4: Roulette

Yuuko-san was a disturbingly good nurse Watanuki found out as he watched his employer apply the blood-colored disinfectant on Taicho's wound. Even while she smiled in a way that suggested that she knew everything, and teased the spirit, her hands expertly tended to the gash on her patient's head. The patient in question didn't like being tended to, and insisted that he was fine, despite the spot on his head that would be staining his white hair pink were it not for Maru and Moro's well-timed dabbing with disinfected gauze. Watanuki, in an observer's spot, (not 'getting out of the way.' Like he would get in the way.) found it strange that while Taicho would seem to flail and rant in protest, his head stayed relatively still, and his erratically moving arms never got in the way of whatever Yuuko-san was doing. It was slightly disconcerting.

Once Taicho's head was bandaged to Yuuko-san's satisfaction, she stood up, dusted off her hands, then declared, "This good a job deserves sake!"

"It's too early!" To Watanuki's surprise, his cry of outrage was echoed by Taicho. The short spirit had sprung to his feet at the declaration, and was standing there, glaring vehemently at Yuuko-san.

"You can't start drinking now!" he continued, "You'll get drunk and never get anything done! Then I'll be the one doing all of- of- of the-" Suddenly, Taicho was the center of a laser sharp focus.

Yuuko-san watched him with her smirking visage. "Of the what, Taicho? What won't get done?"

Taicho's pale face tinted pink as he fought for the next word. "The- the- AAARG! I CAN'T REMEMBER!" His legs seemed to collapse and he was suddenly on the floor, head in hands. "I can't remember."

Watanuki couldn't help but wonder if Yuuko-san had planed this. How many of the events around her had she planed out? Or was her belief in 'hitsuzen' so strong she was never surprised?

"Don't sweat it, Taicho," Yuuko-san said, kneeling down, placing a hand on his white hair. "You'll get it yet. Don't try too hard, though, or you could land yourself in a coma!" Her serious face was gone, and the smirk was back. "And you have to remember this, Taicho-kun: I'm the one in charge here. You aren't my captain. And I say 'it's time for drinking'!"

Taicho's aggravated groan was muffled by his hands.

Watanuki had left the room to fetch the alcohol on Yuuko-san' orders. Taicho had been sitting on the floor, head in hands when he'd left. Now, the white haired youth was nowhere to be seen.

"Maru and Moro are giving him a tour," Yuuko-san told him before he'd had a chance to ask.

"Oh…" Watanuki placed the trey of sake and snakes on the table before Yuuko-san and began unloading it. "Um, Yuuko-san, what exactly is Taicho? He's a spirit, right? Like Zaski-warashi or Ame-warachi?"

Pouring herself a cup of sake, the witch mulled the question over. "Taicho is a spirit; normal people can't see him, but I would not group him with Zaski-warashi, or Ame-warashi."

"So, you know what he is, then?"

"… You could say that."

Watanuki sighed as he picked up the trey. "You won't tell me anything until this is all over, won't you?"

"Don't be silly, Watanuki-kun. I might tell you three-quarters of the way through. Or maybe just before the end," she laughed, knocking back a cup of sake. "Aaaaah, good choice, Watanuki-kun! I'll answer another question, if you have one."

"I-"

"I know you have one," she interrupted.

"Well, I-"

"You always do."

"If he d-"

"You can spit it out, now, Watanuki–kun! What's taking so long?"

Watanuki stood, fuming quietly at Yuuko-san. Was she just going to keep interrupting him? She'd said that she'd answer another question, but Yuuko-san could twist words however she liked to suit her intentions. One more try. "What will happen to Taicho if he doesn't get his memories back. Will he die like Sakura-san?"

"No." Watanuki breathed a sigh of relief. If they couldn't find Taicho's memories, the results wouldn't be too dire. "He still has some of his memories, unlike Sakura-chan, and unlike her he isn't human. No," she continued, "it won't be the amnesia that kills him, it'll be the cumulative effect."

Any relief in the room went out the window. "Wh-what?"

"An important part of his soul, along with all his memories of himself has been taken from him. Don't you think that would impact a person in a negative way, Watanuki-kun?"

"I-I guess so…"

"Exactly. Because of who and what he is, he has time to find himself."

"Before he dies?" Watanuki gulped.

"I suppose you could call it that." Yuuko-san poured herself another cup of sake. "But, now you've asked more than one question. Time to get back to work!"

Taicho's tour lasted a surprisingly long time. At least, Watanuki didn't see the spirit until it was time for him to start preparing dinner. The spirit was being led though the halls by Maru and Moro, looking slightly bewildered. Watanuki didn't blame him. Yuuko-san's shop did that to people.

"Oh, hello," he said to the group. "I'm just about to make dinner. Taicho, is there anything you'd like?" While Maru and Moro placed their own orders, ignoring the fact that Watanuki hadn't asked them for their opinion, Taicho remained silent. Watanuki had a small panic attack. 'Does he even eat?! Have I offended him some how?'

Before Watanuki's mind tore itself apart with worry, the diminutive spirit said. "Do you have… watermelon?"

The answer surprised Watanuki. "Watermelon?" Spirits like watermelon? "Ah… I don't' think so. It's out of season, and watermelon isn't really something you'd eat for dinner, is it?"

"Watermelon!"

"Watermelon!"

Watanuki had to suppress a groan. Great, now Maru and Moro wanted watermelon. And then Yuuko-san would want watermelon. He'd have to go buy expensive, out-of-season watermelon tomorrow. Wonderful. Of course, he really shouldn't complain. If the poor kid wanted watermelon, who was he (a mortal) to begrudge him (a spirit of undisclosed power) a watermelon?

