"Are you all nocturnal?" she asked bluntly, suppressing a yawn as she did so. Gumo turned to look at her, obviously bemused, and she repeated her question. She was so tired – other than those quick naps she took, she had not slept properly the entire day. The others all seemed perfectly fine.
Len was leading the way in the distance, weaving his way through the forest with expert ease. Nero and Rei were carrying their prey between them. Everything was all put in a large net, courtesy of the pirates, and all the prey had been dumped in it minus the fish, the bear and the wolf. Len's claim was that they, as Lost Boys, did not eat fish, and the other three looked happy to comply. The pirates seemed pretty happy too about being able to keep their fish, so it was a win-win situation for all.
The net was attached to two sturdy poles, and the two boys were trudging a little way behind Len, carrying their haul – quite a few deer, some rabbits and four sparrows. The deer carcasses filled up the net so completely that she couldn't quite tell how many there were. She wondered if she would have to start eating such meat in time to come, and wondered how long it would take for her to get used to it. She was actually faintly repulsed by the idea of eating little rabbits and sparrows.
"Well, we stay up and move around whenever we want to," Gumo answered her. He was walking with her at the very end of the procession, for which she was grateful. So far, Gumo seemed like the only genuinely nice person out of the entire group. "We tend to move around more at night, though. It's when all the prey comes out. Besides, in Neverland, nights are long and days are short. It'd make more sense for us to finish our activities at night…more time, you see," he yawned as he said this. Faint rays of light were piercing their way through the dark forest, an indication of the imminent sunrise. "I can't wait to get back and sleep," he muttered, "I haven't felt this exhausted in ages."
At his words, she started thinking. If she was right in assuming that earlier, each cavern had led to one Lost Boy's room – for there were five entrances from the open-air cave, she remembered – then that meant...there wasn't another room for her. Where would she sleep if so? She hoped that Len had a plan. Surely he had a plan, for another lost child could have joined them at any time, right? She sincerely hoped he didn't intend to make her sleep on the floor. Her body was still aching and bruised from all the time she had spent lying on hard surfaces, and she hoped for a proper bed.
Through the tiredness though, a feeling of unease nagged at her. There was the encounter with the masters Len had described earlier. Entering their domain made her feel, in some way, tainted – hearing their voices was even worse. They were cold and slithery, like reptiles yet not, a strange amalgam of human and hissing snake. Their words slunk in like poison through her ears. She still remembered what it felt like when she heard their voices – it made her heart stop, their bitter venom so appalling that she forgot, for a moment, how to breathe. She hated them at that very instant, dreaded feeling fingers reaching out to touch her, dreaded knowing what they looked like.
Luckily she was kept in darkness the whole time and they never tried to touch her, so she was cast out of the cave in unconsciousness and when she woke up, she only saw Len. There were no mutant hybrids of snake and man awaiting her, and she was grateful. She hoped she would never have such an encounter again, because she knew if she did she would drive herself crazy with disgust. It wasn't just what Len had told her about the masters. Something about their voices themselves made her feel like they were oily and filthy. If their voices had been physical touch, she would have scrubbed away at herself until her pale skin turned raw and bleeding, just to get the sliminess of their voices off her. She had never been prone to exaggerating, and she did not exaggerate either in this matter.
Another thing was the Hunt she observed just now, or at least the end of the Hunt. The dead wolf, Rei's haunted anguish, Nero's suppressed anxiety, Len's too-calm speech and Gumo's helplessness – they were all combining to form a noxious mixture of fear and worry within her. From what Gumo told her, a month from now a pack of wolves made of flame would hunt them, for Nero had killed off one of their brothers and they would not forgive them. The fact that they were made of fire worried her the most. Wolves, she was confident the Lost Boys could handle. Fire was a lot harder, given that they lived in the middle of a forest. What if the forest got burnt down? They would have a problem.
For one thing, she didn't even want to begin imagining what would happen to their prey if the forest surrounding the den was destroyed. And, from what Gumo told her while they were walking – she had asked why no one thought of burning down the forest since it was the source of Neverland's foul power and curse – he told her that whenever part of the forest was destroyed, it would rapidly regrow and become even stronger, thicker, more powerful than it was originally. That's why they were careful to not harm the area. Even when they chopped down trees for firewood, Gumo explained, they had to leave a substantial part of the tree standing. They couldn't cut any lower than the midpoint of the tree, otherwise the tree would regrow and become taller and stronger.
