The world goes bright white once again, though this time for other reasons. My teeth clack against the floor and my nose almost crushes itself beneath my face. My forehead knocks against the wooden floor and rattles my brain around in its skull. My body bounces once roughly against the floor and pops up a few inches just to hit the floor again in a confused, shocked heap. Stars twinkle in my closed eyes as the world starts to settle down to a steady zero.

But just as things start to become sensible, the back of my shirt is grabbed and pulled with nearly enough force to tear it, but not quite enough. My body is pulled up and backwards into an off kilter stance just as sound starts to infiltrate my senses. My back thumps against the wall and my eyes seem to slide back into visual recognition. I realize only now, that my mother has been standing in front of me and screaming my ear off for the past five minutes as I stare blankly at her right shoe.

“JORDAN JOHANNESBURG!!!!” She thrusts her finger to my chest. “YOU STAND UP STRAIGHT WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU! I cannot believe this!” She screams. “It's well past one in the morning and I have been sitting here waiting for you to show your face for the last few hours!!!! Do you even realize what time it is!? Unbelievable, unbelievable! You irresponsible twat!!!! You promised me you'd be back by ten and you were nowhere to be found!” And then she starts listing. That thing that she does when she's so upset. Listing every single reason for it. “I had dinner prepared, I had the tables set, I had the food nice and hot for you and you dare not show your mother an ounce of respect! Unbelievable! You're lucky I was waiting for you by the door when you came in or else I could have SHOT YOU for being a home intruder! Unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!”

She stamps her foot to the floor in a rage. It draws my impassive eyes to hers. She's blood red and clearly furious with me, but the moment the screaming began, I sortof just stopped hearing it. I knew this would happen.

“Where were you!? Where the hell were you!? And do you hate your dear mother so much that you can't answer a single one of my calls!? What were you doing that was so unbelievably important that you just HAD to ignore my eight phone calls!?!?” She demands in front of me, but the words take a moment to breach. It isn't until she snaps her fingers in front of my eyes four or five times with another demand that I actually realize I need to respond. “Hello!? Is my son deaf now!? I asked you a question, so you better respond to me! Where! Were! You!?!?”

My body goes rigid and a little cold. “Uh, I was at the park.”

“Clearly not, considering you're wearing someone else's clothes!!” Holy shit, how did she even notice that so fast.

My mother gasps for a moment, a hand over her mouth. “You did NOT sleep with a hooker, did you Jordan!?”

“What?” I'm caught off guard by the ridiculous question. “What the hell, no?”

She stamps her foot on mine and hurts my toes beneath her shoe. “THEN TELL ME WHERE YOU WERE!!!! Tell me really! Were you out doing drugs!? Were you hanging out with the homeless or some gang members!? Goodness knows you didn't suddenly make some real friends, considering your apparent LACK OF A BRAIN! So where were you!?!?”

“I- uh, the… I… actually did make a friend.”

“Oh yeah, and how the hell did that happen!? Did they fall from the fucking sky!?”

I can't think of a single explanation that makes sense at a time like this. My upper processing just fails. “Um, I don't really know?”

“So you're a little liar!” My mother takes a step back and puts a hand over her heart as though she has been stabbed. “My sweet sweet son is gone! He has been taken away from me and replaced with a dirty liar! What happened, where did I go wrong!?” She begins to weep, covering her eyes with her hands. “Oh where did I go wrong? How did he get away from me like this??”

“no, wait, mom-” I start but I'm quickly cut off by her. Her hands leap out from where they were and latch onto my wrists. She squeezes them as hard as she can, and it kindof hurts.

“Show me your cell phone right now, boy.” She growls out behind clenched teeth. “I want to see that you missed my calls and didn't just ignore them the whole entire time.”

She's still gripping both my hands with all her might for a moment or two longer before she lets go. “NOW!”

My hands dart into the pockets of Valerie's hoodie and quickly retrieve the square shaped object from the dark. “Here!” I panic and hand it to her before remembering that the whole screen is broken.

“It's broken!!!!” She shrieks. “Not only did you waste my time and waste my dinner but you broke the phone I paid for as well!? What is wrong with you!? Do you have no respect for your mother and your things!? Do I need to ground you for a year until you can show me that you learned your ABCs!?!?”

“What, n-no!”

