2 "Awake Yet, Darling?"

Teaser: Eika hauling Ryosei over her shoulder like a sack of rice, humming as she skips to her modern yet Victorian-styled mansion...

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Sighing, Eika unlocked the door to her house—though truly, it was a mansion by human standards. Standing at around five stories tall with a white, very much so modern exterior that had hints of Victorian-inspired details around the windows and other outward details and embellishes, it was a beautiful and rather out of place architectural decision that had to have costed millions, especially in a busy city like Newer New York; but to her, it was but a small house.

In other words, Eika was a very, very odd woman—but this was already an established fact, was it not?

Pushing open the three meter doors, Eika casually walked through to the foyer of her house, dragging the headless corpses that she tied together along her shatter-patterned marble floors, ignoring the red stains of blood that ran across them, trails left behind from the bodies. She plopped them in the foyer, and with a flick of her wrist, the doors closed with a boom.

Hauling the limp body of the developing demon over her shoulder, she entered the expansive library on the left, laying him on the floor.

Curious, heterochromatic ruby and amethyst eyes stared down upon the developing demon. If he was pretty as a human, he was sure to gorgeous as a demon—though nonetheless a far cry from her father and herself. Even so, as all the little imperfections that were so common with humans disappeared through his evolution, he was certain to be rather pretty.

She absentmindedly traced the scars on his neck, the last remnants of his humanity, her expression bored; she hated waiting for anything. She did not typically like remnants of things, especially scars...

Or rather, she hated reminders as she had many of them herself, and especially hated one of his kind. He would unfortunately still have his humanity, although it would be weakened till it eventually faded. She hoped he would not end up like her second Turned...

'However,' she wondered, tracing the scar to a new one on his arm, a silver slash mark that stood out elegantly on his forearm, contrary to her own, 'would he fall?'

'He doesn't seem the type…' she mused as she remembered his endearing defiance, all the while pondering over the scar on his arm, his palms, the calluses on his fingers and hands. They were large hands, large, but very thin and angular.

Elegant, like a musician's. One might even argue they were beautiful.

A quality she envied.

She sighed, bored at the wait, yet the anticipation seemed to claw at her brain. Unlike other fellow demons, devils, and various infectious supernaturals, she rarely converted humans; indeed, this man was only the third one. His predecessor had died in the Turning, and the one before that…

'Hmm, bad blood,' she thought childishly as she drank some of her harvest. She had fought all those demons and devils for food this week, though it appeared they were lacking in quality. She would have had better luck throwing them away and hunting new prey for superior taste, but it seemed plans had changed now.

Now, there was a newborn demon—and from the sounds he was making from the other room, he was awfully hungry.

She smiled.

Things were getting interesting, and she could hardly wait for it...

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Ryosei was floating, suspended over a void of encroaching darkness, but a certain serenity was all he felt.

He was surrounded, consumed on both sides all around himself. He felt a jarring exhaustion and restfulness at the same time. It was a feeling reminiscent of where you wish to get out of bed, but at the same time are too tired to do so.

If he had to describe it in a word, it would be… lazy?

Suffice to say, it was a feeling he despised. As a habitual worker and a human plagued by the inability to sit still, he despised such annoying and exhausting feelings—so you can imagine how he felt having that feeling permeate into his very being.

'Are Demons lazy by nature?!' was his initial response to the impact of the feeling.

However, the feeling quickly changed into one of agony, pain crawling over his body, gnawing at it again and again, with breaks and reprieves that made him feel like he was losing his mind.

Then it came.

A pain in his head that nothing in the entirety of existence seemed to compare to, the definition and amplification of the concept and emotion labeled 'pain'. He desperately wished to speak, to talk, to scream, to express something as he suffered through this agony.

However, it was all for naught.

No matter how hard he tried, no matter how or what he wished to express—whether it was anything, everything—his mouth was locked shut, sewn in place. Something felt as though it was pressing down upon his throat, something heavy, and cold, and dark, making it so expressing himself was extremely difficult. In truth, this terrible experience was the reason as to why Demons were the apex of darkness itself.

The reason why they grew so fast.

The reason behind their terrible strength, their ability to persuade, to manipulate, to outrun, to corner, and ultimately, to destroy.

He would meet the reason now.

