Disclaimer: I own nothing but the general plot and OCs

I wasn't entirely sure about how last chapter would be received so thank you for your amazing support and feedback!

I know a lot of you want to see more Kakashi, and don't worry he'll be getting a pov next chapter.

This chapter was a bitch to write, and I just couldn't get it down, so it ended up being written at ten completely different times. Then I couldn't smooth it all out to flow easily afterward and gave up. Let's just chalk it up to Sonaru taking a few days to get over last chapter with Nagao

So it doesn't flow nicely and that's annoying. I'm not too thrilled with this chapter as a result.

There is some character development on more OCs here. If you have no interest in them, don't worry they're not too important in the grand scheme of things and if you can't remember their names or anything about them, again - don't worry, if Sonaru had more of a choice with her memory I doubt she would either.

Thank you so much for awesome reviews, as well as favs and follows! Let me know what works, or what doesn't work for you, as well as any prompts for scenes you'd like to see.

Chapter 46 - In The Company Of Strangers

It had to have been hours that I spent curled up in a ball under the bed, unable to get warm and simply hiding from reality with disconnected thoughts.

Eventually though, the door opened and familiar footsteps stumbled in with none of the grace or finesse I associated with them. Shion's feet slid wearily against the floor as she seemed to propel herself slowly across the room through sheer force of will. I saw her feet turn as she sat heavily on the bed, and then there was no sound or movement for prolonged seconds. I heard a hitched sigh, before her long thin fingers appeared in order to scrabble mindlessly at her boots.

The fact that she managed to remove them from her feet was a miracle due to how unsteady her hands were. They plonked noisily onto the floor one after the other, followed by more prolonged silence.

"Sweet thing," her voice was hoarse and I didn't want to imagine how it had gotten like that. I could hear the click in her throat from how dry it was, "come out from under there."

I hesitated, reluctant to leave my 'safe space', and even more reluctant to see what had been done to her, but I didn't want to cause her any further difficulty and so I wriggled my way out from underneath the bed with the duvet trailing behind me.

I stood up on cautious legs and slowly lifted my head, only to be met with a weary but normal looking Shion. Confused, I scanned her for signs of the violence that been visited upon her body, but there was nothing.

She attempted a weak smile and me, and beckoned me forward, "come here. I'm tired, so why don't we do some more reading."

Unsure of what else to do, I took slow steps toward her until I was close enough for her to help me up onto the bed. She stiffly scooted to lean back against the headboard, picking up the book we had left next to the pillow before the afternoon had turned into a live horror show.

I watched her, unmoving, trying to see beyond the tired defeated look in her eyes -which hid itself well behind the unnerving white-grey colour- and the stiffness of her movements. She looked up at me once she'd flicked through the pages and found her place again, looking as though she didn't understand why I wasn't getting myself comfortable.

She placed a pillow in her lap, her legs crossed like the last time, and patted the pillow lightly, "lay your head here, sweet thing."

I scanned her face intently, trying to figure out what was going on. Small signs of strain began to show itself on her expression the longer I looked, and I realised that she wanted me to carry on and pretend that the afternoon had never happened. Ignore it like she intended to.

If there was anything more useful that I could think of I would do it, but while I was stuck here, unable to even figure out how to make the fucking doors open for me, there was little else I could do to help.

So I dipped my eyes in acquiescence and shuffled on my knees until I could lay down with my head in her lap. The slightly fading scent of soap let me know she'd washed since I last saw her. It was better than the stink of dried sweat and old terror that I had expected. But mixing in with the soap, to my dismay, was the familiar Kuchisake scent of old blood and new blood and a hint of sex.

Did she sleep with him after he'd beaten the shit out of her? Did he rape her? Was this happening regularly and I just hadn't noticed because the wounds were hidden under clothes and they were healed by someone before we undressed and washed after dinner?

Her words sounded rough and dry, but she began to read from where she'd left off, regardless. I couldn't relax enough to fall into daydreams like before, and worries circled me accompanied by melancholy, but I held my pillow tight and took comfort from the fact that I could hear the proof of her continued life and feel the heat of her legs surrounding me.

I still disliked her sometimes, and if she died I didn't think I would mourn her, but I didn't want Shion to be beaten to death by the likes of Nagao. I didn't think she deserved that kind of ending. Besides, she was all I had here.

When dinner rolled around that evening, I noticed with bewilderment that Shion seemed to be slowly but surely radiating aggression like she was gearing up for a confrontation. It wasn't directed toward me in any way, and frankly the last time I had seen something like it in terms of body language was when Dad's old girlfriend went 'crazy ex' on his new girlfriend.

