━━━━༻ ♠ ༺━━━━ memory 00101100 ━━━━༻ ♠ ༺━━━━

The balance was breaking. That much was apparent when (Y/n) returned to the manor to find it silent yet laid in a scene of destruction. She saw the dented doors of the elevator and smelled smoke as she began to go up the stairs. She frowned. That's weird. Who broke the elevator?

Whatever had happened, it meant she'd have to use the stairs to go all the way back up to the third floor. She'd been expecting Jaehyun to stop her once they reached Kieran's floor, but instead, he merely smiled innocently at her and bid her a warm goodnight. The smile raked shivers up her spine—even though it looked kind, knowing the blond it signaled something the opposite of kind.

Back in her room, she closed the door tightly and then pressed her ear against the other door connecting her room and Kieran's. Was he in there? The manor was awfully quiet when she returned. Something bad couldn't have happened to him...could it?

He wasn't in his room. She had no idea where he was, but at least that meant she'd have this time to herself. No random people popping into her room and interrupting her sleep. They were all repeat offenders of that crime.

Speaking of missing people, she wondered where Jasper was. The navy blue-haired male hasn't tried to contact her at all these past few days, much less try to kill her again. The memory made her gulp and her neck throb.

She tried to open the window only to find it locked, though one of them was pushed up just a bit for ventilation. She couldn't push that window any higher. Well, it'll have to do.

"Jasper!" She called out as loudly as she dared. She half-hoped he would be scaling the side of the building like Spiderman, just like the last time she saw him. But he wasn't there. "Jasper?"

Only silence and the faint chirping of birds and crickets met her call. Mist clung to the delicate iron bars of the window like spider silk. Night was like a dark horse with a flank of unadulterated velvety twilight, with a single moonshine eye that blinked open and shut with each passing cloud. Its blue-black mane left streaks of color across the black-gray clouds.

Through the tear in the sky where the storm clouds parted, (Y/n) could see the glimmer of the stars glaring down at her. The sight filled her with regret; there were so many things she could've done better and so many things she could've done to turn this future into a nicer one. But (Y/n) ultimately was not the monster the Bellua Project tried to create; she was only human. And humans made mistakes. Small ones, big ones, and terrible ones. Humans were not gods; they couldn't change the past.

But they could learn from it to change the future.

The next day, (Y/n) awoke to utter chaos. When she finished freshening up and stepped out the door to resume sneaking around, she was met with hallways strewn with broken paints and porcelain fragments. Puddles of water winked under the ceiling lights against the cold marble floor. The fresh blossoms that once stood proudly in the vases now laid pitifully on the floor, their petals ripped off their broken stems and trampled upon.

Are indoor tornadoes a thing now? Should I be worried? She picked her way over the rubble, wincing when her foot crunched down on glass. Good thing she was wearing shoes with thick soles or the bottom of her feet would no longer match the color of her skin. Glass shards are a pain to get out. Literally. Especially the smaller ones.

Other than the obvious destruction, the hallways were quiet. She peeked into Kieran's room to find the white-haired male still missing. Did Leon kill snowman and they had his funeral last night without telling me? Then again, they aren't that nice. They'd probably toss his body into a dumpster or something.

She checked the rest of the rooms. Again, nothing. She followed the trail of ruin—the shattered glass, torn books, overturned furniture, and broken doors—only to find room after room of quiet emptiness. No one was there. Weird.

(Y/n) decided to go all the way down to the elevator. Screw finding them. Maybe it was a good thing she couldn't. Maybe they got tired of her switching the milk jug with the bleach every day in the fridge. Maybe they finally realized how little sh*ts she gave about them and decided to flee to the Philippines. Did they like the Philippines? She didn't know.

She stood in front of the ruined elevator with a small frown. It was no longer smoking or sparking but it was completely and utterly destroyed. There were also no stairs down to the basement, at least none that she's seen. How was she going to get to Reese?

Wait, isn't this like, really bad? Wouldn't Reese wither away down there?

She thought for a moment.

Oh well.

