Chapter 6

Akira scanned the parking lot for an empty space, the colourful phrases she was muttering under her breath gave Lilly some indication of how it was going. Akira wasn't much of a patient person by nature, so activities like looking for parking spaces, waiting in lines, or generally anything that didn't entail immediate gratification tended to grate on her nerves, a fact that she was happy to share with anyone within earshot.

"Sorry for making you come do this," said Lilly. She truly was – Akira's temper had gotten progressively worse on the long ride over to the neighbourhood where Hanako's passport said she lived. Lilly didn't know exactly why, but there was a good chance it had something to do with her spending the night with Hisao. Normally, Akira was at least mildly supportive of Lilly's affections towards him, but that's not to say that Akira wasn't free with her opinions of his faults. It was a strange dance of verbal sparring between the two sisters, Akira would say something sharp, Lilly would defend or excuse, and then Akira would sulk. They would repeat the exchanges until one of them got fed up with the other and then both would be silent.

It had happened twice so far on the way over.

Akira groaned as she wheeled the car around another corner, the cigarette hanging from her lips was precariously close to falling.

"Look Lils, It's just…." Akira's thought was interrupted by the fact she spied another car leaving a parking space.

"Ah! A space!" she cheered and then hit the accelerator, nearly side swiping another car that was coming in the opposite direction. To her credit, Lilly managed to refrain from screaming. She was somewhat used to her sisters impulsive driving and of course, being blind, she had never truly appreciated just how much of a maniac Akira really was behind the wheel.

Pulling into the spot and turning off the engine, Akira turned to her sister once more.

"It's just… hey, have you ever thought that maybe if you were a little harder on Hisao, you'd get a lot further with him? You know, being blunt with a man isn't necessarily a bad thing."

"I tell him what I'm thinking, I'm not a doorstop," said Lilly as she reached to undo her seat belt.

Akira exited the car and then went around the other side, opening the door for Lilly.

"It's not that you don't tell him what you're thinking it's just…"

Akira fumed for a second as she helped her sister out of the car.

"It's just that you never seem to have a problem with the crap he does!" grumbled Akira.

Lilly reached up, her hand grasping for her sisters shoulder as she exited the vehicle. This was a conversation that she didn't enjoy and given what they were about to do, really didn't want to carry forward any longer.

"Akira… I'm not you, okay? I don't…" Lilly searched for the right words as the two sisters started to depart the parking garage.

"I don't agree that everything's been so one sided. I've had… plenty of chances to change my mind as well. After all, I could have gone with him to America, but I stayed."

Akira grumbled something under her breath that even Lilly's keen hearing couldn't decipher, not that she needed to of course, since it was quite clear they weren't going to make any headway in this conversation.

"I could have gone… I really could have. Why didn't I?"

Lilly pondered these thoughts as she and Akira exited the parking garage. It wasn't the first time she'd asked herself that question and it likely wouldn't be the last. Everyone around her assumed that she was just playing her part, the one of the "courteous and responsible daughter", but that was only half the truth. Deep down inside, Lilly had to admit that part of her had been afraid – afraid of leaving home and afraid of being stranded in a foreign country with a man who didn't actually love her. It was something she had never verbalized, but when it came to her relationship with Hisao, Lilly had never forgotten the fact that she wasn't Hisao's first choice. No, that "honour" belonged to her missing "best friend" and if Lilly truly had one major regret over their relationship, it would be that she never had told Hisao that she felt this way. Maybe if she had, then they could have worked through it – together. Still... maybe it wasn't too late.

The two sisters stepped out onto the busy city street and Akira started to bring up a local map on her phone while Lilly strained her ears in an attempt to orientate herself for the journey ahead. Sure, she had Akira with her, but outside of a few well known places, she never felt truly comfortable enough to let herself relax.

After a moment, Akira spoke, "I think it's just down the street here to our left."

Lilly nodded and unfolded her cane. The sisters began moving again towards their destination.

"Are you ready for this?" asked Akira.

"Nope, not in the slightest" stated Lilly with a small smile. It was the truth – she was still running off a mixture of excitement and emotional upheaval, but pressed on anyway.

"Thinking about it will just make me chicken out anyway, so let's do it" she added.

"Any idea what you're going to say? Like 'Hey Hanako, long time, no see!'"