Immediately I knew there was a cat fight in the imminent future. Frankly I'd had enough of fighting and violence and aggression that I couldn't do anything about for the day, but that didn't mean I was in a position to change anything.

It was pretty obvious who she was preparing to argue with. There were very few people that Shion regularly interacted with, and the women at dinner who she sat with were some of the few females. Honestly they didn't even seem to like Kuchisake, but they put up with her most of the time in that horrid petty way that females sometimes did with other females.

It was like a mildly more grown up version of sitting in a school canteen with a bunch of bitchy teenage girls who were 'friends', but actually seemed to spend just as much time trying to mentally fuck with one another than be genuinely friendly with them.

Amongst them, unfortunately, Shion was definitely the outsider - the least welcome. At least with the other five, they stuck to together like a clique. Shion was like the ugly disabled girl that the rest of them allowed to hang out to make them feel simultaneously better about themselves and convince themselves of their own generosity -which was actually just contempt and pity- all the while sneering and laughing about her behind her back.

Except it also wasn't quite like that at all, because Shion was by far the most attractive one of the bunch, and she was also the only one out of them all who was a shinobi. It was instead an ostracism based upon badly hidden jealousy from what I could tell, which came out in a form of elitism that they all upheld in some manner - as the least educated one of the bunch, Kuchisake was the odd one out.

Even though they didn't say the words explicitly, I could tell that Kuchisake was looked down upon as a hot dumb slut, who got by on her looks to make up for her lack of brains. The ultimate cliche. They immediately invalidated most of what came out of her mouth as lacking in intelligence, and sneered at her for her inability to interact with a single male without trying to make him want to fuck her. It was even worse in their eyes that she actually succeeded most of the time in twisting men around her little finger, and it was unforgivable to them that she also had sex with them almost indiscriminately.

They were so caught up in their collective jealousy, hating her and wishing they had what she had and trying to convince themselves they were better than her because she wasn't particularly intelligent compared to the other women, that they completely missed the reason why Shion automatically flirted with and tried to seduce every guy out there.

I knew it because I'd seen it before; Kuchisake's self worth was entirely hinged upon other people wanting to screw her. She wasn't the most charming person out there. She definitely wasn't the smartest. She wasn't amazing when it came to her shinobi skills and was really only just good enough at everything to class as a Jōnin, from what I could tell. She didn't have an illustrious career behind her full of amazing deeds. She wasn't the sanest person. She wasn't the most cunning. But she was very hot.

It was the thing that everyone noticed about her. The only thing that seemed to stick in their minds about her, and so she played it up. As the main thing worth anything about herself in her own eyes, every person who wanted to have sex with her and stared at her tits instead of looking at her face when they talked to her, or made a lewd comment about her arse when they walked passed her, or tried to get handsy with her was confirmation to her that she was worth something.

It made her obsessed with her looks, though, and as a sort of accessory of hers at times, she was almost as obsessed with mine. It didn't particularly endear her to the other women to say the least.

As soon as we entered the food hall Shion grabbed us a tray of food and then gunned for the table. The others watched her approach out the corners of their eyes with anticipation. Clearly they knew something of what had Shion so pissed.

She slapped the tray down with a clatter, and leaned forward over the table with a smile that was more of a sneer as she glared at Ike.

"Thank you, Ike, for not informing me that the children were back from training days ago."

Ike arched a brow and jutted out her chin, "you're always so obsessed with them that I assumed I wouldn't have to. Don't you style yourself as some sort of mother to them?"

"I am their mother," she hissed, suddenly looking a little unhinged. She collected herself for a second afterward, and leaned forward again, "so what, all of a sudden you just don't inform me of their return and assume I'll magically divine their presences on the other end of the compound? Don't make me laugh."

"Be careful what you imply, Shion," Ike primly gathered herself and made a show of eating her meal unbothered. I could tell though, in the slight curl of her shoulders, in the not quite relaxed set of her spine, in the mildly shifty glances between the other women on the table, that Ike had not forgotten who the only shinobi at the table was.

"No, you be careful, Ike. Don't mess with me. Nagao-taichou is not happy right now because you decided to act jealous that I have a special relationship with him and my very own child," she stabbed her chopsticks viciously at Ike and I bit back a grimace at her claim toward me.

Shion was wrong, they weren't jealous in the way she thought they were. They didn't want to fuck Nagao and they didn't want their own bundle of kids to be personally responsible for. Unfortunately though, she had worded her accusation just close enough to the truth that Ike and all the other women bristled defensively.

