Kota felt like he wanted to cry. That was what that feeling was, right? The overbearing pressure weighing down on his shoulders and eyes? It must have been. That was why he was shivering and why he felt like - though nothing was there to hurt him - something was lurking around. But, weirdly, even though he felt like he would cry - that he wanted to cry - he didn't. He never felt any water coming down from his eyes, but the feeling was still bubbling up just the same.

He could only direct his attention to Takuya. It had been quite a few times at that point where the white-haired male had come back into the room to grab another body. He wasn't very strong. In fact, he struggled greatly each time he had to take another one outside. In a normal situation, Kota probably would have found it funny how he struggled to pull one of the bodies along the floor. But it wasn't funny at all. Probably because Kota could have been one of those corpses.

Takuya looked focused. He looked like he was thinking about nothing but doing the mundane task of cleaning up all the blood, which was weird. Kota thought he would have been just as confused and freaked out as him, but he wasn't. He was completely in control of himself, only ever frowning when there was a stain that he had to scrub at. Even then, his facial features contorted back into placidness the moment he finished.

He would inspect the walls closely, not really sure how to go about getting the blood off. Even so, he tried his best, getting as much as he could with a towel before going in with soap and water. And while he couldn't get all of it out, he figured he could always go back in with bleach or something similar. And that was exactly what he did. Kota didn't know blood could be cleaned up so easily. He didn't like it.

When Takuya finished getting all the blood, his clothes were drenched in it. He finally realized when he went to wipe his hand off on his shirt, only to give a small hum, staring down at the scarlet coating him. The male wasn't disgusted at all. He was just a bit concerned with his appearance. Even so, he wasn't done, heading back outside for the bodies. And though Kota had no intention of following him, somehow being alone was worse than being with a killer. So, he scrambled after the male, keeping a safe distance from him as he watched some more.

The white-haired male stood over the bodies as he tried to figure out what to do. It wasn't as if he could just throw them away. It would be easily traced back to them. Plus it was obvious they were killed. The only solution then was to hide them somewhere, preferably on the mansion's grounds. But even that could be risky. So, Takuya grabbed a few tools from the kitchen, laying them out in front of him. Kota had to seriously question whether the male in front of him was the same friend he knew or not.

Takuya figured it was best to get rid of their identities. Even if they were found, it would have been best if it was nearly impossible to determine who they were. So, the male picked up the cheese grater, giving a skeptic look to it. He wasn't entirely sure whether it would work, but, as he began scraping it along one of the corpse's faces, he was pleasantly surprised. As long as he pushed down hard enough, the skin was shredded easily enough. It was messy, sure, but it got the job done. At some point in the process, the male had accidentally scraped into the corpse's eye, making a squelching sound as the air compressed out of it. All the same, he decided to do the same to all of them just in case an optic scan was possible. Using the grater on the eyes was much easier than using his thumbs.

Takuya also made sure to scrape off their fingerprints, making sure he was getting deep enough to where they would no longer be visible. It was a little hard to tell though since they were still seeping blood. All the same, the process was tedious, the male breaking out into a sweat over it all. By the time he finished, the grater was no longer usable. No doubt the bodies had shreds of its metal inside of them, but it didn't matter much. It was obvious he had skinned them, so what he used to do it with was hardly a concern.

Kota, having been shivering due to the violence, tilted his head once Takuya began digging. He wasn't sure what the male was going to do next, but he did begin to understand just how creative humans could get. It wasn't exactly a pleasant discovery though, especially since the use of the holes became clear. He dug them ridiculously deep, only to push one of the bodies to the bottom and cover it all back up with dirt again. The male did that for every single corpse, going to a different location in the backyard each time. By the time he had finished, he let out a big sigh and started gathering up all the tools he used, throwing them to the bottom of a separate hole.

Takuya stretched his arms behind his head, once again looking down at his blood soaked clothes. Kota backed away as the white-haired male moved towards him, squeezing his eyes shut in fear that he would be next, only for the male to ignore him and continue on into the house. As the baku trailed behind him - always at a distance of twenty feet or more - he kept trying to process just why Takuya was acting so calm about everything. Even Kota was terrified and he was well-used to gore.

"Kota," the bunny-like male mumbled, pointing to the bed, "Go sit down there and wait."

"Uh...no, I'm 'kay, so - "

"Sit. Don't move. Don't touch anything. Don't leave that spot."

