I like updating this story when I update I Like A Boy In Uniform because these two were created together and therefore they shall be updated together as well! For those who haven't looked at I Like A Boy In Uniform, please check it out! (Yes, this is a shameless plug.)
Yeah, the rating went down. Sorry everyone, but I didn't have the foggiest clue as to how to input detailed sexiness into this fic. I really didn't want to do this because my T-rated fictions have a tendency to get less reviews (and I'm such a review whore, I'll admit it…), but I'd rather not get you people's hopes up that M-rated sexiness is going to happen when I haven't the foggiest clue on how to input it into this story…. If I figure it out, the rating'll go back up again, but in the meantime…
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN KINGDOM HEARTS
Chapter 3: Obsession with Death Does Not Equal Intelligence
Riku sat crossed-legged on the floor, watching the five-foot hole Sora had disappeared through minutes before. He did not exactly know why he was back here in the mansion with the mortician's son again. The silver-haired teenager figured it was some sense of curiosity. Sora was unlike anyone he had ever met before. Or maybe it was because he wanted to see if the brunette was going to perform more magic, because by now Riku was more than convinced that Sora was a witch, or at least had some form of powers.
The eighteen-year-old twirled his pencil around his index finger before he spoke.
"Did you lock Kairi Nakano in the vending machine outside the cafeteria?" he asked, recalling the dramatic scene that ensued during the lunch hour when the girl was discovered, frantically screaming her lungs out and banging on the glass as hard as she could.
Sora's head rose from the hole. He was wearing a yellow hardhat again. Though the silver-haired teenager couldn't see it from where he was sitting, there was also a black light in Sora's hands. To detect blood, the brunette explained.
"Yes," Sora answered and disappeared into the darkness once again.
"How did you do it?"
"Can't tell you. It's a secret secret secrety-secret." There was a sound of footsteps moving away from the hole. The brunette's footsteps.
"He's a witch!" Kairi Nakano had screamed at the bystanders once the janitor had opened the door and freed her. "That freak's a witch, I tell you! One minute I was talking to him and the next minute I was in here!"
"Why did you do it?" Riku asked, following the noises with his eyes.
"She was being a bitch," came the answer.
Riku laughed at his frankness. "How so?"
"She cornered me while I was heading to class, saying something about staying away from you. I think she was just saying that because of the rumor and I tried to tell her that it was a misunderstanding. Then she called me a bad name, so I put her in the vending machine."
"But why the vending machine?"
"To scare her, of course."
"Hm... of course…" Riku said, nodding out of habit. "Sora?"
"Uh-huh?"
"Are you a witch?"
"Hmmmmm… I guess if you want… Sure."
Which didn't exactly answer Riku's question. But the older teenager figured that this was just Sora being as enigmatic and mysterious as ever. He glanced down at his homework, scrutinizing a question he hadn't understood earlier.
"Explain the use of calcium in the muscle," Riku read out loud. It was another habit of his to read out the problems he couldn't figure out, half-hoping that the answer would come to him just by doing so.
"It's an ion used for contractions," Sora said from below him. The silver-haired teenager jumped a little.
"What?"
"It's an ion used for contractions," the brunette repeated. "When the muscle receives the action potential, calcium ions are released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, which caused troponin and tropomyosin to move and the muscle contracts."
It sounded correct, so Riku wrote it down. "Sora, you're taking Anatomy and Physiology also?" he asked. Which would mean that the brunette was in the same grade as him.
"No, I'm a junior—" Ah, so Sora was a year behind him. "—I don't take Anatomy and Physiology yet. I just know stuff like that."
Riku scratched the side of his head with the eraser end of his pencil thoughtfully. Though Sora wasn't exactly normal, the silver-haired teenager had to admit that hanging around him was pretty advantageous.
"Calcium ions are also the main reason why bodies go into rigor mortis," Sora added. "ATP is needed to pump the calcium ions out of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. When the body is dead, no ATP is made and the calcium ions stay where they are and the muscles remain contracted, which leads to rigor mortis."
Of course the mortician's son would find a way to loop their conversation back to death...
"Did you also know that you can influence rigor mortis?" Sora continued. "They say that if the victim was very, very active right before they die, they could die standing!"
No, Riku didn't know that, nor did he really want to know that he could die standing.
