Return, Act II It was a travel-weary Mireille who was waved indifferently through Customs by the bored guards at Narita International Airport, mercifully clearing that last security checkpoint without a fuss or a wait. The flight from Paris to Tokyo had neither been short nor refreshing--hours confined in an airplane's cabin at extreme altitudes seldom were--but it had at least been uneventful. The blonde assassin was grateful for that leniency. International air travel was frequently a required pain of Mireille's profession, and after so many excursions overseas and back she was inured to its rigors and tedium. However, that acquaintance didn't automatically mean her enjoyment of it had waxed at all. Rigorous and tedious air travel remained to her. The aftermath of a flight routinely imparted her with the chafing sensations of being worn-out, dirty, and dishevelled regardless of what she looked like in front of a mirror. Moreover, the longer the flight was, the more severe the sensations. She just didn't feel like herself once she was flying high in the sky, cruising at fantastic speeds above the clouds. The constant drone of turbine engines buzzing like a swarm of wasps in her head; the not-quite-right air pressure badgering her confused inner ear; the unsettlement in her floating stomach chasing away appetite--together they conspired to make her feel forever out of sorts throughout the flight and afterward a ragged wreck when she at last disembarked. Finding comfort in that environment was nigh on impossible. Even the myriad of opportunities for practice she'd had in the course of her career hadn't improved those odds one bit. But at least Mireille didn't get airsick. To weather the unpleasantness of the latest transcontinental flight raring to suck the life out of her, Mireille had attempted to do what she usually did--sleep through the whole dreadful ordeal, obtaining peace in oblivion. *Attempted*--it was tough with the collective aggravations of air travel rendering her ill and irritable. But she always tried, and tried her best. Even though the closest Mireille could get to actual sleep was a fitful and uneasy doze, it did seem to make the time pass faster. She supposed medicating herself with a sleeping pill might aid her in her plight, but the blonde wasn't keen to resort to drugs for any ailment unless absolutely called for. Mireille alleged that too frequent usage lowered the drug's effectiveness, thus when the remedy was urgently needed it wouldn't perform as well as it could. In the Corsican's line of work, where injury to one's person had the potential to manifest severely and regularly, that was an important factor to take into consideration. However, that being said, while suffering through seeming never-ending flights like the recent one from France to Japan Mireille did review her medication policy with a rather bitter attitude. The manner in which Mireille stalked out of Customs and down the final stretch of empty floor to gate seventeen's exit was in conflict with the toll the fatigue and discomfort stacked upon her during the journey had exacted from her mind and body. She marched as though grim purpose fuelled her heavy but quick steps, one boot rapping sharply in front of the other and her hips rolling haughtily from side to side with each efficient stride. The assassin's weariness strained her visage into a harsh, no-nonsense scowl, her sandy eyebrows drawn down to her wrinkled brow and her cool blue eyes glaring, with dusky pink lips pinched together thinly. Those who turned their gaze in Mireille's direction shied it away in a hurry, her inhospitable expression surmounting the charm of her beautiful features. All those except Kirika, of course. The undeterred girl in question walked a pace behind Mireille, tugging the blonde's trolley-like suitcase as she went. Evidently noticing her older partner's tiredness and discontent, Kirika had kindly and mutely taken charge of the suitcase after she had retrieved it from the baggage conveyer earlier, accepting the burden in addition to her own bag that was strapped across her body with its bulk resting on her hip. The extra encumbrance didn't appear to bother Kirika in any way in spite of her slender and diminutive stature, her gait easy and her expression diffident as usual. That stoic face looked as fresh as a daisy too, the stress of the plane travel apparently not having the same sapping affect on her as it had on Mireille. Not even the company of Kirika sitting in the seat next to her on the airplane had helped to mitigate the harassment of the trip's traumatic aspects on the disgruntled blonde very much. It was a bit of a surprise that Kirika's vigour, such that it was, hadn't been so much as dented. In the periods when Mireille had temporarily abandoned her struggles to realise a decent slumber and instead pick at her meals, answer a call of nature, or concede defeat for a while and simply open her bleary eyes, she'd repeatedly witnessed her young partner wide awake and upright in her chair, idling away the hours in the air by staring out the window alongside her. Mireille had the suspicion that Kirika hadn't caught a single wink of sleep throughout the entire flight, and quite likely had actually forgone any attempt to catch some outright. Mireille hadn't probed the quiet girl on her suspected self-deprivation, believing its basis lied in her eccentricities... or was attributable to their boarding of their Soldats-sponsored flight to Japan in the first place. The former Mireille could simply accept as characteristic Kirika oddness; peculiar behaviour warranting no more than an indulgent smile and wry shake of her head; but if the latter had been the truth then a stilled tongue and blind eye was the significantly less amused order of the day. Kirika's solemn countenance did look heavier with gloom than was normal for her, the demons that plagued her mind and the ghosts that haunted her heart appearing to distance her further from the world around her, the tortured girl's permanent state of distraction more obvious. It was liable that at least one of those distractions owed its origins to her and Mireille's decision to play Breffort's game and comply with his 'counsel' advising they come submerge themselves in the bloody feud between Kaede Ishinomori and Soldats. Indeed, Kirika's heightened despondency and preoccupation had initially been exhibited on that last morning in their Parisian apartment, just as they were preparing to embark on the odious excursion. Mireille was fully aware that it was difficult for a troubled mind to attain solace in slumber. Even if sleep did embrace you in its lulling arms, sometimes the darkness in the world of the waking that you were trying to escape from followed you. Whichever the reason for Kirika's shunning of sleep on the airplane, it meant Mireille had stayed a silent observer to her partner's actions, or lack thereof as was the case. The averse decision to depart their safe and serene home--safe and serene for the short term at any rate, if Breffort's warnings were to be trusted--for the urban battleground in the Far East and wade into a bitter conflict that was not theirs, the manipulative impelling of their Soldats patron pushing them towards the fray, wasn't a choice topic of conversation for Mireille, and no doubt for Kirika either. Hence the blonde steered clear of it, opting for silence over speech when she deemed it necessary, and not daring to even bring up subjects that dwelled too near to that taboo area. The two young women didn't need to be reminded of what had been undertaken and what consequences of that undertaking lay ahead. They knew. They knew the darkness that awaited them. The path Mireille and Kirika had elected to take was black; a familiar path to them both, one they had well travelled. The decision had been made. There was no going back now; there very seldom was on that cruel and ruthless road. All there was to do was follow through on their choice, their path. To wherever it may lead. And so far that choice had brought Mireille and Kirika to the exit of gate seventeen in Narita Airport, Tokyo, and to the conclusion of their journey to Japan; a sight for the older of the duo's sore eyes. Mireille issued a soft, thankful breath as she passed through the gate and into the bustling airport's lobby, as though she had finally made it across the finish line after an agonising marathon. The tension knotting her shoulders ebbed with the relief, although not by much. The only tried and true remedy to loosen those stiff muscles and soothe the rest of air travel's aches was a nice, long, relaxing soak under the massaging jets of a hot and steamy shower. But at least the worst of the trip was over, and that shower was merely a swift bullet train ride away, waiting for Mireille in Yokohama and the first luxurious hotel she laid eyes on. The lobby of Narita Airport was like any other international airport's--astir with life, a flurry of activity. Travellers came and went; boarding planes or disembarking from them; and their family, friends, colleagues, or whoever was there to see them off on their departure or greet them on their arrival made up the secondary population. It was a gateway to the rest of the world, or the final destination for the homeward bound. It shouldn't have been distinct from any other foreign airport Mireille had visited, one of many in an exhaustive and far-flung list. But it was. And not just for her alone. Mireille's brisk trot petered out to a daydreaming dawdle, the chaotic currents of the heaving crowds swirling unnoticed around her. The last occasion she was here, Japanese soil beneath her feet for the first time in years, it had been the beginning step of an odyssey that would beget a wave of change to gradually wash though her life. A revolution and a revelation, a languishing life enriched and a traumatic past put to rest. Back then Mireille's feelings had been dubious about coming to Japan, cautious about answering a mysterious summons from a mysterious girl in a distant country. How a melody from her memory had come to be so far from her former home in Corsica and in the hands of a young Japanese girl who apparently knew her identity and the profession it was linked to had inspired the blonde assassin's wariness, but her need to pursue the slim clue to the true happenings in her past after such a long dearth of them had been motivation enough. The consequences of that decision Mireille could have never predicted... nor could her wildest dreams have ever conjured any better. She hoped that this second decision to come to Japan proved to be as shrewd as the first. If it would prove to be as fruitful.... Mireille's dawdle halted mid-step, and the blonde looked back over her shoulder to the girl tagging along docilely after her. Kirika stopped too and blinked up at her, soulful eyes searching the woman's own fond blue inquisitively for the reason behind the delay. Mireille smiled with a tenderness to match that shining in her gaze. There was no chance this trip to Japan would turn out to be as rewarding. What Mireille had returned with from that previous visit was a 'souvenir' beyond compare--Kirika, the young Japanese girl who had lured her overseas to begin with. Kirika had been the catalyst if not the very cause of all the wonderful changes in Mireille's life... and