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Post by YUKI MORII on Jul 14, 2010 22:49:21 GMT -5
The boy was huddled under one of the counters in the orphanage's kitchen. His knees were drawn up, and his arms were drapped around them. Warm blood rolled down along his jaw, soaking into his pants. Yuki didn't care, his clothes were stained as it was. What did some more blood stains matter? Nothing mattered right now.
The previous day he'd been too caught up in hating every adult in the world, the cut on his jaw, and then the encounter with the doctor. His seventeenth birthday had completely slipped his mind. Who knew if this was his actual date of birth, or a date that his foster parents had made up? That didn't matter either, Yuki was getting older either way.
A scream tried to tear its way out of his chest, but he pushed it down. The last thing he needed was any of the other orphans finding him in this state.
He raised his head long enough to rub a hand over the blood on his jaw. Yuki looked down at his bloody hand and blinked. Wasn't this a little like deja vu? The previous day his jaw had been bleeding in the same place, and his hand had been covered in blood just as it was now.
When he'd woken up and realized what date it was, he'd torn at the scab in frustration. It hadn't taken much to make the little wound bleed again.
His dark eyes were wide, and looked nearly unseeing. One more year. He had one more year of staying at the orphanage, where he now had a purpose...then they were tossing him out on his ass. He would be all alone in the real world. And worst of all...he would be grouped in the same category as those monsters, those adults.
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Post by Dr. Gene Menelaus on Jul 14, 2010 23:32:22 GMT -5
For once, I should leave things well enough alone...
Perhaps if Gene repeated the thought over and over, he'd come to his senses and return to his office, or even his room for a night's rest...instead of searching the entire Orphanage for a child who nearly attacked him yesterday. It seemed a futile search. Each wing yielded no sign of the foreign boy, nor did he seem to be in the gardens or lurking in the corridors. He'd even (after trying to talk himself out of it,) checked the basement. Nothing.
"I shouldn't worry," he murmured. "Perhaps he wishes to be left alone..."
Or he could be lying somewhere in pain. He'd never asked what had caused the wound on his chin in the first place.
"That couldn't happen now!" He gritted his teeth against the ideas in his head. The cruel teachers and staff were either gone, or in no condition to harm anyone. The children might get into fights, but none of them would do serious harm to their fellows, would they? The Shadow man was the only unknown element. He had found Yuki near the basement doors, hadn't he?
At last he entered one of the few places he hadn't checked--the kitchen. At first it seemed as empty as it was untidy. He thought to give it a cursory glance and leave. He didn't see Yuki huddled under the table. He stepped inside a little further, enough for the boy to see his boots on the kitchen floor.
"Hello? Is anyone there?"
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Post by YUKI MORII on Jul 15, 2010 23:08:07 GMT -5
By the time the doctor made it to the kitchen, Yuki's shoulder's were shaking, and the blood on his chin was starting to dry. The boy was upset to the point where he felt as if he was going to get sick. His stomach twisted unpleasantly, and he nearly dry heaved. There was nothing in his belly that he could puke up anyway. Yuki shook his head as if to clear it, then froze when he heard and saw the doctor's shoes.
The eyes nearly buldged out of his face when he recognized the voice that went with those shoes. The doctor?! Of all people?! The person who found him couldn't have been an orphan?! If someone was going to see him like this anyway, he just wished it'd been someone he could relate to.
Hell.
Emotional pain welled up in his chest and unwillingly a sob burst from his lips. And then he couldn't stop. It was as if that first sob had released the others. Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down his face, mixing with the blood covering his skin. He'd really become like one of those people the sent to those hells they call insane asylum. Yuki felt as if it were now official...he'd gone completely mad.
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Post by Dr. Gene Menelaus on Jul 16, 2010 22:16:47 GMT -5
The sob exploded from beneath the kitchen counter. For a moment, Gene thought it was a ghost, or some other unearthly creature. He stumbled back to the wall and pressed his back against it. As if that would help him. He whipped his head around, looking fearfully for a sign of a spirit, or even a person.
He saw none. The sound, however, continued, quiet and pained. Was someone here? The doctor's expression softened from fear to worry after a moment. Something about the sound was familiar as well...