"I want to try that…" The brunette said. A mad laugh echoed underneath the floorboards and the silver-haired teenager had a hunch that tonight he might just have nightmares about Sora testing his little theory on him.
"Riku?"
The silver-haired teenager looked up. "Yeah?"
"Can you hand me this machete in my backpack?"
'He has a machete in his backpack?' Riku thought wildly. "Sure," the eighteen-year-old responded.
Riku scooted over to Sora's backpack, which was close to him, and pulled out the weapon, which was sheathed in snug, black nylon. The silver-haired teenager pushed up the sheath a little, admiring his clear reflection in the metal. The blade was about as long as his forearm.
Sora's hand broke through the floor and gripped his wrist. Riku could not help himself, he cried out in surprise.
"Thank you," the brunette said. "Can you hand it to me?" He released the silver-haired teenager and opened his palm. Riku silently and shakily placed the machete's handle in Sora's hand, which the mortician's son grabbed tightly and withdrew his hand back into the floor. Several seconds later he could hear the brunette cutting into something and Riku tried not to think to much on what it could be.
The silver-haired teenager took this opportunity to see what else Sora had in his backpack. There were herbs that he did not recognize in ziplock bags, several knifes, Witchcraft books with covers that made his spine shiver and down at the very bottom, the eighteen-year-old saw some viable normal student papers. He pulled one out.
It was a History test, dated last week. The numbers 17 were written and circled in bold red marker.
"Hey, Sora?"
"Hm?"
"Do you hate history?"
A loud hiss emitted from the floor and Riku took that as a "yes."
"You know that history is a required subject, right?" The silver-haired teenager continued. "And if you don't pass it you won't graduate?"
"I'm doing fine."
"That's not what your last test is telling me."
"Don't rifle through my things!" The floor seemed to rumble when he said that.
"Look, Sora," Riku reasoned, "I can help you. We can help each other, actually. You can help me with my Anatomy and Physiology, and I'll help you with History in return. How does that sound?"
Something was shuffling underneath him. Riku figured Sora was thinking.
"I concede," he said, finally.
"All right. How about we start right now?" The silver-haired teenager suggested.
The younger made a sort of agitated hum, but he climbed out of the hole second later. "Okay," he said.
"Great," Riku wiped some sweat off his forehead. "Which house do you want to go to?" As Riku didn't wish to incur Sora's deadly and painful wrath, he decided to let the brunette choose.
"I wish to go to my house," the brunette said.
The second story of the Leonhart household was just as Riku thought their house should have been. Dusty, danky, dark, and there were several objects scattered everywhere. Bodyparts from dummies, knives (Riku eyed a triple-bladed knife suspiciously as he passed it), papers, and items he couldn't recognized but looked pretty medieval.
Sora navigated him to his room, which was the second on the left down the hallway.
"I'm sorry it's such a mess," Sora said as he opened the door and entered his room.
"It's okay. I don't… think it'll be… a… problem…"
Riku stood frozen in the doorway, staring with bulging eyes at Sora's room. There were blood splatters everywhere along the walls and floor.
'Oh my God…' he thought.
As if reading his thoughts, Sora spoke up. "Don't worry, it's not real blood," he said. "Blood has a nice color, but you see it changes when it dries. So Dad and I found a paint with a similar shade instead."
"Oh. Th-that's nice," Riku said.
There was no bed; instead there was a black coffin. Two black coffins, actually, one was Sora's size and the other…
'That looks like my size,' Riku thought, his heartrate skyrocketing and the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. To distract himself, the silver-haired teenager focused on another aspect of the room.
There was a TV with a combination of a DVD and VHS player underneath it. A sandy-blonde, mullet-mohawked dummy and a lilac-haired dummy were in the corner. The lilac dummy had a butter knife in his hand and was maliciously leaning over the mohawked dummy, which was lying on its back on the floor.
"That's Applepie and Blueberry!" Sora introduced. "Applepie's the one on the floor."
"What's Blueberry doing with the knife?"
"He found out Applepie was cheating on him, so Blueberry's gonna slit Applepie's throat open."
"With the butterknife?" The concept sounded slow, crude and painful.
"Mm-hm."
"O-oh…" Riku said, turning away from the dummies with discomfort.
The walls on either side of the wall with the coffins were covered by shelves full of a books—books of murders, poisons, witchcraft, weapons, torture devices and tasty little ditties of freak accidents and suicides gone wrong—video tapes, DVDs and several items. Taking a quick glance, Riku saw that all of the video tapes and DVDs were of horror movies.