Lilly groaned, "Wow Akira, you call that a sense of humour? "

"I'll have you know that my jokes are quite popular, at least after three or four beers," the elder sister snarked in reply.

"If you say so…" replied Lilly, the sarcasm heavy in her voice.

"How much further?" she asked.

Akira stopped to examine the map on her phone again.

"The GPS says we are close… ah, there it is. Just up ahead."

Akira went to resume their walk, but Lilly didn't move, her hand was still firmly griped on Akira's shoulder, halting their progress.

"Not ready yet are you?" the elder sister inquired.

"No. Give me a minute," replied Lilly in a hushed tone.

Akira reached into her purse and retrieved a pack of cigarettes. She idly wondered how many she'd smoke before the day was done.

"Take your time little sister," she muttered as she lit up. It was a bad habit, but Akira lived for her bad habits. She took one long look at her sister, noticing how her otherwise angelic face was creased with lines of worry and wondered to herself if perhaps overindulging in destructive behaviour wasn't just a family trait.

There was no answer to that, just a puff of smoke as she exhaled.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hisao sat with his eyes closed on a long bench outside the Yamaku faculty office. He had announced himself minutes ago to a nice older woman who he had never met before and took the seat as she went to find Mutou-sensei. The school, in his opinion, hadn't really changed very much and if he closed his eyes and inhaled the air, he could almost smell the memories.

"Not really surprising if you consider that the olfactory bulb is close to the amygdala and hippocampus. This must be why Lilly seems to always remember things strongly with smells – it's all tied together in your brain."

Hisao took another deep breath through his nose and reclined deeper on the bench.

"And they obviously haven't changed the floor cleaner here in a decade." He laughed to himself silently.

This moment of silence in the familiar, yet empty, hall soothed Hisao in a way that he hadn't felt since he had returned to Japan. Perhaps it was a combination of the setting, the smells, or even just the come down from the excitement of the morning, but he felt a wave of tiredness flow over him. He was just on the brink of dozing when he heard the footsteps approaching.

"Nakai! Is that you?" said the voice.

Hisao opened his eyes and looked to his right. Mutou hadn't changed much, if at all. He still wore the same long brown coat, still had the same bedraggled hair and stubble and if Hisao hadn't known better he would have thought the last 10 years were just a dream and they were meeting again for the first time.

With a small amount of effort, Hisao propped himself up from the bench and faced his former teacher. The two of them shook hands enthusiastically.

"Mutou-sensei, it's good to see you again," said Hisao.

For his part, Mutou just chuckled, "No need to be so formal Hisao, or do you prefer that I call you Nakai-sensei?"

Hisao's face blanched, "No that's quite alright."

The two men sized each other up for a moment. Mutou was the first to break into a grin.

"I have to say, I was surprised when you emailed me about visiting. Not that I'm complaining, mind you, but we could have caught up after work."

"Well… I kind of wanted to see the school as well. You know, I haven't visited Yamaku since graduation," replied Hisao with a sheepish look on his face. As much as Hisao liked Mutou, he also wanted an excuse to spend some time wandering around Yamaku; it had been, after all, a very important place in his life.

Mutou looked down at his watch and then back to Hisao.

"Well, tell you what – I don't have a class this period, so do you want to walk and talk?"

Hisao nodded and the two men began walking down the hall.

"So, what brings you back to Japan? Is it permanent?" asked the elder man.

"I felt I needed a change," responded Hisao as he looked around at the halls and classrooms of his former school. For some reason, Yamaku seemed far emptier than he had remembered it.

"Work not going well then?" asked Mutou.

Hisao shook his head. "No, it was going fine. I just reached the end of what I felt I could do at Stanford. Just like any good book, that chapter is over and it's time to move to the next."

"Speaking of books, did I tell you I found a publisher?" asked Mutou.

Hisao hadn't heard this yet. He was intrigued.

"Really? The last time we spoke I wasn't even sure how that was coming along."

Mutou began walking up the stairs, Hisao behind him.

"Well, I took some overdue vacation a couple of months ago and finished it up. I'll send you a copy to read if you promise not to leak it," Mutou chuckled.

The two men climbed the steps to the next floor, turning down the hall. Hisao didn't notice it, but almost subconsciously his footsteps were bringing him closer to the one place he spent most of his school career in – the library.

"I'd be happy to read it," said Hisao, "Besides, it might give me ideas for my own book."

