Then they’d giggle. As one girl.

It was, quite frankly, beginning to get to me.

I was used to girls looking at me and giggling, but there’s different kinds of giggling. This was definitely the bad kind and I’d been hearing it far too often in the last week. It had started after the encounter-which-must-not-be-named-or-even-thought-of-unless-absolutely-necessary. They had to be connected somehow.

I remember a teacher explaining once that things like that weren’t contagious – you couldn’t catch it from someone else or anything. You were just born that way, or something.

Weird teacher.

I think she was lying, anyway. It had to be contagious – that was the only explanation. The only acceptable explanation, at any rate.

I wondered if I could find her and get my father to pull some strings to make sure she was suitably unemployed for her crimes of misinformation. Except that would involve me explaining wh I thought she needed to be taken far away from trusting and impression kids.

I could not imagine my father reacting well too: ‘She told me that homosexuality was something you had to be born to, but I met this weird foreigner last week, and I think I somehow ended up getting to second base with him, and now I think I might be gay.’

It was a disaster waiting to happen.

It made no sense, though, because I was still interested in girls. They weren’t interested in me, though. Maybe that was how it started? Like the first stage of a disease. And then, when you couldn’t get girls anymore, you turned to guys in desperation . . .

I groaned, trying to shove it out of my mind, and went to class. As I sat down, I snuck a look at Narugami. Just in case.

He was still as sexually appealing as a rock.

No problems there, then. All normal in that department.

For now.

Automatically, my eyes wandered away from Narugami, toward the desk Daidouji normally occupied.

It was empty.

I sighed, put my chin in my hand, and reluctantly focussed my attention on the teacher. Daidouji was probably just sick, or suffering from her mystery disease again.

By the time classes were over I was certainly not ready to snap. I was just a little . . . tense. I wanted to go home and do nothing but sleep the afternoon away. I probably just needed some rest. I hadn’t been sleeping well, lately. It took forever to get to sleep, and when I finally did manage, there were always nightmares waiting for me. It hardly made the thought of additional sleep attractive, but my current difficulties were probably just a sign of exhaustion. Nightmares were worth fixing those up for. And this was a theory that was far more appealing than any of the other options that presented themselves.

Having come to this conclusion, I felt slightly cheered as I made my way toward the door. As I passed Daidouji’s empty desk, something caught my eye.

I turned and stared at the paper that lay there, looking perfectly innocent, before picking it up and reading.

It was an advertisement for some new therapist who had just opened a clinic up, claiming to be able to solve any personal problem with total confidentiality.

It didn’t seem particularly mysterious. I wondered why it had been left on Daidouji’s desk.

I read it again.

Personal problems . . .

Total confidentiality . . .

I pocketed it. After all, it couldn’t hurt to look.

I left the house early Sunday morning as a preventative against the unlikely event that my father might actually show an interest in where I was going, and in order to reduce the odds of encountering any of my inquisitive classmates.

I’d had another hellish night, one full of muttering women and bells and eyeballs. Well, one eyeball. And not in anyone’s head, either. Just thinking about it made me shiver. After that night, rising early certainly hadn’t aided my thought process. Which was probably why I spent several hours trying to find the damn place.

I swear, I must have been walking in circles, because I passed the same girl three times, and she was just standing about, didn’t seem to be walking at all. Unless there were clones . . .

Clones were a thoroughly Daidouji-idea. I dismissed them.

On the third time I came across the girl, I asked her for directions, even showing her the flyer. A bit embarrassing, showing a really cute girl, even if she may have been a bit young although it could have just been the way she wore her hair that made me think that, something like that, and having her think you’re a total loony, but I was getting really frustrated. Besides, it was starting to get hot out, and I didn’t want to be wandering aimlessly around the area until it was past noon.

I smiled at her in my most charming way when I asked her for help. She looked at me when I first approached and blinked a bit, then squinted, as if trying to bring me into focus. Maybe she needed glasses. She kept looking at me, even when I held the flyer out, and was either wondering if I’d escaped from an institution somewhere, or if she knew me.

She must have decided I was neither crazy or someone she knew, sadly, because after a minute she just gave me directions in a distant voice, not bothering to look at me again.

When I trudged off in the right direction, at last, I think she turned to watch me go. She didn’t giggle, but I could feel her eyes on my back. As if my back would somehow communicate more to her about my identity and sanity than my face.

I looked over my shoulder and caught her staring at me. She didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed about it. Just kept staring for a minute, then turned aside and seemed to vanish.

After that, it only took me a couple of minutes to find the therapist’s. I’d probably gone past the street without seeing it all morning.

Before I went inside, though, I did a quick survey of all the buildings on the street. After assuring myself that none of them could possibly belong to my family, I went in.

Inside was a waiting room. It was empty, except for a rather cute secretary with short hair, sitting behind a desk.