those in the woman herself. It was Kirika who had brought about the revolution and revelation both, and many of each. It was Kirika who had shown her what was missing in her life, that it could be so much more, that it had the capacity for such joy although amid darkness and death. And then it was Kirika who had provided that what was missing. Kirika had taught Mireille the pain of loneliness, and then she had taught her the warmth of companionship. It was she who had awakened feelings inside of Mireille that the assassin had never believed were there, feelings that she had never thought she would experience for herself, feelings she never considered she would grow to need and adore. It was Kirika also who had helped Mireille live with her anguished past, to move on from it... to let go. While the yen for vengeance remained a ready passion in Mireille, Kirika had shown her that forgiveness could be just as strong. And just as right. Kirika had killed her family. Tool of Altena's or not, deep down Mireille knew that was the raw truth. She could make excuses for the girl and justify each one faultlessly, as many as she liked, excuse upon excuse to defend her partner's actions. But ultimately Kirika had pulled the trigger; Kirika had ended their lives. Mireille knew that, even though she didn't like to see it that way. Yet it didn't matter. The feelings Kirika had evoked inside Mireille still persisted, and were still entirely focused on the girl who had nurtured them to the surface. Mireille had forgiven her. Forgiven what should not have been forgiven. The blonde wondered where she would be without that lesson. She would likely have exacted retribution on Altena when she'd had the opportunity, killed her, and then... and then who knows? Perhaps her craving for revenge would have engulfed her senses and her heart, incited by one act of vengeance to do another, and she'd have then turned her gun on Kirika next; the tender, novel, feelings of affection giving way to the old, bitter, familiar feelings of malice. That was, if she hadn't already shot Kirika back in that graveyard. Suffice to say everything would be different. One thing Mireille knew for sure however was that she would be but a husk of the woman she was now, unwittingly having doomed herself to a loveless, lonely existence, and forever cursing her rash act, her horrendous mistake--trapped in her own personal purgatory. Mireille owed Kirika a great deal more than the quiet girl probably was aware of. But all Kirika asked for in return was her love. It was such a small recompense, freely given. Gladly given. Mireille's expression softened as her thoughts did, what little remained of the hard ice in her gaze thawing in the mounting warmth that progressively pervaded it, the image of Kirika reflected in the bright, shimmering blue. Her aches and fatigue grew fainter, her body's grumbling distant, melting away with the cool assassin and leaving just the woman. A woman in love. Perhaps Mireille had discovered another cure for the pains of air travel. One corner of Mireille's mouth curled higher, her smile a wry smirk now, and she shook her head gently. She certainly seemed to be a changed person. Forgiveness over vengeance, love over hate, and not to mention her frequent smitten musings. The blonde reminded herself to be careful. A soft heart, a warm heart, was very vulnerable, an easy target. It did not have the safeguards that a hard, cold heart afforded. But right now Mireille saw no danger in indulging in a little sentimentality. She spun around smoothly to face Kirika proper, a hand going to the curve of a raised hip and a teasing, humorous remark on her lips; it about to be unleashed upon the prime target: her unsuspecting petite partner. However, she abruptly gave pause, bemused eyes looking to her left and right at the milling people everywhere and her parted lips drawing closed again, her tease dying on her tongue and then forgotten. It hadn't dawned on her before, the voices all around her being heard yet not truly being perceived, but the language she had become accustomed to sharing virtually only with Kirika wasn't so unique here. A tide of distinctive chatter washed over Mireille, an ocean around her, she and Kirika no longer alone in their fluency of the Japanese language but immersed in a sea of proficients; exclusive now common. It was like their private world for two was suddenly being encroached by countless, everybody somehow coming to understand the 'secret' tongue they conversed with. Mireille didn't like it. The sense of intrusion, of being beset by interlopers from all sides; the feeling of something special lost. She debated whether she and Kirika should talk to one another in French instead, at least whilst in a nation where Japanese was the native tongue. Mireille contemplated whether Kirika was suffering a similar sense of trespass, or if the girl possessed a lesser level of import in how they communicated than she did. The woman wondered how her partner felt about being back in Japan--apt to be her country of birth--in the first place. Obviously the decision to come didn't sit comfortably with her, but did the reasons for that anxiety also include her return to the land where she used to live before partnering with Mireille? Mireille didn't know much about Kirika's life in Japan before their meeting. She had never even thought to pry into those details before now, and Kirika, being Kirika, hadn't volunteered much more information than what she had recounted in her house following their brush with Soldats' hitmen. She had attended high school here--in Kawasaki to be exact, a city that they would be passing through on their route to Yokohama--Mireille at least was privy to. Maybe Kirika had friends in Japan? It was a slim possibility, bearing in mind how introverted Kirika was, but there could be people who knew her, or recognised her at any rate. Mireille imagined she'd find it odd if some past acquaintance of her partner's singled out Kirika from a crowd and sparked up a conversation with the girl. She was used to Kirika being the eternal stranger wherever they went, an enigma to everyone except her. Conversely, here in Japan Kirika was surrounded by her own people, walked in her own land, and Mireille was the obvious outsider. Here Mireille stood out like wheat mixed with olives, her Caucasian looks and natural blonde locks a scarcity, whereas Kirika, who had stood out somewhat in Paris, blended in, at least in the outward sense. But somehow Mireille didn't think that match of appearances made Kirika feel any more belonging than she did. However Kirika's days in Japan had been like, Mireille didn't get the impression that it had been the most fulfilling existence. Loneliness was an affliction Mireille had not held sole claim to, nor was hers the only that had been cured when she and Kirika had united in business, life, and love. Before Mireille could recover her slightly shaken poise or her mislaid teasing comment, her wandering gaze was coerced into centring on Kirika again as the girl leaned coolly out to her left, peeking past the blonde at something behind her. Mireille promptly turned around to see what had captured her partner's interest, her right hand stealing instinctively inside her grey coat for the reassuring chill of gun metal against her fingertips... until she recalled that her Walther P99 resided in her laptop bag, secreted away from airport security. "Bang!" Mireille's heart jumped in her chest and her muscles jerked impulsively, her turn met by a pistol aimed at her chest, the lack of her own weapon's availability acute. Then she realised that the 'pistol's' barrel was nothing more than a harmless pointing finger. Immediately Mireille's already sour mood curdled to a greater degree of tartness. Although her startled jolt was all but imperceptible to the naked eye, the fact that she had reacted so to a mere pantomime of a firearm was grating in its humiliation. Moreover, the voice that had sounded for the pretend pistol's discharge was very French, the accent and the language itself sounding oddly isolated in the midst of so much Japanese vernacular. It educed a sliver of nostalgia in the Corsican assassin as well, it something comfortingly familiar in an unfamiliar land; something of the home Mireille wished she and Kirika hadn't needed to abscond. It seemed a little part of the world Mireille and Kirika had left behind lingered still. Or rather, had come along with them. It wasn't the joking French tongue that additionally stoked the blonde's temper, but just who it belonged to. What he belonged to. Not all that had lingered was good. "You," Mireille stated frigidly in corresponding French, the gentleness that had been in her eyes for Kirika expelled and the hard ice restored for the Soldats operative who had materialised. "Me." The man Mireille recognised as Jacques, Breffort's one-time messenger, winked and cracked a smile that's edginess and unsteadiness caused it to border on a sleazy leer, and then blew make-believe smoke from the end of his literal 'hand' gun--that end being the top of his pointed finger. Like the previous time the blonde assassin had encountered him--in the deceased crime boss Richard Millet's likewise finished stripclub headquarters, 'Slick Chicks', in Paris' Pigalle; the club having met no better fate than its former owner--Jacques was dressed in the characteristic attire of a Soldats lackey; in a suit, shirt, and tie, except dark navy prevalent instead of black. His trademark black sunglasses were on display too, their old-fashioned large square frames seeming to cover much of his face like a stereotypical bandit's mask, the illusion on account of their bulk. Mireille wondered what Jacques was doing so far from France, and in Japan of all remote places. It was too convenient a meeting to be coincidence, reminiscent of their last encounter. Like that last one it was without a doubt Breffort's machinations that were responsible for steering their paths into crossing. There was no such thing as coincidence with Soldats, Mireille reminisced. Jacques gaily pushed himself off the wall he was resting his back against and closed the short gap between him and the pair of assassins. A black briefcase swung at his left side, its presence somewhat conspicuous. He would not have brought it to this unscheduled--from Mireille and Kirika's standpoint at any rate--meeting if it served no importance. "Heh, I guess that's a dangerous thing to do around your type," Jacques remarked with meek wit as he approached. His slightly nervous half-grin grew in what Mireille assumed was contrition, becoming as rueful as his voice. It was a poor endeavour at apology, one Mireille favoured with no more than a dry, callous, and naturally unforgiving glower. She was conscious that she was being overly scornful due to how worn out and unkempt she was feeling, and that put together with Jacques' known ties to Soldats and the general state of affairs her and her partner were unjustly ensnared in translated to cold ire and acerbic bile for the misfortunate Frenchman. Not that Mireille cared at all. Any agent of Soldats was deserving of her contempt for the many atrocities and cruelties their nefarious organisation had perpetrated in her and Kirika's lives. Were still perpetrating. "We weren't formally introduced before," Jacques said