At midpoint, the tree would remain neutral. It would not grow, but it would still be alive, and that was obviously the best way to keep the forest – alive and stagnant. "The forest doesn't see you as a foreigner anymore, does it?" she asked Gumo, curious about how long it would take for her to be regarded as a native. She remembered asking Len this question before, but not receiving a straightforward response – he had said something about…centuries? But that couldn't be possible, right? Len was only twenty, at most. And Gumo…maybe eighteen? The branches didn't seem to be clawing away at him either, the way they still did to her. It wasn't as bad as in the morning though.
"No, it doesn't," he answered matter-of-factly. "It takes a while to get used to. Those cuts look pretty bad," he pointed to the ones on her forearms, and she glanced at them – she had not noticed the wounds there before, but they were rather shallow cuts. They only looked bad because there was dried blood crusted around them. "You should go back and wash the wounds to prevent infection. Actually," he paused for a second, studying her face, "you're beaten up pretty bad. Did Len drag you through the forest or something?" he looked perfectly serious, as though Len was capable of doing such a thing. And she knew he was, because he had done that exact thing to her.
She nodded, and he winced. "He's never really thought about other people before," Gumo said apologetically, as if saying sorry on behalf of his leader. She found him to be very polite and a good deal more considerate than Len was, and she felt that she liked him. He was certainly likeable and had a pleasant disposition. "If you want, there's a healing kit in my room. I'll bring it out for you later and help you dress your wounds. We usually save it for Piko, but…Piko will heal," Gumo shrugged, "and I'm pretty sure you'll need it more. You don't have our high metabolism and healing yet. It'll take a long while for that to build up," he explained, noticing the look of puzzlement on her face.
She nodded in understanding, and decided to ask some questions about the other people she had seen at the Hunt – the Red Indians and the pirates. "Tell me more about the others we saw," she saw something flit across Gumo's face, so quickly that she almost thought she was imagining it, but she knew she had not – and then suddenly he was beaming at her, enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge. "Especially that pink haired girl and navy haired man, those others," she added as an afterthought. Those were the other two people who had been with Len and Nero at the fireside.
"Oh, the pink one is Megurine Luka. She's the princess of the Red Indians. Her tribal name is Tiger Lily. Tiger Lily is more of a position than a name though, to tell the truth," Gumo explained. "They have this thing where important people in their tribe are named after…objects of Nature, I guess? Their soothsayer is known as Silver Winds. The princess is called Tiger Lily. The king is simply known as the Panther," he pushed his way through two quivering ferns, holding them apart for her so she wouldn't have to force her way through. She nodded at him in thanks. "We refer to Luka as the princess since we're used to that. Within her tribe, they call her Tiger Lily. She's not someone I would recommend getting close to," he cautioned, "she's the reason why Piko's always hurt so badly."
She blinked, startled by that. She had not given much thought to how Utatane Piko was injured – she assumed that, given they lived in such a dangerous environment, being hurt was nothing new. She never thought it would have something to do with a girl. The more she thought about that, the more she realised what Piko must have been doing with Tiger Lily, and she felt her face warm just thinking about it. It wasn't that she didn't know what sex was – just that thinking about it still made her feel awkward. She never openly discussed it with anyone back home, after all. Everyone thought she was insane, including her own mother. Miku was not exactly what one would call a social queen.
She wondered whether Piko had wanted to be injured, or if Tiger Lily had hurt him against his will. If it was the former, then the silver haired boy was more masochistic than he initially appeared. If it was the latter…then yes, perhaps it would be a good idea to steer clear of Tiger Lily. The princess had not seen her yet – Gumo had carefully angled Miku so that she would be difficult to see from the campfire, and anyway the princess was paying far more attention to Len than to the Lost Boys.
The navy haired man though, he had seen her. Gumo did not appear to be concerned about the man, and after a few seconds of outright staring, the man's attention returned to the proceedings at the fireside, though he did look in her direction every once in a while. "The man is Hook, he's the captain of the pirates," Gumo continued. "No one really knows his real name…we all call him Hook because, well, he has a hook in place of his right hand. I don't know how he lost it, and neither do Nero or Piko or Rei. I think Len might know, but he never told us," he shrugged. Gumo had a pleasant voice to listen to, and he seemed to enjoy sharing his knowledge. She liked listening to him. It made a nice change from Len's constant secrecy, though she hoped that his furtive behaviour might change now that she had officially survived the masters and was a part of the lost children.
