Disclaimer: All rights are reserved to Kakinouchi Narumi-sensei, but the poem is mine.

(Note: I am doing this from the ova, not the manga or the tv series.)

There are many colors

within this ever-changing world.

I wonder why I can't ever get you right

While I'm painting...

Mistake, mistake.

I'll have to start all over again.

painted reality.

by miyamoto yui

As far as I could remember, as weak as my memory can sometimes be, I saw two red eyes hiding in the shadows. I was holding my mother's hand and put one of my fingers into my mouth, as dirty as it was.

With wide eyes, I blinked at her and then took my finger away from my mouth to point at those red eyes that felt so warm to me.

They were focused and looked right at me.

"Who is that, Mommy?" I asked as I looked up to her with a face filled with more curiosity rather than fear of the unknown darkness before me.

"Don't mind it," she said as she kept her head forward. "Don't look at them. They're nothing."

She smiled at me, but it seemed very unnatural then.

I remembered her grip on my hand was becoming a bit tighter with every step we took. She was distressed, but I couldn't understand why would two red eyes in the darkness make her so fearful.

My mother was calm in every situation and I had wondered then why did she feel so threatened by these eyes watching me.

Perverse as it was, I looked back.

I glanced back into those red eyes...

And at night, I would crawl out of bed. I had really bad insomnia so I would lie in bed for hours on end wondering when I would go to sleep. My imagination ran wild and I started to make images of things on the ceiling, pretending that my eyes could see things that other people couldn't. I wondered about those red eyes, but they never let me feel fear.

I wanted to look back.

That's what they were tempting me to do.

Quietly, I opened the window and stared out into the garden. And while my parents were sleeping, there was a dark figure. I didn't know if it was because I was sleepy, but the tall figure had a mask. He looked up towards my direction and I could see those red eyes of his...

My mouth opened to lip sync, "Hello."

The unmoved mask remained the way it was: Just staring at me.

My mother never let me get close to anyone. I couldn't understand if it was because she was overprotective. Well, that's what I thought it was.

So, could you have possibly have imagined how much I loved your piercing eyes, Larva?

I watched because it wasn't unnerving to have someone look at me relentlessly. To always watch me so carefully and precisely.

It should have disturbed me, but I found your eyes so beautiful. They were like red rubies shining in the darkness around us and I loved to stare at them for such a long time. I had even thought about your eyes while falling asleep at night, wondering if you were watching over me.

As I grew older, I distanced myself more from people. I would make friends, but I wouldn't try to get to really know them, nor would I share myself with anyone.

That was a common survival technique among humans: avoidance.

You did enough to keep people close to you, but pushed them far enough so that there would always be a wall. And it's not that you felt you're too different from them, but you felt suffocated by all their superficiality.

Could people understand what I felt when my dad would just wander day to day not really doing anything? I was scared of him while thinking that maybe I had done something to make him silently angry. Only, he hugged me one day when he said, "I'm sorry, Miyu."

He made me cry that one time.

I didn't understand why he was saying sorry when I was only seven, but something in my heart made me feel for him. He was hiding something much deeper than I could have ever expected.

And my mother?

My mother kept all these things from me. She would randomly rub my hair and say, "Stay the way you are. That's all you have to do."

As kind as she was, I would get irritated because I didn't understand what she was saying to me. And I would ask her why would I change in the first place?

But it hurt so much to see my mother and father the way they were.

Their quiet love was also the source of their greatest pain.

And was that fair to me? A man and a woman who love one another naturally would like to have a child, the tangible form of that love. Did I cause them pain?

Yes, in a way, I did, even though it wasn't my own fault.

So, I lived in a shadow of myself that I didn't even recognize.

Years passed and I found myself going to the beach at night and I cried and cried. I didn't understand why all the smiling at home led up to me spilling it all back to the ocean. My hair would go with the wind and I buried my head in between my knees as the waves crashed on my feet.

I hugged myself for the warmth I couldn't get from anyone or anywhere else.

My mother hugged me all the time, but it was so cold.

And I was only growing colder as the years were getting longer...

Then, in my despair, I felt like I was in a dream. Someone had hugged me from behind with their warm blood pulsating within them.

I wanted to drink and take everything away from this person.

I should have turned around, but I didn't. I knew who this was and I leaned back, pressing my back onto this person's chest. And the white hands began to wrap around my body making me feel as if I were surrounded by a security blanket. I pressed further and he grabbed on tighter.

I wanted him to touch me so much and I didn't know if we could do that.

This wasn't enough for me.

With my eyes closed, I reached up my hands to the face I had never seen or felt before...

The skin was so soft and I felt one hand enclose upon my own. He guided me to where his face was and then let go.

Doki doki doki...

Inside of me, the ice that had been forming was melting and I felt like I was gradually manipulating a fire deep inside of me. I felt so warm all over and it felt nice to feel so well-cared for.

"It's you, isn't it?" I whispered sweetly with all the care that I could have possibly had given to this person. "You're the one looking after me all these years, aren't you?"

There was no response as I pulled his face close to my lips.

Before I knew it, all the anger and hurt inside of me dissipated so quietly as I found myself kissing him.

"You understand, don't you?" I whispered as tears fell from each of my eyes.

At that moment, I woke up from my dream to find myself in my bed and inside of my room. I looked up at the ceiling to find two red eyes looking at me. With that, I was comforted enough to go to sleep.

For many days, I couldn't tell if any of that was real...

...that was until he came upon the shore and wanted to borrow my blood.

Larva was supposed to kill me that day, but he didn't.

So, my dream that night was never a dream. And those red, red eyes that looked like rubies were real too.

I could live half in my dream and half in reality because Larva would always understand the truth behind everything...

But it came with a price.

For my sake and his failure, his beautiful face was shut away forever from me.

I touched his mask and my heart ached every time even though I was smiling in front of him. It was because he gave me eyes that said,

"Yes, Miyu. I'll always understand."

I remained holding onto his mask in my hands and reached the opening of the mouth with my lips. I tried to kiss him with all my heart, soul, and mind.

I'll drown and be damned by whatever this may be.

Whomever I am: Miyu. Whomever he is: Larva.

Then, I opened my eyes to watch him so silent, just as before.

I always remembered what he said. He told me this before he was exiled to live behind a mask for all of eternity,

"Some people wear masks to shadow what's inside.

Some people wear masks to show only the truth of their heart.

For there are people that only care about what they can see and not what they should touch deep inside.

Even if it is their own heart."

I wondered if he meant that no one was really true inside. Was there really sincerity existing in the world?

Because if that was the case, what are trust and the human heart?

They're all just illusions, and we live in our own realities.

Perceiving what we believe is truth.

Owari./The end.

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Author's note: I made this because I like Miyu and I _love_x3 Larva. (I found out what the word bishounen meant when I was hunting for Larva. It was the first thing I looked up on the web.)