Slightly graphic warning after Mitzu starts playing the violin. If you're squeamish maybe skim over it :)

"[Y/n]?"

"[Y/n]?"

An irritating sensation made [Y/n] blink her eyes open in surprise. She sat up in an instant, pulling away from the tapping feeling on her cheek. The cause - Mitzu - pulled away also, a bored and annoyed look on his face. [Y/n] met his gaze with a glare which he returned instantly.

"You're with me for now," he said coldly.

"I'm not an object!" [Y/n] returned abrasively, to which Mitzu seemed to straighten a little and clear his throat. At his actions, [Y/n] couldn't help but dip her head a little in a half-assed apology. It wasn't like she cared whether he was annoyed with her, but she didn't want to get attacked for it. She paused, rubbing her neck. "Um... what happens with all that... uh- stuff- that Seishin was talking about...?" she whispered.

Mitzu watched her for a moment with a confused expression before a light seemed to shine in his eyes as he remembered. This look of recollection was instantly followed by laughter - he held his stomach and leant forwards, laughing more than she'd ever seen him laugh before.

"What...? What's so funny?" [Y/n] muttered.

"You didn't think that blonde bastard meant anything by what he said? God, do you really think we're that bad?" he asked, an eyebrow raised, though still chuckling amusedly.

"Y-Yes! Yes you're that bad- you've done stuff like that before, why wouldn't you do it again?" [Y/n] muttered, her eyebrows furrowed.

"We've done stuff like that before?" Mitzu questioned. [Y/n] looked a little confused. "There's no we about it, [Y/n]. Seishin and Kori lost their tempers once, but we've all discussed that and have concluded that such measures should only be taken in dire circumstances. Right now, there's nothing dire about the situation other than Seishin wanting to scare the shit out of you because he's a twat and wanted to get his own back for you leaving us," he muttered.

"I didn't bring you up to be foul mouthed," [Y/n] said quietly, looking away. Mitzu seemed surprised and almost touched by her words, though simply shrugged.

"I've heard you stub your toe before," he countered. [Y/n] rolled her eyes, leaning back on her bed slightly. She was more relaxed now she knew that she wasn't going to be tortured. Strangely enough, knowing you're going to wake up the next morning with all limbs intact was quite the relief. Funny how that works.

"Just because you're not gonna go through hell doesn't mean we're not mad at you, though," Mitzu said firmly, the amusement dropping from him as soon as it came. [Y/n] visibly tensed at this, and more so when he put his hand on her shoulder, even though the gesture was clearly intended to calm her down. "Relax. I just want to talk." She nodded slowly.

"A-alright," she stuttered, "then let's talk." He gave her a slightly strange look as though saying 'I didn't need you to agree but fine'.

"What was life as a human like?" he asked after a moment of hesitation as he thought. [Y/n] blinked in surprise. It felt like so long ago... she couldn't really put words to it. What was it like?

"Free," was the first thing she could think of saying, before adding, "and fun. I could hang out with friends if I wanted to, go where I wanted to - of course, you had to have the money to do that, but even earning a wage by doing work made you feel... I don't know, worth something."

"And you no longer feel worth something?" Mitzu asked, tilting his head to the side a little.

"It's hard to feel worth anything when your existence is merely for the benefit of others. I'm a form of amusement for you guys. Sooner or later you'll get bored of me and I'll get killed. Or, you'll kill me accidentally. Whichever comes first."

"You shouldn't think like that," Mitzu shrugged, taking his hand from her shoulder and instead placing it over hers. It was cold, as per usual, and [Y/n] was still tense at the contact. Mitzu didn't seem to care - he was giving her affection and she could either take it or leave it. "If you always count your tomorrows, you'll never live your todays."

"Where'd you read that?" [Y/n] frowned, knowing that wouldn't be a line that Mitzu would ever come up with.

"...One of Rayne's books."

"You sure? Sounds too heartfelt for Rayne," [Y/n] frowned. She hated the idea of ever seeing that man again. Mitzu nodded in conformation.

"Yep. The context was different." [Y/n] tilted her head, curious to know what he meant. "He was talking about experiments and people trying to kill him for being too cruel. Apparently people would ask him how long he thought it'd be until someone murdered him to get him to stop doing what he did, so he came up with that, I think."

"Why the I think?" [Y/n] questioned. Mitzu shrugged.

"I dunno. I haven't got a memory like Seishin, Kori and Laion. Hell, Aytsa and Draka too." [Y/n] was about to console him on instinct - it was so easy to fall back into it, and it looked like he was hoping for her kind words of comfort as well, though only silence came. Her lips parted but shut again soon after, leaving the silver haired boy looking rather dejected.

"You were saying something about friends," Mitzu began again. "What were they like?"

"My friends?" [Y/n] questioned in surprise, a little bewildered that he even cared. "W-well, my friends were Tara, Sally and Damien. Tara was— uh, tall," she began with a small nostalgic smile, "and would always mess about with me - silly things really, like pranks on teachers and colleagues," she said gently, her tone softer now she was thinking about her friends. "Sally was amazing. Beautiful and smart... a bit possessive, I suppose. Like a King Charles Spaniel," she smiled. Mitzu looked a little confused.