Mutou raised an eyebrow and asked, "Thinking of writing something Hisao? Science or…"

Now it was Hisao's turn to laugh.

"Yes, science – or medicine to be specific. As much as I would love to try my hand at fiction, I don't think there'd be much interest in a science fiction novel by an unknown like myself."

"Hmm. That's too bad. I seem to recall you and…" Mutou stopped for a moment, catching himself.

"Well, I remember you reading a lot." He finally stated.

"That's probably the understatement of the year. Oh, hey – here we are," said Hisao.

True to form, Hisao's feet had brought him to the library. Without hesitation, he opened the door and stepped inside, just holding it open briefly for Mutou.

"No Yuuko I assume?" he asked in a lower voice.

"Hmm? Oh her… no, she finished her degree a few years back. We don't actually have a proper librarian anymore. Not enough students these days."

Hisao wondered what that meant, not that Yuuko was what he would call a "proper librarian" in the first place, but it seemed odd to be here without her.

Hisao looked around. Tables, chairs, even bean bags – everything seemed to be if not exactly the same, then incredibly similar to how he had left it. His eyes continued to scan the room until they fell upon a familiar old corner. It was her corner, the place where they had first talked. He felt a slight twinge in his heart, almost like an engine doing a bad knock and he sighed once and sat down.

Hisao's reaction didn't go unnoticed by Mutou. He took a seat across from his despondent former pupil.

"Take a look at this," said Hisao, as he slid the box he had been carrying across the table to Mutou.

"Do you want to play chess Hisao?" asked Mutou with a bemused expression on his face.

"What? Oh sorry… no, here let me explain," and with that Hisao opened the chess set and removed the items inside, handing the passport to Mutou. There was a brief moment of shock on Mutou's face when he opened the passport, but he quickly concealed it and then placed the document down on the table.

"Hisao? How did you..." he began to ask.

"I ran into her, just this morning actually. I'm still quite stunned. She dropped that."

Mutou leaned back in his chair and looked at Hisao out of the corner of his eye. His body language showing that he didn't like the direction this conversation was going.

"The chess set, you probably don't know this, but it was my gift to her on her birthday. She kept it after all these years."

Mutou definitely didn't like where this conversation was going.

"Hisao, you know I can't really talk about these things…"

Hisao raised his hand and then looked directly into Mutou's eyes.

"That was then. I was a student. I'm a doctor now," he said.

"Yes, you are… but you're not her doctor."

"Akio," began Hisao. It was unusual for the relatively reserved Hisao to use a first name so freely.

"I won't lie, I do have a personal interest in this, but also I will find her again. Obviously I need to return this to her, so I will. It would be better if I got my answers from you than from her, don't you think?"

It was a gamble on Hisao's part, but he reasoned that Mutou was a lot like him – a man driven by logic. When faced with the inevitability of the situation, he would weigh up the potential for harm and then choose the best option.

Finally Mutou broke the silence, "I don't know everything, and I doubt you'll be able to get more than I know."

Internally, Hisao congratulated himself. It seemed his impression of his former teacher was correct.

"When she dropped this, she ran from me in a panic. Anything you can tell me that will keep me from being an idiot would be greatly appreciated," stated Hisao in the most even tones he could manage.

"She had a breakdown, a bad one."

Hisao had expected as much.

"Psychotic?" he asked.

Mutou nodded his head and continued speaking.

"Severe depression leading to catatonia. She was removed from school and placed in a psychiatric facility."

Hisao pondered this for a moment.

"Diagnosis is what? Post-traumatic stress disorder?" he finally asked.

"Good guess," Mutou responded.

Hisao thrummed his fingers on the tabletop.

"In retrospect, it's pretty obvious. Of course, I didn't have all those years of medical school at the time. It's why she was allowed to leave classes whenever she felt stressed. What happened after that?"

Mutou pinched the bridge of his nose, momentarily lost in thought and then replied, "Nothing much. She came back to school the next year, graduated as normal. Her grades were actually better and her attendance improved quite a bit. I honestly felt…"

He paused for a moment.

"This is going to hurt to hear Hisao, but I honestly felt it was good that she had gotten away from her friends and on the proper medication."

Hisao gave Mutou a curt nod.

Despite his emotions, Hisao had studied and trained to be a doctor. He believed in the science of medicine and as such, he felt that Mutou was likely correct. He didn't like it one bit and it made him visibly agitated.

