"Tsuzuki. . . ."

He flinched, awakened by the light brush of that voice against his sleeping mind, and sat up. The book that had been propped open on his chest fell to the floor, the sound ringing in his ears in the otherwise silent apartment. He shut his eyes as the lamp on the table by his head was switched on, the light banishing the last echoes of . . . whatever he had been dreaming about. He couldn't remember, only that he missed it terribly already.

"I must have fallen asleep. . . ." He couldn't even remember what he had been reading. It was dark in the library—

Which meant it was dark outside. Damn it. Tsuzuki had been meaning to catch the moment day changed to night in this place—it always seemed to happen so suddenly—but he'd missed it again.

He started to push himself up from the davenport he was sprawled across—then stopped. What was that wonderful aroma? . . .

"I thought you might join me for supper," Muraki said, slipping out of his coat as he stepped across the rug to the library door, "even if it is a bit late for it. I haven't yet eaten." He didn't ask if Tsuzuki had. He already knew the answer.

Once again, Tsuzuki had also slept through Muraki's arrival. "How did you get in here?"

Muraki laughed. "Same way I always do."

Which still wasn't an answer. The apartment was entirely self-contained, with no doors leading outside of it. Tsuzuki knew teleportation was not beyond Muraki's abilities, but he had yet to be told one way or another if that was Muraki's means of entrance. Even the dark streaks of raindrops on his coat weren't really a clue. It could be raining outside the apartment as they spoke, but just as likely the rain had come from somewhere else.

Slowly, giving himself time to stretch—and to nurse his suspicions—Tsuzuki got up and followed him to the dining room. Lately meals had begun to appear in this room twice a day, but though Tsuzuki suspected Muraki was the one who brought them, he'd never stayed to keep Tsuzuki company while he ate. Midday tea had, until now, remained the extent of their dining together.

It was an intimate space, the dining room, made all the more so by the dim electric lights and dark wood chair rail. A mantelpiece had been constructed against one wall, but it was only a facade: There had never been a hearth behind it. (Tsuzuki had already checked it for false walls or hidden doorways, just as he had the library bookshelves and the space behind every hanging painting.) But it gave the impression of the potential for warmth, if one ignored the cold stares of the dolls sitting above it.

Take-out containers were already partially unpacked, and two glasses of dark red wine sat beside two place settings at one corner of the table. Tsuzuki recognized tomato and basil, the more subtle scents of olive oil and salty cheese. His mouth watered despite himself.

"I seem to recall Italian is your favorite," Muraki said as he removed lids from the last few containers. "Was I wrong?"

No, however much Tsuzuki wished he could say he was. How just like Muraki this was, to take every last thing that Tsuzuki loved and ruin it.

"Come. Have a seat."

But Tsuzuki wouldn't budge. "The hell is this, Muraki?"

The doctor blinked as he looked up, though he couldn't possibly have been surprised by Tsuzuki's reaction. "It's a month now, to the day, since you came to me. I thought that was cause enough to treat ourselves to something different. Something special."

"So, what? Is this your idea of an anniversary dinner?" Even the word, with its implications of couplehood, left a bad taste in Tsuzuki's mouth.

"Well, technically a year would have to pass before it could properly be called an anniversary. But if you prefer to think of it that way, I won't begrudge you the use of the term."

But Tsuzuki didn't want to think of it that way. He wanted very much not to think of it that way.

Muraki smiled at him, a hand on the back of Tsuzuki's waiting chair. "Are you going to join me or not?"

"Do I have a choice?"

It was a rhetorical question, but Muraki answered anyway, "You always have a choice."

Whatever game he was playing, it would go no further if Tsuzuki didn't play along. And just maybe, if Tsuzuki humored him long enough, Muraki might let his defenses slip enough to reveal, after a month of this nonsense, something about what that game actually entailed.

