-Lillian pov-

I stared into the cold water reflection. I couldn't believe Alice was actually here… except I knew she wasn't. It was just a reflection. Alice's body was inside in Nori's homeroom cupboard.

"Are you hurt?" the reflection said "you look bruised!"

"I was pushed…" was the best I could manage to say before falling into the water. My back wasn't able to support me and I had been leaning forward enough to overbalance and fall in. The reflection swan around me and held my shoulders and back as I hit the bottom of the pond, it was surprisingly deep for a school pond.

"Oh my poor Lillian…" Alice said as she embraced me "you've been so much… but it's all over now" Alice's watery form morphed slowly into Laplace's demon and disappeared. As I reached out to the light in front of me I knew I didn't have the strength to get myself out of the pond, I didn't have the energy to stand when I wasn't supported by water. I realised I should have been floating upwards but it was as if something was pulling me down. As the light streaming into the pond got darkened by the silhouette of someone standing by the pond, I blacked out.

I opened my eyes and looked to my right, there was my mother giving birth to me. As if I was caught in some sort of awful cliché I was watching my life from start to end again. I was born on the eighteenth of October in the year two thousand and five in Ohio America. My mother had named me Lillian because my hair looked white at birth and my mother's mother was called Elizabeth (which apparently Lillian was derived from, I don't see it). My dad worked at a large company and my mother was the CEO of a multi-national corporation. Because of this when I was three we had to move to Japan. Mum didn't mind, it was a new and exciting adventure for me and her but dad had more difficulty adjusting. For one he had to leave the company he had worked at for nearly eighteen years and for another thing he didn't speak a word of Japanese. Mum had a Japanese relative who had taught her some of the basics and I was three so I was able to pick up the language quicker than my parents might have been able to. We moved into the house we live in now which according to Hinaichigo was where her last medium Jun had lived. I grew up learning the Japanese and English language with my parents. Dad would often help me with my language homework, it gave him a chance to learn something's he might have missed. Dad eventually got the hang of the language and started job hunting. His first job was at a food store making foods like sushi and Taiyaki. Unfortunately the store burned down in two thousand and ten. He hasn't been able to hold a job since. Mother kept climbing the company ladder getting promotion after promotion. As for me I went to school like a normal kid. I got alright grades and learned the language quickly. After a while I ran into some difficulties with the kids. Because I was different some of the kids started making fun of me. At first I thought it was just a small group being a bit immature… but that group got bigger and bigger and for some reason the liked to target me. I stood there watching myself receive the same treatment that had haunted my nightmares for years. One of the girls liked to grab my hair and call me names a lot. One time I managed to get away from her iron grip but she threw a ball at my back and knocked me over. But I couldn't get up again. She and the group who picked on me ran scared and a girl in my class ran and got a teacher. I watched as I was taken to hospital by one of the teachers. I sat in the ambulance next to the me who was lying on a stretcher, in pain and unable to move. I had realised two things watching my life back again. 1: contrary to my own beliefs, them bullying me wasn't my fault. It had never been and I shouldn't have thought it was for even one moment. 2: although I am stood here watching myself no-one can see me or hear me. I am just here to watch the events as they unfold. The rest of this day played out like I remembered it… except now I could see something I had never imagined I would see. In every mirror or window or screen I passed there was someone stood there watching me. The first was a girl in black. She had long silver hair and Alice's black wings. She flew through the reflections in the windows following me. The second had green hair in curly bunches wearing a yellow dress. She had the same colour eyes as Alice. She and the first talked across each other before the first disappeared and the second started running through the monitors in the x-ray rooms. The second and third where reflections in two mirrors in the waiting rooms. One wore green holding a watering can and had Alice's hair the other was tomboyish wearing blue holding the scissors Alice had used to cut my hair. I was starting to notice a pattern. On my way through the hospital I had been followed by parts of Alice. No-one else would have noticed because it was such a busy hospital and I was on copious amounts of pain killers so I would have been too drugged up to have seen them. The fifth one was wearing red with a pink cane and long curled blonde hair. Her red bonnet was the same as Alice's. By now the doll in the yellow dress had run all the way through the waiting rooms into the hospital room where I would be staying. It was a small room but it was nice enough. She ran through the screens and jumped into a mirror where Hinaichigo was sat with a doll wearing Alice's white dress with a rose coming out of one eye. They were hurriedly talking about something and the one in red was sat in the window watching the scene unfold. My dad was waiting for me in the room. He grabbed my hand and promised me it would be ok. The doctor walked in and told my dad I didn't need surgery or physiotherapy but I wasn't allowed to take part in school sports or anything that could jolt my back. He explained I had an inherent weakness in my back that neither dad nor I really understood (I don't think the pain killers helped my brain fuzziness). He eventually left the room to get me some pain killers for when we left the hospital. The dolls had disappeared by this point. According to Hinaichigo the Alice game ended around two thousand and five in this universe. Three years after Jun moved out and I moved in to the house. If that was the case then why on earth were the dolls that made up Alice following me round in the hospital? Just as I started to wonder this, the visions of the hospital fell apart and I was left in a blank white space. I looked around and found Laplace's demon stood next to me.

