Oculus watched over Decim with his blackened snake eyes and spoke breathily, "An arbiter with human emotions…"

(how fascinating; how disappointing).

Curiosity

Whiteness: that was the first thing Decim saw as he opened his eyes, awakening from his regularly scheduled mind wipe. It took him a few minutes to register his surroundings, which he came to realize had plenty more color than he had previously thought. Deep forest greens bled into the greys of daunting cliffsides that towered over the terrain like gods, little scatters of pink and yellows joining the fray, all while rushing streams of deep blue could be heard in the distance.

That's right, this is Nona's place.

"Hello Decim," came the sound of Nona's voice, and the bartender tilted his head to catch a glimpse of the purple-eyed girl. "Sleep well?" He politely nodded.

It was the norm. Wake up, forget whatever happened the previous month, go to work, judge human souls, go back to Nona, have memories erased, and start over again. There was never room for a break in monotony. There was never a reason for Decim to expect there should be.

So when he was led back down to his respected floor - Quindecim - and began the tasks expected of him, he was surprised by his first arrival. She was a woman, with straight black hair cut to hang along her shoulders, a single white strand marking her bangs (the ones hovering above a pair of striking violet eyes). He supposed she would be considered pretty. However, her appearance wasn't what caught Decim off guard.

It was the crack she made in the pristine glass of convention; the shatter point to his monotony; the human who knew she was dead.

Bang!

There it was: the shot that jolted him from his stupor. Decim began to feel something then, a kind of churning in his gut, a wave of uncertainty that crashed over his mind. He felt...intrigued.

Who was this black haired woman?

Why was she here?

What was her story?

It was a feeling that emerged itself from the depths of his soul, gasping for air, tottering through his inner workings in search for something to grasp, a hold - a hand, anything - one strong enough to withstand his shell that tried oh so hard to bury such things. It was not foreign, not entirely. After all, he had felt a similar tug when he opened his eyes after Nona's treatment, experiencing a heavy feeling in his head, and the ghost of the imprint that remained. He felt it many times when going near his collection of mannequins, and wondering why his heart sunk so much afterwards, why it hurt so much to look at them: these strangers he knew nothing of.

But looking at her, he had never felt a stronger pull.

Decim realized: this was the reason humans stared wide-eyed at his bar, why they were never fully reluctant to leave it, even after they learned of its intent. It was the reason Nona chose to imitate the land of the Earth on her floor, as if in awe of the sheer beauty of it all, of the colors that it encompassed. It was why Decim wanted to know everything about this black haired woman, even if he could only get a small sliver of information.

Maybe he'd even kill for it; maybe he'd be killed for it.

Happiness

He watched as the black haired woman finished her drink, the blueness of it disappearing somewhere behind her full lips and white teeth. Her cheeks were rosy, and Decim never understood how someone who was supposed to be dead could look so alive. She was glowing, and he could feel the pulsing of energy beneath her fingertips as he retrieved the glass from her, tendrils of shock waves bouncing off of his skin as their hands grazed one another.

He jumped (luckily for him she didn't seem to notice).

"Thank you," she said, lips curving upwards into a smile. Decim nodded.

Not too far away from them lay a snoring Ginti, and Clavis who began poking the side of his cheek with his drink stirrer. Luckily for the green haired male, Ginti did not wake, only swatted his hands. Nona was there too, her voice filling the room in a delicate song. Decim could hear music playing alongside her.

There was serenity to be found at his bar, Decim realized, hidden above the well-polished floors and dim-lifted walls, reflected in the glass water tanks that bursted with the blues and purples of its creatures. It was there, in Nona's pacifying songs and Clavis' smile and Ginti's steady breath and her, the woman who now stared at him through half lidded eyes, a smile betraying her thoughts.

But there was something else too.

His padded fingertips drummed against his side, and his blue eyes scanned his surroundings, almost frantically, as if in constant search for a source of understanding. What could it be? What is this feeling, this, this -

"Do you dance?" she asked, breaking him from his thoughts. "I don't know if I used to enjoy dancing, but…" her voice trailed off, before being carried away by Nona's low hum of music. Her eyes looked hopeful. Decim offered her a hand, and her pale one dipped into the subtle curve of his own as if they were one (he let the jolts of sparks roll off his shoulders). Then, he brought her to an empty space, and they let the music take them.

