"Let go!" she cried again, breaking free from his grasp. She ran to the edge of the cliff and bent her knees to jump.

"NO!"

Certain that neither Miku nor Rin would disturb her, Luka turned the knob on the stove to shut it off, closed the lid on the pot to keep that night's dinner warm, and walked over to Meiko's room. Tentatively, she opened the door, not wanting to wake up the older woman should she be sleeping.

From what she could tell, Meiko's life was terrible at the moment…No, she had been living through a life of misfortune to begin with. Feeling ever saddened by her friend's predicament, Luka walked into the dark room and kneeled next to Meiko, placing a hand on her forehead to check for fever. Luka nearly flinched at the surprising amount of heat, but tried to tell herself that it was just her hand, which was usually cold to begin with. Admitting defeat, Luka brushed a section of sweat-slicked hair out of Meiko's face and tucked in the blanket around her.

Sorry, but this is for your own good. If you've got a fever it means that wound's infected, and it'll go from bad to worse fast.

Luka walked back out into the hallway and down to the kitchen. Going to the ledge beneath the window, she picked up the phone and dialed a now familiar number.

The phone was answered after a few rings.

"Hello?" she asked. "Do you take house calls?"

"Do you want to accept my help yet?" Miku asked Rin. She lay on top of her bed, tossing an apple into the air and thinking about whether or not to eat it.

"No," huffed Rin. "I can do this fine on my own."

"Okay, then. Suit yourself," said Miku, deciding that, yes, she did want to eat the apple. She caught it one last time and sat up to eat it as she watched her roommate struggle with their Algebra homework. Not wanting to admit that she didn't get it, Rin had done all her other homework during detention and slipped her math textbook discreetly into her backpack, trying to hide it from Miku and Kiyoteru. It didn't work.

After another five minutes, Kiyoteru had stood up at his desk and announced that they would start cleaning. (Which only further convinced Rin that he was, in fact, watching them at all times.) Knowing by now that sighing and complaining would not only not work, but earn them more work, the two girls obediently got out of their seats and headed out into the hallway to the closet.

Forty-five minutes and several arguments later, Rin and Miku were released from school for the day. They cheered slightly, but all hope was drained from them when they learned that Ted would have to drop them off at the official bus stop and not at their house, hence a few miles worth of walking and Rin's troubles now.

As she ate her apple, Miku stretched a leg and touched the slanted ceiling with her foot, tracing patterns in it idly as she continued to wait for her friend. When she became tired of that, she rolled over onto her stomach and let the hand holding the apple droop to the floor as she pressed her face into the blue and white quilt that served as her blanket. Although only ten minutes had passed, she was bored beyond belief.

"Rin, do you want to go see why Luka was so eager to get us up here?" Miku asked, knowing that Rin would pounce on an excuse to avoid her math homework for a while. True to her habits, Rin threw her pencil out of her hand and turned to Miku in excitement.

"Let's go!"

Mikuo knocked on the door to the large white house softly, not wanting to seem rude or loud. It wouldn't do good to leave a bad impression on what seemed to be his only client recently. Then, realizing that no one ever opened the door when he knocked because he did it so softly, Mikuo raised his fist to knock again when the door was opened by a girl his age with long, floor reaching teal pigtails. Next to her was a shorter, blond haired girl whose eyes were shining with energy.

"Are you here for Luka-nee-chan?" she asked excitedly. Mikuo nodded, slightly taken aback by the sheer energy radiating off the girl. Come to think of it, she rather closely resembled Len. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the girl interrupted.

"Yes! I knew it! I knew she had a thing for younger guys! I knew it! But," she added, standing on her toes to inspect Mikuo more closely, "there's no way you could be any older than Miku-chan here, which makes Luka a-"

She was cut off by said Luka smacking her over the head with a frozen fish.

"Ah, um, uh," stammered Mikuo, still shocked by the shorter of the two girls.. "G-g-g-good evening, Megurine-san and company."

Luka stared at him, solemn and scary, still holding her fish (tuna, if he was correct) as though she was just waiting for the blonde to start speaking.