as soon as he came to a stop in front of Mireille and Kirika. He slouched where he stood in a transparent charade of laid-back repose, making an obvious exertion to slacken his tense muscles and keep them slack. Slight agitation wobbled through his voice on top of that, and his brown bangs were starting to adhere to his forehead with escalating perspiration--and it was barely above ten degrees Celsius outside if the pilot's information on the flight over here had been accurate, and not much warmer inside the airport's lobby. Jacque didn't appear to be faring well in the face of Mireille's obvious disdain. "Out last meeting wasn't exactly in ideal circumstances," he commented wryly. Jacques stuck out his right hand stiffly at Mireille to shake, the woman noting its clammy palm and timorous quivering in her derisive cursory glance down at it. "You can call me Jacques. Jacques Rousseau." "Is that your real name, 'Jacques'?" Mireille inquired deprecatingly, spurning his proffered handshake by not making even the faintest twitch of her own hand towards his. She didn't feel the need or the want to introduce herself or her partner in return, either. She was positive that Jacques was abundantly versed in her name and background, and likely in Kirika's as well. "It is right now," Jacques retorted rather slickly, his now full and cavalier smile just as slick. But quickly the anxious agent returned as the Frenchman took his rejected hand back and wiped its sliminess off on a pant leg, trying to be discreet in his motion but failing miserably. "I'm your contact here in the Japan," Jacques went on. "He thought a face you recognised would be best." That unnamed 'he' had to Breffort, Mireille deduced. "My prior position had recently become redundant anyway," the Soldats operative added with a bit of a weak chuckle, one that cut off hastily when he saw that his audience weren't sharing in it. "Uh, I only speak a little Japanese though, so I would appreciate it if we just stick to familiar French between us," Jacques stumbled out, his gaze flicking to Kirika--who was watching him with her usual deadpan expression--for an instant. He reached up and scratched behind his awkwardly bowing head, and drew out a weary sigh. "It's going to be tough here with the language barrier. I know it," he bemoaned to himself. Mireille's frown tightened and her expression chilled to an even colder veneer, her complexion that was pallid with tiredness bringing out the vivid winter's frost crystallised in her eyes. For Jacques to have arrived in Tokyo ahead of her and Kirika he would have been rushed indeed, given the narrow timeframe between the assassins' grudging acceptance of Breffort's proposal and their own arrival in the Far Eastern capitol. The more plausible scenario, the one Mireille judged as truth, was that Breffort had dispatched his minion *before* she and Kirika had succumbed to his scheming. It would be like him to do such a thing--the typical arrogance of Soldats. And that impudent presumption galled Mireille. Galled her considerably. It didn't matter if her belief was incorrect; like the rest of Soldats, Breffort had more than earned her loathing already without that supplement. The further she reflected upon how he had orchestrated it so that her and Kirika's peaceful, quiet existence was no longer thus; how he had manoeuvred them into deserting their home and travel to the other side of the world to participate in suppressing the little rebellion he--*Soldats*--had on his hands; the more the Corsican fumed silently but furiously inside. Regardless if Breffort had simply been enterprising and used circumstances in Paris to serve his cause it changed nothing. The outcomes had been the same; the wrong done to Mireille and the girl she profoundly treasured the same. To wrong Mireille risked death, but to wrong she who had her love promised it. Kirika had been as happy as Mireille had ever seen her before that car bomb had propelled them into this mess; had seemed content with her calm and relaxed days spent alongside the woman. But that life had been spoiled now. Cut short by Soldats intrigue and their petty internal squabbling. The penalty Breffort would pay for his part in this would be dire. Mireille swore it. She could do nothing to fulfil her revenge fantasies and cool her boiling blood presently... but the moment would come. Breffort could only cower behind his position in Soldats for so long before Mireille's hunger for retribution burned so hot that it blazed beyond his then flimsy shield. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned... and a scorned woman in love? Her wrath could make the heavens quake. Mireille uncomfortably rolled her right shoulder and adjusted the strap of her laptop's carry bag there for the umpteenth time since getting off the plane, the strap digging sorely into the muscles near her neck--one of numerous dull and dourly endured aches that made her entire body groan for that relieving shower. Jacques' company seemed to kindle the twinges and throbs to assault her all the more, as did thoughts on Breffort and Soldats. To say that Mireille was grumpy was a severe understatement. Jacques, witnessing her discomfort, advanced an extra pace towards Mireille, his free hand rising to reach for her bag. "Here, let me help you with some of those," he politely suggested. Mireille retreated an according step from Jacques and gripped the strap of her shoulder bag firmly, angling her right shoulder and the luggage with it away from his volunteered hand in a dissuading show. "That won't be necessary," the blonde rebuffed in a voice as hospitable as a tempestuous artic blizzard. "No, no; it's alright, I insist," Jacques persevered, not taking the hint from Mireille's unreceptive tone. He turned to Kirika and bent down to the shorter girl's level, a ticing smile on his face that he probably believed looked encouraging. It was closer to a smile one produced while terribly constipated. The Soldats agent gingerly gestured towards Mireille's suitcase that Kirika had propped upright next to her, one of the young yet unrivalled assassin's deceptively frail-looking hands drooped over the extended handle. The nimble and delicate fingers of that hand curled closed little by little around the suitcase's handle whilst their diminutive owner blinked a couple of times in bewilderment at her shadowy reflection stretched over the curved lenses of Jacques sunglasses. Kirika turned her head to Mireille, the uncertainty in her eyes soliciting guidance from her elder. But such guidance wasn't needed, or rather was already given as Mireille sidestepped in front of her unsure partner, her body a blockade to keep Kirika and Jacques' unwanted services apart. "So do I," the Corsican said with a look as grim as her voice, her gaze of piercing blue stabbing through the man's dark sunglasses to the orbs behind. Mireille's daunting gaze must have penetrated deeper into Jacques' brain also, because he quickly gave ground before the imposing feminine wall, the Soldats agent's shoes scuffing and squeaking across the floor in his haste. He bobbed his head several times in acknowledgement, motions more akin to a fearful twitching. His right hand, trembling like a junkie in a desperate need of a fix, withdrew a cigarette from his jacket's breast pocket to be held between his shaky fingers and lifted to his mouth. The cigarette's appearance lasted for but a moment however before he suddenly grasped where he was; standing in an airport lobby where smoking was not permitted; and it vanished inside his pocket once again. "Why are you here?" Mireille demanded to know whist she observed Jacques' jumpy behaviour. "I assume you are to escort us somewhere?" It was the only rational explanation for him wanting to lighten her and her partner's loads the blonde could fathom. "Yes.... Yes," Jacques confirmed, nodding again but a decisive solitary dip this time, and his voice regaining its strength in the second affirmation. "To a safehouse that's been arranged for your stay. We better get moving there now. I was told the feud hasn't spilled into Tokyo's streets just yet, but who can say when it will?" "A safehouse?" Mireille questioned. She pondered how 'safe' a house that Soldats had set up for her and Kirika, allies by the slimmest of margins separating friend and foe, truly was. The Corsican assassin would sleep lightly in that particular domicile. "Where? In Yokohama?" "Yokohama?" Jacques parroted, screwing up his face into a grimace of incredulity. "Are you kidding? There isn't a safehouse in the entire Kanagawa prefecture that can actually live up to its claim. We've been practically forced out of the region. Yokohama was one of the first cities to give." The Soldats operative shook his now lowered head and clicked his tongue acrimoniously. "You'd be hard pressed to even find one of us in that city. If there are any safehouses in Yokohama that haven't been overrun, then you can bet the people in it won't be poking their heads out any time soon." "Where then? Here in Tokyo?" Mireille presumed. "A compromise between Tokyo and Yokohama," Jacques clarified, tapping a forefinger in the air at the blonde. "Literal middle ground in fact, and in more ways than you probably suspect. It's as close as we can get you to the enemy's den without you actually sleeping in it." "Where...?" Mireille asked gravely, but the ominous prickling in the back of her mind told her she already knew the answer. She reminded herself that Soldats were the architects of coincidence. "Kawasaki," Jacques said. ******* Kirika stared out of the taxicab's rear passenger seat window, her right hand under her chin cradling her weary head and her elbow propped against the window's narrow sill for support. Her sombre, weighty gaze absorbed every scrap of scenery that reflected in its reddish-brown hue as the environ of Kawasaki flashed by; gauging every road, building, and landmark with the blueprints the earliest memories she could call her own supplied; trying to make matches between them. Kirika's vantage was a literal window into the past--*her* past. Kawasaki was the place of her birth, the place where she had lived her meagre former life before it had been brightened and fulfilled by the advent of her destined partner, Mireille. It was a place the darkhaired girl had thought she had left behind never to return to. Yet return Kirika had, and old memories were stirring, reviving; roused from slumber in the dusty recesses of their keeper's mind by her coming to the city of their origin. Old memories that gave rise to vague feelings in their wake. Vague as they were, Kirika had nevertheless experienced their like before, several times in fact. Whenever she had laid eyes upon a fragment of her then lost past; fragments too often linked to Soldats--Mireille's father's pocket watch found in her bedroom in her fictitious family home here in Kawasaki, or Chloe's throwing knives unexpectedly discovered stuck in the necks of Maurice Rubique and his police escort that first time at the courthouse back in her real home of Paris. The feelings, while sometimes not engendered alone, had at least been at the fore. The sensations had been at their most acute when Kirika had been wandering the streets of the village that had protected the Manor prior to its eradicating razing, and also whilst on the grounds and in