About twenty feet away, on the other side of the hot spring, Garou-sama lay sprawled out in the sun, snoring gently. If either of the college students had approached him they would have noticed a distinct smell of ozone, as if a storm was brewing, but experience had taught them that interrupting a sleeping hurricane's nap was a foolhardy action.

"You do have a point," Naru murmured. They fell silent and watched the wolf's gigantic flanks rise and fall as he breathed, his black fur rippling gently. A faint rustle came from the house, and they both turned to see Haruka approaching. She bore a small brown book, bound in worn leather, cracked along the spine.

"I think this may be what we're looking for," she said, sitting down beside Keitaro. She opened the book and Naru scooted closer, leaning over to get a better view. "It fits into the right timeframe for Keisuke to have been living here, and there are some pictures that raised a few...well...see for yourselves." She handed the book to Keitaro, and he flipped slowly through the yellowed pages.

The pictures were terribly faded, but even so, he could make out the images well enough. They were nothing remarkable—people, probably old and gray by now (if they were still alive), smiling and waving at the camera. There were shots of Hinata House, clearly before Grandma Hina had renovated it, and one of the dilapidated annex behind the main building. It looked new here though, and Keitaro thought it must have been a photograph of when the annex had first been built.

"This is neat stuff, Aunt Haruka," Keitaro said, looking up, "but what does it have to do with Geppeddo and Moe-chan?" Haruka lit a cigarette and puffed complacently on it.

"Turn the page again." Keitaro obediently flipped to the next picture, but he went no further. Naru leaned closer, her eyes widening.

"Okay..." she said slowly, running a hand through her long hair. "Please tell me that isn't what I think it is." Keitaro shook his head, staring at the picture in shock.

"I wish I could, but...that's definitely him. The question is, what is he doing at Hinata house...a hundred years ago?" The picture was worth easily more than a thousand words. It featured three people, seated under a tree and locked in frozen smiles. Two of the people Keitaro had seen before—they were his great-grandfather, Keisuke Urashima, and Moe-chan, the strange automaton that had been tucked away in the lower levels of Hinata House. The third person, however, was someone he hadn't expected to see ever again, let alone in a photograph.

It was Geppeddo.

"I don't understand," Naru was protesting. Keitaro barely registered her voice; his head was spinning faster than it ever had in the basement of the police station. "You said he was an old man when you met him, right Keitaro? He looks pretty damn old in this picture already, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Keitaro muttered, reeling. "I don't understand either. Unless..." He looked up from the book and started to set it in his lap, then reconsidered and shoved it aside. "Tell me if this sounds too crazy: for whatever reason, Geppeddo came to Hinata almost a century ago, and he brought Moe-chan with him. He met my great-grandfather and, since Hinata House would have been a hotel at the time, he stayed here for a while. When it was time to leave, Keisuke didn't want Geppeddo to take Moe-chan away, so he...well, stole her, I guess." He looked back and forth between the two women. Haruka blew a pensive smoke ring.

"That does sound pretty crazy," Naru confirmed. "But not any crazier than having a hurricane sleeping by your hot spring."

"I don't think we'll ever know what that old man wanted," Haruka said coolly, smushing her cigarette out in an ashtray. "Not when he was here the first time around."

"He just came back for Moe-chan this time," Keitaro said. "He did say that things were back the way they should be. I guess Moe-chan was all he really cared about."

The three of them fell into reflective silence. Keitaro scraped up the last of his ice cream and savored the rich flavor, then set the bowl down and lay back again. There were clouds drifting by overhead; no longer heavy, gray storm clouds, but the sort that looked like they could be caught and tucked into a drawer for later. He sighed deeply, and wondered if, wherever they were, Geppeddo and Moe-chan were happy.

It wasn't until the sound of a car door being closed awoke him that Keitaro realized he had dozed off. A quick look around revealed that Haruka and Naru had done the same, and they all sat up in unison. A few moments later, Shinobu and Motoko entered, followed by Kitsune and Seta. They all looked relatively cheerful, but for some odd reason, but Kitsune and Shinobu were wearing large hats.

"Hey, you guys," Naru called, getting to her feet. "How'd it go?"

"Eh...I'm not really sure," Kitsune admitted, grinning sheepishly. "Your doctor was a little out of it, Naru. Somebody knocked his house down during the storm last week, and he's still sorta loopy from the shock."

"Somebody—what? They knocked his house down?" Kitsune nodded easily and plopped down beside Haruka.