A/N: Long chapter - hopefully this will tide y'all over a few days. Dialogue in italics is spoken in Chinese; everything else is Japanese.

All he could do was stare. It couldn't be her. It couldn't. Bai had disappeared in South America, five years ago. After all that time searching for her, she couldn't just show up on a park bench in the middle of Tokyo, crying and staring at him like he was the ghost.

Wait, crying? He hadn't seen Bai cry once, not since she'd become a contractor. Bai couldn't even pretend at emotions like that.

But the young woman who couldn't be Bai was looking at him in stunned disbelief, her mouth hanging open. She knew him.

"Is there something wrong?" Kirihara asked, looking between the two of them. From the corner of his eye, Hei saw her hand drift towards the gun holster under her jacket, and he tensed.

"Tian?" The sound of that name snapped his full attention back to the young woman, and suddenly he recognized her.

"Jiao-tu?" The name was out of his mouth before he stopped to think.

She gave a cry that could have been joy or anguish or anything in between, and jumped from the park bench to throw herself into his arms. He caught her automatically.

For the first time since becoming a contractor, Hei had absolutely no idea what to do.

Jiao-tu was sobbing into his chest. She really did remind him of Bai, clinging to him like that. No, not Bai - Xing. Xing, after she'd had a nightmare, and she climbed into his bed scared and shaking.

"Tian…I can't believe it's really you!"

Hei had no reply. He hadn't heard that name in so long. He'd almost forgotten it. He thought he had forgotten it.

"I'm so glad you're here!" She continued crying, her tears soaking his work shirt. "I was so scared, I thought they were going to kill me, and I was too afraid to call the police, all I could do was hide, and then I was still so scared I couldn't remember any Japanese, and why did you leave? We all thought you were dead, how could you!" She delivered the last with a wild punch to his shoulder. Then she kept punching him. "You stupid! Stupid!"

The blows didn't hurt, but he was too numb to react even if they had. "Whoa, whoa," someone was saying, and a hand - Kirihara's - grabbed Jiao-tu's arm. The contact startled her, and she flinched into Hei.

He held her protectively. "It's alright," he said. Kirihara and her team were staring at them, clearly bewildered; Hei realized then that they'd been speaking in Mandarin Chinese. "It's alright," he repeated in Japanese. "She's my cousin."

"Your cousin?" Kirihara said doubtfully.

"Hey, Li, I didn't know you had family in the city!" Saitou said with a smile.

"I didn't either," Hei managed. There was no lie that came to mind, and Jiao-tu could contradict anything he said in any case. What was she doing in Tokyo?

"Tian," the girl murmured, with her face still pressed into his chest, "why did you leave?" She'd stopped hitting him, but he suspected it was only because she was exhausted. She clutched his jacket tightly, as if afraid he was going to disappear if she let go.

He wanted disappear. He wanted to throw her to the ground, throw her away from him, and run, run from this park, from Tokyo, from the whole world of memories and emotions that he'd closed the door on so long ago and were now threatening to spill out and become reality again.

But he couldn't run; not with the police there. Not with the Syndicate's eyes on him.

Hei forced himself to focus. She wasn't his cousin anymore. There was nothing rational about caring for others, family or otherwise. He had to play the game and convince the police - especially Kirihara - that he was concerned for Jiao-tu, but it was still just a lie.

Emotions are useless distractions.

He guided the girl who wasn't his cousin back to the bench and sat her down next to him. She leaned against his shoulder, eyes half-shut and arms wrapped tightly around one of his. He tried not to see her resemblance to his sister.

"What are you doing in Japan? Where's Xing?" Jiao-tu asked his shoulder.

"We can talk after we're done with the police," Hei promised her. And say what?

"Oh. I forgot about them." Jiao-tu sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

He pulled a dried leaf from her hair. "Are you going to be alright to talk, Xiao-tu?"

"No one calls me Xiao anymore," she said, but he saw her smile a little at the old nickname. "I can talk. I'm a dragon."

