A/N: Hi guys, I got a lovely message asking me to continue this story. School happened, my laptop crashed, and I sort of lost interest, so I never completed this part of the series. I can't promise life won't get crazy again, but I don't like leaving things unfinished, especially when there are people who really want to know what happens to these two characters. So I'll do some more brainstorming and hopefully churn out another 5 chapters for you all. Thanks for your continued support.

~Nique

Ch. 05: Insoluble Substances

"Reiji didn't like being ignored. That night, Masumi slept only for two hours. Reiji had trashed his lab. Though she had never seen him completely lose it, it looked like he had battled his rising ire at her and took it out on the study. Glass beakers were shattered and their contents were splashed all over the walls. His papers had been scattered, like he'd simply swept his arm across the desk and let the papers land where they fell. It took her several hours to clean it all up. Her back was strained and stiff from sweeping all the glass up from the tile, and bending over to pick each shard out of the carpet. Her arms felt heavy after scrubbing the various substances from off the walls. She just wanted to go to sleep.

But Reiji had other ideas. He stood in the doorway between the lab and his bedroom, arms clasped behind his back, almost as if restraining himself. "You have treated me, your master, with such disrespect I am nearly at a loss for words. Clearly I have been far too lenient with you. Your punishment tonight will be to restart each experiment that was discarded this evening. And I expect each one to be perfect, Miss Masumi." The glint on his glasses disappeared as he leaned in toward her ear and she held her breath, expecting his bite. He whispered, instead. "I have no use for imperfect things," and closed the door behind him.

When she did finally get to bed, Reiji took pleasure in waking her every hour or so, biting her roughly and drinking from her as she tried to sleep. At first she complained, but all it took was a soft rattling of the handcuffs attached to the bed posts for her to quiet down. It was a long night.

At school the next morning, Masumi knew she looked as awful as she felt when the other girls in her English class kept pointing to her and touching their own faces. She assumed that meant she looked frightening. Because she had been placed on the same accelerated learning track as Reiji, she shared most of her classes with him, and usually sat next to him. He felt this was only appropriate. But when she reached her usual seat, she was met by cold purple eyes and a mocking sneer.

"This seat is taken, witch," the girl hissed. Her long nails flicked in the opposite direction from her front-and-center seat. "Go sit in the back, where you belong," Suki Nakamura finished with a fake smile. Too tired to argue with the vampirette, Masumi moved a seat back and closed her eyes for a moment, just until class began.

"And why are you not in your appropriate seat, Miss Masumi?" Reiji's voice penetrated her almost-asleep haze and she groaned internally, preparing to answer. Suki beat her to the punch, however.

"I decided it was only appropriate, given her dismal grades and understanding of the English language, Sakamaki-san," she said sweetly. Reiji's gaze swung to look at the raven-haired girl. Suki continued, "Forgive me if that was presumptuous of me, Sakamaki-san, but I don't think Miss Masumi is well-mannered enough to represent this established classroom by sitting in the front row," she said, her eyes flickering to Massumi's face and back to Reiji's. The Sakamaki prince pushed his glasses up his nose, crossing his arms.

"I see. Her manners are deplorable, and she will be duly punished later." As soon as he finished, their instructor entered the room and they all bowed and took their seats. Masumi could not defend herself, as Reiji would allow no talking during class time. Suki smirked at her from over her shoulder, then turned her head around sharply, smacking Masumi in the face with her long black hair.

Suki had been cruel to Masumi from the moment she arrived, but it was not until this day that Masumi understood why. Now, as she watched the young vampirette angle herself toward the sadistic Prince, the answer was so ridiculously obvious she nearly laughed out loud during the lecture. Suki was jealous. She saw it all so clearly now: the venomous looks, the taunting, the humiliation she heaped on Masumi, how she always tried to get her in trouble with Reiji... Suki had a crush on the Sakamaki brother.

But with that realization came a strange, burning feeling in the pit of her stomach. Suki had been awful to Masumi, she was sure the feeling was just anger. Yet it smoldered on throughout the rest of the day.

Suki had taken to following Reiji and Masumi to their next class, pushing Masumi out of the way as she maneuvered herself closer to Reiji. For his part, his social training was impeccable. He slowed down to match the young woman's pace as she clasped her hands in front of her, elegantly striding down the hallways, her skirt brushing her pale thighs alluringly. Suki was a pureblood vampire, from a well-respected family. She carried herself like she knew she was important, like she had always grown up with people watching her every move and praising her beauty, her grace, her eloquence. And it pissed Masumi off. She wasn't a vampire, or nobility, but aside from a hugely-inflated ego, what did Suki have that she didn't?

And why in the hell did she care?

She was fuming silently over this when she became suddenly aware that someone was following very closely behind her. Looking over her should, Masumi came face to face with Laito's amused, fuck-me eyes. He hummed.

"Mmm, is she bothering you, Bitch-chan? Are you jealous? Nfu~" She bristled at the nickname and his implication.

"Why would I be upset that someone is taking your sadistic brother's focus off me for a few hours?" she bit out.

Laito giggled again. "You can say what you want, Bitch-chan, but you can't fool me... You're kinda cute when you're annoyed." He moved in closer, brushing her hair away from her neck, and Masumi realized they had stopped walking, and Reiji and Suki had continued down the hall, out of earshot. Laito leaned in, breathing in deeply. "You smell... delicious, nfu~" Masumi was trying to think of ways to escape when Kimi-chan walked up to Laito and grabbed his arm, pulling him away from Masumi.