The pink-haired male gave a tiny peep of fear, rushing over to sit on the bed with a rigid posture. Takuya stared at him for a bit, presumably making sure he was really going to listen before he grabbed some fresh clothes and went to shower. Every now and again, he would call out to see if Kota was still there, to which the baku would hurriedly give him a reply. He didn't want to know what would happen if he didn't. It continued like that for a while before Takuya finally came out again, the male rubbing a towel over his hair before he laid down on the bed next to Kota.

Even still, the male said absolutely nothing. He didn't look like he was thinking at all, his expression blank as he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes unmoving. Kota desperately wanted him to say something. Even if he got mad, that was alright as long as they were still friends. But he didn't want to sit in silence, not knowing whether or not Takuya would hurt him or not. So, hesitantly, he turned shakily to the male and pressed his lips together in a fine line.

"Maya? Do you think we could...talk now? I-I mean you've made me wait this whole time even though I had nothing to do with this whole...thing. And you seem really mad, but I don't want you to be mad at me because it really isn't my fault. So...M-Maya?"

Takuya didn't respond. He really was lost in his own little world. After some point of the tedious waiting, Kota decided to lay down, too, not taking the time to think about what had happened. He only observed his friend. The male's face, at many times in the period of silence, would scrunch up like he was confused. It wasn't that he looked mad, per se, but there was definitely some bad taste in his mouth.

But, inevitably, albeit after an uncomfortable amount of time, that look faded away. His eyes softened and his cheeks got all pink and warm, and he gripped at his shirt where his chest was. No, maybe it was where his heart was. In surprise, he shot up to give a sigh of relief. Or maybe it was joy? Kota didn't really know. He felt like he should know, but, recently, he never knew. Either way, it must have been positive. Probably. The fact he couldn't - with certainty - name Takuya's emotions anymore made him feel conflicted. He only really knew his own emotions for sure. Although...there was still that weird feeling he got when it felt like he could have possibly died.

"I think...I get it," Takuya flushed, leaning into that unnamable warm feeling he was experiencing.

"Are we talking now?" the baku perked up, "B-Because I have so many things to say about your girlfriend. I-I mean, you totally saw her try to kill me, right? Maya? You saw it, right? She killed all those people and then she tried to kill your umi, and you just have to see she's seriously insane. You do, right?"

"Yeah," the male smiled softly to himself.

"Don't smile! And snap out of it! She's messing with your head! Y-You saw her try to kill your umi! Why aren't you mad?! Why don't you hate her?!"

A pause.

"Kota," Takuya mumbled softly, "I didn't understand before, but...I think I do now. I-I thought everything she did was to get away from me. Mother said I wasn't working hard enough for her love, so I thought...when she bought Idyll, when she bought the house, when she started doing more and more on her own...that she was trying to get away from me. But - "

"That's stupid! She's only ever been leaching off of you!"

Another silence washed over them as the white-haired male glared at the younger male. For a while again, Takuya said nothing, forcing Kota to try and figure out what he was thinking. He was mad, wasn't he? That was the face he made when he was mad, so he must have been mad, but why was he mad when Kota was talking with him? As the baku gave him a frown back, the older male shook his head.

"I...don't want you to talk right now. I just want you...to listen."

"That's not fair! I should get to talk, too! If it's just you - "

"You always talk. Every time. As far as I can remember, you're the one who gets to decide what we do. You wanted me to play dress-up? I did. You wanted me to stop hanging out with my classmates? I did. You wanted to show up out of the blue after years and have me drop everything to entertain you for days on end? I did. This time, I want to talk. I want to talk and I want you to listen."

"I am listening."

"No, you're not."

"I am! We're obviously having a back-and-forth! If I wasn't listening - "

"You're only listening to what you want to listen to. You always do that."

"I do not! You talk about stupid stuff all the time and I listen! I mean, when you were reading that stupid fairy tale, I listened! I hate that stupid book, but I still listened, didn't I?!"

Takuya thought back to elementary school. It was true Kota was always sitting there while he read it aloud. And, sure, from time to time, he would engage with the story, but not before pulling his clothes and hair and whining that he wanted to play. Ultimately, the white-haired male always caved. He didn't remember even one time when Kota actually sat through the entire story.

"Well...I...tried. I did! B-But how do you expect me to sit through a long story like that?"

"I sit through your endless rants about whatever new product you're obsessing over."

"But that's interesting."

"To you."

"You like it, too!"

"I don't. But I listen to you talk because I care about you. And, if you really cared about me, you would do the same."