He'd forgotten how she used to say that. It felt so surreal, sitting here with Jiao-tu. He tried to recall the last time he had seen her. Had it been before or after the Gates appeared? He couldn't remember. It didn't matter.

Forget the past.

"You can ask your questions now," Hei told Kirihara.

"Right," the police chief said, staring at the two of them as if she'd never seen anything stranger. She sat down on the other side of Jiao-tu, and pulled a small recorder from her pocket. "First, we need to confirm her identification."

"Xu Jiao-tu, from Xi'an, China," Hei told her without waiting for Jiao-tu's answer.

A gray-haired man who Hei assumed to be one of Kirihara's subordinates consulted a notebook and nodded.

"And you're in Tokyo to attend school, is that correct?" Jiao-tu nodded. "Which school do you attend?"

"Tokyo Institute of Technology." She managed that in Japanese.

Hei raised his eyebrows. "Really?"

Jiao-tu let go of his arm long enough to punch his shoulder. "Why do you sound so surprised?"

She'd always been smart, Hei remembered, if not particularly motivated. However, she had more determination than anyone he knew. "I'm not surprised," he told her.

Kirihara looked at him suspiciously when he didn't translate their exchange, but she didn't press him on it.

"Okay. Miss Xu, can you tell us what you were doing in the park this time of night?"

When Hei had ensured that Jiao-tu understood the question, he translated her answer. "I just wanted someplace quiet to sit and think for a while."

"Did you know the park was closed?" Kirihara asked.

"Um, I saw a sign on the gate, but I couldn't read it very well." She'd always been a terrible liar. "Wait, it's not illegal, is it?" Jiao-tu asked in alarm.

"They're not going to arrest you for walking in a park," Hei told her.

"Did you see anyone else in the park when you arrived?" Kirihara asked.

Jiao-tu shook her head. "No. Not when I first got there, anyway. I sat down against a tree" she looked in the direction of the crime scene and gave a little shudder "and just watched the stars for a while; I think I might have dozed off for a little bit, because all of a sudden I heard voices."

"How many voices?" Kirihara asked.

"Two. Two men. They were talking very quietly, like they didn't want anyone to overhear. I didn't want them to think I was eavesdropping, so I kept quiet and stayed behind the tree."

"What where they talking about?"

Jiao-tu shook her head. "They were speaking English, I couldn't follow it well enough to understand what they were talking about. I think they said something about waiting. I thought they must be there to meet some other people. They also mentioned a flash drive - I know that word."

"English? And a flash drive?" Hei saw a furrow form in Kirihara's brow as she concentrated in thought. She'd had the same look in the bathroom stall at the hotel, when she'd been trying to figure out a way to escape her friend. "Hmm. Did the men see you at all?"

"No, I don't think so. They walked away after a minute, but quietly, like they were trying to sneak by someone."

Those must have been the two contractors who'd attacked him for the flash drive, Hei knew. He felt something in his gut clench when he realized just how close Jiao-tu had been to them. They would have killed her outright if she'd been seen.

"I waited a little while just to make sure they were gone; but just as I was getting ready to get up and leave the park, I heard a crash, or an explosions or something, and then someone screaming." She shuddered again and tightened her grip on Hei's arm.

"Was it one of the men you'd heard speaking?"

"I don't know, how can you recognize a voice by a scream?" Jiao-tu said petulantly. "I just know it wasn't a woman. I heard the scream and I stayed on the ground by my tree. Then I heard more crashes; they sounded like they were getting closer, but…but…I couldn't move. I was too scared."

The tears were flowing freely down her cheeks. Hei could feel his own voice, as he translated her words, growing colder and more emotionless. He struggled to maintain a 'concerned relative' persona.

"Then, it got really windy, and branches started falling down around me, but I was still too scared to move. Then I heard another scream, right behind the tree where I was sitting, but it was short like, like…"

"You don't have to say it," Kirihara told her gently, keeping her gaze fixed on Jiao-tu. Was she avoiding looking at him?

