When Junpei Tenmyouji regained his bearings he was in a small but cosy room, the half-light and the ache of his body from the rough manhandling leaving him almost drowsy. That wouldn't be good; Junpei forced himself to stay alert and pay attention to his surroundings. The room was L-shaped, the wallpaper a pleasant calming green, and Junpei was sat at the corner of it. From there he could see the entrance door just feet away to his right, hints of an ensuite shower through a crack in a door just beyond that, and to his left a blue sofa and a glass cabinet in what was a small lounge area.

This all seemed very familiar to Junpei. Was this one of the second class cabin? From the Nonary Game? If Junpei could just check things out closer up he might be able to confirm it.

It was at this point that Junpei realised that he was firmly tied to the seat he'd been sat it.

"Hey!" he called out as loudly as his lungs could manage. "Let me the hell out of here! Goddamnit!" Would any of the hooded figures who'd carried him here be close enough to hear him shouting? Would they care, if they did?

As it turned out, one did respond to Junpei's yells. The entrance door opened up and someone – wearing a robe with the same pattern of black and white blobs – stepped into the cabin. He went past Junpei into the open lounge space and then stopped, as though pondering.

"Why the hell did you bring me here?" Junpei spat, struggling to turn in his chair to face the man. "Who are you? Show me your face, damnit!"

The man turned. His head had been covered by the robe's hood but under Junpei's glare he lowered it. The face underneath was that of a middle-aged Japanese man, one that triggered a spark of recognition in Junpei the moment the fabric fell away.

"Huh? Kenji Matsuo?"

The expression of the man Junpei had been hired to find was hollow-eyed, worn down by exhaustion and anxious uncertainty. But that didn't stop Kenji's eyes from registering his surprise. "You… know my name?"

"Yeah. Your wife asked me to come find you. At least that seems to have worked." Junpei sighed. "What the hell are you even doing here? Your family back home's going crazy with worry." It was hardly his first priority right now, but convincing this guy to go home would be the easiest solution imaginable to the case he'd come on.

"I… I didn't have a choice. I didn't want to hurt them, but… I couldn't just leave it." Kenji shook his head fitfully. "It was an accident. I didn't mean to see it."

"How did all this–" Junpei craned his neck as though to take in the entire towering edifice of the building they were in "–happen by accident?"

"I owe you an explanation," Kenji replied. He turned away ever-so-slightly, and under his breath he mumbled, "I owe my wife an explanation, too."

Junpei curled his lip into a scowl, but nodded.

"There's one more thing that needs to happen, before anything I say will make sense to you. Don't worry, it'll get here soon."

Junpei was about to get impatient, but then the entrance door opened again. Two more cultists stepped through it carrying a golden portrait frame between them. In silence they carried it to the wall at the end of the 'L' and hung it there, facing Junpei. It was the Funyarinpa.

Huh? Hadn't Lotus explained him, back during the Nonary Game, that this was a picture of a dog? She'd traced it out, and he'd certainly been able to see the dog in the image. But now he couldn't see the dog at all. There was the Funyarinpa, and nothing else.

"I just came across this picture while flicking through late-night reruns," Kenji explained. "I ended up on this kooky show about paranormal stuff. Some sort of experiment they were doing about how more people were now able to see what was in the image?"

"Yeah, I know," Junpei replied. He passed on the explanation that Lotus had given him a year before. "So before they did it, people would be able to see lots of different objects in the pattern, or nothing at all. Afterwards, there was an increased chance that they'd be able to see the dog."

"But that's not what happened." Bitterness was laced through Kenji's voice. "All I could see was that it was the Funyarinpa. Everyone else here has a similar story: just coming across this image by accident, seeing the Funyarinpa, and not being to get it out of our heads. We all knew that there was a place we could go, where we might be able to put our heads together and work out why this was happening to us and what it meant."

"You sure gave us the runaround when you left Japan to come here," Junpei said.

Kenji smiled sheepishly. "The idea just came to me. I didn't mean to cause anyone any trouble."

"So," Junpei said, "you all came here. You 'put your heads together', or whatever. Built all this up, and made these mock-ups of the second class cabins. Then you attack my friends and haul me up here." He made a show of struggling with the bonds that held him in his seat. "Did you actually get anything from all that?"