When he moved a little closer to the table, the sound was louder. So he slowly knelt to see if someone hid beneath it. Be it child or ghost. He swallowed hard, prepared to see anything. Or at least he thought so. His eyes widened--at first in shock at the bloody, grieving boy, and then his mouth dropped open when he recognized him. The same one he'd been looking for all day. To find him in such a state... for a moment, he had no words.
"Are you... what happened to you?" He meant to sound comforting, but the words came out flustered. They were the best he could manage at the moment. He flushed even more when he realized that 'that question,' had popped out of his mouth. Oh, well. At least the answer wouldn't be something he had no control over, or feared to go up against.
He hoped, at least. Part of him wanted to lay his gloved hands on Yuki's shoulders. He even began to...but then paused, leaving his trembling fingers to hover in midair. He could rarely ever bring himself to touch anyone.
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Post by YUKI MORII on Jul 21, 2010 11:01:40 GMT -5
The boy's eyes had closed, as if he were refusing to see the doctor, refusing to believe he was even there in the first place. His mind was filled with thoughts, though it was as if there was no thinking going on at all. They all stumbled over one another, bouncing off the inner walls of his skull. More sobs burst from his lips, and salty tears burned at the cut on his jaw as they soaked into the blood that had begun to dry.
'Are you... what happened to you?'
Black-brown eyes snapped open at the words. He'd expected a soothing tone, a string of fake words that were meant to bring him to trust the adult. However, Dr. Gene's tone did not matched either of those descriptions. This caused Yuki to believe that the words might just have been genuine. His chest went still and the tears slowed as his eyes widened, focused on the man kneeling before him.
Yuki saw the doctor's hands lift, then saw them hesitate. He couldn't help but flinch a little, not because he'd nearly been touched, but because the touch had never taken place. What was the matter with him?! Since when did it bother him that an adult kept their hands off him? He inhaled quickly, the air pulled shakily into his lungs.
"One more year. Just....one...."
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Post by Dr. Gene Menelaus on Jul 24, 2010 21:49:46 GMT -5
"One more year until...?"
A sudden bit of courage flamed up in him. Not enough to reach out and touch the boy, but to ask: "Is one of the other children harming you? Or the...the Shadow Man? Those times are past. No one should have to endure them now." The words came slow and edged with guilt, but he was tired of seeing them suffer. All of them. He'd seen too many children pass away or become twisted by violence.
This one...if he became another unmarked grave in the little cemetery...
Gene swallowed hard. For some reason, he'd rather lay there himself than see this boy there. Even if he didn't know him beyond their strange interaction the other day.
He looked at him steadily. "C-can you tell me what happened?"
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Post by YUKI MORII on Jul 26, 2010 16:02:37 GMT -5
Large nearly-black eyes stared at the doctor, focused on his gold hair, the hands that had reached for him but then dropped away. Was Dr. Gene Menelaus too disgusted to touch him? That couldn't be the case, because the doctor had touched him just the previous day. Though that may have been a necessity dues to the wound on Yuki's jawline. Some of the tension in his shoulders had eased, and the tight hold he'd had on his knees had loosened considerably. Yuki Morii now simply looked as if he were in a sort of shock.
He could feel himself slipping, close to the boundary between shock and what had been named catatonia approximately a decade ago. Yuki remembered having read about it in a book by one named Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum. Die Katatonie oder das Spannungirresein was the name of the book, though of course it'd been translated from German to English, or he would have been unable to read it.
Even so, Yuki had read less than half of the entire volume. He'd gotten his hands on the book somehow, either from the library or somewhere in the city -- the boy couldn't quite recall how.
'Is one of the other children harming you? Or the...the Shadow Man? Those times are past. No one should have to endure them now.'
Yuki's eyes refocused on the doctor, returning from the corner of his mind that he had wandered into. "No....no." He shook his head again, making sure that his meaning was clear. Yuki did not want Dr. Menelaus to think one of the other orphans guilty, responsible for the state he was in at the moment. Nor did he want the doctor to think the Shadow Man was to blame. There were some mixed feelings on that particular subject --the doctor and the Shadow Man-- feelings that he would take the time to analyze later.
Maybe.
"I have only another year of childhood."
The boy rubbed a slightly shaking hand over his face, over his eyes. Luckily the blood on his hand had dried enough to keep from staining his eyelids. Yuki looked down for a moment, took a deep breath, exhaled...then looked up at the doctor again. His expression now was slightly guarded with a hint of accusation. "...I will be one of you."
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