“Then show me that you're more than this! I was so worried about you, Jojo! You had me worried sick sitting here for hours and waiting! All I could do was just sit and worry and worry and worry! I thought you could've been hit by a car or kidnapped or worse!” Only now does she tell me that the reason she was upset was because she was worried. For some reason, it doesn't exactly feel genuine. “Who the hell gave you these clothes anyway! Your pants are covered in mud!!! You didn't get these from some dirty homeless person did you!?”

“They were from my friend, mom!” I try to explain.

“Ohhhhhh so you're still gonna stick with that lie, huh? I know you, Jordan. I raised you. You did not make no friend in one afternoon. Not one. And definitely not one enough to give you clothes for free! Tell me, son, did you steal this!? Are you back to stealing again!?” What, what does she mean by ‘back to’? Does she have just zero faith in me whatsoever?

“No! I'm not!!! I swear!!!” Please leave me alone. “All I did was hang out outside for a few hours! I swear, nothing happened! I didn't do anything wrong!! I'm an adult, mom! I should be allowed to be on my own for a little while!” Uh oh, that was a bad choice of words, don't you think?

My mother drops the shattered phone on the ground in anger, crossing her arms and looking furious. “For the last few weeks you have demonstrated nothing but a childish disrespect for all kinds of authority, a disrespect to your property, a disrespect to rules, and a disrespect to your mother. You have messed up big time, and if you ever expect me to see you as an adult even in the most remote sense, you'd have at least done the dignity of COMING HOME ON TIME! Let alone the awful ways you've been treating your teachers! They try to help you, I tryl to help you! And this is how you repay me!? Jojo, you are GROUNDED! You live in my house, under my roof while I pay for a college attendance you're barely staying clean with and cook all of your meals while you do nothing in return. Less than nothing! You don't even pay rent! You're twenty years old and still living with your mother. You have shown me that I can't take my eyes off you for more than one day straight without expecting you to mess something else up or ruin my name! Jojo, go to your room! You're not eating tonight and you're definitely not coming out of your room until I choose otherwise!”

“But- but I'm hungry!”

She stamps her foot loudly. “NOW!” And points frustratedly down the hallway in the direction of the door.

I lower my head and my eyes, making sure not to disrespect her further with eye contact as I sulk past into the hallway and to my door. My heart is racing and there's a ringing in my ears that I can't quite seem to block out. The knob on the door to my room opens slowly to let me inside.

“Now I don't want to see your face outside of that room until morning! Show me that you can at least do that right!” My mother shouts down the hallway as the door closes behind me. It latches shut and brings me a loudly ringing silence.

The room is dark, and my head feels full of anguish. Each step to cross my room to my chair is slow and clumsy. The cushion of my seat catches me as my eyes go dry from unblinking.

I'm in shock.

I expected this to go poorly but I never could have imagined it to go this bad.

I should be hurt, I should be furious. I'm an adult and she treats me like this. All I did was stay out late. I'm an adult, I'm an adult! I should be allowed to stay out late! I'm not a child! I'm not!!!

What could I have done to really deserve this? Did she somehow know what I did today, did she know and this was karma? Maybe it was deserved, I can't tell. I can't tell. Didn't I deserve this after all?? Didn't I?

Honestly, I can't tell how I should be taking this at all. I'm just sitting there dazed with my ears ringing. In the end, she was right wasn't she. Wasn't she? Even if I felt like what she was reacting over was unjustified, I did deserve it right? I have been doing poorly lately… in school, in life. The things I've now committed to are unthinkable, let alone how I've been keeping myself everywhere else. I deserve to be screamed at for the things that I've done. I deserve to be hurt. I killed someone today. In a flying, vindictive rage made of the same caliber my mother screams in. I killed someone, I crossed a line so deep that I know I will never be the same again since that moment. I should be fucked up about this. I should feel something, anything.

So why don't I?

Why don't I feel anything about this?

I'm just sitting here, fuzzy and empty and I just don't care. I killed someone today, and no matter how justified it all seemed in the moment… shouldn't it matter to my morality or ego that I did something so drastic without even a second thought? But I just don't care. I don't care about my teacher, or my grades. I don't care about rules or the time I'm supposed to be home. I don't care about my mother's opinion about me. I don't care about my safety, I don't care about anything. I don't care about anything.

Anything except the stroke of luck I had today, meeting that girl. Anything except… anything except….

The taste of her blood, and the look on her face when I took it from her.

I shivered.

White noise, all the way around my body. In my eyes, in my mind, and in my chest. I feel nothing but tufts of cotton in my bloodstream. Nothing, nothing.

The way she looked at me. The way her eyes lit up when I made a blood snail for her. The way she was

Proud.