the halls of the ancient Manor itself. It had been all encompassing then, as though Kirika was being bodily immersed in the feelings and they were everywhere around her, like a thick fog embracing her with misty tendrils of its languid swirls. Strange feelings... like a... dreaminess... a sense of the old and long forgotten, with almost hallowed undertones. They were neither good nor bad by themselves, just... melancholic. It was quiet in the taxi; the sort of easy hushed calm that Kirika was fond of, close to resembling those she shared with Mireille in their home in Paris, if not for the extra company. Traffic was thin and the ride was smooth, the car's engine humming a gentle and soothing lullaby that floated Kirika's thoughts away on its droning tune. Talk was sparse as well, on the brink of being absent for the whole journey from the airport in Tokyo to the safehouse in Kawasaki. Kirika supposed that neither Mireille nor Jacques--the restless man the darkhaired girl remembered from his sudden appearance at Millet's headquarters--wanted to speak of anything too private in front of the taxi driver. She also supposed that her partner didn't want to speak to her too familiarly in the presence of Jacques, a man known to belong to Soldats, the organisation the blonde openly abhorred and distrusted. Things to do with Soldats usually instilled an obsessive caution in Mireille... and put her in a bad, hostile mood. Not all signs of Mireille's close relationship to Kirika had evaporated upon the Soldats agent's appearance however, and nor was the younger yet still consummate assassin herself unconscious to the activities of those around her despite the attention she gave the window. From the rear passenger seat adjacent Kirika was awake to the subtle turns of the blonde woman's head in her direction, to the blue eyes shifting askance to favour her with appraising, watchful looks every few streets that passed by. Mireille's gaze had been on and off Kirika ever since the airport; surreptitious looks glimmering with unspoken concern revisiting their worry again and again. Ever since Kawasaki was marked as their journey's final destination and as their residence for their time in Japan. Mireille must have been wondering what the implications of returning to Kawasaki, a place akin to Corsica for her, were having on Kirika. What Kirika was thinking; what she was feeling. Although still carefully held in check, Mireille had a lot of worry for Kirika overall. The girl realised it more now that they had gained a deeper understanding of their true connection to one another. It was because Mireille cared that she fussed; her interest was a blessed sign of her love, warming upon the heart and touching upon the soul. Kirika had not known Mireille to care about anyone else the way she cared about her. There were her associates, her friends; but the affection, if there was any shown at all, wasn't the same, even when it related to her family. Some indefinable and fundamental ingredient was missing, something that caused Mireille's normal reservation to soften and wane and free the smiling, doting, tender woman it suppressed; a woman who was a stranger to everyone else but Kirika. Kirika got to see a side of Mireille that no one else seemed to--she got to see the real person behind the canny business woman and hard-edged contract killer; she got to see the real woman behind the gun. And that woman was gentle and compassionate, and warm and loving. An angel disguised as a demon, forced to live in a world of darkness. That Kirika knew this woman defined her closeness to Mireille. It was a joyful privilege to see her, and an inevitability to love her. Kirika would have liked to set Mireille's fretting heart and anxious mind to rest, but she didn't really know what she was feeling herself. When the city of Kawasaki had been revealed to be where her and Mireille's safehouse was situated, she hadn't reacted in any overt way. She hadn't been sure how to react or what to feel. It had been shock, but no more than a mild one spared a mere short moment of pause and surprised bat of eyelids. Kawasaki was a place filled with memory for her, but it was still just a place. A big place at that, with only a small area of it host to her past. The parts of the city she had once walked may not be anywhere near where the Soldats safehouse was. Until she could pinpoint whether or not they were anywhere near to her former home, her precise sentiments on revisiting her birthplace for the first time since leaving it would likely continue to be lost in the cloudy realm of the dreamy and melancholic. Mireille's attention wasn't wholly enthralled by Kirika's plight, however. When she wasn't sneaking glances at her partner the blonde was spying on Jacques in the front passenger seat ahead of her with as much consideration as her position allowed, the devotion for Kirika that softened her gaze exchanged for suspicion that hardened it. The rectangular bag for Mireille's laptop and important documents sat upright by the woman's side, and while her eyes lurked on the Soldats agent her right hand laying innocuously on top of it sometimes threw off its innocence and took to faintly stroking along its opening, fingers toying with the zip. What the bag contained was too valuable for it to have been stowed away in the boot of the taxi--important documents from Breffort and the blonde's laptop--but it was also where Mireille had stored her weapon for the aeroplane trip, making it crucial luggage to remain close by. Mireille was doubtless prepared to unzip her bag and pull out her pistol the instant Jacques lived up to her mistrust. Kirika's bag was next to her as well, the black sausage taking up the rest of the rear passenger seat space separating her and her partner. But the girl's Beretta M1934 wasn't housed in that bag. It was in its classic spot concealed inside a pocket of her parka. Kirika had swiftly transferred it from its prior location in her bag to quick reach in her pocket in the short interval supplied by her getting into the taxi before everyone else, notably before Jacques and the driver. Being inside the taxi alone whilst everyone else was outside had screened her conspicuous movements and the illegal firearm they had involved, such that neither Jacques, the driver, or even any passer-by who might have directed an idle look her way could have seen them. In the case where Jacques did perform a betrayal or antagonistic action of some kind Kirika had him covered, and could possibly react quicker to the danger than Mireille. The younger assassin had a clearer line of sight towards Jacques from her crosswise angle anyway, so she would notice any threat he may suddenly pose earlier than her partner could with her limited view. Mireille did have the better shot however, since she could simply unload her Walther P99's magazine point-blank into the back of the Soldats operative's seat. But Jacques, for his part, wasn't doing a thing that should feed Mireille's suspicion or that piqued Kirika's, apart from him being his Soldats self. He sat pretty much motionless in the front passenger seat, only his head lolling about subject to the consistency of the road beneath the taxi's wheels. He had looked as agitated as the last time they had met when Kirika had seen him at Narita Airport, but had calmed some during the hushed journey to the safehouse. He still wore his sunglasses too, just like he had in Millet's headquarters. Kirika supposed that meant he was really tired again and was hiding dark-ringed eyes as Mireille tended to do. His job working for Soldats was probably demanding, and his hasty flight from Paris to Japan was unlikely to have helped. Kirika had not eluded her plane trip's weakening affects either. She could never settle into a proper sleep whilst travelling by air, and consequently had decided the time was better spent peering out the jet's passenger windows at the purest and most unbridled sky she had ever seen, and watching the even grander vision of the most beautiful and entrancing woman she had ever seen in slumber beside her. Both majestic diversions seemed to really shorten the length of long flights such that hours shrunk to minutes, but naturally at the cost of relinquishing sleep, although that was a pointless endeavour anyway. Prolonged air travel hadn't always given Kirika trouble with her napping, but as her penchant for sleeping pressed close against Mireille had grown so had her dependency on it to fall asleep to begin with. The seats on an airplane were normally not favoured towards comfortable snuggling between two friendly passengers, cursing the girl's attempts to doze off peacefully for any longer than a couple of minutes. And so Kirika simply accepted that sleep was unattainable onboard an aeroplane, and embraced her aerial pastimes instead. The trade-off was well worth it. She wondered if she would have gone without sleep no matter what the case, just so she could have a longer chance to lose herself in the beauty around her. While her admiration had exacted its tax of tiredness on her petite body, it was nothing Kirika couldn't cope with. The assassin simply ignored the fatigue and concentrated on maintaining her mind's wakefulness, enough so that her senses remained tuned to meticulous alertness and her reflexes honed to razor sharpness. Her body would follow her will's direction, shrugging off the weariness like an unwanted blanket about the shoulders when required until she could get some proper rest. Through mental fortitude alone Kirika could sustain herself, such that she could drive her beleaguered body to the brink of collapse without sacrificing a shred of its strength or speed before it succumbed. The journey abroad didn't seem to have agreed with anybody, for Mireille displayed evidence of drowsiness too. She didn't have her sunglasses to hide her straining eyes behind, nor could she disguise the pallor of her face as anything other than the product of tiredness. For the hours she had dedicated to curling up under a blanket on the aeroplane--that being the blonde's routine procedure for long distance air travel--Kirika would have predicted Mireille to be as fresh as if she'd been sleeping in their bed at home. However, Kirika, in her devoted veneration of her snoozing partner, had witnessed Mireille fidget a lot in her seat throughout her naptime. Mireille seemed to only reap restive sleep at best on every flight they took together, which plainly didn't do much to restore her depleting energy. Nevertheless, like Kirika, Mireille rose above her sleepiness and stayed on her guard, as proved by the watchful eye she had placed Jacques under. The built-up surroundings of Kawasaki were treated with a similar discrimination during her respites from monitoring Kirika and her Soldats nemesis, presumably on the look out for Soldats treachery that entailed waylaying the taxi. But Kirika mused whether the reasons for Mireille's curiosity in the sights weren't in addition a little parallel to her own. Mireille had met her for the first time in this city--and had been introduced to the agents of Soldats here too, as a matter of fact. The young women's fateful partnership had been forged in this place. Kirika wondered if Kawasaki had some significance to Mireille as it did to her, perhaps not rousing the same profound emotions, but cultivating