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Kei tried blending into the increasingly growing crowds, consisting mostly of his fellow students walking toward the community center. They were all underclassmen without cars to drive to the event, and Kei was fine with that. After what he had just done, the last thing Kei needed was to try to hold conversation with his fellow seniors, with those that expected him to be [i]on[/i] at every moment.

Still, rather than blending in, Kei was uncomfortable with the crowd—his heart was beating fiercely and his walk was shaky. He was out of breath, having alternately run from the scene of the crime and slowed to a fast gait when he saw others on the streets. But most of all, most of all, [i]he smelled[/i]—it wasn't smoky, as Kei had left the mansion before the fire was roaring (and in fact, as he looked back occasionally, Kei couldn't tell if there was smoke or not—had the fire department responded that quickly?); the fragrance was of sweat and oil, a musty one that didn't fit with a beautiful and mild morning.

Taking a sharp left from the throng, he moved down one side street, and then took a right at another. Two blocks later, Kei arrived at his destination—the Cosy Bear Cafe. A sign hung out in front with just one simple word: "Closed." Kei wrangled out his keychain, hanging on a lanyard that simply read "D-Day" in black letters against a deep red (a "gift" given to all students at his school), and found the key to the restaurant. The Bakers had been so inviting to Kei, trusting him with a key in recent days when they'd given him the charge to close down, an unusual assignment for a bus boy, but perhaps less so considering the strain on the family for the past two weeks.

He moved quickly toward the break room and opened his locker, taking out the cafe uniform, deodorant, and other toiletries. He quickly cleaned over a bathroom sink and changed. Taking his dirty clothes, he found shearers in the kitchen and clipped them apart quickly in long strips, and fed them down a industrial-use garbage disposal, bit by bit. The sweatshirt went down fine; the jeans and gloves, he stuffed in an empty pick jar, which he closed with a lid that he punched two holes in. Kei dropped a match inside to let the items burns, and disposed of the jar in the dumpster behind the establishment.

Still shaking, and unable to comprehend what he's just done, what he was still doing, Kei locked the door behind him and breathed just a little. [i]There are no security cameras here,[/i] he reminded himself. [i]All the clothes are gone, and I'm safe.[/i]

The community center wasn't too far from there. Kei arrived to an already filling auditorium space. His friends waved over to him, but Kei was in no mood for small talk—it was all he could do to even breathe. Instead, he spotted a solemn group in the front row and walked over, even though he knew it was not exactly appropriate for him to sit there. Moving in front of the old man, he bowed to him (Kei had never him, though there were surprisingly quite a few folks in town he didn't know, having lived here for only a few short years) and nodded toward Liz's friend, Elliot, and the girl with whom he was conversing.

Then he placed his left hand on Elizabeth's shoulder, squeezing gently for a moment, and letting go before walking behind the group and sitting directly behind Ellie. Working for the Bakers, Kei saw the young woman almost daily, and found a measure of comfort in her; [i]he[/i] was the center of attention at school, but at the cafe, he could be the one relying on others, and Ellie—Kei preferred that nickname to Liz—was so kind and responsibly and funny. And of course, even if by happenstance, it was through Ellie that Kei met Lily.

As he saw the sadness exuding from Ellie and the same from the older gentleman, as well as a nervousness, it seemed, from Elliot, Kei's thoughts about the morning flew away. Even his own anxiety did, that built from Lily's disappearance, from his longing for her safety, for her warmth, for her physical touch, and he tried to look for words that would help Ellie, knowing nothing he could say could possibly do that.

It was strange that in this moment, he could find a calmness, a centering. But Kei did, closing his eyes and breathing deeply. He stood Zen as the conference inched toward its start, but his trance ended abruptly. Kei's eyelids suddenly shot open, and like electricity shooting from one conductor to another, a single throught raced through his brain.

[i]My bike. I left my bike two blocks from the mansion...I left it at the scene of the crime.[/i]