Author's Note: Well, I've entered the realm of crossovers. And being me, I decided to cross X with an apparently obscure series, Koko wa Greenwood. Since this is apparently the case, I'm going to try explaining Greenwood's basic premise. As it'll be difficult to understand, otherwise.

Greenwood is a six episode OVA based on a much longer manga. I've never been able to get my hands on the manga, unfortunately, so everything I've written is based on the anime. In the anime, Hasukawa Kazuya starts high school at Ryokuto Academy a month late, after giving himself an ulcer from excessive angst. Hoping to find life a little more normal at school than at home, he's alarmed, to say the least, when he discovers his roommate looks exactly like a girl, and his nearest neighbors are insane schemers.

Midorino Mizu

There was a resounding crash. The lights began to flicker. Voices raised heatedly.

"Quick, apologize to her!" insisted Hasukawa. "Do you want the dorm to end up a pile of rubble?"

"Oh, shut up," snarled Mitsuru uncharacteristically. "Do you have any idea what it's like? At least the other girls can't get in the dorm. She goes everywhere with me, and it's got to stop!" He stomped off, intent on getting away from the girl-ghost and all her supporters.

At the last minute, Ikeda Mitsuru turned back. "And, no, I will not apologize! I'm getting away from here."

The front door slammed, and Misato's wails got even louder.

Inside his own room, Tezuka Shinobu looked up from the book he had been reading. The only indication of any emotion stirring within him was the almost imperceptible tightening of his lips.

Something had to be done.

***

For the fourth time that evening, Sumeragi Subaru attempted to explain trigonometry to Shirou Kamui.

Not that he'd ever understood advanced math anyway, even when he had been in school. But Kamui was even more miserable at it than he had been, and that was saying something.

Subaru felt the new presence in his room before Kamui did, and certainly before Ijyuin Akira thought to clear his throat to alert them to his presence.

CLAMP Campus' perpetually innocent treasurer smiled weakly as he met the direct green gaze of the Sumeragi. "A fax came through for you, Sumeragi-san," he informed the other man as he hesitantly stepped into the room. He handed the single sheet of paper over to Subaru, intent on escaping as quickly and quietly as he had arrived. "You can feel free to use the telephone in Nokoru's office if you need privacy.

Subaru nodded absently, already intent on the words on the page in front of him. "Thank you, Ijyuin-san," he murmured. "Kamui," he added looking up to meet the teenager's violet eyes. "I'm afraid I'll have to postpone the tutoring until another time."

Akira peered over Kamui's thin shoulder and visibly brightened. "Oh! Tangents! I can help you with this," he stated. "Unless you'd rather I didn't?"

Kamui's eyes widened to near saucer-sized. "No, no, no," he said, gesturing in such a way as to make it obvious that any assistance would be welcome. "Please! I have an exam on Friday, and I don't understand anything."

"Well," Akira began, "it's really quite simple…"

Maybe, Subaru thought as he walked soundlessly down the hall towards the Imonoyama's private office, Kamui would be able to get tutoring from the much more math-proficient Akira. He certainly wasn't much help. And at the moment, he had this rather strange fax to contend with.

Most of the faxes he received were either through his grandmother or the government directly. This didn't fall into either category.

It read:

Tezuka, mused Subaru. At least in his memory, that entire affair had been very interesting,

He'd not been born when Setsuko-san had wed businessman Tezuka Hidekazu, but he remembered the details had been unearthed around the time of her youngest child's birth.

His grandmother had apparently been vehemently against the marriage. Sumeragi did not, under any circumstances, marry people who did not respect the Clan's position. When Setsuko chose to do so, she was disowned immediately.

Tezuka had forbidden his wife contact with her family, preferring to keep that connection as buried as possible. The cold businessman did not regard the Sumeragi position as being one he desired; he didn't believe in the existence of spirits.

Despite this, news managed to filter back to Kyoto whenever something monumental occurred in Setsuko-san's life; at the birth of her three children, Akira, Nagisa, and Shinobu, and of course, at her death.

The son, thought Subaru, as he pushed open the door of Imonoyama Nokoru's office, must be very different than the father, if he even bothered to acknowledge the presence of a ghost.

He would discover that to be both true and false.

***

Ikeda Mitsuru eyed his roommate warily. He'd taken a walk, in order to get some air, put some distance between himself and his situation.

For that, he'd gotten recriminations from both Hasukawa and Shun. And while he hardly expected Shinobu to react that way, he had thought that he would at least react in some way. Some form of chastisement, or something.

