AN: Although I should be taking this time to update other things, in the spirit of Halloween I decided to write this thing instead. Technically, it's a late Halloween story, but still, only by like, ten minutes!

Just so everyone knows, I don't usually write horror and this will be about my first forage into the genre so please be gentle. Constructive criticism is welcomed though, as it helps authors like me improve greatly. Flames, however, will be ignored so please read the warnings below before continuing.

Warning: contains gender-bending (but only Tsuna), disturbing themes (i.e. psychotic people) and AU If any of these things make you squeamish or uncomfortable, please press the back button now!

Disclaimer: I do not own KHR. If I did, 10027 would probably be canon.

The gods must have cursed Sawada Yukio on the day she was born. How else could she explain getting lost in the city she had spent her entire life in and then having her cell phone promptly die on her when she had tried calling for help?

"Why does life hate me so?" She asked, to no one in particular, perhaps hoping said gods would hear her.

She mourned for the loss of the day, most of which she had spent trekking through miles and miles of forest. Luckily, it was still early spring so there were few, if any bugs out. If there was one thing Yukio hated about nature, it was the bugs.

"Stupid father, telling me to get up early for a hiking trip he had already canceled and forgetting to tell me until after I got off the bus," she grumbled under her breath, yanking at the ends of her long brown hair that she tied back in a ponytail.

She glared sullenly at the tree branches in front of her, brushing them back as she walked deeper into the forest. Lucky for her, she had remembered to wear jeans and a long-sleeved jacket that kept the stray branches from scratching at her skin. She sighed, wistfully thinking about how she would have spent her day if her stupid excuse of a father hadn't thrown her for a loop.

She would start the day by eating breakfast with Fuuta. Her younger brother would tell her about the latest rankings he had done, whether it be on the cutest stuffed animals on sale or the cheapest place to buy fresh vegetables and she would listen, quickly wolfing down her breakfast when she realized it was almost time for her tutor to come over. The home tutor that her father had hired, Reborn, was a tall dark man with the strangely curled sideburns who always wore a black two-piece suit and a fedora whenever he came. Reborn frightened Yukio, even more with his Spartan-like training that he claimed would "help her in the near future".

"More like kill me in the near future," she muttered, absentmindedly rubbing her sore shoulder where she had fallen down the stairs after setting off one of Reborn's traps there. "What kind of home tutor sets traps in their student's home?"

But after Reborn left, Yukio's two closest friends would come over and that would always brighten her day. She had known Gokudera and Yamamoto since they were in junior high together. She had befriended Gokudera after saving him from getting hit by a car and Yamamoto when she had managed to stop him from committing suicide after he broke his arm and couldn't play baseball for a month.

She could always tell the two of them were coming over by Gokudera's loud voice as he yelled at Yamamoto to stop following him to Hime's (a nickname Gokudera had given her after she saved his life, refusing to call her anything else) house. Yamamoto, of course, would laugh which would irritate Gokudera even more and make him go on an even longer tirade until Yukio appeared. The three of them would then head off to the town center, or the park or maybe even the river--whatever they felt like doing that day.

'I could be at the park playing baseball with Gokudera-kun and Yamamoto. Fuuta too, if he felt up to it and then maybe Kyoko-chan and Haru-chan would come around too and play. Gokudera-kun wouldn't like that though he and Haru-chan always fight. After that Kyoko-chan's Onii-san would appear out of nowhere, probably doing some sort of extreme exercise, as he would call it.'

Yukio chuckled at the image in her head and suddenly became despondent. 'But all of this is just a daydream if I don't figure out how to get back.'

She looked around her, trying to see if there was anything familiar. She had gone into the forests around Namimori before, but now she was in so deep she could barely distinguish the sun through the interlocked tree branches.

She sighed again, her head drooping. 'This is just my luck. I get stuck in the forest alone with my cell phone dead and having absolutely no idea where to go.'

Tears began to sting her eyes but she brushed them away quickly. She was a grown girl for goodness sakes, she would not cry! If Reborn saw her like this, he'd no doubt make her go through double the rounds of hellish training for looking like such a weak and pathetic damsel.

'I'll get out of here,' she told herself resolutely. 'The forest isn't that big, I'll definitely reach town soon.'