(Y/n) doubted Tristan wouldn't have a backup plan in case the elevator failed and he had to walk all the way up to his floor from the ground floor—it was more like a penthouse, to be fair. There had to be another way down to the basement, and knowing the fact that there were a few secret passageways in this place, courtesy of Kieran, there might just be one that matched all her needs.

Time for a scavenger hunt, folks.

As the colors of day bled back into the landscape and the sun climbed higher and higher into the sky, (Y/n) was flipping over tables, pulling down tapestries and paintings, and punching walls and bookshelves to see if there were hidden rooms behind them. She went through all the common switches; removing or returning a book from a shelf, pushing a specific stone in the dungeon—technically there was no dungeon here—and looking for trap doors under rugs.

She did manage to find a few, but none of them were stairs leading down to the basement or a spare elevator. One of them happened to be a room (Y/n) was pretty sure she wasn't supposed to talk about and belonged to Kieran since the things in it were questionable at best.

She turned her weary gaze back towards the staircase. She really hoped she wouldn't have to search through all four other floors. That was way too many brain cells to be used and energy to be wasted for her to handle. Besides, the only logical place for a possible alternative entrance to the basement was on the first floor or more unlikely, Tristan's floor. Why build a long staircase all the way up there? That was dumb. Just like pineapple on pizza.

I suck at finding things, (Y/n) scowled internally as she shimmied between the back of a couch and the wall. She squeezed back out of the nook and brushed the nonexistent dust bunnies off her hoodie. I feel like a waffle now.

After finding all sorts of weird things she never thought she'd see in a high school dormitory—from hidden bunkers to underground aquariums, like who needs that—(Y/n) decided to call it quits. Or at least, take a break until she got her next dose of motivation. Hard work was not a phrase in her dictionary.

She snuck back upstairs lest someone caught her snooping around and made a big deal out of it. If there was one thing she learned from this ordeal, it was that her running around switching the salt and sugar always ended badly for her. And (Y/n) thought she needed therapy. They needed to see the inside of a freaking asylum.

Okay, maybe she does too.

But just as she was about to climb the flight from the second to the third floor, she heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening and closing behind her. She immediately ducked behind the banister even though it wouldn't do much good with all its bars and such.

It was Leon. The black-haired male looked terrible, to say the least. Dark circles hung under his eyes and his silver-white eyes were now shades duller than before. His shirt clung to his frame and one sleeve was ripped off. Dust and burn marks scorched the once clean fabric, and she swore she also saw bloodstains. Band-aids and bandages were apparently in season now, since he seemed to be wearing them a lot these days.

That was a joke. Don't laugh.

Desolation clung to him like a toxic black mist, turning any atmosphere it touched into a despondent one instantly. It was an infectious mist. Everything and everyone it fell upon couldn't help but be plagued by his distress as well.

He looked like he'd been out in a brawl of sorts, only to return home in defeat. No—it was far worse than that. He looked like a man whose everything had been seized from him and then he had been torn apart and forcefully stitched back together.

(Y/n) wore her scars on her chest. He wore them on his sleeve.

The monochrome male didn't notice her at first. But when he did, his unpolished metallic gaze resting on her with the beauty of old, decaying buildings lost eternally in a timeless embrace, he broke down all at once. Despair—then desperation—washed over every harsh plane of his face and made him stumble towards her even as she pulled back, before sinking to his knees.

The sobs were muffled at first as he attempted to hide his grief. His hands curled around her wrists and he bowed his head, still reaching up to her chest. Then, unable to hold back against the hurricane of emotions raging within him, he shattered.

All his walls and pretenses washed away with that terrible storm and flowed down his cheeks, even as his face remained a stony mask with a hint of sadness. A shudder ran through him as she settled onto a knee and awkwardly patted his back. She didn't like him, but even she wasn't so cruel as to turn away from someone who was the literal definition of grief and devastation.

He curled into her touch, resting his forehead on her shoulder. While he could easily crush the smaller girl with his frame, he looked like he'd come apart if she hadn't been there to hold him up.

"F-f*ck..." the male choked out, still hiding his tearstained face. Still hiding his weakness. "What the f*ck am I supposed to do now? Without Connie...I'm nothing. F*cking nothing."