Kota gritted his teeth. In his mind, he was thinking how that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard, but there was no way he could refute that out loud. After all, deep down somewhere, he knew the male was right. He just refused to admit it. If he had to suddenly care about Takuya's feelings, he would have had to give up his place at the center of the universe. After so many years of having Takuya do whatever he wanted, why would he ever have agreed to anything else? What they had was perfect. He didn't want to change it.

"I don't...I don't get it! Why are you all weird now?! You weren't anything like this before, but now all you do is ignore me!"

"I was about to tell you, you know. You just wanted to interrupt and call (Y/n) names again," A pause as Kota grew quiet, pouting to himself while glancing over repeatedly to give the older male the hint to go on. "Look, I just...I thought she hated me. I thought I wasn't really enough for her because that was what mother told me. But I think I've had it wrong the whole time. She did all that stuff for me. I-I mean the house...it was just to get me away from my mother, right?"

Kota crossed his arms. He didn't care that Takuya was looking for confirmation nor did he care about him being confused. The male wouldn't say anything to the fae's benefit. So, he pouted. In doing so, however, the white-haired male's smile suddenly fell again, prompting him to hang his head. And just as Kota thought he finally wiggled his way out of the talk, he saw the male point at the door.

"Get out."

"What?!"

"I told you to leave. I-I don't want to sit here and sort out my thoughts with someone who couldn't care less about me. I'll...do this on my own. And then I'll talk with (Y/n). That's probably better anyway."

"Fine. You do that! I'll come back tomorrow when you're done with all this mushy stuff."

"No. I mean it, Kota. If you leave now, I don't want to see you ever again. At all."

"You're joking."

"I'm not."

"But you need me! I mean, we've been together since we were super tiny, so you can't just pretend we're not friends anymore! That's not okay! I won't let you do that!"

"I don't really care what you think I can't do anymore. I can live without you just fine."

"As if! You wouldn't last a day! Admit it: the thought of being my friend keeps you going from day to day!"

"It used to. But I have more people now. I don't need you to feel like I matter."

"Oh, yeah?! Who?!"

"(Y/n), mostly. And - I can't believe I'm saying this - Isao has been better to me lately than you have, Kota."

"Who the hell is that?"

"...So you weren't listening to me when I told you what he did either? Fine. Shows how much you really care. Forget it. Just leave already."

Kota gritted his teeth. Takuya was so ungrateful. He didn't understand how much the baku liked him. Even though he was only a powerless human, he took pity on him and claimed him as his best friend. That was the nicest thing Kota had ever done, and now Takuya just wanted to cut ties with him? Overwhelmed with anger, the male resorted to physical strength. Back then, as long as he pulled his hair, Takuya would quit picturing whatever stupid thing he was thinking about, so, obviously, it would work then, too.

Except Takuya didn't let him get even remotely close. Kota was pushed away after his attempt to brute strength his way to victory, forcing him to get even angrier. How was he weaker than a human? Just how? The more he tried to scare and intimidate Takuya into apologizing and making everything go back to the way it was, the more he broke down a little. If...If, by some chance, he couldn't force Takuya to listen to him...what...did that mean? He choked down a weird feeling, only to feel tears - tears that refused to come out earlier but that now streamed down his face and refused to stop.

"M-Maya, I don't wanna go!" he sobbed, rubbing at his eyes to stop the water from pooling up, "I don't want to stop being friends! Please, please, please don't make me! I just wanted to protect you!"

"From what, Kota?! From the only person who ever loved me unconditionally?!"

"She doesn't love you! She can't!" A pause. "And what the hell does 'uncondi'...what does that word mean?!"

"It means she doesn't care about what I can give her! I told you she has all the things she needs to leave me and never look back, but the only thing she did was try and get me to see what she loves about me! Do you know what my mother has been telling me since I was born?!"

Takuya began to explain each excruciating thing his mother had done to prepare him for "love". And though it seemed like the white-haired male had been aware of the atrocities the entire time, he still ended up breaking down, crying in confusion as if he didn't understand it at all. He cried more and more, trying to figure out for himself as he spoke why exactly he had ever seen that woman as someone that genuinely wanted the best for him. In the end, he never did get a conclusion, but, at the very least, he was able to understand his emotions a bit better, his gratefulness to the (h/c) haired girl expanding infinitely more.

Kota couldn't even begin to comprehend the first part that the older male told him about, let alone when he started elaborating on the "intimacy" lessons. It startled him that he had never suspected it at all, even with all the scars and strange personality traits Takuya had picked up along the way from it. He had never wondered why the white-haired male avoided girls because he thought he did it out of loyalty to him. But, obviously, everything he thought he knew about the white-haired male was warped to fit his own ego.

