Even when the first shock had died away, Yuushi couldn't concentrate. He couldn't even care. Not for poor Bellwood, whose grief was nearly as much as his own, and who felt so needlessly guilty. Not for his family friends, who'd known Taiyou. Certainly, he couldn't care for work. His team was down a rook and a knight now. He knew it was important to them. He knew it should be important to him.

Someone suggested he visit Masato in hospital. He sat with the man for a while in hospital and tried to talk. Masato was kind. Yuushi could vaguely remember having an absurd crush on the older man, slightly embarrassing to them both, for Masato was straight. For all Yuushi knew, he still had it. Everything was wrapped away in cotton wool.

It was harder than the recent deaths of their parents by accident. Taiyou had killed herself. Suicide rejected or betrayed the people she knew loved her, and would grieve for her. Yuushi's kept trying not to think about the despair which had driven her into drowning herself, and the pain and fear she must have felt while doing it. Not as kind a death as a young girl would have thought, and not romantic at all.

He drifted around Tokyo for hours on end. The alternative was to sit still and let his thoughts catch him.

He found himself in a park they had often gone to when Yuushi was a kid. The same benches, the same little bridges, the cherry trees had hardly grown. The memories were a bit kinder there. Their parents had been alive, and Taiyou had looked much like the young girl over there.

For a bit Yuushi found some obscure comfort watching her. She was with her mother. They were talking earnestly, and Yuushi decided the mother was probably encouraging her daughter to university, while the daughter was explaining she loved some boy forever, so the sooner they married and started living in idyllic bliss, the better. It was what an American tourist would call Indian summer, admirably suited to sit on a park bench in the sun and speculate about those near by. A young man came up to them, was greeted, and sat down with them. The girl's boyfriend? Yuushi decided not.

The young man was only a boy, really. That was just how he'd come late to his family. If the kid hadn't had red hair, it could have been him sitting there. His mother was talking something over with him. No doubt it was some important matter such as observing curfew. Or to the kid, Yuushi thought, remembering the few years back, as important as not having to observe curfew.

"Nice family, aren't they?" said a distinctive voice at his elbow.

Yuushi was startled. A civilian shouldn't have been able to creep up on him like that.

The guy certainly looked like a civilian. A tall, handsome man just enough into middle age so he could look fatherly, as he was doing now. He was dressed in a far better suit than the normal salaryman. Yuushi was sure he'd seen that man before, but when he spoke again found himself being mesmerised by that rich musical voice.

He said, "I'm really sorry for the girl, you know. She made a mistake, meaning well, and she's landed her brother in a bad situation. She knows just enough to feel guilty. She might do something really desperate." A pause, while Yuushi looked at the Taiyou-ness of the young girl. "Like kill herself."

Yuushi was careful to remain still. He believed the man was musing aloud to himself.

He went on in that rich, indisputable voice. "Crawford killed their father, and they know it. But Crawford works for Reiji Takatori. And Takatori's brother is Police Commissioner. Nothing to be done about it. Pity. If only there was someone who could take that smug bastard down. Once Shuichi was out, the law could take care of the others."

Yuushi blinked at a sudden image of a smug, bulky Police Commissioner. Another part of his mind suddenly remembered where he'd seen this guy. Kinugawa. Someone who'd undone quite a lot of Crashers' work, and made Weiss needed where it shouldn't have been. He didn't seem the sort of person to be overcome with moral indignation.

But then, he might just be ambulance chasing. Or have a personal beef with the Commissioner.

A foreign-feeling suggestion distracted him back to the idyllic family scene before him. Perhaps he really did feel sorry for the girl and wanted to save her from harm.

It had been a bad night for Schuldig as well as Ran. Ran so hated quitting that outside job waiting tables. It had to do with self respect, as well as wishing to spend as much time away from the team as possible.

The room they shared was all Schuldig's. Even Ran's clothes and weapons stored there were bought for team work.

Crawford's insistence Ran be Schwarz' full time, working on his combat skills when not actually body guarding was, Schuldig suspected, partly so Ran realised Schwarz owned him completely.

Crawford insisted Ran work for the team full time, working on combat skills when not body guarding. Schuldig knew this was to teach Ran they owned him completely.

Finally, Schuldig had sent Ran to sleep against his will. Now he unwound his arm from Ran. Even asleep, the smaller man seemed to flow away from him.

Unwinding his mind was harder. Not only Ran's nightmares had come to live in Schuldig's mind, but his memories of a loving family, a cherished small sister...And why should that spark the memory of a fellow student of Rosenkreuz? Schuldig shook the memory of the vicious, crazy Layla from his mind.

Even that sudden impulse for a midnight raid on the fridge wasn't his.

Nonetheless, once the impulse had been put in his mind for coconut biscuits – he didn't like coconut, really, did he? - he padded into the kitchen and looked meaningfully at the packet in Crawford's hand.

Crawford tossed it to him and watched as he wolfed them all. "Fujimiya still trying to find a way to bribe you to kill me?"

"Hey, it helps keep him sane."

Crawford shrugged. Keeping his team mates sane had never been high on his priorities. At least he'd given up on making a joke of it with Silvia. "You'd think he'd have realised the basic logic in that anything he can offer you, you can take without paying."

Schuldig had taken a lot from Ran. He'd taken love and pity and remorse with the pleasure. Schuldig wondered again if anyone can just take without paying something. Especially a telepath trying to own a human soul. He bundled up the biscuit wrapper and threw it at the rubbish bin. It missed. Crawford was saying, "That Ouka brat will try to poison my coffee just before the big meeting."

"Oh, that won't be poison. It'll be truth serum."

"Your job's to warn me about this sort of thing."

"It's been pretty vague so far." Seeing Crawford's exasperation, "Hey, I didn't know anything definite. She's been playing with the idea of having you break down and confess in the middle of as large a crowd as possible. Preferably including Uncle Schuichi, so he'll realise how deeply he's wronged poor old Takatori and fall sobbing on his neck." Coughing either from the image or a biscuit crumb, he added thoughtfully, "With Ouka set on it, it just might happen."

"I wish she'd face up to the fact this is all her beloved Tousan's doing." Schuldig wanted to say: Yes, but if you hadn't come along with all these tempting offers and powers, Takatori wouldn't have done it. He'd have stayed just another run of the mill scumbag.

Bad enough, for Ouka.

"Well, be there to stop her. I might have to do something about that girl."

"You and Schuichi could get together on that," Schuldig muttered after his unhearing back. He stayed in front of the open fridge, looking for something to take the taste out of his mouth.

He was beginning to realise he didn't like the taste of coconut.