So here's chapter two! Thanks for the reviews, I REALLY appreciate it!

To the guest: Yes, Rejet doesn't really bother giving us DECENT background info or explanations I just–

CHAPTER 2 REWRITTEN (28/02/2016)

Prologue: part 2

→ Friends

Masami and Bear sat in the cell talking for a while, mainly about stupid things like what their favorite color was and what kind of things they hated. It felt weird talking about such trivial things with someone who you'd just met. It felt strangely good.

Bear had also told her about his gang and his past. He had explained that the fight he had with the group of kids was because they insulted his old gang. He talked about his old gang with a voice full of respect and a tiny hint of sadness. Masami was actually surprised how fast the boy opened up to her. People in general didn't like her. They found her annoying, thinking she got special treatment, but that was fine. She didn't need anyone, anyway. She had been fine living like this for eleven years.

But this boy was something different. And it wasn't something she particularly disliked.

"My past is pretty boring. I was born here so I haven't done or seen much," Masami said, trying to sound lightly.

"Oh."

"Pretty sad, huh? But I'm not planning on staying in this shithole. I want to see the world." Masami brought her arms to the air and closed her eyes. Sometimes, she could wished to be carefree like the rich, being able to go and stand where she wanted to. Though everything was better than to die in this rathole.

"That makes two of us, ha!" The boy gave her a bright smile. They continued to talk and later on, they started to throw rocks at the wall when they were done talking. They ended up throwing rocks at each other because of an argument about who was cheating in the previous game.

"You suck at this, ponytail," laughed Masami who was sitting at the other side of the cell. She threw a pebble at his head, thereafter being hit by one herself.

The boy had a typical up-to-no-good smile on his face. "Oi, but you're cheating, you know!"

Masami's breathless laugh stopped as she heard a sound outside of the cell.

"Oi!" Bear walked to her and waved his hand in front of her face.

"Shhh, I hear footsteps." Masami pressed her ear against the wall and tried to listen carefully.

Bear's eyes widened and he gave her a fierce nod.

"Probably a new cellmate…" whispered the boy.

"Yeah… let's pretend we're sleeping," whispered Masami back with a grin.

"Ha? Why the hell should we do that?"

"No reason, just for fun." Masami smiled at the sight of Bear's confusion. "Come on, just play along."

Bear groaned with great unwillingness. "...Fine."

They both laid down and he started to snore to make his act more believable.

Masami kicked him in back with the heel of her foot. "Not so loud, ponytail."

"You're way too aggressive for a girl!" he whispered angrily.

The door of the cell then opened, a small silhouette was pushed inside the room before the door was closed again.

"Masami can we stop pretending now?"

"All clear!" Masami said and let out a chuckle. She glanced at the new visitor. He had moved himself to the other side of the room, sitting in the tiny bit of sunlight that shone through the small window near the ceiling. His arms were wrapped around his knees and his face buried in his arms.

"Hey, boy! Who are you!" said Bear loudly as he looked at the boy in the corner.

"Don't scream in my ear, you idiot!" yelled Masami to Bear and hit his arm.

He smacked her right back. "Stop hitting me!"

"Stop yelling! You're scaring the boy!"

"Ha?! You're the scary one here, not me." Bear roughly shook her shoulders.

"Tch."

Masami released herself from Bear's grip, walked up to the boy and sat in front of him. He didn't seem to look scared or confused. He looked rather bored.

This kid is used to being in here.

"Hey, I know you. You're one of those kids. I don't remember your name though," said Masami in a friendly tone. She sometimes had to help the kids who had to provide entertainment to those rich bastards and she was pretty sure that he was one of them, judging by his pretty face. He had a snow white skin, glittering blue eyes and golden hair, just like a doll.

"I'm Masami and this idiot here is… Eh… I forgot his name, but you can call him ponytail or annoying loud guy."

"DON'T call me that!" yelled Bear as he stomped towards them. "My name is BEAR!"

"Jeez, you're annoying," mumbled Masami as she tried to hide her amused smile. Masami looked back at the new boy and saw that the bored look had changed into a minuscule smile.

The boy sighed. "I'm Kou."

"Nice to meet you! Why are you here?" asked Masami. She was being quite sociable today. She was totally getting into the whole friend-thing.

"Did you get beaten up or something?" asked Bear.

No tact. No tact at all.