"I'm sorry!" she apologized, "I only left him for a second and he disappeared, apparently to harass the other women in the house! Laito!" she tried to admonish him, but he only gripped her waist and pulled her close.

"It's because you didn't satisfy me enough yesterday... Let's fix that now, hmm, Neko-chan?" Masumi grimaced and left the mates to work out their sexual tension on their own.

Why today? Masumi watched Suki assist Reiji perfectly in their chemistry class, handing him exactly what he needed just as he was about to ask for it. She was proper, helpful, even genuinely interested in the chain reactions Reiji was going on about. But why now? Masumi had been by Reiji's side for weeks now, yet today Suki made her move? In the background, the chemistry teacher, having nothing to teach these accelerated pupils, turned the TV to the news channel, listening to the commentator discuss the new bill Tougo Sakamaki had just passed. The young man in his expensive three-piece suit smiled into the camera, almost as if he could see through the screen and stare right at Masumi. She shivered.

In front of her, she saw Reiji's shoulders tense ever so slightly, not enough for Suki or anyone else to notice. While she was distracted, she accidentally poured too much alkali metal sodium into her caesium solution, causing it to bubble over the top of the beaker. Though she rushed to clean up the mess and correct her mistake, she had caught Reiji's attention and he took great delight in belittling her in front of their classmates. Over his shoulder, Masumi saw Suki glance up at the TV screen and smile almost imperceptibly as she looked down again at their solution.

Masumi's gut told her Suki was hiding something behind that fake smile of hers. And no, it wasn't just because she had attached herself to Reiji like a leech, because why would she care about that?

During their next class, Masumi asked to be allowed to do independent study in the library, since she had already finished the lesson plan for that day. Permission granted, Masumi excused herself and availed herself of the library's computer lab.

Masumi knew that Reiji would punish her harshly if he found her snooping about online rather than studying, but for goodness sake, she studied all evening and then worked with him for the rest of the night. She needed a break some time. For the next 50 minutes, Masumi searched the deep corners of the internet looking for the connection between the Nakamuras and Reiji's father, but found none. She left the computer lab with questions still weighing on her mind. Distracted, she only noticed she'd been spaced out when she walked into the women's restroom and found Suki and her lackeys reapplying their makeup. At her entrance, Suki sneered, and her friends gather around behind her, waiting to support whatever torture Suki had planned for the transfer student.

"Ah, I thought the room had begun to stink. Do you know what I do when stink bugs wander into my territory, witch?" Suki hummed, her voice taunting and lilting. Masumi rolled her eyes and prepared to turn away from the catty vampirettes, but Suki reached out, quick as lightening, and grabbed a handful of her hair, yanking her backwards. "I drown them," she hissed into Masumi's ear, dragging her toward an empty stall and shoving her face first into the toilet. Masumi tried to stifle her body's urge to breathe in as Suki applied steady pressure to the back of her head, keeping her face fully submerged. Masumi was too weak to lift her head against the girl's will, not possessing superhuman strength, and the other two lackeys had come around to restrain her arms. Vaguely she recognized the dull ache in her throat as a cry for air, but her brain was whirring too fast for her to pay it much attention. Focusing on the pain would only mean suffering unto death. No, her limited time would be better spent trying to figure out how to escape.

Left only with her legs, which had mercifully been left to half-support her as Suki dunked her head in the water, Masumi allowed herself to actually fall further into the toilet, lifting one leg off the ground and throwing herself momentarily off balance, only to swing it backward as hard as she could, catching one of the girls in the knees and creating chaos in the cramped stall. Whoever she'd kicked fell into the girl beside her, who banged against the wall, and rebounded into the girl next to her. The pressure on the back of Masumi's head lessened, and she took the opportunity to throw her head backwards and out of the water. Gasping for air, her vision obscured by the torrent of water cascading from her hair and into her eyes, Masumi reached out blindly for the stall door, and succeeded in swinging it shut as the other girls tumbled out of the stall. But locking herself in wouldn't solve her problems, Masumi knew, so quickly she dropped onto her belly and crawled under the siding into the next stall, and then the next, until she could scramble out from under the stall closest to the exit, and make a quick get away. Behind her, she could hear the outraged screams of Suki and her crew as they tried to sort themselves out. But Masumi was not in luck. Just outside the restroom door, Reiji stood waiting. Taking in her soaked uniform, dripping hair, scuffed knees and torn stockings (from crawling so quickly across the floor), he reached up to adjust his glasses, and Masumi's stomach dropped.

"Time and time again you bring disgrace upon the Sakamaki household, Miss Masumi. Your appearance is intolerable, and you will be punished severely when we return to the mansion. The car will pick you up in front of the school, so leave immediately. I can hardly bear to look at you." He turned away from her, moving down the hallway toward the second years' wing, likely to collect his brothers. Apparently their school day would be cut a bit short.

As she moved through the foyer, heading for the main entrance, she passed Suki Nakamura's younger sister, Yuzu, who was relaying in a superior tone how her father's business had just made a big deal with the government, and would soon be one of the most powerful corporations in the country. Masumi kept walking, but she had largely forgotten her own predicament. In her head, she flashed back to the news story playing in her chemistry class, the one involving Tougo Sakamaki's new bill. She remembered Suki's smirk.

I see...