This chapter focuses more on Miku and Kiyoteru. It starts slowly, but it picks up by the middle.


Summer

Kiyoteru carried two of her three bags into the new room, most likely because he felt bad about making her carry things. The window looked over the quiet street. The floor was soft gray carpet. It felt nice under her feet.

Kiyo didn't look at her that much. When he did, he would give her a smile that didn't touch his coffee-colored eyes. Something about his demeanor was unsettling, but she didn't have the words to describe it, or even ask him what was wrong. He gave the impression that he was usually more easy-going than his tight, anxious movements would suggest. He told her that dinner was going to be ready in about an hour. She said okay. He said to yell if she needed anything. She said okay. With nothing left to mention, he excused himself from the room.

She began to unpack the things that were in her duffel bag - socks and such. She took too long staring at everything, tracing her fingers over the stitches and seams and loose threads. They said they were her clothes. She trusted them. She knew it was all her clothes.

The hospital bracelet was still in northern pocket she had put it in. She needed it to be sure of her existence. It said she was Hatsune Miku and that, to her, was all that she really owned. She may have been packing away her belongings, but she felt that they belonged to a dead girl.

Soon, everything was sorted into loose piles that she could stuff into empty drawers. After about fifteen minutes, she decided that the ache in her stomach was too much. Sitting down was too tempting.

She counted the fine lines in the ceiling and determined that she would be doing that a lot from now on.

She dug her phone out of her pocket and turned it on. A beautiful brunette smiled on the lock screen, clutching a small tealette in her strong arms. Miku curled up on her side and sank her focus into the woman's face. Her high brows and full lips were colored by a casual, steady hand - she was so natural with her make up, so tangible. She was called Meiko. Miku called her Mama, of course only in private, because it seemed embarrassing to her.

She considered skimming through her pictures again, but she was tired of doing that. In the end, she settled on her current favorite activity, which was staring into space. She could make an entire hour pass if she did just that. She made it through her hospital stay by gazing into nothing. Surely she could make it for several months in this place.

As if to prove that all that time had truly passed, Kiyoteru came knocking on the door.

"Dinner's ready," he informed her. "Are you hungry?"

Miku wasn't hungry, but she got up and followed him down to his itty bitty dining room. The food was steaming on what looked to be his fanciest plates. They were different from her mother's dining set, and aunt Sachiko's as well. That was because he hadn't inherited any fancy china when grandma passed away. He never even showed up at that funeral.

He pulled out a chair for her. The cushion was comfortable. He sat on the opposite side of the table and ate silently. It was merely inches across from her, but it felt like he was on the opposite edge of the universe. She couldn't tell what he had made, as the food tasted like air. It smelled good enough. Some chunks she recognized as chicken, and she pushed those to the edge of the plate as stealthily as possible.

Miku gave up on eating before he did, but he whisked the dishes into the sink as soon as she swallowed her last bite. She watched the street lights blink on, just outside the window.

"Do you need anything?" He asked over the click of plates. The faucet burst on. "Want some dessert?"

"No," the girl replied, tugging on strands of her teal hair.

He looked over his shoulder at her. "No sweet tooth?"

"No."

A long whistle came from his mouth. "I've never had a roommate who didn't want to steal my ice cream."

She didn't say anything. Still, he seemed less uncomfortable from this distance. He washed everything carefully, wiping the forks down twice. She wondered if he'd had many roommates, if he'd liked any of them. If he liked school. He probably did. He was a teacher, after all, educating middle schoolers in music. She noticed the piano sitting in a corner, clean and open.

Miku had never liked school that much. She didn't remember what she had been learning before the...well, she didn't remember. It probably wasn't important, considering that she was fifteen and no job involved any of the concepts she learned at that age. No one was going to begin a job interview with "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."

"Kiyo," he said suddenly. She turned to look at him. He was immediately sheepish, rushing to explain himself.

"I mean you don't - don't worry about calling me uncle or anything. I'm not used to it. So Kiyo is fine." He wiped the the back of his wet hand over his forehead. His straight brown hair was looking a bit messy.

"Mom said they called you Teru when you were small."

"Kiyo sounds cooler."

"Sharper," Miku agreed. Pleased by this progress, Kiyo came back to sit down across from her, and he didn't shrink from her gaze.

"Do you remember Christmas when you were three? I drove for five hours to meet you and you chucked a pine cone at me," he said with a faint grin. The street lights reflected in his thick glasses.

"I don't remember," she admitted, looking away with a healthy dose of guilt.

"You were probably too little," he added, a good-natured dismissal.

"Where did you go? ...why did you take five hours to come home?"

He mulled over his words, suddenly carefully of their weight. He looked tired as he thought about it. His hands were clasped tightly in front of him, positioned as if in prayer. After a shrug he told her, "you know it wasn't my home anymore. Sachiko probably told you the story, right?"