But even thinking that made no difference. If her memory wasn't wrong, she had just passed by the same whitened oak tree for the third time. She slumped to the ground; despair welling up in her chest.

'That's it I'm lost. There's no way I'm getting out of here, I'm just dame Yuki after all.'

The nickname had haunted her since junior high and continued to stick to her, despite her (very gradually) rising grades and improved, larger circle of friends. It had been the one thing in her past she had been trying to escape from but here, alone in the forest with the hundreds of trees pressing down on her ominously, every single bad memory about her "dame" days were coming back.

"Dame Yuki, can't you even throw a ball properly?"

"Haha, dame Yuki tripped again!"

"Dame Yuki's such an embarrassment. I can't believe she's still willing to show her face here."

Biting her lip and vigorously shaking her head, she dispelled those memories from her mind shaking them away like pesky insects. 'I'm not like that anymore,' she kept on telling herself. 'I'm not dame Yuki anymore, I'm not!'

While she was convincing herself of that, she had started walking again, her feet taking her perhaps even deeper into the woods. But soon, she stumbled (literally) into a clearing. When she looked up after pulling herself off from the ground, she saw a sight that made her jaw drop.

An elegant white mansion towered above her, at least with four flours and two wings branching out from the main house. Yukio was dumbfounded. There was a mansion in a place like this? Who lived here? It didn't look abandoned, if the newly cleaned windows and properly hinged, large oak front doors were anything to judge by.

'Must be a rich hermit or something,' she thought as she dusted off the dirt on her jeans. 'I hope they have a telephone I can use.'

She began walking towards the mansion; it's white exterior seeming strangely out of place in such a wild and untamed area.

She knocked on the door twice seeing as there was no doorbell, and waited. After a minute she knocked again, this time a little harder. Moments later, the door opened and a messy red-haired man wearing glasses and a suit appeared. He blinked when he saw Yukio there, standing timidly in front and covered with stray pieces of twig that managed to stick onto her jakcet. The red-haired man didn't seem to be willing to say anything first so Yukio forced herself to speak up.

"E-Excuse me," she began, nervously stuttering and slightly frightened of the way the man was looking at her. He looked very...intense, and it reminded Yukio strongly of Ryohei. "I-I-I was wondering if I could use the phone in here. I got lost, you see and saw the mansion so I was hoping I could into contact with my family."

The man said nothing. Yukio began sweating buckets. Did she say something wrong? Was she intruding and being overbearing? But all she had done was knock on the door! Wasn't it normal for people to ask others for help when they were in need? Surely the people living in this house (because the red-head certainly couldn't be the only one living here, the place looked too big for him to keep clean alone) would be willing to help her. Yet, judging from the man's silence Yukio didn't think so anymore.

She began to nervously laugh, tugging at the hem of her jacket. "N-never mind then. I-I'll just find my own way back, sorry for bothering you."

"Wait." The red-head finally spoke, reaching out to grab hold of Yukio's elbow. "You can see this place?"

"Eh?" A question mark hovered above Yukio's head. "Of course I can."

'Kind of hard to not notice a mansion as large as this in the middle of nowhere,' she silently added as the red-head continued to stare at her, making her feel exceedingly uncomfortable.

"Come in," he finally said, letting go of her elbow and opening the door wider.

**********

'It's looks even bigger on the inside,' she marveled, turning her head this way and that to catch sight of all the antiques and draperies adorning the hallway they were walking through. She remembered going into a mansion only once before, when she had been very little but it had never been as extravagant as this one.

Irie Shoichi, the red-head who Yukio now knew was the head butler of the mansion, turned to look back at her. "Sawada-san, could you please walk a little faster? Byakuran-san is waiting to meet you."

"Ah, sorry," she apologized, running a little to catch up to Irie. As he had explained to her as they walked, the owner and head of the mansion was Byakuran. He was originally Italian but moved to Japan to expand his family's business. The mansion was a heirloom from his grandmother and was about to be torn down when Byakuran decided to move in. He re-built the entire place and had been living here ever since. Since Yukio was someone who stumbled upon the mansion by accident, Byakuran had been informed of her presence and, as the master of the house, was to meet her before she could do anything else.

"Um Irie-san," she spoke up timidly, half-jogging to keep up with Irie's longer strides. "What kind of man is Byakuran-san?"