"How are you enjoying your life flashing before your eyes my dear?" he said with an evil grin on his face

"It's confusing…"

"Well your brain has roughly seven minutes left to live so how about we sit and have some tea" as he said this he produced a delicate red metal table, some seats of a similar make as the table and a black tea set from nowhere "Darjeeling or Japanese green?". I stood in silence for a minute considering his proposal… but I didn't see any other choice so I reluctantly said

"Green please".

"Excellent choice Lilllian" he grinned more as he poured the tea into a cup

"So… are you going to explain anything or are you going to let me die confused"

"My dear if that is your dying wish I shall explain myself."

"Well I have nothing else to do until I die"

"I see" he chuckled "humans are a funny race". He places the tea in front of me and sat at the other side of the small round tea table. "After the Alice game I got rather bored. My sole purpose was to be a referee for the Alice game before that I was just a wandering demon. Father, or Rozen as you will know him, found me and made an interesting deal- If I refereed the Alice he would reward me with what I needed most. He even offered to build me some companions. It's a lonely life living as a demon with unlimited amounts of power and time on his hands and I was getting very bored of my existence." He must have known that this all sounded a bit too convenient to me. Rozen just so happened to find a bored demon at the same time as he was going to make the dolls fight in the Alice game? Too much of a coincidence. "I see you don't believe me. Let me tell you a story. Like the Rozen maidens I too once had a medium, it was how I survived as I don't have a key to wind myself up like the dolls. My last medium was a girl called Alice. She was Rozens wife and was meant to die before her twentieth birthday. I made a deal with her, I would keep her alive long enough for her and Rozen to do everything they wanted to do before she died. In return I could have her soul when she died. To a demon that's pittance, a dying woman's soul really isn't worth that much to a demon no matter what you humans seem to believe." I was becoming less convinced the more he talked "It gets better I promise. She and Rozen had a happy life together and Alice became pregnant. However because the last thing on the list of things she and Rozen wanted in life was a child she and I agreed that the deal would come to an end as soon as the child was born. As agreed I took her soul and Rozen got the child he and Alice wanted… Except he didn't, the child was a still-born. I didn't care. As far as I was concerned my job was done and I need to go on to find a new way to entertain myself. I found a new dimension to roam called the N-field, I'm sure you're familiar with the name from your talk with Hinaichigo. I roamed the world and discovered it was connected to all other dimensions, like the centre of a spider web. I found it entertaining enough and plenty of misguided creatures wandered through to become mediums for me so I had my source of power." He looked at me from behind his cup of tea, seemingly entertained by my shocked expression "Eventually as with all things I need more energy than I was getting from these creatures. That's when father found me. He had an ultimate source of energy and I had unlimited amounts of time and power. So we struck a bargain and I became the referee of the Alice game… that became my entertainment for the next few thousand years of my existence. Until as you are well aware the Alice game ended creating fathers perfect girl and ending my entertainment. So what was I to do? I was horribly bored and I had so much power and no use for it. So I decided to do what any demon would. Start the games again!" I sat there in stunned silence. Not only was he a creepy rabbit but he was a powerful demon capable of restarting the Alice game, a game that has lasted thousands and thousands of years, on a whim and enough time on his hands to create all kinds of havoc. He was as close to a god as any being could get with the mind-set of a trickster and a murderer.

And I'm stuck having a tea party with him!