Sorry for the wait I had to go away for two days with my family! The scenery out there gave me some good ideas for this chapter though, see if you can tell when ;P


When Mikan awoke in the morning, once more she found there was more blood – her own – dried into her clothes, and her neck ached more than ever before. When she went to look at herself in the mirror she saw two shiny red marks on her neck.

There's no way... she thought, but as she touched her finger against the healing pockmarks suddenly everything went dark.

'Help' Mikan cried, only a little girl but dressed up in rags like an animal, 'help me mamma!'

'Your fool mother is gone', Persona laughed evilly, 'and so is your father too. She couldn't take her husband's death, so she took her own life instead.' Persona stepped closer to Mikan and then pulled her close to him by one of her pigtails. 'So now you belong to me,' he triumphed, and then pushed Mikan away, hard, so that she fell down on the floor.

'Mamma...' she cried, 'Someone! Help me!'

When Mikan came to she was curled up on the floor crying. She tried so hard to put her past behind her, but these strange happenings were bringing it closer and closer to her mind again. Going to the Academy had been her only escape from Persona after her parents died, but she had tried to make it a separate part of her life and put it behind her. Even Hotaru and Ruka had no idea how she'd suffered before the Academy.

They didn't need to know; it would only make them pity her. She hated being pitied by anyone.

So she cleaned herself up, put her shirt in to wash again and got ready for school, today she had all her uniform and even managed to get in on time.

"Good Morning Hotaru!" she said as she entered the classroom and joined her friends at the back row.

"What's that on your neck?" Hotaru asked, pointing to the reddish marks on Mikan's neck that even she didn't know the cause of.

"OH! That? I think I just slept funny, it'll fade later," she replied awkwardly, but then the whole classroom fell silent as Natsume walked in. If she had actually been in the girls' dormitory them Mikan would have known that last night the only thing anyone wanted to talk about was Natsume.

Thick dark hair, perfectly shaped eyes, and such a deep crimson colour; not to mention he had the build of an athlete and top grades. He already had the strong, silent type down to a tee and everyone was already practically in love with him.

Natsume stood at the front of the classroom quietly, staring out across the room as if he was looking for someone. Mikan kept her head right down and pulled up the hood on her hoodie so he couldn't see her face; she had no interest in wasting any attention on someone like that.

Well, until he sat down next to her. Already vicious gossip started forming, as Natsume walked across the classroom and sat down right next to Mikan. She glanced out from underneath her hood to look at him a few times, but didn't say anything for almost ten minutes, when Ruka arrived – and seeing Natsume in his seat – went to go and sit on the row in front of them both.

"Um... what are you doing?" Mikan finally asked as Ruka sat down in front of them.

"What?" he said angrily, as if she had asked him a massively offensive question.

"Well... I mean... why are you...?" she mumbled awkwardly; she hated having to talk to people like him like this, because she just knew they were judging everything she said.

"Sitting here?" he snapped. "What, is this a reserved seat or something?"

"No," Mikan muttered. "Well not really."

"I sit wherever I want to sit," he sniggered. "Sorry if that offends you."

"Look it doesn't offend me!" Mikan yelled suddenly. "I just know that someone like you won't have any interest in someone like me beyond making fun of me and pretending to be nice to mock me even more! So don't bother! I don't need your pity or your attitude!" She had always had a fiery temper, but never had it been more damaging to Mikan now. Natsume leant over the desk and put his perfectly sculpted chin in his hand.

"Were you always this irritable?" he teased with an arrogant smirk.

"No," Mikan said. "But something happened in my life and changed that. So leave me alone." Even though she didn't see it, at this Natsume's eyes widened a little – could she be referring to what he'd seen in her memories?

He reached out and grabbed the back of her hood, in full view of the classroom, and then pulled it back off her head revealing her face.

"Mikan," he said seductively, watching her blush at suddenly being touched – even just her clothes – by this mysterious guy: why would an attractive, popular boy like Natsume want to hang around her. "I couldn't stay away from you if I tried."

After this, he quietly got up and walked away, crossing the room to occupy an empty desk by himself, and leaving Mikan with a face redder than a tomato. Ruka quickly moved to occupy his regular seat, as everyone else burst out laughing, thinking that it was a joke and Natsume had very funnily mocked her.