"And here are my friends!" Sora said, gesturing his hand to the wall opposite of the coffins. There, Riku saw two skeletons (one dressed in a tuxedo and the other dressed in a wedding gown) and what appeared to be a full-size replica of a bloody zombie.
"This is Helicobacter Pylori and Clostridium Tetani—" Sora pointed to the male and female skeletons, "—and Ebola Virus, [1]" the zombie.
"Oh!" he said suddenly. He jogged over to the larger coffin and lifted it up. "And this is Yersinia Pestis! He's usually out and about, but the sunlight hurts his eyes, so he stays in here during the day."
Riku realized that Sora was naming his dummies after deadly bacteria, but one single bacteria sounded like he heard it before. "Yersinia Pestis? Why does that name sound familiar?"
"It's the bacteria that caused the Black Death! Isn't it lovely?" Sora stroked Yersinia's cheek affectionately. "Ah, Yersinia, I love you," he said, kissing the dummy.
Completely weirded out, Riku turned to the wall with the skeletons and found himself staring at a large pentacle that was painted there. Following the pentacle he saw several magic circles drawn on the ceiling. There were also about a dozen horrifyingly realistic severed heads hanging from the ceiling. (Riku found himself staring at one with several vertebrae protruding out of the neck.) All positioned so that their, gaping, bloodied, terrified faces were looking down at the two. The silver-haired teenager faced the brunette in shaky movements. "Um, let's—let's get started on studying, shall we?"
They sat in the center. Riku tried to ignore the splatters that look so much like blood as he crossed his legs. "All right, we can start on history first. Here, let me see your book."
Sora sat in front of him, fished the reading material out of his bag and glumly handed it to him.
The eighteen-year-old flipped through the book. "Okay, Sora, what subject are you guys studying?"
"Land of the Dragons History," the brunette answered.
"Okay, what can you tell me about the Land of the Dragons?"
"I dunno…"
Riku hummed thoughtfully and turned over several pages in the book. "What year was the Ming Dynasty established?"
"Beats me."
"Who was Emperor Hongwu?"
"I have no idea."
Pausing for a moment, Riku figured that perhaps he needed to take another angle at this.
"Who was Shan Yu?" the silver-haired teenager asked.
"Leader of the Huns in Fourteenth century China," Sora answered automatically, perfectly annunciated and clear. "He killed approximately three thousand, four hundred and fifty two people before he was killed by Fa Mulan."
"What is the Tumu Crisis?"
"A frontier conflict, originally started on July 1449, between the Oirat Mongols—led by Esen Tiyasi—and the Chinese Ming Dynasty which led to the capture of Emperor Zhengtong on September 1, 1449. [2]" The eighteen-year-old scanned down the page as the brunette spoke. Sora was reciting the passage word-for-word. Amazing.
The brunette continued. "A Ming Dynasty army of five hundred thousand men lost to a much smaller force whose specific number is not recorded in the textbook. It is said to be the worst military blunder in the Ming Dynasty."
"Who initially started the Great Wall of China?"
"I dunno."
Riku looked up from the book, raising a curious brow. "How many people died making the Great Wall of China?"
"Approximately one million," the brunette answered rapidly, twiddling his thumbs absentmindedly.
Riku placed his face in his hands and sighed.
'Naturally…' the silver-haired teenager thought, 'he only knows the bits and pieces about battles and death!'
Sora tilted his head to one side, watching the silver-haired teenager. "Is there something the matter?" he asked.
"No, no, nothing…" Riku said. "We just have a lot of work to do. Sora, who's your History Professor?"
"Professor Saix."
"Good, I had him also. Okay, first off, you have to know that he likes dates, battles, important people and their deeds and documents. I'm pretty sure you've got the battles down, but you'll have to work on the other four."
Sora nodded and took the book from him. "Dates, important people, deeds, and documents," he repeated. "Got it."
"All right." The silver-haired teenager took out his Anatomy and Physiology book and began doing today's assignment. The younger looked up from his book.
"What material are you studying for?"
Riku gave a sad sigh and looked down. "Muscles. We're going to have to know the names of most of the muscles in the body and be able to identify them on a model." The older teen flipped the page, showing a lovely spread of the human body's muscles. Sora scooted forward, peering at the printed material. Suddenly he looked behind him, to the anatomical dummy—Yersinia, he had said—as if the dummy had called him.