"Conan?" Her brow furrowed in concern and she let her hand rest on his broad back. An edge of urgency entered her voice. "What happened to him?"

Just when she thought he'd trust her with his vulnerability and open up to her, the mask was back. The shutters came slamming back down as he walled off his emotions behind an indifferent mask. It was how he coped until everything was okay again. It was like he didn't know any other way.

Leon shook his head and his hands slid up to grip her by her upper arms. "Connie's...fine," he rasped, his voice hoarse from choking back so many sobs. A steely edge reentered his voice as his natural instinct to put others before himself kicked in. "Don't worry about it. I'm fine, as long as I still have y—"

He cut himself off and pain flashed over his face. He turned his face away from her and shook his head. "Nevermind. Anyway," he cleared his throat, "w-when was the last time you've eaten?"

Although he was the one suffering from whatever had happened to his brother, his sole family member left in this world, it sounded like he was trying to comfort her. To erase her worries and push her back into a dreamland. He wasn't the first to try it and although (Y/n)'s never realized it before, she sure as hell recognized it now and she wasn't having it.

She pulled away and made him look at her. "I get that you don't want to talk about it, but you're trying to do that thing again where you redirect the topic away from yourself. Keeping it all in for too long is unhealthy, bro, and you've obviously been doing it for a long time."

Okay, she did say she sucked at pep talks for normal people. Now how was she supposed to pull off a pep talk for abnormal people? With extra rambling, of course!

"So don't be worried about me. Look at me, I'm beginning to look like an actual potato with how fat I'm getting. I have eaten actually, thanks for asking, but you look like a skeleton."

She eyed his arms. They didn't look very skeletal. "Uh, a buff skeleton in your case. Same difference. Point is, worry more about yourself. You look like sh—um, I mean, you look pretty bad."

Way to be subtle, (Y/n), she scowled at herself. Ever heard of delicacy?

That also wasn't a word in her dictionary. She was a terrible human being.

Fortunately, Leon didn't seem to mind her choice of words. He seemed to deflate and his miserable attempt at a reassuring smile fell off his face.

He looked down at his hands in his lap, looking like a lost puppy. "I wonder about that," he murmured. He clenched a hand into a fist. "Connie...there was an accident, and now he's not doing so well."

"An accident?" Then it hit her. "You mean the elevator?"

He confirmed her suspicions true with a nod. "I should've been there when the elevator broke down, but I wasn't. I managed to get him to the hospital but he's...he's—"

He covered his face with his hand, but not fast enough to hide the tortured expression that filled his face from her eyes. "Connie's in a f*cking coma, and the doctors don't know when he'll wake up. It could be months or years. What the f*ck am I going to do...?"

Instead of the rage and frustration (Y/n) was accustomed to hearing in his voice and seeing in the way he held himself, all he had now was loss and melancholy. She's never seen him so broken before and honestly, it made her feel a little out of place. She wasn't sure how to help him. Was it even her place to try? She was never the empathic one; she didn't know.

The answer was obvious: she couldn't help. She wasn't the person who could solve his, or anyone's, problems. She wasn't the person who could make things better. In fact, she considered herself one of the many people on the P4 hate club member list.

But even so, she was the person who could sit there and listen. A person to talk to, or a person who'll just be there to make them feel less alone. (Y/n) has spent enough time with Conan to feel the impact of Leon's words in her chest. It felt like someone had dealt a blow to her chest. She could only imagine how it must've felt for the black-haired male.

Maybe this was her cue to lead him to his room and surround him with pillows and blankets, bringing him tissues and hot chocolate with marshmallows whenever he needed it. That might've worked if Leon was any other person and they were in any other situation.

They weren't. Stockholm Syndrome much? At the end of the day, Leon was the guy who killed one of her BEST friends. She'd offer him her condolences and give him a pat on the back. Not a hug—she wasn't that type of person. And that was it. She had no obligations to do more than that. If she didn't start employing that kind of mindset, she might start to get too comfortable here and become blinded by their human masks.

Remember, this is all for the tomato rotting away in the basement as we speak.

