A/N:

I can't link stuff here. But I'd really like to give a shout to Zy and thank you for the reeverly fics. 8) The rest of you might not know, 'cause Zy keeps to the shadows a lot, but they've made some beautifully dark, twisted one-shots with inspiration from TEotB-verse. Anyone who's curious can find the links on my profile page, or check out rowan_one on AO3 (Archive Of Our Own).

*Reeverly isn't a word, I know. I made it up. It's adjectivified onomatopoeia for the feeling of warped satisfaction those fics give me coupled with the tickling, unreal feeling of getting gift fics.

...and Q? THANK YOU. For your help and for your patience. (Holy shit it took me forever to get to this. x'D)

/ Dimwit

As usual, I don't own or profit from anything Kazue Kato has created.

And now: benvenuti/benvenute a Roma!

It smelled wrong. That was his first cue something was off.

Shiro groaned and turned face down into the pillow, away from the light. The pillow smelled funny, too. He reached blindly for his glasses on the nightstand, only to smack his hand into a wall.

"Nnnnnh…" He forced one bleary eye open. Yes. Definitely a wall. "Nngh…" He rolled over, sluggishly, and squinted in the other direction. Where the wall should have been. There was a stocky, unfamiliar chair, and on it were his glasses and a set of keys, and beyond that were the fuzzy outline of a room.

Right. Yesterday. Moving to Rome. Landlady showing him his room.

Shiro drew a long, deep breath that came back out in a yawn. His body was nicely heavy from sleep, and he would have slept some more if he hadn't needed the bathroom so badly. Swinging his feet out of bed, he made the next discovery of the day: he was fully dressed. The same could not be said of the bed. Yesterday was a jigsaw blur in his memory, but apparently he had been too tired to bother with bed sheets or anything of the sort.

Shiro rose, and his stomach shrivelled up with a gurgling death rattle. His head ached thickly from dehydration, his mouth tasted like he had been French kissing a skunk's butt…

System overload: short-circuit. Shiro became vaguely aware that he was just standing, stupidly staring at his bed. The hunger and the need for the bathroom were having a kicking contest in his gut, pulling it inwards and stretching it outwards at the same time and both howling for his attention. His throbbing brain observed the fight apathetically, like a despondent parent deciding that maybe it's easier to just let the kids bash each other bloody until they tire of it. Maybe he'd just stop being hungry and stop needing to pee and then he could go back to sleep and pretend this day didn't exist.

Yes. Brilliant idea.

After some deliberation on where to even start, he decided breakfast would taste much better if he brushed his teeth – and anyway, he needed the bathroom. And water. Glasses on his nose, he shuffled his way to the door in the far end of the room. It was a single-room apartment, so not much to navigate. It wasn't unlike his dorm, actually – bigger, and with a private bathroom, but otherwise the usual setup with everything in pairs. Two beds, both with clinically clean and pressed linen stacked on top. Two sets of drawers, of which one looked like it had been subjected to the rough love of a small child and painted with new finish to cover the blemishes. Two windows and two identical desks, with little…

Shiro paused his shuffling to identify just what those were. He peered at the desk surface. Little round… tablecloths? They looked like lace, but they weren't. They weren't really tablecloths either. They were too small to cover anything, and full of frilly holes – meant to be there, probably, since they were symmetrical – and Shiro had no idea what they were for.

He gave up the guessing game quick enough. At least he had had the sense to ward the place the night before – he spotted a slip of paper inscribed with symbols jutting out from under the window frame. With a grunt, he pulled the mustard yellow curtain to the side. ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DELLE ASSICURAZIONI, the one metre high concrete letters informed him. The building across the street looked more like a prison than an insurance agency, to be honest. Solid concrete and red brick, with a big, forbidding gate: barred, six metres high or more. The kind of entrance that makes people feel watched and insignificant.

Uplifting view.

He let the curtains fall shut and shuffled the last bit to the bathroom. It had no windows, and was- Shiro stopped. Scowling, he turned around and glared at the floor of the main room. He hadn't realised there had been a carpet until his feet felt the cool tiles of the bathroom floor. The carpet swathed every inch of the main room floor in a burnt orange cover of… fluff. He put his foot on it again, giving it a few experimental taps. Nice. He could get used to that.

