Shin could still hear his reflection laughing softly as he backed away from the refrigerator. "Ko-ki, I have a bad feeling about this," he murmured while stepping back from the reflection in the refrigerator's doorknob, which had previously spoken to him. Ko-ki, of course, had been enthralled with the glowing colours their cell phones were emitting and had not seen anything. "How about we go outside, or something?"

Ko-ki smirked teasingly. "Are you afraid of your own house, Shin-kun?" Despite actually looking in Shin's direction to find out if he really was scared, Ko-ki's eyes remained fixed to the phone. It seemed as though he believed the longer he stared at the glowing colours the more likely it would be that the phone would show the right time-when nothing that had the ability to tell time in the kitchen was not glowing funky colours and not showing a numerous range of times from three in the morning the day before and eight at night the day after: Shin's family were usually a very punctual bunch, though Shin himself never actually looked at any of the clocks.

"Not of my house," Shin muttered with slight annoyance. On top of being ignored, he wished he could be as composed as his friend seemed to be after their impromptu make-out session-which was how Shin was going to be referring to it in his head from then on out. His first kiss. "Come on," he demanded firmly and pulled his best friend from the room, but let go of him in shock: there was no one in the living room. They had all been half asleep when they left for the kitchen and now no one was around? "Reno? Ryouga, IV?"  He called out in shock.

Turning around to face Ko-ki for some answers, he flinched. His pink haired friend had vanished into thin air. "Ko…ki?" He called nervously and his teeth began to chatter a little in the cold air and the fear of loneliness combined with his talking reflection.

A soft sound like the song of a small bell tinkled in the air around him before honing in on his left ear. Spinning around quickly he managed to not catch the maker of the sound, but instead his right ear came under assault by the little noise. As he revolved this time a glowing ball of golden light hovered before his eyes; its size shrinking and growing to the notes of its sound. Shin reached slowly up to touch it, but before his fingers could brush the warm-looking sphere of gassy gold it darted away from him as if it were a living thing. Prior to realizing what he was doing, Shin found himself following the shimmering light out of the room.

As he stepped into what should have been the hallway leading to the front door where only a few hours ago-maybe even under an hour-Ko-ki and he had collapsed into each other and Iv had embraced him. Instead he walked only a few feet before coming to a staircase with a hallway going off to his right and he frowned while standing very still. Somehow had they left his house without realising it and found some other large building to have their party in? He did not think they could travel so far without noticing it since it was winter outside and freezing cold, but no matter how impossible, this could not be his house, but the pictures and paintings hanging on the walls he did recognise. The living room had looked the same.

Before he could follow the golden ball a pained shriek ripped through the very walls around him.

Reno.

Shin sprinted down the dark hall way screaming for his under brother as he tore open doors and yelled into the darkness behind them. Stumbling upon one room that was dimly lit and full of whimpers, he strained his eyes to find something moving in the darkness just out of his reach. Approaching slowly, he felt fear beyond anything he had ever experienced before. He heard a soft, mimicking whisper and a low throated groan.

"Reno?"

The noises stopped and for a long moment Shin thought he had merely imagined them in the first place. Glowing red eyes snapped open in front of him and in the dull light white teeth appeared in a grin as a face came into focus. He felt all the warmth he had previously sustained from the chilled house leave his body in a single expulsion of breath and his chest tightened so it became impossible to recapture the last warm entities back.

"My name is Gauryo," it whispered with Ryouga's voice. "I am currently tearing your brother to pieces," Gauryo snarled, "so you had better be going now." Icy fingers locked onto his arms and Shin found himself shoved so hard from the room he smacked against the opposite wall painfully.

"SHIN-!" Reno's voice screeched as the door separated them.

"No!" Shin bellowed and threw himself at the door again-barely feeling the pain in his back with the coming of the adrenalin rush-but when the door opened before him easily he found himself at the entrance of a completely different room, one bathed with more light.

In the very center of the rooming sitting in a large darkly coloured chair that Shin had never before seen in his house before was Reno. He felt that something was wrong, something was off, and was Reno not just screaming for help in a different room? Was this his brother? It looked the same as him, almost the same from the distance at which they stood a part from each other, but the feeling was wrong. Reno, seeming to notice him, stood slowly from the chair and draped his arm over it. With a graceful, confident moment and a slight grin Reno beckoned Shin to join him.

"Come sit down, brother," the man whispered with Reno's voice.

Against his will Shin found himself striding over so softly he barely felt his own footsteps and sinking down into the chair. The man looking down at him with Reno's face did not have Reno's green eyes, but eyes of the deepest onyx. He had never seen Reno grin in that way, either.

"I see," the man hummed, "so you are not my brother, but I look into your eyes and know you have met Nushi-sama."

Shin remained silent, though he wanted to know the answers to all his questions and wanted to ask the man staring him down over the chair.

