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Korin didn't mind working late. He liked the peace, and enjoyed knowing that interruptions were highly unlikely. There was no sound in the library save the soft swish of his brush on the paper, and if you starined your ears you might think you heard the quiet sound of dust settling on bookshelves, coating the books and scrolls with another layer of time. The hours ticked by.

Korin was near the end of the records now. He was just putting the finishing strokes to a line when the candle went out.

Korin said a mildly bad word and put down his brush. Luckily the tinderbox he had used to light it was on his desk. He felt for it and lit the candle by feel, standing up to lean over the desk.

The moment the flame flared up, he saw a face appear on the other side of the table.

Korin started backwards in shock, burning his thumb and dropping the tinderbox. "Who- who are you?" he said. The man was dressed in loose, unremarkable black clothes, and had a sword at his his side, but even that paled into insignificence beside his stare. It was a calculating stare, and underneath it, Korin felt like his life was being measured out in seconds. His heartbeat refused to slow.

"A message?" Korin said, assuming it was for him and automatically putting out his hand. But as he reached for it, the man shot him a look of such intense threat that Korin drew his hand back as if burned. Whatever the scroll was, Korin wasn't supposed to touch it now.

His eyes went back up to the man's face, but he couldn't hold his stare even for a moment. "Yes," he said, answering the stranger's question. "Minobe Korin, head librarian. Who are you?" He knew he had already asked that question, but he hadn't had an answer. This was an odd person to be sending a message. And why couldn't Korin read it?

The minute the man laid his hand on his sword, his stance seeming to show nothing but relaxed amusement, a couple of things crystalised for Korin: that this man could probably kill him more easily than swatting a fly, and that Korin really did not want to know who he was. "No," he said slowly. "I don't think I do." His eyes went down to study the scroll, but it gave no clues to anything. "Can I ask why you're here?"

His nightmare was that Namiko had finally tired of her games, and had gone against her husband's orders and actually sent someone to kill him. Ozawa would be cross, but he would eventually forgive her and Korin would still be dead. But if it was that, surely he would have died without ever knowing.

Korin sat, feeling his heart still thudding in his chest. He found himself very glad there was the barrier of the desk between him and the man. He was clearly not going to get any information that the man didn't want to give, but he had one more try. "Is the scroll a message for me? Or is it just for decoration?" He probably shouldn't have let himself add that last bit, but the candlelight and the darkness and the danger radiating from the man were making him light-headed with fear.

Korin's eyes followed the man's every move, turning his head slightly as he walked behind him, with Korin stuck between not wanting to let him out of view and not really daring to move. He looked at the scroll instead. "Who to?" he said. It didn't even cross his mind to refuse. He suspected that the man was lying and that there woudl be difficulties - had it been a normal message there would have been no need for him to come in the middle of the night like this - but those potential difficulties were distant in comparison to the immediate danger. Korin would do it.

Korin moved his head away from the voice in his ear, the skin on his shoulder almost wanting to writhe away from the man's touch. "Fire?" he said, bewildered, when the man straightened up and what he said actually sunk in. "I don't know anyone called Fire." Was it even a name? He racked his brains, but drew a blank. "Maybe you have the wrong person?"

Korin frowned, finding it hard to concentrate through the buzz of fear. Brothers, family squabbles - what? What was the man talking about? But as he listened, elements of the story started chiming disturbingly. Framed for a crime, a lord of such stature. Where had he heard this story before?

But as the man said the word slave, Korin's eyes opened in shock as it all fell into place. "Rou," he breathed.

His head jerked around to look at the man. "Rou - Fire - his powers," he said, the elements all tumblind into position. "You're the elite section of the army that he doesn't like talking about. THe one that seems to make him think he isn't a real person any more. You."

The name was a shock. Rou had told him about his past life, had told him that he had killed people, and done things he was ashamed of, but he had never told him that Rouichi Tokushima was an assumed name. For some reason Korin found that harder to accept than whatever crimes Rou might have committed in the past. Someone's name was very intricately tied with how you saw them.

Korin knew whatever the scroll contained could not be welcome to Rou. A better friend, he thought bitterly, would have scrunched it up and thrown it in the fire in front of the man's eyes. But Korin couldn't. He nodded reluctantly. "I can give it to him. But why me? Surely you could contact him yourself?"

Korin's breathing seized up and he nearly choked. Without his glasses the man's face blurred, too close, although Korin could see every detail on the ceiling. He half-heartedly cursed Rou for being the indirect cause of him being caught up in this situation, but most of his mind was taken up with simple panic. He forced himself to calm down a little, his breath rasping against his throat. He knew the man wasn't going to kill him. He still had to deliver that scroll. But what was the man doing? Korin shut his eyes and tried to believe he would come out of this alive.

At first Korin could barely hear through the sudden pain, fire in his cheekbone that seemed to spread in jagged lines through his head. But as the words dripped like poison into his ear, the only thing Korin could think was how did you know? He couldn't be guessing, he knew too many specifics for that. The man was right. All those things Rou had been invovled in, had sometimes been the cause of.

But one name hovered in his mind, and as the stranger released his hair, he said it. "Lord Sohma." He groped for his glasses in front of him, fingers blurry but able to get them by feel. "I regret nothing that Lord Sohma was involved in," he said, not even having to think about that. He slotted his glasses back on to his nose. The room leapt into focus. The pain in his cheek still hurt, but it was a more managable ache than the agony of someone slowly cutting.

He replayed what the man had been saying, at what Korin himself had thought. Now that he could think more clearly - the illegal magic had been just as much Korin's fault, and Benikura had marked Korin because Korin had helped Rou save Aiko. Not saved her himself - no. Rou had been the one there.

"I wonder if a friendship that will eventually kill you is one worth having, Minobe Korin." Air seemed to be waiting for an answer. For a moment Korin wasn't going to reply. Then nausea rose up in his stomach, nausea at the way he was going to keep silent, again, like he had all those other times, keep silent and let the poisonous doubt seed itself. He had betrayed those closest to him any number of times - Sai, Rou, Sohma. He felt ill at the thought of doing it again like this. He could feel warm blood running down his cheek, and he absently took a handkerchief out of his sleeve to mop it with, staining the light blue with brown. It was important not to risk it dripping. Cloth could be replaced, but most of the books on his desk could not.

"I think so," he said politely. "Are you finished?"