It seems like it's been forever since I've written a chapter. Wow. Only a week, really? I don't believe it. Lots happened this week… I tried out for American Idol (don't look for me on TV, I didn't make it, haha), spent five hours frosting a cake for my 17th birthday (which was Friday) in an Alice in Wonderland theme – you know why if you've been reading my previous author's notes – and went boating with my friends. Then, the next day, I made them dress up all pretty and we went FORMAL BOWLING and on a photo scavenger hunt in the local mall. Oodles of fun! And of course, I turned 17! Yay!

Anyway, that's what's going on in the life of ThePhantomAlchemist… not that you all needed to know, but I like telling you all anyway! So, enjoy these snippits from my life and enjoy chapter fourteen!

I slammed the door of my car shut in a frenzy, tears pouring down my cheeks and my heart pounding so violently in my chest it hurt me. I was going to explode. Everything felt like it was on fire. I was going to die, right now, unless I managed to alleviate some of it right this instant. My bag. My blade. My blade was in my bag. My bag was on my lap.

I tore it open and dug my hands into it, searching frantically for the bag that held the small razor fragment that had been my relief countless times. It didn't seem to be anywhere.

I needed that damned thing now, why the hell couldn't I find it?!

"Where the fuck is it?!" I screamed through a choked sob, furious with everything. Why was it all so difficult?! Why was everything falling apart?!

And why the fuck couldn't I find my blade when I NEEDED IT, DAMMIT!

What was that? Plastic? Flimsy plastic?

Oh, thank god. I yanked the bag out and ripped it open, simply not caring anymore. I was even ready to die. Why not just slice into an artery and end it all?

It would make everything so much easier. My life would be so much easier if I didn't have to live it.

~Tamaki~

Tamaki was beginning to panic. He'd had a very bad feeling about Samayu as she ran out of the club room, and she'd lost him when she bolted down the stairs. Now he had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but judging by what he'd just discovered about her, he knew it probably wasn't something good.

Maybe he was just reading too much into things. Maybe she had just gotten freaked out and gone home –

Home. She had a car, didn't she? Yeah – she drove to school, which he noticed because it was uncommon for someone with her social status to drive rather than take a private car. She would have gone straight to her car. Right?

Before he really even knew what he was doing or where his thought process was headed, Tamaki found himself racing through the halls to get to the school's parking lot. He burst through the doors and ran out, scanning the pavement for her car – a black Nissan GT-R (A/N that car costs about $107,000). There were only a few cars left parked, and there was hers, near the lot's center. Tamaki sprinted towards it, the unease in his gut pressing him to run faster even as he reached his top speed.

She was there, in the driver's seat, focusing intently upon her schoolbag. It was almost like her life depended on something in that bag. Her expression was like a knife in his side – it was the face of someone burning alive on a pyre meant for their funeral, even though they weren't dead. He hesitated as he reached for the handle of the car door handle, wondering if he should disturb her. Maybe she just needed her keys?

She tugged something out of the bag and fumbled with it for a moment before, much to Tamaki's dismay, he saw the glint of metal and knew what it was. Horrified, he watched her yank up her sleeve and rip off the bandage he had so carefully wrapped not ten minutes beforehand. No way was he going to let her do that to herself again.

Just as she was pressing the blade against her arm with trembling figures, Tamaki thrust open her car door and yelled, "What the hell are you doing?!"

She started and dropped the blade, gasping. For a moment she seemed frozen, unable to even blink, before fury twisted her expression, giving her a demonic look when it mingled with the tears on her cheeks and the red hue of her skin from her sobs, and screamed back, "What the hell are you doing?! You can't just go barging into other people's cars, idiot! Go away and leave me alone! Okay?! It's none of your business!"

"You think I'm going to just stand here and watch you slice into your arm? Good lord, I thought you were supposed to be intelligent!" Tamaki snapped, fed up with Samayu. He'd had it with her snarky attitude and fierce rebuttals. All he wanted to do was help! It physically hurt him, watching her self-destruct the way she was. He didn't know why it affected him so much, but it did. "And why did you run away?! I thought you agreed to tell me what's going on!"