Jiao-tu had been on the other of the tree when he had electrocuted the wind-controlling contractor. Hei felt his blood run cold. He knew what was coming next.

She sniffed, trembling a little. Hei found one of her hands and gave it a squeeze. He remembered Amber doing that sometimes, when she sat down next to him after a particularly bloody mission. He'd always brush her off, but she would just smile, because she knew he really didn't mind. The small gesture of human comfort, feigned though it was, always helped to quiet his mind.

It seemed to help Jiao-tu as well; she squeezed his hand back, and resumed her story.

"The wind stopped blowing after the scream ended, and at first it was quiet, and I thought maybe it was safe. Then I thought I heard someone moving around, but it was so soft I wasn't sure. I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep myself from making any sounds.

"Then out of the corner of my eye I saw this quick flash of light, like a reflection off of metal, but really faint because it was so dark, except for the starlight. At the same time I heard a sound, like a grunt or a gasp, maybe, and I saw - I saw a man, standing just twenty yards away, like he just appeared out of nowhere! And there was a knife sticking out of his chest!"

Jiao-tu started to shake as the tears poured forth again. She put a hand over her mouth to hold back a sob. Hei extricated his arm from hers and put it around her shoulder, like he remembered doing to comfort his little sister, so long ago. Jiao-tu let him pull her close, crying into his shoulder again.

"You can take a minute," Kirihara told her. The police chief's face looked pale. She was definitely avoiding looking at Hei.

Jiao-tu shook her head. "If I stop talking about it now, I won't be able to start again." She rubbed at her face, trying to wipe away the tears. "The man with the knife in his chest fell down on his side. I think he was d-dead. Then I saw another man walk up. He - he was scary. All dressed in black. I couldn't see his face well, but it didn't look…real. All white and pale like he was a ghost or an evil spirit or something. He walked up to the dead man, and kicked him so he rolled over onto his back. Then he took the knife out of the man's chest, and turned around and walked away. He never saw me," she added with a relieved shudder.

Saitou gave a low whistle. "Lucky."

Kirihara shot him a glare before turning back to Jiao-tu. "Did anything happen after that?"

Jiao-tu shook her head. "I was too afraid to even look for my phone and call the police. I thought…I thought if I moved, or stood up, or anything, the man in black would come back and kill me." She'd stopped crying now, but she buried her face in Hei's shoulder again, seeking comfort. The irony did not escape him.

Nor did it escape Kirihara. She gave Jiao-tu a long look, a mix of compassion and what Hei thought might be anger. She studiously avoided Hei's eyes. "Thank you for telling us what you saw, I know it must be hard. I need to speak with my men; please give us a few minutes."

After setting her recorder on the bench (still turned on, Hei noticed), she stood up and joined her team, far enough away that they could speak quietly without being overheard. Hei kept an eye on them; there was every possibility that the police chief was informing her men that the murderer they were looking for was sitting right in front of them.

But at the moment he didn't really care what she was saying. Hei considered Jiao-tu numbly. She'd seen him kill a man. That she didn't know it was him made no difference. The clash between who she thought he was, who he used to be, and who he was now, was jarring.

"I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been here, Tian," Jiao-tu said.

"You would have been fine."

"I was too afraid to even call the police," she said miserably. "I was a frightened little rabbit. Grandfather would be so ashamed of me."

Her words cut into him like a knife. "No he wouldn't. There's nothing wrong with being afraid. You might have been killed if you had moved or tried anything. Even dragons aren't invincible."

Kirihara finished conferring with her subordinates and returned to the bench. She picked up her recorder and turned it off. "Miss Xu, that's all we need for tonight, although I may have more questions for you later. Here's my card, in case you need to contact me for any reason."

She handed Jiao-tu a business card. Jiao-tu managed a 'thank you' in Japanese. "Do you have anyone who can come pick you up?" Kirihara asked her.

