Odaiba, Tokyo,
December 27, 1999 

Midnight had passed by the time Subaru left the campus through the northwest entrance at Station Two. Low-hanging, strangely solid clouds reflected the lights of the city and the campus behind him. Parts of the harbor were still in use, the Ariake docks a brightly shining line to his left. The Metropolitan Expressway he followed now was also still lit, though not all of the street lights were working. The smaller side streets were dark, gaping mouths. Most of the houses were untouched, but showed hints of disuse. Closed shops and office buildings, their neon signs dark and sometimes splintered, lined the street. 
     The municipality was running several initiatives to revitalize the area, though given the current situation it was questionable at best if they would ever be finished. Construction sites were scattered between the industrial buildings, but with the partial evacuation, they had been closed down. Fragile-seeming steel cranes reached for the clouds behind their hoardings. An occasional truck rumbled along the broad street, reminders of the fact that Japan couldn't forgo the capacities of Tokyo's harbor and docks just because of some earthquakes and a partially evacuated city around them.
     The light was unsteady. The unlit gap of a construction site on the left and the black nothingness of the Ariake tennis park on his right had him wander through almost-darkness whenever one of the street lamps was broken.
     A hawk's lonely cry shrilled through the night. The silhouette of the sleek raptor was briefly visible against the pale ghost of a waning moon among the clouds. Another cry. Wild. Angry. The bird swooped down into the darkness ahead. 
     A scream. Hollow. Human... 
     Subaru shuddered, tugged up his collar and headed on. 
     He saw the bird behind the next corner under a streetlight, strong wings flapping for balance. Was it really a hawk? An eagle? Something else entirely? It was perched on a man's head, claws sunk deeply into the slack skin of the throat. Its strong, hooked beak came down onto the man's face. Blood soaked the green cloth of a rough shirt. Brown-clad legs with heavy boots twitched slightly. 
     Another cry. The animal focused on Subaru with golden, unperturbed avian eyes before it hacked at the man's face again. When it looked up again, a human eye was dangling from the strong beak on its optic nerve. The man's legs shuddered. Subaru hoped it was because the raptor's claws had pierced the spinal cord and not because... 
     The incantation came naturally to him as he raised the ofuda. He couldn't just stand and look, he– 
     The beating of strong wings interrupted him. The bird swung itself into the air. Its piercing cry mocked Subaru from afar when he knelt to check on the victim. A look into the destroyed face and two fingertips on the side of the bloodied throat searching in vain for a pulse told him that there was nothing left to be done for the man. His spirit was gone; only an empty shell remained.  
     Subaru straightened. The hawk's lonely call followed him through the night. 
     A pontoon bridge, put up by the military, ran from the south end of Odaiba Park to the Shinagawa pier. It replaced the Rainbow Bridge, which was now a pile of rubble blocking the main canal of Tokyo harbor. A pile of rubble... a grave. 
     Subaru stood still, unable to move, staring at the strip of torn concrete across the water. The sea had forced its way over it in some places, in others... One of the pillars, its left forking crumbled, the other one still tall, rose like a memorial out of it. Another unmarked grave. 
     Seishiro's grave. 
     Subaru shook. Seishiro had... been killed by his hand. Seishiro's blood had flowed along his pulse. But... he hadn't been the predator, he... Seishiro... 
     He stared transfixed at the white broken fork of the still standing pillar. An unknown grave... like Emperor Sushun's. 
     Sushun's grave was the Sakura. 
     Had everything buried under the Sakura been the Sakurazukamori's prey?
     Subaru shivered at the memory of a body pulsing around his arm. 
     The first Sumeragi chronicle said that the Soga clan had opposed prince Shotoku and ordered the Emperor's death. But the essay he'd found in the Campus' archives said that Shotoku himself had ordered the Emperor's death... 
     What was lie, what truth? 
     "Whatever prediction comes to your mind shall come to pass." Deadly cold crept along Subaru's spine, wound itself into his soul at the line from his recent nightmare. The prince's predictions had been awfully precise... "The onmyodo won't allow anything else." 
     Why should it not? If the Sakurazukamori hadn't killed the Emperor, then who...? 
     The furious screech of a hawk in the dark stirred him out of his stupor. He wrapped his coat tightly around himself, seeking a warmth he hadn't known he still cared about, as he hurried on towards the pontoon bridge and the city beyond, seeking answers he hadn't known were still important to him. 

