K: Midnight: A K Project Fan Fiction

Chapter Ten: Midnight

00:01 December 9, 2008

Red. So red. So beautiful. That's all I could remember at the time: waking to that brilliant shade surrounding me completely, as though nothing else existed in the world, perhaps not even me. But the red: the red, I knew, was real.

I wasn't certain where it came from, nor even what it was — only that it was perfect and that somehow, it had found me. Somehow, it brought me back to life.

I reached a hand toward it, longing to experience its warmth between my fingertips, for even in my place — that place I could not see, nor afterward recall but for the chill that settled there and numbed me to my core — I felt its heat and knew that it was good. I knew that it would soothe me, if only I could bring myself to touch it, to hold it in my arms, as if, by doing so, I'd finally be safe; yet, in my weakened state, my hand fell back against me and the red began to fade. I saw nothing after that.

When, at last, I woke, there it was again: such a pretty red. This time, I could see it far more clearly than before. What once was but a blur had turned into a form: a human form belonging to a man as fierce and otherworldly as the red that had encompassed him.

He lay asleep, waiting for me; but where was I exactly? A bed? And he, seated in a chair beside me, the pair of us inside a room: his room, perhaps?

I rose up on my knees. The bed seemed awfully large; then, so again did he; or perhaps it was myself who seemed quite small against all else inside the room. I thought it strange at first. But that red. Again I was distracted. I dared not look away. I'd never seen an aura quite like his, nor nearly filled with rage and savage power. I told myself: This time, this time I will touch it. I will know for certain how it feels.

I inched my body closer to the edge and set a tiny palm atop his knee, gently, so as not to wake him. I sent the other in the air, reaching out to him, but why was he so far? And why, my hand, so small? Again, I'd grown confused, yet only wondered vaguely, for my mind was driven solely toward the red. Next to it, to him, observing what I knew to be a force akin to mine, I found myself (by means unknown) inferior, and blamed my ill-perception on that one specific thought: that somehow, he had risen far beyond the limits bound to every other person in the world, along with me.

My hand was almost there. My fingers nearly grasped the object of my suddenly obsessive curiosity; but in that splitting instant, he stirred. My weight, spread thinly on his knee, was unexpectedly cast off. His eyes at once appeared and startled me. I fell, though as I did, I found myself encased, drawn nearer back to him as he, then staring down at me, appeared to glow more brightly than before. The red about his features spread throughout his body, radiating outward as though he himself, the fiery flame, ignited me as well.

Caught within his arms, the object of his gaze, a shuddered gasp commanded me to silence, and all that I could do was stare into the ruthlessness abounding in his eyes, entranced, yet wholly unafraid of what I saw. Equally, he looked at me as though I, too, were just as rare and dangerous as he.

"You… You're like me, aren't you?" Came his low, consoling voice, his words the very mirror of my thoughts. "Or, at least…" He paused, his face intensified. "Huh. That's weird." I eyed him wide and fell at once to nervousness, for he had spoken, all the while scanning me from head to toe and back. "Guess I didn't notice."

"N-notice what?" I stammered out.

"See for yourself," he offered, loosening his hold.

I then commenced to panicking, and in a swoop, I wrestled free of him. My bare feet hit the floor, and as I stood before his seated form, our eyes (to my astonishment) were not of equal distance from the other's. At my full height, and he relaxed within his chair, I found him towering above me.

My heart began to thunder like a hammer in my chest. "How is this possible?" I asked, and at his backward nod, my sight closed in upon a mirror mounted to the wall.

I raced what should have been a single pace (then amplified to three gigantic strides) and came before the mirror, only to retreat again with one long breath of horror that came scratching down my throat. "I…I'm a…" I tried to speak, but nothing came, for staring back at me was not the full grown woman whom I knew myself to be.

My eyes, of deeply potent red, were massive and obtrusive; my skin was pearly white, as was the hair that fell in heaping strands about my waist. These features had not changed. They were, for all intents and purposes, the same, yet starkly out of place and nothing like the memory I had pictured of myself. My body, as I scanned myself, was not yet four full feet in height, nor was it formed as that of a woman's, but of a little girl's.

My face, above all else, was what was strikingly unique, for despite the similarities, it was neither my own face, nor that of a child's, but somewhere in between. My age appeared unnatural and severely indeterminate, while all my power — in fear, I gasped again. My dark, resplendent power, mystical in nature, inexhaustible in worth: it was gone! So that's why, I realized. That's why I feel as small as I appear.

Driven to a bottomless despair, I found myself lightheaded and I wobbled in my place, my footing falling out from under me; yet once again, the red was there to catch me and he laid me in his lap, holding me and soothing me in silence as the tears began to well and dribble down my cheeks.