"Maybe it was. I don't really know, but she didn't seem to be 'better' when I saw her this morning," the bitterness in Hisao's voice was palpable.

"What are you going to do?" asked Mutou. There was a hint of concern in his voice; Hisao didn't know if it was for him or for Hanako.

"The reasonable thing. I'll find a third party to return this," Hisao waved his hand over the items on the table, "If she has PTSD and if she reacts like that around me, then I'll not cause her any more suffering."

Mutou nodded and relaxed a bit. To him, it seemed as if his initial fears about Hisao's reaction were unfounded.

"Primum non nocere," muttered Hisao as he began to retrieve the items from the table.

Mutou gave him a puzzled look, "Hmm… Latin I think?"

"It means something like 'first, do no harm' – it's the golden rule of all physicians, even researchers like myself. Either you do something that helps, or you do nothing at all."

"So, you don't think you can help her?" asked Mutou as he stood up along with Hisao.

Hisao just shook his head.

"I think the time where I could have done that is long past."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The ride back on the bullet train was longer than Hisao would have liked. His meeting with Mutou hadn't done much to settle his feelings; in fact, it had probably made his mood turn even darker than it had been this morning. He didn't exactly know the depths of Hanako's problems, but he could at least guess at some of them considering they were quite literally written all over her body. It had become quite obvious to him that his own callous treatment of her, combined with whatever difficulties she had been facing had obviously been too much for her to handle at the time. He hadn't needed to be a doctor to understand that Hanako's state of mind was a delicate one and now that he knew the full extent of what had happened to her, he puzzled at how fine of a line she must have been treading on for most of her school life. If it hadn't been for Lilly constantly being at her side, then she might not have even made it as far as she did. Of course, he lamented, he had to go and ruin all of that over a childhood crush.

For what might have been the millionth time he cursed his younger self for being such a self centered ass.

Hisao fished his phone out of his pocket and dialled Lilly. She picked up on the third ring.

"Hello? Nakai speaking," he said into the phone in the standard Japanese way.

"Hisao? Hello, where are you?" it was obviously Lilly being far less formal. She sounded stressed.

"I'm on the train, heading your way. How did it go today?"

There was a silence on the other side and for a moment Hisao had feared that the line had gone dead until he heard Lilly's voice again.

"Not good. Akira and I are still tracking down a lead. It turns out that Hanako moved out of that apartment years ago, but we ran into a neighbour that pointed us in the direction of an old roommate of hers."

Hisao puzzled this information for a moment. "A roommate you say? That sounds promising."

"I thought so too at first. It turns out that this roommate and her were not very close. She gave us a mail forwarding address and Akira and I were going to track it down…" Lilly's voice trailed off and Hisao thought her heard a side discussion on the other side of the line.

"Actually Hisao", came Lilly's voice again, "Maybe we can pick that up tomorrow. It appears my chauffer is requesting a leave of absence and I'm inclined to agree. I'm tired and need a shower."

"So, I take it were not on for dinner tonight?" asked Hisao.

There was another pause and a side discussion. Hisao had a sneaking suspicion that Akira was badgering Lilly in some way. It was usually a good bet.

"No… we're on. I'll have Akira text you a map. Meet me there in let's say… 3 hours?"

Hisao agreed and hung up the phone. It was disappointing that Lilly had come up empty in her search, but not entirely unexpected and given that the passport was relatively recent, there was no way that pumping Mutou for more information through the school was likely to yield a different result. Hisao propped his head up on his arm and leaned against the train window. He was frustrated and pondered his next steps.

"We can follow up Lilly's lead tomorrow I guess, it's not like I have anything better to do now. I could always… what? Hire a private investigator? That seems excessive. Hang out at the train station? I have a lot of free time but that's probably not the best idea… come on Nakai, think – you're supposed to be brilliant, there has got to be some way to solve this."

As he was pondering these thoughts, his phone beeped signalling a text message. It was the promised map from Akira.

"Hmm, a Chinese restaurant. Maybe not what I would have picked after living in San Francisco for the last few years…"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hanako used her shirt sleeve to wipe the sweat from her brow. The perspiration and moisture that the industrial dish washer gave off made her bangs stick to her face and while the temptation was there for her to move them, her years of self-conscious behaviour had conditioned her to value the comfort of hiding her face over the comfort of being cool. Instead she just tried to rub away as much dampness as she could in-between bouts of loading and unloading the massive machine.