"I wasn't going to just stand there and let everybody – let everybody –!" Samayu spluttered, rendered unexpectedly speechless. The rage faded out of her expression, replaced with a look of loneliness and pain unlike anything Tamaki had ever seen. "All those girls… the way they looked at me," Samayu burst out, tears beginning to pour out of her eyes. "I'm not a freak! I'm not! Sometimes I think I am and say I am, but I didn't really believe it! Not until they all started looking at me like I was one!" She buried her face in her hands and broke down entirely, crying in what seemed to be an uncontrollable manner. "I'm not a freak," she repeated through her racking sobs. "I'm not a freak."

Tamaki swallowed down the lump in his throat, resisting the urge to start crying himself. She was just so helpless and depressed. If only there was something he could do to help. He'd give anything in the world if she'd only stop crying. "Move over," he said softly, picking the blade off the floor of her car and pocketing it. "You're obviously not fit to be driving. I'll do it."

"I can drive," Samayu mumbled, her face still in her hands.

"No, you can't. Get in the passenger's seat, Samayu."

She obliged after a long moment, grudgingly, still loath to resurface from her hands Tamaki crawled into the driver's side and found she had already jammed the key into the ignition. He turned it and the car roared to life. Damn, it was a nice car. It vibrated softly with the purr of the engine, but smoothly. It was almost a soothing experience.

"You don't know how to get to my house," Samayu said in a muffled voice.

Tamaki shifted into drive. "That's okay. We're not going to your house. We're going to mine."

~Samayu~

To be honest, I was rather impressed by the size of the Suoh mansion. It was nearly twice the size of my home. I don't know why I was so surprised, since they are the richest family in Japan, but I was.

It was somewhat humiliating to have to ride in my car rather than drive it, but I have to admit it was more comfortable. My legs were curled into my chest and my chin rested on my knees. I watched the world roll past me without having to worry about how fast we were going or when it was safe to pass a bus pulled over to accept passengers on a country road (which is never safe, for anyone out there who doesn't know).

Tamaki pulled up to the front of the mansion and a small cluster of servants surged forward from the front door, eager to accept their young master. One opened my door for me, but Tamaki ran over to my side and helped me out so the butler wouldn't have to try. Tamaki passed my car keys to him and gave him instructions on where to park my car before he led me inside, his hand wrapped around mine.

As I climbed the stairs into his mansion, my blisters stabbed at my feet. I grimaced. I hate those damned Mary-Janes. When we got inside I kicked them off immediately. I didn't ever want to see them again.

Another group of servants swarmed us when we had gotten not five feet into the mansion. From what I could understand, this was a daily ritual in which they presented Tamaki with more casual clothes and informed him of the current important happenings of the house and new developments in his schedule. I didn't really listen to the schedule stuff, but the change of clothes intrigued me. Tamaki noticed my interest, thank goodness.

"Oh, Sonia," he said, turning to one of the maids. "Do you think you could find something more casual for my school friend here? Something Miss Hitachin sent over a while ago should be fine…"

The woman, Sonia, nodded and scurried off, returning a minute later with a sequined red tank top, a gray sweater, a black skirt made of some loose black material that would probably only reach down to my mid-thighs, and a pair of sandals with red flower decorations. Tamaki was led one was and I was instructed to another, though I heard him arrange for them to set the living room up for us.

I was led through a labyrinth of halls and allowed a guest room to change my clothes in. I found the sweater's sleeves reached only to my elbows, which did little to hide the bandage on my right arm and the angry red lines from my recent cutting adventure on my left. Still, it was better than being in that hideous yellow school dress. The skirt, if I pulled it low enough, just barely covered the bandages on my upper thighs.

