Whenever Kanato attended parties, he remained sandwiched between his bodyguards, Ayato and Laito.

Laito would hold his left hand, and Ayato would hold his right. Whenever people came up to them with the intention to talk to Kanato, Laito diverted their attention towards himself instead. If anyone looked at Kanato the wrong way, Ayato would shut them down. Once a little boy marched right up to Kanato and informed him, "My dad says that girls shouldn't cut their hair past their ears because it makes them look like boys," to which Ayato replied, "Do you want to die?"

They got in a lot of trouble, mostly for being antisocial at a social event, and for Ayato's careless threats (that very well could have caused a serious incident, if Ayato weren't so young, but he was forgiven on account of being about seven years old). But Ayato and Laito were devoted to the cause of protecting their brother. They could endure the punishments.

Kanato had to wear dresses at those parties too. There wasn't much they could do about that. He was unhappy about it, but tried not to complain because he knew Laito and Ayato were already trying so hard to minimize his discomfort. Of course they noticed, though.

"Hey," Ayato piped up in a whisper. "If it makes you feel better, I'll wear the dress when we get home. So you won't be the only boy whose gotta wear one."

"That's a great idea!" Laito added. "Good thinking, Ayato!"

Ayato beamed with pride, and Kanato's face flushed. "You don't have to do something like that…Seeing you uncomfortable won't make me feel any better."

The fact that they offered in the first place meant a lot to him, though. Kanato liked that they were thinking of him.

There were a lot of rules that Kanato had to follow that didn't apply to Laito and Ayato. He wasn't supposed to play roughly, or talk too loud because it might damage his singing voice, and he wasn't supposed to curse or sit with his legs apart. He had been scolded time and time again for getting his hands dirty while playing with his brothers. Kanato didn't see what the big deal was. Even if his hands got dirty, he could always just wash them.

He also wasn't allowed to stick up for himself at these parties, so Laito and Ayato came to his rescue.

Laito and Ayato had to act as Kanato's bodyguards because of one particular incident, the first party that they attended after Kanato cut his hair. There was one particular boy who managed to get alone with Kanato, and he bothered him till the point where Kanato was crying and begging his mother to take him home. Ayato took that boy outside and punched him right in the nose, leaving him bloody and crying harder than Kanato had been.

Nothing too bad had happened, but Kanato didn't sleep well that night. The issue had clearly affected him. Laito told Ayato that he ought to let Kanato sleep in the middle this time, so he would feel safer. Ayato usually wanted to sleep in the middle, but he agreed for Kanato's sake. It worked; Kanato felt much better between his two brothers

But Laito couldn't stay for long. Mother would be furious with him if he was late. So after Ayato had fallen asleep, snoring lightly and gripping onto Kanato's shirt, Laito tried to get out of bed as quietly as possible.

"Laito?"

Laito froze when he heard Kanato's voice. He turned around slowly, and saw Kanato sitting up on the bed, looking at him with a worried expression.

"Kanato...I thought you were asleep."

"Where are you going? Please stay here tonight, I need you here."

Laito's heart dropped immediately. It was an incredibly heavy feeling of guilt. He couldn't decide what was worse: the fact that he was leaving his brother in his time of need, or the fact that he needed to lie about it.

"I'm just going to get a drink of water," he said with a smile. "I'll be right back."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise. Go to sleep."

Kanato mumbled "okay" before snuggling back into bed, now facing Ayato, who was still sleeping soundly. Laito's smile faded from his face as he left the room.

He did not return for the rest of the night.

Laito wanted to make sure that this would never happen again.

xxx

Ruri went back home. It was a few days before her birthday party. She hugged everybody goodbye, and used the signs for "goodbye" and "take care of yourself" that Shu taught her. Laito got a little bit teary-eyed, and as soon as she was out the door, he was hastily wiping his eyes. This could very well have been the last time he could see his sister, at least in her current innocent state. The little sister he had been praying for, the one that he spent all that time with, the one that he spoiled all week...she might have been gone.

The Sakamaki household settled down again.

Everybody was a little sad to see her leave, but Laito was by far the most torn up about it. He disappeared from the house for a while, off to go find something (or someone) to hold his attention for a while. He needed a distraction. When he did appear again, it was at Subaru's door.

"You know," he said in a friendly voice that made it very clear he was asking for something. "I was just wondering. You got an invitation to Ruri's birthday party, right?"