Of.

Me.

My body tenses and relaxes again. Tenses and relaxes.

Emotions… Lust. Energy. Mania. Thinking about the ways she looked at me, the ways she saw me, intensity. Then, rage. Angry, hurt. Untrusted. Scorned. Angry. Then, flush. All gone. The heat sputters out and dies on me. Then, a little kernel of a thought leaks back into my head.

I deserved this. I deserved worse. I'm a murderer-

Emotions flood back in again, strong, colorful, full of red. I'm so hurt! I'm so sad! I shouldn't be sad!

So I'm not, and the feelings go away again. Numbed instantly by some unseen balm.

Then, something else. A stray shine of light breaks through the infinitely blurry gray clouds of my mind, and I start to feel everything all over again. My mind hooks deeeeply into a thought spiral so potent and intense that it breaks the cloud layer apart instantly.

Instantly overwhelmed to the maximum possible degree, like everything is collapsing. Like I've never felt worse about anything more in my life than I feel right now. It's all over, it's all over. And I cannot take it. Something is wrong here.

Then, the switch.

As to be expected, my body suddenly decides to depart with the parts of me that are causing me pain. Striking everything else down with it and boxing it up in a place firmly away from me. All of my emotions, all my vindication, all my passion instantly sapped away all at once, to the very same, but opposite, maximum degree. Or minimum, in this case. Like I do not care a single ounce about anything that happened today. I don't care. I couldn't possibly care. It's so beyond me now, so far away, I couldn't care. The words are there but they all lack the meaning. The picture of a broken neck in my mind, but it lacks the colors of the red blood I made him bleed. Something about bleeding neck wounds in pIt's all there, in immaculate HD rendered detail of my memory, but it lacks the accompanying value behind it. Dampened, obfuscated, hidden, painted over, just behind a sheet of frosted glass. Like it happened to someone else. Something is terribly wrong here.

A manic rapid switching between two terrible states of being. Completely overwhelmed and Completely Emotionless. The moment that emotions start to leak into my pressure-contained vessel, my subconscious immediately floods with a surge of anger and shock and- then it switches off. Forced out by the same subconscious that decides I'm not capable of handling my own emotions. Goodbye! They wave and depart. Just to knock at the front door of my mind and blast me through with a loaded shotgun. We're back again!

Colors into uncolors into colors.

My head is spinning. I think I'm going to be sick if I don't stabilize. I feel like I'm missing something. A bridge between the place of ‘on’ and ‘off.’ I am missing something utterly crucial. What the hell is happening.

Focus, focus, focus, Jojo. Do what you have learned to do in these spinning moments. Focus on the trails of thought that can keep me real, keep me colorful, and let the emotions drain out naturally. Because that's what I'm supposed to do right? Let them bleed out.

And then, I found it. The exact thing I needed to stop the unbalance. The one thing I've found to draw my focus more than anything else. Bright rose red.

I needed to bleed.

…

My limp body jolts into action. The opposite of a puppet losing its strings. Scrambling like a cat trying to avoid a puddle of water. A single minded, tunnel visioned scramble across my room towards a little pack of school supplies sitting near my desk. A small little red plastic bag. Full of pencils and markers and highlighters. And a yet unused pencil sharpener.

My fingers grip around the little piece of plastic, trying with all my blurry and manic willpower to crack the case and reveal the little razor blade lurking inside. Like a little pearl hiding in a clamshell. If I don't hurt then how can I feel? If I don't bleed then how can I possibly hope to vent this pressure cracking my fucking head. Everything is hitting me all at once and I simply just cannot take it.

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I cannot get it out of me in any other way. The moment my emotions rear back into life, almost enough to make me cry, they run away again and leave me so confused. Frustrated and confused. Grasping for how I'm supposed to feel.

I do not care, I do not care, I do not care.

I care so badly, so much, I am so overwhelmed! Can't you hear me!?

But I do not. I do not hear it. I do not care. My fingers find themselves holding a scavenged blade of metal, hesitating over the skin of my left arm as something very very strange happens.

It starts raining.

A water droplet falls from the sky and lands on my arm. Splat!

What the hell?

My resolve wavers. Another droplet joins the first. What is happening here? Is there a leak in the roof? My eyes slowly drag upwards, but they find nothing of interest. When I look down again, another droplet spontaneously appears. Is it raining indoors? I don't understand…

Wait, am I crying? Am I actually crying this time? But that doesn't make any sense. I don't feel anything at all. Let alone enough to cry about it. So what's causing this? I don't understand…

And then I heard a whimper. From somewhere off behind me.

