Chapter 9: See the Difference

"Oh god…oh god!" Alfred's voice became shaky, and he didn't even know what to do. Kiku opened the door, curious to see what was panicking Alfred. Immediately a deceased body that looked similar to his fell out. Kiku frowned for a moment, but then glanced to Alfred who was still in the closet.

"Um sorry if I sound rude but you shouldn't be sitting in there like that! Someone could come back, we must hurry."

Alfred was staring blankly, not responding. After almost a minute, he slowly nodded. "…Yeah, sorry," he paused, "but…"

Kiku didn't like where this was heading. "Alfred, let's go, please!"

"We can't just leave him here! What the hell were they doing with his body earlier?" Alfred snapped. By each word his voice grew louder, and his tone was harsh.

Kiku did something he usually wouldn't do. He harshly snapped back at Alfred. "Hypocrite! If you care about this one body so much, than what about all the thousands in that body storage? Don't you want to bring them back too then?"

"It's impossible to—"

"Now that's not fair, isn't it? One dead person gets special treatment, while the rest don't. Now shut up before we're heard!" Kiku tried grabbing Alfred's wrist, but Alfred slapped Kiku's hand away.

"What the hell is your problem? You wouldn't even exist right now if the actual Kiku wasn't… Wasn't dead! "

Kiku looked down, trying not to show any signs of being hurt. "…He's dead and you can't do anything about it…yeah…" Kiku squeezed himself tightly, smirking a bit. "Never to be revived…"

Alfred felt himself close to punching Kiku in the face. Kiku sighed, looking all pessimistic like he usually did. "We really will get caught if we continue doing this…" he began to mess with his hair, and it looked like he was trying to think of something.

"Hm…" Kiku looked around the room and went to the closet that he hid in. After snooping around with it, he came back with a small device. It was rectangular in shape, and the bottom of it had four small holes. He reached down to the other Kiku's body, but Alfred interrupted him before he could do anything.

"What the hell are you doing now?!"

Kiku looked away from Alfred awkwardly, "I wish I remembered this earlier, I'm so stupid! But do you really even think you can just take his body with a chip in it?" Alfred blinked a couple times at that statement. Earlier Kiku even told him about how all the cadavers here had their own chip in them.

"Oh yeah…" Alfred whispered, looking down.

"…But with this thing I can take it out if you'd like. If I do we're not taking him with us still. Instead I can take him down in the body storage. No one will find him." Alfred could hear that angered tone Kiku had earlier by the end of that sentence. Alfred still didn't like this idea that much, but this was the best choice from Kiku he had.

Alfred hesitantly nodded, agreeing. I'll try to come back myself without him here!

Kiku happily smiled. He proceeded with what he was going to do. Alfred watched in disgust as the device was able to quickly transport the chip out in a second. Alfred wasn't even allowed to follow Kiku to the body storage without getting threats of him putting the chip back in.

Kiku definitely seemed off compared to how he would usually act. Usually yelling at him would result in the clone getting really upset, and even aside from their quarrel earlier, he just seemed strange to Alfred.

"See, that wasn't so bad!" Kiku expressed as he came from the stairs. "I'm sure there's other important things you'd like to find out, we wasted too much time in here."

Alfred said a silent yes. "Why can't you just tell me these important things?" he questioned.

Kiku playfully moved his finger in the air. "I don't like this room. Can we go now?" It was like Kiku didn't even listen to Alfred's question!

They finally left, and to their luck no one else had appeared. It was like the man that was there earlier had vanished and it was just him and Kiku again. Any kind of questions Alfred tried to ask that had to do with the place were either ignored, had an answer that made no sense, or had the subject changed. It was now pretty obvious to Alfred that Kiku wasn't telling him something or something was up.

"There should be a room full of computers somewhere, would that be helpful?" Kiku asked Alfred, getting a nod from him. Kiku claimed how sure he was with where the computer room was at, but ended up leading them into an empty room with one single window.

"Oh, oops! S-Sorry I could've sworn this was it…" Kiku nervously stated.

Alfred rolled his eyes. "Something is obviously wrong with this place, dude! I should've known better to trust you!"

Kiku winced at Alfred. "No, I-I swear! There were computers here… P-please don't yell at me, I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Kiku began to sound like he was begging to be forgiven.

Alfred narrowed his eyes, hoping to make it look like he was still very suspicious of what Kiku was saying. "Tell the truth! Right now, are we the only two living people in this place?" Kiku didn't respond. He bit onto his lip.

Alfred closed the door and luckily there was a lock to it. "Okay, then why is there a room like this?" Once again there wasn't an answer from Kiku.

"…You know Alfred, you must have really cared about that stupid corpse for you to try to bring it with you, how disgusting."

Before Alfred could say something defensive, Kiku began to quickly shake his head side to side. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!" he scolded himself.

"What is your prob—"

"My problem? My problem is that y-you never, never care about me…because…because…" This time Kiku ended up clutching his own head and shaking it once more. "Stop it, stop it!"

Alfred watched in mere confusion. "Kiku…are you alright?" Who knew if that was true worry from Alfred.

Kiku was staring at the ground. "Yeah…I hate this place…hate it…and yet you're being mean to me…" Even though Kiku's tone sounded upset, he was smiling and his face was cheerful. "You never were this mean to me, even back then!"

Back then? Kiku must have been talking about the many times he would just act nice around him.

"You aren't really a good friend, no you're not…Why did I even let you come here? I should've gone by myself. I have some things to do soon. You can't even tell the difference." All Kiku was saying was utter nonsense. Nothing made any sense to him!

"You're the one who made the offer, saying you'd help me! And so far I had to figure everything out myself, without any help from you! Not cool!" Alfred huffed in response.

"Wrong!" Kiku burst out. "I never said what I would help you with, dumbass!" Like he did earlier Kiku played with his finger in the air, "I bet if there was some sort of quiz right now, you'd fail! Of course a quiz over me… You can't even tell the difference."

Again, Kiku wasn't making any sense. Kiku sat in one of the corners of the room, sighing. "Can't tell the difference…What a shame…I mean, I guess I wasn't the type to easily make friends. You're not a true friend. You can't tell the difference."

Alfred tried to get what Kiku was saying, but couldn't. "What difference? I don't even understand what you're talking about!" exclaimed the blond.

"That stupid fake corpse you got so worked up over." Kiku faked a yawn when Alfred's blue eyes gave out even more confusion.

"Alfred, do you really think I'm a clone?"