Returning to the bathroom, he ran his hand along the wall in search of a light switch.

"Oh for the love of…!"

Shiro slapped a hand over his eyes and screwed them shut. Yeah, the bathroom had no windows alright – and somebody had decided to compensate by installing a goddamn floodlight in the ceiling. God. He could swear the light ricocheted around in his head like a stray bullet. Lowering his hand, Shiro carefully squinted around the room. Mint green seemed to be the theme there. Bathtub to the left, sink and mirror to the right, and next to the sink a toilet. One of those Western toilets that looked like hollowed out porcelain chairs.

Shiro glared: it reminded him of Samael. All the bathrooms in his mansion had Western toilets.

Meeting the eyes of his reflection in the mirror, his glare lost intensity and became a look of disappointed indifference. The stabbing fluorescent light was not, as they say, "kind". It brought out every tired shadow on his face, and combined with the weary grey of his patchy stubble to make him look twice as old as he was.

"Morning, ugly", he greeted. "How about you bring your toothbrush along if you intend to brush your teeth, hm?" After he re-acquainted himself with Western toilets.

As expected, he hadn't unpacked last night. His backpack had been left unceremoniously at the foot of the chair, and it took a great deal of unloading before he found what he was looking for. The lacquered case sat on his bed again, just like it had in Japan. Much as he hated it, he was glad he had put it in the backpack. But it couldn't stay there, no... His eyes wandered to the set of drawers, and the keyholes that stared back at him with empty sockets.

Shiro set the case on the scarred surface of the drawer, then reached for the leather cord inside his shirt collar. The key didn't bother him, and that bothered him. It leeched from his body heat as if pretending to be part of his skin and the bone beneath it. Part of him. He felt the weight against his chest, yes, but it wasn't a bothersome weight. It didn't chafe or irritate. It simply hung there, idly ghosting over his skin as he moved, whispering quiet secrets to his sternum: to his heart.

It couldn't be coincidence that it hung at that height.

The Kamikakushi key fit in the lock and turned without sound or resistance, like all of Samael's keys did. They fit any lock: forced any lock to yield, reshaped the mechanism to suit their needs. Shiro placed the box in the empty top drawer, shut it, locked… When he opened it again, using the regular key from the second drawer, it was empty. He even patted the wooden bottom of the drawer with his hand, but there was nothing. Deciding to check one more time, just to be sure, he closed the drawer again and unlocked it once more with the magic key: there it was, the lacquered case.

Uncanny. But now he could brush his teeth in peace.

Breakfast did taste better with brushed teeth, yes. If he had had anything to eat. Shiro didn't think of that detail until he had already walked down a hall and entered the apartment kitchen.

The kitchen is the heart of the home: everybody has one. Not all know how to use it, but that's a different matter. This particular kitchen looked somewhat like a plane aisle; it was crowded by cupboards and compartment from both sides, leaving a narrow strip of space where you could move. A single person kitchen for three people to share. It shrunk in on itself, not out of shyness but from a sense of organisation: every little thing was lovingly but efficiently assigned a place, and there it stayed. All prim and proper, nothing out of line and nothing taking up unnecessary space. The kitchen was also colour themed, like every other room he had seen, and cupboards and walls all followed a yellow – or brown? – nuance that reminded him of soup broth.

Which in turn reminded him how goddamn hungry he was. And that he hadn't done any shopping yesterday.

"I could borrow some and replace them later." Shiro had spotted a ceramic bowl on the kitchen countertop, and his stomach growled pleadingly. The landlady wouldn't notice a missing egg or two. And he would replace them as soon as he got back. "Just a couple…" He had his hand in the egg bowl when his nose informed him that the basket next to it held food, too. "Oh yes..." The smell of fresh bread hit Shiro's nose when the baking towel came off: he could have burst into Hail Marys there and then if he hadn't been drooling so badly.