Ueno Park, Tokyo, 
December 27, 1999 

He reached the tree together with the very first beams of morning light. It was cold. He had pulled up the coat's collar. His gloved hands were stuffed deeply into his pockets. The thick cloth of the dark coat was much warmer than his old one had been and he found himself thankful for it. Ice crystals glittered on the dark bark and the wood of the bench between the gnarled roots. The frost gave an ethereal beauty to this place of death. 
     Shaking a cigarette from the packet, Subaru sat down with his back to the tree and lit it. The white fog of his breath mixed with the bluish smoke of his cigarette.  
     ...That's not good for you... 
     Subaru shrugged, "So I've been told." He inhaled again. The familiar timbre of the voice hurt, but he'd come to expect the Sakura's mind games. 
     ...I can still kill whoever sits on this bench... 
     "You didn't." Another nicotine-loaded drag. He wouldn't be lured. His hand holding the cigarette was cold within the leather.
     The tree's branches quivered. ...So, are you less of a murderer because you are Sumeragi?...
     "No." Another draw on the cigarette. Slow. Deep. "I'm not a murderer because I didn't kill anyone."
     ...So you are innocent?...
     Subaru snipped the cigarette butt onto the frozen path and straightened, finally turning to look at the tree behind him. "I am guilty of not preventing that man's death. I am guilty of not having been aware that I was your bait for him." He drew in a deep breath of cold, crisp air. "That doesn't make me a murderer, it makes me... ignorant."
     ...Ignorant. Yes... An imaginary wind moved the branches, had countless blossoms whisper in the dark. Figures formed in the shadows under the tree. A familiar scene. He had seen it countless times, in his dreams, in his nightmares... of him, of his so much younger, so much more innocent self, lying in Seishiro's arms, bleeding. The sigils shone under the blood welling from their cuts. Yet he lay calm as if asleep in the teenage Sakurazukamori's arms. 
     Subaru watched, transfixed. Wood scratched over the leather of his boots, the cloth of his pants. A hawk screamed.
     The youth's embrace was strong... protective even as he raised chubby hands covered in blood to his face. Seishiro was smelling, tasting... The golden pins on his school uniform glowed in the twilight under the tree.
     The scars on his hands prickled. Bark scratched across them. Twigs quivered over his wrists. He couldn't bring himself to move. Something touched his throat, curled...
     Subaru choked, wood pressing against his larynx.
     The silence broke under the batting of wings. The hawk screamed again, tearing through the maboroshi. The picture of the past splintered, broke, rained in giant, sharp shards onto the ground of the tree's realm. A large splinter falling towards Subaru showed a fragment of the young Seishiro, the golden pins still glowing on his collar. Involuntarily, Subaru reached out for him, and hissed as the illusion's shard cut his palm. Thick red drops fell to the ground. A thin root of the tree curled up, greedily catching them. The hawk's angry cry reverberated in the dark. 
     Roots and twigs retreated hastily. Subaru, clasping his aching throat with his bleeding hand, staggered back, away from the tree. The animal hovered above him in the maboroshi. The wind of its beating wings brushed his cheeks and shook the Sakura. Golden eyes glared.
     His eyes widened. He'd seen that bird before, doing something very similar...
     Watchful golden eyes pierced him; the bird of prey screeched its victory. Strong wings whapped the air. Illusion shards were blown off the dark ground at his feet. The Sakura whispered in the background, but like in the dreams that had troubled his nights nine years ago, wind drowned out the words. The hawk swept past him, spiritual feathers brushed along his face, smearing the blood across his cheek...

He found himself on the empty ground in front of the bench under a barren tree. The terrifying beauty of the Sakura was gone, as was the ...shikigami? The blood on his hand had congealed. He shivered. It had been close. The Sakura... had been serious, had tried to consume him. 
     "I've dreamed that the Sakura blossoms were taking you away." His grandmother's warning of long ago reverberated in his mind. It seemed he still was prone to– 
     He blinked. The park around him was strangely surreal, as if it, too, was an illusion. Frost glittered under a dusty midday sun. A layer of clouds lay over the city below. Wafts of mist wavered through the streets. The upper stories of the tall buildings downtown stood like islands in the endless billowing sea of silver white.

The fog.
     It was cold. It was wet. It wandered in tendrils across his worn boots, swallowing the sound of his steps as well as the stains of earth and dirt. Trees formed out of the fog. A slightly tilted wall of large grey stones appeared. Subaru's steps slowed. This was the Hirakawa-mon, the north gate of...
     ...the Imperial East Garden, the Higashi Gyoen. He'd lost his way in the clouds. He'd come too far west. He...
     Startled, he realized that he'd followed the lines of power. Down from Ueno to the... Imperial grounds? A connection between the Sakura and...?! No. Impossible! Yet...
     He shivered, felt suddenly cold as he remembered. He'd followed that line before. Sixteen years ago when he'd been nine, on the evening after his initiation, he'd been called by the Sakura from...
     ...the East Garden of the Imperial Palace, where Obaa-chan had left him to wait while she... reinforced the spells of the campus. Back then, she'd spoken of an appointment at the Ministry, but today he was sure she'd been at the campus instead. What ministry would still be open that late?
     The Sakura had called him and he had come. He shook his head. No...
     The pull of the Sakura was still there. He knew it well enough to recognize it without a doubt. No, he had followed... something... someone else back then. Someone who was no longer up in Ueno, no longer on Ear–
     Someone whose power now whispered along the line coming up from the other end. The other end...
     The picture formed in front of his mind's eye. The campus.
     His speed increased.
     The campus protected the shinken until the final day. The campus was meant to preserve the balance till the very end, the final decision.
     The Sakurazukamori had meddled with it. Seishiro had been there. He shouldn't have been able to be there. Not even as a student sixteen years ago. He should have realized that the moment he'd found out who wrote that essay. He- 
     The essay was the proof and his mind had been too numbed to realize it. He should have seen it whenever he dreamed about the bet, about the golden pins on Seishiro's uniform collar, about that whisper of power... 
     That whisper of power that had led to the sigils of his opponent being engraved on his own hands.
     That whisper of power that he couldn't ban from his soul.
     The campus. The balance. What had Seishiro done there?
     What? 
     Subaru ran.