"I'll have to see if we have any watermelon," Watanuki said over the girls' chorus of 'Watermelon, watermelon, we want watermelon!'

There was no watermelon. After being followed by two chanting girls, and a strange spirit, Watanuki felt that Yuuko-san should have had watermelon in the kitchen, but there was none of the melon to be found. Maru and Moro lamented the situation, but Taicho took the news stoically.

"Sorry, we don't have any watermelon…"

Taicho shrugged. "It doesn't matter. We can have something else for dinner."

"It seems so. Heh." Something about this spirit set Watanuki on edge. Spirits were bad news. That was the one law that Watanuki lived by, but recently that law had had a few exceptions. But those exceptions were fox-shaped, and cooked oden. Every other spirit he'd met had hurt him, wanted to hurt him, or caused him some kind of grief. Even spirits who seemed to like him caused him trouble. He'd almost died the day he met the Ame-Warashi, and the Zaski-Warashi… had made a mistake. Maybe he was subconsciously waiting for Taicho to cause something horrible to happen.

Suddenly, Maru and Moro stopped bewailing the lack of watermelons, and grabbed Taicho's hands.

"Come on, we have to leave!"

"Mistress says you shouldn't be in the kitchen," the girls giggled as they pulled a bewildered whit haired spirit from the kitchen.

"Besides, Watanuki doesn't like people in the kitchen."

"He yells at us when we try to help."

"I heard that!" Watanuki took objection to the girls' claims. "You can't call stealing the food 'helping'!"

There was only a vaguely creepy echo of giggling in reply.

When Watanuki arrived at the shop, four beings were there to greet him. Taicho seemed to have joined the 'welcome to work' group that included Maru, Moro and Modoka, though he didn't look too pleased to be there.

"She says that I start working when you do. Hurry up. The sooner we start, the sooner we finish," he declared over the sounds of Watanuki's welcome.

Once inside, however, Taicho didn't seem too interested in work. Probably because he saw the apron Yuuko had picked out for him. She must have gone shopping while Watanuki was at school, or something because he couldn't remember seeing it before, and something like that was hard to forget.

It wasn't that the apron was ugly- in fact, it was a nice apron- it was just… not something that Taicho, an individual who radiated dignity (or tried to), would ever consider being within twenty feet of. In short, the apron was cute. It had the same rough shape as his, and it was white, but it had more lace. And there were snowflakes stitched into it. Where Yuuko-san had gotten it, he didn't know. He did know that the spirit it was intended for looked like he'd rather be boiled alive than wear it.

"But you have to! You don't want to get those clothes I loaned you dirty, do you?" Yuuko told him.

"Don't you have any other aprons?" there was veiled desperation behind Taicho's eyes.

"Nope."

"She planned it. I know she did," Taicho growled as he and Watanuki battled the dust in the shop. Taicho was, much to his displeasure, wearing the apron. "I don't know how she knew how to get this apron before I came here, but she planned it. She knew I'd hate it, so she went and got this stupid apron!"

"You catch on quickly," Watanuki grumbled. His polite manner had thawed out as he worked, though he wasn't relaxed enough to complain about the spirit in question, he would happily complain about Yuuko. "She seems to know all about what happens before it happens. She's obsessed with this hitsuzen."

"I know. She explained it to me today," Taicho replied. "It sounds stupid."

"Yeah, but she still has that whole 'predicting the future' thing going on."

"Hn."

Watanuki shivered. It seemed to be getting colder.

The next day, on the way to work, Watanuki picked up a watermelon. It wasn't the best, but it wasn't the season for watermelons, so there wasn't anything he could really do about it. He usually didn't buy produce out of season, but usually there weren't irritable spirits with a watermelon addiction working with him in the shop. Hopefully, the watermelon would make Taicho stop snapping at everybody.

It really was weird. One minute, Taicho was acting like a mature adult, and the next he acted like a horrible brat. Sometimes, not even Yuuko seemed to keep up with the mood swings. Taicho sometimes didn't seem to know how he wanted to act, and that fact seemed to aggravate the diminutive spirit, who would occasionally snap at the others in the shop.

Actually, Watanuki couldn't blame him. The kid had no idea who the hell he was, and he was missing a part of his soul. That had to be hard on someone, even a spirit, and even if he was a spirit, Taicho was still a child. At least, he looked like a child; he threw a fit every time Yuuko tried to even insinuate that he was one. It would be funnier if the shop's temperature didn't take a nose-dive every time it happened.

Other than that, Taicho was a good companion. He took work as seriously as Watanuki himself did, besides cooking, since he wasn't allowed to do that. He was also staunchly against Yuuko-san's midday binging. It was comforting to have an ally against Yuuko's alcoholism. Even if she never listened to either of them.

Even though Taicho was a good ally against the excesses of their boss, something about the white haired spirit made Watanuki uneasy. He was glad that he only had to deal with him during work. If Yuuko-san, after hearing the effect Taicho had on the spirits that followed Watanuki, started having the diminutive figure follow him, he didn't know how well he could handle it.

Which is why Watanuki Kimihiro could be seen in the middle of an empty street violently cursing fate, irony, and something called 'hitsuzen' as he rounded a corner and saw several hungry-looking spirits waiting for him.

A/N: In manga, you can just throw in some dramatic shots of the characters while they talk. It doesn't work like that in prose! So, when a fanfiction author tries to mimic the story style of a series with a lot of explaining, like say, xxxHolic(!) you get large chunks of dialogue with nothing really happaning except talking. Nothing.

Anyway, sorry about this chapter, it's mostly rubbish, I know, but things have been hectic this week, the dreaded Writers' Block fell on me, etc, etc. So, you know what makes my day? Reviews. Click on the button. You know you want to...