Laion had watched the door for a little while, nervously awaiting [Y/n]'s return. The longer she took, the more anxious he became. Had this been a bad idea? He'd find out when she came back, he supposed.

Eventually a short-ish man with cropped brown hair and hazel eyes opened the door, dipping his head respectfully to the prestigious guards that manned the door. He turned to look at Laion. Where was [Y/n]?

"Sir, the king requests that you return to your quarters now," the hazel-eyed butler said quietly, seemingly caving under the weight of Laion's green gaze.

"Alright," Laion dipped his head, "where's [Y/n]?" He peered through the door behind the butler, his eyes narrowing as he tried to locate the [h/c] haired girl. The doors shut behind the smaller male, which only caused Laion more confusion. He cleared his throat when his question went unanswered. "Where's [Y/n]?" he repeated, firmer this time, though there was obviously a little panic in his eyes.

"[Y/n] will be transferred from your care to His Royal Highnesses'."

Laion stared blankly at the butler for a while, his shoulders slowly dropping. His eyes clouded over and his lips were parted ever-so-slightly. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts, but even then he couldn't move. He stared at the door, his breathing slowly deepening. After a while, he felt a presence behind him. He turned around lethargically to see Erda reaching out to place his hand on Laion's shoulder. Laion brushed him off immediately, a scowl now contorting his countenance.

"You should leave," Erda voiced calmly, his russet eyes seemingly staring right through Laion. It was unnerving to say the least.

"Why?" Laion spat back, mustering the little courage he had. "I won't leave without [Y/n]."

"Then you wish to disobey direct orders from the crown?" he questioned. Laion glared. "If you truly desire to do so, at least prove yourself of some worth," Erda said easily, the words rolling off his tongue like honey. Despite his obvious threat, he had a singer's voice, each word holding its own melody. Laion's own voice was certainly smoother before Rayne had assaulted all his senses with the smell of his basement. The chemicals and rot certainly hadn't helped him.

When Laion didn't react, Erda huffed and decided to show exactly what he meant. He pulled his chosen weapon - a spear-like object with a secondary blade on the side of the wood - from behind him and held it out in front of him. "Do you have a weapon with you?"

"I don't fight," Laion said shortly, which earned a laugh from Erda.

"You talk so big, though you seem to have nothing to back it up. You should have a little dignity," he scolded.

"Sir, that boy works under Rayne. Asking for dignity is like asking a siren to stop singing," another of the guards muttered. He was the second tallest of the group (under Erda) who's long dirty blonde hair was braided behind him all the way down to his lower back, with misty blue eyes and a solemn gaze. Laion recognised him as Ren, the Patrol General.

"I am nothing like Rayne," Laion hissed indignantly.

"Then pick up a sword and prove it, boy," Erda taunted. Laion's gaze flicked to Zeron, who seemed to be smugly enjoying the show. The last guard of the four, a lithe looking man with thick black hair and a couple of canisters of some liquid attached to his belt, finally stepped forwards.

"If the boy was like Rayne, he'd have a coat and a scalpel," he hummed. "He doesn't advertise who he is. He doesn't hold much pride about him, either. In my eyes, he appears to be worried about his friend. That is all."

"Yerin, you try too hard to see the good in people," Ren shook his head.

"You don't try hard enough," newly named 'Yerin' responded, earning a scolding glare from the man he'd insulted. Ren was about to speak up, when the click clack of high heels brought all the guards to attention. There was only one female elite, and very recently had she been given the powers of Queen Regent in Nyais' absence as neither Jay nor Erda wanted to be murdered if/when Nyais returns. Of course both she and Olli knew that it was a when, not an if, and when Nyais returned he would receive his title once more. This still made her the first Queen Regent, and she certainly wore it with pride. The girl in question approached the doors, sending a brief glance at Laion before turning her gaze to Erda.

"Mira," Erda smiled, "come to see the king?"

"No," Mira shook her head, "I've come to tell you to leave this boy alone." Upon closer inspection, there was something amiss about Mira. Though she still held her authoritative, prideful air, she seemed a little... distracted. "Beating up one of Rayne's apprentices is surely not something you'd take pride in. And if someone tries to take you down, you might need this boy to save your life someday." Laion dipped his head respectfully at Mira.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, his voice unusually quiet. She shrugged it off, beckoning for Laion to head off. With his head low, he scurried away from the four stronger individuals, not wanting to stay and get beaten to a pulp.

* * *

Draka sat back on the sofa, allowing a groan to leave him. "Laion isn't back yet," he observed blandly. For once, Seishin didn't shoot a deprecating comment at Draka after he spoke. He simply stared over in the direction of the door. Mitzu had gone into his room and refused to show himself, looking unsure about something or other. Aytsa was at work and Kori placed a book back in the bookshelf, his finger trailing over their spines to pick another out. After finding what he was looking for, he turned to look at Seishin.

