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I straightened the bow on the girl's collar, pushing her hat over her wild hair, now done up nicely by Poppy so she could make a good first impression on her would-be adopters. Trying to swallow the frog in my throat, I gestured to the toy in her arms. "Do you want me to put him in your suitcase?"  She cradled a red corduroy bear with a bright blue bowtie, whom she liked to call Mister Cuddles. 

Ichika forked over the bear with a smile, trusting me wholeheartedly with her beloved toy. "Okay! Make sure he's comfy."

"I will," I said, taking the bear from her hands with a reassuring smile. It was the least I could do.

As far as the child knew, she was going to see the outside, and even if she would miss this one dearly, she was going to be part of another loving family. As Ichika bid goodbye to her closest companions with an elated smile, I couldn't bear to look her way. "Bye-bye, everyone!" she called, as she blinked away the tears in her eyes. "I'll miss you! I'll draw lots of pictures and send postcards, 'kay?"

Yukko pushed open the door, beckoning the girl outside. Ichika glanced her way, but thinking twice, ran back through the crowd. She tackled my legs, and as I regained my balance, I could feel the wetness of her cheeks through my clothes. 

"I wish you could come with me," she said, snuffling her sobs in my shirt.

Trying to keep my eyes from watering over, I pulled her arms from my legs and knelt to her height. "Hey now..." I spoke softly, and tapped the left side of her chest. "I'll be with you right here, okay?"

Her lower lip trembled as more tears threatened to fall. "You'll come find me when you get adopted, right? You won't forget?"

In that moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to be able to remember everything; every moment she'd been with this body in the past. That was the very least I could've done, for the child I was sending away to her death; remember every moment she spent alive. But no matter how hard I tried, all I could remember was this one fleeting day.

I dabbed my sleeve on her face to dry her tears. "Of course I won't forget," I said. "I'll miss that smile of yours every day."

Ichika rose onto her toes and slung her arms around my shoulders. "Okay," she said, squeezing desperately, as if she were afraid I would disappear. As she pulled away, fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. "Sorry I can't smile right now," she sniffled. "I'm just more scared than I thought."

"It's okay," I said, and tapped the side of my cheek. "I'll smile instead, so you can be brave. See?"

Her fingers reached up to pinch my face, pulling my cheeks apart. "You have a silly smile, Y/N." As her final tears dripped from her eyes, her round face split in a bright little grin. "I'll miss it lots too. So promise you'll smile lots, and I'll smile lots, too. 'Kay?"

"That sounds like a deal to me."

And so I waved goodbye to the little girl, carrying a suitcase with a pillow in the place of her belongings, as she and her mother disappeared into the night.

"Y/N? Whatcha doin'?" Poppy's head slid into my field of view. I stood with my feet rooted to the floor, eyes trained on the door as if I expected Ichika to walk back through it any moment. Reina stepped out of the kitchen, and brushed my hair from my face in a motherly way. 

"Is everything okay? You've never handled adoption days well..."

I shook myself out of my transfixion, a hesitant smile finding its way to my place. "Yeah. I'm alright."

She pursed her lips together. "Well, we're starting our night chores, so could you go check on the kids for me? They're in the bath."

"Sure." I departed the hall quickly, and after checking on the kids, moved to a window that I could see the gate from. The light was still on. 

Poppy and Reina's voices were raised in concern when I returned. "What do we do? She loves Mister Cuddles..."

"She's long gone, Poppy. It's too late."

I stepped into the room with a hum, gesturing to the door. "Maybe not. The light by the gate is still on..." I felt so obvious. Pretty stupid, too. I was certain they would see right through me any second – in which case, my only course of action was probably to run head-first into a door and act like the concussion gave me amnesia. 

Yet, the conversation continued without any sign they knew I had an ulterior motive. "It's against the rules," Reina prodded, although she looked uncertain herself. Poppy looked down to the bear in her hands, her brows drawn together in melancholy.

"But..."

"I'll come with," I offered. "If we apologize right when we come back, I'm sure Yukko won't mind."

"You can't!" The disagreement arose from Hannah, a girl freshly ten, with wavy blonde hair cropped close to her jaw. Her eyes were coloured a dark hazel, and her soft features might've given her a friendly look if she wasn't constantly wearing an expression so sour she looked like she was sucking on a lemon. This was the girl who never had time to play – she was too busy sucking up to Yukko or studying.

Reina glanced between the distressed-looking blonde and the eager Poppy – clearly, the eldest girl was the deciding force in the matter. "Well..."