Miku shook her head. "Mom just said that you were far away and she thought about you a lot."

He clenched his teeth. "Yeah. I thought about her, too," his voice turned weak.

She didn't know how to comfort him then. Her fingers twitched. She left them in her lap, too cowardly to reach for him.


Miku stopped sleeping for the sixth time that night.

She didn't tell anyone. There was no point. She wasn't having dreams, but each time she found herself waking up with a distinct dread in the pit of her stomach. Her throat would be dry and her chest would be heaving. Thankfully she hadn't screamed this time, otherwise Kiyoteru probably would have stormed in to determine the cause.

She looked out the window and observed the warmly glowing street lights. The ground was so clean and empty down there. A single black cat slinked by, disappearing behind a dumpster that apparently blocked an alley. It looked bristled and anxious.

Theirs was one of a few houses before the street widened into a more major intersection. If she remembered correctly, the was an apartment building on the opposite side of that street. The property was rather cheap in comparison to her old home, much more densely populated. All this told her that things should be awful and dangerous, but she had yet to witness any criminal activity or, really, anything unpleasant. There wasn't even graffiti on the dingy backs of buildings. It was too quiet.

She thought back to the first grade, sitting in Mama's lap under the bright lamp of the living room. They held a book together, Mom's finger skimming under the words as they sounded them out. It was titled "Animals of the Rainforest," a dry, and admittedly amateurish book. But Miku had picked it at the library and she was stubbornly interested in its contents.

"And...when an...apex pred- preta-" Miku squinted hard at the words as if she was having trouble seeing them. Of course, she had perfect vision, because the eye doctor had told her so before giving her a high five just last month.

"Predator," said Meiko in her rich, dark voice. "'When an apex predator is in the area, all the animals go silent as they hide.'"

"What's a apex predator?" The girl asked, looking down at the page's depiction of a lion in the jungle foliage. Again, it was a severely inaccurate book.

The brunette hummed thoughtfully as she combed through her daughter's bangs. Miku remembered the warmth of her touch and savored the memory. Finally her mother answered.

"A predator is something that everyone else is afraid of. And it's not like a clown, or the monster under your bed. The predator can hurt everyone. We're all right to be afraid of it."

Meiko spent a long time afterwards assuring an inconsolable Miku that the predators were in the wild. No bear or lion was coming to get them - unless Miku forgot to brush her teeth at night, or lied about not taking the last chocolate chip cookie, even though she really did take it.

Miku pressed her cheek against the cool window, watching for predators as the stagnant tears hung from her lashes. She wanted to fade away, fall into an unthinking void, but she kept remembering Mama's careful hands and her chocolate voice. So she stayed awake.


"He's not breathing." Yohio paced in front of the door, kneading his forehead feverishly.

A muffled reply came from his phone, the exhausted voice of Tonio: "He's a quiet kid."

Yohio blanched, his brow crushed together in concern. "And he doesn't - he doesn't even blink," He exclaimed, turning a little so that he could see that kid from the corner of his eye. A puny boy, practically drowning in his new hand-me-down shirt, was lying belly-down on the floor. His back didn't rise or fall. Hio only knew that he was alive because of the way his eerie blue gaze would follow the slightest movements.

His newly washed hair was fluffy and wild, defying gravity with its strange texture. His skin was so gray under all the dirt and caked blood, as if his veins were empty. His eyes were red-rimmed, and incredibly dim.

Toni really wasn't impressed by the report. "Tell him to blink. He probably will," was his comment.

"Is he undead or something? Jesus, Tonio, what aren't you telling me? Is he a..." Yohio's voice shrank. "...a vampire?"

"A vampire?" His boss gave a great and hearty laugh from the depths of his stomach. He even slammed his fist against something and caused another object to rattle. Yohio twitched as the laugh only grew stronger by the second. He attempted to force a word in, but there was no room with all the amused shrieking. He held the phone away from his ear until all he could hear was a sharp, painful wheezing. Then the phone clicked as Tonio hung up.

Yohio bit down on the curses that threatened to spill out of his mouth. His questions sounded stupid now that he heard them out loud, but he was sure that Tonio would keep vampire children. It was just the kind of "interesting" thing he would enjoy.

The lethargic boy was still eyeing him. This was the thing that had removed Big Al's finger in one bite? Sure he had the teeth for it, but even so...he couldn't be that powerful.

Yohio rummaged through his fridge for a certain plastic and Styrofoam package. He approached the child, slow and steady, then knelt next to him.

"What did they call you back in that place?" He asked. To his chagrin, he got no response.

"Well then, little man, we've got a few ground rules to cover. Rule number one: You can't leave the apartment without me. Rule number two: don't eat things I tell you not to eat. Ever. And rule number three..."

