He had to be dreaming.

"Hey," she smiled awkwardly, hands behind her back as she stepped shyly through the door.

He could only stare.

"So, um…"

He blinked a few times.

"…uh… How's it going?" she attempted.

"What are you doing here?" he spat out in surprise.

He had curbed his voice at the end, trying not to sound hateful, but she still cringed. "Um…"

He flinched.

"Well, you know that modeling thing? The one the girls asked me to do, with all of you guys?" She took a breath. "Um, so, you're injured."

"I can tell," he muttered spitefully. She winced, and he flinched again.

She took another shaky breath and looked away. "Um, so… the modeling thing. Right. Um, we decided that we couldn't cancel it—the public's already crazy clamoring for it—but we have to either delay it or let you out."

"Let me out?" He glared at her, trying to force her to look at him.

"You know… just take you out of the thing. You didn't particularly want to do it anyways." She shrugged, turning her head back towards him but not focusing on his face. "It's your choice."

He stared at her, suddenly, horribly reminded of someone very different from the angel in front of him.

"Either you do what we say…" the man hissed quietly, "…or she will."

The boy's muscles tightened, ready to spring.

"I'm sure she'll be willing to comply. After all… we could always use the same tactics with her as we do with you." The man smirked predatorily. "She has many more openings for threats, my dear boy. One of them being you."

"Why the hell do you want her?" the boy retorted, ignoring the jolt of fear. "What the hell could she give you?"

"We know about her. Did you think you could hide it from us forever? That beautiful, rare Alice," he mused, with an enraptured tone in his voice.

The boy glared at him.

"You work for us or she works for us."

The boy gritted his teeth.

"You die or she dies."

The boy shut his eyes.

"It's your choice."

She sighed heavily as she shut the door of the car.

Truthfully, she wasn't entirely sure what she had gone to see him for. It only brought back memories. Not good memories. Once she was in the room, she didn't know what to do or say. She could only stand there awkwardly.

It didn't exactly help that he was staring at her like he didn't know who the hell she was and why the hell she acted like she knew him.

She sighed again and put her head in her hands.

So, of course, she made up something on the spot. The first thing that came to mind was "the modeling thing". Wonderful. And all that stuttering!

And she called herself a professional.

To be fair, even professionals were generally human. If only to boost her ego, she reminded herself that even professionals would be upset by the image of a heavily injured friend, whom she had seen in the same situation too many times before, with blood seeping through his clothes, and a pained, twisted, fighting expression twisted onto his face, while a dark-haired dark-eyed dark-hearted man stood watching them in the corner, his own expression patronizingly, coldly amused, and the boy in the bed would jerk up, wincing, and the man would toss him some pills—those f***ing pills—and the boy would glance at her before shoving the pills down his throat, and all she could do was bite her lip to keep her silence, wanting to protest but afraid of the iciness of his face and the metal against her skin when he screamed at her the last time she tried to stop him, and she felt numb even as the lack of care in his glance heated the spitting furnace of fearful rage in her, and he would gracefully leap through the window, and she would run to it—late, late, so f***ing useless—and press her head against the wall and choke back a wet cry for help as she watched him sprint off, and she would turn and slide down the wall, shuddering, until a nurse took pity and sent her back to the dorm.

Mikan woke up with a cry of anguish.

Not the best start to a day.

She clumsily wiped some sweat off of her forehead—not that it was much help; her palms weren't much drier and the rest of her body felt sticky as well. She spread a hand across the flat area right below the base of her neck, willing her heart rate down.

Once she deemed herself relatively calm, she sat up and leaned against the headboard, feeling strangely lonely in the huge bed. She closed her eyes, but when blood-soaked black flashed in front of her, she jerked them back open.

It had been awhile since then.

"I'm sorry…" her uncle whispered, his head in his hands, elbows on his desk, liquid leaking down his arms.

She wasn't sure if she was supposed to respond.

