"Phase one has ended in failure. The host will not accept the Code. The programming must be altered. The Code must be accepted by the host or we will lose."

ln 37, pg 17, Astral Project Journal 3. Author lost.

Haruto was hiding in the cupboard again. Kaito could tell, because of the way that the normally locked door was hanging just barely open...just enough so that Haruto wouldn't be scared of the dark. Kaito pushed the door the rest of the way open. Dust hung heavily in pillars in the air, turning everything into shades of monochrome gray. He waved his hand around and stirred the floating dust around his fingers. He glanced around the dark kitchen, wondering where his father was. Probably in the study, or the laboratory...like usual...

He pulled the door closed behind him. Just in case. No need to let anyone know that he or Haruto was in here.

The kitchen was unused, dust clinging to every surface in a thick, musty gray shroud. Kaito could see the trail of Haruto's footprints through the dust to the cabinet, the way that the lock had clearly been broken off. Their father didn't want Haruto in here anymore. Or really, anywhere in the house except his own room. It was too dirty everywhere, without someone to care enough to clean it. It could make Haruto's sickness worse.

The sickness. It was always about the sickness. Haruto was sick, Haruto needed to be well, something was wrong with Haruto. His father couldn't shut up about it. When he wasn't whisking Haruto off to doctor's appointments, he was throwing pamphlets around the house about various diseases, as though he were trying to diagnose Haruto himself.

It's not sickness, Kaito told himself, as always—but the sentence was starting to lose its confidence. Haruto's just sad. And lonely. And father's crazy episodes are scaring him.

Haruto only seemed sick when father was upset, Kaito kept telling himself. He only got withdrawn and quiet sometimes. It was more like—more like a depression than a sickness. There wasn't anything wrong with Haruto physically. He was okay. Kaito carefully avoided thinking about the way that Haruto seemed to fade out of consciousness in the middle of playing for a few minutes, or the way that he seemed to have trouble breathing while he was sleeping, or how he seemed to get winded really quickly, unable to run around for very long like a kid his age was supposed to be able to—

He stopped his thoughts in his tracks as he realized that his heart was picking up. No. No, it wasn't worth thinking about. Haruto was just...more fragile. He wasn't sick. He wasn't. He couldn't be.

It's mother's fault, his brain thought automatically. If she hadn't died...

It was stupid, but it was all Kaito had to cling to right now. If mother hadn't died, then Haruto wouldn't be sad, father wouldn't be strange, and that man wouldn't be hanging around their house every other day, leering at Haruto and Kaito through his red glasses with his too wide smile. Kaito's jaw clenched. He had never liked Mr. Heartland, but as the man visited more and more since their mother's death, he was starting to hate him.

Kaito heard the soft sob inside the cupboard and stopped just standing there. He walked over to the cupboard and bent down, peeking through the crack. He could see his brother's face pressed into his knees, just a crack of light illuminating his small frame.

"Hey," he said. "Haruto?"

Haruto gasped and jerked up, almost hitting his head on the top of the cupboard.

"Sh, sh, it's okay, it's just me," Kaito said, reaching one hand inside. "Do you want to come out of the cupboard?"

Haruto shook his head quickly. Kaito frowned, but didn't push it.

"Can I come in, then?"

Haruto hesitated. Then he nodded, a very small motion that Kaito almost missed.

He pulled the cupboard open and crawled in. He was almost too big to do this; it felt so cramped in here. Haruto scootched over and snuggled his head into Kaito's shoulder. Kaito managed to thread his arm between Haruto's back and the back of the cupboard, clutching his brother's tiny shoulders.

"You know father doesn't like it when you come in here," Kaito murmured.

Haruto just pushed his face into Kaito's shoulder. He mumbled something.

"What was that?"

Haruto raised his voice only a fraction.

"...I hear mom here."

Kaito bit his lip. Haruto talked like that a lot...he wasn't sure if it was the fanciful speech of a three year old, or if it was...something else. His father seemed to think so. During the times that he was especially strange, especially feverish, running hundreds of computer simulations on things that Kaito didn't understand, talking to himself and muttering strings of numbers, throwing papers around the room and even getting violent by kicking his instruments across the room and shattering glass test tubs against the walls of the laboratory. During those times he would storm into Haruto or Kaito's room—usually Haruto—and grab one of his sons by the shoulders and shake them a bit, demanding to know if they were hearing it.

