Cold.

The floor was cold.

Miku's toes tapped a drum beat on the sterile tiles. The obnoxious turquoise of her nail lacquer somehow made her skin look even more gray. Her lank teal locks dripped down her neck and shoulders like blood. All in one big, tangled mesh. Miku missed her twin pigtails.

Yellowing incisors gnawed on a bleeding-heart-petal lip as she pretended to ponder. The doctor stared at her expectantly while she twitched her toes and bit the inside of her cheek.

He had enough of waiting.

So he asked his question again.

"Miss Hatsune, do you remember what happened that night?" he asked carefully. Hesitantly. And for good reason. Bringing up the incident could be the rock to break her fragile glass mental walls. If the walls shattered, then who was she?

Miku flicked her gaze to him. She briefly opened her mouth into an O shape to speak, then thought better of it and twisted the O into a decidedly unsettling smile.

The doctor shifted and gripped his clipboard.

Examining him through a haze of bristly lowered eyelashes, she spoke.

"I do."

The doctor sighed. He had been hoping the trauma of the incident would erase the memory from her mind. Selective amnesia was not as uncommon as most would think.

"Well," he began. How to phrase this delicately? "Do you know what happened to Mr. Len Kagamine?"

Damn. He hadn't meant to say it so bluntly.

But he got a quicker response this time.

"I do."

"Do you know where he is now?"

"I do."

"Where?"

"Hell."

"Do you really believe in Hell, Miss Hatsune?"

"I do," she said, an octave lower. Her eyes narrowed. Fingers tensed on his clipboard.

"Any particular reason as to why most of your responses consist of 'I do'?" he grumbled under his breath. The doctor honestly didn't mean for her to hear it.

"They say if you use a phrase often enough, it loses all of its meaning. I'm hoping 'I do' will have the same effect," she said, her voice beginning to decrescendo. Internal wince.

"And why is that?"

A savage wolf grin, tongue flicking against her teeth.

"'I do' is what you say when you get married, ain't it? You know, white dress, fancy wine, spend the rest of our lives in each other's heads? Till death do us part," she chuckled. The term 'marriage' felt foreign on her tongue."Whoever coined that line was smarter than he knew."

She hadn't wanted to go, but Len insisted.

He said it would be good luck, right before they were joined together as one in the Ceremony.

"Why not fly one last time, doll?"

She tried to refuse, but that lit the spark of anger in him. Golden boy Len was not used to being denied anything. She withered like a dying flower under his gaze. She refused to be a dying flower; Len was a strong believer in out with the old, in with the new. Dying things would not be tolerated. So she went with him.

Len and Miku used to fly once a week. Len preferred to drink before they flew, as it pleasantly buzzed him enough to where he wouldn't crap himself with fear. Miku didn't want to drink. She wanted to remember every detail of flight with sharp clarity and precision.

Flying was like drugs. Best thing in the world, especially falling back down to earth. She didn't need drink to fog up those memories for her.

But Len brought along a crappy six-pack of beer anyway, and they drove out to what Len called the Launch Zone. Where the plane takes off.

It was a small piece of the cliffs facing the ocean. The cliffs were hundreds of feet above the shoreline below. Len and Miku would launch themselves off of it and hopefully land on the small ledge ten feet below. If you didn't recalculate your trajectory ten times a second you would miss the ledge and plummet to the earth below.

Miku couldn't understand why Len drank. She couldn't imagine flying off the Launch Zone with half of her wits; then again, Miku spent most of her life as an over-cautious worrywart anyway. Hadn't she started dating daredevil Len to get over that paranoia?

But Len allowed himself to get pleasantly buzzed ten minutes before

Liftoff that night. The two drive the truck five miles off road through the trees before reaching the cliffs. They would sit at the cliff side, skinny legs dangling off the edge, swapping stories while Len downed beer after beer after beer. Then he would stand up with the idiotic grin on his face, clap his hands together like that alchemist he looked so much like, and fling himself off the cliff, flying or falling or flailing. He always landed on the ledge. Then it was Miku's turn.

But tonight, she laid her hand on his arm and offered to go first.

"It's our last time to fly, Len. I want tonight to be special. I don't need you there to catch me at the bottom."

He laughed like a fool and agreed. Miku hiked up her already too-short skirt and backed up ten feet. Inhale, exhale. Then run. Run at the cliff like you're being chased. Run at the cliff like you're flying, not falling.

Toes push off. Muscles are coiled. Arms spread like wings. Air rushed around your face, whipping your hair like it's caught in a blender. The sky on the horizon is so beautiful.

Land on the ledge. Knees pop from the strain. Wince. Brush dust from her eyes and straighten your hair.

Then the rush is gone and she looks up at Len expectantly. He still has that stupid grin on his face. He steps back a few paces and runs at the cliff. Jumps off. Then he's flying.

No, not flying. Falling.

Len took off wrong. His trajectory is screwed up. He's flipping end over end over end and his face stays frozen in that smiling mask while terror rages in his eyes.

"Miku! Miku, Miku, Miku! I'm flying, doll! Really flying!" A cackle of laughter, brief like static.

Then his head hits the side of the cliff. Crack, like an eggshell smashed against the side of a bowl. Blood and bits of gore spatter the walls and arc across the sky, but he's still smiling.

Your throat is frozen like his smiling face. You are so scared so scared so scared, but you can't scream. The noise curls up in your lungs to the point of suffocating you, but it refuses to escape.

Len's head hits another rock as he falls. This one spears him through the eye, widening the home that is his eye socket. You think you see a bit of brain, or maybe an eye, get snagged on a piece of moss that clings to the cliffside.

Bile erupts in your throat and seeps down your chin, but still the scream is caught.

Finally his neck is speared on a stone at the bottom of the cliff. He reached the bottom, alright. He landed after flying. He flew further than any of you, past the ledge past the cliff past the ground past life and straight into death.

A chuckle-sob reaches your lips. How ironic; Len hated old things. Didn't like visiting nursery homes. Said he never wanted to be 'dying' like them. And it turns out, Len was never 'dying'. He went straight from full of life and alcohol and the rush of flying, to missing part of his skull and eye and trachea, most certainly very very dead.

The scream finally leaves your lips. He's dead, you know. Isn't it amazing how in one moment, one gunshot, one rock spearing your brain, all of your hopes, dreams, fears, futures, LOVES, and everything else you ever were can be snuffed out like a candle? Here one second, gone the next. You hope he didn't suffer.

Rot in hell, Len Kagamine.