"Yersinia says you can use him."
"Yersinia?" Riku repeated slowly. "The dummy?"
"Yes, Yersinia's anatomically correct from head to toe. He can be useful in helping you and he is willing to allow you touch him."
The silver-haired teenager nodded, his mind wandering back with how Sora said the dummy "allowed" him, as if it were alive. He shook the thought away when he saw the younger head to the coffin, haul Yersinia out and place it on its feet. Sora even took care to place the dummy in the darkest part of the room. With swift, practiced hands, the brunette easily stripped Yersinia of his skin and stood aside to allow Riku to use it.
The silver-haired teenager uneasily walked forward.
Using the dummy proved to more helpful than Riku first thought. Having the muscle in front of him made the information much easier to compartmentalize in his brain and thus memorization came easy.
Thirty minutes into studying—and with nearly all the names of the muscles he had to remember memorized—Riku turned to Sora.
"Hey, Sora, how are you doing with the—?"
The book had been abandoned, and the brunette was off in the corner, fiddling with a closed butterfly knife.
"Hey, Sora, I thought you were supposed to be studying," the silver-haired teenager reminded him.
Sora tucked the knife away, gave a low little growl, much like a very angry cat would, and begrudgingly scurried back to the history book.
Unfortunately, one hour later, the Riku began to realize just how much the brunette hated studying for History. Often when he turned around he found the brunette looking elsewhere, playing with a killing device (or devices) that seemed to materialize out of nowhere, reading another book with a disturbing, dark cover or sleeping.
Honoring his conscience and their agreement, Riku brought Sora's attention back, reprimanded him for the knife, scissor, hidden knife-pen, sword, cleverly-hidden axe or club, and woke him up when needed. But the older teenager knew that something had to be done.
"Look, Sora, you really have to focus. Why don't you give me that knife—"
Immediately the brunette's eyes became livid, his lips pulled back (his sharp canines suddenly very apparent) and a completely feral snarl rose from his throat that was so terrifying the older teen scrambled back, his heart pounding and eyes near tears.
"Okay, okay, okay…" Riku fought to keep his voice even. "If you want to keep your weapon, that's fine. But you should at least keep studying."
"I don't like history!" Sora spat, switching the knife from the forehand to the backhand position rapidly. "I hate it! I don't care! Don't don't don't care! Not even a little bit! Disgusting little book!"
The silver-haired teenager sighed and scratched his head. "Here, let me help you," he said, edging towards Sora and simultaneously eyeing the weapon in the brunette's hand. He cautiously sat next to him, which seemed the surprise the mortician's son. "What do you have a problem with?"
Sora looked at him, tilting his head in curiosity as if he were attempting to grasp the situation. He seemed too busy in his contemplation to answer.
"Are you having trouble memorizing the dates?" Riku asked.
The brunette nodded.
"Okay, here. Sometimes it just helps to put them in a timeline, you know? Like, just having them in order helps you. So why don't we try that?"
Closeness seemed to have a positive effect on Sora, whose usual off-putting demeanor melted to a most endearing, normal personality. He was quiet and his normally sharp, hostile eyes took on a softer nature. And though here and there a dark flicker would pass through his face, the brunette said nothing and passively allowed the elder to continue instructing him.
It all reminded Riku too much of a story he read in his childhood about a misunderstood cat.
After half an hour, they switched and Sora began to help Riku with his homework, pointing to random muscles on Yersinia to quiz him and offering helpful tips on how to remember the names.
"The digitalis leads to the fingers, see?"
"Rectus femoris. Rectus means straight. Femoris for the bone it's attached to."
At precisely six seconds passed six minutes passed six 'o clock, Leon popped in—literally popped in—via a small trapdoor in the floor (and Riku, who sitting on the door, nearly toppled over) to announce dinner.
The mortician let out a curious hum as he turned. "Ah! Riku! You've come back! Still as lovely as ever, I see!"
"Good evening, Mr. Leonheart," Riku grunted as he brought himself upright.
"Riku's here helping me with my history," Sora said.
"And Sora's helping me with my biology class," the silver-haired teenager ended.
"Ah, well, then you're welcome to partake in our food, Riku," Leon said.
"Thank you, sir."