"I'll keep an eye on them," the other kid in the room offered, setting his broom against the wall. He was Hayato, the reclusive bookworm and the third-eldest, following Reina and Poppy. He was a delicate looking boy with tan olive skin and softly curled hair he wore pulled back in a short pony. His face looked like it had been flecked with ink, as a few stray beauty marks dotted his features, and his eyes, so dark they were almost black, were lined with some of the longest, thickest eyelashes I'd ever seen.

Reina regarded Hayato with lips pursed in a thin line – in the short time I'd known them, I'd already became aware of her soft-spot for the boy. "Okay," she relented. "I'll stay behind and watch the kids... So hurry up and come back, fast."

"We will!"

Our first obstacle turned out to be the back door. "It's locked!"

Of course it was. But before I could follow Poppy for a try, Hayato crouched down before the door and pulled out two skinny tools. While Poppy and I watched, he picked the lock within seconds.

"Where'd you learn how to do that?"

More importantly; why!?

Hayato pushed the door open, stuffing the tools in his pant pocket. "A book," he said, as if it were the obvious conclusion. 

Mentally, I added Hayato to a list of helpful people – who knew what other knowledge he'd picked up from books.

The Grace Field landscape was turned many shades of blue in the pale moonlight, which filtered down through dark scattered clouds. It was a beautiful sight; a peaceful one, but we didn't have a moment to take it in.

The gate loomed several metres separated from the forest, and its unforgiving tunnel seemed to lead infinitely into darkness, as far as the eye could see. As we approached the towering structure, my heart began to pound in my chest, my throat running dry with anticipation.

I poked my head into the opening to make sure the way was clear. The old brick walls and the interlocking metal pipes above were illuminated mostly by two lanterns, each hanging above a heavy-looking door. One door was the average size, expected for a human, and the other was impossibly large.

"Ichika?" Poppy called out as she stepped into the tunnel. "Where are you?" I wished whole-heartedly there was a way to tell her to shut up without announcing I knew something she didn't. "Do you think she might be in one of those rooms?"

Hayato looked to the doors which occasionally dotted the tunnel walls, but there were no windows he could see into. He shrugged. "Possibly. You could leave it in the truck?"

I forced myself deeper into the tunnel, acutely aware of each step I took away from the opening; our only escape route. 

Poppy poked her head into the front window of the truck, glancing around. "In the front seat, or in the back?"

My eyes tore to the back of the truck, as if I could see right through the curtains pulled over the opening. "We should hurry." My voice came out quieter than I'd meant it to, but as the sound reverberated off the tunnel walls, I really wished I'd just said nothing at all.

"Okay." With a skip in her step, Poppy walked around the truck, bear tucked under arm. She raised a hand to the curtain, and I, unable to do anything, watched as she pulled it aside. 

Until this moment, some part of me had been hoping the truck would be empty – that really, this was some big trick. This was an alternate universe or something, where kids never died. But Poppy didn't even pull the curtain back halfway before she froze in her tracks, and her exhale gave way to a dreaded whimper.

"This isn't... Am I... I–?" Her breath hitched, as her weight shifted to her back foot, as if her mind was making an attempt to escape what she saw, but her body didn't completely respond.

Glancing my way with a question in his eyes, Hayato walked over to her side. He caught a glance over Poppy's shoulder, and his posture went rigid. The girl cast a glance his way, face etched with horror, as his reaction confirmed what she was seeing wasn't a figment of her imagination.

"Ichika...?" She took a step forward, as she finally found her voice, the bear falling from her hands. "Ichika!"

At her shout, my suspension ceased, and I sprang to life. "Let's get out of here!" The siblings turned to me with gaunt expressions, and I hastened the point, spurring them to action. "Now!"

They sprinted toward the gate, yet I dashed in the opposite direction. I didn't want us to make the same mistake that would occur here in a months time, at some other plant. 

I scooped the bear off the ground, and as I rose, I caught an unintentional glimpse of the body in the truck. There are no words to perfectly describe the feeling that accompanies seeing someone once so full of life now so empty. Ichika lied limp, bloodless, a red flower blooming over her chest. There was no Ichika there at all; just a haunting corpse. And though her smile would haunt my dreams, it was that lifeless face that would grace my waking hours for many years to come.

I slid beneath the truck moments before the large door creaked open on rusty metal hinges, slamming shut with a bang. 

"Did you hear something?" A voice asked, vaguely human, yet garbled and thick in a way that said otherwise.

"Nah."

"I thought there was a voice..."

"Probably just your imagination."

