Sleepwalker Part 8:

One morning came; soon followed by a next one, and a next, and suddenly Kurogane found that he had lost count of how many days had passed since Fay had moved into his apartment. Maybe because it all felt almost dreamlike, like something that wasn't supposed to happen in reality, something too absurd to be allowed if the world was still sane.

His investigations went on, but it was almost as if everything was cloaked beneath a mist of mysteries that he couldn't yet see trough, and he sensed that there was something that he missed.

Fay had, by some unspoken agreement, started spending the night in Kurogane's room and the guestroom was once more deserted. However, this didn't mean that it was any easier to get anything useful out of him, at least not anything else than good sex and delicious food…

If Kurogane tried to confront him, he would either make a joke out of it or close up inside himself. He got tired one evening, after an extraordinary trying day in which Yuuko had sent him away to talk to a woman who called herself "Crime Psychologist" and then talked in hours about disconnecting "Risei"s and "Kanjou"s. As Fay once more dodged his attempts to start a descent conversation he had simply grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against a wall, red eyes burning with anger and frustration.

But what he had seen in the blonde's eyes had been fear, mixed up with a resignation so total that it had made him drop him and step back, almost shocked, before putting his arms around his waist instead, holding him tight and trying not to hear the relief in his sigh as he buried his face in Kurogane's shirt. Probably, he thought, Fay would never stop believing that it only was a matter of time before Kurogane got tired enough of his antics to hurt him. So he found himself accepting the fact that he couldn't force Fay to open up to him.

What he didn't accept was Yuuko and her never ending games. Everything the woman said was important and yet worthless unless you could figure out what was between the lines. And he hated for making things so difficult, hated her for first connecting his own life to Fay's and then putting them both in danger with not telling him all she knew. Kurogane hated riddles; better speak simple, true and straight forward than making things more complicated than necessary. He was in the wrong company and he knew it.

Tomoyo seemed pleased enough, though. Only after two days she had told him that Fay was the best secretary she'd ever had; smart, charming and skilled in lots of different things. She seemed to be willing to give him the job permanent, should it be topical. And Fay had nothing adverse to say about his post, he and Tomoyo fit well together and he didn't object to run errands for her at all. And if this resolute you lady decided that she wanted someone to work for her, no one would ever dream about objecting even if the person in question hadn't even graduated from elementary school.

It was a little more than a week into the epoch of his life Kurogane subconsciously called the "Fay Era". He had just dropped the blonde off in front of Tomoyo's office and was now waiting for the traffic lights in the nearest corner to turn green. The clock at the instrument panel told him that he was only going to be a little more than five minutes late today, if the traffic was running in normal pace. Before Fay had moved in he had always been early to work, but the other man seemed to know numerous of different ways to get them delayed… The minute hand moved again, the light switched colour and he drew out at the larger street.

It hit him that this could have been a perfectly normal morning, in which the memories of blood, cold stone and an extremely dead body slowly faded away and were replaced by common things such as breakfast, autumn sun and hurrying to work. In this different light, it could almost be real and not a cheap, desperate game of lies, questions and survival.

He could have asked himself whether he thought that it could be made real, but he didn't have the energy to think about it.

A dilemma with being late was the inevitable lack of parking slots and it took him at least two more minutes to find a backstreet where he could leave his car. Tomoyo would kill him if she knew he had left his birthday present in such a shabby place, but he didn't actually have much of a choice.

As he walked in trough the front door he almost collided with Watanuki for the second time in less than two weeks. This time it was mainly the youngsters fault, since he came rushing like an idiot out from the office.

"Sorry," he said breathlessly, "Yuuko sent me to get something from the post office before they manages to deliver it. Of course, I shall be the one to delay their honest work… She told me I would probably run into you on the way out, there's a lady in her office who wants to meet you."

Kurogane felt half pissed off and half hopeful as he made his way over to Yuuko's office, taking the almost ritual way past his desk to leave jacket and lunch box, he was pretty sure it was fried chicken today. He had no idea what the witch was up to this time and he neither had any idea to whom this "lady" was. But the door to the room stood already half open as if telling him to hurry up; Yuuko loved metaphors, even in daily life.

