Hey! A continuation!

Once I was real
Once I had something to lose
Once I could peal
Once I was harder to bruise
Once I was here
Once I was willing to bend
Once I appear
I will be real once again
Brad Caleb Kane "Once"

Waking up becomes something he wants to delay, postpone at any cost, pushing away the slightest touches of awareness tickling his mind; and once the fight for oblivion is inevitably lost, he refuses to admit any understanding of the circumstances he finds himself in. The dull ache in his hollow eye socket radiates inside his skull, permeating it to the very back, pulsating lazily over the passing hours and providing him with a shield of silent physical pain against the frantic cries in his memory. Besides, it grants him a handy excuse to lock himself away and helps deter those noisy, annoying people who keep demanding that he eat, drink, take medications, allow the wound to be cleaned and bandaged.

He surrenders to their treatment with what appears to be abject indifference, but in truth there are deep layers of loathsome fear and nervous hypersensitivity responding with merciless acuteness to each and every glance cast in his direction. No matter if the looks are of empathetic interest, uncertain concern, superficial politeness or open suspicion, he, who for so long lived lurking in the shadows, cannot bear the exposition of his pitiful person to the world.

As he sits all alone in the room he woke up in, as he thinks and he remembers as the relentless throbbing has already ceased to be a sufficient protection from brain functions, he realizes that there isn't anything and that he doesn't know. He doesn't know where or when he is, he doesn't know what happened to his master, if the snow-white girl from the Abyss kept her promise; he doesn't know whether and how he is to do what she entrusted to him. He doesn't know if he can or should or wants to live on; he doesn't know what for.

He doesn't know who and why is keeping him in this place, and whether they are aware of just whom they are housing. The new, clean clothes he discovered on himself after regaining consciousness hint that someone must have seen the seal on his chest, yet none of the servants says a word about it. Is he being cured only to be sentenced to death soon later? Would he care if that was true?

He doesn't even know how long a time has passed in this new place of confused, hopeless refuge when he is confronted with an invitation.

"Upon hearing of your improved condition," recites a servant with eyes fixed on the wall above the patient's lowered head, "Mistress asks you to join her at tea."

Silence. The maid musters her courage to look into his face and smile reassuringly, but her efforts go in vain.

"Our good Mistress is who decided to keep you here, despite knowing nothing of who you are," she adds quietly. "So now she'd like to get to know you. Talk to you. Ask your name."

See him. Talk to him. Know him? Ask his name.

He can barely recall the last time he was treated this way, so kindly, so naturally after everything twisted itself up and any normality apart from the desperately squeezed remnants of his withering sanity got diluted in painful dedication and rabid toil.

He is to be treated as a real, normal person.

The servant blinks in surprise when all of sudden he lifts his head in a rapid movement, in spite of himself revealing the stirred expression.

"I'll wait outside till you get ready, okay?" She utters and backs off swiftly.

He is supposed to give a name. But what name? Certainly he can't use the old one, the real one.

His name was Kevin Regnard, and that was once a real person.

But then, he became a nameless red-eyed ghost creeping beyond the edges of normality.

Can he be real ever again?

That's yet another thing he doesn't know.

FF won't allow a hyphen in the title!

Anyways, let us be happy, please review, have a nice day~