Enishi, 16 years old now, wore the glasses to hide his eyes. He had found that if he wore dark glasses the silvery people that smiled at him couldn't be seen. Right now, behind him in the mirror, Enishi thought he could see a taller man with pale spikey hair. He smiled.

The young man shoved his glasses hastily back on his nose and checked again. The man was gone. He walked to his room. The neat white walls, creamy carpet and pale wood furniture and trim made the room look like a hotel suite. Outside the honk of a taxi far away brought back another guilty memory.

He had lied about the accident. The young woman's face had been so familier. A long face with smooth cheeks. Brown eyes soft as a doe's. Long hair pulled back in a low ponytail. A fringe of bangs around her pale skin. The scent of white plums mixed with the smell of blood. She had spoken in Japanese before she died. The words were engraved on Enishi's soul.

"It's all okay... so please don't cry..."

The shock had been when he saw another face over the girl's. So similer, but when Enishi saw that face... Blood, grief, anger, fear, shock... He began to scream and couldn't stop. When he had woken up in the hospital the doctors said his eyes were fine, and his hair, though white, wouldn't fall out. They suggested dyes and contacts, but Enishi wanted to stay the same, a testament to his grief and the promise of revenge.

'Why did I think that then?' Enishi asked himself as he closed the door and stared out the window at the grey sky. 'Who would I get revenge on? Why was I so sad?'

Enishi's uniform was scattered on the floor with his school bag. He glanced disdainfully at his books and let his eyes rove elsewhere. They lit upon an old book. A martial-arts book.

Enishi had lied again. 'I didn't really get strong to make them stop picking on me,' he confessed to himself as though it would make it all better, 'I did it so I could get revenge.'

He began to punch at the air in familier excercises. 'What's wrong with having white hair? Why is it so bad that I have blue eyes? Why did they make fun of me because I had to wear the black glasses to make the visions go away!?'

He knew the answers wouldn't come that easily. He looked at the most recent picture of his parents. They were standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower, large smiles on their faces. The included letter said that his mother was modeling to earn money for their stay and their next trip. This trip, unlike the others they had taken, was a complete secret. They had ended the pitifully short letter with their usual promise that they loved him and they would send him another letter soon.

"Say, Dad?" Enishi said out loud, sitting down on the bed with the picture in hand. "There's this girl I met. She's really nice. I know I like her. What should I do?"

---------------

In the back room of Aoshi's flat, Misao sneezed. Aoshi looked up at her in surprise.

"Sorry," she said, propping the old Oniwabanshuu record book against her knee as she fished for a handkerchief, "must be the dust."

Aoshi looked away, accepting Misao's excuse. Misao wiped her watering eyes and looked down at the book again. Since the first time she and Aoshi had pored over the manuscripts her kanji had improved. She no longer needed Aoshi's help to decipher all but the most obscure and archaic kanji.

"Hey, here's something," Misao said, "from the year 1878. Late summer."

"Oh?" Aoshi leaned over and looked at the book in Misao's lap. She held it at an angle and he rested his chin on her knee like a dog.

"In Kyoto, you were still recovering from a battle," Misao read, trying hard to ignore the weight at her leg, "and we received a letter from a friend..." Misao paused and wrinkled her forhead in confusion. "Well, that makes no sense, but it's just a name, and it's not Enishi's, so it won't matter. Anyway, by the time we, the two of us, got there, the battle had been lost and the friend that sent the letter dead. Appearently Enishi killed them. Then it gets really confusing, so I say screw it."

Frustrated, she closed the book with a puff of dust and a snap of old vellum pages and set it a little roughly on the floor.

Aoshi propped his chin in one hand and looked up at Misao. "What's bothering you?"

"Enishi," Misao huffed, "and I don't know why. He doesn't seem like a totally trustworthy person. I sensed something from him when he was telling us about that trip to China."

'And I sensed something from him when we were leaving,' Aoshi said to himself. 'He wants you, my Misao...' The words had sprung to him mind before self controll could quell them.