Jiao-tu turned her eyes to Hei. "I can take her home," he said, resigned. "My work shift is probably over by now." He didn't want to spend one minute longer with her than he had to, but he couldn't afford to leave her hanging in the wind right now.

"Li, may I speak with you for a moment?" Hei didn't miss the emphasis Kirihara put on the name; nor did he miss the fact that she left her recorder on the bench - apparently she was sticking to their deal. He wasn't sure if he was surprised or not. Kirihara walked off without waiting to see if he was following. She still hadn't looked at him.

"I'll be right back," he told Jiao-tu. She reluctantly let him go, wrapping her arms around herself instead. Hei looked at her a moment, then took off his jacket and settled it on her shoulders. Jiao-tu gave him a small but grateful smile, and pulled the jacket close.

Kirihara stopped a few yards away, out of earshot of both her team and Jiao-tu. She stood with her arms folded and her gaze on the ground. Hei waited impassively for her to speak, not bothering with any affectation beyond resting his hands in his pockets. The flash drive his contact had given him was still there - he hadn't had a chance to pass it off yet.

"Is she really your cousin?" Kirihara finally asked, raising her eyes to his.

"Yes," he answered, not flinching from her accusing look.

She hesitated before asking the next question. "I hate to ask this, Hei, but I hope that you understand that I have to; it's my job to protect the people in this city. Is she safe with you?"

He felt a touch of irritation. "She is."

Kirihara didn't look convinced, so he added, "She saw nothing. We'll erase the memory of her having recognized me, and that will be the end of it. Just leave my name off of any official records - that would be worse for Jiao-tu than for me."

Kirihara sighed. "That makes sense, I suppose. I just…can't believe she's really your cousin. I mean, no offense, but I know what usually happens to contractor's families."

"You know less than you think," Hei said sharply, taking a step forward. The anger in his voice surprised them both.

"You're probably right; I'm sorry," Kirihara said, her expression softening a little. But then she abruptly turned businesslike again. "I don't suppose you can tell me anything about who those two dead contractors were?"

He gave a noncommittal shrug, his anger not subsiding. He still had Jiao-tu to deal with, the last thing he wanted now was more questions from Kirihara. Did she really expect him to talk about the job? "You probably know more about them than me."

"And the flash drive your cousin heard them talking about? Any idea what that might be, or where it is?"

He met her gaze with equal intensity. "No."

"No?" She leaned forward intently. "You don't have any such thing in your possession?"

Hei had no desire to stand there and argue with her. He took another step forward, threatening her personal space. Eyes still locked on hers, he lowered his voice. "Want to search me?"

She didn't back down from the threat; her eyes were wide, but not from fear. She looked…embarrassed? Hei was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how close they were standing, how dark the park was around them, and felt the heat rising in his own cheeks. He leaned back. "Uh, I didn't mean…"

To his surprise, Kirihara suddenly burst out laughing. "I'm sorry," she said, covering her mouth with her hand. "I shouldn't have asked you about the contractors, I haven't forgotten my promise. And if you say your cousin is safe with you, I believe you. Just don't erase her memory until the investigation is closed, otherwise it'll look suspicious if we need to speak with her again and she has no clue what we're talking about."

Hei stared at her, speechless for the second time that night.

"Well," Kirihara said, "I've got a lot of paperwork to do, no thanks to you, and you should get Miss Xu home." She started to turn away, but paused. "Are you going to be alright?"

"What?" he asked, taken aback.

"With your cousin. I mean, you looked so shocked to see her, I can't imagine…"

"It's fine," Hei said wearily.

Kirihara gave him a long look which he couldn't interpret, then nodded and began walking back to everyone else. Hei watched her go for a moment, then said, "Misaki."

She turned to look at him. He didn't know what he'd meant to say, so he said, "Thanks."

Chinese translation:

Xiao...small/little