She looked at the clock and internally groaned. It wasn't like her to be a clock watcher, but today she wasn't feeling well. She didn't know if it was just the heat being worse than usual today, or if it was the emotional stress of the morning, or even if she was honestly coming down with some sort of sickness, but she did know that she was struggling harder than she had in weeks and it frightened her.

"I can't get sick. I really, really cannot afford to get sick. When I get my break I will buy some ridiculous one thousand percent vitamin C drink from a vending machine and maybe look for a cold tablet."

When you were in the position that she was in - only getting paid for the hours you work and living out of cyber cafes, then the concept of being sick was probably just a few degrees of terror removed from being killed or mortally maimed. She had no safety net to fall back on and she knew that all it took was one slip-up to see weeks of hard work and suffering go up in smoke. If anything, the incident this morning when she had lost the means to secure an actual apartment of her own had driven this point home. She couldn't afford another mistake as bad as that one, not just financially, but emotionally as well.

She hated to admit it, but she was at her wits end. What better evidence of that could there be than the fact that just a few hours ago she had done the one thing she had been petrified of doing for almost a decade and all over just wanting to save the money required to replace her jitsuin.

Of course, now that she had taken the plunge and had contacted her former "best friend", she now waited with equal parts trepidation and excitement as to if she would respond. It was frustrating to say the least.

"Ikezawa" came a voice behind her, "Are you alright?"

Hanako had been motionless, staring off into space at the dish washing machine. The voice behind her, that of her manager, shocked her back into motion.

"M-m-manager-san!" she practically screamed as she swung around. The floor was slippery and she momentarily lost her footing.

"Wait, Ikezawa!" the manager was too slow to respond, but he tried to reach out for Hanako as she spun wildly out of control and to the floor.

Hanako tried to brace herself, but all she ended up doing was curling up into a ball as she crashed into the wet tiles. The fall itself wasn't too bad, but she had momentarily knocked the wind out of herself so she was barely able to respond as the obviously distraught manager hovered over her.

The manager looked at her with a guilty face and then gently reached out to try and help her up.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you" he began to apologize, then looking over his shoulder he called for one of the cooks to come help.

"Let's get you up" he said to Hanako.

Hanako just nodded. Her head was swimming, either from the fall or from the heat, she couldn't be sure.

As the manager held Hanako steady on her feet he issued orders to some of the other staff to dry up the area with a mop, it was obviously too dangerous if someone who was used to working in the wet area could slip so easily.

"Ikezawa… let's get you to the manager's office. There's a cot there you can lay down on for a bit."

Hanako began to protest, "But… I need to work…"

The manager just shook his head.

"This girl… I guess I should be happy I have at least one employee who likes to work."

"It's fine. You don't have to clock out, just rest a little bit. I'll come check up on you later."

Hanako nodded and allowed herself to be led away. She probably could use the rest, even if it was 15 or 30 minutes.

As the manager led her to the upstairs office, he passed by the kitchen station. He was preoccupied with helping Hanako up the stairs, and the cook who was normally at that station was helping clean the floor, so neither one of them noticed that the pilot light which had been giving them trouble all week finally went out.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Lilly waited in front of a giant gold painted dragon at the front of the pedestrian mall. She hated being early to meet people, particularly in a new location, because it made her feel somewhat vulnerable. Akira had offered to stay with her, but Lilly had declined. After all, she had dragged her sister from building to building today in their aborted attempt to find Hanako and both of their nerves were getting frayed. The last thing that Lilly wanted right now was her extremely agitated sister getting into a round of verbal fencing with the man she was waiting to meet.

Lilly ran her fingers down over her watch to check the time. There were newer models available these days that would tell you the time by just pressing a button, but this watch was special to her as it was one her mother had given her as a gift on her 14th birthday. Instead of a normal watch face, it had raised pips rimming the edges – three pips in each cardinal direction denoting the major hours, then a single pip for each hour in between. The time was indicated in two ways – hours by a nob around the edge of the watch that moved, and minutes by a "hand" which was really a single piece that rotated on the face of the watch. Hisao had always told her it looked pretty cool, like a sundial, but Lilly just wore it because of the memories.

"Technically he's not late, I'm early. Still… it's bad form Hisao."

Lilly made a little laugh at this thought, but it was cut short by the distinct sound of a fire alarm sounding behind her.

