Chapter 1

"Sleeping on the job again, Mr. Leonhart?"

Squall sat up abruptly and fixed the crumpled collar of his shirt. He muffled a yawn and stood up, answering his secretary’s jest with an embarrassed smile.

"Thanks for waking me up, Mrs. Kramer."

"What’s the matter, having a nightmare?" She asked as she arranged the papers on his table.

"Yeah, the same one."

"The shootout at the flower store?"

"You know me better than anyone else, Mrs. Kramer."

"Edea." She corrected as she handed him a scrap of paper. "I got that address you wanted."

He gave her a confused look.

"Ms Heartilly? Remember? The pretty brunette with the yellow highlights in her hair."

"Rinoa Heartilly?" He asked.

"Yes." Edea said with a happy nod. "This is the address of her work place. She wants to meet with you again."

"When?"

"Tonight. You better get on your way." She said as she walked toward the door. "This is a strange case for you to accept. Little pay, strange scheduling and no evident sense of necessity."

"I’m a private detective, this is my job."

She chuckled. "Private detective? You look like you’re barely out of high school, kid." With a sudden mischievous look on her face, Edea walked across the room and pulled a leather jacket out from his closet. She tossed it over to him.

"Put it on. You’ll fit right in at Chinatown."

He shook his head, staring at the dusty jacket in dismay. "I haven’t worn this since college."

"Loosen up, Squall." Edea replied with a laugh. "Go out tonight. Have some fun. You just might find a social life."

"Yeah right." He muttered under his breath. However, as he did so, he changed into the jacket.

********

The streets were cold this time of the year but it was not too much for a healthy twenty seven year old youth to bear. Squall Leonhart walked down the crooked boulevards of lower Manhattan heading for the section of the city reserved for its immigrants. It was the time of night when the bulbs of the Tribeca Bridge colored the gateway to the World Trade Center and the skyscrapers were aglow with flourescent lights. However, he walked east, away from the city he knew and into a place that lacked the elegant sterile beauty of the rest of the city. It was a warm place full of smells of rotting foods as well as roasting ducks. It was a crowded street littered with boisterous people. Some selling foods and trinkets in carts or on carpets. Others were busily trying to win themselves a bargain. This was the portion of the city made only for the social and unfortunately Mr. Leonhart was not one of those types.

He had lived in this city too long to think that the place this address led to would be easy to find. Here in this city, everything was crammed into every nook and cranny possible. He came to a small doorway lowered slightly below street level. He checked the address twice but with Edea’s neat handwriting it was impossible to miss.

As he walked into the bar, a waitress showed him to a small table in the corner. He had meant to tell her that he was looking for an employee but he quickly found the girl by himself as he saw her stepping out, onto the small stage with a piano. The bar was dim and it heightened her beauty making her seem even more pale and slender then she already was.

Rinoa Heartilly.

He recognized her at once.

He knew that Seifer had dated her once and that it had been during the time of the flower shop shooting which had ended both their careers. Did Seifer come to this bar and sit in this same corner watching her sing back then? The thought was too much for Squall to bear as he began to stir his coffee nervously. It took him a few moments to realize that the action was absolutely pointless as he always drank his joe pitch black.

When he met her, all his memories of Seifer Almasy came rushing back to him. And he began to wonder where Seifer was now, and if Seifer ever wondered about him or had forgiven him for what happened that day four years ago.

He realized then that Rinoa was looking at him as she began to play the opening to her next piece. He wasn’t sure whether to maintain eye contact or to look away but suddenly he saw her smile as she sang her next words.

I saw you smiling at me, was it real or just my fantasy?

He felt the urge to smile back but he stopped as the tune changed and she looked away. She began to sing about a last night with her lover. He felt a pang of guilt as though she was telling him about Seifer. He never came back, to any of them, after that day in the flower store.

Squall went back to stirring his coffee until her song ended and she left the stage. There was a modest degree of applauding from the audience who never gave the entertainment much thought.

A moment later she arrived at his table and asked to sit down.

"That was a beautiful song." He told her as she poured herself a cup of tea. She smiled at him, turning slightly red in the process.

"I’m glad you liked it, Mr. Leonhart."

