SPOILERS: Reveals a significant part of Soubi's past.

Ritsu walked down the hospital corridor with the sensation that he was not really moving at all, just as he felt that there were not really people around him, not nurses, not patients in wheelchairs, not visitors, and that he was all alone, just him and the dull buzzing in his ears.

The phone call had come only an hour earlier, because any and all Fighters and Sacrifices who were assigned to Septimal Moon always had some sort of identification with the phone number of the school on it. There was of course a private hospital at the school, and there was Nagisa's clinic, but those were generally for people injured during spell battles. Ritsu found it rather disgraceful that his old Fighter had ended up dying in something so mundane as a car accident. Ritsu had always envisioned her dying in a spell battle, as his Fighter.

But then that would have meant that she had stayed with him.

Ritsu numbly followed the directions given to him by the receptionist.

And there would be such a lot of paperwork to fill out too, since she had gone and died. She did, after all, work with Septimal Moon. Ritsu disliked paperwork but he loathed things not being written down and recorded properly. He allowed himself to feel a slight irritation at his old Fighter.

The two bodies were still in a hospital room rather than the morgue. They had been barely alive when brought in and the doctors had operated as best they could, but the injuries were too severe and the blood loss too great and they had ultimately died, and the hospital was too busy to have taken care of them properly and so, for now, a sheet had been placed over both.

Ritsu pulled up a chair and stared at the two shapes outlined by white and rust-brown hospital sheets and felt a vague distaste. He had never liked hospitals. The routine was fine, Ritsu liked order and cleanliness, but he hated the stench and messiness of blood. A nurse click-clacked past in heels to switch a patient's IV drip, exchanging an almost completely drained bag for a full one.

As he waited (he didn't really know what for, she was dead, and that was that, and he really did need to go back to the school) he became dimly aware of a loud noise nearby, and as he struggled out of the lethargy he had submersed himself and his consciousness in, Ritsu located the source of the noise as being a child. It (was it a boy? Girl? Ritsu certainly couldn't say for sure) was wailing harshly at the top of its lungs, interspersed by hiccupping sobs, and then followed by more loud wailing.

"I want my mommy and daddy! Why won't they wake up?" the child seemed to address anyone in the room willing to answer.

Because they're dead, thought Ritsu irritably. As he watched, a doctor came over and, crouching down to the child's level, began to explain quietly in roundabout terms, failing to reach a solid conclusion, that his parents were unable to speak to him right now, and a relative would be coming to pick him up.

Both Ritsu and the child found this explanation insufficient, the child opting to cry more as a solution to its confusion, and the doctor giving up and shuffling off lest he have to answer any more difficult questions.

Ritsu waited until the racket had triggered a faint pounding of his temples that signalled an incoming headache before he went and knelt down to the child's level himself.

The child was small and scrawny, maybe about seven, with very short and recognisable blond hair and a copious amount of snot and tears streaming down his face. Ritsu had been studying the small child for several minutes before the child even noticed and stopped to sniff and ask,"Why won't daddy and mommy wake up? I wanna go home."

"Because they're dead," Ritsu stated plainly.

He watched the child take in and process this information. That's right, she had had a child with that man, hadn't she? It was a little footnote on her file. Ritsu had forgotten about it really.

"Don't you even understand that? What a stupid child…" Ritsu drawled. His dislike for the child was growing more and more by every moment. It was a good thing the nurse was preoccupied at the other end of the ward, she'd most likely try and kick him out for "upsetting" the child. Women were like that. Especially that annoying Nagisa. Full of unnecessary ideas about coddling people and kindness.

"They're dead? They won't wake up?" Oh good. The child had ceased its howling for the moment. If he was lucky, Ritsu might escape a headache.

"They'll never wake up again." Could a child grasp that idea? Probably not, Ritsu reflected. Even so, it stopped its crying properly and fixed its eyes on Ritsu. They were huge eyes, with the same colours as the child's mother's, Ritsu thought.

"Never?"

"Never."

Ritsu had ended up staying for several more hours. It was afternoon now, and there was more noise and more people. There was the sound of steady traffic outside and the sun was now in a position to freely pour its light through the windows. Various concerned personnel had come to check on the child and other various concerned personnel had conversed in undertones about how the child's relatives were either non-existent or just did not care about the child. The child itself had been getting quieter and quieter and smaller and smaller and was finally slumped miserably on the floor, not even bothering to get a chair.

And Ritsu himself had been sitting thinking.

When a nurse, the same nurse, in fact, who had changed a patient's IV drip in this very ward this very morning, stopped by and leant down to ask,"Excuse me, but have you come to pick up that child? Is he yours?" despite the two corpses right there and the distraught child, Ritsu paused thoughtfully, gave the child one last glance and said,"Actually…"

When most of the business had been sorted out, helped along by his influential reach as a member of Septimal Moon, and by the fact that nobody seemed to want the creature, Ritsu found himself towing the reluctant child along by hand and wondering what on earth he was doing. Nagisa would be apoplectic when she found out.

It was only until they were in a taxi - the taxi driver having been ordered to keep silent the whole way to Septimal Moon if he wanted a good tip - that Ritsu found himself realising that he had forgotten to ask something rather important. He glanced over at the (as he had recently discovered) boy who was gazing disconsolate out the window.

"Hey."

The boy didn't respond.

"Hey. What's your name."

He turned around and stared at Ritsu through wet matted eyelashes and a long fringe of soft blonde hair. Ritsu had been correct about his eyes. "Soubi."