"Really, Somehow, I'm Not Surprised... Why Am I Not Surprised?"

Eika hadn't been expecting much when she'd dived into Ryosei's soul realm, but she certainly hadn't been expecting... THIS.

I mean, she knew that he was a neat freak but this was... a little much for her. Seriously, how can a person's mind be so perfectly organized like this? In all her years of traversing the mindscape, Eika had seen a lot of stuff, from fractured, manic minds to slow, slippery ones and everything else in between—but not even she had seen a mind as perfectly smooth as this one.

Currently, Eika was surrounded by pure white.

Now, perhaps that doesn't sound that odd, but to Eika whose own mind was a mad explosion of color and fractured lines and thoughts that were constantly rearranging themselves into yet another new ensemble of ideas, such stellar blankness was... uncomfortable. She was mad, and in her madness she was quite comfortable—so immersing her own unstable subconscious into such a, a sane mind was... different.

If she had to compare his mind to anyone's, it would be her father, surprisingly enough; both of their minds seemed at first glance empty, but in reality were incredibly orderly and neat—but if Ryosei's mindscape reflected his somewhat neat-freak nature, her father's was an endlessly black void of boundless wonder; it was a mind that devoured everything, regardless of resistance or any other factor or personal preference.

Ryosei's mind was cold; her father's mind was merciless.

Still, in seeing the smoothness of the blank ethereal plane that stretched before her into seeming eternity, she really wasn't surprised; Ryosei's touch to his physical environment was always exceptionally clean and well-organized, a sense of perfectionism coming from him as he lived in the house and studied diligently as college student, which was in stark contrast to Eika, who much preferred to leave a messy, but somehow coherent living environment that only she or others who understood the depths of her warped mind could navigate.

"Really," she muttered to herself as she began to walk to where she sensed Ryosei's consciousness, "somehow, I'm not surprised... why am I not surprised? Oh wait, cause it's neat-freak Ryosei, with the perfect grammar and dignified handwriting and impeccable room who goes to bed at nine o'clock sharp, that Ryosei..."

She started wondering if this kid was actually a college student.

Aren't college students transcendent beings who have overcome sleep and covet caffeinated drinks whilst they slog endlessly through assignments and classes? She found his sleep schedule ridiculous in its regiment-like orderliness.

Oh.

Was that why he hated her willfulness? Because there's no real rhyme or reason to it?

"... This autocratic punk..."

'Doesn't he know how much I hate maintaining a troublesome and unnecessary regime?!'

Eika suddenly and vividly felt the intense desire to stomp her feet around the floor of his mindscape—I mean, his subconscious would naturally find her faster and she might be kicked out of his mind, but she knew that doing so would cause one Hell of a nasty migraine and to Hell with it all, she was feeling particularly sadistic as of this moment.

The idea was becoming more and more appealing to her by the minute when she stiffened. 'There,' she thought as she sensed his emotions, 'he's over there.'

She walked in the general direction where she sensed him to be before stopping abruptly; she had approached his minds emotionscape, a valley of blank white that suspiciously seemed similar to snow. Eika took a deep breath, before breaking the boundary of his emotionscape.

Pain.

Loneliness.

Fury.

Resentment.

Sadness.

Longing.

Bitterness.

Anxiety.

And guilt.

So much guilt, that she was suffocated with heartache.

A thousand emotions smothered her intensely, memories that were linked to the emotions running through her head as she staggered forward. She may be a demon who ate extreme emotions to continue her existence, but emotions were nonetheless a hassle to sort through, especially when her own emotional state isn't necessarily... let's just say, high-quality, or better yet, stable.

"And everyone claims you're the stoic ice type? Yeah right, that's a load of fuxxing bull—" Eika hissed with pain as her own memories rose up, making her pissed at the whole situation even more; she hated feeling troublesome emotions like pain, or grief. They always reminded her of what she lacked instead of what she had.

Eika was someone who wasn't lacking in the slightest in concerning the material aspect of things, and lacked almost everything in the immaterial, especially the emotional.

Such invasive emotional stimuli from her charge was like turning the faucet to a severely blocked pipe; it overwhelmed her rationale and clamored to infect her emotions.

Gritting her teeth, she forged ahead, stilling her emotions with a grasp of iron and stubbornly moved to find her troublesome charge; she was going to make him pay for making her reflect on herself and how she really was after this was all over. She squint her eyes, her dual colored gaze rummaging for any hint of Ryosei's consciousness, so that she could bring it back out of the subconscious.

After what felt to be an eternity for the emotionally exhausted demon, she discovered the small sound of sobs and sniffles. Casting her eyes about frantically as she desired to be free from something she considered her personal Hell, she ran towards the source of the sound, only to stop when she heard words that reminded her of a time she'd rather forget, of a picture that she wished to ignore.

There was a small, young boy who seemed no older than twelve years of age. His expression was hidden beneath a fringe of unusually pale ash white hair, the only hint of his distress in the tightness of his jaw and the pull of his mouth.

At first, she only saw a broken, stubborn Ryosei, but as she slowly and cautiously approached him, a scene trinkled into existence around him, and details to Ryosei became less hazy and subdued.

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It was raining around the young child who was as silent as the gravestone he faced, and splotches of brown, green, yellow, and purple lined his bare arms. Eika recognized them as bruises, as she had also been dealt with many as a child herself.

He was wearing a white t-shirt and gray jeans, an outfit that was hardly appropriate for the weather that poured down upon him, but he exhibited no sign of cold or fever in his stance; he was just silent, and still, his dull ocean eyes drilling into the slab of stone before him.

"Why..." his lips that seemed to be sealed with iron finally parted, a scratchy and emotional voice emerging from his throat in a manner that seemed genuinely painful. He swallowed what seemed to be a lump in his throat and continued his labored and pained speech.

