Author's note: Would just like to say thank you for the reads. Also free! and all characters from it does not belong to me. I would also like to explain that opinions shared by characters or attitudes towards certain mental illnesses within this fic are not my attitudes or opinions. I have had to write the attitudes in this way as it seemed more fitting with each character's personality (as well as their own mental illness causing them to perceive things differently).

Nurse Etsuko told Rin that he could put up posters in his room but he couldn't see the point. He didn't really have posters in his room at home. Though now he wished he did as he was lying in a plain white room with that same awful medical stench in unfamiliar starchy sheets. The pillow felt too thin.

In the end he decided to get out of bed and see if he could find something to do. It was not quiet on the ward. There was yelling, and tapping, and squeaking, and sobbing, and weird whispers, and scratching, and the sound of feet pounding on the ground.

"It's always like this at night."

Rin did not scream like a girl when he realised that Haruka had somehow gotten inside his room.

"What are you doing here?" Rin yelled, once he was sure his heart palpitations had gone down.

"Be quiet, they might hear us," the boy replied, sitting on his bed. Haru was fiddling with the drawstring on his pajama pants.

"You have one of those?" Rin asked indicating to the drawstring with his hand. Haruka stared down for a second before looking at Rin with a puzzled look.

"Doesn't everybody?"

"I don't. They took mine from me when they got here."

"Really?" Haruka had scooted up the bed and moved closer to Rin.

"Yes, they said it was too dangerous for me to have it," Rin replied.

"I can get it back for you."

"What do the voices in your head think you can steal the drawstring for my pants back? Thanks but no thanks, I'm just focused on getting out of here."

"Drawstring?" Haruka mumbled under his breath. "Anyway, why do you want to go?"

"Because I hate hospitals and this room and all these dumb fucking rules," Rin answered. And you're also weirding me the fuck out.

"But we can be together here."

There was a long silence. The redhead knew his face was flushing again despite the fact that he found what Haruka had said really creepy. The schizophrenic seemed to think that they had foreknowledge of each other, more so he thought they had been important to each other. Rin didn't have anything to say to that statement.

They sat there for a while, Haruka didn't even seem tired.

"Could you please go back to your own room?"

Haru turned to Rin, eyes wider but still not wide enough to actually be classified as wide.

"Why?" It was almost as if he knew Rin couldn't answer to his question.

"I want to go to sleep," at which point a scream, which was one of the many rhythmless beats to the night's soundtrack, was sounded. This particular scream was much more bloodcurdling than its predecessors.

"You can't sleep through this. You'll feel better if I'm with you."

"No, I won't," Rin snapped, though he hadn't meant to. He meant to think it. Either way, Haruka had heard it and Rin lurched back after realising he had vocalised his feelings. Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit. I'm so fucked. He's going to kill me and eat me or something else really nasty.

Contrary to Rin's assumptions Haruka had lowered his head and moved off of the bed, opening the door and walking out the room, heading for the communal bathrooms. Rin exhaled, relaxing the muscles he hadn't known he had tensed. As he walked over to shut the door, a wave of guilt crashed over him and then ebbed at his side as he realised that Haruka seemed more upset than violent. He decided to turn towards the communal bathrooms when someone grabbed his shoulder.

"Hi, I'm Nurse Katsu, I'm one of the night nurses. I just need to ask, what the noise coming from your room was all about?"

"Haruka came into my room and I told him to leave and he left and he went to the bathrooms?"

The nurse cursed under her breath. "I'll have to go get someone, otherwise he'll be in there for hours," she mumbled.

"Is everything alright?" Rin inquired. Shit, I fucked something up for someone, again. I'm a failure and an inconvenience. I fucked up killing myself three times.

"Everything's fine, you just need to go to sleep," The nurse replied, momentarily distracting rin from his bout of self-loathing.

"But I can't," Rin whined.

"Okay, come with me I'll see if I can give you something to help."

The next morning Rin felt more tired than he had before he tried to sleep. All the nurse could give him was a shitty herbal tea since he hadn't had his first one on one session yet and apparently it would have to wait until Tuesday as he was scheduled for group therapy on Monday. Along with this, he kept hearing someone getting out of their room and turning all the taps in the bathroom on as well as someone who kept going up and down the hall turning the lights on and off, on and off, on and off.

Breakfast was hell. Trying to find somewhere to sit in the canteen was so unnerving. He knew that everyone here was "a danger to themselves and/or others." But it was impossible to tell who came under what category. There was a little brunette girl who sat on an alcove in the wall stabbing at her food rather than eating it. It was impossible to tell whether she was here because she tried to kill herself or someone.

And either possibility made him feel so horribly on edge. If they were suicidal, he felt he had to pick his words oh-so carefully otherwise the patient would shatter because they were that fragile. And in the other situation, say the wrong thing and the patient might attack him or start tormenting him, making his life a bigger nightmare than it already was.

"Hey newbie!" Rin was pretty sure that the owner of this voice, which he vaguely recognised, was referring to him. He looked around and noticed the blonde boy, the one who had been playing with the pack of cards the other day, was calling him to his table. On the table was also the boy with the red glasses, and the silver haired boy who cried/almost cried yesterday evening. Deciding he had nothing to lose, Rin sat with them.

"Hi," he said, settling his bowl of porridge(?) on the table. The boy with glasses made a face.

"You're porridge is uneven," he huffed. The blonde boy chortled before then trying to violently catch his breath.