"A what?"

"A King Charles Spaniel," [Y/n] repeated. "It's a type of dog. They're pretty small, about this high," she said, gesturing their height with her hands, "and they're really cute. They've got curly little ears and very cute faces, but they're possessive little dogs that get very attached to their family. That's a bit like Sally," she explained.

"Fluffy ears and possessive?" Mitzu echoed with a perplexed frown.

"No, her hair looks like the fluffy ears," she laughed, before the smile fell from her face. She looked away from him. God, she missed her friends.

"And Damien?" Mitzu pushed, wanting to see [Y/n] reminisce again. It brought him some sort of satisfaction, though he himself didn't really know why. [Y/n] shrugged.

"Doesn't matter," she mumbled, shaking her head. Mitzu simply stared at her in response to her stubbornness and raised an eyebrow. She met his gaze with a blank one of her own, clearly stating that she didn't want to talk anymore. After a moment of silence, Mitzu huffed and gave up, standing up from his seat on the side of the bed and holding out his hand for [Y/n] to take. She stared sceptically at first, not really sure of what he was thinking - was he mad at her for not answering?

"Come on," Mitzu rolled his eyes, a small glare being sent her way, "I have something I want to show you." In [Y/n]'s experience, one of the boys wanting to show her something was never good, so this only increased her apprehension. He raised a brow at this. "I'm not going to snap your arm off," he groaned, waving his hand up and down a couple of times to gesture for her to take it. Eventually she did so and he pulled her out of bed. The duvet slid off her and partially onto the floor but he didn't seem to pay much attention to it.

His grip on her hand was solid but not harsh; he led her out of her room and down the painfully familiar corridors of the house in the direction of his own room. [Y/n] couldn't help but notice the place was quite quiet. "Where is everyone?" she muttered.

"Laion's working with Rayne for a little, Draka is spending the morning with Ray, Aytsa's in his room, Kori's... somewhere, I didn't ask. Seishin's with Kaist, I think," he explained. The fact that the boys now had free roam of this kingdom [Y/n] had only seen glimpses of was strange. Before, they'd all been trapped in this place. Now it was just her.

Eventually they got to Mitzu's room. He pushed the door open and the plethora of musical instruments revealed themselves. As the door shut, the soft twang of a few instruments that reacted to the vibrations ricocheted from one wall to another, before fading out to silence. Mitzu gestured for her to sit on his bed and, with a moment of contemplative hesitation, she did so.

He picked up a viola from the corner of the room, along with a bow, and checked the tuning. He tweaked a few strings although [Y/n] couldn't really hear a difference in how they sounded before and after tuning - she supposed he must've had an extremely sensitive ear to such things. Then he started playing.

It was beautiful.

It was so beautiful that slowly she felt herself sinking into a trance, the low notes creating a pit in her stomach and the high notes pulling on her heartstrings. So many emotions through a piece of music, before something strange began to happen. Her focus was shifted from what was in front of her and she was taken back to a time before all of this. A time with her friends, though she was crying. Perhaps the setting was after the occasion, or perhaps—

It took her a moment to realise why she was tearful. It was red, so red. It was painted on the walls. It dripped from the ceiling. It drowned her in guilt.

Her friends were hardly recognisable. Their faces were mostly peeled clean off, their arms too— she could see the bones. She could see their muscles; their skeletons; their hair torn from their heads and strewn across the floor. The girl she presumed to be Tara was missing an arm - her body was bent awkwardly around a wooden stake that fully impaled her. Sally was in much worse condition, however. Her stomach had been cut open and her intensities wrapped around her throat. It was clear she'd died of strangulation before blood loss or shock, however, as the little skin left on her face was an unmistakable purplish-blue colour, even under all the blood. Damien had been stabbed multiple times and dismembered, his head somewhere different to his body, though [Y/n] couldn't locate where.

She slowly turned around after hearing a sound. It was raspy and filled with hate.

Damien's decapitated head lie lifelessly behind her, his eyes glazed over, his lips slightly parted. And then, those lips - those deathly pale lips - started to move.

"Why?" they asked. "Why?"

"Why?" The voice turned to two, and then to three. The three corpses of her friends. They asked her again and again. "Why? Why?"

"I'm sorry," [Y/n] whispered, "I'm sorry— I'm so, so, sorry," she said over and over again, hoping they'd stop asking. Hoping they'd understand. Sadly for her, they never did. That one three letter word echoed again and again and she tried her hardest to block it out but to no avail.

"Why?"

They got louder and louder until suddenly, there was silence.

The irony tang of blood and death in the air had vanished, and she was left hugging her knees to her chest, crying into herself, whispering "I'm sorry."

Slowly she turned her gaze to Mitzu, realising the trauma was over, and so was the piece he was playing on the violin. That beautiful piece... she wanted to be sick.

He stood up and walked over to the corner of the room, placing the violin back where it had been before. [Y/n]'s lips parted to ask him why he'd done what he did - why he'd shown her something like that. Hell, how he'd showed her something like that was on her mind too, but that wasn't a priority. Still, as much as she wanted to ask, no sounds left her.

Mitzu slowly turned to face her with eyes cold as stone.

"Never leave me again."