Even if she wanted to comfort him, she didn't have the chance to anyway. Leon recovered in a flash. He seemed to have come to a decision as the tension in his face cleared up. He gripped her arms, starling the (h/c)-haired girl.

"This has to be Knight's fault," he growled, his pale eyes wild with fury. "It has to be. No one else is capable of this sh*t. He f*cking distracted me, and it's not like he hasn't threatened me with Connie before."

An unhinged look settled upon his face and his smile, his first smile in what felt like forever, bordered on the line between fury and plain insanity. (Y/n) felt her heart drop. Freaking cheese-doodles. I'm screwed.

"Yeah, it has to be him," he said again, his grip on the (h/c)-haired girl tightening, even as he seemed to be looking right through her. "He keeps getting in my f*cking way"—an indescribable fear suddenly filled his face—"He's going to hurt you too. He's going to try to take you away too. F*ck if I'd let that happen."

(Y/n) cracked an awkward smile in response. "Okay, I know my pep talk is trash and I should never become a therapist in the future, but I think with your case you need rehab instead, so please don't be doing what I think you're—"

Her words fell on deaf ears as suddenly, they were moving. Well, she was being dragged as usual. "Can we please not do this again?" (Y/n) wailed as she was forced to jog after the male to keep up. "I seriously can't—ack!"

Either Leon got fed up by her complaining or felt a moment of guilt because he picked her up without slowing. Her heart literally fell out of her chest as she was suddenly higher off the ground than she preferred. It looked like a pretty uncomfortable fall.

"Uh, I can walk, you know," (Y/n) tried to say as she watched with wide-eyes over his shoulder the hallways fading behind them. She could say a lot of things about the guy but she couldn't say his height made him slow. "So, um, can you put me down?"

He ignored her as he thundered up the stairs, stopping only to fling open a door, revealing all three Furies in one room. Though to be fair, Tristan wasn't looking so good. (Y/n)'s eyes bugged out of their sockets as she saw the usually crisply-dressed male lying in a bed in his pajamas with his leg in a cast.

Kieran was actively making fun of him but who cares about that. (Y/n) needed another second to burn the image of Tristan looking so pitiful into her memory.

Damn.

"Why are you here, back for more?" Tristan curled his lip in disgust. His attitude was intact even if his leg wasn't. His eyes flickered to the (h/c)-haired girl for a brief moment, but it was enough for Leon to catch it and get the wrong idea.

"I'm a f*cking idiot for trusting you," the black-haired male snapped, ignoring his taunt. "I bloody believed you'd keep your f*cking word. But you're a power-hungry son of a b*tch who can see nothing but money and power. I was a fool for believing that you were human. You're nothing but a goddamned, heartless machine."

"Ooh, sh*t's about to go down," Kieran jeered. He threw himself into a chair and stole the bag of cookie's Jaehyun had been eating.

Tristan bristled. He pushed himself to a sitting position and placed a hand on the nightstand as if he was about to stand up even though his leg was broken.

"I'm no longer surprised that you're once again quick to accuse me," the male growled. "Though I have no bloody idea what you're talking about. You break my leg and then the next day you come in here to insult me. You're getting overconfident, Matthews. I have no use for someone who bites the hand that feeds them. Rabid dogs must be put down—"

"I don't want to listen to your excuses, you f*cking sh*thead!"

"Ohhh sh*t!" Kieran leaped out of his seat to narrowly avoid getting caught up in the fray as Leon lunged for the blue-haired male. Jaehyun squeaked as he was knocked over from the sudden movement from the other male. He'd only been trying to get his cookies back.

Kieran looked down at the blond and a sh*t-eating grin spread across his face. He waved the bag out of the boy's reach tauntingly. "You want this, Jay-chan~? Come and get it then~"

Jaehyun scowled as his fingertips brushed the bag, only for Kieran to pull it away at the second. "I hate you, Kieran!"

"Aw, shucks. You make me blush~" He spied the (h/c)-haired girl who'd been dropped unceremoniously at the entrance. "Never expected to see you here, princess. But hey, who am I kidding? I'm not complaining. You look cute today. Did you miss me already?"

