A/n: Heya, yet another chapter! Yeah I know, a lot of people wanna read some X-rated stuff but you know what? Tuff! Oriya's still sick and we still have some angsty stuff to get through. Stay tuned!

-Dark-

Ghost

Chapter Three

"Oriya?" A voice called to me and jarred me awake...

On my back, I stared up at my ceiling. I was half naked and sweating, long brown hair fanning around my head and pillow. I was Mibu Oriya: Brothel Owner, again, fully grown and friend to Muraki Kazutaka: Doctor and murderer.

"Wha-?" I let out, blinking to rid myself of my blurred vision. Damn… everything was slightly fuzzy. My body felt heavier than it ever had and my head was pounding. Christ, something's really wrong with me…

"You fell asleep, Oriya." He spoke to me, face blank as he looked down at me.

"I guess I did..." I grumbled, a dull pulsing in my skull. Placing my hand on my head, I met a wet washcloth instead of a forehead. I pulled it off and looked at it while I still lay on my back. A pale hand stole it from me soon after.

"Hey-"

"You're fever worsened. You should be taking better care of yourself." Muraki spoke as he sat on the edge of the bed, dipped the cloth in a bowl of water.

"You lecturing me?" I spoke to him, glaring over at him but the actual act of scrunching of my brow hurt! I groaned and shut my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"Do you need to be lectured?" Asked Muraki, a hand coming to toss hair out of my face. The cloth, now cold and wet, came to rest on my forehead again. Groaning, I moved it over my eyes since the light from outside my window was not welcomed to my sensitive vision.

"No. No energy for one." I grumbled. I could almost feel the smile pulling onto his face.

"You never do." He said and I moved the cloth away to look back at him. He sat next to me on the bed, staring down with that silver eye, a lingering smile still on his face. At least, I was still able to amuse him.

Behind him, the filtered light from the screen doors made him look darker, his expression loss in the darkness. A shadow engulfed by light, hiding within its radiance, waiting to show itself.

I sighed, shutting my eyes and letting my head fall to one side. That's what he was alright, a murderer back dropped by light, his true intentions lost to outsiders and on lookers. Everyone sees the good doctor in white, only looking out for his fellow man, saving lives, ending ones misery, stopping pain, preventing it…

Such a grand farce of his. He loves inflicting pain on others, he gets his kicks from it. He loves breaking spirits and ripping ones conscious apart, destroying ones will…

The only one he doesn't seem to ever want to hurt…he does hurt nonetheless. He hurts her the most.

He always hurts her. The one who gave him the name…

"Kazu…Kun" I found myself saying. That was her nickname for him. She named him that so many years ago…

"Oriya… you don't call me that. You never call me that." Muraki said, moving a hand to my cheek to hold my head. His tone was not an angry one. It was bordering on being a statement and an exclamation as it held some surprise within it.

"Ukyou always does…Did you call her yet? She's so…worried about you…" I spoke but it was almost as if I was…dreaming. I couldn't control my mouth… My chest felt tight as I continued, "she…called about…a week ago. Sh-she was crying. She was…a mess on the phone. She…misses you, Muraki. Ukyou misses you so much."

"I know, Oriya." Muraki stared down at me with a heavy gaze, as if he knows all to well what he is doing to her. Perhaps he does… Am I the only one to ever see that gaze? Maybe Ukyou has seen it… "I have spoke to Ukyou. I am going to see her this week." That cool voice came at me, more casual. He doesn't like me to ever see that the hard crusted bastard has a chewy center and not an equally hard inside.

"Good…" I found myself breathing out, my chest not as tight as before. Good, he going to see her, help quell her worried turmoil, to put her weak heart's frantic state to rest. She's to weak to be under so much stress, stress she causes herself for worrying about Muraki.

Thinking on it, I would have begun to blush if my fever wasn't already making me do that already. I had said such foolish things and I was gaining some stable ground for coherent thought processes. Great, I know sounded like some retarded little boy just then! I placed a hand on the cloth and moved it back over my eyes, pressing it down on my skin.

"Can you sit up?" He then spoke to me and I pulled the cloth completely off my head. No use hiding and at any rate, the cloth was beginning to annoy me. Overall, I felt like the blanket over me was weighing me down and even then… Yeah, I was going to be in this spot for a while.

"No."

"Are you hungry?" He tried, taking the cloth from me but he held it in his hands rather than rewetting it.

"...Can't say I am. Plus, I think it'll all come right back up."

Doctor Muraki was trying to help his patient. However, I was never the best patient. I hated doctors, as ironic as that is, and hospitals.

"Oriya..." Muraki began slowly. He was growing annoyed with me. My, this was an odd day. He's not laughing at me or chiding me. I really must be sick for him to worry. I would laugh if I had the energy to do so…

"Lay off..." I grumbled at him, moving my head to one side, sighing out a heavy, almost crushing, feeling welling in my chest.

Damn… this sucks. I want up! I need to get up. I can't not being at this level, staring at him like this! I couldn't take it.

I tried to get up. I mean I really really tried! My arms were like jelly but they managed to get me somewhat up but then a dizzying wave of nausea hit me. Oh god…

"Oh god!" I murmered and as soon as my body moved to the side of the bed, I felt something lay next to me a bucket no doubt. I took hold of the bucket as a pair of hands moved my hair back and away from my face.

Oh, I buried my face in that plastic bucket, the very one I had been using days before when I actually tried to force food down my throat.

At first, it was a dry heave that gripped at my throat and stomach that my whole body shake. Then another wave came, still as awful as the first… then another… then, finally, it came. It rolled like liquid fire up my esophagus, over my tongue and out my mouth, splashing violently into the bucket. Though, nothing was there, only the toxic yellow bile that my stomach was only able to hold…until now.

The taste of the bile stung in the back of my throat and actually made me gag and nearly vomit again, but I all I managed was a dry heave. Nothing was left in my stomach.

As I sat there, heaving at nothing, those two hands ran threw my hair, keeping it from falling in the way and into the yellow slop in the bucket. Soft and comforting, uttered soft words that I could not hear completely.

I sat like that for god knows how long, clutching the bucket to me and those hands still moving. I spat and shook my head slightly, moving up and away from the bucket and, like a lead weight, I fell back on my pillow. The cold wash cloth came and wipe my mouth and I didn't fight or protest against it.

God…that felt so much better. I really needed to do that. It's the most awful experience but it feels so much better afterwards.

Panting, I felt so much better. I opened my eyes and looking up at the white shape above me. Muraki? Yeah…it had to be him, no one else I know it white like that…

I could feel myself slipping again and that white blur soon faded out of my sight and…I out again, falling into that being I had been, that stubborn kid I was…still am on the inside.