One of the funniest things you can see is a starved individual trying to cook in a kitchen they've never seen before. Before Shiro had located the pans and cutlery and oils he needed for frying eggs, he had gotten himself stuck in a cupboard knob twice (bloody glasses string), pulled out and dropped a whole cutlery drawer on the floor (bloody strength), and almost knocked down a vase of flowers with a frying pan (bloody… vase).

But breakfast was worth it all. Shiro had rarely felt as close to paradise as when he took his first bite out of the warm egg sandwich and moaned. From there on, a couple of eggs had soon become three couples, and the half loaf of bread had mysteriously disappeared along with a fair amount of smoked ham.

Shiro was still frying eggs when he jumped, nearly flipping the egg into the exhaust hood, as he was startled by a sharp ding. And another ding.

Upon closer inspection the sound came from behind the fridge in the corner. Though, strictly speaking, the fridge wasn't in the corner: there was a small gap left between fridge and wall. The kind of space that can't be used for anything except storing trays and dust bunnies – and, apparently, an old pendulum clock. Which had just struck two in the afternoon.

"Who the fuck hangs a clock where you can't see the time?" Shiro glared as if it had insulted him personally. He was a bundle of nerves with his heart up in his throat because of that thing? Tch!

Two o'clock… That meant ten in Japan. It meant Sen and Midori would still be up. It meant Shiro should place a call.

The moment he realised that, his brain helpfully suggested a load of other things he could do: call Lost & Found at the airport, buy cigarettes, buy food, sort his belongings into drawers, make his bed, clip his nails, count the number of picture frames hanging in the hall.

"Sometimes you gotta do things you don't wanna do", he reminded himself. Then he snorted. "I'm sounding more like my parents than my parents."

Cutting the gas from the stove, Shiro went back out into the hall that connected all the rooms in the apartment complex. It took him a while to actually find the phone, as it was mounted on the wall and well hidden among the myriads of picture frames. Really, how many Madonnas did you need to feel properly certain you'd see Heaven?

The phone was a rotary dial model and rattled mechanically each time he worked the wheel. With each number he dialled, he hoped the rotary mechanism would snag on something, get stuck, keep him from making that call. When it didn't, he hoped nobody would answer the beeping tone.

God he was pathetic.

Shiro didn't have to think long about what to say, once a voice at the other end answered. He had been running this conversation in his head since he woke up. The voice that answered wasn't a familiar one, but it was the voice of a young girl.

"Hi. Fujimoto Shiro. I'd like to talk to Futotsuki Sen, or Sakura Midori. Either will do." He searched the wall with his eyes for some place to put his hand, so he could have something to lean on, but if it wasn't Mary stopping him it was some embroidered pigeon. Or magpie or unnamed bird. "Though give it to Sen-chan, if you can find her."

His hand wormed down into his pocket instead and occupied itself with the lighter. Open lid, close lid; turn around one way, turn around the other; his fingers created elaborate patterns, like prayers to ward off evil.

"Moshi-moshi, Shiro-kun." Sen's voice reached him a little muffled over the line. "How is Rome?"

"Don't know yet – I slept until now. Listen, I've got lots of stuff to see to here, so I'll make it short and write you a long letter when I have everything settled. That letter I gave you? For Kasumi?"

"Yes?"

"She'll be coming to the Academy within a few days; she doesn't know I've left her a letter, so you'll need to keep an eye out and catch her when she comes." His fingers stilled for a moment, clutching the lighter in a tight grip. He hoped he hadn't stressed those last words too much. "We didn't exactly part as friends, that's why I left a letter for her", he said and tried to sound as naturally as he could. "It's not that big a thing, but mole hills become mountains and all that. She might be in a foul mood when she comes, just giving you a heads-up about that. I really want the misunderstanding sorted out as soon as possible, so please give her the letter as soon as you can. Okay?"

He'd like to think he sounded relaxed and inconspicuous, but the silence from the other side had him holding his breath. The fewer questions Sen asked the better – especially since Kasumi would be showing up with a radically altered face.