As Kieran started to run towards (Y/n) who was dreading having to put up the loving act again, her savior came in the form of a golden-haired angel. Jaehyun knocked the taller male out of the way and ran over to her instead, hissing at anyone who tried to approach. His face lit up before exploding in flames when he realized their outfits matched.

He pulled another bag of cookies out from the pockets of his hoodie and offered it to her with a bright smile despite the fight going on in the background. "Cookie?"

(Y/n) karate-chopped images of the man in white away from her mind and plastered a smile onto her face. "Great, I love cookies!"

She popped one into her mouth. Chocolate chip. How I wish I was allergic to them right now.

"It's not my fault your brother ended up in the hospital," Tristan hissed as he avoided Leon's blows with surprisingly good agility, even with his compromised leg. Though to be fair, Leon's swings were much sloppier in his blind rage. "I had nothing to do with it—when will you get that into your thick skull?!"

"There's no one else but you! As much as I want to strangle the f*ckboy"—Leon flung a hand towards the white-haired male who was excitedly watching the fight with his stolen treats—"He wouldn't pull this kind of sh*t! Neither could the brat over there—he's too f*cked up to even think straight!"

"Hey!" Jaehyun scowled, crossing his arms. "I'm going to take offense in that."

(Y/n) let out a sigh of relief. Good thing it was angel Jaehyun today instead of the other one. Split personalities were confusing.

"Since you're not willing to listen to reason I'm not going to hold back either." Tristan pulled off something (Y/n) could never do in a thousand years as he managed to make Leon lose his footing, freeing the blue-haired male from being pinned to the wall.

Tristan massaged his sore arm, his expression darkening by the second. "Your brother's accident is entirely your fault, Matthews. In the end, you have no one else to blame. You're the one who almost got him killed. I warned you when he was coming you had to keep an eye on him—none of us are going to play babysitter for you. You knew the dangers but you decided to keep him here anyway."

"Oh yes," Tristan walked up to the furious male and pushed him harshly, making him stumble back. "You're the one who put him in danger. You're the one who forgot about him and now he's in that mess. You're the one who wasn't careful enough and because of you, he could've died."

"You think I don't f*cking know that?!" Leon shouted angrily, knocking a lamp and a few cups off the nightstand beside him with one vicious swipe. "I have to live with that for the rest of my f*cking life if Connie doesn't wake up. You'd have no bloody idea how that would feel. All you care about is killing your f*cking dad, and now that you've achieved that, you're going to get rid of the witnesses. Which means"—he seized Tristan by the collar and threw him across the room—"You're going to try to kill (Y/n) too."

This drew the attention of everyone in the room. Except for the girl in question who was busy choking on a cookie. Something dark flashed over Jaehyun's face and he stood up, his hand falling back to his side from where he was patting (Y/n)'s back.

He gave her a sweet smile. "Bathroom break. Be right back." Then he skipped outside, leaving the door wide open.

Kieran threw a cookie in his mouth and rearranged his features into his signature smirk. He pretended to fan himself. "Ugh, the tea is piping hot in here. Sh*t just got real."

(Y/n) finally stopped trying to cough up her guts. She turned him in confusion. "What?"

"They're just having a lover's quarrel," he shrugged. "Nothing for you to worry about, princess."

That earned him a chair to the head, one that he managed to catch at the last possible second. "Watch the hair! It—ugh, fine," Kieran grumbled and rolled his eyes. "Continue ignoring me even though I've taken such great care of you, Trish-chan. Great."

She stared at the bowls of cereal filled with something she was pretty sure wasn't milk and the bottle of rat poison on the ground. Great care indeed.

"You shouldn't be so careless, Fujikawa," Tristan called mockingly over his shoulder as he ducked under Leon's heavy swing. "You might not feel pain but death is a real threat to you. And I heard it isn't very pleasant."

Kieran only smiled wider. He tossed the now empty bag to the side and spun a fork between his fingers. "Is that a threat?"

"It's whatever you see it as—"

"Looking away from the fight is going to get you f*cking killed, you a**hole!"

(Y/n)'s long given up on trying to stop their fights. Let them tear up their home for all she cared. But first, let her stop coughing first.

What the hell was in those cookies?!