"Excuse me?" Ren's mind temporarily falters.

"Oh! Right. I'm sorry about that." She switches back to Japanese. "You're probably more better...sorry. I mean, you're probably better with this one, aren't you?" I ought to have remembered that really."

"I can hold my own in English, thank you very much," Ren says, kind of naturally miffed by her tone of voice, switching back to his native language easily as if taking up a challenge.

"Okay, sure, we'll go at it this way," she switches back, smiling at his competitiveness.

"So who are you, and where did Natsu go?" Definitely not Setsuka, which is a given since I stayed out of Cain like she said to, and something tells me it's not Mio, which I'm kind of relieved about. I don't really want to see her. Her voice is a little deeper...tomboy maybe? Maybe a guy? If a chick could pull off Peter Pan flawlessly, then no doubt Kyoko could be a guy for an act.

"No doubt you'd rather sit with that chic lady than a regular guy like me, but I won rock-paper-scissors, so you're outta luck there. Best two outta three right before the little miss conked-out by the hand of her little potion there," he points to the near-empty glass on the bar. "I wouldn't advise drinking it if you want to talk, though I am quite surprised that it isn't just made with crushed sleeping pills. On the flip-side though, I'm a little scared that she was able to whip this up with things from your kitchen. I've heard it runs sparse, so I wonder what she used." She reaches over to snag Ren's glass from him sniffs it, taking only a minuscule sip. "Chamomile, maybe, but no doubt there's more in there than that. Hmm...the amount of chamomile would probably be the equivalent to the amount of vanilla extract in cookies I'd say."

"But who are you?" Ren questions, not caring about cookies or the tea at the moment.

"You don't remember me? Wow." He puts his hand to his chest like he's been shot with an arrow. "I'm hurt. I'm truly wounded. THE Tsuruga Ren doesn't even remember meeting me?" He leans back on the stool, careful not to fall off in his theatrics, and drapes his hand palm side up over his forehead like a 1950s swooning girl in the sight of something terrible. That reminds me of mom when she's say she had only ten more minutes to live. "Now that hurts me, considering I'm kind of a fan."

"Oh spare me the dramatics and tell me who you are," he huffs, annoyed with his antics.

He sits back with a cheeky grin, sticks out his hand for a handshake and says the last thing he ever would have guessed. "Nice to see ya again, Mr. Ren! I'm Corn."

Ren numbly shakes his hand. "Corn?"

"Sorry, no. Dad said it was said differently here, and it looks like he was right again. Why he didn't just name me something normal, I don't know. Said it had to do with heritage or something. It's Kuon Hizuri. Wait, you people say it backwards here, don't you? Then I guess it should be 'Hizuri Kuon'." He cocks his head to the side at an angle a bit like a dog would while listening to something. "You know, that just sounds weird considering we are speaking English anyway, but you get the picture I suppose."

Ren finally speaks, thinking about the game Kuon apparently won. "So you guys interact with one another?"

"Usually not this much I suppose, but on occasion we do. It's good either way. How should I explain it..." He taps his index finger on his chin a couple times. "I think an analogy or whatever it was that fits this would be how people call Halloween a time for spirits and what-have-you walk the Earth. Kyoko being in this state of tiredness in a certain situation is pretty much our Halloween. It only happens once in a blue moon."

"So you're all just having fun?"

"Well, not everyone...There are ones like Mio and Setsuka who don't really care about it and then there's the one-timers who aren't really there anyway."

"'One-timers'?"

"That's what I call characters like A-kun, who didn't really have much of a character or a name, and Flora, who may have had a complete profile, but was only needed to prove a point. Kyoko only needed them one or two times and there isn't that much to their characters and she wasn't really connected to them. They don't really bother with showing up."

"You don't consider yourself a one-timer?" He was only called for once, right? It was only for that acting thing with dad...

"No, I actually come and go whenever she needs it and whenever Father shows up. Although, I don't actually do that much taking over anymore...I guess it could be guidance thing now, like helping her be comfortable with calling him 'Father' and just being comfortable there. When I was first put together and was playing around with Father, I heard about her past inside of her head. I felt her...take herself back...a memory had flashed through her head, freezing her mid-motion and she suddenly became so unsure of how to deal with Father's love. It was horrible, looking at all what went on, so I decided that she deserved Father too. But that was so bad. She was even brought to tears at one point because she never felt anything like that towards her and was just so overwhelmed by the love..." he trails off in his own thought.

"Yeah...imagine hearing all that first hand," Ren mumbles, not really thinking that he was talking out loud or even loud enough for the boy to hear him clearly.

"What do you mean, 'first hand'?" He scoffs shy of arrogantly. "I'm about as 'first hand' as it gets by being in her head at the time, feeling her reactions to her own memories at certain space of time that day." He sits back, waving the comment Ren made off like it was nothing at all and even slightly chuckles. "You couldn't possibly have heard it worse than me unless-" he stiffens and sits up straighter, scrutinizing Ren as he leans forward in his stool, kind of jaw-slacked. He goes back through all of the memories that he and Kyoko has combined, and compares all of the data that Kyoko has taken in, and factors in time. Ren watches as a conclusion forms in th guy's mind and dawns on his face.

"You have got to be kidding me," he deadpans.