At first I thought it was a giggle. A laughter. A bit of a jest. A joke someone has been pulling on me this whole time, keyed in only to them and not me. But it wasn't. Something, no, someone.

Was crying.

The blade drops from my hand. I didn't even want to use it anyway.

I slowly stand up, tears now streaming down my face entirely unimpeded, and I search for the source of the noise. A whimpering, softly weeping sound. The cries of a little girl who just dropped her ice cream, or lost her favorite teddy bear. The sad, small little sounds that would make anyone with a heart ache to tell her ‘it's all going to be okay.’ And I find it in the only place I could think to look. To find said little girl, hiding in my closet. Right where I would cry if I didn't feel safe.

I slide the door open slowly, the sounds of muffled sobbing only intensify.

In there, I find a small gray girl made of porcelain and sorrow, lined with nothing but arm length fishnets, all curled up in a ball and crying into her hands. With her arms wrapped around her legs so tightly, as though she would simply float away and vanish if she didn't hold herself down. Her palms grind into her cheeks as she cries, wiping down her face as though she was trying to combat tears that were not flowing. As she has no eyes, so then the tears must come from mine.

I drop to my knees beside her, taking myself to her level. I'm speechless. I have no idea what to say in a situation like this. I've never been good around other people who are crying. But I feel it deep inside of me, almost duty bound, that I must do everything in my power to comfort her. And to do it quickly. I can't just leave you like this.

My arm, shaking and shuddering with strange feelings, reaches out to place a hand on the doll girl's shoulder. She feels warm and alive. Much more alive than me.

She doesn't seem much like a demon anymore.

『Rosegold』turns to look at me with this heart wrenching frown, taking her hands away from the place where her eyes would be for only just a moment before returning to her pitiful whimpering sobs. I feel nothing but immediate guilt for the way that I've been treating her. How I've been neglecting her. Ignoring her needs and her cries for attention or help. How I've been taking her obedience for granted. But I will rectify this, I swear to you.

“What's… what's wrong?” I ask her in the gentlest voice I can possibly make. So quiet and soft that it wouldn't even scare a rabbit.

She answers me by sniffling. Taking a sharp breath, and trying to steady herself enough to say some words before breaking down again. It almost works. “I can't… I can't believe this….” she whines into her hands again and begins to cry once more. My face feels freshly wet as her tears run down my cheeks.

“Can't believe what?” I ask, gently rubbing her shoulder with my thumb in an attempt to comfort her.

But she doesn't seem to like it much, as one of the hands hiding her face darts out to push my hand away. She grabs me by the wrist and pulls my hand off of her. Shooting me a look of pure devastation. “We're a monster!!!”

Woah… the words slice right through me. I've been pretending not to care this whole time. This whole time, with all these justifications and all these hidden feelings. That I simply did not care what we had done. But if I didn't care, then she did. “We're not a monster. He- he deserved it-”

She cuts me off. “It doesn't matter if he deserved it! We killed him and we're a monster! Don't you even care!! We crossed a line and we will never be the same!!!! Our innocence is ruined!” She whines and wails and drops my hand to begin sobbing once again. She simply cannot take this the same way I can.

The same way that I pretend that I can.

“We're not a monster, Rosegold. These things happen sometimes.” I struggle with my words for a moment. Searching for what to say. “Think about the logic to it… if we didn't kill him, someone else would. Or he would have killed us! He was a bad man! It had to be done… it had to….” I try to wipe away the emotions, the feelings, the guilt with context.

“I don't care about the logic! We killed him without even thinking! We're heartless!!” She whines. “We're going to be a monster! We'll grow up as murderers if we aren't stopped!!!!”

“Well! What can we do now, then!” I snap suddenly. Losing my cool because she won't listen to me. “What am I supposed to do about that, Rosegold!? We killed him! We had to! Get over it!”

This is where the disconnect lays.

“I caaaant!” She cries at my sudden flippant rage. “If we don't feel bad for something like this then how will we know when it's right or wrong! If we won't be punished for it then we have to punish ourselves!!! Or no one will stop us if we don't! You have to know!! We're a monster!!!!! We killed someone, I can't I can't I can't!!!” She breaks down fully and falls onto the floor, rocking back and forth in the throes of a breakdown. “We have to care! We can't just get away with this!”