"You're just angry because you can't seduce your way out trouble, like always," Chou snidely butted in, a prissy smile tightening her features. Chou was small and slender looking, with wide hazel eyes and a cute strawberry-blonde bob. Her demeanour matched her looks most of the time, but she had revealed herself since I'd met her to be a petty bitch underneath that.

Shion glared at her fiercely, but turned back toward Ike - whose lips had perked upward at Chou's remark - without saying anything. She was still looking down at her food, eating primly, and her posture had straightened with confidence now that she had backup.

"You seem to forget, Ike, that your actions don't just affect you. You're part of a team," her gaze spanned the others hostilely, "you're all part of the same team. When one of you slips, you drag the others down with you. I'm the one who says nothing to Nagao-taichou about it when I see him."

Ike squared her shoulders and narrowed her eyes at Shion, "you are responsible for the children's discipline. You took that upon yourself. It's not my fault that you failed your responsibility and then couldn't persuade Nagao-taichou to put his hands on you in the way you wanted."

Holy fuck. They all knew. They knew that Nagao beat the crap out of Kuchisake when he got mad, and went and dropped her in the shit anyway.

"This isn't about the children. This is about the fact that Chou-chan mislabelled the used needle bin and delayed medical by another four days while waiting for a new batch of clean ones. I took the brunt of that because I knew it was an honest mistake. Like I said, Ike, Nagao-taichou isn't happy. I can change my mind and point fingers if you piss me off."

There was no guarantee that he wouldn't have beaten her with the delay (thank god) in medical, but the fact that Ike purposely made Shion mess up in her duties toward the kids, by not informing her that they were back from whatever training, and made the violence a certainty had me feeling sick.

These women disgusted me with their completely unnecessary bitchiness. I could have been killed because of these shallow cows' jealousy toward another person. It especially pissed me off that Shion had taken the fucking blame in the first place for medical's delay because she actually thought Chou was a nice woman, and 'if she would just see how mean Ike was she'd stop being such good friends and siding with her and she'd like me more, sweet thing,'.

Like they weren't all completely aware of how petty each one acted, particularly toward Shion. Ike was just the most outspoken and catty.

"Alright ladies, that's enough," Miyako butted in, with her usual smooth and mature tones. She was the oldest on the table, looking to be in her late thirties or early forties, with dark skin, and eyes, and dark brown hair that had maroon streaks, interspersed with a few greys that were peaking through.

She was the other women's professional superior (barring Kuchisake) as far as I had been able to tell, and although she didn't often have much to say, when she did she was listened to and usually obeyed.

At first I had thought that she was above the catty bullshit the other women played, but then I realised she only really said something when one them was putting their foot in their mouth, or was about to lose ground to Kuchisake. She spoke up under pretence of mediating the younger women, but I was certain she was just making sure the status quo wasn't shaken up in any way, and that Shion remained on the bottom of the pecking order.

"Regardless of who did say or didn't say what, the problems are fixed now. We're ready in the lab for the child as soon as everyone has finished eating. Is that a problem for you, Shion-san?"

"No problem, Miyako-san," Kuchisake shook her head, her reluctance well hidden. I wouldn't have noticed it if I wasn't sitting on her lap, feeling her tense form.

To be honest, after hearing that, I was just as tense. Looked like my time avoiding being a human test subject was up. I couldn't help but feel bitter resentment as I scanned everyone sitting at the table, caught up in their fickle power plays that didn't mean a goddamn thing, and after they were done they were going to get to work experimenting on the kidnapped person casually sitting among them.

Dinner passed far too quickly for my liking, although I couldn't eat much. I rarely could at meal times here, even when I wasn't conscious of feeling stupidly anxious and stressed. Sleep, too, was a struggle since I'd arrived.

For the first time, everyone on the table left together, with Kuchisake trailing behind as they quietly left the food hall and entered the maze of hallways.

Everyone seemed to have entered a focussed and impassive state with the exception of Shion and I. Both of us got more and more tense and stiff as the laboratories loomed closer in my mind.

Despite the futility of it, I desperately wanted to run. Only Shion's tight hold on me as she carried me prevented me from doing so.

Shion's compulsive and unusually fast crunching of hard sweets punctured the quiet of the group, and although she spit cleaned her hands afterward, smearing me as always in the process, I didn't even care. I'd rather take sweet spit slick hands any day than being a test subject to these people.