I smiled at her.

She ignored me.

I sighed and took a seat in the chair nearest the secretary’s desk. There weren’t any books or magazines. Not even a helpful pamphlet like, oh, ‘So you had a mysterious sexual encounter with a badly dressed foreigner – does that mean you’re gay?’

I counted the tiles on the floor.

As I counted, some people came in and began filling the remaining chairs. I looked at them out of the corner of my eye, without taking my attention away from the tiles.

I didn’t know any of them.

All good.

Just before I was ready to count the cracks in the ceiling, a door opened, and a kid came out. His hands were shoved in his pockets and he kicked the floor as he walked. When he sulked past me I heard him mutter something about “Stupid Freyr, making me waste my time like this . . . Should be killing Loki . . . Don’t have issues . . .”

I watched him stalk out of the room, slamming the door as he went.

I’d probably imagined hearing him talk about killing someone.

The secretary didn’t even look up when she called out: “Next, please.”

After a slight hesitation, I got up and opened the door, stepping inside.

It shut behind me automatically.

I jumped.

It hadn’t looked like an automatic door.

It was a room so brightly lit it killed off anything resembling cheerfulness and comfort. It was dominated by a large desk that was completely devoid of papers. Behind it was a chair facing the wrong way around. “Daidouji Mayura,” a woman’s voice said from behind the chair.

I blinked. “Uh, no. Definitely a no. Kakinouchi Koutarou.”

So Daidouji had an appointment with this therapist. That might explain why the flyer was on her desk. Maybe her father was hoping to get her mystery disease cured.

The chair turned and I found myself staring at a woman who was not cute. Cute was no a word that belonged anywhere near something so beautiful and elegant as the smartly dressed woman with the long, dark hair opposite me.

I’d always wanted to have a go at an older woman. Supposedly they were at their sexual peak when they were older . . .

The look she gave me, however, was not encouraging my thoughts in a happy direction. It felt like she could see right through me and out the other side, and was quite possibly looking at a bird flying by the front door. “Kakinouchi . . . Koutarou . . .” she said slowly, as though she were concentrating very hard on the sound of my name.

Then, she nodded, and smiled at me. “I see. Have a seat, Koutarou-kun.” My eyes followed the casual waving of one long, elegant hand in the general direction of a piece of furniture that looked like a cross between a couch and a bed. It didn’t look entirely trustworthy, which is a ridiculous thing to say of a piece of furniture, and I sat down anyway.

It wasn’t comfortable. Maybe being uncomfortable is like being untrustworthy for a piece of furniture.

Feeling her eyes on me, I swung my legs up and lay back stiffly. It didn’t make the couch any less uncomfortable.

“And what,” she asked, giving me a charming smile that made me abruptly glad I was lying down, “can I do for you, Koutarou-kun?”

Several possibilities danced temptingly through my mind. I ignored them as best I could as I tried to explained the situation. “I’ve been having these problems with women,” I began carefully.

She raised her eyebrows. “What sort of problems?”

“Well, they don’t seem very interested in me any more. They used to fall for me, no problem.” This was not, I realized, going to win my any points with the beautiful therapist, but some things are more important than a date. “Now, though, I’ll talk to them and nothing seems to work like it used to. Everything will seem to be going smoothly and then, without warning, they’ll just . .. Walk away. And giggle, sometimes.”

“And why do you think that is, Koutarou-kun?”

I braced myself. “I think it has to do with this guy I met a week ago.” She stared at me, and not in a good way. I carried on, quite bravely in the circumstances. “I was out with this friend, Daidouji –”

“Daidouji Mayura?” she asked, sounding thoughtful.

“Um, yeah, that’s her.” Why the interest in Daidouji? Aside from the fact that she seemed to be skipping out on an appointment. “Anyway, we ran into this guy and Daidouji started acting really weird, and when we went by the street this guy had gone down, it was full of women who looked a bit . . . excited. So I decided to follow him . . .”

“To see why women were getting so excited?”

I felt like an idiot. “Yeah.”

“And is that all, Koutarou-kun?” Her voice was far too pleasant as she asked the question, as though she already knew the answer.

“No,” I muttered. I wasn’t blushing. Even fi my body wanted to blush, I wasn’t actually going to let myself blush. I wasn’t . . . Shit. “I, um, caught up with him and he, um, pulled me into an empty building . . . I tried to get an explanation out of him, and then we started arguing and then . . . He started kissing me. And taking my clothes off. And I started getting really into it and can’t really remember anything else . . .” I trailed off. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“And what did this individual look like?” she asked as though strangers pulling high school boys into abandoned buildings and then having their way with them was perfectly normal.

“My heigh, um, foreign, red hair, badly dressed, I think he was a magician or something.”

She looked very pleased, in a cold sort of way. “Did you catch his name, by any chance?”