But there had been nothing. Shinobu had smiled at him when he came back, and then silently went back to his reading.

Shinobu had yet to say a word to him, Mitsuru realized. And that was very unusual.

Shinobu was plotting something. And he was leaving Mitsuru out of it. That simply wouldn't do.

But just as he opened his mouth to interrogate the smirking student council president, the P.A. system sounded.

"Tezuka Shinobu, Room 211," came the dorm mother's disapproving voice. "You have a phone call."

Shinobu silently marked his place in his book and rose to his feet, walking almost swiftly across the room. When he reached the door, he lifted an eyebrow at his roommate.

"Isn't that paper due tomorrow?" he inquired. At his roommate's dark scowl, he laughed lightly, and headed down the hall. "You should get started on it, then. You know that Etsuko-sensei won't let you off."

Mitsuru huffed and turned back to his pile of Japanese history books. Shinobu was right, but that didn't help his situation any.

He still wanted to know what was going on.

***

Shinobu smiled in apology to the dorm mother before going into the private room the dorm provided for telephone calls. Students were not supposed to receive phone calls after hours, and normally she would have refused to call the student.

But something in the caller's quiet, polite voice refused to allow that.

"Hai?" asked Shinobu as he picked up the receiver.

"It's Sumeragi Subaru. I received your fax."

"Ah," replied Shinobu simply.

Subaru had somehow expected the teenager to be a little more forthcoming, but he pressed on nonetheless. "May I ask what exactly is 'haunting' Ryokurin Hall?" he asked, a thread of irritation creeping into his voice. He didn't particularly care to be summoned out of the blue, and then receive next to no cooperation from the other party.

Shinobu smiled slightly. "A sixteen-year-old girl, name of Misako. She's decided that she's in love with my roommate, Ikeda Mitsuru. It's causing difficulties for all of us."

"I see." Subaru paused. "Is there no other way of moving her on?"

"We tried that," replied Shinobu. "She insisted upon a kiss, from Mitsuru, and then moved on, for about a week."

"And then?"

"And then, she came back. With friends." Shinobu sighed slightly, and a little weariness seemed to enter his voice. "They've moved on, thankfully, but Misako has evidently decided to wait for Mitsuru's dying day." His voice hardened. "And that is not acceptable."

"Hmm." Subaru mentally checked his schedule for the next day. The Dragons of Earth had been quiet lately, so he had nothing really pressing. "What time tomorrow would be suitable?"

"Four o' clock," said Shinobu instantly. "Mitsuru has band practice, after classes."

"Very well then." Subaru neatly wrote the time of the appointment down on the fax with one of Nokoru's elaborate fountain pens. "You can expect me then. See to any necessary clearances, please."

"Certainly, Subaru-san." Shinobu hesitated. "And, thank you for doing this. Our families are hardly on the best of terms."

"I can't say that it wasn't a surprise to hear from a Tezuka," conceded Subaru. "I'm surprised you even acknowledged the connection."

"I understood the necessity. Until tomorrow, then?"

"Yes."

Shinobu hung up the phone with a faint click. If the Sumeragi was surprised by Shinobu's request for assistance, then his father would have been furious. Tezuka Hidekazu despised everything his wife's family stood for, and it was only for her beauty and grace that he tolerated the connection. Any contact between Tezuka and Sumeragi had always been, and would always be, strictly forbidden.

Shinobu had always found ways to work around the forbidden, however, and his father's all-encompassing edicts didn't phase him.

Especially when the welfare and relative sanity of his friends was at stake.

***

Mitsuru barely glanced up as Shinobu strolled back into their room a bare fifteen minutes after he had left it. Nothing seemed different; his customary smirk was in place.

Sometimes, Shinobu's ability to keep an impassive mask up, no matter what the situation, was useful. Sometimes it just was an irritant.

This was one of the latter times.

Mitsuru studiously pretended to go back to taking notes on the Takagushi Era in Medieval Japan and It's Effect on Modern Japanese Life as his roommate sat back down and opened his book again. He was not going to ask Shinobu anything. He wasn't. Really.

His self-restraint lasted exactly 16 seconds. Shinobu counted.

"So, who was on the telephone?" asked the other teenager with deliberate casualness that didn't fool his roommate at all.

"A cousin," replied Shinobu softly. "He's coming to visit tomorrow."

Mitsuru's blond eyebrows climbed high on his forehead as he contemplated that statement. Shinobu's relative--that immediately brought to mind Nagisa, his psycho dominatrix sister. And then there was Misako, Mitsuru's own devoted, and very dead, admirer.