"Did you write it? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it before."

She smiled again, more coyly this time as though she was finally back in step.

"It’s by a chinese singer, Faye Wong. That’s probably why you’ve never heard it before. Not too many people have."

"I like it." He answered absently.

"I’m sorry to bother you so late at night, Mr. Leonhart." She answered as she grew serious. "But there are some things I need to tell you."

"I’m listening."

She bit her lower lip miserably as she set her tea cup down. "I think there is someone watching me. It has something to do with Seifer and -" She broke off suddenly as though she was rethinking what she was about to say. "You have a past with Seifer don’t you, Mr. Leonhart. You know how he is. He’s rather -"

"Fanciful?"

"Obsessive." She answered gravely.

"You think Seifer’s been stalking you?" Squall asked somewhat disbelievingly.

She stared at him without speaking as though she was searching his face for the right words to say.

Squall looked away and stared at his coffee, flabbergasted by her accusations.

"I know Seifer," Squall answered. "He wouldn’t do anything that would break any laws. When he left me, I know he hated me and the entire police force but it would never come to this. He’s not a man who is forgiving, Rinoa but he’s not psychotic either."

She nodded sadly as though he had crushed something inside of her.

"I guess I have nothing to worry about then." She answered in a detached voice.

With that, he knew that he had said all the wrong things. He got up, threw down a couple of dollars to cover the undrunk coffee as he followed her to the coat rack.

"Let me walk you home." He offered as she picked out her long black overcoat. He helped her with the sleeves as she fumbled around with it. She grimaced at him and then nodded obediently.

"If that’s what you want."

"If there’s someone stalking you, the last thing you should do is wander around alone at night."

She gave him a smirk as she said her goodbye to the doorman and bounded up the stairs onto the deserted sidewalk. She hugged the coat around herself as she began to walk back to the main avenue of chinatown.

"You went to college with Seifer, didn’t you, Mr Leonhart." She asked casually.

"We grew up together." Squall mused. "Same elementary school, high school, college."

"You graduated from Columbia in two years too?" Rinoa asked, cocking her head.

"Yes. We met a girl named Quistis there. She was in our graduating class. She also become a part of the NYPD working in the area of DNA fingerprinting. We used to be close, before the incident."

Rinoa nodded as her eyes began to wander.

"I’m sorry." He answered. "I must be boring you. It’s just you remind me of so much."

"I remind you of Seifer, don’t I?" She asked, smiling again. "Is that all I remind you of?"

"No." He answered growing somewhat embarrassed. "This is kind of bizarre but you remind me of a girl I knew in high school."

Her smile grew wider. "I like listening to bizarre stories."

Squall looked down at his feet.

"I can’t believe I’m telling you this but on the night of the prom in high school a mysterious girl asked me to dance with her. I lied. I told her that I couldn’t dance. It was because I was so shocked by her invitation. But she pulled me onto the floor anyway. We had a good time, at least I did. But -"

"What? Go on." She prodded.

He chuckled bitterly to himself.

"I found out after the prom that her name was Mary and she turned out to be the date of the school quarterback. He was a real bull. I mean it, nose ring and all." Squall watched Rinoa with satisfaction as she burst out in laughter. "I thought I was a dead man but then. . ." Squall trailed off as he remembered what exactly had happened that night. "Then . ."

"Seifer came to your rescue?" Rinoa finished for him.

Squall nodded. "He always felt responsible for me because he was the older one. It was ridiculous really. I can get by . . .by myself."

"We all need somebody, sometimes. I have my sister, Ellone. She can be a pain sometimes, but I love her all the same."

Rinoa turned her head as they came to an apartment house. She gestured to it.

"I guess I’m home. Why don’t you come in, meet my sister and have something to drink?"

Squall was about to refuse but before he could respond he saw the door to the apartment house open and a little girl with shoulder length brown hair popped out.

"Rinny!" She exclaimed as she ran over to hug Rinoa.

"Who are you?" Ellone asked as she looked up at Squall. Her face was round with a tiny chin. On her feet were small slippers with pon pons on the ends. Her large brown eyes were concealed by the layers of her loosened hair. She beamed at him in such a sweet way that it made Squall wonder if she had been practicing in front of a mirror.