"I'm… sorry?" Rin offered.

"Just eat it quickly and get it out of my sight," the boy sighed. Rin nodded and began eating the tasteless slop.

"Gee, Rei, he just sat down and you're already bitching about his food," the blonde said, but he said it with such merriment that it didn't sound as mean as it would have.

"Well, I'm sorry but I don't want Nurse Etsuko to find any of your contraband in my room, Nagisa!"

"Quiet about that! Besides, everyone's porridge here is lumpy, and they don't always find it."

"I told you it's only if I see it!"

The silver haired boy began to squirm away from them as they continued to bicker. The argument seemed to settle down after they realised how uncomfortable he was.

"Anyway, I'm Nagisa," the blonde smiled, "and you, newbie?"

"I'm Rin," he replied.

"That's a girly name isn't it? I'm not really one to talk though. I've got the same name as that protagonist from the anime where the girl goes to the lesbian school? What's it called again? Something to do with strawberries… I think," he chatted very animatedly, unlike most of the patients Rin had seen so far who all seemed as though they were slightly dead inside.

"Oh and that's Rei," Nagisa pointed to the boy with glasses, "and that's Ai," he pointed to the silver haired boy who shrunk in on himself as soon as he heard his name.

"Aren't those also girls' name?" Rin asked.

"I think Ai is unisex," Nagisa replied. There was a pause and then Rei and Nagisa exchanged a glance with each other.

"So what tier are you?" Rei asked.

"Tier…? Um, is that about those points again?" Rin asked. Nagisa shook his head and Rei pulled out a folded piece of paper from his pocket. The piece of paper had a labelled pyramid on it.

"I grouped people based on how crazy they are and put them into tiers," Rei explained.

"In a descending order, so tier 1 being the craziest," Nagisa began in a specially adapted voice as though he were presenting a scholarly announcement. "Tier 1: schizophrenia and DID, Tier 2: high functioning DID, bi-polar, and body dysmorphia/extreme eating disorders, Tier 3: highly dependent addictions, eating disorders and extreme anxiety disorders, Tier 4: anxiety disorders, addictions, extreme depression, and extreme personality disorders. Tier 5: depression and personality disorders."

That's kind of… offensive.

"I guess, Tier 5," Rin replied.

"They wouldn't put you in here if you were just a tier 5," Rei retorted.

"So he's a tier 4 in denial?" Nagisa added. "I'm a tier 2 and Rei's a tier 3, and so is Ai."

Rin nodded, he felt as though he needed to get up from the table, all the discussion made his food seem even less appetising. He hadn't wanted to eat any anyway but after hearing that not eating could deduct "points" which gave him privileges, he figured he'd have to. He was used to having to force himself into doing things he didn't care to do anyway.

"So are you here because you're parents want you here, you want to be here, or the doctors want you here?" Nagisa asked. Rin had started to hook his finger around his bracelet again. The two continued to stare at him, pushing him to answer.

"I was sectioned," Rin answered.

"Oh, so you tried to kill yourself? Can't have been your first time, I know, for a fact, that the first time you try to kill yourself, they put you on suicide watch for a week. And you need a pattern of recurring harmful behaviour before they put you on the ward. You must have done something else," Rei babbled. Then he and Nagisa began to discuss different things Rin could have done to get himself "locked up."

The discussion was broken by the sound of something smashing. The canteen fell silent and everyone turned to see that the little brunette who had been sitting on the alcove and thrown her tray to the ground, she then began screaming whilst grabbing a shard of plastic from the ground.

Nurse Etsuko along with a few orderlies came rushing over, the nurse trying to pull out a large needle whilst the orderlies attempted to tame the thrashing beast. A midst the struggle, one of the orderlies hadn't noticed that the girl had picked up the shard of sharpened plastic and was blitzed when she stabbed him in the arm with it. Ai almost fainted.

The nurse managed to wrestle the girl from behind and inject the contents of the syringe into her neck while the wounded orderly howled in pain. The brunette's eyes flickered shut and then the nurse pulled out a walkie-talkie asking for one of the first responders to come and check on the injured orderly.

"That was like watching a train wreck," Nagisa chuckled under his breath. Rin could hardly breath, his lungs felt like they were clenched.

"Well, now I can conclude she does that every time someone new has breakfast here for the first time," Rei said coolly, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Someone just stabbed someone with a shard of plastic and no one gives a shit! What the actual fuck?!

Rin couldn't stand it anymore and he leapt from the table and ran all the way out the canteen. He kept going until he reached the dorms and then he sprinted until he found his door. As he jiggled the handle he found the door was locked because he wasn't inside, as protocol stated. Not knowing where else to go, he headed for the bathrooms.

Upon entering them, he immediately regretted it.

Author's note: I would now like to say that after this update, it's more than likely updates will become less frequent as I will be going back to school on the 28th and haven't done any homework yet. In addition to this, it is also now exam season in my year.

I would also like to credit a BBC 3 documentary I watched around a year ago as it gave me a lot of insight to the running of mental hospitals/ psych wards (I think the documentary was called 'The Ward') it also gave me a lot of information about OCD which is the disorder that Rei has in this fic.

The Only Sane One: I have done quite a bit of research about schizophrenia (well at least more than the average person) so I'm attempting to do the most accurate portrayal I can. I mostly use websites for research but I also used a big book about pyschology.