some sentimental attachment nonetheless because of the history that had taken place between them in this city. She wondered if Mireille saw the past in the streets that flew by as Kirika herself did, and smiled in remembrance of their earliest encounter and time spent together. It was a nice thought. The taxi trundled through a sedate intersection that initially seemed like any other, but as the vehicle moved further ahead suddenly Kirika was peering down a narrow suburban lane that was a reflection of the ethereal blueprints penned in her mind; a solid reflection as real as anything else around her, erected right there in reality. Kirika remembered that lane. It was long and straight and the road wide enough for only one car to drive along, and was flanked by high walls with houses on the other sides. Kirika had walked its length to the street beyond dressed in her school uniform and carrying her leather satchel on her way to and from Tsubaki High School more times than she could count. It was a path she had well worn during her old life in Kawasaki, and a marker that told her she was halfway to school... or halfway to home. The familiar lane was gone as quickly as it had emerged into view, and it served as a marker of a different kind now. As the taxi continued on it was as though Kirika and those with her were passing through a barrier, a... portal, an intangible portal into a time long ended... into a memory long remembered. Matches for her mind's blueprints were everywhere; the streets and buildings that went by Kirika knew, each new one sighted refreshing the dated memory of it she had. It felt so surreal, as if she were drifting through a hazy dream, and the deeper she went inside it; the farther she was driven down the olden roads away from the portal entrance; the more the real world was left behind. The fuzzy melancholy swelled inside her too, that fuzziness thickening more and more from an indolent mist into a dust-laden fog swimming with fresh eddies at every old memory's renewal; each resurgence beating a whisk through the mass and spurring it to a faster condensing churn. Wistfulness flowed as the fog billowed, as did an odd reverence for the old sights seen. They were from another life after all; a life for all its shortcomings Kirika still cherished the memories of. The taxi and Kirika with it followed those memories, tracing them back to their beginning. Tracing them back to the root of that old life--to the grave of it. A few more familiar streets and remembered turns later the taxi rolled to a stop. Virtually consumed in a light-headed trance Kirika climbed out of the car, dragging her bag mechanically with her, her mind as mesmerised as her staring eyes. There it was. The house Kirika had awakened to the world in, the first place she had called home, where she had first spawned her own memories and lived her own life. Kirika had thought she would never see it again. As though it had ceased to exist the instant she had left it and the life she had lived in it behind, the house enduring only in her mind. But here it was, looking the same as always. Brick and mortar still stood steady, the garden still thrived in its greenery, and the property gave off no sense of abandonment. Instead it was as if the house had remained static up until Kirika's return. Stuck in time--eternal, unchanging. Waiting. It was as though she really was looking back in time, into her mind's recorded image of the past, gazing at a memory ripped straight from there and transferred to the living, breathing world. It was like *being* in the past, walking in it, walking in the very memories contained in her head. And it felt wrong. A wrong step placed, a wrong path taken. Like Kirika wasn't supposed to have ever come back. Not back to the beginning. Not back to a life already departed. It was a grave that shouldn't be disturbed. The orange of sunset twilight streaking the sky overhead basked the house in its glow, feeding the illusorily ambiance that swallowed Kirika whole. The surrealism was at its most potent on the street in front of the young assassin's first and former home, as was the melancholy, the latter still keen in the face of the emergent sensation of wrongness. The house exuded feelings of sacredness too like the roads leading to it earlier, and as with the others they were strongest here. This house was the origin of them all, just as it was the origin of Kirika. Its history gave it its power, the girl was beginning to understand. It was a hallowed site to her because of what had occurred within its walls, because of the importance of those events and how they fit into her life. She had been born here, she had allied with Mireille here, and she had lived a life here. It was the last that tainted the house's eminence, distorting it into something that burgeoned painful regret and woeful longing at every glimpse its way. The bulk of Kirika's memories concerning Kawasaki were weaved with such. All but the closing little fraction of her previous time in this city was borne stagnating in an empty existence with loneliness as her solitary companion, though interposed with the mundane contentment of normality... albeit normality eventually punctured on a near daily basis by the surfacing of Soldats and its aggression. The everyday routine of her life was the only thing she looked back on with some extent of fondness, her union with Mireille aside. It was lost to her now, lost with the desertion of that life, although she'd had a measly grasp of it back then anyway. Still, Kirika didn't like being reminded of that loss--it made her pine for its recovery all the more ardently--and here outside her old home the memories were at their freshest. It wasn't the only past hurt rekindled. Within the house the ghosts of loneliness and meaninglessness awaited Kirika. She couldn't help but remember the ills that had worn on her life at its start. How they had felt. The pain of them. The ache for change. Those ghosts would haunt her inside that house. They were already starting to now. Kirika was disrupting their rest revisiting her bygone residence, evoking memories and feelings better left alone in time-fostered obscurity. They would not let her go unpunished. This was a house of fruitless dreams and hollow lives. A house built on lies and misery. This was not Kirika's home. Maybe it never really had been. There was breathing on Kirika's neck--serene, gentle, steady and hushed. Over her shoulder, behind her back, just shy of the corner of her eye she could feel *her*. Kirika's other self, the darkness, the voice, Altena, or whoever or whatever it was. It was there, behind her, perhaps prodded from wherever it had been skulking in Kirika's mind, silent as it was still, by the girl's trek through her memories of the past. She could not so much hear the breathing but *feel* it, *sense*it, like a mouth with lips parted and words ready on tongue. Kirika's body tensed severely, waiting, expecting new whispers to chime through her thoughts, invade her mind, the poison commentary by a dead woman in service of a younger trapped one. But the quiet lingered on. It was there, the darkness, the voice, yet it did nothing; said nothing. In some ways it was worse. Agitating, unnerving. It was cold outside the taxi, the icy winds coming close to buffeting, but sweat slicked Kirika's forehead. It was as cold as the weather. Suddenly there was a very real weight on Kirika's left shoulder. Panic shot through her just as quickly, and her head snapped instantly to the presence, a muted gasp blown between her lips. It was Mireille's placid smiling face that materialised in Kirika's vision, as compassionate as it was soothing to the smaller girl. She should have known. The hand resting on her shoulder was far too tender to have belonged to something... or someone... bad. Relief came as swiftly as panic had, but poured into Kirika instead of slashing through her insides. Her knotted muscles slackened, her stiff left shoulder visibly sinking under her partner's pacifying hand. Mireille's gentle and caring smile grew just a little bit, and she squeezed Kirika's shoulder softly. Nothing was said before the blonde let her hand drop and she turned away, moving towards the back of the taxi and its open boot to collect the rest of her luggage to go with the laptop bag dangling from her shoulder. However, the woman's message was clear. Kirika was not alone. Mere moments had gone by since Kirika had stepped out of the taxi, mere heartbeats, but it had felt like those moments had been stretched into a whole lifetime, the past lifetime she had already lived. Her heart, which she hadn't been aware was leaping in her chest, was quieting down, and the perspiration spotting her brow was close to drying in the cool winds wafting her hair. The surrealism enveloping the house had waned, its edge dulled greatly if not altogether, the dream awakened from and the regression into the past ended, with reality and the present regaining their purchase. The invisible presence over Kirika's shoulder, the low breathing down her neck, had vanished too. Chased off by Mireille--the darkness cast out by the light, the demon fleeing before the angel. Mireille had broken Kirika free from her trance; led her out of the mire of malicious memories she had been ensnared in with a mere affectionate touch and encouraging smile. Kirika's battle with her sinister twin was her own to wage, her inner turmoils hers to surmount unaccompanied, but aid for all of her troubles was always nearby. The girl knew she could rely on Mireille and her support if she ever asked for it. However, Kirika hoped she would never become desperate enough to have need to. Not every feeling that the sight of her old house engendered in Kirika had been expelled. They had lost part of their thrall over Kirika, but few had followed the surrealism in its fade. The same misgivings, the same sadness, hung over her like a pall as she looked upon their abode. Ghosts were not so easily banished. Kirika shut the taxi's passenger door quietly and joined Mireille at the back of the vehicle just as the blonde was hefting her suitcase from the boot to the street, plopping it down on its wheels with a little heaved sigh of exertion. She closed the boot, and before Kirika could take it herself Mireille had dragged her suitcase over the stubborn curb and onto the pavement, all without so much as throwing her obliging partner a glance. Kirika would have happily lugged the suitcase on Mireille's behalf, now more than ever to assuage her partner's exhaustion, but the older woman usually reclaimed her luggage at the finish of a long journey. Kirika wasn't sure why she did that, nor did she have a guess as to why Mireille had repossessed her luggage so soon after landing at the airport on this trip. Customs to the taxi outside the airport was a stretch of time where the petite girl normally had her love's burden in her hands. Kirika supposed that right at this moment Mireille wanted to continue to keep any shred of familiarity they shared masked from Jacques. Or maybe that wasn't it. Sometimes Mireille was so hard to figure out when they were not side-by-side in carnage with guns in their grasps. They were Noir, connected, tied together by threads of fate, meant to understand each other's hearts perfectly... but that was just an ancient belief. Maybe it