Decim knew how to dance. It was something instilled in him the way bartending was - a practice not taught but innate. It seemed to be the same for the black haired woman, because she moved with such grace and clarity that could only come from someone who held this art as a second nature. She glided across the floor as if it were ice, and the music was suddenly replaced by the sound of skates carving into frozen water, a steady rhythm fabricated by her own devices. He traced the curve of her body with his eyes, watched as her pale arms extended over her head and then behind her back like the flapping of wings. He fell into step with her, letting her lead him, let her fingertips graze his own and then piece together, drew her to his chest and felt warmth creep up, slowly and then all at once. His ears rung with the sound of her laughter.

There was a rising crescendo - a build up in the symphony they created together, they were reaching a peak, and Decim's heart began to soar, began to swell, began to beat faster and faster and faster, the sides of his mouth twitching upwards, until...until he stepped on her foot.

The composure collapsed.

He winced, "I'm terribly sorry." Her laughter filled the room, erasing any thoughts of unease. Gingerly, she reached out for his hands, and placed one against the curve of her waist, the other held tightly.

"Stop saying that," she breathed. A new dance started, and Decim let the jolts of electricity overtake him.

Loneliness

Decim knew the quiet. It was something he experienced every night since he became an arbiter, tucked away by himself in the darkness of his bar. Usually, when the work day was done, he would spend time on his mannequins. It was an art that required silence, an art that, when he felt the cool plastic beneath his fingertips, there were no words needed to express his sentiment - thank you for living a full life - yes you did everything you could - live on in my heart.

It was calming, to piece together the broken bits and pieces that remained in the elevators after everything went to hell - or heaven or...well, back to earth.

It was not calming afterwards.

Because Decim, standing there in the dim lighting of his bar, surrounded by countless numbers of (faceless) souls each with their own story and fulfilled lives (that for the life of him he could not remember), he had never felt so alone. He had never felt so out of place.

The silence then had become deafening.

One night, long after working hours were over, Decim decided to retire to his bedroom, foregoing his original plans of tending to his mannequins. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and traversed down the narrow hallway leading to his doorway, beginning to untuck his shirt and loosen his tie as he went. A crash alerted him from the kitchen, stopping him dead in his tracks. Decim turned back, only to find the black haired woman staring at him from within the doorway. She offered a sheepish smile.

"Sorry for the noise," she spoke, "I was just getting a glass of water before bed." Her hair was put up into a ponytail, and the strands were slightly coming loose, splayed against the pale of her face. They made shadows in the dark, and Decim found himself almost reaching out, as if to scatter them. He immediately forced the thought out of his mind, embarrassed. "I see you were on your way to your room too..." She raised an eyebrow to his somewhat disheveled appearance, a smirk tugging on her features. Decim looked down at his undershirt half hanging out of his pants, and of the tie still clutched in his fingers. He blushed. The words I'm terribly sorry sat awkwardly behind his lips.

Their accommodations were small, so much so that the grey hallway they stood within was low enough that Decim practically hit his head with every move. But it was something else too...cozy, perhaps.

He felt like she belonged here, taking up half the space of the hallway, her shoulders nearly brushing his own when she passed. She belonged, with her soft smile and her stray strands of hair and her calming countenance - this woman made the normally grey atmosphere burst with color. He felt like everything was right when she was by his side, whether that be aiding him in his judging, making him lunch, or tasting the drinks he conjured up just for her sake - there was something she brought to his life that hadn't been there before.

He didn't know what that was, but he knew it wasn't loneliness.

Anger

Decim was known for his quiet ambiance. He was non confrontational, calm, and and an all around easy-going guy. He wasn't like Ginti who could break at the drop of a hat or some of his customers who felt suddenly betrayed as they learned of his bar's true purpose. Still, there were times when that emotion of raw and bloody red invaded his mind, not perhaps as extreme as some felt, but Decim knew that it was something. Foreign? Yes. Unaccustomed to? No.