{"Why... Mom. Mom, why did you... why did you leave me?"}

He swallowed again, his teeth gritting before his voice grew into a crescendo, resentment and terrible grief coloring his once pretty ocean blue eyes black.

{"Fuyumi is scared all the time, crying every night, and that man has gotten more violent towards me. Mom, why did you marry that man?! He hates me and obsesses over Fuyumi! Why did you leave? Where are you, Mom!"}

Tears dyed his eyes a blue color once again, the sadness in them uncomfortable for Eika to witness as a memory she longed to bury forever rose up, an exchange similar to this one playing out in her mind.

"'Mommy, won't you wake up? Papa misses you a lot, so please, please wake up!'"

{"Mom! Where are you going? Why did you leave me? Where are you?! Don't- *hic*- don't you love me? Mommy!"}

"'Papa, do you love me?'"

Eika flinched when Ryosei fell to the ground, his shoulders trembling with emotion as he broke down into sobs, the scene of her own younger self curling up into the corner of her room as she silently sobbed overlapping with his similarly broken visage.

"Really," she muttered, her soft voice hidden beneath the blanket of rain sound as she stared at Ryosei with empty and dull eyes, "why is it always the broken ones... why do I always choose the broken ones..."

Eika sucked in a deep breath, stilling her afflicted hearts before entering his memory that he was locked into, approaching the felled Ryosei.

She kneeled down next to the kid as he continued to sob, letting him express his pent up grief a little longer before she finally spoke up, her calm, but gentle voice cutting through the rain and into Ryosei's young, tender heart.

{"Those are the wrong words, kiddo."}

Ryosei's sniffles and sobs quieted, his attention honing in onto the words of a stranger that seemed oddly familiar—this oh-so mysterious stranger that had chose to crouch down next to him of all people.

{"'Please don't leave me' and, 'I love you, so please come back' are the proper things to say, the things you want to say, aren't they?"}

Ryosei peeked through his messy bangs and out from over his bruised arms to glance at the women next him, his eyes widening as he saw white hair and a complexion similar to his father's in the visage of an entrancingly beautiful, but hauntingly familiar women.

Her eyes, one a familiar red and the other one being a foreign black eye with a golden star engraved in it, turned to peek at him from under her long white lashes, a sad smile blossoming onto her too-perfect face that was foreign to him as she whispered with a voice like his own mother's halted lullaby, {"Right?"}

Ryosei's sad ocean eyes trembled as he faced the mysterious woman fully, and with a tremulous voice stuttered through his sobs, {"W-will I e-ever g-get through th-this?"}

The woman smiled sadly again, her otherworldly eyes turning up to the raining sky and closing, as she hummed her answer in that lullaby voice of hers.

{"Who knows? Do we ever truly overcome grief? What is overcoming grief? How do you know when it's overcome? I can't answer such a personal question, as I am an entirely different person from you; whether you overcome your grief is up to you. Personally, I hate grief, but in a way, I suppose it's a blessing of a sort—you never get out of grief without changing, but whether or not it's a good change for you, is up to you and you alone, isn't it?"}

She released a heavy breath, a cloud of mist rising from it in the cold air before she turned back to Ryosei, a friendly but pained smile on her face as her hand rose to muss with his hair. Ryosei gave a sound of protest at the woman's strength, his eyes opening to glare at her before they widened in surprise at having that too-perfect face suddenly being too close to his own.

His cheeks grew hot with embarrassment as the woman parted her lips to finish what she wanted to say.

{"Grief is the price we have to pay for love; remember that, Ryosei. Remember how much you loved your mother, and hold that close to your chest; carry that through your grief, so that when the hard times are over, you will still love your mother dearly."}

Eika released Ryosei, her gaze affectionate as she said the final words that finally broke Ryosei from his grief.

{"Don't worry darling; you'll still love your mother when you wake up, and Fuyumi will still love her brother. If you want to atone for your sins, then you need to wake up—Fuyumi loves you, you idiot. See you when you wake up, little Ryo."}

Eika turned to leave, her black coat clad figure beginning to fade away from Ryosei's view before he cried out, rising from his defeated position, {"W-Wait! Who are you?! Will we ever meet again?!"}

Eika spun around, a charmingly mischievous smile on her foreignly perfect face peeking through her long tresses of pure white hair that seemed to shine with unearthly light.

The difference of her appearance was because in order to invade a persons mind, Eika needed to send a fragment of her soul into the other persons subconsciousness, resulting in the true appearance of her original body and not her borrowed homunculi body to shine through, as she laughed in a voice that could make one drunk.

{"Me? Why, I'm just a suspicious onee-san that you'll meet formally when you're all grown up! If you wanna see me, wake up, you silly little boy!"}

And with that, the soul of Eika departed from the mind of Ryosei, leaving a star-struck little boy in the rain.

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As he recalled her urging to wake up, he turned back to the grave where his mother laid, his young eyes calmly and fiercely staring down on the older him that hugged the grave desperately.

{"What are you doing, holding onto that?"}

Ryosei did not respond, only gripping the grave tighter before he stiffened at the next words his younger self said.

{"Are you going to leave her all alone again?"}

Ryosei's grip on the grave loosened, his sad ice blue eyes turning to gaze into the determined ocean blue eyes of his younger self.

His younger self opened his mouth again, his hand reaching for the adult him who had suffered much in his life, and declared with a steady voice, {"I'll take care of things here, so you go back to her, okay?"}

Silence hung in the air for a little while longer, the drizzling rain coming to a stop finally, as the older Ryosei reached for his younger self.

It was time for him to wake up—for the sake of all of the other people waiting for him in reality.