As soon as Mr. Honne leaves, Miku clambers from her chair to the tile floor again. She's become sort of acclimated to the chill. She curls into the fetal position and lies there for several moments, not blinking or breathing or moving. If she stays still enough while the rest of the world moves around her, will she be erased, left behind in time?
Miku stays in that position for a long time. Her joints begin to ache after so long on the floor. At long last, she hears the creaky hinges of the door whining as the door swung open.
"Miss Hatsune, are you alright?"
She replies with a noncommittal grunt.
"It's time to go to your room, Miss Hatsune. Please get up so we may escort you," the tech says nervously.
Miku snorts. Poor techie, having to babysit the crazy girl.
The tech snaps her fingers and heavy footsteps pound behind her. Miku was soon being dragged away by a large, hairy pair of arms. She cracks her eyelids to find herself sliding across the floor thanks to a big, muscle-y guard. No, Miku don't play that way.
"Fine, I'll get up," she grumbles in an eerily Dell-like fashion. Her knees were sore after so long on the floor, drowning in loneliness.
The smiling tech places her hand on Miku's surprisingly bony shoulder and steers her back towards her chambers. Miku lurches and stumbles more often than she walks; each step was a huge effort.
"And here we are," exclaims the tech. She's way more cheery and confident now that she has guards for backup, Miku thought with a wry smile.
She clambers into the uncomfortable hospital bed, settling between cool sheets. As soon as the tech and guards close the door and lock it, Miku falls into a deep and dreamless stupor.
"Good MORNING, sunshine!" trills an irritating voice. Miku growls under her breath and sits up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
It was another stupid tech; this one has curly pink hair pulled into two pigtails, which Miku notices are shaped like drills, oddly enough.
She rushes into the room. "Hello, I'm Teto Kasane, and I'm your nurse!" bubbles the enthusiastic girl. Miku groans internally. You've got to be kidding.
Teto cheerfully takes Miku through her morning routine while emanating sunshine and smiles the entire time. Miku finds herself smiling a bit as well; curse this happy nurse and her contagious, persistent cheer.
So it was quite a shock when Miku was brought back to her seat in the therapy room, freshly showered and dressed, to find The Rain Cloud himself.
Mr. Honne sits slumped in his chair. His blank expression immediately goes south when he spots Miku walking with the nurse, Teto.
"You're late," he grouches as Teto sits Miku in her chair.
"I'm sorry, sir, wake-up took a bit longer than I expected," Teto says somewhat apologetically, running a hand through her untamable curls.
Miku huffs. Yeah, blame it on me, why don't you?
"Whatever. Let's get started, Hatsune," he says dismissively, waving Teto away. Right as Teto closes the door behind her, he turns to face Miku with an unreadable expression.
"Trust you slept well," he mumbles.
"As well as you can in a cell."
"Then let's begin."
Three hours later, Miku felt bored and emotionally drained. Psychologists were exhausting; they didn't hesitate to thoroughly pick your brain and ask you how you FELT about everything, even though Miku sensed Mr. Honne didn't really care.
"So, why are you a psychiatrist?" she asks casually, picking at her nails.
He looks up from writing on his clipboard. "Why do you ask?"
"It's not polite to answer a question with a question."
"It's also not polite to claw out my freaking eyes, yet you managed to attempt it at our first meeting," he sneers. Continues writing notes on that stupid clipboard.
Miku quells the urge to smack that clipboard right out of his mitts and instead tries a different tactic. "I just don't get it. Psychiatrists are supposed to help. You're not the healing, you're the pain."
Dell glared up at her with a new ferocity. "They figured I could relate to the patients with trauma a bit more. I'm not doing this therapy thing for your poor sick souls, I'm doing this for her. You say I'm the pain? You have no idea."
Miku was dumbfounded for a second. First of all, that was probably the most words she'd heard him string together in one breath. Second, the compulsory question. Who was 'she'?
Miku would regret her next paragraph.
"Look, I don't know who 'she' is, but I'm guessing it was your long lost lover or whatever, and you might be all prickly about it because as far as I can tell you're prickly about EVERYTHING, but don't talk down to me like I have no idea what you're experiencing. I watched my boyfriend fling himself on a cliff and shish-ke-bab himself three times. I bet his eye is still there where the rock split his eye socket in half. So don't treat me like I'm four, like some naïve little kid who has no idea how the world works. I do, I really do." To her horror, Miku finds she is crying, again, in front of this man. What is it about him that makes her emotions skyrocket? She was always good at keeping stoic before. She didn't even scream when she saw her boyfriend die, but she can scream at this man as easily as she can open a can of tuna. He was like a catalyst for emotional reactions, a key to the darkest parts of her soul that brought them into light.
When he speaks, she sees with shock that he's taking deep, shuddering breaths, hands clenching his knees, head bowed. He looks almost ashamed.
Until she is confronted with the fire in his crimson irises.
"People are nothing but the sum of their memories," he hisses with barely restrained rage. "Judging by how you act, all those 'horrible' things to happen to you have had no effect at all, not making you humbler or more sensitive or better. You're just a silly spoiled rich girl who doesn't know anything. Maybe you'll find some answers. If not, I look forward to seeing you speared on the nearest cliff, you stupid selfish whore."
They end up jabbing a needle into her skin filled with a numbing drug just to haul her off of him.