So Tsuzuki took his seat; and, satisfied, Muraki began to serve him, filling his plate with roasted spring vegetables and risotto ai funghi and veal parmigiana, swimming in sauce. Tsuzuki tried to remain unmoved with that first, tentative bite, but the food was too good, and soon he was all but cramming it in, his tastebuds in heaven and his stomach growling to be filled.

When Tsuzuki caught himself at it, and forced himself to slow down, Muraki chuckled. "I take it everything meets with your approval."

"Does it ever," Tsuzuki grudgingly admitted around a bite of veal so tender it all but melted in his mouth. He washed it down with a generous swig of wine, which he also hated to admit was perfectly chosen. "But I can't help but think you wasted your money on me."

"I hardly think so," Muraki said between more measured bites. "It's the least I can do. To reward you for your patience this last month, but also to show my appreciation. After all, I would not be here if not for you. In more ways than one."

There was something in the way he said it, Tsuzuki knew he wasn't just referring, for the thousandth time, to that night one month ago. He knew it was bait, but not taking it would only draw out this charade. "You're still going on about being my son?" Tsuzuki tried to sound dismissive, as if he didn't believe what he knew was true. He remembered tearing up the paper that showed without a doubt their genetic similarity, as though that the act of tearing up the evidence were enough to turn it all into a lie.

"Biologically," Muraki amended. "Genetically, you are my father. That fact is too significant to be ignored or downplayed. However, I cannot force myself to think of you the way a son would think of a father. As far as I am concerned, the man who raised me under his roof bears that title, even if that is where his patrilineal obligation ended."

"Then why bring it up to begin with?" Tsuzuki genuinely wanted to know. "Just to put me through the pain of knowing that, if I'd made a few different decisions in my life, the world would have been spared your existence, and all the suffering that followed?"

"I would not have phrased it in quite that way, but yes. It is remarkable how things work out, is it not—what great things can come from confluences of events that seem quite random and unconnected at the time? But then, history is made of such confluences. Perhaps someone of your unique genetic makeup running by pure chance into someone like my grandfather, who was uniquely qualified to make something of it, did not alter the world in any grand way, but I like to think the consequences of it so far have been, in their own way, rather earth-shattering. I would not alter them for the world."

"Of course not. Or else you wouldn't be here. And we wouldn't get to have this riveting conversation."

"Precisely." Muraki's wine glass was almost to his lips when he paused, and smiled to himself, as though in secret vindication. He confessed, "I had hoped a similar thought had occurred to you."

Tsuzuki didn't follow. "Why is that?"

"I noticed you were reading Thus Spake Zarathustra before you fell asleep. Only the philosophical treatise on accepting—no, embracing the consequences of past actions beyond our control, no matter how unconscionable said actions may remain in hindsight."

"I thought it was about a hermit living in a cave with his talking animal friends," Tsuzuki said, more to himself than Muraki. He hadn't gotten far enough to reach all that other stuff.

That earned him another laugh. "Ah. Well, I suppose we all see that to which we are most likely to relate," said Muraki. "I must admit I've given you plenty of reason this past month to feel like a hermit in a cave."

"If I were a dog," Tsuzuki grumbled, not appreciating being laughed at when he was perfectly serious, "you'd at least take me out for some fresh air and a shit every once in a while."

That sobered Muraki right up, Tsuzuki noticed with a twinge of triumph. Even if the smile refused to leave his lips entirely.

"You saved my life," Muraki said. "Not just once: repeatedly. And when you had every opportunity to end me for good. I am only trying to show my gratitude—"

"Then you've got a strange way of showing it."

"And have you given much thought to why you made the decisions you did?" That shut Tsuzuki up, and made him reluctant to meet Muraki's penetrating glare. "Why, when I posed a direct threat to the system of order and justice you pretend to represent, not to mention your dear friends—when I've killed almost as many innocents as you have, you made an exception to your moral and righteous code to pull me out of the fire?"

"I didn't pull you out of that fire! If it'd been up to me, you would have stayed there and burned—like you deserved to!"

