He didn't know how long he had been floating here. He didn't know whether he was floating, flying, or whether it was all in his head. He didn't know where he was. All his senses - sight touch, and everything else - had grounded to a dead halt. He couldn't hear. He couldn't feel. He just lost himself to Oblivion.

At some point in time, he found himself in the middle of the main hall in the Rokkenjima mansion. He didn't know how he got there. It was like a dream - his conscienceness had drifted apart, and he had woken up in a completely different place.

How he got here was inconsequential. The portrait, the painting, the smile of the Blue Witch burning into the back of his eyeballs, that was what encapsulated his entire being. And, even as he watched, the girl stepped out.

'Hi, Mr Will,' she said, but she wasn't smiling anymore. Will wanted to tell her to smile, but found he couldn't speak. The Blue Witch continued to walk towards him, hands extended, that unnatural, almost mournful expression on her face.

'Why don't you believe in me?' she whispered.

I do, Will tried to say but his throat seemed to be clogged up. He tried again. I do. This time he uttered a guttural sound, not unlike that of a pig. The Blue Witch seemed to take this as an answer enough.

'I was willing to do anything,' she said. 'Anything, for you, as long as you loved me...'

Will found his hands rising up to his waist, and he thought for a frenzied moment that he was going to shake hands with her. But the monster inside him was not so merciful. Helpless, horrified, Will could only watch as his hands, with a mind of their own, reached over and wrapped themselves over the Blue Witch's throat.

Stop it, Will screamed at his nerves, but they wouldn't respond. The other part of his brain, the other Will, had taken control. The hands glowed a fiery red.

They started squeezing.

Her eyes were the first ones to go. They slipped out of their sockets and bounced around the floor, leaving two bloody caverns. Then her tongue shot out, writhing wildy, before finally being struck limp. It dropped out of her mouth. She still had that same weary expression of acceptance, without the smile.

Will wanted to scream, but he couldn't do even that. His red hands finished their work by crushing her throat completely, obliterating her windpipe into dust, and severing her spine from her head. As he watched the blue hair fall to the ground, bloody and mangled, he thought he would go mad. Already the tendrils of insanity and darkness, the chains of nihilism and despair, they were all creeping up onto him like a fast-spreading plague. And then, finally, he found the strength to open his mouth and scream.

Something was nudging. Someone's foot was kicking at his head. He opened his eyes, and saw white marble.

'Welcome back, Wright' a familiar voice said. 'How was Oblivion?'

His hands worked over the smooth marble floor, confirming it was real. The witch above him laughed. Will forced himself to his knees, found the back of the chair with a flailing hand and began the painful process of hoisting himself up. He felt like he was dead. He felt like he had died a hundred times before that.

'How...' he croaked, struggling to recover his voice. 'How...long...'

'A few million years' Bernkastel said. 'Are you done moping around yet? I need to resume the game.'

Will tried to remember what Bernkastel was talking about. 'The...game...' Slowly, it all came back together.

The Blue Witch was slumped against one of the walls, watching Will's progress to his feet. He caught her eyes, and she immediately turned away.

'You didn't shut her out last time, by the way,' Bernkastel said, and the ghost of her old insanity crossed her face. 'I kept her in, just that you didn't see her. She heard the whole thing. Are you ready to resume the game already?'

Will put his hand over his head, which was pounding like a ten-ton jackhammer. He didn't want to play the game anymore. He didn't want to think about the Blue Witch. He just wanted to sleep.

A chain snaked out from underneath the table, wrapping around his leg and forcing him down on the chair. Too weak to resist, Will turned his bleary eyes to Bernkastel, who was grinning like a demon.

'We'll resume the game now,' she said, 'If that's okay with you.'

It wasn't.

Rudolf had never seen so much rain in his life. Even living for over forty years - those long, and tiring years - the rain came down harder than he ahd ever seen it. It was as if the heavens themselves were weeping over the tragedy that had happened on this day.

'Ya alright, Rudolf?' Hideyoshi said from behind him.

'Shut up,' Rudolf grunted, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. It had since lost his taste, and all he was getting from it now was just poisonous nicotine.

'Ah - you should smoke too much, Rudolf. You could catch cancer, or something like that.'

'I know,' Rudolf said. 'What's your game, Hideyoshi?'

'What's what game?'

Rudolf spun around. 'I may not look it, but I am a pretty shrewd guy. Even back home, in business. I did the same. I got my angles covered, checked behind me every ten seconds, treaded carefully. It's how I've survived, with Big Bro, Big Sis and my old man constantly on my backs. I've honed my instincts to thier sharpest potential.'

Hideyoshi blinked, and then smiled. 'That sounds like hard work, Rudolf.'

'You bet it is. All my life, my instincts tell me what to do. Until now. I can't figure out your goddamn game. Just what are you planning?'

'You shouldn't be so high-strung all the time. It's unhealthy.'

