It smells like citrus in the morning.

Sunlight streams through cracks in the curtains, it's cool enough for long sleeves but not cold enough for a sweater. Atsu hides under pale cream blankets sweat rolls down his face into the pillows and he's breathing fast breaths, his face is pinched and his eyes hurt.

It's raining, he never really saw that as a surprise, even in those movies he used to watch with his parents.

Pitter patter falls behind him and he can feel the sand by his toes and the ocean by his hips and the burning in his arms, but everything is black. He can't see. He can hear her screaming and shouting but everything is black, he can feel the rain falling off his face but he can't see. Everything is nothing and he's choking on something he can't see and she's dro―

He wakes up to a nightmare, but he does not scream, or shout, or give any indicator of his dismay. Instead he remains just barely calm enough to breathe. Distantly, he thanks himself for having an internal alarm set for when the sun rises. Nobody can see or hear him that way. So he stays calm and just takes shorts breathes of air, because he feels that if he takes in too much his lungs will fall apart and his fractured rib will poke and prod at the sensitive tissue until it breaks in and he'll drown.

Irina knows nothing of this and he won't tell her. He won't tell her anything, he'll just keep quiet and breathe, and walk on air for now because that's all he can do.

Although it takes a moment, Atsu realizes that a presence is missing and he panics before coming to the conclusion that the monachopsis is caused by his newly deceased sister. He takes in another small, shallow breathe of the citrus smelling air and gets up from his bed. The blanket is folded when he leaves the comfort and warmth it gives. His body was always cold. Always. Even durring the summer when Mor made him work and work and work until the skin on his hands peeled back and his legs collapsed underneath the weight of his torso.

He grits his teeth and squints his eyes allowing the world around him to become fuzzy and diluted. He let's his ears fill with cotton and his mouth to swell and burn and hurt. A wet sound jumps from his mouth and his lips feel sticky and he can taste copper and salt and red. It slips down and he swallows the crimson fluid before it can spill from his lips.

Rule number five: don't make anything dirty.

Right- right. He can't get anything dirty. So where's the bathroom? He needs to spit it out or he'll choke and he doesn't like the feeling, it reminds him too much of drowning. In a frantic motion he opens the two doors in the room―the closet and the white one leading outside, he can hear nothing so his parents must be asleep, right?

His feet tread lightly on the wooden that felt too cold underneath his calloused feet. It's too early for someone to be this cautious, a voice in his head reasons, but he knows to be weary constantly. He knows, he knows that if he let's his guard down even for a moment- that when he finally shows that he is vulnerable, that he's weak, it will all be over.

If he let's his guard down he'll be ten again and he really wants to just relax and forget his past and replace it with citrus skies, lavender dreams, and mercury eyes.

He wants to think that red is passion and blue is life. That the sky wasn't always so dull and dreary and his head wasn't always so quiet and the world around him wasn't always so loud. He doesn't know why but he wants to feel light and cheerful, even if he never really knew what those feelings were. He wants his chest to thump with adrenaline and to smile so much that his cheeks hurt.

The bathroom is at the end of the hallway, it has a beige door without chips and the wood doesn't bend or peel back, and there are no splinters on the ground or mold shrouding the hinges, and that's when Atsu realizes that this isn't his house. That's right, he thinks to himself, they're gone. So he opens the door and locks it carefully because Irina might be just like them after she notices he won't tell a soul because it would be pointless. Nobody would listen to him anyway. He's just a child.

He opens the lid to the toilet and some awful mix of blood and rice and eggs comes up. His face twists into a grimace at the taste and he wants a glass of cool water but it's Sunday and rule number three: don't wake them up on Sundays or Thursdays, so he washes his mouth out with the lukewarm sink water and hopes that the toilet isn't loud when he flushes.

It isn't, and he let's out the tension from his shoulders and washes his hands- but the sinks has some dust around it and there are cleaning supplies in the cabinet underneath. If she hurts him then the wounds will get infected by the grime so he takes a tissue and wets it before scrubbing the marble encompassing the sink. This is routine he needs to get used to anyway, now that Kanashi won't be able to help him.

He leaves the bathroom cleaner than when he first came in.

Though his head is too fuzzy to recall what happened, but it smells like bleach and he's biting his tongue to subsided the urge to regurgitate whatever bit of food sits in his stomach.

_

His room isn't as dirty as before- he hasn't cleaned it or anything, but the wooden strips under his feet are straight and smooth and moldless. He likes the feeling of them, he runs his hands up and down the grooves and hills of the planks.

Today is Sunday so he stays in his room because he's not allowed to leave on Sundays unless his parents ask him to do something. So he just sits on the floor, running his fingers on the tiles and breathing in citrus. Atsu is calm, he's calm―and even if he wasn't he doesn't care enough to be frantic.

He can hear Irina when she wakes; it's not that's she's loud, she's a lot more quiet than his parents, but he's trained to hear for footsteps because his parents have enemies and he's a target and they walk like he does. They tread on air and they don't talk they whisper because talking loud means that you are loud and if they want a chance to get money and food and a roof over their heads they need to be as silent as the night that cloaks them.

The twisting on his stomach worsens.

Some part of him thinks he's broken, that only broken people feel like this so he has to be broken. Otherwise he's a mistake and Atsu doesn't want to think of himself as a mistake- he likes the thought better that he is a regret. Because that's means that they saw he was a broken child made from mismatched pieces and they loved him until he broke them, too. Until he made too many mistakes and the hate overrode the guilt of leaving a broken child so they kept him; all he had to do was keep quiet. All he has to do is think that this is for the best and how they are getting him to do the best he can doesn't matter in the slightest.

Not that it matters anymore.

Nothing matters anymore.

There is no routine and he doesn't know how to act around Irina so he'll have to test the waters and make mistakes. He'll make mistakes so he knows not to make them again. He will make her angry and sad and scared and tired. He will break her and watch her pull herself together, dissecting her until he knows the buttons to push and what makes her tick.

         ＾『C for cicatrize

―I have broken eyes and―
            lips that speak in lies』＾
|
→This is the Earth
in which I have lived
This world where I lie-
of which I will die
This is the home
where scum roam
This is a weary dream
where the villain always succeeds.←
|
   。＊ ♡《The roses bloom rotten black The Bellflowers cry sapphire blue,
         I think that they hate me
              As much as I miss you》♡ ＊  。
∆
Ring around a rosie
A pocket full of posies
Ashes ashes
We all drown
∆
π
Mama, why are people so greedy?
•

°=°•

They're   just   sick   and   tired   and   bored   of   having   bad   happen   to   them,
•

°=°•
Mama, why do you keep hurting me?
.
.
.

Don't   ask   questions   you   don't   want   the   answer   to,   Sweetie,
π