"Okay", Sen said at long last. "So you haven't seen any goats?" Shiro could hear the deadpan in her voice, but he could also picture the ever so subtle smile that gave away the joke.

"Sorry: only parrots in Rome."

"Parrots?"

"M-mh", he confirmed, throwing an eye around the corridor to see what else he could identify. "And doves and… stuff. My landlady likes birds. And embroidery. She's got the whole wall full." Shiro's eyes met with a bright yellow one that stared at him down a viciously hooked beak. The canvas was much larger than the others, as was the bird: perched high up at the ceiling as if to monitor the rest. Shiro didn't need to know what it was to know it was a predator. "Actually…" This part of the conversation he hadn't run through in his head. This part came out of thin air and brittle worry that something terrible might happen where he had no chance to prevent it. "They're better off that way, the birds." He drew upon every ounce of theatrical talent he had to make it sound like a joke. "Far away from bigger birds with sharper eyes. It's an in-joke", he added. "Between Kasu-chan and me."

And I, he heard Shizuku's voice correct him in the back of his mind.

He and Sen ended up talking for quite some time, about nonsense things and about what reasons there might be for hiding a clock behind a fridge. Eventually Sen had to retire for the night, and promised to give everyone his best regards. The phone gave a loud, resonant ding when he hung up the receiver: and Shiro sighed as if hit in the chest with a dumbbell weight.

"That went surprisingly well", he congratulated himself. He felt lighter. Energised. Ready to take the day by the horns and master it. With a quirk of his lips and a quick bend, he picked up the phone book from the small stool beneath the phone. "Next one on the list…"

Lost & Found had found his suitcase, thank god. All he had to do was take the bus to the airport and pick it up.

Apartment locked and keys in pocket, Shiro jogged down two flights of stairs and… didn't actually know where to find a bus that went the right direction. Hands in his pockets, he started up the faintly sloping street to his right. There was a travel agency a few doors ahead: best shot at finding somebody to ask when everybody was at work. The man behind the desk didn't know which bus he should take, however. His colleague didn't know either, only that buses to the airport departed from the central train station, Termini. How to get to Termini was something Shiro would have to figure out on his own.

With a moderate headache still reminding him to hydrate, Shiro continued up Via Umbria. There was a T-crossing approaching, and a house with a huge, ornate iron gate and… Palace was a more accurate word. An ornate gate and an even more ornate pink palace squatting beyond it like a huge, pompous toad.

Shiro made a military sharp turn to the left, continuing on that street and refusing to look at the building. The street he came upon next was much bigger than Umbria, and for the first time he came out in direct sun. Squinting, he observed the little cars and the little Vespa's that crammed themselves together on the road, trying to make themselves smaller still in the hopes of squeezing past and getting ahead of the traffic. Warm dust tickled his nose. Coal tars bobbed leisurely on the heat currents rising from the asphalt, same as they did in Japan.

There were more people on the sidewalks, too. He asked a woman carrying groceries for the fastest way to Termini and the directions were easy: follow the road down to the bus stop – Bissolati – and take bus 85. Better yet, when Shiro arrived at the stop and checked the timetable bus 85 was due in two minutes.
…after three minutes he had to ask if there was something wrong. Luckily, there was a quite attractive young woman waiting for the bus, too, with a wild bundle of brown curls cluttering around her shoulders.

"Oh no, signore. The bus is late. We'll just have to wait and see", she replied in fast-paced, roiling Italian. "You aren't late for anything, I hope?"

"Not really. Just asking." The reply confused him, to be honest. Late? In all his 20 years of life, Shiro had never seen public transport be late.

"Where are you from?" she continued the moment he fell silent.

"Japan. This is my first day he-"

"All the way from Japan? That must have taken a long time. What brings you here? I hope you will enjoy the stay. How long are you staying? There's so much to do in Rome now that it's summer – don't miss the night fair on Via Ostiense the 29th."

Shiro didn't know how she expected him to reply to those questions when she carried on talking, or if she expected him to reply at all. The rapid-fire talk carried on for another ten minutes, with him interjecting a word here and there, until he saw the green bus finally come crawling down the packed street.