Kou's handsome face was bruised just like his legs and arms. There were also blue lines on his neck and barely healed cuts over all visible parts of his body, minus his face. His body was literally buried with wounds and bruises. It was known what the aristocrats did to the children they 'rented', but it was shocking nevertheless. As Masami was about to hit Bear for being tactless, Kou just sighed and raised his chin, his eyes closed and his head leaning against the wall.

"I provide entertainment for the rich. I don't mind, though, since I get nice clothes and decent food."

"What are you babbling about? You like being used like that?" Bear said with a tone full of disbelieve.

"Well…" began Kou, but Masami interrupted him.

"We should stop talking about this." Masami placed a hand on Bear's shoulder, indicating that he was crossing a certain line.

"Do you also entertain or…" said Kou timidly.

Masami was taken aback by this question. "No, why do you think that?"

"Well… you're... eh…kind of..." the boy said as he looked away. "... Pretty." He had basically mumbled the last part, but Masami had heard it.

Oh. She didn't expect that.

"Thanks."

"She isn't pretty, she's annoying," said Bear and flung her long hair in her face.

Masami gasped dramatically before giving Bear a friendly punch on the shoulder. "You're the one to talk, Ponytail!"

"Stop calling me that, my name is BEAR!"

The kids talked for the next few hours and even played a few games. Masami couldn't remember the last time she actually had fun in the orphanage. The isolation cell of all places! Life consisted mostly of work, being bashed, hit, ignored and more work. But now… She felt good. No, she felt great. Never did she think that she was capable of making friends like these. She always told herself that friends were going to drag her down, all because of experiences from the past. But now? She had made two friends! Two! Even though she didn't want to admit it, she was truly happy that she was thrown in the cell with Kou and ponytail.

A month had passed and Masami had always spent lunch with Bear. They fought, laughed and enjoyed each other's company in general –even though they would never admit something like that. They saw Kou on occasions in the first weeks after their first meeting, but due to his 'job' they didn't have the chance to talk to him a lot. He joined them for lunches after a while and became part of their crew, as Masami called it, much to Bear's dislike. He thought it was a lame name and yes, they had had an argument about that too.

On this particular day, the three kids were sitting outside for lunch. The weather was nice; it wasn't very warm or cold, there was a light breeze of wind and the sun peeked through the clouds.

Masami had arrived last, since she always had to work longer than everyone else. They were currently lying down in the grass, eating their skimpy meal. Well, that didn't count for Kou, whose meals were a lot better than Bear's or Masami's. But neither complained about that. Bear and Masami were smart enough to not make any comments. If she had to be honest, Masami wasn't very keen of Kou at the beginning. To be honest, she still saw Kou as a strange guy, but he was easy to talk to. She gradually came to like him.

"Kou?" Masami asked.

"Hmm?"

"Your right eye... can you see with it?" she asked carefully.

"Ah..." Kou sat up and scratched his cheek, while Ponytail turned to his side, leaning his chin on his arm.

"No, it's dead." Not making eye-contact, he lay down again and looked up at the sky.

"Aah... That explains a lot. Sorry, I was curious," said Masami while plucking grass out of the ground.

"Don't worry about it," Kou whistled.

"Masami stop covering me in grass." Bear groaned as he threw some leaves at her.

"Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts," she laughed before jumping up.

"What's wrong?" asked Bear lazily as he sat up. He and Kou were both taken aback by her sudden action.

"Shit, I'm late, I'm late!" Masami shrieked as she ran away and left the boys in complete confusion.

It was evening and Masami's muscles felt sore. Her finger brushed over the dirty bandage around her arm. She better hadn't touched it, as an intense amount of pain shot through her arm. Thinking about the fact that she would have to work with a sore body and a wounded arm, made her nauseous. And there was no way that she could get treatment for her wound, even if she begged for it. She hoped that it wouldn't get infected. Resting her head against the wall, Masami let out a growl of pain in her bed. She closed her eyes and bit on the insides of her cheeks, just to distract herself from the pain in her arm. Anda-san had hit and stabbed her for being too late and had even said that it was a reasonable punishment. She had said that Masami had to be thankful.

Thankful for what, though? Living like some kind of animal, a working beast? I'm nothing more than trash, no, I'm the lowest form of a living being. Not good for anything. A nuance. The world would be perfectly fine if I died. No one would care or mourn my death. Life would just go on as usual. My birth had even taken the life of my own mother. Why? Why did I get to live and why did my mother have to die?

"Hmmp... I'm drowning in my self-pity," Masami whispered to herself.

Daring herself to look at the wound, she saw a red spot growing bigger on the bandage.

It's no good.

"You can't sleep either, can you?" whispered a voice.