"Tell me who did this to you," I heard his voice inside my ear. His tone was stern, demanding, full of anger, yet above all, it was warm. "Tell me and I'll kill them."

He could not see, yet no doubt, he could feel how shocked I was that he, a man I'd never met, would issue such a threat against the people who had wronged me; but then I understood: he did not need to meet me to have known that we were different from the world and thus, entirely the same. He felt the void in me, the absence of my power; and that had been enough for him to seek his own revenge: for me, who could not do it on my own; and for himself, the only one who could have understood.

"Tell me," he repeated, his arms closing in around me.

"My…my clansmen," I whispered.

I felt him tense with rage. Then it donned on him, and I perceived his thoughts, as ever after, I alone could see them when no other person could. "That means…" he began.

"Yes," I confirmed. "I'm not of the seven."

Slowly, he exhaled. I felt his chest relax and his warm breath against my nose. It smelt of cigarettes, though not the noxious scent of them but a sweetness full of musk. "How long exactly?" He asked. "How long have you been a king?"

"Thirteen years," I whispered.

"And before that?"

My forehead dipped in closer to his breast, the cotton of his shirt a gentle softness on my skin.

"I see," he said. "You're a Strain."

I bobbed a little nod.

"If you've been a king for thirteen years, then how old are you really?"

I drew my face to look at him. He seemed sad. "Twenty," I replied, somewhat meekly.

On the left side of his face, I watched his jaw contract. Somehow, this had angered him the more. He asked me, "Why a kid?"

I thought for a moment. "My aura was often called 'Restore.' It was a healing power. It could return all that it touched to any prior state of existence."

He peered at me with interest. "So in other words, it could turn back time."

"Mm," I nodded. "It seems I've been restored to the age I was before I was a king, though I imagine they were planning to go further than that: to a state of nonexistence, I suppose."

His voice then turned emphatic. "They wanted to erase you?" Again, I felt his anger in a boiling rage of fire inching closer to the surface of his red. I closed my eyes, shuddering at the thought, yet thankful for the warmth he gave to counter it.

He then asked my name. "Anna," I replied. "Anna Kushina."

"Anna," he repeated. "You said your clansmen did this to you — turned you into a kid by stealing away your aura." Then, as an afterthought, he asked, "What color is it, anyway?"

I answered sheepishly. "Think of a magic eight ball."

"Huh? Oh, I get it. You're the eighth king. It's black, then?"

Again, I nodded. "It was."

"You'll get it back," he said intensely, his grim expression bearing down at me. "I promise. These people — "

"The Shadows," I supplied. "My clansmen are — were — the Shadows."

"That's all they'll be when I get through with them."

"And me?" I asked. "What will happen to me? Will I stay this way?"

He looked at me — a hardened, painful look — and issued out a sigh. He slanted off his features to the side as though the presence of some unseen force had long since weighed him down. "All I know is that you can't just take an aura from a king. It doesn't work like that. Even killing him, his power just goes back to the Slate until it finds a new king."

"Then how come it happened to me?" I pressed him, and all his red peered down and stared at me. I could tell he didn't know the answer any more than I did, try as we both might to understand.

Nodding to my tiny self, he said, "I take it that's what you really look like — the inside part, I mean."

"So it is true, then. You really can see me."

Mikoto looked at me — the real me — and popped his brow approvingly. Even then, I knew what that look meant. "Mmhm," he answered simply.

"Can anyone else?" I asked, hiding a slight blush.

"I doubt it — not unless they're a king."

I scanned away from him, dropping my attention to my nervous fingers fidgeting together. "If at all possible, I…I'd like to keep it that way, at least for a little while."

I then snuck a peak at him and saw him raise an eyebrow at me. "How long is 'a little while?'"

This time, it was I who didn't know, and once more, I diverted my gaze back against the charcoal-colored t-shirt he wore underneath his jacket (if it really was a charcoal-colored t-shirt, for all that I could tell).

"Well, until you're ready," he said, as though I'd given him an answer, "or until we fix this, you can stay with me. I'm Mikoto."

"You're the Red King," I said fondly. As evidence from my smile, it was clear I loved the red, and, looking up, I saw that he was pleased.

"I picked up a strange scent – several, in fact – roaming through my territory like ghosts about the time I found you last night," he informed me. "Your Shadows, I'm guessing? It seemed to me like they were looking for something. I think it's safe to say it was you."

I dipped down lower, shrinking in his arms. "Maybe when they realized I was still alive, they came back to finish the job. But that doesn't make very much sense," I realized, frowning. "I remember clearly: they had already found me. They had me cornered, and that's when they attacked. Against all of them at once, I didn't stand a chance. So how is it I survived?"

"It seemed to me like you'd been hurled into that alleyway I found you in, like you just fell out of the sky and landed there by accident."