Finally, we stopped outside a door as unremarkable and sound proof as all the others I'd seen, with the exception of the food hall door. Only the harsh smell of antiseptic, latex, sterile materials and unnatural chemical scents that lingered in the hallway let me know we were anywhere near the labs.

Miyako opened the doors and everyone filed into the room behind her.

It was as pale and bland in colour as the hallways. There were large pieces of equipment, the function of which I had absolutely no clue, as well as a lot of the typical accoutrements that could be expected at the doctor's or in a hospital. At face value it wasn't obvious that the room was used for anything but benign purposes.

It was fairly large and sectioned off by worktops that jutted out from the wall on the left into the room every six or so meters, evenly separating the space into five sections. One had computers and spaces to sit and work, but the others had medical equipment and machinery dominating the sections. All but the one with computers contained what looked like two hospital beds each.

While I was anxiously taking stock of the place, Kuchisake walked over to one of the beds and placed me sitting down, she crouched down in front of me, capturing my attention.

Her face radiated regret and discomfort as she murmured to me, "Listen, sweet thing, I can't stay here with you while the other girls do their thing," she reached forward and grasped my hand in hers and cupped my face with her other hand.

"I want you to be good, and do as they tell you. No fussing, okay? I know you won't because you're a good girl," she smiled a little, but it faded quickly.

Panic yanked my breath from me and I hadn't realised until that point how much I'd been relying on Shion to stay with me to keep me calm. Some part of me had been convinced that if she was was there, she wouldn't let the others do anything too bad to me.

"Why can't you stay here," my quiet voice couldn't keep the pleading notes at bay.

She looked pained, her eyes flicking at what I assumed to be the other women in the room as they bustled around preparing.

"There are other little boys and girls who need my attention. I'm sorry, sweet thing, I have to take care of them too," she reached down and gently tried to unhook the hand I hadn't even realised was grasping tightly at her top.

I wanted to guilt trip her. I wanted to play up being a needy, clingy child until she gave in and stayed, but I already knew that method wouldn't work when doing so could get her beaten up by Nagao for neglecting her duties.

So I said nothing, and swallowed thickly, staring with half betrayed and half beseeching eyes. I didn't want her to go. She was the closest thing I had to safety here.

Her expression crumbled slightly and cupped my cheeks with both hands, her thumbs stroking in an attempt at soothing, "This will only take a few hours. Then I'll be right here to take you home. I'll be here the moment you're finished."

Her eyes flitted to the women, still busy preparing the equipment for fuck knows what, and then back to me. She kissed me then, once, twice, and a third time. I didn't give a thought to how I usually disliked her doing so, clinging to the unspoken comfort she was trying to give.

"I promise," she whispered to me, and then she kissed me one last time, before she stood without another word and left.

If I'd known how to work the stupid fucking doors of this place, I would have taken my chances then, done my best to kill all five of the women left in the room and run. But I still hadn't figured out why exactly they opened for some and not others.

Obviously there was some kind of signal that made the doors open, but I didn't know if it was to do with thumbprint, DNA, chakra, or something they physically had on them that I hadn't seen. So I was out of options but to go along with it all.

After all the anxiety and fear I had about being experimented on, that first evening was fairly anticlimactic. It was more like an incredibly thorough check up at the doctors. My throat was checked, my blood pressure and my heart rate were measured, my respiration, sinuses, lymph nodes and abdomen were checked, my temperature, my height, my weight and my foot size measured.

I had an eye test and a hearing test done. My teeth and gums were checked, my fingers were checked, my nostrils and ear canals were checked.

I breathed into so many devices and tubes in different ways that I was light headed and dizzy by the end of it. Joints, reflexes and balance were measured - although I intentionally did far worse in the balance test. All limbs and body parts were poked and prodded at, including -to my great discomfort- the genital area.

Electrode patches were attached in various points to my body as I lay down for ten minutes, and then stood up for ten minutes. I had a full body X-Ray and pissed into a cup. I had a hair sample, a nail sample, and a spit sample taken, as well as far more blood than I was comfortable being removed from such a tiny person - through a variety of different methods, in a variety of different amounts, from a variety of different places on the body.

I hated it. But, admittedly, it could have been worse. I was more concerned that things would escalate from there, and what sort of information they could pull from my biology. What if they figured out I was a Hatake? What if they figured out how weird my brain was and what exactly that meant? There was nothing I could do if they did, and that more than anything freaked me out.

I could worry all I liked, but no answer to my fears seemed to be willing to present itself. I hated feeling so completely powerless over my situation and being forced to wait for a rescue I wasn't certain was coming anytime soon.