"You'll have to excuse Rin," she said, turning her gaze to the now pouting girl. "She doesn't quite understand the meaning of being polite."

"Come back here, you thief!" yelled the shopkeeper.

Len smirked as he heard the baker's infamous words. No matter how hard he tried, he could never, would never, catch Len. The boy was just too quick.

Once he was out of the general vicinity of the baker's store and back in the safety of the alleyways, Len allowed himself to slow down. He continued at a steady trot with silent steps, making sure that no one was following. After a time of doubling back over his path and taking extra turns, Len arrived at an uncovered manhole in the center of a four-way intersection of paths. Then, after tucking the bread into his jacket, he lowered himself onto the ladder hidden by the darkness of the sewer and climbed down into the ever deepening shadows.

After lowering a foot only to feel the empty space where the last rung should have been, Len hopped off the ladder and walked along the slimy cement path into total black. Having been here many times before, Len knew the path he had to take by heart, all the way down to how many footsteps he needed and how long or short his strides would have to be to prevent slipping. A flashlight might be too risky, as there were occasional sewer workers down here.

Soon enough, Len arrived at his destination, a hole in the sewer wall that opened into the basement of an abandoned warehouse on the east side of the city. He stood silently at the mouth of the hole and peered into the gloom that was the basement, trying to figure out if anyone else were there. Becoming confident that he was alone after five minutes had passed without so much as a rat scurrying by, Len stepped carefully over the bricks that littered the warehouse entrance to the sewer and made his way to the staircase on his left. Len walked up slowly, still not completely trusting his instincts that no one else was there.

When he reached the top, he once again paused for a reconnaissance of the room. Nothing but stacks of wooden crates seemed to be around. Finally at ease that he was alone, Len called out into the darkness.

"Rin? Rin, are you there?"

A shuffling movement to his lower right caught Len's attention, and he turned to see Rin poke her head out of a blanket.

"Len!" she exclaimed, smiling. "I was able to get a blanket for myself so we don't have to share anymore. No more freezing cold nights!"

Len smiled back and walked over to her. He kneeled down and took out the bread he had stolen earlier.

"And I got dinner."

He sat down next to Rin and handed her one of the loaves.

"It's probably cold by now, but it's fresh, and it's more than we've had lately."

Rin smiled again, but it no longer reached her eyes, which were dull as well. Len put his head against his knees and looked in the opposite direction.

"If you hate this so much, why did you leave? Why did you give all that up for this?"

Len rose to his feet, angry, and turned to Rin.

"Why did you give up your perfect, fairytale life for me? Why! I'm nothing but a street urchin that everyone hates! You can't even handle it! You're always cold or tired or hungry or…GAH! Why, Rin, why?"

His chest heaved as he struggled to regain his breath from yelling. The words seemed to echo in the large room, and Rin wouldn't look Len in the eye. She just stared down at her bread and let her hair hide her face.

"Fine, then," Len growled. "I'll be back later."

With that, he stomped past her and headed back to the doorway he had just come from a few minutes before. In his rage, he almost missed Rin's quiet reply.

"It didn't feel like home there," she whispered.

Len pause for a moment, as though he were thinking about turning around, but he continued down the stone staircase.

That night, Rin went to sleep to the echo of Len's frustrated screams and the sound of his fists striking the sewer walls.

Gasping, Len awakened from his nightmare. He hadn't had a flashback like that for a while. Was being alone in the hospital giving him to much time to think? Len closed his eyes and tried to shut out the memories he worked so hard to forget. Finding himself unable to do so, Len sighed and let his left arm hang over the side of the bed. More tired than before, Len closed his eyes, only to be greeted by haunted memories of years past.

Mikuo rebandaged Meiko's wound.

"I'll get you antibiotics for the infection, and they should bring the fever down as well. For now, make sure that she doesn't stress herself and try to keep the wound from reopening."

Luka nodded.

"Would you like me to drive you back into the city? I'm sure it's dark by now."

Mikuo chewed his lip and looked at the floor as he tried to think of a good way to refuse her. What he eventually said was,

"Could you?"