"I'm speaking metaphorically. I could have died a month ago if you had let the boy have his way. We both could have." So Muraki had come to the same realization as Tsuzuki had; and here Tsuzuki had thought—hoped—that Muraki had been too busy at the time, or too trapped in time, to notice how close he had come to oblivion. "You would have liked that, wouldn't you? To finally achieve your final rest. To know nothing more. It would certainly uncomplicate things for your former associates if you removed the two of us from the picture for good. Yet you chose to sacrifice the boy—"

Tsuzuki's fork clattered to his plate. "Don't call him that, he has a name."

"I believe you meant to say he had a name. Isn't that right, Tsuzuki? I know he did. And now whatever used to be Kurosaki Hisoka—" (Tsuzuki had been wrong; this was worse; Muraki had no right to say that name) "—is gone. All because you couldn't bear to let him kill me."

"Clearly I made the wrong decision." And wasn't it obvious how he regretted it every second of every day since? Hadn't he earned the right to bear that pain in silence?

Muraki shook his head. "I don't think so. That is, whatever came of it, I don't believe you thought it was the wrong decision at the time. Something made you stop his bird's attack. Something, perhaps, that you were not even consciously aware was there. I like to think it was something you finally understood about the two of us, about our interconnectedness—"

Something between a sob and a growl of frustration escaped Tsuzuki's throat in protest. He wanted to cover his ears, to shut out the words, but what good would it have done? He couldn't shut out his own thoughts. Or that little voice that had always been there whispering in the dark corners of the back of his mind, that he now realized sounded an awful lot like Muraki. As though they'd been reading the same books.

Or were made of the same stuff.

"I . . . could be wrong," Muraki amended, disingenuously apologetic at Tsuzuki's reaction. "What I cannot deny—what you cannot deny—is where your decisions have brought us. Whether you meant to or not, you chose me over the boy—over Yomi, and whatever vows you made to your god—"

"I didn't choose this," Tsuzuki hissed.

"And now I have to wonder what it was all for," Muraki went on as though he hadn't been refuted. "What paths have opened before us that might never have had a chance to be, if everything that has brought us to this point had unfolded even the slightest bit differently?"

He seemed as though he wanted to say more, but something stopped him. When the silence dragged on for several seconds, Tsuzuki looked up from his abandoned plate and own thoughts to see what had given Muraki pause.

And was surprised to see him just sitting there, his fork still in his hand, a troubled look slowly making its way over his face.

"What paths?"

At Tsuzuki's question, Muraki started as if out of a trance. "My apologies, Tsuzuki," he said, clearly distracted. "I'm afraid you'll have to enjoy the rest of this so-called anniversary dinner alone—"

"You're leaving?" As Muraki rose to his feet, Tsuzuki shot to his.

"Another matter requires my attention. Regrettably, as I was rather enjoying the conversation."

"Oh, I'm not letting you get away that easily." This was his chance, maybe the only one he was going to get, to find out how Muraki was getting in and out of the apartment. "If you're leaving, I'm coming with you—"

Tsuzuki never made it to the door, however. Muraki moved so fast, Tsuzuki barely had time to react to the doctor's hands on him before he was thrown back against the edge of the dining table, his breath knocked out of him but otherwise unhurt, while Muraki disappeared through the rapidly closing double doors.

Tsuzuki threw himself against them, rattled the handles. Banged against the solid wood. Shouted to be let out. But, of course, none of it did any good.

And by the time he did manage to get free of the room, courtesy of the cutlery and his own persistence, Muraki was long gone. Again.

"I told her to leave her number, sir, and that you would call her back," Sakaki said as Muraki came down the stairs, "but she insisted that she had to speak directly to you right away. That it was urgent."

Muraki's butler handed him a small piece of paper, on which he had written the name of the caller. One Dr. Akiyama. It wasn't exactly a rare name, but he knew he had met her once before. It was not like him to forget a kindred spirit.