“What do you know!!!!” I snapped at her. Unreasonably pissed off at her malfunctioning sense of justice. “What do you know about consequences, you! You left me! You left me there! Alone!! After all, it was your hands that killed him!”

Rosegold clasps her arms tightly around her head and lets out a panting scream with no air, a silent whining wail that's barely loud enough to reach me. “You can't say thaaaaaatttttttt….. please please don't say thaaaaaatttt….” She begs.

“Then just own up to it, then! You don't get to blame it all on me!”

Rosegold shakes her head on the floor before picking herself up to look at me with sheer desperation. “I'm not!! I was just overwhelmed! I didn't try to abandon you! And you can't say that about me!! It was your hands that killed him too!!”

I wag my finger snarkily and condescendingly. “Nah ah ah! I just held him down but you broke his neck and ditched me! This is on you, 『Rosegold』!”

“No no no no! Please! Please don't say that! It was your hands too!” She shakes on the floor before looking up at me. “It was your hands too! You should be more upset right now! Why don't you even care!! Are you crazy!?” She whines and curls into herself. “Why don't you care!”

Am I crazy?? … Pshh, no. No way. “I do care!” I snap back at her. “I'm just not a whining baby about it!”

“Well someone has to whine!” She cries. “You put your hands on his neck, and I only wanted to help!!! I didn't stay, I didn't stay because I was guilty!!!! I was overwhelmed!!! We killed someone! And that means a lot to me! I couldn't just ignore the implications of such an act so I panicked, okay!? I panicked!! I'm sorry and it won't happen again so please stop saying it was all me!! I can't take it from you, too!” She cries to me, unfurling from herself and latching onto my leg like a scared little kitten. My heart stops in its place and my righteous fury is iced immediately. Now I feel guilty too. “All I can think about was how he looked… How lifeless his eyes were… How we were the ones who did that to him…. I know what we did, and what it means for our future… I'm not stupid. Please don't call me a murderer too… I can't take it….” She begins to weep once again. Pitiful little girl cries that showers down my cheeks and well up in a puddle in my empty gray heart.

“I'm-” I tumble on my words. “I'm sorry. You're right and I'm sorry.”

“I'm not a total brick wall, User. I'm not just a tool…” She mumbles into my leg. “I have feelings too.”

“You're right. I'm sorry. I was so hung up all day long on everything that was happening, I just expected you to be able to keep chugging along too. I never stopped to consider that maybe these things affect you too. More than they do to me.” I bend down a little further to give her a stroke across her cheek. She looks up at me with indents instead of eyes. But even though that's the case, I can still tell that she is terrified. “But I'm glad to know this now. You're important and so are your feelings, I'll try not to take that for granted again.”

“Thanks…” She barely squeaks out.

“And we're not a monster. We're not monsters. What we did today was a good thing, in the end. We had to do it. Both for self defense and for the very same justice that man was pretending to hide behind. We're good, Rosegold. We did something good today. Try not to beat yourself up about it. We will never end up like he did, we will never use our powers for harm like that.” My eyes dart away for the next words. “Petty crimes don't count. They don't actually hurt anybody. So we're not bad for doing that. But what he did! That was bad! … I think I'm right about this.” I trail off at the end, not knowing where to go. Why am I pretending to have such a clean grasp on morality here when it's obviously clear I have just as little experience with this sort of thing as she does? I don't know. But I get the sense that if I don't try to teach her these things now, that she'll end up just as big of a mess as I did.

“Eheheh…” Rosegold giggles, the terror and guilt slowly leaving her face. “You're funny.”

“Thank you~ but I wasn't trying to be funny~” I giggled right back at her, right after saying these words. “Are you feeling any better now?”

She nods. “Yehh… A little.”

“That's good, I’m glad.” I make to stand up, letting go of her and straightening myself out. My chest feels heavy and so do my eyes. Too much emotion for one day. I'm tired. Too tired to keep going for much longer.

But as I step away from her to walk towards my bed, Rosegold reaches out after me from the floor. “W-wait” She calls out to me. I stop and turn around. Her hand is still up, so without even thinking, I help her to her smooth porcelain feet. Once she’s upright and level, I notice her arms cross and her dainty fingers brushing across the porcelain beneath her shoulders. That is to say, she looks nervous. Awkward. Like she's about to ask me something strange and doesn’t know what my reaction is going to be. It's a familiar gesture to me, but not one that I can recognize where I’ve seen it before.

“Yes, Doll?”

“Um….” She fidgets in place, digging her feet into my carpet. “It's been a really long day and um… im tired um… and its… um…”

“Out with it, doll.”