Clamp Campus, Tokyo,
Imonoyama Mansion
December 27, 1999

It was the second time in less than twenty-four hours that he was standing on this doorstep. The second time that he faced the chairman of Clamp campus in private. He knew the man had no reason to support him any longer, that they were technically enemies now… but despite this he was quickly losing patience with the fact that he was getting no answers to his questions. What Imonoyama might not appreciate fully was that he needed answers and, for once, didn't care about being considerate. He couldn't take that risk.
     "Imonoyama-san. I know that Sakurazuka Seishiro was a student at Clamp Academy!"
     "Clamp Academy has been a renowned institution for many years. It is not surprising that an old family like the Sakurazuka–"
     "I remember the emblems he wore on his uniform sixteen years ago! The pin wasn't the crossed Z of Clamp Academy." 
     The chairman arched a brow at the statement. "If he didn't wear the school insignia, what makes you think–"
     "I found his essay about Sushun in your archive!" Subaru snapped. "But the pin on his collar looked like– like a Greek pillar." At Imonoyama's blank stare, he forced himself to calm down a little before he tried again. "Like the Latin character 'I'. Do you know that?"
     Imonoyama sighed and nodded slowly. "Yes. It's a symbol for a rather exclusive scholarship my family finances for the top five percent of Clamp's students no matter what form they are in."
     "You mean?"
     "It's the symbol of the Imonoyama-scholars. They wear it instead of the school pin. My father chose the Latin 'I' because our family logo would have looked too much like branding and he kind of liked the double-meaning of 'I' for 'Imonoyama' and 'I' for being the Number One."
     "These scholars... you do know what they did here, right?"
     A muscle twitched in Imonoyama's cheek, but he remained silent.
     "What was Sakurazuka Seishiro doing in this institution?" Subaru's voice trembled and he broke off, tried to explain. "He shouldn't have been able to touch these grounds." He held the chairman's eyes. "What did he do here, Imonoyama-san?"
     "I can't possibly give you insight into our institute's proceedings, Sumeragi-san," Imonoyama protested firmly. "I'm sure you understand that."
     "Imonoyama-san." Subaru startled himself with the sudden decisive cold in his voice. "I thought I made it clear the last time I was here that I have no time left to spare." He raised his hand. The ofuda gleamed threateningly white between his black-clad fingers. "You might want to recall that I can use the spiritual energy the campus collects."
     The chairman paled, but stood his ground. His eyes kept flitting back and forth between Subaru's face and the ofuda. Then something inside him seemed to falter. "It might be easiest if you just follow me upstairs, Sumeragi-san." Without waiting for a reply, he indicated the door and walked ahead into the depths of the house.
     A wide, sweeping flight of stairs led to the first storey. The floor there was of a dark wood, polished to a gleam rivalling marble. The double doors at the end of the hallway were nailed with reddish brown leather, the typical noise protection of an expensive private library. Imonoyama opened the right hand door and stepped aside to let Subaru enter. 

The door closed behind him. Subaru's boots scratched on the expensive wood of the floor as he turned around and stared at the closed door. Imonoyama hadn't entered with him. Something whispered in the dimly lit room behind him. Subaru's hand closed more tightly around the ofuda. Dark bookshelves filled with expensive leather tomes covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Heavy velvet curtains shielded most of the windows. His feet sunk into a deep, blood-red and golden patterned Kirmani carpet.
     One of the curtain shawls was pulled back. The weak light of the winter sun framed a high-backed armchair with a small table next to it. A brass lamp with a cognac-colored glass screen stood on it, its light brighter than the pale afternoon outside. 
     The man occupying the armchair calmly put a reading mark onto the page. Long, unstained fingers closed the book and placed it on the table.
     "Hello, Subaru-kun."

to be continued in
36°-7: Sakurazuka Seishiro - Truths

Notes:
Actually, Subaru saw Seishiro's shikigami when they first met each other in 1999 in X-8 p 66 (Nakano). But since he isn't an ornithologist, he might be excused for not recognizing the animal instantaneously. It is also not quite clear to which species Seishiro's shikigami belongs: hawk or eagle. I decided on hawk for mostly two reasons. Number one: a hawk has a more reasonable size for sitting on Seishiro's shoulder than an eagle, and number two: a hawk is a less suspicious animal to be spotted in a metropolis like Tokyo than an eagle. 
Kirman carpet: An Indian wool carpet with roughly 155.000 knots per square meter and a typical intricate pattern of a blood-red crest (called a "mirror") in the middle that is surrounded by very fine, intricate ornamental pattern of pale cream, gold, and red that from a distance looks like pale gold and reveals its pattern only under close observation.