"I-I don't remember a lot of it," the white-haired male choked up, "I don't even remember when I started doing the special lessons, but I still remember how scared I was. I remember it hurting and me being scared of the much bigger girl - no, the fully-grown woman - on top of me. And I remember getting in trouble for crying."

"But I thought...I thought you loved your umi! You always said so, so how was I supposed to - "

"(Y/n) was right. I just didn't want to admit to myself how scared or miserable I was. I just wanted someone to love me. A-And now that I know I have someone that does, I understand the huge difference between what my mother showed me and what (Y/n)'s love is. And I...feel so stupid, Kota."

"But she...," the baku trailed off, feeling the rare feeling of empathy and making the wise decision to shut the fuck up.

"And I think I finally understand why (Y/n) always refused to touch me like that. She's always known me better than I know myself. And she's always been protecting me. Even when I tried to be...intimate...with her, she would always redirect to something else. Last time, she even read my fairy tale for me to calm down. Why...didn't I understand that?"

"I...dunno...," Kota mumbled as the male looked at him for an answer, darting his eyes to the side as he blushed a little.

"You know, she really hates you," Takuya paused, finally smiling a bit in a spontaneous fit of amusement despite the younger male pouting more. "Like she despises you with a fiery passion. But...she still let me hang out with you so much. And she still let you come over for a sleepover. (Y/n)...doesn't do that. I learned that, if she hates people, she avoids them at all costs and cuts them out of her life. But she didn't do that with you. Because she knew you would give me some good memories. She made an exception for you because she loves me."

Kota slouched, biting his tongue to stop himself from reminding him she had tried to kill him on multiple occasions. Then he thought. Takuya gave him the opportunity to do so, letting silence fall over them. He...had tried to kill her, too. In fact, Kota had tried to kill her nearly completely unprovoked. But, though she was probably capable of it, she didn't set out to kill him. She only tried due to retaliation. And she always stopped when Takuya showed up and reminded her of how much he meant to him. So, Kota frowned, completely confused.

He continued to be confused as Takuya began to talk more and more about the things that she had done for him. Maybe Kota had just never seen it before or maybe he had never thought about it before, but she seemed to be genuinely concerned about Takuya. The more the male talked about her, the more confused Kota became, and the more confused Kota became, the more anger started bubbling up inside of him.

What Takuya was really saying was that he wasn't good enough; that he would never be number 1 in his heart as long as (Y/n) was around. Kota had never done any of those things and he would never be able to do any of them either, so, obviously, she had gone and made the white-haired male turn his back on him. That was the only explanation for why Takuya would ever threaten to cut off their relationship. He hated that fae so much. And nothing Takuya would ever say would change that. That was the absolute truth.

So, when he and Takuya parted with uncertainty, neither of them were sure how their friendship would hold up after that night, he was still seething in anger. Takuya refused to promise him he would still be a part of his life since he still tried to leave. He only said he needed time to think, but that he had to focus on (Y/n). So, Kota got angrier, returning back home and screaming as loud as he possibly could.

He yelled and yelled, cursing everything that she was and swearing that he would kill her with his own two hands. The male ripped apart a chunk of meat and threw it to the beasts below him, trying to appease his anger by imagining it was her corpse being ripped to pieces. Even so, his anger didn't dissipate, the male screaming out all of the horrible ways he would kill her and all of the things he hated about her. He promised over and over again she would regret ever meeting Takuya before finally flopping himself down.

His chest heaved up and down as he started to catch his breath, the male punching the rock underneath him. Even so, as he began to recover from his hissy fit, he had all the time in the world to think. And think. And think. He thought about what the white-haired male said constantly, reimagining what she had done for the white-haired male to like her so much. Takuya's words would never convince him to like the (h/c) haired girl. But Kota's own words...

Suffice to say, that night he dove right back into the girl's dreams, watching her crying and suffering from the nightmares that naturally existed. She had gone insane already. If left on her own, she would have remained like that until she healed, which would have taken years. But Kota felt some weird emotion again. It was like pity but not. And it was like being grateful but not. He just felt obligated to do something.

For the first time in his life, Kota didn't feel hungry. He could have enjoyed a nice meal by eating her nightmares. But he didn't. On the contrary, the male shut down all dreams, moving forward to catch her as she faded into restful sleep. Weirdly, he decided to rest her on his lap, stroking her hair as a means to apologize. He had to expend a bit of precious magic to reverse the damage he had done to her, only leaving her with the most restful sleep she had ever had in her entire life.

"It's okay now."