“I was wondering if I could sleep with you tonight. It’s cold out here and I've been lonely this whole time!” She squeaks out, looking up at me and fidgeting so much that she’s started to levitate. Slowly moving upwards towards the ceiling so gently I don’t think she even notices. “I just want to sleep where it's warm, for once! And I don’t think I could sleep on my own tonight after all that happened today. I’m too wired! I can-”

“Hush, Doll. You can sleep with me tonight.” I cut her off and turned to the side, gesturing towards the blankets. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll make sure nothing comes for you in the night.”

“Oh! Thank you!!!!!!!” There are tears in my eyes as she zips across the room so fast she’s barely visible, all while only making the barest of noises dashing through the air. The blankets go up in a flurry but it's only a moment before she’s a ball of comfort laying in my bed. Fully concealed, having made a burrow out of all the bunched up blankets and pillows. It left the bed mostly empty beside her fortress of snuggletude, leaving the mattress visible in some spots. But it didn't matter, I would find my way in a moment. For now I just stood and looked down upon her concealed shape under the blankets. Admiring.

…

I had realized the look she was giving me. The same face I had seen before somewhere distant. In the media, in movies, in videos, I’m not sure. A childhood cliche of sorts, one that doesn't really matter wherever I've seen it before. A storybook look. The face of a scared little sister standing in her older sister’s doorway, asking to spend the night together after a long night of bad dreams. Or thunderstorms. Or rain. Or fireworks. Or whatever the day had brought before. I knew that I could act as her stuffed animal, providing a mental protection to all the scaries of the night.

Big sister? No, no, we'll investigate that line of thought later, this is more important now. The fantasy just makes more sense if we’re both girls, anyway. It's not weird that way, it feels like… Sisterly cuddling. Like it's meant to be, no questions asked, no subtleties or underlying messages.

Plus, the thought just feels right anyway. The deep seated sense of pride that I feel for Rosegold, my 『Rosegold』, can only be described as Sisterly in nature. I feel happier and much more stable now that I know what the problem was. I needed to comfort my doll. Seeing her back on her feet and ready to keep going just fills me with a bright sense of pride and purpose. A much stronger feeling compared to the numbing sensation I was feeling earlier.

I had realized it when she began to cry for the last time during our argument. The way she looks, the way she acts, the things she says and does. She acts so childishly. Like she grew up but skipped her childhood, and the rest of her had yet to catch up fully. And considering my eight year gap in memory, plus all my blind spots, well it's not hard to have a few guesses as to why that might be the case. I doubly realized just how much responsibility I had in that sense, as I'm the one who brought her into this world. It may have been a stroke of pure chance, pure luck that I had stumbled across that 『Pillar Man』, but it may have very well been the best stroke of luck I have ever had. Like coming across a fallen shooting star. I wouldn't trade her for anything else in the world.

Our newfound bond makes total sense from a Sisterly point of view as well. As she came into this world looking almost fully grown. I feel like I'm too young to be a parent, and too much of a role model to be something like an older brother, but the way she looks at me? Nothing short of a little sister looking up to me for guidance and stability. A stability I ought to provide to her, as I brought her into this world in the first place. I have a responsibility to care for her now, and I'm not about to drop the ball on that. I'd hope.

Plus, it doesn't help much that she's over a foot shorter than me when standing up. With that temper and those whines, well, it simply comes naturally to see her in this way.

It feels right, it just feels right. There's no other way to explain it.

Though I do wonder what that must mean for the state of my soul. As supposedly a stand is simply a reflection of their User. That makes sense thus far from what I've seen of other users, though my sample size may be a bit small. Just… for us? Rosegold and I? That seems almost a bit off. Couldn't tell you why, though.

Like, if she's supposed to be a ‘reflection of my inner soul’, then why is she a little girl when I'm just a boy? That doesn't make much sense on its own, now does it. Nonetheless, it's something to investigate later, as I have more important obligations right now.

…

There's a gentle ruffling within the sheets, and a little gray head peeks through her blanket pile to look at me for just a moment before darting back away into the darkness. “Mrrrrp~?” She makes a little noise, hidden beneath the covers. “Are you coming to bed, 『User』?”

“Of course, doll!” I happily say to her. Almost, almost as giddy as she is to finally be sharing my bed with someone. No less a girl! I've never gotten to have a sleepover before. Not one time in my whole life, and it was always something I had wished to do. But my friendships never lasted long enough to allow that, even at my twenty years of age. Now seems like a perfect time to catch up on that. “But you'll have to make some room for me under all those blankets, you little burrowing fox!”