The combination couldn't be healthy for anyone concerned.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" the purple-eyed one ventured. "I mean, with Misako and all?"

Shinobu slanted a gray-green gaze at his nervous-looking roommate of two years, and his perpetual smile widened a bit.

"Have you ever known me to have a bad idea?"

Oh yes, Mitsuru thought, this could be very bad, indeed.

***

Subaru stared down at the sleek, state-of-the-art, pink phone he'd just hung up, and shook his head as if to clear it. That conversation had been oddly normal, for him at least. He'd actually spoken more than a sentence to someone without feeling compelled to do so.

And he felt interested in another human being, for the first time in years. Most people were just there, never really registering on the Sumeragi's radar, with a few notable exceptions. His grandmother, Kamui, Hokuto, and, of course, Seishirou.

But no others. Until this newfound cousin of his, whom he sensed was both coldly controlled and wildly passionate.

Tomorrow afternoon, if nothing else, would be one of the first jobs he actually looked forward to in ages, thought Subaru as he walked down the hall, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

He stepped through the doorway of his suite, and was surprised to find it occupied only by Shirou Kamui. Where was Akira-san?"

Kamui glanced up towards the door, despite Subaru's customary silence. His eyes were bewildered.

"Look, Subaru-san, the answers are actually right. And I even think I might know why! That's never happened before."

Maybe Kamui could explain it to him then, Subaru thought dryly. For he certainly wasn't ever going to understand the point of tangents, cosines, and sines.

"Amazing," the green-eyed man said in response to the younger boy's comment. Then he turned to stare out his window.

Normally, Kamui took that as his cue to leave. Subaru, for some reason known only to him, liked to stare at the lights of Tokyo when he needed to think. And if he wanted to think, he normally didn't want company.

Despite this foreknowledge, Kamui cocked his head to one side, letting chocolate-brown locks fall into his eyes. "What are you thinking about, Subaru-san?"

"A job," replied Subaru absently as he scanned the glittering artificial stars of his city. It was so beautiful, and yet so false.

"The one that came through tonight?" persisted Shirou-kun. He loved to hear about Subaru's jobs, be they past or present. "What kind of situation is it?"

Subaru slid indulgent emerald eyes towards the boy. "Yes, that job. A ghost is haunting boys' high school. It should be fairly straight-forward, I imagine."

"Then what intrigues you?"

"The request came from an unusual source. From a branch of the family that doesn't acknowledge the Sumeragi as having any power."

"Oh," said Kamui. He frowned. "Then, why did they call you?"

"It seems the son sees more than the black and white world of his father. He also sees the shades of gray." He turned to eye the Dragon of Heaven more fully. He was visibly drooping. "You should go to bed. Class tomorrow and all. And I need to prepare for the job, no matter how routine it might be."

It was a clear dismissal, Kamui reflected with a sigh. And Subaru was right, it was getting late.

He needed his rest if he was going to survive Sorata's wake-up call in the morning.

***

Subaru stopped in front of an old, well-kept stone building, clearly identified as Ryokurin Hall. Or Greenwood, Shinobu-san had informed him the previous evening.

With a sigh, Subaru pushed open the front door and stepped in. He was beginning to feel some trepidation, but he wasn't entirely sure if that was from the job or from the prospect of meeting another relative.

The Sumeragi were a large clan, and Subaru had been intimidated by the constant flow of relations for most of his youth.

Blinking away his reverie, Subaru smiled gently at the middle-aged woman manning the front desk. He bowed slightly to her.

"I'm Sumeragi Subaru. I've come to visit my cousin, Tezuka Shinobu." He prayed fervently that she didn't recognize his name, and pepper him with questions. Sumeragi was not a common surname, and though they weren't as visible as they had once been, some people still knew what the name meant.

He was lucky today, for she merely smiled.

"Ah! Shinobu-san mentioned you might be visiting go on up. His room is 211, one floor up, and to the right." She took his white coat, turning to hang it up. "Have a nice visit!"

"Yes," said absently as he walked towards the wooden stairs, unconsciously sidestepping a young man who was carrying down a red motorcycle.

Continuing his quiet tread down the hall, Subaru ignored the sounds around him, the blood-curdling screams that came from the dorm room cum video arcade. Apparently, someone was losing. He knew that sound well. Sorata usually yelled that way when Imonoyama-san got the best of him in a video game. Which was most of the time, really.

He paused in front of room 211, and was about to knock, when the door was flung open exuberantly.

"Konnichiwa!" called a sunny voice. "You must be Sumeragi-san."