"Good luck with everything!" She beamed a rather yellow smile at him as he climbed aboard the bus.

People were talking on the bus. At first he thought they were outraged how late their transportation was, but from the bits of conversation he caught as he went down the aisle that wasn't it. They were just talking – very animatedly – and nobody seemed to find it strange that the bus was over ten minutes late.

What people did find strange was him. They weren't discreet about it either. Heads turned when he walked past – once he even heard an older man ask his seat neighbour "what do you think he was?", as if Shiro couldn't understand what they were saying.

Well, let them at it. People in Japan did the same when foreigners came there, only they were more discreet about it. Shiro did his own fair share of staring at the bus when the passengers weren't looking. So many colours of hair. So many strange faces.

Shiro amused himself with looking at people all the way to Termini, where he was informed that the buses for the airports departed once per hour and that he had just missed the departure. He was also asked which airport he wanted to go to, and learnt that Fiumicino was only part of the name: the full name was Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci International Airport.

Shiro stalked off from the information desk with his lips pressed into a thin line. Was every single thing in Rome determined to remind him of the last person he wanted to think about? Well he was just as determined to think about other things.

In a corner of the open area before the central station was a cluttered little building Shiro knew to be a kiosco. That is, it was something of an octagonal, and every square centimetre of it was packed with trinkets and tourist things. Post cards, maps, tour tickets, calendars – and newspapers. Shiro bought the day's Corriere della Sera and two cartons of Marlboro: that should keep him occupied until the next airport bus.

That, and tea. Shiro had only just lit a well needed cigarette before he caught sight of the bar across the street.

A bar in Italy was not a bar, as Samael had instructed him in one of their many roleplay lectures. A bar was the same as a café, and it was where Italians came to get their life-sustaining coffee. Shiro didn't care for anything that smelled that bad and had the colour of something burnt beyond recognition. His elixir of life was tea. He had searched every cupboard in the shared kitchen and found nothing except a few sad bags of chamomile tea. As he had wanted to wake up rather than fall asleep, he had left them on their shelf.

A smoke, a newspaper, and a cup of tea. Yes.

A bell above the door jingled pleasantly when he entered the spacious bar. It seemed like quite the popular place, and he could understand why. There was an air of home about it, a welcoming atmosphere created by people who loved their shop and their work. He swept the place with accustomed eyes, taking note that there were no signs of demons or places likely to attract demons. There was only the odd coal tar, being whisked about by the slowly churning fan in the ceiling.

Shiro quietly rehearsed to himself how this was supposed to be done. When ordering at a bar, place the order and pay at the cash register, then take the receipt to the barista who would make your coffee. Or tea.

If he could get to the barista, that was. There didn't seem to be any correlation between placing your order and picking it up, nor any actual queue. Well: when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Shiro shouldered his way to the counter and placed his order - that went quite smoothly, even though he was acutely aware that he landed the accent wrong on 'tea'. The greying man working the cash register didn't seem to mind. He licked his finger, counted up the change, and handed it over to Shiro – who did his best not to picture how a certain germophobe would have reacted in that situation.

It was kinda gross though – handling money like that. Not even putting it on a tray before handing it over.

The barista made eyes at him in ways no one could mistake. And what eyes! Shiro had never seen eyes that big, not even Sen's. They were a light hazel, same colour as the hair that cupped her head and curled in softly towards her neck. And her apron fit her… very well, he noticed, when she turned her back to him to prepare his order.

What she put on the counter was a cup of hot water with a teabag dangling its string over the edge. Chamomile.

"Excuse me, do you have other tea?" He tossed the question out quickly, catching her while he still had her attention. "Green tea, if you have. Red works, too."

Her pretty hazel eyes regarded him as if she didn't understand a word he was saying.

"Green. Tea", he articulated as thoroughly as he could. But no, it wasn't his pronunciation that failed him. When that dawned on him, Shiro's stare became as blank and uncomprehending as hers. "She has no idea what green tea is. People in Italy don't know what green tea is…" He knew he was on the other side of the earth. It just didn't sink in until that precise moment. "Uhm… Forget the tea. You don't…" He held up a hand, palm up, politely giving up and leaving the matter in her hands. "Please make something similar like tea but that won't put me to sleep. I'll pay."

