DISCLAIMER: Skip Beat! belongs to Yoshiki Nakamura.

A/N: This is part of the same AU as my old fic "Sacred Lie".

~ Bad Magic ~

The boy glares at his mother, violet eyes flashing.

"You're a liar!" he yells. "I hate you!"

The woman turns and runs inside the house, leaving her four-year-old child outside alone, not bothering to stop and pick up the blue stone from where he dropped it into the dirt.

The boy is still standing in the same spot when his father comes home.

"Cain," the man says. "You need to apologize to your mother. What you said really hurt her feelings."

"She should apologize to me!" the boy spits. He points to the stone on the ground beside him. "She lied. She said it was magic but it's not, it's the same as everything else in the world!"

Before he has time to wonder about what the boy could mean by that, the man notices that the child is sunburned.

"You should come inside, even if you're not ready to make up with your mom yet. We need to get some aloe on that sunburn. Have you been standing outside all day?"

"I don't know why you care," the boy says, not moving from where he stands. "You're not even my real dad."

Cain sees shock stamped on the face of the man who has been pretending to be his father all these years. It is nearly identical to the expression his mother wore when he told her he hates her.

"How do you know...?" fake-Dad puts forth hesitantly.

"From the memories that are soaked into the stone."

And for the first time since the child's birth, 'Dad' realizes that Cain inherited more from his real father than just his eye color.

The boy's psychometry is strong... and to him, the whole world is a source of pain.

~oOo~