“Nooooooooo!” Rosegold giggles and rolls around in the bed, kicking the sheets everywhere before bunching them all up again. “Not my burrow!!! If you want it you'll have to take it!!”

“I guess I'll have to take it then!” I jump into the bed and rustle the sheets all over, playing tug of war with Rosegold for a section of the bed. It quickly turns into an all out turf war in just a few seconds flat. All fun and games until a porcelain gray hand darts out to grab one of my pillows and smack me in the face.

I'm stunned!

I'm absolutely stunned and my jaw drops in a dramatic display of flabbergastedness!

Rosegold sits up slowly with the pillow down. She notices the dramatic look on my face and nearly freezes in place. “U-user?” She trembles. “What's wrong?”

“Rosegold!” I say to her, jaw still dropped and eyes totally wide. “You're heartless!!”

“What!?!?!?” She squeaks, looking completely shocked.

“You killed me! Now….. I'm gonna get you!” I quickly reached out and stole her pillow just to bop her on the face with it in a big puff of feathers.

“Oouuuuuuhhhhh” She flops backwards in an instant kill. “I'm deaaaad.” She goes sprawling on the bed.

It makes me crack out into full body laughter nearly instantly. Her drama and my drama combined into a devilish display of comedy, I simply could not contain my laughter any longer. It seems that my dolly couldn't either, as she starts giggling like an idiot as well. Laughing together with me for so long that I'm not even sure we'll ever fall asleep. And it simply feels… fucking incredible. I'm utterly amazed that having someone close to me like this could feel so great. There's nowhere I'd rather be than here, laughing along with her.

Until there's an angry knock on my door that makes us both go dead silent.

A grouchy sounding woman calls from the other side of the door. “Son, if you don't shut the hell up right now, I swear I will find my way in there and whoop your ass! I'm trying to sleep, and you're supposed to be grounded! Stop watching whatever show you're watching and go to bed! Or I swear….” Her voice trails off as she walks away.

I feel utterly morbid.

That could have gone so poorly so quickly if my mother had walked in here and seen the two of us. I can't even begin to imagine all the possibilities of how badly that could have gone. There are too many to count. My heart rate skyrockets again instantly.

Until a pair of arms wraps around me and pulls me down to the bed to lie flat.

“Shhhh….” Rosegold whispers. “I can feel you panicking.”

“Of course I'm panicking!” I whispershout right back to her. “That could have gotten you found! I don't know what I would have done if she came in here!”

“Shhh…. Calm down.” She lays me flat and sticks a pillow beneath my head before climbing halfway on top of me beneath the sheets. This would have been quite the compromising position if it weren't for the nature of our relationship as too deeply platonic. In honesty it just feels completely natural. “I would have just gone away again if she came in. And look, she didn't! I'm still here and we're both still fine! Everything is going to be fine.” She reassures me over and over again, rubbing her smooth palm across my arm in a rhythmic fashion. It's deeply soothing.

“You're right, you're right. Thank you… I feel so on edge lately. I think I almost just had a panic attack right there.”

“I know, I can tell.” She says. “I can tell when you're getting upset like that. I'm glad you've calmed down now. It's been a long day for both of us, so we should probably go to sleep.”

“Yeah, yeah… I agree…” I say back to her before groaning and wiping my face. “Grreeerrrrrmmmmm…… what am I gonna do about tomorrow?”

“What do you mean?” Rosegold asks me, running a single finger up and down the length of my tummy. It almost tickles.

“I agreed to meet that Valerie girl again in the park tomorrow, but now we're grounded. How am I supposed to get out and tell her that? She's gonna think I just ditched her ass because I didn't want to help her with her leads…”

“Oh, right, that blonde girl. I don't think she's gonna believe that you just abandoned her, though. She doesn't seem like the type. Plus you'll be able to sneak out on Monday during school hours at the very least. You can tell her then. And from what I gathered, I think she'll believe you.”

“From what you gathered!?” I almost raised my voice again, but a startled little jump from my doll made me remember that I have to stay quiet. I keep my voice to a whisper. “You weren't even there! How do you know what she was like!”

“Snrrk-” Rosegold makes a snickering noise. “I was there, silly. Just because you can't see me when I go away, doesn't mean I can't keep watching. I was there the whole time, just waiting.”

