"Sei, be careful where you're walking. Here, take my hand."

A wavering hand reached up and gripped onto the arm that belonged to the familiar voice; the hand's digits moved down towards the limb's length until he finds the hand he was suppose to keep a hold on.

"That's good. Now slowly walk down the stairs. Take your time."

A foot shyly lifted off from the floor and carefully let his toes touched the first step of the staircase before resting the rest of the foot. The same procedure was repeated for each single step, making the entire walk down the stairs unbearably long and time-consuming. But Alpha had the patience and ended up with Sei safe and sound as the trip downstairs was finally over.

Taking in an intake of air, Alpha breathed out to express his relief that the trip downstairs didn't end up horribly. "Okay. You made it safely." Tightening his grip on Sei's hand, the android guided the male towards the kitchen. He heard a soft chuckle escaped from Sei and when Alpha looked back at him, the feeble-looking male was showing his usual, pure smile. "Alpha, you're such a worry-wart. The way you're acting right now is similar to an over-protective parent." Even though it was just a light humor to lighten the atmosphere, Alpha wasn't at all happy to hear it. In fact, it only made his mood even worse than before.

It happened so fast. Sei woke up and was heading downstairs to help Tae with the house chores, nothing out of the usual. As he put himself to work, Sei noticed his vision began to look off to him but he ignored it, not wanting to trouble anyone in the household. While washing the dishes, black blotches appeared inside his field of vision, floating around like living microbes swimming through. Not knowing what was going on, Sei rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, hoping to shoo away the pestering blotches. It only got worse as the black spots rimmed the vision, making it hard to detect the objects around in his peripheral vision. It was by luck that both Tae and Aoba were at home when Sei experienced the symptoms of vision loss and immediately called an ophthalmologist to check up on him.

Unfortunately Sei was diagnosed to have a degenerative eye disorder caused either by the abnormalities of the photoreceptors or the retinal pigment epithelium of the retina, which could progress to sight loss. The described symptoms looked similar to retinitis pigemntosa; however, the eye disease was said to be inherited, meaning Aoba would have it as well. The doctor also noticed other few eye abnormalities: scared ocular tissues and muscles. Sei knew the reason behind the internal eye scars was all thanks to the many years of experiments he had to go through back at the Oval Tower. Even though he was free, it seemed his phantom past was catching up towards him, a friendly reminder about his cursed fate he had for the past 23 years.

As for the Alphas, the two began their lives living with Clear -unfortunate to the twins' part- ever since the tower collapsed and were brought back to life, thanks to Tae and her connections with an unknown person. Still remaining the same mischievous and mean duo they were before, the Alphas had their keylock removed and had a few re-programming steps to completely free themselves from Toue's control. It was hard and confusing at first for the two androids, having this sort of weird and free life, no longer brainwashing people's minds and following after their Master's orders. For the longest time ever since they were created, they lived nothing but manipulating chess pieces in part of the monopolizing whole island game.

But going through the details about living the ordinary life wasn't something that Alpha cared much to explain. It was mostly boring and there was barely any interaction, with the exemption with Clear and the rest of the Seregakis. Alpha never thought he would encounter such a fierce and intimidating elderly human such as Tae; it didn't help each time he saw her, he was grimly reminded the first day meeting her and that damn frying pan. Back then everyone was surprised at Tae's bold move to smack on Alpha's head with the pan after throwing in his usual snarky remarks. Ever since that happened, the android kept his smarty remarks to himself and did as he was told by her. Man that was intense.

The current situation changed right after Sei's incident. Alpha found himself temporarily living in the Seragaki residence, looking after Sei 24/7. His other two brothers did come over to help but knowing that the house cannot hold that many people, Alpha offered himself to stay until Tae finds a treatment to cure Sei's vision impairment. There was still enough time as the progress of the blindness happened at a gradual rate, buying enough time for Tae to search around for information.

Pulling out a chair, Alpha carefully guided him towards it and gently pushed his shoulder to make Sei take a seat. "What do you want to eat? I'm pretty sure we have leftovers from last night. Here let me check." Walking towards the fridge, he was about to pull the door's handle before hearing Sei opening his mouth to voice out his unspoken words.

"It's alright. I'm not really that hungry." Rubbing his thumb over his fingers, Sei looked back to where he thought Alpha was standing, imagining the android's disapproving frown. "Tea and some sweets sound good though right now." Staring him for a long time, Alpha gave out a sigh before turning his back to him. "Alright. I'll prepare the tea and take out Tae-san's homemade doughnuts. I think there are some cream puffs as well."

Pushing his sleeves up his arm, Alpha had the tea kettle filled up with water and waited until he heard the hissing sound of the steamy water vapour escaping through the snout. With a tea cup on his one hand and a green teabag sitting on the cup's bottom surface, Alpha gently poured the warm water and let the tea seep for a few minutes before placing in front of Sei. "Here you go. I'll bring the sweets shortly." As he said that, Sei heard a clattering sound of a plate sat next to the tea cup.

Sei smiled. "Thanks Alpha." He was about to lift both of his hands and reached for it but was immediately stopped by a sudden grasping hold.

"Sei. What did I tell you about handling hot beverages? Let me help you."

"I'm not completely blind, Alpha. Don't worry about it." Sei gently tried to decline Alpha's helping offer but it turned out to be impossibly. "I can somewhat see the cup in front of me."

"Sei." Alpha called out his name sternly. "I'm not buying that excuse, even if you see it." Taking the cup within his hands, Alpha blew the green tea a few times before passing the edge of the cup closely to Sei's lips. He took cautious sips but felt calm as the welcoming cascading warm liquid passed through the esophagus. It tasted wonderful.

After the tea was finished, Sei was allowed to eat the doughnuts and the cream puffs without the need of Alpha's help. "Do you want some?" Munching on a doughnut, Sei handed another piece of the android. Alpha chuckled and shook his head. "Nah, I'm fine. By the way, you have some crumbs all over your face."

"Huh? Where?" Blinking in confusion, Sei tried wipe of his face but wasn't able to succeed.

"Not there. Over here, dummy." A finger swiftly brushed out the tiny crumbs that were sitting closely to the corner of the mouth to Sei's surprise. Alpha couldn't help but grinning at the Seis' offended expression. "Well then, who was dummy enough to jump around people's roofs because he was bored out of his mind? Not to mention, try to sneak into my room late at night through the window."

"Ouch. That truly hurts me, you know." Laughing, Alpha carefully watched Sei finishing off his sweets but soon found himself staring through the window with a dazed expression.

How many days he has left before his vision completely gets destroyed?