would come to be one day, when their love had prospered to its full and glorious bloom. Yes. The day would come. The taxi drove away, leaving Kirika and Mireille and Jacques at the roadside, the last putting his wallet back in his suit pocket after paying the driver. Jacques picked up his briefcase from the footpath where he had placed it by his leg and then offered the pair of assassins an unsteady smile. "After you," Mireille said, grim-faced once again. "Of course," Jacques replied with coolness at odds with his nervous bearing. He walked ahead of his stony overseer and her less threatening companion and through the already open gate of the house, past the front garden and to the porch steps. Mireille trailed after him, watching his every movement and the house that loomed at the fore with careful notice, her gaze never long from either. Kirika followed her, feet plodding, dragging like the blonde dragged her suitcase, though without the smoothness wheels endowed. The troubled girl's eyes flitted to the wall that separated the house from the street as she passed it, the topmost railing a head taller than her just as she remembered. She caught sight of the scuffed nameplate mounted on the nearest edge of the wall, near the entrance to the house. Yuumura, it said. More evidence of her old home's standstill in time. Kirika didn't believe that anybody else had lived in it after she had left. It was like this house had been made for her. Maybe it had been. Altena had commanded that kind of power. The mailbox set on the porch was empty, showing that someone at least took care of the mail that tended to accumulate to massive proportions if you didn't clear it out frequently. Junk mail, Mireille called it. Never anything addressed to Kirika Yuumura specifically, not in all the time she had lived here. Not in all her life. The lie only went so far. The porch light was on, shedding light on Jacques while he slid a key into the front door's lock. It was as though the light had been switched on by itself, anticipating Kirika's return. Dread was welling up in the pit of her stomach as she reluctantly climbed the porch steps, her attention glued on the door, awaiting the moment it would be swung open, letting out the pains entombed behind it. Kirika stood close to Mireille on the porch, so close they were almost touching. The girl wished they could touch. "Here we go," Jacques announced, as if opening the door to Kirika's past was nothing. He did just that, unlocking the front door and walking into the house, then fumbling in the shadows for a light switch that Kirika knew was just next to the entrance, on the left hand section of wall. Jacques eventually found the switch and bright light reinforced dusk's soft radiance previously bathing the small foyer and larger room ahead. Stooping down slightly and lifting his right foot up, he undid the laces of his brown leather shoe and then flicked it off to drop onto the green tiles lining the genkan with his free hand, that shoe closely followed by its mate. "This will get irritating," Kirika heard him sigh under his breath. Mireille squeezed her way into the genkan at Jacques' back and after depositing her suitcase against a wall, began to work on removing her own footwear, unzipping her high-heeled leather boots and pulling them off her slender ankles and elegant feet, losing a few inches of height in the process. She yet retained a close eye on the nearby Soldats agent, not trusting to leave him free of watch even for these ephemeral moments. Kirika dithered at the house's entrance. No ghosts had assailed her at the breach of the front door, only more memories of the past; of the countless times she had donned her shoes and taken them off in that genkan, coming and going across this threshold. But she feared that they might only be prowling deeper inside the rooms and halls, searching for the moment to pounce. Mireille rose to standing once she had rather messily arranged her floppy boots at the lip of the genkan, near her similarly discarded suitcase. She looked over her shoulder to where Kirika wavered behind her at the doorway, the woman's lovely profile suddenly appearing from around the flaxen curtain spilling down her back. A blue eye of hers beckoned, and the curve of her mouth was gently persuading. "Kirika," Mireille said. As if something had nudged her lightly but compellingly forwards, Kirika's feet shuffled from the porch outside to the genkan inside in a single timid step. Nothing awful happened, and Kirika breathed a little easier. Just a little. Mireille spared Kirika another moment to bolster the timorous girl's nerves with her patient smile before Jacques quickly lured away her attention again as he stepped out of the genkan and into the connecting room. She tailed him, her bare feet padding mutely across the buffed hardwood floor. Kirika put her bag down next to the wall opposite Mireille's suitcase, and then shut the front door quietly. Carefully she slipped her feet out of her pink shoes, pushing them beside her partner's boots when she was done, and then went to join Mireille and Jacques in the adjoining room. Kirika's footfalls were even more subdued than Mireille's, her socks hushing to a degree, but the young assassin's apprehension lightening her steps was the most effective silencer. The room styled in the old-fashioned Japanese manner was the first in the house to reacquaint itself with Kirika. It was the largest room in the dwelling yet also the most sparsely decorated in accustom to its traditional vein, the lone piece of furniture a kotatsu in the centre of a span of flooring layered with tatami mats. The small, stumpy table had an ashtray on it, positioned exactly as Kirika remembered leaving it. The ashtray was still spotless as well, and Kirika wondered if it had ever been used. It hadn't been in her time here. There were several pictures on the walls, some even high above the trim and tidy alcoves and cabinets, hanging bare inches lower than the ceiling. A few were traditional Japanese calligraphy and artwork framed for display to fit the theme of the room, but most were family photographs. Kirika's family. However, the people in them were no family that the girl knew. There was a picture of who was presumably meant to be her grandmother, a black and white photograph that looked old. Others, in colour, were of her pretend mother and father in seemingly pleasant moments, one with her encompassed in the shot. She was smiling cheerfully in it, her mouth open wide. She looked very happy. Kirika wondered how she could be like that, if the merriment was a lie too. She hadn't thought her mouth was even capable of a smile that big, or her face able to appear so trouble-free knowing the sins she was laden with. But then, Kirika hadn't made that smile. She had no memory of it or of the woman and man posing beside her in the photo. It was a smile belonging to her other self in a life that warped twin had led. It was amazing that the darkness had the capacity to show such unadulterated joy. Perhaps it--*she*--had really known their faux parents? Or was her delight really merely a fabrication? Whatever the truth, Kirika herself felt no connection at all to any of her supposed family members. They were just strangers to her, faces no more meaningful than those belonging to passers-by in the street. Kirika didn't have a family. Parents... relatives.... These were rudiments that other people were born with. Not Kirika. She had come into this world alone. No mother's comforting embrace or father's warm smile had greeted her; no blood ties had been forged when she took her first breath. Perhaps it had been different far, far back in the past for her younger self, but that was a life belonging to another girl. That she would never experience the love and care of a family made Kirika sad, but it was a distant, indistinct ache. How could she mourn for something she had never known? The closest Kirika had to family was Mireille. And Mireille's love and care outshined all others. Kirika didn't need a real family. "This is it, your home-sweet-home," Jacques said as he walked to the kotatsu in the middle of the room, swinging his head to each wall in appraisal. He turned around to face Mireille and Kirika, adjusting his sunglasses with a brief touch from his thumb and forefinger. "He said you would like this place." "It will do," Mireille replied simply, giving nothing away. Jacques just smiled diplomatically and then sat down at the far end of the squat table, plunking his briefcase on it. "Why is this table so low?" he griped immediately afterwards. He kept rearranging his legs this way and that; sometimes crossing them, sometimes sticking them underneath the kotatsu; seeming on a tricky quest to get comfortable. But finally they stilled, the Soldats operative finding a balance with one leg bent and upright, and the other similarly bent but flat on the floor under the table. Mireille walked to the opposite side of the kotatsu and lowered her laptop bag by its strap to the floor, alongside a table leg. She then shed her coat and tossed it over the bag before kneeling down at the kotatsu across from Jacques, tucking her legs smartly underneath herself. Unlike Jacques, Mireille had sat at this table before. Kirika knelt beside Mireille in the same way a moment later, legs folded neatly underneath her bottom, squashing into the little space remaining at that particular edge of the small table on the blonde's left hand side, the side that wasn't occupied by her laptop bag. The petite girl didn't mind the tight fit though, and especially not the close proximity to Mireille it accorded. Their neighbouring bare thighs were almost touching, the tiny, titillating gap separating them taunting Kirika to part her legs ever so slightly or even lean a bit against her partner and close that gap. But she knew she would never do either. She would never breach that gap or any other separating them without invitation. So instead she sat there very still and straight-backed, savouring the nearness she did have with her love, while trying to forget the ghosts the house harboured. Two simultaneous clicks snapped the stillness in the room--the house--announcing the unlocking of the Soldats agent's briefcase. Jacques' face was all seriousness now as he cracked open the briefcase, the abrupt turnaround leaving Kirika questioning if the nervous, fidgety man she had witnessed beforehand had really existed. Kirika sensed Mireille tense beside her at Jacques' actions, the blonde's back becoming as straight as a board while her hand strayed once again to her bag next to her. Conversely, Kirika was impassive and unmoving, giving away no sign that she had seen anything potentially suspect. That by no means meant she was any less alert than her partner. If Jacques were to produce a weapon of some kind from inside that briefcase of his, Kirika would flip the kotatsu on its edge in the space it took him to hurl a knife or pull a trigger; a makeshift shield at a moment's notice. And before Jacques could follow up his initial attack with another he'd be already dead, two bullets from two guns delivering his demise. But that violence ensued only in Kirika's head. In reality Jacques retrieved an innocuous enough stack of paper from the innards of his briefcase and dropped it with a slap in the middle of the table. He