He had never seen such poorly veiled disdain as when she swept his cup from the bar and turned away. It didn't escape his attention that she was much nicer to the customer coming after him, either. Really, now? All he had asked was to get a different kind of tea!

After the customer was served, a new cup landed before him with an ungraceful clink. There were none of the flirtatious looks she had sent him before. He had a "thank you" ready on his tongue but it never made it beyond his lips.

The cup held a black, murky liquid with a smell that made his nose prickle, and it was unmistakably coffee.

"Thank you", he said, although she had already turned away and was busy with her next customer. Shiro gave the brew a sceptical sniff and took a sip. His face shrivelled up instantly. He swallowed again but it was like the taste had burnt into his tongue. "Sorry. Can I have some more water in this?" he asked as politely as he could after his less than polite display.

The woman looked at him as if he had insulted her father. Not with a very good insult, either: some mediocre run-of-the-mill slur that couldn't even be taken personally, only mark him as the kind of general jerk who has no friends. This time Shiro scowled back. It wasn't like he was being a nuisance on purpose. Surely she could tell he wasn't used to this? And either way, she could have at least tried to treat him the same as her other customers.

She took his cup back without a word, conveying her disdain well enough with only the sharp angles of her raised eyebrows; she returned the cup a moment later, without comment. Shiro thanked her, although it came out more sarcastic than sincere.

It shouldn't have been possible, but the added water somehow just brought out the taste even worse. Shiro stared at the cup in his hands and weighed his options. Toss this rat poison back in one gulp and leave, or push his luck with the barista the last bit over the precipice.

…it was very tempting to swallow the coffee and leave, but he didn't know if he would be able to. Throw it away? Shiro had sinned much in his life but he did not throw away food. Especially not when he had paid for it.

"Can I have some milk in it instead?"

"What are you-" she began harshly, but caught herself. She leaned over the counter, thrusting the words at his face with an angry whisper. "What do you want? Tea, then no tea; coffee, then no coffee – what is your problem? And milk? What would you have me pour in next, hm? Wine? You like making fun of people at work? Then go do it somewhere else, coglione."

"I don't make fun of you!" He wasn't. He was a foreigner in a foreign land and she should damn well not expect him to be anything but that. "I don't know what to order, I don't know what you serve! You don't have things we have in my country!"

"Then maybe you should have thought of that before you went to Italy!" Shiro couldn't even put together a reply, only stare. Her arms were everywhere, chopping and waving in the air, and while he had no idea what all those gestures meant the message was abundantly clear. "Umberto! See this gentleman out, please!"

"Don't bother, I'll leave." Shiro did not need to find out who Umberto was, and he didn't really want to finish his coffee either.

Fucking women.

…well he didn't mind that, but women could be so stupidly difficult. And for no reason! That was the worst thing about them; they got upset over absolutely nothing and then they never let it go. Rest assured they wouldn't tell you what they were upset about either. They got upset and then they sulked – forever.

Shiro spent his bus ride smoking and testing his Italian with the newspaper. Mouthing the words to himself helped work the new motions into his tongue and lips. He understood most of the articles, too – the odd word here and there escaped him, but that was only to be expected. Not to say that he understood what they were about. Only that a lot of things were going on in Italy.

The main article was about a Cossiga minister guy and some Pannelli guy in the Radical Party going through a verbal wrestling match. There had been some demonstration a month ago, in Rome. It had escalated to a riot, shots had been fired, and one woman had died. Pannelli blamed Cossiga for not guaranteeing the safety of the demonstrators, and Cossiga in turn blamed Pannelli for carrying out the demonstration despite him saying that he couldn't guarantee the safety of the demonstrators. Word against word with no documentation on either side. Accusations were thrown left and right as to what jackass had fired into the crowd and why – Cossiga had had Carabinieri in civil clothing mixed into the crowd; extremists had mingled in and killed on purpose to bring about public uproar and destabilise the government; the woman had secretly been shot by radical feminists so they could "prove" they were right about oppression of women.