That being said, he didn't really understand how so many of his customers could fall victim to such a...feeling (that was the word right?). He could see the trembling of their fingers as the emotion set in, the red hot burn of their fists bleeding into a constant white, and the way their eyes grew dim and daunting. Decim looked at his own hands: pale and pristine, made for stirring drinks, not for inflicting violence.

Decim had the power to create threads. They were long and thin like spider webs, but also strong and true, and would twinkle intermittently as they caught in the overhead light. He liked the surge of energy that unraveled beneath the tips of his fingers when he called upon their power, and the extension they were to his body. They seemed lithe and graceful in his hands; they seemed unassuming and fragile.

But they were not weak.

He remembers the sharp, crass, and insulting words Ginti threw at the black haired woman, how they bled with stark disgust for her human nature, for what made her, in Decim's eyes, so intriguing. He remembers his body going numb as she was knocked out, the feeling of blankness that enveloped his mind, and something animal clawing it's way up his throat.

Decim didn't know what took over him, this... this sudden urge to fight.

Ginti fired a barrage of water droplets at the arbiter, fast and unrelenting, and it only took a brief second for Decim to counter them with his own threads. Unthinkingly, the white haired male slipped his hand against his opponent's wrist, pressed down hard so he wouldn't escape, and hurled him over his head across the room, slamming him into the glass water tank that shattered in mere seconds. Water pooled onto the floor, but Decim didn't care.

He felt - pause (Decim checked his heavy breathing and the way his hands trembled) - exhausted.

Sorrow

Chiyuki, that's her name. He wanted all three syllables on the tip of his tongue, the raw and open feeling that would accompany the word as it were stripped of its honorifics and formality. He wanted her, wanted her hands in his and her chest against his own, and wanted to breathe in the sent of her being.

She remembered she remembered she remembered.

There was something intimate and wrong about the whole thing, about seeing her memories on repeat, flashing against his mind: the slashing sounds of knives on ice played over and over and over again. There was something terrible falling into the pit of his stomach, and as he watched her form glide across the ice, soar into the air like a bird, and as if suddenly shot down, fall, his heart pulsed and his hand shot to his chest in agony.

This wasn't what he wanted.

He saw Nona's face in his mind and could almost hear her chiding voice lilting: "It's time Decim. She remembers."

Please, that means she'll leave, she'll have to go, and I'll be (left behind) alone. Don't take her away from me, please, you can't, please- Was this how she felt? When she lost what defined her? So broken and empty and lost and everyone around her didn't understand? Is this what killed her?

He took her to her old house and watched as her eyes filled to the brim with nostalgia, and when told her that she could go back, she was thrilled. When he told her the cost would be another's life, she faltered. But still, she was human, and Decim saw the conflicted emotions flash across her visage, watched as her heart broke apart, completely floored by her mother's love and devotion even after she was gone. She was going to say yes. Her eyes screamed, do it!

Chiyuki was a woman of compassion. During her time at Quindecim she realized that every life is beautiful, and everyone good or bad has someone who cares for them. Sacrificing someone else's life for her own was the equivalent of sending herself to hell. Humans cherish each other's lives, and not cherishing her own was something she could never forgive herself for. She expressed this, but still, even after she acknowledged it, she was still screaming for him to take her back.

Do it, do it, do it, do it-

-Please!

Decim broke.

Like a waterfall, his tears flooded out of him as if it were the first time ever. "It was a test," he told her, clutching his heart, deep sobs racking his body. Finally, he understood her pain.

Love

She watched him with hooded eyes, a sad and caring smile etched deep onto her features. Her slim body fit itself into the small space of the elevator, the one that would take her soaring up, on her way. Their bodies were adjacent, mere inches away.

He wanted to tell her so many things but found himself silent.

He appreciated her presence, and it would be something always near him, a memory etched so deep into his brain that he couldn't possibly forget (except he would, but he wasn't going to think of that then). She allowed him to understand what made him so unique, what gave his own life meaning.

An arbiter with human emotions, that's what he was.

"Thank you," he voiced.

And when the doors began to close and tears filled in her eyes, Decim smiled.

.

.

.

"-ove you."

Thanks for reading! Feel free to review, I'd really appreciate it :)