The pain slipped away with a sudden, and an image that was suddenly reflected in front of him was all that appeared in the void. A young boy with pale hair that grew lighter at the ends and almost unnaturally pale skin stood before him, wearing a while long-sleeve shirt and white pants; underneath the clothes were bruises that seemed as if they could split through the delicate skin at any time.

He looked up, and Ryosei felt as if the air had been socked from his lungs.

"You're..."

A terrible pain ran through him again, blotting his senses and the figure from his sight and he could sense serious changes to his body, internally and externally, only this time, he could finally scream, finally act to expel and express the awful pain.

Suddenly, a pit seemed to open in his stomach, the emptiness and pain indicated an all too familiar feeling.

Starvation.

He was starving, and already his rationale was beginning to slip at the all too familiar state of mind. The pain had disappeared, but he somehow now wished for it—he would take anything to distract this empty and desperate to be sated desire.

It was at this moment, he awoke.

Nothing seemed to be any different, save for his eyes, now dyed a dark black, but that was hardly his main concern now.

He needed to sate this urge.

He lurched to stand, only to encounter a wave of vertigo and fatigue that assaulted his body violently as he experienced an extreme sensory overload. Sirens seemed to bleed through his skull as he shuddered, aches and pains burning over his entire body, and he felt desperate to cool the burn of the throbbing aches.

He groaned at the feeling, nausea from the torment rising until he could contain it no longer; it was then he proceeded to expel all that had once paid residence in his stomach. The miso soup he had eaten yesterday and the sticky rice was purged violently from his body, leaving him feeling even more sick, yet strangely satisfied.

He knew then he should have chosen death; anything that made him relive his childhood was a bad thing—therapy included.

He stumbled away from his mess before collapsing onto the cool, sweet, marble ground, groaning and hiding his face from the light that assaulted it.

He twitched when he heard a series of light footsteps, causing him he peek through the little ball he had curled himself into, only to see nothing for a few seconds.

'Did my senses improve?' he wondered, his head twinging as an odd sense of emptiness and space echoed within his mind, causing him to wince from confusion.

He then heard a dragging sound, and after a few seconds more he saw her, the one who began the orchestration of these fantastical events.

Eika.

"Awake yet, darling?" her voice rang out and was both soothing and painful for his too sensitive ears.

A smile crossed her face that seemed even more perfect with his new eyes, his sight finally sharp enough to properly observe her pale beauty...

'Annoying…' he thought to himself before looking away from her face. Her skin and hair was so pale, the lighting bounced off of her, making him feel as if she was a spotlight he really loathed to see right now, as she aggravated his eyes even more.

His headache got worse when she laughed her cherub's giggle, saying, "So, the little butterfly has awoken! What a relief—you were as limp as a dead rat!"

Ryosei's expression twisted at the comparison before he weakly spat while squinting, "I appreciate the comparison; will definitely reach my top ten weirdest things I've been compared to, next to the snow cone at fifth."

She smirked, finding his anger and sarcasm entertaining, before she spot the mess his stomach had made off to the side. She cringed at the sight of it, her smooth features wrinkling in displeasure before walking away to retrieve something. In this time frame, and through stinging, watering black eyes, Ryosei started to observe the room he found himself in.

It was large, shockingly so with wide, overarching ceilings of white marble, columns of intricate designs added to the classiness. He turned, resting on his back and craning his head to see ceiling to floor, wall to wall dark mahogany bookshelves, filled to the brim and bursting with books.

Huge windows that let in the copious amounts of light laid embedded into the pale walls between bookshelves, and the landscape it reflected was puzzling, to say the least:

They were in a city, so why was he seeing a frosted birch forest at night?

He blinked, and the familiar view of the city laid before him again. Disoriented, he chose to believe it was a trick of the light before looking for distraction around him in the furnishings.

Tables of finely ornate similar mahogany lay scattered around him, leading him to believe he was on one of them previously. All the chairs looked comfortable and neat, and he found himself wondering where on Earth she found the cash to make this possible, or how she found it.

His curiosity was derailed as he heard that dragging sound again, and then a delicious smell that nearly made him delirious plopped down with a thud on the checkered marble floors. He turned over, eager to find the source—only to freeze.

It was one of the corpses from the people Eika had killed.

Ryosei turned to see a large smirk grace Eika's perfect features, stretching her face into an insanity ridden look.

Then her voice rang out in a tempting yet horrifying command.

"Eat."