"I wonder what's going on?"

She was just about to call out to someone when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hisao ran down the street at a slight jog. He wasn't nearly as out of shape these days as he had been as a youth – perhaps it was one of the positive things about his pursuit of medicine, he began to heed the advice that he had been given early on in his diagnosis to improve his overall fitness, but even still he made a concerted effort to keep his heart rate nice and steady. After all, there was no point in ruining Lilly's evening by dropping dead on his way to meet her.

Thankfully it didn't take long for him to find the pedestrian mall where he was supposed to meet her at. It had been set up as a sort of mini "China town", complete with fake paper lanterns and gaudy dragon and Buddha statues. Halting his pace, he stopped for a moment and scanned the crowd. He didn't see Lilly.

"She must be on the other side."

The evening was rather nice. Autumn hadn't quite fully set in yet and the weather, while slightly crisp, was still comfortable. There was the normal assortment of street vendors selling food or trinkets and a few shops and restaurants lining the promenade. Hisao thought that despite the motif, this area was actually relatively high class. Considering who he was going to meet, he wasn't particularly surprised. She would object until she was blue in the face, but Lilly definitely had rich girl tendencies and tastes.

Luckily for Hisao there was a decided lack of statuesque blond bombshells roaming the streets of Japan, so it didn't take him long to spot Lilly. She was standing exactly where she said she would be and was dressed in a red cheongsam, a fashionable Chinese-style dress that featured what Hisao considered an extremely daring side slit – not that he was complaining.

He was just approaching her when he heard the sound of a fire alarm going off behind him. He turned his head to look, but couldn't quite make out where it was coming from. The distraction made him forget for a moment that the woman he was meeting was blind, so instead of calling out to her he merely put his hand on her shoulder.

"Who's there?" came the immediate response from the startled Lilly.

Hisao immediately regretted his carelessness.

"Sorry! It's me! I got distracted by the fire alarm…" he apologized.

Lilly visibly relaxed, "It's fine Hisao. Can you see what's going on?"

Hisao turned his head again. There didn't seem to be anything going on, or at least, he didn't see any fire.

"I don't really know…. It might be a false alarm," he replied.

"Let's just hope it's not the restaurant I've booked us a table at," drolled Lilly. It was obvious to Hisao that she had not had the best of days.

The two of them started to make their way up the promenade when they noticed a crowd starting to assemble outside one of the restaurants. Hisao halted their progress.

"Oh, there might actually be a fire. Maybe we should leave," he asked.

Lilly was just about to respond when all of a sudden she was cut off by a thunderous boom that blew out the windows of one of the shops. Instinctively she clutched onto Hisao.

"W-w-what was that!" she exclaimed.

Hisao did a double-take, the restaurant he had been looking at previously now had broken windows and a stream of people crawling out of it in various states of injury.

"Some sort of fire, maybe a gas explosion – I can't tell. People are… hurt."

He hesitated for a moment.

"I'm going to go help," he said.

"Hisao?" gasped Lilly.

Hisao squeezed her hand and led her over to a bench.

"I'm a doctor Lilly... I have to help. Just stay here please, it should be safe here."

Lilly nodded and clenched her fists as Hisao ran off towards the injured diners. Intellectually she knew that being sighted or not in this case wouldn't actually matter – she knew absolutely nothing about first aid, but being alone on that bench and with people yelling all around her she felt incredibly exposed.

It was one of the few times since she was a child where she had felt that her blindness had made her completely useless.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Hisao approached the crowd and looked around. Judging by the clothing he could tell there was a mixture of kitchen staff and patrons assembled outside of the now burning restaurant. He marvelled at how the situation which had seemed so placid just a minute before had so quickly devolved into chaos.

"Hello! I'm a doctor! Is anyone seriously injured! I'm a doctor!" he yelled while waving his hands.

He was just about to move deeper into the crowd when he heard another voice yelling aloud in a panicked voice.

"Ikezawa! Has anyone seen Ikezawa!"

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Authors Note:

Wow. What the cliff-hanger huh? I'm sure everyone who's been following the story knows where this next chapter is heading, so I won't bother to tease it.

Once again I want to really thank the people who have left me reviews and comments and feedback. I truly appreciate it, particularly the positive encouragement as this is what keeps me writing. If you like this story, please remember to favorite and follow it so that you'll be able to get updates.

Cheers,

QC