CHAPTER 3
Andi's POV
I lay in a cold white room. I couldn't move. It was like someone had put fifty pound weights into my bloodstream – everything felt so heavy, even my eyelids. The room was empty save for a bookshelf, a TV mounted to the wall, and a chair at my bedside in which my mother sat. She noticed me stirring and ran a hand over my hair.
"Just rest, sweetheart," she said. As a rather tenacious child, I would have none of it.
"Where am I?" I managed. My jaw hurt. Everything hurt.
"You're in the hospital, Ollie," my mother told me.
"Why?"
"You fainted in school today.
"Oh."
A man bolted through the door and screamed. It went black.
When I awoke it was the middle of the night. I was all alone in the dormitory I had been assigned at Ouran. I tried to move, but all of my energy was focused on keeping air moving in and out of my lungs. I was paralyzed.
That was the second time in two nights I'd had that nightmare. I didn't know why it was so terrifying – it was just a snippet from my past with an added jumpscare. Maybe because that day had been the beginning of everything.
The paralysis faded and I was finally able to sit up on my bed. I help my head and my hands and tried not to think about it. Thought about anything else – the sheer curtains reflecting the moonlight, my ragged fingernails, how excruciatingly tight my shirt was around my back.
Kyoya's POV
The next day she had purple bags underneath her eyes; it was obvious that she had gotten little to no sleep the previous night.
"Good morning, Miss Konanawa," I greeted. "Did you sleep well?" She glared at me from the corners of her eyes.
"No, I did not sleep well, and I'm tired of your 'Miss Konanawa' bullshit," she spat. She had definitely had a rough night.
"I am sorry to hear that," I told her. "Perhaps you would like to exchange your mattress for a different one? Ouran has an extensive mattress collection to suit your needs." She whirled on me.
"I'm going to assume your father's hand is not currently shoved up your ass, so you don't need to be a puppet for him. You don't have to be so formal around me. It's condescending."
I felt a spark of annoyance flick up within me. She certainly was an inconvenience.
We currently sat in what we discovered yesterday was our shared first period. I sat in the desk directly beside her, all the more convenient for checking her eyes for redness.
The room fell almost silent, as if waiting to see what she would do next. Actually I do believe the entire class was waiting with bated breath to hear the outcome of the exchange. I merely slid my glasses farther up my nose and returned to my assignment.
"I am sorry you feel that way," I said and ignored her. The class let out a collective sigh of relief. Miss Konanawa would not be gaining any powerful enemies just yet.
After class I tried to speak with her once more.
"Please don't talk to me," she said.
That was the last time I tried speak with her that day.
Although I neither attempted to nor wanted to speak with her, I still had the responsibility of looking out for any changes in eye color. Upon observing her I inadvertently noticed several details of her behavior.
She spoke very little and never in front of the class. She ate lunch alone and tried to work and be alone as often as possible. All the erasers on her pencils were worn down to the metal nub and she had an annoying habit of tapping them against her notebooks. She drew hands and music staffs in the corners of her papers. She had a separate folder for doodles in each of her notebooks. She never smiled. She never laughed, except sarcastically, and she never leaned back against her chair, only forward onto the desk.