"I'm sorry…" he shuddered again, bringing his head up to stare dazedly at her. "Sorry, sorry, sorry…" His eyes and nose and cheeks were an ugly pink.

At that moment, Mikan chose to notice the dimness of the room, and the lovely crimson curtains covering the windows.

"Sorry…"

She was glad. She didn't think she could endure sunlight at the moment. She tried to distract herself from the lack of sorrow she felt.

"I'm sorry, Yuka," her uncle muttered, head back in his hands. "I'm sorry, brother."

She pushed away the horrible disgust creeping up her back. She couldn't feel that way about her uncle.

Thankfully, there was a sharp knock on the door. An unfamiliar man stepped into the room. He ignored the high school principal and turned directly to the girl. "Sakura-san."

She nodded stiffly.

"There is a matter of importance I must discuss with you."

How incredibly pretentious, she mused. So formal. Why couldn't they just tell her? She already knew he was dead.

But she followed the man into the hallway anyway.

"Concerning Hyuuga-san…" the man muttered, barely audible. "He's alive."

She froze.

No way.

No way in hell.

She had just seen him die, right in front of her, witnessed his face paling and his body cooling, and this idiot had the nerve to tell her he was alive?

She offered him a short, harsh laugh.

"I'm not lying, Sakura-san. I swear. He came back to life. He's sleeping now."

She turned with a swirl of her skirt and stomped away from him, fuming, trying desperately to ignore that prick of hope.

"I swear by my life, Sakura-san! He's alive!"

She hesitated before sprinting away, towards the hospital. She couldn't stop the tiny, clawing beast in her chest, clamoring for attention, forcing her to confirm…

She skidded into his room, breathless.

He was alive.

Alive.

Alive.

She savored the word.

"Mikan-chan," a playfully dark voice breathed from behind her.

She spun around.

The tall, dark man beckoned slowly with one finger, a sly smirk crossing his face.

She shivered, but followed him out, refusing to cast one weakened glance back at the boy in the bed, breathing calmly.

He was breathing. That was enough to calm her for the moment.

The man abruptly stopped, turned, and bent down towards her face. She stubbornly didn't back away.

He laughed softly in her face.

She shrank a little.

He smoothed some hair back, tucking it behind her ear. "Mikan-chan… we're going to need you to keep quiet, 'kay?"

"About what?" She was horrified to hear her voice tremble.

He seemed ecstatic. "About this period of time…"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Our dearest Natsume-kun has recently been in a rather bad condition, because of some unfortunate circumstances that… harmed him repeatedly over the past month."

Unfortunate circumstances? she fumed. As if you bastards didn't send him on mission after mission, hoping—knowing he would eventually slip up and be injured fatally!

"Of course, we hadn't expected his revival… It's incredibly difficult to play with an uncooperative toy, you know." He ran a thumb over her lips as if to emphasize his point.

She refused to back down, glaring in hatred at him. Did they really think she didn't know that he was purposely being sent on death missions because he was rebelling too much?

"He really only became unruly after he met you…" the man whispered. "He needed to be re-controlled, darling. Much like you." He kissed her.

She couldn't move, much too horrified. The kiss only lasted a second before he pulled away.

"Of course, he's been through so much… If you ever brought it up in front of him, he may go crazy. It would be terrible if that happened, wouldn't it? You don't want him to go crazy, do you?"

She remained in mute revulsion.

"And, of course, he can't be sent on too many missions either."

Finally, getting to his point.

"We'll need a replacement."

She nodded.

He smirked and kissed her again before he walked away. "Remember, Mikan-chan. Silence."

When she finally worked out how to move again, she robotically marched to the bathroom, determined to scrub off all traces off him. She looked in the mirror, and her eyes widened.

Scrawled across her collarbone in incredibly fine, death black print that seemed to be bleeding outwards, in such a way that she could read it through the mirror, there was a simple message, a message that faded as she instinctively activated her Alice in fear.

"10:32 tonight, my Dying Flower."