Subaru narrowed his eyes, thinking of the letter he had recently received from his mother. "...I guess. I don't know if you'd call it an invitation…"

"Oh that's great! I was just thinking, maybe I could see it for a second?"

Subaru glanced off to the side, remembering that time Reiji read a handwritten note from his mother. He had been so ashamed then, and he really didn't want to go through that process again. "You just want to know the time and place, right?"

Laito was all fake smiles. "Oh no! Why would I need to know that?"

"Something awful might happen if you try and crash it, you know."

"Crash it? Who, me?"

Subaru was getting sick of the innocent act, so he told Laito the time and place the party was being held. Laito (who had purposely brought a pen with him to record this information) scribbled the details onto this hand.

Before Laito left, he asked in a much quieter voice, "Do you want to see Ruri get engaged?"

"Hmph." Subaru looked away. "The sooner she's married off, the better."

Laito bit his lip, and then responded, "You thought she was just a burden at first."

"She is a burden."

"I have to go to the party because I don't trust you to think about what's best for her. I need to protect her." Laito's next sentence sounded gravely serious. "Nobody should be in a relationship at her age."

Subaru scowled and shut the door on him, retreating back into his room.

A few days later, the day of the party arrived. Things didn't go quite as Laito had planned.

Subaru had to show up by order of his father, and he stood like a soldier by his mother the whole time. They both seemed to want to be wallflowers (Subaru desperately wanted to be left alone) but Christa was practically the center of attention on account of the fact that it was her daughter's first appearance in the public eye. She seemed...worn out, somehow, like she was straining herself. But she was able to put on a kind smile and greet her guests properly. Subaru was still keeping an eye on her, and trying to keep track of Ruri, too.

Laito had shown up uninvited, and he had dragged Kanato and Ayato along with him for backup. He was watching Ruri from afar like a hawk, staring down any boys who came near her.

"Guys!" Laito piped up all of a sudden, making his brothers jump. "Guys, guys, she's wearing the dress I bought her! Look, she looks so good in it, it really suits her…!"

"Don't make a fuss like that unless something is wrong," Ayato snapped.

"But you're right…" Kanato watched her with wide, thoughtful eyes. "She looks like a perfect little doll."

"Don't say creepy stuff like that. She looks like a girl wearing a dress," Ayato commented.

There were plenty of kids Ruri's age (and older) who had been told by their parents to go up and introduce to themselves. So in that sense, Ruri was getting a lot of attention. But hardly any of them looked truly interested in her. Her clothes were plain and not as expensive as any of the dresses the other young girls were wearing, and she had no clue how to talk to boys other than her brothers. She did a lot of nervous frowning and nodding. Many of them left her alone after greeting her.

There were two kids that remained with her. A girl about her own age, and a boy that looked about ten years older; around 16, if Laito had to guess. The boy looked like he wanted to leave Ruri like the rest of the kids did, but the girl was joined at the hip with her, and she apparently wouldn't let the boy (her brother?) leave. She was talking fast and vibrantly and Ruri was smiling with her.

"I like the way you keep your hair in braids," she said with a happy smile. She twisted her own dark hair between her fingers. "My hair's not quite long enough to do that. But if I grow it out a bit then maybe we can put our hair in braids together."

Ruri's cheeks were somewhat pink. She nodded enthusiastically.

"I like your necklace, too. All my necklaces are made of jewels but yours is unusual."

It wasn't a necklace, it was the microphone for Ruri's hearing aids, but she nodded again rather than correcting her.

"You don't talk too much but you seem like a really kind person. Do you want to be friends?"

"I do very much," Ruri responded, in full sincerity.

"You live here in this big castle? My house isn't nearly as big! But I have a big room filled with lots of stuffed animals."

Ruri looked mystified.

"Can I see your room?"

"Angelica, we have to go," the older boy complained.

"Hush!" she snapped back at him, making it abundantly clear that this was her older brother. "I just want to talk to Ruri!"

Ruri let them bicker, because she was too busy thinking long and hard about what to do next. She certainly wanted to show this girl Angelica to her room. But there was only one problem: Ruri did not have a room. Ruri lived with her mother, in a place that was much too cold and bare to be called someone's "room" in the first place. It was more like a cage. Ruri did not want this cute girl, who had grown up with a room filled with her own possessions, to know that she had been living such a mediocre lifestyle. For one reason or another, she felt the need to impress her. Luckily, Ruri was a fast thinker.

She shyly extended her hand. "I can take you to my room."