"He doesn't look that much older than you all are," she observed. "Like he's in his early twenties. How young to be a captain," she looked around, for Nero and Rei had stopped before them and she figured they were probably close to the den now. She wouldn't know, since the first time she went to the Lost Boys' home she was asleep the entire journey. It was interesting to see the cavern network from aboveground. "I've never seen the outside of the den before," she shared with Gumo, who tilted his head, listening to her intently. "Are we nearby? Why did the others stop?"
"We're pretty close," he answered. He made no comment on the fact that she had never seen the outside of the caverns before, despite having visited the very heart of the network yesterday – she assumed it would be yesterday, since today was already a new day. The sun was steadily creeping up the horizon, chasing away the shadows with what weak light it could provide. "Nero and Rei stopped because it's going to be a hassle to transport the food underground – they have to determine which route would be the best to take and who would go underground first. It's something they've never been able to agree upon," Gumo sighed. She took a few steps closer to Nero and Rei, who had appeared to be talking to each other from a distance – now that she was closer, she could hear the heated words of argument, and she winced as Rei spat a particularly vicious insult at Nero.
"Okay you two, stop it," Len said tersely, appearing from out of nowhere to break up the fight. Nero and Rei turned to look at him, both of them breathing heavily, as though they had run a marathon. "Rei, I know you're still upset over the wolf but that's really no excuse to call Nero a 'bastard dog who only knows how to roll over and lick his own balls', that's really too much. Apologise to him, even Nero doesn't deserve that insult. And Nero, seriously, if you dare to take the net and whack Rei over the head with it to give him concussion I will break your right leg. You two both follow me, Rei coming in first. I'll decide on the best route since neither one of you can be bothered to grow a brain," their leader sneered at them, looking absolutely disgusted. Both boys fell completely silent.
Finally, Rei muttered an apology, which Nero accepted in a similar mutinous fashion, and then they both followed Len, seeming to disappear slowly into nothingness. She blinked and followed after them, wanting to see where they went – they were there just moments ago, and then they started moving and moments later they were gone. She didn't see any entrance to the caves anywhere, no matter how hard she looked. All she saw around her were ferns and trees, dead grasses and leaves.
Gumo appeared to be entertained by her efforts to find the den entrance. "You're looking at all the wrong places," he came to stand beside her, a smile curving his lips. He looked like he was having fun at her expense, but she was too curious about where the entrance was to take offence. "Try looking at the ground. Look for the fern plants especially," he continued, sounding a little more serious now. She did as he told her to, looking around for fern plants – there were five large bunches of them in the vicinity, but no sight of any cave entrance anywhere. She walked over to the first fern, parting the leaves carefully, but still she saw nothing but dirt. She wrinkled her nose, annoyed.
"It's okay, I didn't know where they went the first time either," Gumo finally relented after she turned to give him a look of utter confusion. "See here?" he walked over to the fern plant furthest from the one she was standing at, right at the base of a tall, wide tree. The tree looked like it had grown for centuries and centuries – it was so thick and sturdy. As characteristic of the trees in Neverland – this was something she had noticed after spending so many hours in the forest – there was a wide circle on the trunk, this one stretching up from the base of the tree to somewhere around the midpoint of the tree. It was a perfectly circular hole, pitch black. Again, it reminded her of an open mouth, wide open in a silent scream – for what? Mercy? Absolution? She didn't know.
He stopped right in front of this gaping black circle, running his fingers almost lovingly around the rim, across the bark of the tree. She did not know how he could stand to touch it. The trees in this forest were alive, and they seemed to her to be quite clearly malignant. "Look here," he whispered, and she had to move closer just to hear what he said. He let his hand drop down from the bark towards the hole, and her eyes widened in surprise as his hand slid into the darkness, right into the dark circle in the tree. He caught her eye and grinned. "Shocking, isn't it?" he asked conversationally, as though his hand had not just passed into solid wood. "I was too the first time. But of course, now it's nothing new to us. You just need to remember which tree it is. There are others like it, they're sort of…portals, and the other portals don't always lead into nice places. Let's enter, shall we?"
Hesitant, she let her hand reach out towards the dark circle too, and Gumo watched her, allowing her to explore the hole. She shivered slightly as her hand passed into the wood – a chill ran down her skin, the kind of shiver that struck deep into the bone. It was a passing thing though, and shortly after her hand felt totally normal again, save for the fact that her wrist was now attached to nothing. The darkness cut her hand off, and she wriggled her fingers experimentally – she could feel her fingers move, but she couldn't see anything beyond her wrist. She stared at Gumo in wonder.