"What happened there?" Ruka asked almost angrily. "Have you spoken to him before?"

"No," Mikan mumbled. "Never." Suddenly she felt something in her memory trying desperately to surface, but she couldn't' quite reach it, and it floated along just beyond her grasp.

"Then why is he paying attention to you and no one else?" Ruka said in confusion.

"Yes," added Hotaru, who had been there from the start but engrossed in wiring a new invention of hers. "It does seem quite odd."

"I wouldn't know any more than you two do," Mikan confessed, and then tried to say no more by diving into her school work. Thankfully Natsume didn't say anything else to her, or anybody, for the rest of the day. Although there was practically a fight to sit on a table with him at lunch, and plenty of people spoke to him if they thought they were cool enough to befriend him. The most he did was nod once or twice, and politely reject an offer from Sumire to help her 'study' after class.

However, after school that day Mikan was on her way back to the boys' dorm – Ruka had football training and Hotaru was inventing as usual – when Mikan bumped into the last person she wanted to see again.

"Ah," Natsume said as Mikan crossed a patch of woods to take a short cut back to the dorms. "I was hoping to run into you..."

"Huh? You?" Mikan blabbered. "But but but... what?"

"Mikan," he said seriously. "I know you won't believe me at the moment, but I have to find out if it's true."

"What's true?" Mikan said cluelessly, and Natsume took a step forwards.

"Your memories," he said threateningly, and his eyes began to darken. "I have to find out if you really know him..."

"Him? Who? What are you even on about, Hyuuga!" Mikan yelled. "I didn't ask for you to talk to me!"

"You didn't," he hissed, his voice becoming more and more angry as Mikan tried to walk away from him and he chased her, "but I need to know... do you really know Persona?" Just at the mention of his name, Mikan's memories swallowed her up and everything went black. She was back there again.

She was at the home that was no longer her home – a place that was once happy but now only held fear and terror. At first sickness when her father first became ill; then sadness when her Mother took all those pills and wrote Mikan a letter that just said goodbye and she loved her. Then the horror when Persona came. A relative, he said, of her father's; he was here to look after her, but he only made her work and suffer. She lost weight, stopped being recognisable as a girl and cried or bled every day and every night, usually both.

But she couldn't leave, because Persona said her parents would be so disappointed if she turned out bad, so she tried to get along, but the last string finally snapped when he threw away the only picture Mikan had left of her parents. Then she packed her bags, ran away from home and applied to the only Boarding School in the city – the Alice Academy. She got in on a bursary for 'underprivileged' children and seeing as she was homeless there wasn't much more underprivileged than that. There she started over. Free from her memories and past. Free from Persona.

Or so she thought.

When she came to again she was curled up in Natsume's lap, his hands combing through her hair softly and his eyes warm and caring upon her face.

"Ah" she yelped as she woke up and realized where she was. "What are you doing?!"

"You passed out," he explained. "I couldn't leave you here." That didn't explain why he needed to rest her in his lap or brush his fingers through her hair, but she didn't think to ask about that.

"Why do you know that name!" she screamed as she remembered what caused her blackout. "DID HE SEND YOU?!" Natsume pounced on Mikan as she began to scream and put his hands over her mouth, pinning her to the ground with his weight and panting angrily.

"I'd never work with that bastard!" he hissed. "So don't you even say that! Persona ruined my life, but I have to know how you know him!" Mikan's eyes started to fill with tears, as she had never thought the memory of Persona would chase her all the way here.

"I...I...I...I..." she sniffed, "I can't tell you..." she sobbed. "It's too painful to me."

His crimson orbs fixed on her. He knew that he couldn't take any more blood from her to find out any more, but he had seen enough already. He just couldn't believe that man had found his way into the life of this girl.

"How do you know him?" Mikan demanded when she had stopped crying so hard, although in fact she actually looked kind of tragically beautiful with crystalline tears running down her face. Natsume was silent, his arms still around Mikan's shoulders to steady her.

"He... hurt me a very long time ago," he murmured. "Perhaps he saved me too, but I can still never forgive him."

"When?" Mikan questioned.

