She's not getting anywhere.

Rui exhales slowly, threading her fingers through her hair, bowing low over the desk she's been seated at for God knows how long now; she lost track of time as she delved into the dusty records of the paper's archives, filtering through ancient history and current events in search of anything about the Closed Ward. They've never been organized here (Kaori's workstation used to look as though a hurricane had hit it, immediately followed by a bomb exploding in the general vicinity), but the haphazard way in which files were stored...

Her head pounds with every beat of her heart, sometimes faster, more urgently, and she groans quietly as she presses her fingers gingerly into her temples.

Words are swimming across crinkled white pages, and she resists the urge to drop her forehead onto the desk, because, if nothing else, it will only worsen the ache in her head. She does so regretfully, though, knowing how satisfying that pain would be, if only for a few, precious seconds. But then, of course, the world would come knocking, and she'd succumb to the dull throb of her head, and nothing would have changed apart from the red mark that would adorn her pallid forehead. So she sighs instead and twists her fingers into her hair, tugging just enough to hurt; it's an ineffectual distraction, but she does it anyway, because she can.

Rui controls so little of her life these days, at least she can feel comfortable in the knowledge that she's in control of what she does to her own body.

Again, it's not much, but she'll take what she can get.

Harada hasn't checked in on her in over an hour; at least, she's relatively sure it's been that long. Time tends to lose meaning without a deadline haunting one's heels, and Rui's only certain that she needs to crack the code of the Closed Ward. She lacks a timetable, something that might prove to be the kick in the ass she needs to have something concrete turn up from these depressingly sparse articles. From what she can tell, the reporters at the time didn't put too much stock in facts; most of what Rui's come across so far has been riddled with prettily-worded opinions masquerading as eye-witness accounts and expert input. 

Kaori's name is startlingly absent from these articles.

More than anything, that's what nags at Rui as she straightens in her chair and scans the next wrinkle-laden document. Kaori obviously worked here at the time of any and all incidents centered around the Closed Ward, and yet she didn't pen anything about them. Kaori, the woman who risked life and limb (as well as her career) to sneak into the infamous ward, the woman who once explained to Rui in painstaking detail that she would not stand for the press sweeping government screw-ups under the proverbial rug - utterly ignored the sensational story that was the seventeenth ward's becoming the Closed Ward. It doesn't add up no matter how Rui puts everything together.

"She wasn't here."

Rui nearly leaps from her own skin at the sound of Harada's voice, coming from just over her shoulder. It takes a substantial bit of willpower for her not to turn to meet him, but she manages to train her eyes on the scattered articles in from of her while Harada makes himself comfortable in the seat he's pulled up beside her. 

"Er, sorry Harada-san, what do you..." Rui's voice drops off as Harada flicks a glance at her. She swallows, hands suddenly clammy.

Those are the eyes of a man forsaken.

"I mean," Harada says, clipped and professional as ever, spreading a hand over the pile of manilla folders closest to him, "Kaori wasn't here when the Closed Ward became the Closed Ward. She was on assignment in the twenty-first ward, covering a potential story regarding corrupted members of the CCG. By the time she came back, the government had clamped down on the media and hushed up the whole thing, and I informed her that if she tried to revive it I'd strangle her, and then fire her corpse. Sometimes she listened to me back then. It's a trait I wish she hadn't grown out of."

The wistfulness of his tone snatches Rui's answering words from her tongue, and she bites her lip and clenches her hands around the fabric of her pants to keep from grabbing hold of them. What right does she have to say anything in the face of Harada's raw grief? Rui's connection to Kaori spanned only the last few years, however much it felt like an eternity to Rui and her broken heart; Harada and her had known one another for at least the better part of the last decade, perhaps since the budding beginning of Kaori's journalistic career. And if Rui's right about their intimacy... she can't imagine (really, truly cannot grasp) the kind of agony Harada must be in, every second of every day, having lost someone as ingrained in his life as Kaori. 

Harada, seemingly privy to her spiralling thoughts, nudges Rui's shoulder, jolting her out of her reverie. He studies her a moment, brows pinched and mouth flattened, then picks up a stack of papers and shuffles them together, rifling through them as his eyes dart back and forth. Rui takes that as he cue to resume her research, and like that another half hour drags on.

"What are you even looking for?" Harada asks after checking the clock. It's late; Rui doesn't bother thinking about how long she's been here, fruitlessly digging through the paper's archives, probably chasing dead-ends and cold trails. "I should have asked before agreeing to this... but what are you hoping to find, precisely?"