Angelica smiled and delicately took her hand. The two girls left the party together and headed upstairs, with Angelica's older brother following a distance behind.

The triplets had been too busy arguing amongst each other to notice. Ayato and Kanato were complaining that clearly nothing was going to go wrong so there was no need for them to be there, while Laito insisted that Ruri was such a cute girl that she needed someone to protect her. Sure enough, when they turned around, Ruri was nowhere to be found.

"Oh my God. We lost her."

Ayato put his hands up. "Well, it's not my fault."

"Someone should have been paying attention-"

Laito cried out in horror. "This is no good at all! We have to find her right away!"

"We should just tell Subaru," Kanato sighed. "This is his responsibility in the first place. As his older brother, I'll scold him for this later."

"Yeah, yeah. It's Subaru's fault, not mine."

Laito had no time for this. "Everybody split up," he commanded, allowing no room for protest. "I'll search the ballroom. Ayato, you try outside. And Kanato, you look upstairs."

And off they went.

Meanwhile, Ruri had taken Angelica to her father's room. She now stood in front of the tall, imposing door, staring hesitantly up at it. She had never been in that room before and was told repeatedly to never go in this room. But Angelica had linked arms with her and was bouncing up and down excitedly, impatiently asking Ruri if this was her room. Feeling an intense feeling of pressure to impress her, Ruri nodded, and reached up to grab the doorknob.

The interior of the room was dark. It usually ran on candlelight but all the lights were out, since it was empty. There were large statues twisted into grotesque positions against the walls, so many that it was difficult to tell which limb was attached to which body, and paintings of shallow and disconnected-looking people whose eyes were unfocused and seemed to be looking elsewhere. A tall glass window that oversaw the courtyard was the only source of light; the moonlit state of the sky turned the room a deep blue and made the statues cast odd, monster-like shadows against the wall. Before the window was a huge desk, and while Ruri was a bit too short to see the top of it, she could see the tops of stacks of paper and what appeared to be a rotten apple and also something moving.

Angelica apparently didn't see whatever it was that was squirming around on top of the desk - she was too busy observing the rest of the room while keeping a tight grip on Ruri's hand. All of Ruri's instincts were telling her to get out of that room right now, but she was too distracted by Angelica's hand to actually make a move.

"This is your room, Ruri?"

Ruri nodded quickly. To an adult it might seem obvious that she was lying, but Angelica wasn't an adult.

"It's so cool. Do you collect all these things?"

"Yes."

"Whoa...It's way cooler than my room!" Angelica turned to face Ruri, and now held both of her hands tightly. "I really like you, Ruri."

Ruri was dumbfounded for a moment. She was unsure about this plan for a while, but now it seemed to be paying off perfectly fine. "I like you too."

Angelica's brother had been waiting outside, but now he peeked into the room. He blinked at the two holding hands, but then when he caught sight of the moving thing on top of the desk, his eyes widened a bit. "Angelica!" he snapped suddenly. "You better get out of there."

Ruri looked visibly shaken at being interrupted. Angelica turned to her brother, red in the face.

"Geez! I didn't ask you to be following me around everywhere! Mother told you to talk to Ruri but you've been acting rude to her this whole time!"

Her brother replicated her exasperated anger. "Well Father told me to keep an eye on you! I can't help but follow you, it's my job! But you've been stuck with this girl all day!"

"Ruri is nice to me," Angelica huffed. "And she listens to my stories, and she collects cool stuff! For example-" Angelica let go of Ruri's hand.

"Angelica, don't touch anything!"

Angelica wasn't about to start listening to her brother any time soon. She headed straight for the desk to do some investigating, and stood on her tiptoes, though she was still too short to see what was on top of the desk. She poked around with her right hand, blindly searching for something.

She did not find anything, but something found her.

She felt a pair of teeth sink into her hand. In the delayed time it took for her to react, she felt an unusual and chilly feeling of slime or mucus dripping onto her forearm. The thing that bit her crept forward, its slimy body gliding against her arm-

She shrieked. She threw her body back and flailed her arm wildly to get the thing off of her - she fell backwards, and the thing fell on top of her.

It was a slug, about the size of half of Ruri's body, yellow and moist and apparently hungry. It snapped it's big teeth at Angelica again, and she screamed and tried to bat it away.

With absolutely no concerns about how dangerous the slug was, Ruri lunged forward and grabbed it. Her number one priority was to get this thing off of Angelia before it bit her again. She felt the gross slimy body's dead weight in her hands, and no matter how hard she strained herself, it was too heavy. She couldn't get the slug off of her, and Angelica kept shrieking in terror.