Masami turned her head, seeing a boy in the bed next to hers. Wait, where was the girl who slept in that bed? Did something happen to her? Oh well. That's how life here went. People came and people went. Masami was so consumed in her thoughts that she hadn't even noticed her new neighbor.

"Mmmn." Masami couldn't bring out more than an animal-like sound as an answer to the boys question.

"You look pretty beat up."

"I could say the same about you," said Masami with lack of any kind emotion. The boy literally looked like he had been in a fight. A fight he had lost. His lip was cut and his cheek was purple and swollen.

Not wanting to pick a fight with her new neighbor, Masami turned her head away mark the ending of the conversation. She really wasn't in the mood to talk.

Masami hadn't seen Kou and Bear for a week, since she had to work from sunrise to sunset. Work went slower due to her injuries and this only caused more and more punishments for being slower than usual. Every night she went half-dead to bed, enjoying the little rest she got. She could barely sleep, as her arm ached at the slightest touch. Even though she tried to renew the bandage as much as she could, the pain didn't go away. Besides that, she still had to take care of her other injuries. There was only so much her eleven-year-old body could handle. She wondered how long she could go one this way. Because if she had to continue like this, she was sure that she wouldn't be able to reach adulthood.

On the bright side of all of this, there was one thing that made her night a little bit more pleasant. It was surprisingly her new neighbor. She occasionally talked to him at night, because he also couldn't sleep. Masami would wake him every time he had a nightmare, at first just because he was being noisy, but it became a habit in no time. Talking to him was pleasant; he was smart and fascinating. He had told her about lots of things from the outside worlds, every night a different story. He was very different compared to the other kids in the orphanage. She wondered why, but didn't bother asking.

"Hey, Ruki, wake up." Masami carefully shook the boys shoulder.

The boy shot up, breathing heavily. He grabbed his shirt and laid back down, resting his head on the flat pillow.

"That dream again?"

"Yeah..." Ruki said, a bit out of breath.

"Jeez..." whispered Masami.

"Would you mind singing again?" he then asked while looking at her with those sad gray eyes.

"Sure."

It wasn't really a song she was singing, since Masami didn't know any songs. It was a simple melody she invented, nothing special in any way. But it calmed the boy down for some strange reason. He asked her to sing ever since he had heard her singing to herself a few days ago. Masami didn't mind, though. Honestly, she felt quite flattered and privileged. She wasn't even sure why.

Masami stopped and glanced at the boy. His had closed his eyes again and went back to a quiet, continues snore.

The floor in the hallway was finally clean. Masami had scrubbed for an hour now and she honestly couldn't feel her arms anymore. Using her right arm was too painful, so she had done everything with her left one.

"I just have to get this bucket back and –" said Masami to herself, before she got cut off.

"Ah... So many bruises..."

"What?!" Masami had almost dropped the bucket. There was a boy behind her staring at her. To be more specific; he was staring at her injuries. She blinked a few times as she looked at him. The boy had a scar on his nose and messy dark hair. She might have seen him before, but she wasn't very sure about that.

Anyway, were the hell did he come from?

"I wonder if it hurts... How did she get all those wounds..." spoke the boy in a timid voice.

"I don't have time for this," sighed Masami as she walked away with the bucket, not noticing the boy was following her.

"Stop following me!" yelled Masami as she noticed that the boy started to walk faster.

"But... I want them too... Where did you get them…?"

"What?! What the heck are you talking about?!" Masami tried to walk as fast as she could, but the heavy bucket put a limit on her speed.

"Azusa, stop bothering her."

Masami laid eyes on the boy in front of her. Pitch black hair along with sad gray eyes.

Ruki? Does he know this freaky kid?

Taking a closer look, she noticed two other figures behind the boy. And she recognized them.

"Oi, Masami where have you been?" said the familiar loud voice of Bear.

"She has been working, obviously," said Kou. "We've been looking for you, you know."

"Eh... why?" Masami put down her bucket and stared at Kou as she was utterly confused.

"We're planning on escaping," said the raven-haired boy.

"What?!" Masami couldn't believe her ears. Were they joking? They couldn't be serious about this, right?

Right?

"We're serious," said Ruki calmly.

"...How – " began Masami.

"We'll talk about it somewhere else... If you want to be part of it, of course." Ruki emphasized the last part.

Masami grinned.

"Whatever it is, I'm in."

Sorry if it looks a bit rushed, but I really wanted to update~

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- Next chapter is also set in the past, maybe a part of it in the present. Would you like the whole chapter to be set in the past, or not?