“You mean to tell me you were there, watching the entire time but you didn't once help me?” I feel almost offended. I had to deal with that intimidating girl all on my own!

“I did help you, silly goose! Don't you remember the fire?”

“pshhh!” I blow air from my mouth. “Yeah you helped, helped steal all the glory from me!”

Rosegold makes a noise indicating she's holding back demons. The amount of mocking laughter she'd spill in this moment would be unprecedented if we didn't have to stay quiet. “Glory! What glory! I saw you fumbling the bag on that one like crazy! You had zero rizz!!!” She rolls away from me and starts to laugh into the pillows. Desperately trying to stay quiet.

“Wut…” I'm dumbfounded. “That's very mean to say. I'll have you know I did very well in my opinion! It's not often that I meet such intimidatingly forward young women! I was out of my league!”

“Ahhh ahhhh…..” Rosegold sighs deeply satisfied after getting all of her giggles out. She rolls back towards my way and wraps her arms around me, throwing a nearly weightless leg over one of mine. She's using me like a body pillow, but I don't really mind. “Yeah, to be fair, she was pretty intimidating. So I guess I don't blame you for being totally rizzless.”

“Hey! I'm not- who taught you that word anyway! How the hell do you know what ‘rizzless’ means!”

She giggles before reaching out beneath the covers and bopping me on the nose. “Go to bed, goofball. Cuz I'm not telling.” She adjusts her position while I'm laying on my back, finding a place to rest her head on my chest, directly above my heart.

“Ah. Fine. Whatever. I'm just glad to see you're doing okay, Rosegold. I was getting seriously worked up every time you wouldn't appear.” I wrap my arms around her the same.

“Yeah… m'sorry. I'll try not to do stuff like that again unless it's important. But…. 『User』?” She tilts her head up to look at me sincerely. She goes serious and I feel my heart almost stop from guessing what it could be. I find myself searching for where her eyes would be, trying to look for some kind of answer in her sudden change of emotions. But no matter how desperately I search, I still don't find any. Just indents that remind me of her inherent inhumanity.

“Yes, 『Rosegold?』”

“I know I was pretty messy today, all that happened kinda got to me pretty bad. I was overtaken by so many strong emotions… And I… I'm sorry.” She starts to apologize preemptively.

“What are you sorry fo-”

“I saw what you were about to do with the razor blade. That's why I showed myself when I did. I don't like pretending like I was the only one who was messy. I knew what you were going to do with that if I didn't stop you. I was going to wait it out all day if I needed to. I didn't want to show up as a crying mess in front of you after I already knew how bad today was treating you. I didn't want to dump another problem on top of you after all that, but I just couldn't stay hidden when I noticed what you were going to do. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for hiding and I promise not to let you get that far into a spiral without me again.”

“O-oh, Rosegold… you don't have to-”

She cuts me off, silencing my bumbling before I can even start. “But I do. You helped me so much today… I can't go on pretending like I'm the only one who needs help. Like I'm the only one who deserves help. You deserve help too, and I promise to try for you as best as I can. We're in this together now, so it's the least that I can do to repay you. You can't tell me that you don't want to do the same for me, don't you?”

“I- I do. I get the feeling that I want to protect you. Innately, I-” I start to wave a hand through the air. “I don't understand it, it just comes to me, I want to make you safe and happy and-”

“Shhh… you don't have to explain. I get what you're saying, see? I feel the same way. It's going to be okay, and we're going to get through this together, I promise.” She holds me tightly in her arms and I hold her right back. So tightly she almost fades right back into me. But thankfully, she stays.

“Oh, thank you….” It's my turn to say that now, with tears welling up in my eyes that are entirely my own. “Thank you… I've never had anyone say that kind of thing to me before…”

“I know.” She whispers. “But it's different now.”

“Thank you… I don't even know what to say, I-”

Rosegold gasps suddenly, pushing off me to sit up straight all of the sudden. She looks positively shaken.

“What, what??” I ask her, just as shocked.

“I heard it! I heard it, User! Through my very own ears, look, look!” She turns her head to show me. Lo and behold, she's got a brand new set of fully sculpted porcelain ears. Where just before they were simply ridges in imitation, these ones look very real. Though they're still made of glossy gray porcelain.

“Woah. Wow. You got, um, ears? What did… What did you hear with them?” I ask her, my eyes going completely starry. I'm mystified. I'm proud of her.

“I heard your heart. Beating in your chest… And it was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.”

(End Of Chapter Ten)

← To Be Continued