'I know it fucking is,' Rudolf finally gave up smoking, plucking the cigarette out of his mouth and tossing it away. 'Eva's the same. She must have been a terrible wife, huh.'

'No - no she wasn't,' Hideyoshi allowed his eyes to glaze over. 'Sure, she could be...overbearing at times, but when things really got down to it, she cared for everyone. Even you.'

'That lucky, huh? I suppose I can believe it. Kyrie...she was a dame, but, sometimes living her felt like dancing across crocodiles. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing,' Rudolf sighed. 'Wouldn't want to get soft in marriage, now, would we?'

They fell silent for a while, reflecting on their lives.

'If you, by any chance, aren't the culprit,' Rudolf. 'You''d better race back home tomorrow and live a damn good life. If you don't get killed first.'

'Yeah...but it'll be hard without Eva.'

'And it'll be hard without Kyrie. Battler, too. That poor kid probably hates the shit out of me now. I hope he makes it.'

Once again, silence reigned. Each man pondered on his individual losses, weighing them up against the impact on their lives.

'The cousin's room is upstairs, right?' Hideyoshi said, standing up.

'Yeah. Where it all started, it's all up there.'

'I want to see George.'

Rudolf glanced at him. 'What, you sentimental, or something?'

'Call me what ya like, but I want to see him. Not much point moping around here anyway. You coming?'

'I don't have anything else to do,' Rudolf shrugged. 'Sure, why not.'

They walked out of the sitting room and ascended the stairs. Halfway up the landing they were greeted by the portrait which housed the girl they knew only too well - The Blue Witch.

'So what do ya think?' Hideyoshi murmured, almost distractedly. 'Ya think the legend holds true? That she's the one doing the killing?'

'Fuck no. Witches don't exist.'

'If she thinks killing is right, then I'm no friend of her's, either.'

'You know, Hideyoshi, in the Western's, it's always the nice guy who turns out to be homicidal.'

'What are ya saying?'

'I'm saying, Hideyoshi,' Rudolf said, throwing an arm over him, 'That if you ever try anything funny on me I'll snap your fucking neck.'

The crime scene was exactly where they had left it, with the door yawning open and the chain lying broken onto the floor. Hideyoshi, very gently, pushed the door open. He switched on the lights.

The six bodies were silent. Blankets had since been thrown over them, rendering the corpses ever more inhuman. Hideyoshi drew in a deep breath adn let it out in a sigh.

'So,' Rudolf said. 'You going to see his body, or what?'

Hideyoshi stepped forwards, and gingerly picked up one of the blankets. The light fell on George's face for the first time since in ten hours. Hideyoshi left the blanket such that it was covering his neck, so that George could almost look like he was simply sleeping.

'Done yet?' Rudolf said. 'Found your enlightenment or whatever it is that you people do when you look at dead bodies?'

Hideyoshi's shoulders slumped. 'Actually, to be honest I feel just as terrible.'

'Now you're finally getting the hang of how things work, my friend.'

'I still don't get why he was...killed.'

'Hmm?' Rudolf was already preparing to go.

'I mean, killing just one person is something I might be able to understand. But...to kill everyone single one of us? And randomly?' Hideyoshi drew the blanket up to his sons face and patted it, once. 'I just don't understand how anyone could do that.'

Rudolf shrugged. 'He's just a psycho, I guess.'

'How did he - or she - manage to get in here, though...they were locked in by a chain, right?'

'Yeah.'

'Did he pass through walls, or something?' Hideyoshi tried to chuckle. 'Maybe he really is a witch.'

Rudolf glanced at him sharply. 'Hey. Don't go joking around like that.'

'S-sorry,' Hideyoshi's chuckle died out as quickly as it had started. 'It's just...just a habit. Whenever things are looking down, and everyone's sad, I just - try to make everyone happy.'

'That's fucking retarded.' Rudolf said. 'Let's get going.'

Hideyoshi cast one last look at his son buried under the blanket, and turned away.

As they left the room, Rudolf suddenly stood up straight, as if stuck by a sudden idea. 'Hey, Hideyoshi.'

'Yeah?'

'About Natsuhi's murder - she didn't have a neck wound or anything like the cousins, did she?'

Hideyoshi's winced at the memory. 'No - but blood was all over the place.'

'Come to think of it, the cousin's murder was pretty clean. It's pretty improbable the killer murdered them in their beds when it was still early, so I think he placed the bodies there. Almost like he was tidying the bodies up. He even put Kanon and Shannon in their chairs and cleaned all traces of blood. It was a clean murder. Like a signature of sorts.'

'But Natushi...'