However rhetorically Junpei had meant that, Kenji answered with, "Yes. I think we did." He rubbed his brow for a moment, then added. "I think we've worked out what the problem is. Why the Funyarinpa's causing all of us who've come here such mental pain."

"And? What is that?"

"We know the Funyarinpa is important. Every part of us is saying that it's blasphemous to think otherwise. But there's nothing else. We all know we have to do something, but there's nothing in what we received to tell us what that something is."

Not a surprise, Junpei realised. It had all started as a heat-of-the-moment joke, carried on long enough to make a point and no further. Of course there was nothing more to it than that. Was this… his fault?

Something on Junpei's face must have conveyed what he was thinking about, because Kenji narrowed his eyes at that moment into a tight, suspicious glare. "You were there, weren't you? When it first happened? I thought I recognised you."

"Could have seen me from anywhere," Junpei replied, his eyes wandering off to the side.

Kenji scratched his finger through his beard-stubble. "No… we only got flashes of it, but enough. It was you, and that skimpy woman, that punk kid, all looking at the Funyarinpa. We got enough to know you were here." Then the man snorted. "And you recognised this room when you came in."

"Fine!" Junpei exclaimed through gritted teeth. "It was me! I made the Funyarinpa! I'm the one who did this to you."

Kenji Matsuo nodded, then slowly drew closer to loom over Junpei, still trapped in his chair. "Yes. And I think I know exactly what we need to do with you."

o-0-o

"And so they elected me Funyarinpope," Junpei said to the assembled group of his friends and their colleagues.

He'd come back down to the bottom of the building, with Kenji Matsuo and a couple of the other worshippers in tow, to view the aftermath of the conflict that had erupted after he'd been carried away. Now his friends stood alongside the Funyarinpa worshippers, an uneasy truce holding among them. Wounds were being tended on both sides, and one young acolyte – Junpei now knew her name was Jessica – was speaking to Clover with a stutter in her voice and her hands intertwined contritely in front of her.

On the other side of Clover stood Light, and as Junpei had finished his speech he raised his hand with a question. "Can we be sure that the various convulsions of the past few months will come to an end? It would be just terribly sad for us to remain at odds."

"I hope so," Junpei replied. "I'm not sure exactly how it works, but the Funyarinpa should be stabilised now. A real idea worth believing in, not just a mind-virus. That should make everything better. If it doesn't… I'll just have to keep working at it."

The detective Junpei had been working with laughed heartily. "It's a hell of a step up from being PI, Junpei," he said. "So, what will you do now?"

It took Junpei a moment to decide, but when he did his voice was certain and unwavering. "I'm going to go with them. We can't use this place now–" And it really was 'we', wasn't it? "–but we can set up somewhere else. And when we finally find somewhere, and gather everyone together who was affected… I'm going to take responsibility for what I created."

For a moment it looked like that was the end of it. Certainly plenty of the others thought it was: the SOIS agents gradually retreated from the building, while the Funyarinpa worshippers dispersed to clean up the detritus from the fight. But Junpei knew there was one thing left to happen.

There she was. As the rest of the crowd melted away around her Kanny stood in place, eyes fixed on Junpei. For a moment he'd been tempted to have one of his new followers keep an eye for her leaving; in the end he was glad he'd left it to trust.

Junpei stepped down off the makeshift wooden platform he'd been using. He didn't realise the way his breath had caught in his throat until he was half-way across the distance to her. When he finally reached Kanny he didn't now whether to leap in for a hug, to scold her, to turn and run back the way he'd came.

It was Kanny who broke the silence. "I guess it is your turn, to do the thing and then vanish without a trace."

"This is something important. Something only I can do. You came here to make sure that what we did in Building Q doesn't cause any more problems. If I do this, I can make sure that happens."

"I know the feeling." Akane glanced over towards the edge of the foyer, where her brother Aoi was watching over her warily. "I… I'll have to go soon too, to sort out the aftermath of this. Is this really it? Again?"

That finally gave Junpei the impulse he needed to cross the last few feet and grab her hand.

"Don't worry. Funyarinpa willing, we'll meet again."