It was several days before the boy next visited Lucy in her hospital bed, and for the whole time, she was silent, refusing to respond to questioning by the medics and barely resisting whenever they came to give her medication. She didn't try to attack them, though she knew she could easily escape even if she only could use a single Vector without that splitting headache she got the last time.
She didn't know how much time had passed in the world of her thoughts. She couldn't see, and something in that boy's voice when he'd warned her about the bandages made her terrified to touch them. He may have been just some employee, but even she was able to tell that he was genuinely worried for her safety.
She didn't know why he seemed to care so much, she had never once heard any of the bastards at the Institute worry even slightly for her wellbeing, but the thought that there was someone in this nightmare that wanted to keep her alive was comforting, even if he was just interested in using her for experiments.
She heard the door to the room she was in open, and instinctively turned to face it, though she couldn't see who it was. She had a feeling she knew, however, and the excitable greeting from the man confirmed what she thought.
"Hello, again!" the boy said, his footsteps getting louder as he walked right up to the hospitalized Diclonius. "Did you miss me, uhh…" he hesitated as he apparently forgot what he was going to say, and Lucy took the chance to respond. Might as well not antagonize her captors until she was strong enough to fight at her peak capacity. That and she had plenty of questions for the odd boy.
"Who exactly are you, anyway?" she asked, cutting him off from whatever he was going to say. "You don't sound like one of the people I'm used to hearing here."
The boy laughed in response, and she had an odd image in her head that he was shaking his head, though she had no clue what he looked like. For some reason, she imagined him to look like a younger version of Kohta.
"Name's Katsuragi Adamu. You probably don't know me, I was never assigned to you when you were last here, but I'm…" he hesitated, before chuckling. "I guess you could call me the Diclonii's moral support."
Lucy heard the voice of a female, probably around 40 or so, sigh from behind Katsuragi. "Director Katsuragi, don't be so modest all the time. You're more like their best friend than just simple moral support."
Lucy went silent at the other person's words. "D-Director?!" she exclaimed, wide-eyed, though it didn't change the blindness caused by the infernal bandages.
Katsuragi laughed hesitantly. "Yeah, I was voted the new Director just before our guys found you." he said. "I didn't bother telling you when we first met because I was still going through the transferal process."
Lucy had no idea how to respond, and Katsuragi continued.
"Anyway, me being Director doesn't change the fact that you're under my wing now, uhh…"
The woman whispered something in his ear that Lucy couldn't hear, and Katsuragi made an "Ah" sound.
"Right. Well, nice to meet you, Kaede Mikoto. I'll just call you Kaede." he said.
Lucy stiffened at the name, and grit her teeth in reaction. "How do you know that name?" she asked, a tone of anger creeping into her voice. "I want nothing to do with those people anymore."
"And yet you're fine with the name the Institute gave you?" Katsuragi asked, and even she had to admit it was sound logic. "I call all the Diclonii by their real names, or if they don't have them, by the names they prefer to be called by. I don't know much about your history other than your name, but I think it's probably a better thing to call you than a name half the people here can't even pronounce correctly and the other half cringe in fear at the connotation."
Lucy was silent for several seconds, before relenting. There was really no point in arguing with him, and she had a feeling that if she threatened him with her Vectors, or the one she could safely use, he would simply block it again like he'd done the last time.
She heard him stepping closer to her, and growled. "What are you doing?" she asked, annoyed at the mystery that was how he'd gotten knowledge of her real name.
"I'm going to take your bandages off now." he replied. "Just hold still."
Lucy, or Kaede, would have resisted, but something about Katsuragi made her want to trust him, as counterintuitive as it seemed to trust the DRI's Director. So, instead of resisting, she simply let him run his hands along her face, finding the edges of the bandages and pulling them away in strips. She finally got a glimpse of his face when one eye was uncovered, and blinked in surprise at the shocking similarity his face had with hers. He could almost pass for a Diclonius himself.