"This is Mr. Leonhart." Rinoa answered for him. "He’s my friend."

"Mr. Leonhart?" Ellone asked. "I like that name."

The way she said it made Squall uncomfortable. It was asthough she had gorged that name out of his body and had placed it in a bottle for her collection.

"Squall." He answered. "You can call me Squall."

"Squall Leonhart." The little girl muttered. "Cloud Strife." She suddenly proclaimed, as though she had made a discovery.

"What?" Squall asked utterly confused.

"Your name reminds me of Cloud, Squall."

Rinoa burst out in embarrassed laughter as she pushed Ellone aside.

"It’s those video games she’s been playing," Rinoa said shaking her head in humiliation, "everything reminds her of something or other from her Final Fated 7."

"Final Fantasy 7." Ellone corrected. "And they’re not just video games."

Squall smiled as the conversation approached a place where he could feel like an adult again.

"I remembered playing some Tetris when I was little. Do you still play that?"

"No no!" Ellone yelled pouting. "It’s not the same. It’s my tenth birthday tomorrow. Why don’t you come to my party? I’ll show you."

Rinoa paused as she began to scold to Ellone once more for her rudeness.

"Why don’t you come tomorrow, Squall?" Rinoa answered suddenly. "I have the day off. We can talk some more. I have something you need to see."

Before he could ask her for another time her expression suddenly turned to one of sadness as she reached out to touch his arm.

"Please, the sooner the better. I’m confident that I can sway your judgment on Seifer."

Seeing that he was trapped by her new damsel in distress guise, he nodded unwillingly.

"Great, I’ll see you at twelve noon." Rinoa answered as she hurried Ellone up the stairs before he could change his mind. "Oh yeah and Squall?" Rinoa said as she stood at the doorway. Squall grimaced, wondering if she was going to ask him to bring party utensils or something of the sort.

"Nice jacket." She said as she clicked her tongue at him. He chuckled under his breath as he casually waved goodbye to her.

******

Walking home, Squall found himself doing a double take at a video game store. Somehow it just seemed impolite to go to her party without a present. He entered the tiny cramped store with the large poster of a blond woman standing outside saying "You pick a world we’ll take you there." Somehow those words, like the little girl he had just seen, brought him chills.

"What are you looking for?" The man with a heavy Asian accent asked from behind the counter where he had just been eating a dinner of seafood noodles. He shoved the container aside and stood up to greet his sole customer. Squall cursed at himself, knowing that he was obligated, by the guilt factor, to buy something now.

"I’m looking for a game." He began as his eyes scanned the rows of shiny boxes each more confusing than the last.

"What kind of game?" The man asked, leaning over the counter. "We have the X rated ones in the back, no ID needed."

Squall scowled as he realized that the man probably mistook him for some seventeen year old out to buy porno. Damn the leather jacket.

"No I think something to do with Final Fated?"

"Final Fantasy?" The clerk answered excitedly he gestured to the middle shelf. "The most popular one is seven. Everyone loves that. My friend spent days playing it. No sleep, no nothing. If it wasn’t for his mother, he would have died of hunger."

Squall shook his head and crossed his arms, wondering if the man was bull shitting him.

"It’s not for me. It’s for a friend. I think she has seven already. Don’t you have eight or something?"

"No." The man answered as though anyone with an IQ in the double digits would know that he was not selling eight. "They never made an eight. The series stops at seven."

"Why seven?" Squall asked.

The man threw his hands up. "How should I know, maybe it’s an unlucky number for the Japanese or something. Here," the man said as he pointed at a box with a large yellow bird on it, "this is called Chocobo Racing. It’s related to Final Fantasy. Your friend will love it if she’s a Final Fantasy fan."

"Alright." Squall responded, exasperated. "I’ll take it."

Squall reached into his wallet and withdrew his credit card which the man stared at for a moment as though he was handling an exotic bird.

"May I see some ID?" He asked.

"You don’t need ID to buy pornography here." Squall answered curtly.

The man chuckled.

"You look like you’re not a day-"

"-over seventeen." Squall finished for him. Wearily, Squall sighed and drew out his driver’s license.