"Laion is useless. No doubt he'll arrive having made some other stupid error. Maybe she'll have stabbed him again," he grinned. Seishin tilted his head.

"Is that why you insisted we let her have the knife back?" he questioned, though he already fully comprehended Kori's reasonings. As much as he hated to admit it, he and Kori were quite similar — they both held intelligence in high regard and enjoyed to mess with people. Only Seishin was higher up on the intelligence scale, and Kori was higher up on the... insanity scale. Seishin, of course, viewed himself as fully sane. He'd only fed one person to ravenous dogs in his entire lifetime. At most, that's one graphic killing every two months. See? Not insane at all.

"Something like that," Kori shrugged, "though I figured it might serve as a... home comfort," he grinned. Seishin raised a brow, though concluded he'd allow Kori to have his fun, deciding not to bother too much.

The click of the front door sounded and all three boys in the living room became alert. Heavy footsteps plodded through the house, before stopping at a door close to the living room. Seishin stood up, walking out into the hall to see a drained-looking Laion.

"Did you get stabbed again?" Seishin smirked, raising a brow. Laion turned away and ignored him, pushing his door open. Seishin hated being ignored - this was manifestly self-evident - so he took it upon himself to jar Laion's closing door with his foot and glower down at the boy. "What happened?" Seishin hissed.

"[Y/n]..." Laion whispered. "She... she's with the king." Without another word, Seishin grabbed Laion's wrist and pulled him from his room, dragging him down the corridor again and into the living room. He threw him in like a bag of waste, where Draka and Kori gave the pair confused and concerned gazes.

"This fucking idiot," Seishin began, his eyes dark as he stared down at Laion, "managed to hand [Y/n] over to the king." The curious expressions of the other two boys in the room slowly changed. Kori was suddenly unreadable, which likely meant he sought after blood. Draka visibly tensed, his fist clenching. Mitzu appeared in the doorframe, walking into the room and finding a place on the wall to lean against, staring at Laion, who was convinced this moment was going to be his last.

"So how did it happen?" Seishin hissed. "Care to explain yourself?"

Laion looked down, letting out a sigh. "She said she wanted to see the king, but I assumed that he would laugh and turn her away on site. T-then she'd realise that... that no one else will help, and that—"

"You assumed?" Kori interjected, his finger still holding the page of the book he was reading, though his attention was fully torn from it now. "Do you know what happens to people who assume things?" he asked. "People always assume the best. If you expect that everything will be completely fine, you're not going to live very long." Laion narrowed his eyes.

"Well maybe... maybe [Y/n] will be happy now. Without us, I mean," Laion snapped. Of course that's the total opposite of what he felt. All he wanted was to have her back - to keep her close at all times - but maybe, just maybe, if he got the others to come to terms with her being happy in her 'new place', he'd be able to get them to forget her. And then he could have her to himself.

"With the king? Are you out of your mind?" Draka put in, raising a brow. "Do you know what that man is? Do you know what will happen if she and Olli get close?" The conversation comes to a halt when the front door is heard again, slowly creaking open and then clicking shut. At last, the final presence had arrived - Aytsa stood in the doorframe of the living room.

"Something tells me this ain't a party," Aytsa laughed dryly.

"Congratulations, you've finally learned how to read the room," Seishin snidely commented, "a shame you're still lacking in the 'common sense' department." Aytsa rolled his eyes at Seishin's antics, his eyes lazily drifting over to Laion, who was being glared at from all angles. Seishin clicked his tongue, causing Aytsa's gaze to snap back to him. "You're not at work; howbeit?"

"How be what now?" Aytsa raised a brow.

"It means—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know what it means, smart ass," Aytsa crossed his arms over his chest, "but you using 'howbeit' is even worse than Laion's habitual use of the abomination 'shan't'," he muttered, leaning back. "To answer your question, Rayne sent me home because the king called on him." The raven haired boy placed his hand on the door handle, about to pull the door shut as he decided to leave them to do whatever strange interrogation they were doing, but Seishin quickly strode forwards and grabbed the boy's wrist. Aytsa looked back at him and let out a slightly bitter laugh. "I know you love me, Sei, but don't you think you're being a bit forward?"

Seishin stared at him with a bored, disappointed expression before letting go of the boy's wrist. "What did the king want?" Aytsa was confused as to why Seishin seemed so grave about the question.

"Why should I tell ya?" Aytsa grinned, tilting his head to the side. Seishin only seemed to grow angrier, which made Aytsa all the more determined to rile him up.

"Because Laion lost [Y/n], and now the king has her."

Aytsa's posture slowly straightened itself, the playful grin on his face dropping and transforming into something more sinister. He turned to look at Laion, an unnerving stillness about him.

