-Chapter Three -- Hallucination-
"Y-You!" Was all that Kei could manage, his blood red eyes staring back at their glowing counterparts with abnormal interest. That was the only thing that Kei could make out particularly about the person, besides their sillouette in the darkness being the figure of a young woman. "How do you have eyes like that?! The only one that has them i--" Kei was cut off from ending his sentence, his head thumping suddenly with an unbearable pain, like nothing he had ever felt before. He grasped his head in his hands, stumbling around on his feet while groaning in pain, his eyes closed and his face pointed towards the dark ground. Kei opened his eyes as soon as the pain began to quell, looking just in time to catch the girl, now several feet away, winking. At least, that's what he thought she was doing, because one of her glowing eyes blinked out for a moment, and along with that, he heard a distant giggle. Then, as quickly as she had appeared before his eyes, the girl disappeared, leaving Kei speechless and with his head pounding.
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Anai sat in class, her eyes half closed due to lack of sleep the previous night. She had been up until late reading her books that she had borrowed from the Library. Her class was quiet, since her school had a designated reading period, and her eyes were lazily scanning one of the same books that had caused her insomnia. She was often the gossip-queen of her class, whispering and passing notes to the other girls in the class even during the reading period, usually getting caught and scolded halfway through the class. However, this day was different. She was inspired to read what was in these books, because she had seen something a week ago that she would never forget. As soon as she had turned the page to the last chapter of "The History of Voodoo and It's Teachings", the final bell of the day rang, which meant she would go back to talking to her friends until they had parted ways to walk home.
Loitering outside the main doors of the school, sitting on the steps near the flagpole, was Ichimaku Ren, wearing the same attire as always, but leisurely smoking a cigarette. It wasn't his sort of thing, but he had seen how many packs of cigarettes that Anai had in her apartment and guessed that she was a chainsmoker, leading to the plan of stealing all of her cigarettes the previous night so that she would have an almost uncontrolable craving by the time she was dismissed. Just as he had percieved, as Anai walked by him at the steps conversing and giggling with her friends, she caught the faint smell of the cigarette smoke in the fresh air, and stopped almost on the dot. "Hey, mister pedophile, can I have a smoke?" Anai obliviously asked the man, who turned to her with an unusually annoyed look for Ichimaku Ren.
"First of all, I'm no pedophile, I'm just related to one of the teachers at this school, and I've decided for all of the students to leave before I visit my brother," Ichimaku Ren winced, taking a puff of the cigarette and blowing the smoke in Anai's face disrespectfully. "Second of all, you are pretty cute, so you can have a smoke," Ichimaku Ren handed her a cigarette from his carton and lighting it after she placed it in her mouth. He watched as she took a long and seemingly relieving puff, her knees weakening in a ridiculous nirvana.
"Thanks alot...what's your name, Mr.Teacher's Brother?" Anai asked, taking another long puff, though not showing the broken abstanence symptoms this time.
"My name?" He looked around, as if there were someone else there besides him, but all of the students had left school grounds. "My name is Ichimaku Ren."
"Ichimaku Ren, huh? Some people sure do have wierd names these days."
"You shouldn't be saying that. Like you said, I'm older than you are." Ichimaku Ren smiled, watching as Anai returned the smile, putting the cigarette to her lips and taking a shorter puff this time. All of a sudden, with the third puff, she began to waver and then leaned over and began falling, her eyes closed. Ichimaku put out one arm and caught her securely, taking out and stomping his cigarette with the other. He then used his free arm to put it under her legs, and began to carry her out of the schoolyard.
---
Anai awoke, sitting on the dark floor of an almost completely black room, if not for the single fading yellow of the light bulb above, illuminating just enough so that she could see her own body. There was no bondage applied to her - though she was sure she had been kidnapped in some sort of manner. The last thing she remembered was standing in front of her school with some man, smoking a cigarette. Maybe he had found some way to knock her out from behind while she was smoking? That would work, but she had been facing him and speaking to him the whole time before she fell unconscious.
"Chloroform," came a voice from somewhere in the dark room. Anai was startled, and almost yelped at the sudden interruption of her solitude. "I chloroformed your cigarette," it confirmed, Anai's eyes widening not just from the fact of the chloroform on her cigarette, but also because the voice had come from the complete opposite side of the room the first time, and with the room being of an exceptionable size, it would have been almost impossible for someone to get to the other side that fast without some proof of work in their speech. Suddenly, a large eye appeared in front of Anai's face, nearly a foot length away, causing her to scream in fear and surprise. Without delay, right after her scream, another eye appeared on her left side, making her whole body tremble as she began to sweat in high quantity. "As long as you show fear, your enemies will take advantage and take you by surprise with something that could easily have been avoided," The voice continued, two more eyes appearing in front of Anai. She began to moan and shake at the same time, four more eyes crowding around her in the center of the room. "You should know that best.." The voice insisted, Anai covering her eyes with her hands. More and more eyes began to appear around her, suffocating the room.
"Isn't that right, Ms. Anai?" Kei asked, standing calmly among the multiple eyes. Anai began to giggle, the same giggle that Kei had heard the night before. The light bulb flickered off, and Anai took her hands away from her eyes, allowing their blood red light to illuminate the room along with Kei's, a malevonent smile forming on her face, the eyes fading into the still dark part of the room. "I knew it wouldn't take much persuation."