It was with relief when Kuchisake showed up to take me back to our room. Immediately, however, I noticed the smell of cleaning products and a slight scent of bleach in the room. When Shion was stressed she sometimes cleaned. I wondered how long she'd spent scrubbing at whatever dirt she'd imagined.

I put up with her insistence at joint bath like usual with barely an internal complaint, and spent the rest of the evening feeling a mixture of exhausted and restless as she once more lay my head in her lap and read to me. Sleep was, as usual by this point, slow to arrive and patchy once it had.

The next day I wasn't supposed to eat in preparation for the medical exams to come. It was a good thing too because I had no appetite. Shion was gone for much of the day, and I had little to do but pace and worry and try to distract myself by reading or playing shogi against myself.

I was almost glad for the brief company when Kuchisake returned to take me to the labs a few hours before dinner. The lack of too painful or terrifying exams the day before didn't make watching her leave again with the same excuse any easier.

The devices looked somewhat different from what I was familiar with in my original life, in the adjoining rooms I was taken into, but I recognised a CAT scan and MRI scan. I was pretty sure the last one was a PET scan. Yeah, there was no way in hell they weren't going to notice my weird brain. Fuck.

I had more electrode patches stuck to me, and this time I was led into a room with a bunch of fitness equipment. They stuck me on something that worked like a treadmill but looked nothing like one at first glance and had me run, with some sort of device strapped to my mouth and nose. I began fake wheezing and stopped long before I needed to, completely uncertain if I was actually tricking anybody of anything with all the monitoring devices stuck to me.

My temperature and more blood was taken a bunch more times before and after the tests, and then came a series of tests I knew had to do with chakra. But frankly I knew absolutely fuck all about them to even tell what each one was supposed to be vaguely telling the women.

I despised it even more than the previous day, feeling barely human in my hospital gown and with no choice but to have the secrets of this body taken from me. I felt reduced to results in a medical file in everyone's eyes but Kuchisake.

A clean and showered Shion arrived once again to pick me up, unable to hide the underlying scents of cleaning products and sex and old blood. My heart clenched a little at the thought that she might have slept with Nagao again, and I hoped it had been some of the other men that she habitually seduced.

Cleaning products and bleach once more hit my nose once I entered our room, but this time I was able to identify that it came from one particular spot - the big dark metal chest that sat conspicuously on the left side of the room and was always locked.

I knew if blood had been spilled there I'd be able to pick it up regardless, since my already heightened sense seemed especially sensitive to the smell of blood. I figured either she kept cleaning products in a really ugly metal chest, or she'd had sex on it and cleaned it up vigorously afterward.

I couldn't smell the typical scents of two people having gotten it on together, which I was unfortunately way too familiar with by this point, so I really hoped it was the former.

Despite not having eaten that day, I picked at my food and listened with great discomfort as the women discussed me in medical terms I didn't understand, never once giving away from their tone or body language that they were talking about a living human being.

I was tired of tests by the second day, and so I approached day three with a quiet sullen attituilede. Shion seemed sympathetic and as reluctant to leave me there as ever, but just like the two days previous, she walked away.

This time, though, the team had been changed up. Two of the women, Mari and Chou, were elsewhere, replaced by a short thin man with non existent eyebrows, thin black hair and a perpetually quizzical expression on his face, and a kid who looked somewhere between fifteen and seventeen with a grey tone to his skin, dull yellow eyes and spiky light blonde hair.

It didn't take long to figure out that the day was going to consist of some a few chakra tests, but primarily filled with psychological exams. I told just as many lies as truths during the tests, hoping that my identity as Sona was solid enough and held enough truth in it to hold up under scrutiny from a professional.

It was by far my least favourite day of exams. I had some control for once over what the results were and yet that control also meant I could fuck up. The stress had my anxiety rocketing which the eyebrowless man, whose name I never caught, noticed quickly.

I didn't know what he put the cause of my stress down to, but the fact that he noticed had me sweating in paranoia that Igarashi Sona was going to come falling down around me, leaving Hatake Subaru visible to my kidnappers.

I was mentally exhausted by the time the day of testing was over, and thankful when Kuchisake entered to remove me. She hurried over to me, her hair damp and messy, and her skin covered in a light sheen of sweat.

"Did you get caught in the rain, Ame-Onna?" Ike's cruel-tinted voice called. I could feel the flinch that Shion hid from everyone else at whatever that taunt meant to her.