Irie paused for a moment, unsure of how to answer the question. "He is a very unique man," he finally said and Yukio wondered just what kind of unique this Byakuran was; there were many definitions for that word. "You could say he's one of a kind. He's a bit eccentric but he's easy enough to get along with as long as he doesn't lose his temper."

'In other words, don't get him angry,' surmised Yukio. Irie's explanation didn't make her feel any better though. Her legs still felt a little wobbly; what if she made the wrong impression on Byakuran? Would he refuse to let her use the telephone and kick her out to fend for herself? Possible worst-case scenarios swirled around in Yukio's mind and, for the fifth time that day, she cursed her bad luck and wondered what kind of horrible star she had been born under.

They finally reached a room filled with lavish and expensive furniture that were so impeccably clean Yukio felt bad for just thinking of sitting down on them. In the center of the room, seated on the largest sofa covered with white pillows and fluffy cushions was a man with equally white spiky hair eating marshmallows out of a bag on the coffee table in front of him.

Byakuran, Yukio assumed and instinctively felt afraid. She wasn't sure what it was that made her feel frightened, just that there was something wrong with the relaxed-looking man in front of her; something she couldn't place.

"Ah Sho-chan," greeted Byakuran, munching on another white marshmallow. His eyes were closed in his fox-like smile, the small purple tattoo under one of his eyes curving upwards as if smiling as well. "Did you bring our guest in?"

"Yes Byakuran-san, she's right here." Irie stepped slightly aside to reveal Yukio (she had been behind him when they entered the room), standing with her head a little bowed and her hands grasping at the fabric of her jacket.

"This is Sawada Yukio-san."

Byakuran's eyes snapped open, revealing light purple eyes that were like steel, piercing through Yukio.

"Yukio-chan," he murmured, his voice suddenly very quiet compared to his earlier cheerful tone. "Even the name is the same."

'Eh? What does he mean by that?' Before she had time to ponder that statement or Byakuran's almost wistful expression, the white-haired man was all smiles again, munching on another white confection and gesturing for her to sit down.

"You must be tired after walking through the forest. The mansion's pretty deep into the place since I didn't want any nosy people coming to bother me. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone found this place. Marshmallow, Yukio-chan?" His cheerful chatter ended as abruptly as it began as he held up his bag of marshmallow to her, the white confections like large white bulbs of budding blossoms.

"N-No thank you," she declined, gently pushing away the bag. "I'm not very hungry. I just wanted to know if you had a phone I could use to call my family."

"Sorry," he apologized but not sounding very apologetic. His tone was too playful. "Since we're so deep in the forest it's almost next to impossible to get phone lines hooked up to here. I have a cell phone but unfortunately, it's out of batteries right now and I've lost the charger." Byakuran laughed, looking up at Irie standing behind the couch Yukio was on.

"Help me find it, alright Sho-chan?"

"Yes Byakuran-san," the butler intoned, his expression suggesting that he had done this hundreds of times before.

'It must be a daily routine here,' inferred Yukio, the nagging sense that something was very, very wrong here. The fact that the phones weren't working and Byakuran's cell phone had died at the same time was far too coincidental for Yukio's liking. Her instincts whispered to her, telling her to get out before it was too late.

She tried smiling, trying to appear as unworried as possible. "Is that so?" she said, drawing Byakuran's attention back to her. "I'll be going then. My parents are probably worrying about me right now."

"Oh I wouldn't do that if I were you Yukio-chan~" Byakuran sing-songed, in a way that made Yukio stiffen with indescribable fear. "There's a storm coming and it wouldn't be good to be caught in it when you're surrounded by trees."

"Storm?" repeated Yukio, confused. "But the weather forecast said today would be--"

A frighteningly loud roar of thunder shook the chandelier hanging above them, the sky behind the window suddenly a heavy, dirty, metal gray. Yukio let out a small 'eep' of surprise, looking out fearfully through the window. Byakuran watched her, his smile widening.

"Yukio-chan," he began, popping another marshmallow into his mouth and speaking in the same sing-songy way that showed how happy he was. "Why don't you stay the night?"

AN: And that's it for chapter one. And I can't believe I just started another new story when I haven't finished a single one of my other stories that are rotting away on my computer. *weepweep*

Muse: (points at the emo-ing mass that is the author) Anyone want her to continue?