I stuffed the uniform into my bag and slung it over my shoulders. I noticed then that my strong and urgent need for the blade had passed, even though my heart was still aching dully. I could survive a little longer without cutting. I realized I hadn't retrieved my blade after I'd dropped it. Maybe it had fallen in the parking lot. If that were the case, I knew I'd never see it again. Oh, well. There were more razors out there with more blades, and I still had two perfectly good blades in my desk drawer at home.

When I emerged from the room, I was led back through the halls until we reached a room that must have served as a parlor – it had a pair of couches arranged in a ninety-degree angle around a low, chic coffee table. A flat screen television hung on the wall in front of the couches with a surround sound system. There were pictures on the wall and potted plants in the corners. At one end of the room was a small table with two chairs.

Tamaki was sitting on an end of one of the couches, waiting for me. He was wearing a loose pair of faded blue jeans and a yellow sweater. He stood up when I came in, eyeing my bandaged and mutilated arms, but said nothing. He sent the servants away and beckoned me forward. "Sit," he said simply, sinking back into his own seat and waiting for me to accompany him.

I sat a few feet away from him, staring down into my lap. I knew what he was waiting for.

Diary Excerpt

He wanted my explanations. He wanted to know why I cut, where I cut, how often. Anyone in their right mind would. And explanations, I had plenty of. Explanations I could tell him about, however, were a different story. I couldn't even breathe Raito's name. And since Raito is, of course, my main problem, there wasn't a whole lot more for me to say on the subject.

But I wanted to say something. Because, for some unexplainable reason, the boy sitting not five feet away from me, watching me with those beautiful violet eyes and waiting for my explanations, was the person who I wanted most in the world to see me as Samayu Yojin – not the freak who cuts herself.

At long last, I attempted to speak. "There are a lot of… reasons for what I do," I said shakily. "I'm not just some wanna-be emo looking for attention."

"I never said that," Tamaki replied, fidgeting uncomfortably. "It's just… can I ask you something?"

"I guess." Here come the questions. Why do I cut myself? Doesn't it hurt? Can't I just not be a cutter?

"Is this what you were doing… the first time we met?"

Not what I was expecting, which somehow made it worse. I looked away from him, blushing furiously. "Yeah," I whispered, ashamed. "I was having a really rough day."

"Okay," he said gently, not prying any further. "But… what happened?"

"What do you mean? Why do I do it?" I asked, a little bitterly. I was about to bare my soul to this guy, and I wasn't quite sure I was prepared.

"Yeah."

I took a deep breath. "Lots of reasons," I said simply. "I can't really explain it."

"Could you try?"

"No." I swallowed hard. I had already explained it countless times. In the pages of my diary. Why couldn't I say it out loud. Maybe… I could…

This had got to be the craziest thing I would ever do in my life. Slowly, I opened up my bag and pulled out the black journal in which I've been recording my thoughts for the last several months. "Everything is in here," I said quietly. "I write almost everything down. I'll let you see some of it. But only some. And if you try to look at pages I didn't tell you to… I swear, I'll cut off your fingers."

I think he believed me, even though I was only half-serious. I'd probably only kick him so hard in the balls that he'd never be able to have kids. Although, to most men, that's probably worse than losing a few fingers…

I opened my diary and began to find the pages Tamaki should see to get an idea of the pain I go through every day.

Diary Excerpt

He's dead. He's dead. Somebody killed him. My dad is just… gone. I'll never see him again or hear his voice ever again. Somebody blew him to bits. Somebody wanted him dead.

I wish I was dead.

Everything hurts. Everything is meaningless. I don't love anybody anymore. There was only one person I truly loved. He's gone. I'm never going to see him again, we are never going to laugh together again. He's never going to see me through high school or college. He'll never give me away at my wedding.

I feel like someone's smashed me to bits with a hammer and is vacuuming up the pieces, letting the fragments of myself go flying in a chaotic tornado of death and misery, and then they dumped the vacuum into an incinerator just to watch it burn. Just to watch me perish.

I don't know what to do. I feel hollow. I read somewhere once that a soul can discard its body while the body is still alive. Like a ship whose crew just abandoned it for no reason at all. That's how I feel. Hollow. Empty. Worthless.