"Shall we enter?" he asked invitingly, and slowly she nodded, knowing that she wouldn't be harmed if she passed through this entrance – she had gone into the Lost Boys' den before, after all, just not while conscious – but feeling perturbed by the idea of passing through a solid tree, nevertheless. "After you," he pulled his hand out of the tree and swept into a shallow bow, and she felt a little smile tug on the corner of her lips – it seemed like, despite being isolated from the rest of humanity, Nakajima Gumo still had memory of his manners. His green eyes glinted with mischief.
She took a deep breath and stepped carefully into the circle, feeling the icy chill ripple through her entire body. She floated in darkness for a while – it seemed like she was falling, falling gently down. She didn't know how long she spent just floating. It was so dark that there seemed to make no difference whether or not she closed her eyes. "Hello?" she called out into the darkness – after a few seconds, a voice returned her greeting, but she listened and realised it was just a faint echo of her own voice, bouncing off some distant surface back towards her. It was all very strange, and she wondered if she ought to be frightened. She felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
It could have been seconds, it could have been hours, she didn't know – she just fell and fell, or at least she assumed she was falling because the movement was so slow that she almost felt like she was stationary throughout, suspended in mid-air. Finally, her feet gently touched solid ground and she took a deep breath, flailing her hands around, trying to hold on to something solid. It was still dark, but she could walk now, she could feel the ground beneath her. Shakily, she took a step.
Once she moved, she had to throw her hand up to shield her eyes – at the movement, torchlight burst into her vision, flickering orange flame illuminating the cave she was in. She was in a chamber of sorts, one that led off into several different routes. Quite obviously, she didn't know which one to take, and she didn't want to step into any of the entrances and risk getting lost here, so she decided to just wait for Gumo to arrive in the chamber. It didn't take long – less than a minute later, she heard the soft fall of footsteps behind her, then Gumo popped into view, whistling to himself.
"I always like the fall," he said cheerfully, noticing her questioning look. "It's my favourite part, it actually makes me feel like I can fly. It never fails to excite me," he stuck his hands in his pockets, and that was when her gaze was drawn to the leather sheath strapped to his hips. It seemed like every Lost Boy, Len included, had a dagger of his own – in Nero's case, he had three. She wondered if she would have one of her own in time to come. Would she learn how to use it? She couldn't imagine herself being a fighter. She had never been very fast or strong. But she knew that if she wasn't capable of basic self-defence, she would be nothing but a burden upon the other five.
"Well, I don't like it very much," she answered honestly. "I don't really like the dark…it brings back bad memories," she murmured, not revealing any more on the topic. He nodded, not probing any further, and led her down the middle passageway. The passage was familiar, with the smooth stone walls and the flickering torches lining the route, and they walked in comfortable silence for a while. Eventually, her curiosity overcame her, and she had to ask. "Who keeps all these torches lit up?" she sped up a little so that she could walk next to Gumo, instead of trailing behind him as she had been.
"We…take turns," he sounded evasive, running his fingers through his hair. He continued looking straight ahead, and she wondered if he was telling her the truth. It sounded like he was hiding something. But he had not probed more about her bad memories, so she respected him enough to not question him. Perhaps she would ask Len, though she held little hope that he would answer either. Len was even more secretive than Gumo was, and he didn't seem to take kindly to being questioned, as he had demonstrated continuously yesterday. She glanced around at the torches again. Sometimes, instead of braziers, the torches were contained in bleached white skulls, which was something she had not noticed yesterday. The dancing flames that shone through the hollow eye sockets made it morbidly beautiful. She cringed at the sight, but could not help appreciating the way the torches threw shadows across the rock walls, the jaws of each skull seeming to smile…
She wondered whose skulls were these, and she wondered why only certain torches were held in skulls. There seemed to be a pattern, she noticed as they continued walking. Every seventh brazier, on either of the passageway, would be replaced by skulls. They were mostly animal skulls, she saw some with antlers and others with long, narrow snouts – but there were one or two that looked disturbingly human, and those unnerved her the most. She avoided looking at those. The eye sockets almost seemed to follow her as she walked down the path. She was thankful that yesterday, she was too tired to focus on anything other than putting one foot before the other – if she had seen all these skulls yesterday on the way to meet the Lost Boys, she probably would have been absolutely terrified. As it was now, she was rather intimidated, but she had already met the Lost Boys so she knew there was nothing to fear from them. If these skulls were human…who did they belong to?