“Luke . . . Luke Laufeyiarson. Something foreign like that, anyway.”

She nodded, smiling to herself. She looked at something I couldn’t see on her empty desk. Wait . . . “Tell me something, Koutarou-kun, are you a member of that Kakinouchi family?”

Oh no . . . My heart sank. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Your flyer said total confidentiality, though . . .”

She ignored me. “Tell me about your father, Koutarou-kun.” It wasn’t a request.

“What?” I propped myself up on my elbows.

“Your father, Koutarou-kun. He must be a very busy man.”

“Of course . . .” It was only natural. He was a wealthy business man, and there was always some meeting he had to attend. It was something you didn’t even think of, when you’d grown up in a home like that.

“So busy that he doesn’t spend very much time with you, in fact.”

“Well, no . . .” And who in their right mind would want the old man hanging about?

“Leaving you to grow up without a proper male role-model.”

“Hey!” I didn’t like where this was going at all.

“And now, Koutarou-kun, you’re at an age where, without guidance from a proper male authority figure, you’re rather lost. And, I feel certain, very confused. Therefore it’s only natural that, at an age when you’re so driven by y our hormones, your need for a father figure manifests itself in homosexual tendencies that until now were repressed – ”

I sat bolt upright. “Now wait just a minute! I am not gay!”

“You’ll have a much easier time working out the confusion you have surrounding your sexuality and the problems with your father that have caused this confusion to arrive if you stop living in denial, Koutarou-kun,” she said quite sweetly.

“I am not living in denial!” I yelled, just as the door burst open.

The therapist from hell slowly turned to stare at the open doorway. The little detective stood there, looking rather the worse for wear and out of breath. “Mayura!” he yelled, looking around the room, the anger in his eyes being replaced by confusion when he saw me. “Kou-chan?”

I groaned. I did not need this, on top of everything else.

He turned to the therapist. “Verdandi, what the hell is going on here?” he asked – how did he know her? – before turning back to me. “Mayura,” he said, sounding weary, “always has the decency to get herself knocked out at this point. If you could hold on for a minute, Verdandi.”

Above the detective’s head, I saw the therapist nod. Then the little detective produced a stick from thin air. Something like a stick, anyway. A sort of a wooden scythe thing . . .

I stared at it in disbelief and went to stand up just as the little detective swung it around and smashed it into my skull.

I woke up and wished I hadn’t. “Ugh,” I muttered sensibly, putting my hands to my head as I tried to sit up, hoping they would keep it from falling off.

I opened my eyes and slowly lowered my hands from my head when it showed no sign of falling off. I seemed to have four of them. I glared until the extra pair vanished. When everything seemed to have stopped moving around, I looked about the room, very carefully. It was empty except for me, the couch, a desk, and the little detective, sitting on top of it, swinging his legs and looking at me thoughtfully. In the back of his eyes lurked an unhappiness that didn’t belong on the face of a little kid.

“The hell?” I said intelligently to the room at large.

“Kou-chan’s skull is not nearly as strong as Mayura’s,” the little detective observed. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Mm,” I grunted. I moved my legs a bit and decided that, for the moment, verticality was not something I needed. I lay back down, very carefully. “What just happened?”

The little detective stoped swinging his legs. “I think you must have bumped your head, Kou-chan,” he answered sweetly.

“Bullshit,” I glared at him. “You hit me in the head with a stick. My brain isn’t that scrambled.”

“You did not need to witness what was about to transpire,” he said very carefully.

“You didn’t have to give me a damn concussion,” I snapped.

“Would you like another one?” he asked, smiling brightly.

I should make it clear that I was not, in any way, afraid of him. He was half my size. An eight-year-old kid poses no threat to a healthy, if slightly wobbly, high school student. But no one would be at all impressed if said high school boy beat the crap out of the little eight-year-old. Even if he deserved it. “Right, right, leave the stick of doom wherever you keep it?”

He rolled his eyes at me.

“You did know that woman though, right?

He changed the subject without missing a beat. “How did you end up here, Kou-chan?”

“There was a flyer on Daidouji’s desk at school, yesterday. I just thought I’d check this place out. For my father.”

Understanding dawned on the boy’s face. “Not for, ah, personal problems, eh, Kou-chan?” He gave me another of his too-bright smiles.

How much could one little kid know, dammit? “So who’s Verdandi?” If he wasn’t going to play fair, neither was I.

Unless he brought the stick out again.

I don’t think it’s right for someone that young to look as angsty as he did when I brought up the hell therapist again. It’s the sort of thing some girls really go for. In older guys. “Verdandi is . . .” he began uncertainly, before falling silent.

“Does she work for your relatives or something? Is that how you knew her?”

He looked at me in surprise. “Relatives?” The tone of his voice told me I’d hit the nail on the head. Or at least only bruised my thumb slightly with the hammer.