"What are you doing?!" she heard in her ear. She jolted due to the sheer volume of the voice she heard, and when she whirled around she saw Kanato, looking furious with her. To tell the truth, he had every right to be furious with her: she had snuck away from the party with a girl, into her father's room, and she had started touching his things without permission and aggravating his dangerous pet (?) slug. Ruri let out a whimper and she would've started apologizing on the spot if she didn't desperately need Kanato's help at the moment.

Kanato pushed Ruri away and yanked the giant slug off of Angelica, who was kicking and screaming for her life. Kanato kicked the slug so hard that specks of slime flew off of its body, and he yelled some words at the slug too, but Ruri was too concerned with Angelica. After being kicked, the slug gurgled menacingly and slithered away behind the statues.

Angelica was being supported by her brother now, but she was still splayed out on the ground with her dress dyed an ugly green-yellow by the slug. Where the slug had touched her, her clothes were clinging to her with moisture, and she was sobbing out of both horror and discomfort.

Ruri scrambled to her side. Even though her hands were still wet with the slug's liquid, she reached out to her. She tried to call out to her, but her voice came out warbled and broken, the same as it was before she took speech training: "Angelica-"

Angelica's brother slapped her hand away, as if it posed a bigger threat than the slug did. "Don't touch her!"

Ruri recoiled, and grasped the hand that had just been hit close to her chest. The boy was much stronger than her, so her hand was now red and stinging. He was looking at her with nothing other than animosity in his eyes.

"You- You creepy girl- My sister could have died!" he roared. His crying sister was wrapped up in his arms now. "What kind of little girl keeps a monster like that! Don't come near her again, freak!"

He probably would have continued on, but Kanato violently grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled on it, shutting him up. Kanato's eyes were glaring at the boy menacingly, communicating that he was angry enough to kill him.

"Please don't act like a savior when you're hurting my sister too; it's hypocritical." Kanato's voice was low and cold.

Angelica's brother winced from the pain of having his hair pulled. "You-"

"You shouldn't ever touch my sister again either."

After another agonizing seconds of practically ripping the boy's hair out, Kanato released him and told him under his breath to take his sister and go away. The boy hurriedly grabbed his sister and ran away, only turning back to yell, "Your whole family is insane!"

A hush fell over Karl Heinz's room as Ruri and Kanato were the only ones left. Kanato turned to face Ruri, who was still on the ground clutching her hand, and staring with mystified eyes at Kanato. Kanato then saw her start to tear up.

"Please don't cry, I told you only annoying children cry-"

It was too late, she was already crying. She felt dreadful. She had really liked Angelica and now she thought Ruri was a freak, and her brother thought so too, and he had even hit her hand. It was all Ruri's fault for leading Angelica into such a dangerous place just to impress her. Angelica had probably been really really scared. And on top of all of that, Kanato was probably extremely angry with her, and maybe he would even tell her mother or worse, her father. What that boy had said was right, she was a freak, and she was creepy-

Kanato knelt down and placed his hand on her head. Ruri sniffled pathetically and looked back up at him.

"It's okay," Kanato murmured. His voice sounded awkward, like he wasn't totally used to this comforting thing yet. "He said some mean things, huh?"

Ruri shook her head. "N-No."

"You don't have to pretend that you weren't hurt by it." He paused. "When people say hurtful things, sometimes you want to try and become numb to them, because you think it will hurt less that way. But you can't heal when you're numb. It takes an even stronger person to be hurt and to be able to heal." Kanato brushed his fingers through her hair. "I want you to become strong."

Ruri watched him with large eyes, and then hastily tried to wipe away her tears. "Yes." Her voice still wasn't back to normal.

Kanato got up, and started to walk away. "If you understand, then let's get you washed up so you can return to the party. You'll get in big trouble if you get caught in this room without permission, you know."

Ruri struggled to her feet, hurried to catch up to him, and grabbed onto his hand. "Thank you, Kanato."

Kanato was somewhat caught off-guard, but then he sighed and held her hand as he walked. "Your hands are all dirty though…"

"So are - Kanato's."

Kanato laughed to himself. "I guess you're right. We both messed up and got all dirty. We'll probably both get scolded. Haha!" It was apparently pretty funny to him.

Ruri didn't get what was so funny. But she didn't care. She smiled along with him anyway, and the two of them swung their arms a bit as they walked.