around and headed down the hallway she was in, finding two cords and pulling on them, revealing the trap door stairs that led up into the ceiling. She climbed up then and found herself in a room filled with shadowed boxes, too many to count and she walked around them, searching for the child. Instead of finding the girl, she found a tiny brown door, the only thing in color, inscribed with the Celtic knot thing that Watanuki had seen on the key to the mansion that the young woman had had.

Watnauki opened the door and ducked inside, finding another room with a table, a window with cute curtains and a bookshelf. With right hand curtains looked odd, bulgy, as if someone was hiding behind them. She'd found the girl! Watanuki poked the curtains and they giggled.

"You found me!" The girl revealed herself, her dress pink and colored in her black and white dream like the door had been, but Watanuki couldn't see her face, just her shoulders and down as she knelt on the floor. Something spilled from the girl's hands and rolled on the floor. They were colored bean bags. "These?" The girl asked, as if she'd been asked a question herself. "These are my bean bags! I told you I was going to start collecting something remember? Well, this is what I picked to collect and I've already got this many! You should start a collection too! It's really fun! It has to be something no one else is collecting or it doesn't count!"

Watanuki's eyes sprang open, suddenly awake, her dream still wavering before her eyes. She said up groggily, wondering what could've woken her and looked to see if she'd woken up Doumeki. But where Doumeki's bed was supposed to be, there was a wall instead.

"Hm?" Watanuki hummed, not quite awake enough yet to notice how bad her situation was. The girl reached for her glasses and put them on, staring at the wall again. "WHAT?!" She yelped, completely shocked and terrified that Doumeki wasn't beside her anymore. She leapt out of bed and slapped her hands on the wall, trying to see if he was trapped inside or something. "Doumeki! Hey, Doumeki! Shizuka!" She called, her voice utterly terrified. She didn't get an answer and the girl dashed into the hall of her room, the walls extending to the bathroom and then the door like Doumeki's bed had never existed in this room in the first place. He's gone…he's gone…he's gone! "What happened here? Shit!" Watanuki ran over to the window, thinking that she might've been moved to another room, but when she opened the curtains, it was the same room she'd been in the whole night. It had shifted around all on its own. Watanuki walked up to the note and opened it, going to read the words "you both are safe" to make herself feel better and reassure herself that Doumeki was fine, but when she opened the note, it had changed, just like the room.

"'You are safe,'" It read. "The words changed! Earlier the note had said that both of us were safe here!" That added to her uneasiness. "What happened to Shizuka? Where's Yuko?" Watanuki's heart clenched in worry, her breathing speeding up as terror started to consume her again. And that's when she saw something out of the corner of her eyes, a new shadow on the wall, and something moving outside her window. The girl looked over and saw a little girl in a pink dress with wild brown hair teetering to her feet, standing on her window sill and probably having climbed all the way up here by herself. Her face was blank and gray, similar to the spirit that had morphed through the hallway before dinner, and she had vacant and expressionless eyes with an unearthly gaze. That was freaky enough but then the girl slapped her hands on the window, trying to get in and that terrified Watanuki even more. The girl screamed and ran over to her window, throwing the curtains shut and running for the door, trying to get away from the horrifying girl. She grabbed the door know and started to pull the door open when she remembered that the letter said not to leave the room. But Doumeki was missing and there was a creepy, scary, terrifying little girl haunting the seer outside of her window! She couldn't stay here! But she was supposed to be safe here so she should probably stay…but not by herself! She had to find Doumeki!

"Get it together, Watanuki!" She chided herself, her heart pounding, tightening her grip on the handle before yanking it open. She leapt out of the room before she could change her mind.

To Be Continued…

A/N: And there you go! Part 2's coming up soon and then onto the second season of xxxHolic! See you all later! :3