And most of all, who had killed them? As she thought to herself, pondering over the mystery of the skeletal torch holders, Gumo led her into the main chamber, the one with the open roof. She narrowed her eyes, expecting the flood of light at the end of the passageway, and they stepped out into openness and fresh air. She felt, suddenly, rather vulnerable and exposed. The place looked the same as it did yesterday, save for the net full of food, which had been set carefully near the circle of stones in the middle. The other three boys were nowhere to be seen, and she guessed they were probably in their rooms. Gumo stopped, turning to face her. Suddenly, he looked rather solemn.
It seemed as though he had an announcement of some sort to make so she straightened and faced him, though her attention still wandered around the chamber, picking up on things she had failed to notice yesterday. Like the reddish stains that surrounded the central entrance, the stains that looked suspiciously like blood. She assumed this was Len's room, since no one had come out from this room yesterday. The small white fragments that gleamed out from the ground at her next to the stone circle, pieces that could almost be bits of bone…again, the skull on the pole that lay outside Nero's room watched her eerily, seeming almost alive. She could imagine its jaw clacking and clattering away, trying to tell her some sort of message, but she couldn't understand it for the life of her.
There were shadows in the darkest corners of the chamber, shadows that recoiled from the faint light of the sun – shadows that reminded her of her nightmares. She felt a vague familiarity, not a welcome kind, more uncomfortable than warm. It was the kind of familiar you would associate with seeing a hated aunt, a once-close friend who betrayed you in the past. It was not familiar in a good way. She wondered if, at night, the shadows lurking in the corners would coil up and form the ghostly shapes that clawed to her at night – perhaps they would speak in Neverland, perhaps they would be different from how they were like on Earth. She knew she didn't want to find out.
"There's the question of where you're going to sleep," Gumo started delicately, bringing her attention back to him. She tilted her head, waiting for him to continue, and he visibly swallowed, running his fingers through his hair once again. "Len actually asked me to be responsible for you," it sounded like a confession of guilt when combined with his fidgety gaze and obvious discomfort. "He told me to answer your questions and show you the way here, but he didn't tell me anything about your sleeping quarters. I can't just make a decision for you right now, so we'll have to wait for him to be back from whatever he's doing," he finished, looking somewhat relieved to have said all that.
"Why did he ask you to accompany me rather than doing that himself?" was all she asked, and he blinked, looking at a complete loss as to how to answer. He didn't say anything for some time; instead, he turned away from her, pacing away across the chamber. He passed between light and shadow while he walked back and forth. When he was in the light, he looked like she was used to, with his light green hair and those eyes that were a few shades brighter than her own deep emerald. When he stepped into shadow, it was different – she fancied that she could see, in the few moments between light and dark, when he still threw a shadow, the shape of a bear. But that couldn't be possible.
Finally, he must have come up with some answer, because he stopped his pacing and turned sharply to face her once more, expression unreadable. "I'm the youngest out of all the Lost Boys, so he thought I would be the most relatable, that you would be most comfortable around me. You are, aren't you?" the self-assuredness suddenly cracked, and he looked worried. She nodded, and relief entered his gaze. "That's good. I know it can all be a little overwhelming at first, and the others aren't exactly…very sociable," this was said apologetically. "They're pretty nice though, all of them, even Nero and Rei. They're cold in different ways. Piko will warm up to you in zero time since you're a girl," there was a suppressed snort in his words, "and me…well, it's the first time I'm no longer the youngest, so I didn't want to frighten you or anything. Though I have somewhat forgotten what it's like to be sociable. When you're always with the same people…you forget your manners."
"You're doing fine. You're more polite than some people back on Earth are, to tell the truth," she reassured him, and he cracked a bright smile at her. He reminded her of a little boy, in some ways. He had a vibrancy and spontaneity that the others seemed to lack. Then again, he was the youngest. Perhaps the others had already grown jaded to the harsh life in Neverland. She could not help but wonder what age they were when they all came to this land. Surely they had not come when they were her age, since they all seemed scarcely older than her – but then it couldn't have been that long ago either, right? She knew Len was here for at least ten years. What of the others?
"More polite than your mother is, certainly," Len's voice rang out through the chamber, startling them both – the words had lashed out at her like whips, and it stung somewhat. The woman she left behind, though she always seemed to treat her like a burden, someone she hoped would just disappear and leave her in peace, was ultimately still her mother. Though she never interacted with Miku directly, she at least paid for her medication. She didn't let others bully her. In a way, her mother still cared for her despite the physical neglect. And she could recall how loving her mother was before her father's death, back when they were still a happy family. Those few years while she was a drunkard, during her rare moments of sobriety, she had loved Miku too. And most of all, when Miku was sixteen and her life changed for the worse – the year she dropped out of school and just decided to stay at home, taking charge of her own education, her mother had cared for her.