prodded it with his finger a few times towards Mireille. "There's the information relevant to our... situation... in this region," Jacques said, nodding his head at the paper heap and then shrinking back, as if the pile were something repulsive to him. "Right now Kawasaki is the only city in this prefecture worth having that we still maintain some control over. How long that control will last...." He paused, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. "Well, that's presently being contested," Jacques went on, flashing a dry smirk. It fell away quickly. "Kawasaki is all that buffers our primary Japanese power base in Tokyo from Ishinomori's movement. If Kawasaki falls under her sway, the capitol will be open to the brunt of her offensive straight from nearby Yokohama, and her influence in this country would be significantly increased if she should somehow manage to take it. Naturally this is undesirable. We want Kaede Ishinomori's splinter group stripped of its ability to pose a threat before our presence in Kawasaki has a chance to wane, and before the authorities governing Tokyo can become perverted to her cause." "And we are to do that? We're not here to win your war, or at your convenience for that matter," Mireille stated coldly. "We'll see to Kaede Ishinomori if that is what it will take to prove to Soldats we are non-aggressors in this. But that's all, whether it derails your revolt or not." Jacques cleared his throat uncomfortably, the jumpy man resurfacing. He squirmed in his spot on the floor, laying his right forearm across his upright knee with forced casualness, and then nodded his head in a slow show of prudent surrender. "As you say. Any assistance you provide will be valued." The Soldats operative's right hand drew back to his jacket pocket over his heart seemingly of its own accord, bony fingers absently starting to pluck free the cigarette that had made a short appearance before at the airport. The cigarette peeking halfway out of its home, Jacques nodded his head at the ashtray on the table. "Do you mind?" "Yes," Mireille declared without possibility of negotiation. She hooked a finger over the rim of the ashtray and then unceremoniously dragged it from the middle of the kotatsu to near her, well out of range of Jacques' cigarette if he should unwisely choose to light it. Jacques coughed nervously a second time, covering his mouth with his fist after discreetly pushing the cigarette back inside his pocket. "Like I said, I'm your contact within Soldats forces here," he proceeded with a decrease in aplomb. "Your *sole* contact. I'm the only person in the whole of Japan that knows you are working for us, for Soldats. You understand; you are regarded as rather like outlaws to us. Taboo. Your relationship with our mutual employer cannot be broadcast. It would... cause problems." "We are working *with* you. And I know. We don't expect any real help from you because of that either," Mireille said, her words with a bite to them. Kirika wasn't sure why that incensed her partner so. The darkhaired assassin was sure that Mireille preferred working alone anyway, just the two of them. Kirika liked it that way too. She had never known anything different. She didn't *want* to know anything different. "Ahh... alright then," Jacques said wanly. Kirika noticed him swallow. "I've been told you know that Kaede Ishinomori has had trouble with the law lately," he continued. "Her trial is very close, but the case will be thrown out for sure. Ishinomori and her cohorts have seen to that. However, it is a prime time for you to... well...." Jacques waved his right hand as though he could fan the words he was looking for from the air to his mouth. "...You know, do your thing," he finally settled on. "We'll do it when *we* decide," Mireille retorted. "*Our* way. If Soldats won't give us assistance, then they can keep their interference to themselves as well." Jacques said something else to placate Kirika's prickly partner, but his quavering voice had floated away from the girl's ears. Mireille's captivating tones had drifted too, become faint as if the blonde were speaking through a gag of cotton balls. Kirika's mind was enticed elsewhere, and had been piece by piece whilst her love and the Soldats operative's exchange hummed on from a lengthening distance. Her head was incessantly bid by an invisible finger on her chin to turn from her reflection in the shiny surface of the kotatsu to the yawning opening framing the room on her left. Her ears picked up a voice only she could hear, ringing clearer above the others, chasing them away; a beckoning that tugged her attention towards it. The room next door took up the rest of the house's ground floor, a somewhat cramped space comprising of a kitchen and a small living area, the latter equipped with a television and computer. Seeing the computer ignited a fresh slew of memories to spark inside Kirika's head; visions of her sitting in front of its screen, her face illuminated by its promising glow while she perused the background of one Mireille Bouquet; assassin for hire; and hoping that this woman could bring enlightenment to her life. Kirika wondered if the information was still there in that computer even now, that road-sign to her and her partner's pilgrimage for the past, left undisturbed like everything else in the house she had seen so far. Mireille might like to read it if it was. But it wasn't the computer or anything else particular to that room that exerted an attraction in Kirika. It was what lay above it, and the means to get there. The stairs to the second storey of the house were in that room, and it was from the top of them that the summons tumbled down. Maybe it was the ghosts speaking to her in their silent yet beguiling lilt, whispering in the air, gossamer voices carried on a breeze. The whispers reminded Kirika of the ones that haunted the caverns of her mind as opposed to the halls of a house, and she took a moment to listen inside them for the telltale echoes. But there was nothing. Empty darkness and quiet; not even rasping breaths in the murk. Different spectres were harassing Kirika this time. The ghosts beseeched the hypnotised girl to come closer, implored her feet to climb those wooden stairs that connected to more memories buried in the past. Kirika would have to sooner or later. She would be staying in this house again, and the ghosts she would be taking up residence with would have to be greeted. Faced. With lissom movements Kirika quietly slipped away from the kotatsu and Mireille's side, coaxed by the soft ethereal murmurs or compelled by her kindled courage, or maybe a mixture of both. If Mireille or Jacques noticed her go, she was oblivious to their looks. Kirika was focused on those stairs, at the behest of the invisible finger under her chin pulling her nearer. She didn't like leaving Mireille, but her petite feet stole over the tatami mats without thought, taking her out of the room and to the stairs, then up them, further into the past, deeper into the realm of old spirits. Upstairs seemed somehow quieter, stiller, than the rest of the house below. The only light here was from the setting sun, and just like outside wherever the feeble rays hit sacrosanct surrealism bloomed. There was more dust here than downstairs; a thin coating on banisters and windowsills and more marking the time gone, shining in dusk's ruddy, dwindling, flame. Kirika left fingerprints and footprints in it as she went by, the signs of her return. No one had been up here for the period she had been off with Mireille in France. No one. This place at least really had been waiting for her. The door to Kirika's imaginary parents' bedroom was open, and the girl glanced inside the room as she walked by. She had only been inside that room once, during her explorations after she had awakened in these then unfamiliar surroundings. She had left the room pretty much how she had initially discovered it. There was nothing in there except more foundations to the nevertheless flimsy lie that was Kirika Yuumura's normal background--her normal life. The bedroom had never had the feeling that it had ever been lived in; the bed ever slept in, the clothes in the wardrobes ever worn. It still had that feeling. A single cursory glance inside was enough. Kirika's feet drove her onwards. She knew where they were going. It was where the ghosts gathered for their poignant commune. Her old bedroom was the last doorway near the end of the hall. The door to Kirika's old bedroom was wide open too, like she used to keep it since creaking it open to explore the strange world outside the womb of blue-painted walls that had birthed her. It was from here the ghosts called, here that more of Kirika's memories waited to be remembered. Those memories taunted the girl's brain; scurrying around the fringes of her mind's eye like monsters hiding in the shadows. Images flickered with every scampering footfall, as though each struck an ember close to the paintings recounting her old life. The salvo of memory flashes caused Kirika's feet to waver, her step beginning to degenerate to a shuffle as the spectres' beckoning lost its potence under the burst of mind sparks. Kirika's nerve quaked, and her fingers curled to make fists. She was scared of what the ghosts had in store for her; what stories of woe they'd tell, what old scabs they'd tear off. But while her stride slowed, it didn't stop. The ghosts *would* be faced. Kirika didn't run away from her past anymore. Kirika's pulse was quick and her breath short when she braved standing in the doorway of her old bedroom, foreseeing a throng of hurtful hauntings to leap out at her from inside the room and from inside her mind. But nothing jumped out. Nothing materialised out of the thin air in front of her or from the room's shadows to spook Kirika, at least not in the manner she had predicted. A quiet sadness emanated from the bedroom; benign waves of despondency gently enveloping the girl like a fine vapour--the ethereal embraces of ghosts. Kirika realised that the spectres weren't really cruel or malicious. They were just... sad. She had been summoned by their tortured moans, by their calls of pain--*her* pain. Kirika had spawned these spirits; they were *her* ghosts, her sad longing for the little peace and ordinariness her past life had contained birthing their shape and affliction. The melancholy she had been feeling before on the way to the house, outside it, and finally inside it didn't find its source in anything around her. Not from the house, not from this room. It came from the ghosts, and they came from Kirika. They haunted her mind, not the house. Her ghosts' embrace washed away whatever fear Kirika had, leaving behind a room of reminders and a girl taken by reminiscence. That was what everything in this house was from her old bedroom to the computer downstairs--purely reminders of a past lived through. And the most potent reminders were all present in Kirika's former bedroom. Like the rest of the house, not a single facet of the room varied from the recollection of it the darkhaired girl's memories narrated to her. Everything was in its place; everything on top of the long chest of drawers set against the right-hand wall, everything on the desk directly to her left; *everything*, as though Kirika had vacated the room mere minutes ago, or had never vacated