My mom won't talk to me anymore. She won't even look at me anymore.

Did I do something wrong?

I dyed my hair. It's red. It looks horrible. It matches the person inside now. My own mother won't look at me because I'm so horrible. She says she won't look at me because I look too much like my dad. I can change that much, at least. I just want her to love me. I want to be able to love her.

I got contacts too. They're gold and look freaky. I chose them for that reason. Now my hair isn't like my dad's and my eyes aren't either.

I don't even recognize the person I see in the mirror anymore.

Mom still won't look at me. I don't know. I just don't know.

I cut today. It was only too easy. And it hurt so badly, but at the same time it felt so good. I found out that bleeding helps today when I accidentally nicked myself shaving. It was all I could think about. The pain. Just for an instant.

I needed so much more than just one instant.

Maybe it is a good thing Mom won't look at me anymore. I wouldn't know how to explain the bandages on my arms and legs to her even if she asked.

I skipped every mention of Raito and went straight to the passage I wrote my second day of school.

Diary Excerpt

I always ask myself why I do it. I can't really find an answer.

Does it hurt? Sort of. It feels better than… everything else.

But when the scars start to heal, I begin to feel crushed again. That's how life is. It's like there are always frigid, torrential waves beating down upon me, and I'm drowning. I can't breathe, but I go on living. Sometimes things will happen that make it worse. And the pain of feeling anything at all becomes nearly unbearable.

When the physical pain goes away, I resume drowning. So then I have to cut again.

"I can't read anymore," Tamaki said suddenly, snapping my diary shut and holding it out to me. He looked a little green. "Was that… blood… on some of the pages?"

I nodded, chewing on my bottom lip as I stuffed my journal back into my bag.

"I had no idea, Samayu," Tamaki told me softly, his voice trembling. "I am so sorry. For… everything. It tears me apart, knowing you're hurting so much."

I nodded slowly. "I know that cutting is… wrong, but I just… I don't know how to make things any better."

"Do you want to… to not?"

I stared at him. "I don't know what you mean."

"Do you want to… you know, stop?"

"Sometimes," I sighed, shutting my eyes. "But usually something happens that reminds me why I need it so much."

"Come to the Host Club meetings!" Tamaki suddenly blurted out, looking almost horrified by his boldness.

I was so shocked I could only stare at him. I had no idea where that came from.

Tamaki blushed and said quickly, "Not as a guest or anything! I mean, you can sit in the corner and read or do homework or anything for all I care! I'll make sure Kyoya doesn't charge you as a guest! I just… I want to be able to… to…"

"Keep an eye on me?" I offered bitterly.

He pursed his lips. "Sort of."

I'd have to think about it. "Listen…" I said, glancing at a clock hung on the wall. "It's getting late and I should be getting home, you know?"

"Is your stepdad waiting for you?"

I froze as I was getting up. "Well… no. He's in Kyoto on business."

"What about your… your mom?" he asked hesitantly. I could understand that, after what I'd just let him read.

"She's out of town, too."

"Why do you want to go home, then? No one's there, right?"

Oh, god. "No. I guess not," I mumbled. The servants didn't really count, anyway.

"Then you should stay here!" Tamaki offered, leaping to his feet. "We have all these spare rooms, and I just… I can't stand the thought of you going home all by yourself."

I swallowed back a snide comment of Why, so you can keep an eye on me and make sure the cutter-freak doesn't hurt herself?

I couldn't see any way out of it. Even though it would mean another long day without a blade… "Fine," I sighed, holding my head. "I'll stay."

Fin!

This is actually fairly long. I enjoy doing diary excerpts.

I need to go continue reading my AP English books now… yuck. Thank goodness the fair's in town. I need a break. And I have no idea when I'll get the time to write my next Pet Shop of Horrors fic chapter. Summer is nearly over! T.T I'm going to cry so hard on the first day of school.

Love you all! Thanks for reading! AND YOUR REVIEWS (wishful thinking, perhaps, but seriously. Review.)!

Phantom, out!