“Hey, little detective,” I tried a smirk, “don’t look so shocked. You’re supposed to be the super smart detective, right? Daidouji would be horribly disappointed if she saw you gaping at me, doing a remarkably good impersonation of a fish.” He laughed slightly at this, for no reason I could see. “Everyone has relatives, everyone has parents. Even you must.” I rubbed my head carefully as I continued, feeling frustration mount. “No one ever seems to ask ‘Why’s there an eight-year-old kid running a detective agency, anyway?’ because they’re apparently all blind idiots in this town, or have no sense of curiosity. But I know, no matter how smart you are, little detective, that there’s a lot more to you than people are willing to see, or ask about. And little boys running detective agencies is not normal.” He looked ready to laugh again. “Seems to me that your parents, whoever they are, wherever they are, wouldn’t like it. So it would make sense that the freaky therapist of hell would be someone working for your father, really just in town to keep an eye on you. Am I right?”

“In a way . . .” He sighed and slipped off the desk, vanishing from my sight.

I turned my head in an attempt to follow him. “You’re a bit of a mystery yourself, eh little detective?” I think now the blow to my head was doing the talking. Maybe it had been doing the talking the entire time.

He grimaced at the word ‘mystery’ as he moved into view and knocked on my forehead with his knuckles. “Sounds like you’re feeling better, Kou-chan.”

I winced and pushed his hand away. “Gently, little detective.”

He grinned at me and held his hand out.

Reluctantly, I took it as I got slowly to my feet. “Other people’s pain puts you in a good mood, eh?”

“I thrive off chaos,” he said. It was something like an answer, I suppose.

The waiting room was empty when we went into it. The cute secretary was gone, as were the people who had been waiting behind me. Although it was hard for me to imagine, I suppose the therapist and the little detective must have gotten into a rather loud argument, to make all those people run off. “Where’s your butler?”

“Yamino-kun was taking food to Mayura in order to aid in her swift recovery,” he said, looking less than pleased about this.

“So she really is sick, and not just suffering from an acute attack of mysteries.”

“I would appear so. I believe she was out late at night, in the rain, looking for a UFO of some sort,” he said as we left the empty waiting room. His face went sombre again after he had finished relating Daidouji’s misfortune.

He wasn’t much fun to be around when he was like this, and I was getting the nagging, uncomfortable feeling from my conscience that it was somehow my fault. I sighed and grabbed his hand. He tried to pull it away, broody angst being replaced with irritation. “Come on, little detective, I’m walking you home. Someone has to look after you if the butler’s attending to Daidouji.”

“You’re the one who’s practically concussed,” he snapped at me, bristling. “If anything, I should be walking you home to keep you from walking into telephone polls and walls.”

“I would not be able to live with myself if I let one so small walk home alone. It could be dangerous.” I smirked.

“You might not be able to live with yourself if you do, Kou-chan.”

“I’ll take the risk. Besides, we’re going to get ice cream on the way.”

That shut him up.

The walk to the little detective’s home was a quiet one. I only walked into one wall, three telephone polls, and a little old lady, and the little detective was too absorbed in his ice cream to do more than snicker and guide me away by my elbow.

At the gate to his house, a small dog greeted us. Well, him. It was a fairly ugly dog with a head half as big as the rest of it’s body. It yipped and bounced around madly, like it was on drugs, until the little detective picked it up and started cooing over it.

There’s no explaining some people’s taste.

After several minutes of watching their ‘touching’ reunion with increasing boredom, the little detective turned around to look at me, still holding the dog.

The ugly little dog looked at me and I shuddered. Could dogs leer?

“Thank you for the ice cream, Kou-chan,” he said with deceptive sweetness while the dog licked his chin.

“My pleasure, little detective. If your relatives ever give you trouble again, I’d be glad to help. As long as it doesn’t involve another concussion.”

“Of course,” he smiled and turned. Then he peered over his shoulder. “You never told me why you went to see Verdandi, Kou-chan.”

“I told you, my father wanted me to take a look at the place for him.”

He wandered back to stand before me. “I wouldn’t worry about anything she said to you, Kou-chan, he said serenely and patted my knee. “Therapy’s really quite stupid.”

“Well, yes,” I agreed. Oh, yes.

“You shouldn’t have even bothered,” he continued. “You were probably just suffering a few natural doubts concerning your sexuality after being seduced by some overwhelmingly good looking guy,.” My head hit the gate as I fell forward, grabbing it just in time to keep from sliding to the ground. He flashed me a wide smile and patted my head. “Careful there, Kou-chan,” he said cheerfully before wandering back to the house, the ugly dog under his arm.

I didn’t do anything as he went. It would be very unfair to do anything to so small a child.

Which was why I would have to wait until I could get him alone, or until he was old enough to make it a fair fight.