"No, I didn't. Nagao-taichou expects a report on his desk tomorrow morning. I'll be here collect it," she replied sharply.

I was distracted by the heavy wafts of sex and sweat and Nagao radiating off her skin. Turning my head to hide a grimace, I closed my eyes - I was pretty sure I could smell piss faintly, too and tried not to think about why that would be on her.

I kind of had to think about it, though, when we returned to our room and the pee smell was even stronger in there. While Kuchisake showered, I wrinkled my nose in distaste and tried to sniff the source out. To my confusion, I discovered it coming from the dark metal chest. It smelt like someone had shoved their pissy clothes in there hours ago.

It also smelt like the fear-sweat of a child.

Kids and adults just didn't smell the same, but my nose wasn't good enough to pick up the subtle scent changes that came with normal emotions.

This had to have been high levels of fear-stress-upset in one contained spot for a prolonged length of time. I didn't know how long I stood there with my heart beating in my ears, trying but failing to reach a state of denial.

I was still staring in horror at the implications of the metal chest when Shion entered the room, clean from her shower.

"Sweet thing? What are you staring at?"

I didn't know what else to do but tell the truth, "it smells like wee," I pointed.

"Oh. Don't worry I'll have it cleaned up before bed. I was a bit pressed for time today," a nervous strain lightly touched her words.

I didn't want what I thought had happened to be true. I knew this wasn't a safe place, and I knew that there were children here but, having never even seen or heard one, that fact had remained an unreal concept in my head.

I dragged my eyes away from the dark box, feeling chilled and disturbed and hoping that I was wrong. This room, as much as I was reluctant to admit it, was my safe space in the compound. It was the place other people weren't allowed in, where the worst I had to put up with was Shion being overly free with her saliva and her touches, and uncomfortable kissing on the lips. The idea that it was also a place where terrified children were taken and locked up had me shaken.

Kami, I really hoped I was coming to the wrong conclusion, because I distinctly remembered there being only one person in charge of the kids' discipline, and if this was her idea of a normal punishment then I dreaded to think what she would do to me if I was caught trying to escape.

I didn't have long to contemplate the disturbing suspicions which had my throat tightening, though- I was too busy being led by the hand back out of the room and to dinner. I forced myself to eat, aware I had to keep my strength up, but I kept on having to hide how much I was gagging due to my throat closing almost every time I tried to swallow.

I felt a strange mixture of tired and shaky and numb.

I didn't listen to a word any of the women said as they faded into a hum in the background, and stopped myself from focussing on how much I didn't want to be here.

Lying on the bed that evening before we washed, I ignored the light hearted humming of Kuchisake, while she scrubbed away at the inside of the box with cleaning products and a small amount of bleach. I faced the other way and closed my eyes, imagining I was back in Konoha with Tou-san.

I couldn't sleep that night, and maybe it was the tiredness that loosened my tongue, but as Shion slowly drifted off, I found myself speaking into the darkness.

"Shion?"

"Hmm?" She sleepily murmured.

"Why did Nagao-taichou say he thought about killing me in front of you? I'm supposed to be safe here," I tested.

"He was just trying to scare me, sweet thing, it wasn't true" she limply stroked my hair.

"But what if he tried?"

"I wouldn't let him," she kissed me, and I could tell she was half asleep.

"Would you stop him?" I whispered.

"I promise."

There was a long pause as I tried to figure out if I believed her or not. I didn't know.

"Shion?"

"Mhm?"

"Why did you take the blame for Chou's mistake?"

"Chou's a nice woman... and she didn't mislabel anything."

I was silent for a long while, unsure if she was implying that she'd intentionally delayed medical for me. It would explain the rare occurrence of her being able to almost one up the women in an argument - plenty of time to anticipate it.

"Why did Ike call you Ame-Onna?" I could feel Kuchisake jerk awake at this one.

For some time I thought she wouldn't say anything. But then she took a deep breath and let it out in low sigh, "it's my name in the bingo book."

"Are you from Ame?"

"...yes. Years ago. When I had a little girl like you, and a husband."

"Oh... Shion?"

"Mm?"

"I miss Tou-san."

I was silenced with another kiss, this one a touch more forceful.

"You can write him a letter tomorrow. Go to sleep, Sona," she gently commanded, and tucked me back under her chin.

I lay awake for hours, unable to tell if the hint of urine in the air was my imagination or not.

Captivity getting to Sonaru a bit in this one.

What do you think they'll be most interested in from what they find in the results of her tests?

What do you think of what Sonaru suspects about the way Kuchisake is disciplining the other children?