He would never answer when Kaito asked what "it" was. But sometimes, Haruto would say yes. And then their father would drag Haruto down into the lab and lock the door and Kaito had no idea what was going on down there.

He had told Haruto to stop saying yes. Even if it was a lie.

"I still hear it," Haruto mumbled. "Mom isn't loud."

Kaito's hand tightened on Haruto.

"Are you scared? Of 'it'?" he asked.

Haruto nodded into Kaito's shoulder. Kaito pulled Haruto into him.

"Don't worry," he said. "Your big brother will protect you. Okay?"

Haruto shuddered. But he nodded.

"Okay."

Kaito sat there with Haruto in his arms for a long time. He didn't know how long. He sneezed once or twice from the dust floating around inside, and he started to cramp up, his butt falling asleep, but he wouldn't move, as long as Haruto wanted to stay in here.

He thought he might have fallen asleep because the next thing he knew, the cupboard was being ripped open and Haruto was shrieking bloody murder because there was a hand reaching inside and grabbing him by the collar.

"I told you to stay out of here!" their father said, his voice a roar. "And Kaito! I told you to keep him out of this room!"

Kaito tried to cling to Haruto as Haruto grabbed onto his shirt, but his father was stronger and practically ripped Haruto out of the cabinet. Haruto's fingers slipped out of the fabric of Kaito's shirt even as Kaito grabbed at his brother's hands.

"Nii-san, nii-san, nii-san," Haruto said over and over.

Their father reached in and grabbed Kaito next, dragging him out by his arm.

"Stop it, father! Stop it! Stop scaring Haruto!" Kaito shouted.

"Your brother is too sick to be in here! It's bad for his lungs! I can't believe you would let him stay in this trash heap for even a second! And you're supposed to be taking care of him! Aren't you his big brother?"

Kaito flinched as his father shook him, his already wrinkled face contorting with anger and distress. Haruto was sobbing and screaming, something incoherent and babbling.

"Stop it, father, you're scaring him! You're scaring Haruto!"

"I'm trying to take care of him, you ungrateful little runt!"

He half flung Kaito towards the cabinets again—oh, no, he was in one of those moods. Kaito scrambled back to his feet and grabbed at his father's waist, wrapping his arms around him and trying to stop him from leaving the room.

"Father, he just wants to be close to mother again, can't he just stay here for a few more minutes? He's scared, father, he's scared!"

"I have indulged the both of you far too much! Haruto, you must come with me—it's time for your medicines."

"The medicines make him more sick! Father, please, you have to stop!"

His father simply grabbed him by the shoulder and wrenched him off, causing Kaito to tumble to the floor with a cry. Without another word, he hefted Haruto over his shoulder and stalked from the kitchen, ignoring Haruto's screams.

Kaito scrabbled back to his feet and bolted for the door. He wasn't quite quick enough, though, and the door slammed shut between him and his father. He heard the door click shut.

He screamed, then, a wordless sound of frustration and rage and fear and why. He slammed his fists on the door a few times. It did nothing, the door was very solidly wooden, but it make him feel a little better, even if his hands did sting.

He slumped against the wood, letting himself slide down against the door with his head pressed against it.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I'm sorry, Haruto, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

He slumped further to the ground and curled up into a tight ball at the foot of the door. He wondered what it was that Haruto heard in this room that made him feel better. To Kaito, it was just a tomb. A silent, horrible tomb.

At least, until he starting hearing it.

He wasn't sure what Haruto heard but he thought it must be something different from what Kaito heard. When Haruto heard "it," he would shake and clutch his hands to his ears and curl up in a ball under the bed, crying until it went away. Haruto was scared of the "it."

Kaito was not.

It was a humming, he thought. Dancing just on the edge of his mind. So quiet that it might have been the whine of an electronic in another room, except that it was musical. Sparkly, somehow. It wrapped around him like warm, leathery wings. It sounded like the tune that his mother had sung to him when he was a baby...dragonsong, she had called it.

He fell asleep listening to the dragonsong, and hoping, wishing, praying, that maybe that song could take him and Haruto away, far, far away, where there was nothing terrible, and father wasn't agitated, and he wasn't locked up in a dusty old kitchen that stunk with memories he'd rather not have.