Chapter 1: Kiku's POV

I hated it.

I hated waking up at least three times a weak next to him. I hated how I had learned how to read people's emotions so well to judge how much pain I'd be in later that night and the next morning. I hated that feeling of hopeless ness that had been haunting me since I was eight. I hated fearing everyone who so much as looked at me. I hated that I was afraid of returning to the place I was supposed to call home.

I reluctantly sat up, wincing as a sharp pain shot through my lower half. That was another thing I hated: the constant pain. Unfortunately, he wasn't exactly what you could call gentle. Being careful not to wake him up, I got out of the bed, shuddering as the cold air hit my bare skin. The one sort of okay thing about him was the amount of body heat that he created. At least I didn't freeze to death every time afterwards.

I made my way to the bathroom, limping because the pain was too intense otherwise. I closed the door behind me, avoiding looking into the mirror and turning on the shower. I winced as the sharp jets of water hit my skin, jabbing like needles into my already bruised flesh. I washed off slowly, methodically, trying to scrub off the feeling of his touch. It didn't work. No matter how much I scrubbed, no matter how many times I scoured my skin, turning it red and raw with my effort, I could still feel his greasy, revolting fingers on me.

I gave up eventually and turned the water off. As I stood in front of the mirror, I cringed at my reflection. Bruises covered me from the shoulders down, some yellow and nearly healed and some black and brand new. There were a few red marks from the night before that I knew would contribute to the painful, black and blue mess I had become. I hated it. I hated him.

I hated myself.

I looked my reflection over, trying to see myself from the point of view of an outsider. I was small and delicate looking, skinny because of how little I tended to eat. My straight black hair and coffee brown eyes were from my Japanese heritage, as both my parents originated from Japan itself. What skin was undamaged was pale, soft, and smooth. My face was wiped carefully blank, betraying no emotion whatsoever. I wasn't muscular, more on the weak, even fragile side of life. I knew that most people only saw my weakness. Then again, there wasn't much else to me. I wasn't strong enough to resist the people at school who had been beating me around and taunting me since first grade. I wasn't strong enough to resist him.

As I got dressed, my movements mechanical, I realized that I had already fallen into the routine from the year before. Get up early, shower even though I could never feel clean, get dressed, eat whatever I could force down, and go to school for six hours of lesser hell only return to the ninth circled of hell when I got back to the place I lived. I couldn't really call a place that I wanted to leave as soon as physically possible 'home.'

Great. First day of my freshman year of high school and I wasn't expecting it to be any different than the year before in middle school. Then again, I was still living in the same tiny town that I had been my entire life. Everybody knew everybody, and there was only one high school, so that meant that the same people who had been tormenting me since elementary school would be in the same school—again—as I was, along with the kids from the middle school in the next town over that I hadn't gone to who hadn't seen me since elementary school but had used me as their favored punching bag then. Now, all of the assholes who liked pushing me around would be back in full force.

It wasn't like I didn't have any friends. Sure, there were only two of them, but they were still my friends. Ludwig Beilschmidt, a strong, quiet German, and Feliciano Vargas, an excitable, very loud Italian. They were great people, but we had started drifting apart after Ludwig had started dating Feli. I was happy for them, and they did their best to make sure they didn't leave me out, but I still felt like a third wheel whenever we were together.

As I left the house, I had the painful feeling that that year would be different than all the previous ones. Knowing my life, it would probably take a turn for the worst. Then again, without Ludwig's unintentionally terrifying presence offering me a little bit of protection and with the return of fifty percent of the people who walked over me for kicks, there was a high chance of my hell not getting any better. With my luck, my high school years would be as brutal, if not worse than the rest of my life.

By the time I had reached that depressing conclusion, I had reached the front doors of Hetalia High. I took a shaky breath, preparing myself for the mental and physical pain I knew the day would bring, and joined the river of students entering the building to start the new school year.