Yohio tore the plastic and peeled a long slice of bacon from its pack. The boy bolted upright, his mouth hanging open at the sight of raw meat. Yohio couldn't help smirking at the pure, childish reaction.

After clearing his throat, he continued his announcement. "...you've gotta act natural from now on. The job that we've got is gonna take a lot of acting."


Miku couldn't remember falling asleep, but she woke up again.

The sun was dripping across the street. Some primordial wisdom whispered in the back of her mind that, despite a resounding lack of proof, this light was unnatural. At least, it shouldn't be here right now. The sunbeams look sharp and angular, like they were meant to slice through the air. She hated how black and impossible the shadows were. She couldn't stand the complete absence of noise. It was like living on a desert island, all by herself.

She rose on unsteady feet, not thinking about the soft carpet this time. She'd let down her hair before going to bed. Now it was coiling around her shoulders, hanging in her eyes. It would prove to be a great enemy in her quest to see things clearly, but for now she ignored the tangles.

The stairs were teetering as she descended them. They screamed under her weight. This offended her - she wasn't even that heavy.

The wall caught her when her knees buckled. It seemed that the poisonous light was piercing through their curtains, creating glowing pools on the floor.

Kiyoteru looked up from his book and smiled halfway before he noticed her inability to stand. He went to her side immediately, his mouth moving to form words that she couldn't hear. He made her sit down on sofa.

"Not a morning person, huh?" He sighed, pressing his cool palm against her forehead.

"It's so bright," she whimpered, leaning into his gentle hand.

"Breakfast fixes everything," he promised. "Do you like pancakes?"

She didn't care, so she nodded along. He went into the kitchen, standing in a place where he was easy to spot. He piled fluffy golden cakes onto one of the plates from last night's dinner. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the light. There was nothing supernatural about the sun. She began to feel silly for stumbling around like a crippled foal.

He was dousing her breakfast in dark maple syrup when she hear a steady knock at the door. Years of "stranger danger" conditioning prevented her from answering by herself, so she called for her uncle's attention. He scurried over in anxious anticipation. Miku shrank into herself, turning towards the window to look out at the sidewalk. She saw a large black car with tinted windows, scooting away as if lives depended on it.

Kiyo looked through the peep hole and made a noise of awe...or concern. He said, once he had opened the door, "is everything okay?"

Miku was at the wrong side of the room to see what was happening. She only saw the way Kiyo's eyes melted with paternal instinct.

"Do you have a phone I can use?" Said a voice that was boyish and fearful. "I need to call my dad."

The surprise visitor was allowed in. Why, of course he could use a phone. What was his name? Was he hurt? Was he lost? The answer, in a meek tone, was thank you and no he wasn't hurt, he had a bad nose bleed but that happened all the time. His name was Len Kagamine, his father's name was Yohio. The door clicked shut and Kiyo raced into the kitchen to find his cell phone.

Miku's insides shriveled up, her stomach in knots. For some reason there were alarm bells blaring in her head as she scanned the boy's old sneakers.

His shoe laces were stained with something brown while every other inch of his footwear was clean, as if scrubbed raw. The sleeves of his hoodie were tainted by the same odd brown color. He was lean, and not overly tall, but still several inches above her. His chapped lips were flat with boredom. He had light hair bound in a lazy and ineffective ponytail, with most strands hanging loose in any directions they pleased. Fortunately for him, it all managed to stay out of his ice blue eyes, which were focused on Miku. He was studying her with even more intensity than she had done to him. He looked at her the way cats looked at birds.

She opened her mouth just a little, but the scream wouldn't come out. How did he manage to stand so still? Why was he so colorless? Her heart was already galloping against her ribcage.

"I found it!" As Kiyo called out, the boy's head snapped back in his direction. His expression shifted into something sheepish and grateful as he hugged himself.

"Thanks," he said, in that same anxious voice as before. He took the phone and dialed a certain number. The person that Miku presumed was his dad picked up instantly. The conversation sounded oddly cold, with only the shortest questions and answers being exchanged.

"I'm on the corner of...no...someone nice let me in...no, I'm fine." He simpered at something his father said. Kiyoteru hovered close to him with a thousand unspoken questions on his lips. To think that he was so comfortable around this...stranger, when Miku's arrival had clearly disturbed him yesterday.

"Everything's okay now." The boy - Len, she remembered - hung up first, returning the phone with fervent "thank you"s.

"He's coming to get you, then? How long will he be?" The adult brunet inquired as he tucked his phone into his pants pocket for safe keeping.

"Well, he was on his way to work. He'll take half an hour, so I'm going to wait by the-" Len was cut off by the aggressive growl of his stomach. He quickly rewrapped his torso in his arms, his face full of perfectly believable shame. He began to rattle off apologies and goodbyes with a couple of stutters thrown in for realism.

But Kiyoteru smiled warmly. Miku knew what he was going to say, even though she hoped that she was wrong.