"Let me tell you a secret," the man who looked like Reno purred and brought his hand down over Shin's eyes, flattening his hair and holding him easily to the chair. Shin found within himself no desire to move away. Against his ear hot breathe brushed and the secret came: "we own everyone and everything in this house, and sooner or later the five humans here before us will be dead." Shin tensed and tried to pull away again, but his body was not responding to his commands. "We won't kill you right away of course," Reno's look-a-like touched his ear with his lips, "you seem to be fun playthings."

"Let go of me," Shin commanded, but his voice came out as a weak noise instead of the strength he had imagined when he thought of saying that. "Leave us alone."

Reno's look-a-like chuckled for a moment. "Get out of here," he snarled after another laugh and padded the back of his self-constructed throne.

Shin found himself exiting the room without even remembering getting out of the chair. Once outside of the room he found himself at the top of the same stairs he had seen before and was immediately surrounded by the glowing balls of golden light. Staring around in surprise, he found himself looking eyes with IV, with two IVs. IV's eyes, behind their black contacts, seemed dazed as though he were really asleep and the other IV, with eyes that matched the colour of the golden balls that floated to him as he raised his hands, had his head cocked to the side in a manner that showed he was intrigued by Shin's sudden appearance.

"IV…?" He found himself asking even though his legs were carrying him to the bottom of the stairs. Once at the bottom he looked up again. Golden eyes met his, but his IV, his boyfriend, his friend, was looking at the floor with his shoulders bent. He looked the image of a puppet discarded by his master.

Shin could not help but slip away into what had been the living room. He found an even lighter room, though there was no sun coming in the windows and none of the lights were on. Collected on the floor were blankets that looked like they had survived from an era before the house had even been constructed. Sitting down slowly and pulling one of the ragged blankets around his shivering form, he closed his eyes tightly with no intention to actually sleep.

His brother had been harmed in someway, though he did not want to think about the possibility of him now lying somewhere as cold as the house and not breathing. IV was supposedly outside the room from where he was sitting although by now the rooms had changed so much on him Shin thought there was a possibility he was not going to see stairs when he left the room he was resting in. There was a man who looked like Reno who had told him they were all going to die. There was the other IV. There was the man in the darkness, who had been attacking his brother, and who had sounded like Ryouga. There was no sign of Ko-ki. Ryouga was nowhere to be found. It was cold. There was no light. And Shin could not remember ever feeling so miserable in his life.

When his head hit the floor he was not even aware of it.

*

He stands in a small alleyway with another man, whose eyes are shaped like his own and whose voice sounds like his own. He is speaking with this man with soft undertones while the other is laughing. Narrowing his eyes a little, he demands that he and his friends be released.

"Unfortunately, Shin-kun," the other man says, "we need to devour you and your friends if we are to survive in your world. Our world no longer wants us and we need some new place to be. You understand, don't you?"

Shin can not understand. "You're talking about our deaths!" Suddenly his undertone becomes a pitched yell. "How can you just stand there and ask me if I understand why I'm supposed to give up my life for you?"

"You're human," the man hisses, "and your life is wasted upon you. In a hundred years I will still be alive, but you, you will be rotting in the earth!"

"That doesn't give you the right to take our lives, I won't let you," Shin retorted with as much strength to his voice as he could muster.

"We already have, you know. For now we are simply playing." Nushi explained with a victorious smugness to his voice.

In anger Shin lunges to punch him, but his fist connects with rock only and the pain jolts him awake.

*

"Did you sleep well?" A voice growls in his ear.

With a small groan, Shin looks up into black eyes. They are so similar to the eyes the man in his quickly fading but still present dream had that he screams in fear and rage. "Don't touch me, we're not yours to play with!"

"Hush, hush," the Reno look-a-like placed a hand almost gently over his mouth and Shin's insides froze, which effectively silenced him. "You were talking to my brother, what did he say? Do we kill you yet?"

Shin narrowed his eyes in a furious glare and did not speak.

"That's alright; I can tell by your eyes that he has not commanded us to kill the humans yet. It seems as though we are as of yet to continue toying with you." The black-eyed man carried on with his one-sided conversation. "You can call me Nore. I'm going to rape you, Shin-kun." Shin's eyes widened as Nore removed the hand from his mouth and got up off of him. "So try and stop me."

Breathlessly, Shin stared up at him. Like a nightmare stance, his body would not listen to his command to flee. He was stuck, lying on the floor, with his clothes and a ragged blanket keeping him "protected." Absolute terror filled his eyes and Nore kneeled down over him.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Nore asked and brushed a hand across Shin's cheek. "Run away. How are you going to stop us if you can't protect yourself from one simple little action?"

Shin's hand twitched as it swatted the hand stroking his face away. Surprised, he stared at hand for a moment before a thought raced through his mind: what was he doing staring at his hand if could be running?!