"Well, dinner is down here…" Leon bowed, and descended down the doorway as if he were on some invisible platform until he disappeared from sight.
"Come," Sora said, stepping into the trapdoor and following his father. Once the younger's head was no longer in view. Riku tentatively peered over the hole, looking down into the inky, black darkness. This was not like the hallway he found in his last visit. There was light there.
There was no light here.
Inhaling and exhaling deeply, Riku carefully lowered his leg into the trapdoor, praying that nothing would grab his leg.
It's so dark! The walls…
…are…
…shrinking!
Riku jerked back. "A-actually," he called into the hole. "I should be getting home. My mother, you know, worries… and I have to… go."
Sora's head rose from the open trapdoor. "All right," he said.
The older teenager casually rubbed his arm, trying to ease the goosebumps. "We can meet tomorrow and study about the same time."
"Okay."
Riku began to pack his things as he continued speaking. "Um, you should try making flashcards for the important people. You know, right their name on one side and what they did on the other. It really helps."
"Thank you," Sora said. "Don't forget the anatomical names I taught you."
The silver-haired teenager grinned. "I won't. Thanks for that."
Sora lied unmoving in his black coffin, staring into the perfect darkness of his eyelids. He felt the smooth silk of the thin mattress underneath him and opened his eyes. Hard as he tried, he could not stop the image of silver hair and sea-green eyes from dancing in and out of his vision.
Sighing with exasperation, the brunette rolled onto his side, the action putting him face to face with the wall of his small coffin. He flattened himself against the wall, as if he were meeting the question that was keeping him up this fine night:
Why, through all his long list of personality defects and quirks, was Riku still hanging around him?
This had never happened to Sora before.
'Friendship…' the mortician's son thought. 'I think… they would call this friendship.'
Riku was his friend.
He never had a friend before. Save for his father and his dummies.
'And of course, you, Yersinia Pestis,' Sora raised the lid of his coffin and peeked over the top enough to see the anatomical dall.
"I don't know what to do, Yersinia…" the brunette opened the coffin completely and folded his arms on top of the wall. "I've never had a human friend before. What do people do with human friends?"
Though the room was filled with silence, the brunette nodded his head sagely.
"Riku? He's very pretty. Really pretty. Kinda smart, I guess. I think he likes sports. Yes…"
…
"I see. No, I don't think he'd like that. He's not like me."
…
"But I thought that they—oh, they didn't? Hmmm… Yeah, I guess they would like the light more."
…
"I don't know what people do for fun!" Sora said. "What? How am I—Oh, thank you, Yersinia! Thanks a lot!" the brunette said sarcastically. "Be quiet! At least I get out of this house! Another insult and I swear I'll take you apart and bury you! Don't think I won't!" The moment those words left his lips, Sora shrank into his coffin, sighing and shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it."
…
"No, no, it wasn't your fault. It's me. This whole people-friend thing is completely out of my genre."
…
"Huh? What's that?"
… … …
…
… …
Sora nodded.
… … … …
… … …
… …
"Yes, yes, that's perfect…" A slit-like small crossed Sora's features, and his fingers drummed happily on the wall of his coffin. "Yes, yes… I'll go right now… Thank you, Yersinia Pestis. I shall place a lovely velvet cloth with stars on the lid of your coffin, would you like that? The stars shall glow in the dark, too. I'm sure you'll find that divine…"
… … …
"Hee hee hee… Yes, I knew you would. Only the best for my lovely Yersinia. Ashes to ashes, they all fall down! All for you, my darling!" Giggling, Sora slid out of his coffin, opened his window, and vanished into the night.
[1]" Helicobacter Pylori, Clostridium Tetani… Ebola Virus" H. Pylori causes stomach ulcers, C. Tetani causes Tetanus, and Ebola Virus obviously causes ebola. :D Deadly diseases! Yersinia Pestis is supposed to be to Sora like Hiroshi-kun is to Sunako.
[2] "A frontier conflict between the Oirat Mongols and the Chinese Ming Dynasty which led to the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor on September 1, 1449." From wikipedia.
Yes, Sora sleeps in a coffin. TOTALLY BADASS. When I get my own house, I'm sleeping in a coffin. And I'm having, like, three massive german shepards guard me so that someone doesn't nail the coffin shut and lock me in!
Reviews are my dark clouds in front of the sun on my emo days. :D
-See you next chapter!
|Corrosive Moon|
