Minato avoided the room after that. He had always thought that what his friends didn't know, wouldn't hurt them, but his closest friend had just taken a beating for him. Not only that, Mitsuru might be watching now to see who was going up there. He had no idea if she had realized it was him yet. Part of Minato wanted to go confess to her, but ultimately he couldn't bring himself to do it. He was almost certain she had assumed it was Junpei because he was the dorm "pervert" as far as she and the other girls were concerned. Somehow, he couldn't bear it if she thought of him in the same way.

A couple of strained days passed. Minato lived in fear of giving himself away. He spent as much time as possible seeing people after school or participating in club activities. That put him in closer contact with Fuuka again and he was relieved to find that they could be good friends after all. Junpei was his usual cheerful self, too. As unlikely as it seemed, Minato concluded that he really must be used to "executions." Maybe there had been no lasting damage. Maybe…everything was going to be okay.

One night, after he had finally persuaded himself that things were back to normal, it all came crashing down.

He was crossing the lobby as usual, on the way to his room to do some studying, when there was a soft tug at his sleeve. He looked down to see Mitsuru sitting there.

"It seems that something's wrong with the console in the Chairman's room again. Could you go take a look at it?"

Minato fought to maintain his calm as he studied her face. It was impassive. There was nothing in her expression to suggest that she suspected anything at all. Maybe Mitsuru had decided she was wrong. Minato realized he had been standing there all this time without speaking and hastily nodded, saying he would go check it out.

Up in the control room the screen had a message for him: there was a new recording. Minato's eyebrows rose as he saw that it was from last night. That was unusual, he thought. It had been at least a month since the last random recording. He had assumed the glitch had either been ironed out somehow, or halted by his own activities on the computer. But, he reflected, you never knew with machines. As a matter of routine he opened the recording.

Akihiko's room. He had apparently been studying at his desk and fallen asleep. His head was on his open notebook and a pen had rolled a little distance away from his right hand. Minato smiled and moved to stop the recording and clear it out. Then he froze.

Mitsuru came in quietly and shut the door. Then she very deliberately locked it. Minato felt a sense of panic well up within him. Should he have gone to Mitsuru after all? Surely she didn't think Akihiko would ever do anything like that. Then he reminded himself that this had all happened last night, and that Akihiko had looked fine when he saw him earlier in the lobby. Still…that didn't necessarily mean anything.

Mitsuru wore the same strained expression she had shone earlier with Junpei, and Minato's sense of uneasiness heightened. He watched as she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, then walked over to Akihiko and gently roused him. He hesitatingly turned up the volume but kept his hand ready to shut off the feed. If they were just going to have an innocent conversation, he shouldn't watch. He just wanted to be sure nothing bad had happened to Akihiko because of him. If it didn't look like anything had, he would stop watching.

Akihiko took a minute or two to wake up. Minato wondered offhandedly if he was always like that. It would be pretty funny if their school's star boxer had to drag himself out of bed every morning to go train. Somehow Minato had always pictured him bounding out of bed the second the alarm went off. Mitsuru was patient with him, though. She needed to be, since even after Akihiko woke up a little more he was clearly confused by her presence in his room.

"Mitsuru…?" Suddenly Akihiko's eyes opened all the way and he shot up out of his chair, making Mitsuru jump a little. "What's wrong? Is it a Shadow?" As he spoke his hand automatically went for the right-hand drawer.

Mitsuru smiled…a little. "It's not." Then, with the same tone that a mother might use when her child goes around touching everything in a department store, she said, "Put that down."

Akihiko slowly put down his Evoker and then asked, "Why are you here, then?"

He wasn't prepared for her answer, though. Neither was Minato. With the same sense of purpose Minato had witnessed earlier, Mitsuru pulled Akihiko's face down to hers and began to kiss him violently. She backed him relentlessly towards the bed, and as Minato watched what happened after that several parallels flashed through his mind. He thought of a citadel being conquered. He thought of a valkyrie dragging a warrior up to Valhalla. But mostly Minato thought of how Akihiko was experiencing everything with Mitsuru that he had only dreamed about. Watching this wasn't arousing…it was painful.

After it had begun Minato was so numb that he didn't even think of switching it off. He watched as Akihiko, exhausted, finally fell back and he saw the gentle way Mitsuru passed her hand over his eyes, shutting them.

"Now…go back to sleep."

It was only after she said those words that Minato thought to switch off the feed. He did so and then covered his own eyes. He was still sitting hunched over the darkened screen when he heard the door behind him open and then shut softly. By that point, though, he was beyond the fear of discovery. He did nothing.

"I hope you understand why I had to do that." It was Mitsuru's voice. There was something jarring about hearing it in this room with him after hearing it on the recording.

Minato turned around in his chair and looked up at her, shaken. "Then…that was on purpose?"

She nodded gravely. "Of course. You watched us all without our consent. That was wrong. I suspected Iori and acted thoughtlessly…another consequence of what you did. You had to be punished." Her face betrayed a hint of sadness. "And so did I."

Minato felt dead inside as the meaning of her words struck him. "Are you saying…that if I hadn't…watched you, you might have…"

Mitsuru smiled softly. "I think we both know it's useless to dwell on what 'might have been.'"

Minato's face fell and he leaned forward to say something, anything to change her mind, or even just to apologize, but she had turned and was walking away again.

"I don't believe that any further action is necessary. This room will be locked from tomorrow on." She inclined her head just slightly to look back at him. "Good night." The door shut behind her.

That night, as Minato lay in bed trying to sleep, he shut his eyes and remembered the image of long, slender fingers…flashing palely in and out of the dark red of her hair.