"Niigata Minamata all the way", he scoffed at the article. Cossiga and Pannelli wouldn't care who was left sitting with the blame as long as it wasn't them. Men of power never wanted to take responsibility when civilians were hurt.

Getting his luggage back was quick once he got to the airport, despite Italians having no organisation whatsoever when they walked on and off transport. Shiro was on his way out to the buses again when he passed one of the many ads in the airport and it clicked. The beach. He couldn't even remember the last time he had been to a beach, and the pictures of blue water and sun-kissed sand dotted with parasols spoke to every fibre of his being. How long had it been since he had taken a proper vacation and just done nothing?

Everything went so much smoother when he had a reward waiting at the end. He got back to Rome with his tourist leaflet in hand, hopped on the bus, bought the eggs and ham he owed the landlady, dropped everything off, and gathered himself and his swim shorts for a nice, relaxing afternoon of checking out girls in swimsuits.

It was on the beach that Shiro felt he could truly appreciate Italy. The sand stretched a good half kilometre to his left, billowing like a mirage in the bright sunlight; to his right it curved like a sickle, forming a harbour nested against the outcropping peninsula. A breeze swept in from the infinite blue, where white triangles of sails cruised slowly over the almost still water. It smelled of salt and seaweed. He felt the warmth of the sand seep through his shoes, the whiff of sun-baked skin as he put his hand up to shade his eyes and get a better view.

Girls in Italy all wore bikini. He could appreciate that.

Smile on his lips, Shiro kicked off shoes and socks and tucked them in with the towel roll he carried under his arm: time to locate the most strategic lookout point. The beach was flat, save for a small rise where wind and waves had crafted a few rudimentary dunes. That might work. He wove his way between towels and parasols and tanned, naked skin, then carefully balanced his weight as he climbed the sliding sand hill.

Yeah that would probably do. He took off his glasses for a quick polish, sauntering towards the neighbouring dune top to see what kind of view he'd get from the-

"Aua!"

Shiro half-jumped half-stumbled back and reached for a gun that wasn't there. Shit. He crammed his glasses back on his nose – if he could only identify the demon there was a chance he knew its fatal-

"The shit…?" Shiro felt his face take on the shape of one big, dumbfounded question mark.

The sand he had stepped on was a flapping camouflage blanket, and the one doing the flapping was a tangle of red, frizzy curls attached to a person. A woman, he saw when she floundered to her feet. A tall, flustered woman in bell-bottom pants two sizes too small. She frantically inspected some black box for damage. A camera? With two lenses?

The woman's head snapped up, and even behind the huge sunglasses Shiro could tell that she was frying him with her eyes. She had her mouth open to burn his ears off as well, but halted abruptly. It did not make Shiro any less confused.

When she finally moved, she let the camera fall back in its strap against her (considerable) chest and extended her hand. Still confused to hell, Shiro reached out to shake it.

Her hand went past his as if she hadn't even noticed, and closed firmly around his-

Shiro's whole being squeaked. His brain had no protocol prepared for what to do in case an unknown woman grabbed his junk.

"Also stimmt es…" he heard her murmur. Distantly. As if he had been wearing earplugs.

Not a millisecond later, the world crashed back in with audio. There were shouts and piercing whistles, and two men in what must be police uniforms coming at full speed over the sand.

The woman reacted to the whistle blows like an Olympic sprinter. Before Shiro had grasped what was happening she was hightailing it out of there with the camouflage flapping behind her and the policemen in hot pursuit. They had to give up quickly, however; once she reached the edge where beach sand met grass, the woman threw herself onto a plate-less Vespa and speeded down the street.

"Signore! Signore, do you speak Italian?"

"Uh... Yes."

"We saw what happened." The taller of the two had piercing blue eyes that stood out against his tan. He was also sweating profusely through his uniform. "It's not the first time. We would like you to describe the woman, please. Anything that can aid an identification."