it to begin with. The bed, the dominating presence in the room and to Kirika, attracted the spellbound girl first. With steps shy thanks to reminiscence's charm, she entered the bedroom and approached bed, the covers tucked in and the pillows arranged neatly as if in preparation for her to spend the night in it. Her memories placed her lying on that bed, blinking her eyes open to the room around her, and on the nights subsequent to that one she had slept there again, but fleetingly compared to her seeming long torpor that had stolen more than a decade's worth of her life. Seeing it again made her recall the disorientation she had experienced upon awakening, the confusion that had subverted her mind with only one word as a guide through the blank muddle. But beyond that, Kirika wasn't sure what to feel. Her feelings were jumbled and hard to isolate, but most every one was coated with gloom--sadness, regret, and longing the routine triumvirate. Kirika turned, and then moved to the desk that had once been the keeper of an artefact that had been the chain joining her, Mireille, and Soldats together and of a deadly weapon and its ammunition that had claimed many lives while wielded in her unenthusiastic but expert hands. She felt compelled to open the top drawer, just like she had done shortly after waking up in the very bed behind her. Kirika did just that, pulling it open smoothly and softly, mimicking motions performed a long time ago. It was empty of artefact, weapon, and ammunition, of course. Gone now, lost to the rigours of her and Mireille's pilgrimage with merely the cloth the items had once laid on as a memento. None would be missed. "Perhaps we should sleep separately now that you have your old bedroom back. I noticed another bedroom down the hall that would suit me fine." Kirika looked up from the empty drawer to the doorway enclosing a fair-haired and fair-skinned angel sculptured by the heavens and steered by fate to her. Mireille had her shoulder to the doorjamb, leaning her body nonchalantly against it with her arms folded and one bare leg bent behind the other, the ball of her foot tapping the floor absently. The teasing smile that Kirika had had cast in her direction many times brightened the blonde's already beautiful face, and her blue eyes had a twinkle to them that the younger girl had learned to be... wary... around. Despite that, Mireille was a vision in the faltering sunlight, an uplifting beacon for Kirika's solemn eyes and a balm for her troubled mind. Kirika hadn't been aware of her partner's arrival, the knowledge blockaded on account of her thoughts being swept up in the past or because of the woman's bare feet on the carpet muffling her approach. But Kirika was glad Mireille was here. Kirika's face must have portrayed her anxiousness at Mireille's remarks, for the blonde's smile swelled to a big grin and the blue in her gaze sparkled with all the more gleeful intensity. "I didn't think so," she said in mirth. She tossed Kirika a playful wink; a gesture that elicited several full blinks from the girl herself, unused to such behaviour. Kirika was, however, used to Mireille's strange amusements--most of which were centred on her--but 'used to' didn't mean she understood it at all. It was hard for her to tell when her partner was joking or not, having a tendency to take the woman's words at their face value. To Kirika's dismay, that seemed to make Mireille jest more frequently, and also seemed to heighten her enjoyment of it. Mireille's carefree mood turned out to not be as infectious as Kirika would have liked. As quick as her heart had elated at her love's appearance, her ghosts had moaned again of their--her--turmoil. Kirika's heart deflated and her visage came to bear the weary strain of a haunted soul once more. It was a face that fit her comfortably--she had worn it often in her short life. "I missed you downstairs," Mireille said, the humour fading from her voice and expression. "Jacques is gone. I shooed him back to his masters. He had nothing of importance to say anyway." "Mm..." Kirika mumbled monotonously as she closed the desk drawer as carefully as she had slid it open. Her head turned back towards the bedroom's doorway, but it wasn't Mireille that secured her notice this time. The sailor top of her school uniform still hung on the coat stand behind the door, as though waiting for her to take it and wear it to another day of classes at Tsubaki High School like nothing had happened; like she hadn't been off in France or had met Mireille, or had confronted Altena at the Manor and found out the mysteries behind the title 'Noir'. It was like a life on pause, yet Kirika had no hope of picking it up where she had left off. "Feeling nostalgic?" Mireille asked softly. Nostalgic. A word for what Kirika was feeling as a whole. Yet it didn't seem enough. It was more than just being nostalgic. The feelings were dug from deeper inside her, cut deeper, and the melancholy monumental. Nostalgic was too small a word to describe Kirika's feelings. Wordlessly Kirika walked over to the uniform top, the trappings of a different girl that stood before it now. Mireille's eyes never wandered from her, the blonde's look a conduit for her sizable worry. How to make her understand? The ghosts flitting around in Kirika's head blurred and spun the words needed for her to tell of what she was enduring, but she snatched at them as best she could, wanting Mireille to know. And Mireille wanted to know too, Kirika recognised. Mireille wanted her to share the weight of her troubles, to help shoulder her burdens. This was one Kirika could share, one where her twin didn't darken the tale. Her darkness was the only affliction she would keep to herself indefinitely. "It had been a lie," Kirika spoke quietly, staring at the uniform top as she fashioned her feelings into words from the clutter in her head. "But it had been a lie I was comfortable with. I wanted to believe it. I wanted... I wanted what everyone else had." Kirika's hand took out her student card from a pocket of her parka, and then she looked down at it where it lay in her palm. The full-length mirror beside her caught her movement, and it captured her gaze too soon after. She remembered holding something different while looking into that mirror. A gun. *Her* gun. It had felt natural to her hands, more natural than this card. Kirika dropped her gaze to the student ID again; at the girl in it wearing a school uniform of the type her former classmates had. But underneath the clothes she had been different from them. She had been a demon disguised as a normal girl. Trying to be something she was not. "I wanted to be her. I wanted to be Kirika Yuumura." Raising her heavy head, Kirika reached out and slipped the obsolete student card into the pocket of the sailor suit she had donned for her charade. The card disappeared easily inside the pocket, returned to the place she had originally discovered it. The life it was associated with had ended a long time ago. Moments of silent reflection elapsed in seeming eternities, eternities where Kirika lived a different life than she did now. But the eternities succumbed when Kirika felt soft warmth against her back. She blinked down at the arm beneath her chin that was smoothing a course across her chest, tantalising her skin left exposed by her spaghetti strap top, and holding her close to the reassuring presence behind her. An enchanting scent delighted her nose; that wonderful bouquet that always caressed the corners of her mouth, enticing a blissful smile--the wonderful bouquet of a wonderful Bouquet. Mireille's left arm around Kirika coaxed her to turn to face the mirror, and the image of the woman's compassionate eyes found hers in the glass. She saw that Mireille was stooped over a little to match her shorter height, her partner's chin near Kirika's left shoulder and her lips by her ear, with some of her blonde tresses blanketing the girl's upper arm in a silky cascade. "We are who we are," Mireille said gently into Kirika's ear while absorbing her partner's sad reddish-brown gaze with her sympathetic blue in the mirror. "Wicked people took away many of your choices from you--from us. We can regret it all we like, but it won't change the past. All we can do is live on in the present." The Mireille in the mirror smiled, and her right arm stretched over Kirika's shoulder for the old uniform top. Graceful fingers deftly retrieved the student card out of the uniform top's pocket, and then held it in front of the mirror for Kirika to see. "And this is who you are in the present. There has only ever been one Kirika Yuumura to me. I met her in this city, where she lived, and I came to this house, her home, with her. This is you." The twinkle to Mireille's eyes came back, and she pursed her red lips into a little wry smirk. "Besides, life with me isn't so bad, is it?" she said a touch impishly. Kirika's eyes stung with tears and her sight became hazy, but she was smiling. How could she forget? She had been so mired in the things she had lost in Japan that she had overlooked the things she had gained here. The companion she had gained. The friendship she had gained. The love she had gained. The single person whose coming into her existence made up for everything that Kirika's life had lacked. Mireille. The plagues of loneliness and meaninglessness were gone forever. They were truly ghosts, dead and buried. They could haunt Kirika no more now that she had Mireille. She had nothing to fear from them, or from their memories. She still hoped for an ordinary life, the spectres that craved peace still calling, but Mireille would soothe her wishful heart and soul and quiet the moans until that life was realised. Kirika's former home wasn't a house of broken dreams. It was a house of an earnest dream fulfilled; of a fervent prayer answered. It was here that her partnership with Mireille had been moulded and set in unbreakable stone. That fact made this house not a locale to shrink from but to be adored and revered. Kirika understood now. The reverence; it had been because of that first and foremost. Because this was where she and Mireille and joined as one. It was a hallowed site more sacred than any of Soldats or Noir lore. Mireille held her closer, and Kirika breathed in her perfume deeply. "Are you sure you don't want to sleep in separate rooms?" the blonde teased again. "Mm!" Kirika hummed enthusiastically, nodding her head in a manner that left no doubt to her preference. She delicately cupped her hands around her student card that Mireille still dangled before her, taking it from her partner and then clenching it tight to her chest. She was Kirika Yuumura. And she was not alone. ****** To be continued.... Author's ramblings: I hope I got the general layout of the bottom floor of Kirika's old house and her bedroom right. Genkan = The foyer bit at the entrance of a house where you remove and leave your shoes in favour of slippers. Kotatsu = A low table, with built in electric heater and blanket. I know the one in Kirika's house wasn't exactly like that as far as you can tell, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what that kind of table was called other than kotatsu or 'low table'. -_- Kotatsu is close enough! Tatami mats = Mats primarily made of straw. Used for carpeting.
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