His boss herself sat as usual casually leaned back in her chair and at the other side of the deck sat a middle aged woman, tall, blonde and quite good looking, with tasteful clothes and determined eyes.

As he entered the room, the woman stood and offered him her hand in greeting.

"Hello," she said, "I'm Johanna Andersen, nice to meet you!"

He recognized the name almost immediately even if it hadn't turned up very much since the report he had read that night for one and a half week ago.

"You led the research about the case with the disappeared child, am I right?" he asked as he shook hands with her.

"Exactly," she made a small grimace, "I spent two years of my life on that case and I was never able to solve it, I'll never forgive myself for that."

She sat down in the chair again and reached for the coffee cup in front of her, Watanuki must have bought it to her before rushing away.

"Now suddenly, Yuuko-san called me and said that you're investigating a murder in which the child mentioned in my report is considered the main suspect?"

Kurogane fought down an impulse of asking her if "considered the main suspect" was enough when talking about someone who sat in the cellar of the same house, had blood in his face and refused to tell what the hell he was doing there. Whatever kind of weird relationship he had with Fay didn't change the fact that he still wasn't convinced that he had killed that guy, he just hoped that the blonde had had a damn good reason for doing so…

"I trust that my boss has already familiarized you with the details about it?" he asked instead as he fetched himself a chair from the other side of the room.

"Absolutely," Yuuko smiled broadly and toasted him with her own cup, "I even told Miss Andersen about this 'special kind of investigation' you are doing."

"Of course you did," he growled, he could just hope that she hadn't been hinting on anything else to someone, since her smile had told him long ago that she knew more then she possibly should do.

"Oh, yeah," the Norwegian woman seemed to be confused by this, "I heard that Mr Flourite is currently staying with you in your own apartment?"

Kurogane nodded, glaring at Yuuko sideways.

"I didn't want to lose track of him before I had this solved and over with," he said simply.

"And he agreed with this?"

The black haired man shrugged.

"He didn't have anywhere else to go… I was confused that he didn't object to it, as well, but actually that man seems to have neither a sense of logic nor a common sense."

"Really? From the people who met him before he left Norway I have heard that he appeared to be an intelligent and somewhat premature boy?" the woman finished her coffee and put it back at the tray.

"He is too damn intelligent for his own good, but he seems to enjoy acting like a complete idiot, but enough with this, why exactly are you here?"

"Well," Johanna sank back into the chair's back support, "I talked to Yuuko-san a little more than a week ago as she had found my number and wanted to ask me about my old reports. After this I felt like I had to make a last try to solve this case that has been haunting me for all these years. And I actually think that I have stumble upon something…."

Kurogane raised an eyebrow.

"What then?"

"Well… A lady in the same village as Mr Flourite and his foster parents lived in at the time I was in contact with them told me later, after they had left, that it had been yet another child living in that house, a girl. This girl was never in any registers at all. I started to contact colleagues in different parts of the world, sent photographs of the family and actually got some answers from people who thought that they might have seen them. One of them sent me a picture of this girl and as I faxed this to different Japanese police forces, you ought to have gotten it too?"

Yuuko nodded and received a deadly glare from Kurogane in return.

"I did get it," she said, "I let one of my most trusted men look for the girl but he didn't find her…"

"Perhaps he did never cross the line to the next district because there, this girl has been seen on a number of different supervision cameras."

"So then Watanuki…?" Kurogane turned to Yuuko.

"Is out to look for her," Yuuko had lit her pipe again and took a long drag from it, "that boy has a peculiar gift for stumbling over things…"

"I still don't get it," Kurogane frowned, "so this girl is supposed to be his what? Sister? Partner in crime?"

Maybe even the actual murderer?

This time it was Miss Andersen's turn to shrug.

"No idea," she said, "but…"

They where interrupted as a tall, dark haired youngster knocked at the door post.

"Watanuki called," he said shortly, "the girl is outside your apartment, Kurogane-san, and she says that Flourite is in trouble."