Subaru just stared. He could have sworn that Ryokuto Academy was a boys school.

"I'm Kisaragi Shun," said the vision with the long pale pink hair. "I live next door."

"And he's a guy, despite appearances" came a groggy voice from inside the room. "Uh, Shinobu, why am I so tired?"

"Because," came a soft, pragmatic voice, "you stayed up until four a.m. writing your history term paper. That was announced at the beginning of the semester."

Subaru stepped into the room just as a box of Kleenex hit a violet-haired boy reading at desk over the head.

"Always a smart ass," muttered a blond boy from his position of the bed.

Shinobu simply stood to greet his cousin. "Subaru-san."

"Shinobu-san," returned the Sumeragi. "Shall we get started, then?"

"Haaaiii!" caroled Shun.

Shun's roommate, Hasukawa Kazuya, scowled from his position in the doorway.

Ikeda mumbled something along the lines, "Anytime, I want a normal life back."

Shinobu's smile just widened a shade.

All in all, reflected Subaru, they were a group that would have fit in alarmingly well at Imonoyama Mansion.

***

Two hours later, Subaru was becoming frustrated, though he didn't allow it to show in either his expression or his demeanor.

To begin with, it had taken Misako-san an hour to show up. And when she finally had, she proceeded to wax eloquent on how she must spent the years preceding her true love's death in a tragic limbo.

It was almost enough to make Subaru twitch. And, as it happened, it was making Ikeda-san and Hasukawa-san twitch. Severely.

Subaru put on his best kindly-onmyouji expression, and proceeded to explain to Misako, for the third time, that it was perfectly acceptable to await her "true love" in the other realm. Honestly, he thought, spirits did it all the time.

"No!"

Subaru's gaze hardened, slightly. "I can force you to, you know."

Misako opened her mouth to wail, and three of the room's other four occupants dove to the floor in order to protect themselves from the ensuing damage. Shinobu didn't.

Subaru cut off the sixteen-year-olds cry with a single sharp movement of his hand. "Misako-san," he reproved.

He smiled softly. "I know that you haven't gotten everything you wanted in life. And every girl deserves the chance to fall in love. But," he faltered, thinking of Hokuto. "Not every girl gets that chance. It' sad, but it's reality.

"It's time to face your reality, Misako."

"But--" protested the blond girl half-heartedly. She knew what Subaru-san was telling her, had bee telling her all evening, was true. It didn't make leaving her dream of Mitsuru any easier.

"Misako," said Subaru patiently, "Mitsuru-san could never be yours."

Misako's shoulders sagged. "I know," she whispered. "But I don't have anything else."

"You'll make something else for yourself, then. A spirit always has a chance to do that." Those were words he'd believed in so fervently when he had been sixteen. He knew now that they weren't true for him, but perhaps they would be true for Misako.

She nodded, very slightly, and then bowed to the four boys she'd by turns amused and terrorized for several months. "I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you," she said softly. "I'll go on now." She rose her sea-colored eyes to meet Mitsuru's purple ones. "G-Goodbye, Mitsuru-kun."

Mitsuru smiled at her. He'd be relieved when Misako had left, but a little sad too, he thought. She'd just been there for so long. "Goodbye, Misako-chan. Be happy."

She nodded before looking again at Subaru. He smiled at her, and began to chant.

***

Soon after, Shinobu walked his cousin down the stairs. "Thank you," he said. "You didn't have to."

"No," agreed Subaru, slanting a glance at the younger man, "I didn't. Because you were probably capable of doing it yourself."

Shinobu shrugged. "I'm not trained. At least, not since my mother died."

"Hmm," said the Sumeragi thoughtfully. "Would you like to be?"

Shinobu's smile was a trifle sad. His father, with his steadfast rejection of anything spiritual, would kill his youngest son before allowing him to learn onmyoujitsu. "My father would never allow it. My mother made sure I knew enough to keep from making everything in the house explode. That will have to be enough, for me."

Subaru shrugged into his coat silently. Everyone, he thought, was tied down in some way. No one could become exactly what they wished. It was a cruel trick fate played on humanity; allowing it to have dreams and aspirations, but never letting those dreams be fully realized.

He lifted a hand in farewell. "Ja ne, Shinobu-san."

"Ja ne, Subaru-san."

Long after his cousin left, Shinobu stood in the cold darkness staring after him. They were very much alike, hurt deeply by what life had dealt them. They each protected themselves with impenetrable masks.

They were just very different masks.

~fin

Part Two

Back to Fiction