"I don't really remember what Rayne said to me, but I gave him a stack of empty blood packs and the needles for a cannula." He paused. "Ah... he was saying that he was excited about Olli finally having an interest in... medicine? I think?" Aytsa rubbed the back of his neck, thinking back to the strange way Rayne had behaved before sending him home.

Aytsa looked up to the sound of hurried footsteps down the stairs to the basement. The door swung open and, along with a beam of blinding light, Rayne burst into the room. He was studying a letter in his left hand and agitating some mixture in a conical flask in his right.

"Who's it from?" Aytsa questioned, peering over Rayne's shoulder at the letter, though it was quickly moved from his sight.

"King Olli," Rayne said shortly.

"Ooooh, fancy~" Aytsa hummed, walking back over to the dead person's arm he'd been practicing surgery on. Not conventional, but a great way to learn. Rayne huffed, placing the letter in a Bunsen burner, allowing it to crumble to ash, before clicking his fingers at Aytsa.

"Stop what you're doing and get me these things," he said abruptly, pulling a notepad from his lab coat pocket and jotting down a list of objects and solvents for Aytsa to retrieve. Aytsa looked at them curiously, though he was even more curious about the beginnings of a grin on Rayne's face, which only grew more prominent as time went on. Rayne brushed off the curious look by walking away, though Aytsa's gaze followed him and he was forced to turn around and explain.

"The king finally has an interest in humans," Rayne observed, said grin growing brighter. Or darker - as his eyes couldn't emote, it was hard to tell. Aytsa hummed as though he was interested, though now his curiosity had faded away and he was trying to find the anti-coagulating solvent buried under a million other random bottles of liquid.

"Humans," Aytsa blurted aloud as he remembered what Rayne had said. The room cast him a strange glance.

"Hi Rayne, didn't know you could possess people," Draka laughed dryly. Aytsa huffed but ultimately ignored him.

"Rayne said Olli had an interest in humans," Aytsa clarified with a pointed glance at Draka. "Wow Laion, I knew you were a living, breathing fuck up but now I'm wondering if you're a natural disaster," he groaned. And with the subject brought back to Laion, the room turned their gazes to the cornered boy once more. Seishin cleared his throat, stepping forwards to Laion.

"As much as I'd love to rip out your throat right now, and as much as I hate to admit this... we'll need your help. If you don't want to give it, that's fine. I'm sure Erel's corpse would love a companion," he muttered.

"Is that why you didn't kill me after I got stabbed?" Laion questioned. Seishin looked confused for a moment, before he realised what Laion was talking about. Either Rayne had told him or Laion was amazing at pretending to be asleep. Either way, he didn't really care. He shrugged.

"No, I didn't kill you because you looked pitiful. It's like sparing a starving newt," Seishin said darkly, "though I certainly wouldn't class you as a newt. Even a gnat has more integrity than you," he drawled out, lazily rolling his shoulders. "Oh... I said I wasn't going to tear out your throat, but don't get the wrong idea," he added, taking another step forwards and slipping his knife from a pocket in his jeans.

"I do still want you to know how deeply I loathe you."

* * *

The flickering of the light above suggested someone had just tried to switch it on, which was fruitless as the light had never worked properly, but supposedly it had been activated to add some psychological horror to the male's already grotesque stay in his own basement. Nyais stared up at the flickering lights. The bucket was still tied to his chest, though the rats had all perished and most of his wounds had closed. The person coming downstairs wasn't Aytsa - he could just about make out Seishin's particular patterns (breathing and length of stride). The blonde appeared, his usually-pristine grey shirt now splattered with blood.

"Who else have you been "meeting with"?" Nyais questioned dully. Seishin looked over at the bucket with a curious gleam to his eyes, before returning his gaze to Nyais.

"No meetings. Just a... disagreement," Seishin muttered, using his knife to cut the rope around the bucket, then staring at it in confusion when it stayed stuck to his chest. He pulled on it, realising there were spikes in the rim that also held it to Nyais. The brunet male let out a pained groan as the spikes were pulled out of him. Seishin allowed the bucket of dead, decaying rats to sit by Nyais' side.

"So, what do you want? I thought Aytsa was your hired torturer," Nyais mocked, a slight rasp to his tone thanks to the pain, though there was little interrogation in his words.

"Oh, I just want to relay something to you," Seishin hummed, leaning down to meet Nyais' eye level. "[Y/n]... she's not as perfect as you think. She's forgotten all about you. She chose to live out her days with the king," Seishin laughed bitterly. Nyais gave him an incredulous look, though only for a moment as it quickly faded to a more relaxed expression.

"Good for her," Nyais shrugged, his gaze now unwavering as he pushed away the pain, "she escaped you."

"And you," Seishin added darkly. Nyais thought on that for a moment. He gazed down at the ground, his expression turning ponderous.

"Maybe so."