I scrunched my brow reluctantly. "That's strange. I don't remember that. I remember they set a trap for me, and even though I ran, they cut me off. Then I remember being jolted with something." My heart dropped at the memory. "They were sucking out my aura."

"That must have hurt."

"Like hell," I said instinctively, and I watched him twitch a bit. I realized how amusing it must have been for him to witness a small child cussing like an adult. "It all happened in a flash, and then…" I shook my head, "nothing. I remember nothing after that."

"You must have blacked out. Sometimes when an aura's threatened, it retaliates. As a last resort before it fully left you — in an effort to save you, I guess — it sent you someplace else, someplace they wouldn't find you, maybe even to me, if it sensed my aura wandering nearby."

"I like that theory," I said thoughtfully.

"Yeah but even still," he went on. "These people…They're going to try again, if what I sensed last night was any hint." He issued out a sigh. It sounded like a growl. "I can't shake the feeling that they've got another reason for it, though – something we're both missing."

I frowned, a bit perplexed. "Isn't it obvious? It wasn't enough to simply strip me of my aura. They wanted my life on top of it. This was all for power."

"I'm not so sure that's the whole story," he proposed. "From what I got, they were pretty frantic, and it wasn't out of greed. Trust me. They were afraid, like whatever they had planned would fall apart if they didn't find you. It may be just a hunch, but — " I could tell he was concerned, " — either way, this might just be the safest place for you until we can figure out what to do."

Just then, a rumbling sounded from below. I shuddered once again, clinging to Mikoto as though clinging for dear life. He didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to like it. He hummed his minor growl again, glancing at the door. "Looks like the boys are back."

Caught inside a sudden sense of urgency, I stood up in his lap. "Mikoto," I said quickly and he turned back round to me. I stared him down intently. "Remember."

"I said I wouldn't tell," he reassured me with a shrug. "But I'm going to need some sort of an excuse."

I drew my shoulders up, squinting at him. "Let them think I've come to join your clan?" I suggested.

Mikoto rose his eyebrows once again. "A little girl?" He humphed. "They wouldn't believe it."

"I'm still a Strain," I pleaded. "That isn't gone. If they see that, then it shouldn't matter how old they think I am, right?" My words, if they had started strong, had dwindled into barely even a whisper.

From the evident scowl I got, I saw Mikoto wasn't entirely fond of this plan. Slowly, he dipped his head back, staring at the ceiling. "I don't know what would stand out more: a little girl on the side of Suoh, or the attention we'd draw with all we'd have to do to keep you hidden. It wouldn't be that big of a deal if we didn't have so much trouble coming from the Blues lately." He propped his arm along his knee, eyeing me reflectively. "And I guess if you're out in the open — secret in tact, of course — we'd have a better shot at drawing out your Shadows — that is, if you don't mind being the bait."

I shook my head. "But won't that put your clan in danger?"

"Don't worry about that," he said, passing off what I assumed to be a valid point as though it didn't matter. "My guys live for that kind of thing."

I inched forward, scrunching my small fingers round the furry collar of his jacket. I knew I wasn't very intimidating, but I thought I'd give it a go. "Please don't do anything reckless just because of me."

Along his cheek, a subtle crease appeared: his own version of excitement. "We'd do it even without you. But you, on the other hand," he said, his tone direct, "if we're going to do this, then aside from when you're with me, you can't be talking like you do."

"H-how do I talk?" I asked, darting back self-consciously.

"Not the way you should. You sound too…superior. Try acting a bit more — "

" — childish?" I shot back, and he paused. He knelt back once again and ran his fingers through his hair.

"Kids aren't old enough to know who they are yet," he explained. "And based off how you look, you know too much."

I slumped. Already, my own plan exhausted me. "At least, if I were taller, this wouldn't be so hard to deal with," I mumbled.

Then, as though confirming my frustration, Mikoto rose and gained his feet, surpassing me entirely. "You were the one who wanted to keep it a secret." He eyed me in a jest, though he could see my confidence was far too badly damaged to reveal myself a failure as a king, at least not right away. I needed time to think, to somehow readjust, to conjure up a plan, and time was what he offered — time and his assistance.

"Just keep it simple," he said in acquiescence to the timid look I bore. "And if you get stuck, I'll help you, okay?" He reached a hand to me. It seemed enormous and enveloped mine completely as I took it. I didn't mind, though. His red was comforting that way. I nodded back. "Okay," I said.

"Alright, let's go. Time to meet the rest of Homra."

"Homra?" I asked.

"My clan," he said, guiding me to the door. "Homra's the Red Clan like your Shadows are the Black Clan."

"Midnight," I said quietly.

Mikoto stopped and eyed me conscientiously. "What?"

I met his gaze, for the first time feeling proud, despite myself, and clearly said to him, "I'm the Midnight King."

Epilogue: How We Wanted Us To Be