'Exactly my point. Natsuhi - and Big Sis and Kyrie, for that matter - they were just sprawled about. Blood everywhere. No clean cuts to the neck like before. It doesn't follow the pattern. We also have to take - '

' - Kumasawa's body,' Battler said. By looking at him, no one could tell if he as aware he now had the attention of everyone in the room. He seemed like he was speaking to himself. 'She breaks up the pattern as well. The three murders before that was messy, but this one was a 'clean' one. Her body was prepared, in other words. A clean cut to the throat, most traces of the blood removed, and put in a theatrical position.'

'You still haven't explained a thing, you fool,' Kinzo barked, his eyes stretched wide.

'Hold your horses, old man. As I was saying. The inconsistency in the murders could be a clue. The killer killed Kumasawa and the cousins the same way, but didn't "clean up" for the other murders. There could be two reasons why he did this.'

Battler held up two fingers. 'One, the killers' murder went wrong. He planned to make a clean murder, but for some reason - maybe the victim fought back, or maybe his knife slipped, or whatever - the murder didn't go according to plan. So he was forced to kill the victim is a messier way, and had to leave without cleaning up the crime scene.'

'You do know,' Rosa said, 'That all this is just wobbly guesswork.'

'Hold on, Aunt Rosa. The second reason for the inconsistency, is that the killer didn't kill his victims directly. He would have just slit his victims throats if he could, but since it's become apparent that he wanted to create more 'magical' murders, he resorted to more complicated methods. Like a trap of some sort, which, in the way that it is designed, killed messily and didn't clean up afterwards.'

'So?' Kinzo bared his teeth. 'I'm waiting for your big punchline, boy.'

'If you want one so badly, you'll have it,' Battler said. 'It's a bit strange that a witch, with all the powers of nature at her disposal, would need to leave a body. Why not just teleport them to the happy land or whatever it is you call it? Why leave wounds that look suspiciously like knives?'

'Shut up,' Kinzo garbled, taking another step forwards. 'Shut up, shut up, you miserable lout! What are you trying to do?'

'Beats me,' Battler shrugged in Kinzo's sweating face. 'I'm not doing anything, really. Just stating the facts.'

'She does exist,' Kinzo swung a finger at the girl in the picture. 'She does, and she's going to take me home. You'd better not get in the way, runt.'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Battler said. 'But you might want to consider getting some help. You look insane, old man.'

'That's because I am!' Kinzo produced a hollow grin, before bending over and beginning another round of violent coughing. Genji quickly stood up and ushered him to his seat.

'And that's what I have to say,' Battler said. 'Yeah.' He turned away, picked up the flask of alcohol and began drinking it again.

'So you're saying the killer is human, then?' Nanjo said.

'I guess.'

'But...you haven't exactly proven anything. Who do you think is the killer, then?'

'Dunno?'

'How did he carry out the murders?'

'Out of my hands, doc.'

'Why did he do it?'

Battler paused in mid-sip. 'He's a psycho,' he said, and continued drinking.

'Killing someone is a terrible thing,' Genji said. Everyone regarded him with surprise. This was the first time they had heard him speak without having been called upon.

'Shut up, Genji,' Kinzo moaned, putting a hand over his head.

'It's true, Master. Killing another human being is an act against the God of this Earth,' Genji swept all of their faces with his gaze, and, for the first time, something indiscernible flickered in his blank eyes. 'To kill one is a sin. To kill nine in one day is an abomination.'

No one dared to speak. Battler continued to chug nosily at his bottle.

'I lost someone, once,' he said. 'Someone dear to me.'

'Who?' Nanjo said.

'Someone,' Genji replied briskly. 'We lived in very dangerous times in Taiwan, back when we were young. There was death everywhere. But I never expected, for one second, that death would reach us. It did.'

He paused for a moment, his face intact, and then spoke again. 'Since then, I realised killing another human being is a terrible thing. In this world, killing is the most heinous thing anyone can ever do.'

Finally, he fell silent. The others waited with bated breath to hear him speak again, but he didn't stir. He seemed to have exhausted all his energy for that one personal monologue.

'That's harsh,' Battler had time to say, before he started drinking again.

Rosa got up. 'I'm going to get to the bottom of this,' she muttered. She cast a glare at Krauss before walking over to the portrait of the Blue Witch. As per tradition of Rokkenjima, the epitaph was inscribed in a tablet below it. She put her hands on both sides of the tablet and began reading.

Nanjo looked at the clock. It was already six in the evening. The twelve hours that had passed since the first murder could have been a thousand miles. Gohda, who had been silent this whole time, was glancing out the window every now and then. His clothes was sagging with sweat. Next to the Krauss and Battler, he was probably the most unstable. Nanjo walked over to try to comfort him.

'The window's locked, right?' was the first thing Gohda said.

'I would assume so...' Nanjo tried to push open the window, but could not. 'It's locked tight, Gohda. Don't worry, nothing can climb up here, anyway.'

'Nothing could have passed those chained doors in the morning, too.' Gohda said. 'In here, we've got a door and a window. We're doomed.'