It wasn't much of a description. Her hair, her clothes, her camera. She wasn't Italian, probably – he hadn't recognised any of what she said, at least, but he was unfamiliar with provincial dialects. It felt surreal. Shiro couldn't quite grasp the fact that a woman had just groped him in broad daylight.

"Who is she? Who does that kind of thing?"

"Some bitch from UDI." Whatever UDI was, the other policeman made it very clear what he thought of it.

The tall one wasted no time – literally no time, the man hadn't even finished his sentence – arguing that UDI wasn't perfect but it did make some good points.

"Don't get me wrong: I love women", the other defended himself, with the mandatory hand-waving. "When they behave like women."

It was the same as when he woke that morning. The policemen had left and Shiro was just… standing. Staring. Trying to…

She had grabbed his junk.

Shiro tried stretching, arms up over his head, in an attempt to get his mind back into his body. Crazy fucking day. He really deserved his sweet afternoon on the beach now. And so he picked up his towel, put every thought of nutjob women out of his mind, and spread it on the top of the dune. Nutjob or not, the "bitch from UDI" had picked the best viewpoint on the beach.

A/N

...you there, reader in Italy, carry a lot of responsibility from now on to point out to me if I write something incorrect about your country. =P

Carabinieri is the military police. Though in my opinion they look more like military than police. I happened to stay in an area of Rome – Trastevere – where the Carabinieri were conducting an operation against civil disorder, so I passed by their patrols every morning.

UDI is L'Unione Donne in Italia, which I believe is the largest feminist organisation in Italy.

The Niigata Minamata scandal was a thing in the mid-60's. Hundreds of people fell ill due to a chemical plant dumping wastewater into the river. The company tried to cover it up by accusing other sources, like agriculture.

Public transport works well in Rome nowadays, but according to sources I interviewed it wasn't always so. Buses sort of… came when they came. I expect that would surprise Shiro a great deal since Japanese public transport is (and was?) extremely punctual. …well, I can't imagine anyone would actually double-check, but for the record the bus numbers and routes I use are from modern-day Rome and not the 70's because good luck finding those. So if you are taking a stroll in the vicinity of Via Umbria you can take bus 85 from Bissolati to Termini.

The thing with gestures… In case you wonder why the bar dialogue escalated the way it did, it's because Shiro wasn't interested in learning Italian body language when he and Samael roleplayed. =P To raise your hand and indicate a person with your palm facing upwards is a polite way of referring to another in Japan; in Italy, it's the equivalent of "I can't believe this idiot". To which the barista's response is coglione – "asshole". (more like "balls", but used the same as English asshole)

The drink faux pas didn't improve the situation. Tea, for example, is something you drink mainly when you're ill and need to soothe the body with – most commonly – chamomille. Italians aren't big on tea at all: coffee is the thing. The espresso is the default, regular coffee, while Caffè Americano is the watered-down variety you order if you want most other people's "regular coffee".

But the milk is the real problem. Ordering a caffe latte is okay, but only before noon (remember, this is after three o'clock). After noontime, you do not drink milk: it's believed to interfere with your digestion and in general just be very bad for you. And strictly speaking, the Italians are right. The majority of the world's population can't digest lactose in adult age – Shiro most likely can't – which is why we have a term like lactose intolerance. As I have a Scandinavian genetic setup, I can (and do) drink all the milk I want. That doesn't keep Italian waiters from looking absolutely horrified when I order milk with my pizza. Like they expect me to drop dead off my chair.

Politics, politics…
I always try to research to the best of my abilities, but there are times when I do admit defeat. So here's my summary of Italian politics in the 70's: it's a bar fight, in a pitch black room, with a dozen brawlers that are all gonna point fingers at each other when the lights are turned back on and somebody asks who the fuck is responsible for this mess.

I've pieced together some form of basic understanding using the scraps I've found, but honestly Italians themselves barely understand what was really going on in the 70's. That bickering between Pannelli and Cossiga? They're still at it. Forty years later they're still having the argument about who did what and who didn't do what he should have done.