"Don't insult her," she said evenly, meeting Len's gaze. His blue eyes were carefully neutral, not a hint of emotion within their depths. "She raised me for eighteen years, and I have only known you for two days. Judging from how you treated me the whole time I was here, I can hardly say you're the most polite person yourself, Len," she spoke without heat, and he did not react to her words, but she saw his eyes darken slightly at the implied accusation. Gumo very wisely stayed out of the conversation, though he constantly looked between the two of them, obviously curious.
"Well, I'll start on changing that impression you have, then," he continued in that same even tone. She knew they were both walling up their emotions behind their careful facades, and she knew this was dangerous too. She wondered how long it would be before one of them exploded. What would the consequences be if they really did lash out at each other? He, who knew the most about her situation out of the rest of them – what if he told the Lost Boys about her, about how strange she was, about the accusations of psychosis and schizophrenia, about the judgemental stares?
For a moment, familiar fear gripped her heart as she panicked about whether they would judge her, outcast her, fear her for her differences. She didn't have any medication here. The medication didn't help with her shadow nightmares, she still saw them no matter how many pills she took. The only reason why her mother continued buying them was because she kept quiet about her continued visions – she learnt long ago that telling her mother about their persistent existence would just lead to a new set of medication, each one more potent and expensive than the last. They could not afford such expensive treatment, so she kept quiet about her condition. She took the pills because, though they were useless in treating her mental state, they kept her drugged and hazy. She saw the world in a whirl of feeling and emotion, vivid colours and patterns. She was lucid enough to study by herself, holed up in her room, and she could carry on a normal, intelligent conversation, but her senses were rather dimmed and muted to reality. The effects were wearing off from the last time she ingested the pills, and the more the medication wore off, the more details she noticed about her surroundings.
As if sensing her rapid return to reality, the shadows in the corner of the chamber writhed and stretched, almost like they longed to crawl to her, caress her skin with their icy cold familiarity. Their touch was like feathers, dark and soft and so delicate. But their grip was unbreakable. She feared them because they were a mixture of impossibilities – hard and soft, frail but strong, beautiful and terribly grotesque. They were everything she wanted and everything she despised.
They had always lurked around her when she was little, but they were chased away when her father entered her room and sang that lullaby. The lullaby kept them away, and she slept peacefully. The shadows became more daring when her father passed away, forming shapes and whispering in their strange, undecipherable language, but never actually touching her, always coming close but withdrawing from her skin, as if the touch of her skin would dissolve them. They would hover over her, protectively or menacingly, it seemed to go either way, and she told her mother. Her mother told her to see a doctor, and that was when everything changed. The stigma came, people told each other that she was a lunatic, and her mother cast her away from her sight. But still, the shadows did not touch her, did not wrap around her wrists and trap her, struggling, to her bed at night.
It was only when she was sixteen…when her life changed, that everything changed, that the shadows started replicating touch and replicating her nightmares. "How so?" she asked, willing her voice not to tremble. She was almost scared of Len, sometimes. No, not scared. It was some other primitive, dark emotion she felt rise to her chest when she looked at him – the same kind of emotion that the rush of static prompted. She did not understand why she felt this electric jolt whenever he brushed against her skin. It seemed to be a connection of some sort, but why? She had never met him before. She didn't know anything about him other than what he had so reluctantly divulged.
His eyes gleamed, and he took a step closer towards her. "Simple," he breathed out, his voice soft – but she was paying him so much attention now that the single word seemed to ring out loud and clear as a yell. He almost looked gloating. "We decided where you'll sleep from now on…" he glanced at Gumo, who frowned, looking concerned. "You'll be sleeping in my room," he concluded, before he walked away, leaving Gumo stunned and Miku hollow. She did not react to his words.
She did not know how to react. Was she supposed to be upset or pleased? Gumo's look of surprise could mean either one – it was pure, simple surprise, neither horror nor elation. Len disappeared past the vines into the central cave, whose surrounding walls were streaked with red, and suddenly she wanted to know if that red was blood, if she was not the only one to have ever passed through those vines. Had Len shared his room with others before? Were those others where the red came from? Did Len kill his guests? An irrational fear rose within her, and the shadows stirred once again.
She knew it was irrational, but she couldn't help thinking that Len intended to murder her. Why? She didn't know. But was there any need for logical reasons while they were here in Neverland?