"Anything," Rui murmurs, and knowing that won't remotely satisfy Harada, tacks on, "Anything that might help me piece together information about the ghouls who lived in the seventeenth ward."

That gets Harada's undivided attention. He stops his perusal of what looks to be a rough draft of an unpublished article and stares a hole into the side of Rui's skull. She does her best not to balk beneath that golden stare, busying herself with trying to make sense of some reporter's chicken-scratch handwriting (honestly, this person should have gone into the medical field with cryptic hieroglyphs like this), but it's like trying to ignore the sun when it's two feet away, and she caves faster than she'd like to admit. 

"Harada-san--"

"You're just like her, Rui, and you have no idea how sick that makes me feel."

Those words are knives scraping against Rui's scarred heart. Once, to be compared to Kaori was such a blessing that Rui would blush a hundred shades of red and adamantly redirect the conversation to a safer topic to disguise her embarrassed joy. And now it's an insult, a warning. Harada doesn't think she's a starry-eyed go-getter... he thinks she's going to get herself killed chasing a lead. He thinks she's going to gouge out the hearts of her friends and family, leave only ruin and chaos in her wake. Just like Kaori.

Maybe he's right.

"You're really going to throw your life away over this."

It isn't a question. Rui isn't sure whether or not she'd prefer that he phrase it like one. 

"Kaori deserves more than just an obituary in the newspaper and ghoul experts speculating about her death on the news, Harada-san." 

She says it with such conviction she doubts he can tell that's only a partial truth. Yes, Kaori does deserve all that, but - Rui's doing this because it's all she can do to help Shin and Hinata, and every other ghoul and human plagued by that monster stalking their ward. She'd made the connection hours ago, after getting shooed out of Shin's hospital room; Kaori, beautiful, courageous, ridiculously moronic Kaori, must have disturbed a viper's nest when she went and sneaked into the Closed Ward. She let something out, she let a ghoul out. There's no other explanation that aligns so perfectly with all the rest of Rui's amassed clues. The ghoul responsible for nearly gutting both Shin and Hinata has its roots in the Closed Ward.

She came here, panicked and stricken, because she'd been hoping against hope that somewhere in these forgotten, buried articles, there would be a sliver of information in regards to the ghouls of the seventeenth ward. Something that could help her understand how this ghoul survived, why it's only come out of hiding now. She knows now, from meeting and befriending Hinata, that ghouls are almost indistinguishable from humans, so her assumption that the ghoul was simply hibernating, or in a stasis-like state... it's not holding much weight any longer. And really, with that in mind, these articles aren't going to get here anywhere, at least nowhere that's going to be of any use to anyone outside this office.

Rui blinks, realizing Harada's been silence while she got swept away by her relentless pool of thoughts again. Setting aside her papers, she looks over at him, half-tempted to reach out a hand and cover one of his with it. His white-knuckled grip on the edge of the desk says it wouldn't be smart to offer the comfort of touch at the moment, though, and she wisely tucks her hands under her thighs to staunch the temptation.

"Rui."

She sits straighter in her chair, shaking her hair from her eyes with a subtle toss of her head. Harada's not looking at her, and with a fleeting glance Rui sees he's focused on something displayed on his phone screen.

"Let her rest in peace. Let her go. Gods knows she could use the rest."

Rui opens her mouth, but just as quickly clamps it shut. She can't tell Harada her real reasons for taking on the Kaori's final story, not anymore. He'd try to stop her, like he's doing now, but he'd likely involve the police, or the CCG in response to this new revelation, and Rui just can't have that. Not if it means exposing Hinata and Shin to any more danger when she could have done something to prevent it.

So instead of coming clean and bearing her fettered soul to Harada, she twists her lips into a somber, forlorn smile, shakes her head and shrugs with the sort of tense rigidity she's been laboring under for weeks. It's like slipping on a favorite sweater, one that molds so very easily to her frame.

"I'm not sure I can promise that, Harada-san. Kaori-san is... she's..."

Harada heaves a short, heavy sigh and leans back in his chair, slinging an arm across his eyes to block out the stuttering fluorescent lights.

"I know, Rui. I know. At the very least... I'd like it if you didn't die on me."

"I'll do my best, Harada-san."   

Hi, yes, it is I, the horrible author who might as well have abandoned this story. I have returned from the barren wasteland of dead fanfics to bring you this rather short and probably not-too-great chapter, because I rediscovered my love for this fic and for Rui and her idiot in-fighting boys. If anyone's stuck around for the last year or whatever, I hope you get some enjoyment out of this chapter, and hopefully I'll have another one for you in the not-so-distant future.