He waited until Sakaki was out of earshot before he took the caller off hold. "Ms. Akiyama," he said, in the brightest tone he could manage, having been so recently interrupted for this. He did not need to introduce himself; she would know him by voice. "May I ask how you came by this number?"

The question seemed to take her aback. As if she'd had a script all worked out for this call, and he had just made her toss the whole thing out. "I-it was in Dr. Sakuraiji's effects at the office, under emergency contacts. I wasn't sure it would work, but—well, I'm not sure if you've heard, but Dr. Sakuraiji has been on leave for the past month—"

Leave. Was that where she was telling her colleagues their employer had gone? But Muraki decided to humor her, see what playing along might reveal. "I heard. And my man did relay your message that this was an emergency."

"I need your help, Dr. Muraki." He heard relief in Akiyama's voice. So far he hadn't hung up on her. "I was hoping maybe you remembered me from the mixer at Waseda where we met a few years ago. I was a post-grad at the time and Dr. Sakuraiji my mentor. She, um, wasn't there that night either, her work was keeping her busy, but we talked for a time about cellular regeneration, and whether certain genetic mechanisms could be 'switched on' to combat disease—"

"I remember." And all the time she spent on pointless reminisces was time he could have been spending with Tsuzuki.

"Right," said Akiyama. "Well . . ." She laughed. "It worked. We figured out how to do it, and it actually bloody worked!"

Muraki felt his blood run cold as she told him all in a rush about the trials she had been running in secret, patients she had been bringing back from the brink of death with some new gene therapy that Ukyou had been working on before her disappearance. He knew exactly what she was going to tell him, what she had done. He didn't need to hear the actual confession.

"The problem is, it's all gone. All our research, our equipment, precious samples—" A nervous laugh, the defense of a woman who had been trying very hard all day not to break down into tears of frustration and was finally nearing her wits' end. "Some men came in the middle of the night and ransacked the place. Took or destroyed every trace of what Dr. Sakuraiji had been working on for the past twenty years.

"I don't know what I'm going to tell her when she gets back. I tried every number I could, but I can't get ahold of her. I thought maybe if we could at least recover some of the original samples, if any still existed, we could start over again while the data was still fresh in our minds. It's never too late to rebuild as long as we have those samples. They came from your grandfather, Doctor, if I'm not mistaken. Didn't they?"

That sounded about right. It had been Muraki's father's parting gift to the senior Sakuraiji when they ended their working relationship, and Muraki was well aware that Ukyou's old man had cloned them for use in his own pharmaceutical research. They were what Ukyou had been working with her entire career. A billion little pieces of Tsuzuki Asato, his grandfather's mysterious undying patient.

And now this Akiyama woman had started sticking them into patients across the country. Without Ukyou's knowledge or permission, surely, and certainly without his. And without any care for the side effects—either to the patients, or to Ukyou, her own employer. Let alone any thought for what it might mean for him, when word of these "miracle" cures got out.

The audacity of her, to come asking him for more now. Did she think he just had Tsuzuki's tissue lying around? And even if he did, that was hardly an excuse in her own defense. "These men you say ransacked your lab. Who were they?"

"I don't think they were government, if that's what you're asking. Most likely some reactionary, Luddite protest group who're afraid genetic research goes against God's will, or some such nonsense. They called themselves shinigami." By Akiyama's derisive laugh, she thought it was a joke. "Can you believe that? As if scientists like us are supposed to believe those things exist?"

The boy. He had to be behind this. Muraki was sure of it. As deeply as he had wanted to believe that brat was finally gone from his life, he couldn't swallow what he knew was a lie.

But nor was he willing to let this mistake go unpunished.

"You're right," he told Akiyama. Her register was simple to mimic, to feign sympathy with. She would buy it, that stupid woman, and believe he was on her side. "This research is too important to let go without a fight. I think we should meet."