"It doesn't matter," Nastsume growled, standing up and leaving Mikan on the ground.

"Where are you going?" Mikan questioned.

"Nowhere," he said huskily. "Just leav... I'll see you around." With that he was gone, and Mikan was left in the fading light of dusk a little way from her dormitory.

Mikan rushed home and washed her hands and face furiously, trying to scrub out wherever he may have touched her. Who was Natsume Hyuuga? What did he have to do with these things at night? Or Persona? Or her past?

"You seem very distracted lately," Hotaru observed, as she had visited Mikan on her way back to her own room from an inventors' convention. "Is something wrong?"

"I... well..." Mikan mumbled. "It's nothing really..."

"Oh," said Hotaru, neutral as always. "Good." Hotaru carried on with her work; perhaps if Mikan had told her the truth she might have offered to help her, but Mikan didn't want to burden her friend with her old problems. Mikan had come to Alice Academy to put them behind her, not make them an issue for everyone.

Late that night, when she couldn't get to sleep but hadn't had any more strange blackouts or occurances, Mikan got out of her room by the window and climbed onto the roof to think.

Why did Natsume have this connection to her? How did Persona relate to him? How did he hurt him? Natsume was one of those people who just looked like he was born perfect, without a scratch or imperfection in sight.

"What's going on?" Mikan sighed, resting her head on her arms and staring up at the star-encrusted sky. Against her will, tears began to fill her eyes again. "I thought I'd got away..." she whispered. "Seems like you'll follow me until I die, huh Persona?"

"Or worse," a rough, husky voice said behind her. Mikan whipped her head around and saw none other than Natsume.

"You?" she gasped. "Why are you...?"

"I came up here to think," he said quietly. "Seems we had the same idea." Without saying any more, he walked over to the ridge that Mikan was sitting on and sat down beside her. Propping his chin on a fist, he stared up into the sky with her. The moonlight really made his hair shine, tingeing it almost silver in the luminescent light. When he turned to look at her his eyes were sparkling with the reflections of the stars.

"You're crying," he murmured, and Mikan realize the cold sting on her face was the night breeze across her own tears. She blinked heavily and two more tears fell from her eyes. He reached up a hand and cupped her cheek, brushing away her tears with his thumb. Mikan didn't realize that the same moonlight that made him almost divine in appearance was also rendering her beautiful in his eyes too. Even through her thick clothes and unladylike behaviour.

Mikan didn't know how to react when he started to gently pull her face in toward his, and tilted his head to the side. No one had ever tried to kiss her before, how could she recognise it until the last minute, when she only gasped in surprise and began to shake, feeling her blood rush and skin tingly from how close she was to him.

However, before their lips could do anything but barely brush together, he moved his hand and turned her face away from him, baring up her fragile, marked neck.

"Just a little," he murmured, and Mikan felt sharper-than-human teeth drag across her skin. It was painful, but also made her entire body burn and she had to suppress a breathy moan. She felt her skin give way under another stroke of his pearl white teeth and a little of the precious blood she had left dotted the cuts and began to roll down her neck.

She then felt the rough burr of Natsume's tongue follow the trail of the blood droplet and shivers ran up her entire spine, twice he followed the length of her neck with his tongue, and then once he latched his mouth over her wounds and sucked a little blood directly from her.

Mikan's breaths were light and gasping, instinctively she had reached out to hold onto Natsume's shirt, in case she should fall, and her other hand was flailing weakly against his forearm. He tightened his grasp on her until it was almost a full embrace, and when Mikan began to feel her cheeks begin to flush and her hands to tremble he slowly pulled away.

One last contact of his mouth against her neck and her cuts began to heal, but this time he had not delved into her memories or erased what was happening from her head. Mikan was perfectly aware of the whole thing from start to finish.

"You're..." she whispered, still panting in the cold night air and needing Natsume's strong arms to steady her. "...Vampire."

"Yes," Natsume groaned, and gripped Mikan harder in his arms, pulling her closer until their legs were flush against each other. "But you..." he moaned primevally, his eyes dark like a rich red wine and intoxicated with her. "You make me feel human."


Woo woo! I thought I'd tease you but hold back on a real kiss just yet ;) Hope you're enjoying it leave a review!