He could almost swear that he saw Luka smile a bit as he answered, but she had turned around and left the room before he got a good look at her face. Mikuo scurried after her, not wanting to get lost in the exceptionally large house that was Luka's home. As they walked past the living room and into the mudroom, Mikuo couldn't help but ask the burning question at the front of his mind.

"How did you get such a big house?"

"I inherited it," Luka replied as she slipped her feet into a pair of moccasins.

Mikuo was dissatisfied with such a short answer, but held his tongue. If Luka didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't press her. Everyone had their share of secrets.

The young doctor was still thinking about secrecy and how the people he'd been seeing lately seemed to be full of them as he unlocked the door to his house and walked in. After an argument that lasted for at least five minutes, Luka had practically forced Mikuo to let her drive him home once they had finished their errand at the pharmacy. Now he looked into the darkened front room and called out into the darkness.

"Tadaima."

No response. Mikuo took off his shoes and placed them on the mat next to the door. He then shut it behind him and walked up the stairs directly in front of it, not bothering to turn on any lights. Reaching the top, he turned left and headed into his mother's room, where a lit candle rested on top of drawer to the front and right of the door. It's weak yellow light illuminated Mikuo's mother collapsed on the floor, but unlike how he usually found her, there were no telltale signs of how she had gotten there. Mikuo sighed and checked to make sure she was still alive.

Everyone has secrets, and I'm no different.

Rin sat up in bed and stretched, yawning. Across the room, Miku continued to sleep like the dead, even with the sunlight from the window in their slanted ceiling shining directly onto her face. As she finished up her stretch, Rin remembered that last night Luka had told her that Len would be coming home today. Excited, she reached for the blow horn beneath her bed and quickly walked over to Miku. Just as she was about to set it off, Miku turned over so that her face wasn't in the sun and said that if Rin dared set that thing off she'd strangle her. From past experiences, Rin rolled the horn back under her bed.

"Well," she practically shouted, "since you're already awake, I'm reminding you that today is the day that Len-kun comes home!" She jumped in joy and became to ramble about how happy she was and how happy Miku should be, not noticing that her friend had slunk out of bed and into the bathroom that was conveniently nest to it. She was grateful for that, but not for the fact that today was a Saturday, which meant that she would be forced to bear Rin's speeches for the whole day. Luka had class, so it wasn't like she could dump Rin on her, and Len probably wouldn't have been too cooperative even if he was there.

Miku brushed her teeth harder in annoyance. Well, at least they had chores to do, and after only a month of having them together, Luka made sure that each of the children was working alone for most of the day. There was that to look forward to.

"This is degrading," Len said moodily. He had his arms crossed and his back hunched over as he sulked in the wheelchair that Luka was pushing. It didn't help that the late afternoon sun was directly in his eyes and he had to shield them with his arms so that he could sulk properly.

"If this is degrading," Luka said, "I can always take your clothing and force you to go to school naked. I'm sure your classmates would be happy."

Len scowled and muttered something under his breath, which didn't go unnoticed by Luka.

"Now, now," she chastised, "No need to curse me out. I can always leave you here, you know. In fact, Mikuo-sensei would have preferred it if you stayed, but you know that I'm not going to be paying those bills."

Len could almost picture the evil smirk on Luka's face. He knew she was right, and he didn't really want to stay in the hospital any longer than he had to. This was doubly reinforced by the fact that of all of Len's nightmares, the worst ones always took place in hospitals. Always.

"Damn woman," he muttered.

A/N:

Hello everyone~

Sorry I haven't updated since last month, but school and a lack of motivation were starting to get to me. More importantly, now we're starting to get somewhere! I can now officially declare that Chapter 7 is where the plot really starts! Up til now we've met most of the characters and seen their general personalities. Now they'll actually interact with each other. I promise that Meiko, Meito, Kaito, and Gakupo will reappear conscious in the next chapter!

So...do you guys have any questions, comments, concerns...?
It kills me to say this, but could you leave a review? Even half a letter would make me happy. I don't like to guilt trip people, but we're 6 chapters, over 10,000 words, and nearly 9 months in and shorter one-shots have more responses! I know a bunch of people are reading this, and if you want you could leave a review in code (leave a key) or in your native language...I'll read them. /rantle