I could feel their approach through the ground; the large, heavy footfalls, bouncing off the brick walls of the tunnel. My cheek rested against the dirt as I clutched the bear to my chest, and I couldn't tell whether I was breathing or not. My eyes opened into slits as I pressed my face to the ground, inching forward, slowly, silently.

No manga or anime could do them justice: the hulking demons. Their rough grey skin was scaly, stretched thin over bulging, disproportionate limbs. Their mouths were gaping, etched across their jaw and lined with long rows of pointed teeth, worn over time with the effort of chewing human meat. Just visible through their pale, crudely carved masks, were bulging green eyes which swivelled this way and that in their sockets.

Emma and Norman make it out alive, I pleaded with myself, trying to calm my pounding heart for fear it would give me away. Yeah, but I'm not Emma or Norman.

A long grey tongue snaked out of the larger one, drool splattering to the ground before me. "Shit, I wish I could just take one bite."

A vat of blue water slammed to the ground before me, Ichika's body dropped inside. As the bubbles cascading her form subsided, I was confronted again with that stare. Her last moment was captured frozen on her face, an expression of horror, a pleading look in her eyes. I couldn't look away.

"Dumbass. This is top-teir merchandise. Even if this one's just one of the runts, you'll never be able to afford even a finger."

"Well, damn Dale, sorry I said anything."

A third demon entered the scene, his long black cloak dragging across the ground, concealing most of his long, clawed feet. "How goes the Gupna ceremony?"

"It's just finished, sir."

I heard the scrape of the robed demon's claw against his clipboard before I saw it. "Another six year old. It's a shame this plant's produce is mediocre. Though... it appears some scores have been increasing, as of late. Is this your work? "

"Yes, sir." Yukko's voice was chilling, cold and empty – a stark contrast to the gentle, loving manner of speaking I'd heard her use hardly an hour earlier. 

The robed demon hummed. "And the full-scorer?"

"I've reported to headquarters. 96194 has fully recovered, sir."

My hand reached instinctually to my neck, where those very numbers were printed.

I realized my time was short, and started to creep out from under the truck. Every minuscule scrape of my hands, elbows or knees against the ground made my heart leap in fear. But I made it behind the large wheel without drawing attention, my silhouette concealed from view. 

My head poked around the edge, as my eyes caught sight first of Yukko, and then of the robed demon. "Excellent," the latter was saying. "Ensure they stay in good health, else we may have to consider taking action."

His back was turned from the exit, and I took my chance, moving quickly in the dark, uncertain shadows the two lanterns cast. "Understood, sir," said Yukko as I dashed around the corner of the gate to safety. It was there I found Poppy and Hayato, sitting against the outer wall of the gate. They looked ashen, faces twisted in fear.

"Go!" I hissed, gesturing frantically to the house. The siblings spurred into action, stumbling to their feet. We made through the woods and across the field, the house in view, before Poppy stumbled over herself. Exhausted both physically and mentally, she crumpled to the ground. 

"I'm dreaming, right?" she covered her head with her arms, letting out a sob. "Ichika... It's not funny." Though she laughed, it was a heartbroken sound. "I want to wake up now." 

I was unable to offer any words of comfort. My legs and lungs burned with exhaustion, and still my clammy skin prickled with lingering fear and adrenaline.

Hayato knelt in front of her, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Take your time," he said, and though he sounded rather composed, his breaths came short and ragged, and he blinked furiously as if he could erase what he'd just witnessed from his memory.

As Poppy cried, her head dipped to the ground, and the tears she could no longer withhold spilled over and dotted the moonlit grass. I gave them a minute to gather themselves as I scoured the edge of the field for any sign of movement, clutching Ichika's bear close to my chest.

Soon Poppy rose, her head tilted down as she wiped her wet cheeks. "What..." Her voice was hoarse, hardly speaking above a mumble. "What are we supposed to do now?"

"For now, we go inside," I managed. "The rest, we'll figure out after sleeping. Okay?"

Poppy blinked away the gathering drops in her eyes, her voice thick with another repressed sob. "Okay."

Reina was waiting by the door as we pulled it open. With a creased brow, she looked between the bear in my hands and our avoidant gazes. "What happened?"

"We were too late," I said, wishing the statement were true.

"Oh..." The girl didn't look entirely convinced, but she likely figured it was best to leave it alone for the night. "I see. It's running late, anyhow. We should get to bed – Mom will be back soon."

Poppy's chin was tucked close to her chest as she nodded. "Yeah," she mumbled, without a glance in her closest friend's direction. "Good night."

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