Author's Note: In 2012 I started working on this story. Currently 25 chapters exist, yet it's still a work in progress and since I'm lacking free time updates will be quite irregular. Still, I hope some of you are interested in this story.

The first chapters are all very short, but later chapters are much longer and darker, focusing mainly on the description of eating disorders, (traumatic) past experiences, depression, and therapy. Please understand this as a trigger warning and don't read this story if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Characters featured in this story are America, North Italy, fem!Russia, England, Liechtenstein, Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, Spain, Belgium, Tony, fem!America and much more.

Last but not least, I'd like to thank my beta Catherine for her quick and encouraging beta service!

{ 01. | Welcome to Sunny State }

Sighing indignantly, the 16 year-old American took his new sneakers out of his travel bag. The pair had barely been touched until this morning, when the nurse who checked Alfred's stuff decided that ripping out the laces was an absolute necessarily. Now the poor sneakers had a remarkable resemblance with a callously eviscerated pig.
"No laces? Are you kidding me?!" was Alfred's only comment on the matter. Bewildered and angry, he put the pair of shoes in the wardrobe allotted to him. He really had to get out off this place! He did not need people in his life who stole his laces and waited in front of the bathroom while he was inside. This was simply unacceptable!

Swearing like a trooper, Alfred put the rest of his clothes into the tall, wooden wardrobe. Beads of sweat began to appear on his forehead. This room felt like a sauna. The heat was almost unbearable, yet Alfred doubted that he could ever sweat away all his excessive body fat.
Vigorously he crossed the sparsely furnished room and grabbed the window handle. Outside a lonely late summer day presented its gray face; neither sun nor rain kept him company. Alfred found that the window was secured, which made it impossible to fully open it. It could only be tilted. The clinic seemed to place great value on security. There were even bars in front of the window! As if he would ever be able to squeeze through the damn window..!

A tiny breeze slipped into the room where dead air, the sharp odor of disinfectants, and the sickening smell of old canteen food had been vegetating for far too long. Enjoying the fresh draft, Alfred closed his eyes. He had promised himself to stay positive and to handle things the way he always did: optimistically. Yet knowing that his parents put him in this hell-hole because they thought he had a problem made it hard to keep his attitude alive.
Problem?
Alfred did not have a problem! He simply did not allow himself to have any problems for there was no place for his problems in his family. If only he had been more careful! If only he had managed to guard his secret a little better, then his parents would have never noticed something was wrong with him and he would still be at home...

"Ve...?"

Alfred's eyes snatched open. With his hand still on the window handle, he turned around and saw another boy, probably his roommate, standing in the door. Alfred was not surprised. When he had entered the room about 10 minutes ago, he had seen many silent witnesses of another human's existence. Clothes, books, magazines, and some other items were spread across one of the beds. Hence, the all-important question was not if he had a roommate, but what type of guy his roommate was. Since Alfred considered offense to be the best defense, he let go of the window handle, grinned and offered the other boy a greeting hand.

"Hey, dude!"

The boy's brown eyes grew wide with astonishment.
"I can't believe it! I've got a new roommate!" Smiling wholeheartedly, he spoke with a welcoming Italian accent and joyfully shook Alfred's hand. His warm eyes shined so bright that Alfred felt caught like a deer in the headlights.

"God, I'm so excited! No-one told me you'd come! My name is Feliciano!"

To be honest, Alfred was amazed by Feliciano's enthusiasm. Energetic and friendly, the quick speaking Italian was the kind of company Alfred had hoped to meet, so it would be easier for him to keep his own spirits up. Feliciano seemed to be one of those guys who were happiest lying in the sun, dedicating their free time to laziness and napping.

"Have you unpacked your stuff yet? And what about the ward? Have you seen it? I mean, it's small, like really small, but we have a living room here where we can watch telly and most staff members are actually very nice. Say, what's your name?"

Alfred felt a little dizzy which was entirely Feliciano's fault. While talking, Feliciano had been running through the whole room. First, to have a glance into Alfred's wardrobe -and consequently answering the unpacking-questions for himself. Then, he had circled twice around Alfred, before he had finally stopped and closed the window.

"Uhm... yeah, no, my name's Alfred. And I've just opened that window..." Alfred's last remark fell upon deaf ears. Feliciano just kept on smiling and babbling.
"Welcome to Sunny State, Alfred! I'm so happy to meet you. You've no clue how scary it can be here at night. Do you see that tree over there?!" Without turning around, Feliciano pointed at a tree growing outside in the park. "Whenever the wind's getting a little stronger, the damn branches of this tree scratch over the windowpane! I swear, it sounds like a monster digging through the glass!"

"Hey! Don't worry, dude! I guarantee you, next time this monster shows up, I'll take care of it."

Relief kissed Feliciano's face and erased every hint of his fear. Alfred did not have the merest idea why his roommate was caught in this clinic. Feliciano looked quite ordinary in his thick, cozy sweater. His hair was a crazy brown mess that did not need taming, his face was lively and his openmindedness convinced Alfred that his roommate was doing so fine that he was probably released in a few days.

"So, how are things here?" Alfred asked casually.

"We have to get up at 6!"

"6 in the morning?" Alfred could not quite believe his ears, but Feliciano's eyes had stopped gleaming and his smile was nowhere to be found anymore. So he must have spoken the truth.

"That's terrible, isn't it? I'm always so freaking tired in the morning. I mean, how can you not be tired at 6 am?"

"But-but why?" Shock made Alfred stutter. Then his anger set in. "They can't just throw us out off bed, can they? That's inhuman! Don't we have any rights in here? Like the right of sleeping in!?"

Silence was Feliciano's answer, followed by a slow squint. Then the cheerful smile returned to his lips, but it was not as bright as before. He had just realized that Alfred did not bother to gather any information about the Sunny State clinic in advance. Alfred had, in fact, ignored whatever his parents had told him about the clinic. Ever since he had been sentenced as an inpatient, all he had been doing was creating the perfect strategy to leave the clinic as quickly as possible. He even gave the strategy a name: operation "Fake for your life!".

"You know, every morning we're getting", Feliciano bit his tongue while his gaze wandered restlessly from one corner of the room into the other. When he met Alfred's eyes again, he took a step forward, put a hand on Alfred's forearm and lost a whispered "weighed!". The word made him rather uncomfortable, and Alfred shared this feeling. Instantly, his ears and cheeks turned a deep crimson color, and Alfred swallowed hard for his throat was suddenly dry as a desert. Haunted by the echo of Feliciano's voice, Alfred did not even protest when he was dragged out of the room.

We have to get up at 6. We're getting weighed!
Weighed!
This was pure torture!

Following Feliciano, Alfred quietly shook his head to get rid of the burning redness occupying his cheeks. It did not work, though. Instead, persistent self-doubts took control over his thoughts and made him realize how big he actually was. Compared to the fragile Italian, Alfred felt horribly fat and clumsy. If only he was not overweight...

While Alfred wished he still had his old feel-good weight, a chattering Feliciano led him through the harshly lighted corridor. The boys passed the nurses' room, the dining room and the living room. The relatively short corridor accommodated only a small number of doors. All of them were closed, so Alfred could not estimate how many other patients were currently imprisoned here.
Finally, Feliciano stopped right in front of a door. Next to the door, a small sign hung on the wall, informing Alfred that this was the room which from now on would ruin Alfred's mood daily. It was the room with the scale in it.