Youth

#47 - Striking Similarities

    [Y/n] tossed and turned a fair amount when she began to awaken. The smell in the room was unfamiliar — slightly musty and almost metallic; not her own room, not the basement— where had she last been? She squeezed her eyes and pushed the sleep from the corners, sitting up. When her eyes adjusted to her surroundings, she remembered where she had been, which only brought more confusion as she processed why she was... here.

    "Hey [Y/n]!" Aytsa grinned from his workbench. [Y/n] blinked a couple of times as she stared around the room, speechless.

    "Why am I here?" she asked. "Where's Laion?"

    "Why do you want to be with Laion?" Aytsa responded carefully, a smile still on his face, though his words were slow for a reason that [Y/n] couldn't pin. She didn't understand this boy. At least with Laion she knew he'd be calm and relatively caring, and with Draka she knew he'd be slightly irascible and self-deprecating; with Mitzu she could expect anger and with Seishin she could expect disrespect and indifference. Kori... supposedly she could expect to be thoroughly disturbed by the end of her visit, but Aytsa? Who even was he? What was he thinking?

    "I- I don't, I just..." she looked over at the lava lamp on his bedside table. Vampires had lava lamps? Maybe he'd made it himself? He was scientific and creative, after all. She distractedly watched the small blobs of whatever the hell they put inside lava lamps rise to the top and then gracefully swirl back down, occasionally clumping with other blobs and changing paths. She didn't really want to talk. This was the most fun she'd had since Nyais passed — just watching a lava lamp. She wondered how long her situation would remain the same for. She was supposed to live forever... would she live here forever? Or maybe one day she'd break to the point of being unrecognisable, and the boys would have no need for a damaged shell of who she was. Maybe she'd be discarded of like the humans who came with her to this damned place. Or maybe...

    [Y/n] was jolted from her thoughts by Aytsa, who pulled her shoulders back from the lava lamp a little, holding her at a slight distance. With all her gazing, [Y/n] hadn't realised how close her face had gotten to the glass exterior of the lamp.

    "It's called a lava lamp for a reason, silly," Aytsa laughed softly, "I haven't worked out how to make the glass not transfer so much heat, so if you touch that it's gonna leave a nasty burn." [Y/n] looked back up at him and nodded. "Aww, I know I keep saying it but you really are like a cat. It's adorable," he gushed, pulling [Y/n] a little closer to him as he perched himself behind her.

    "Stop..." [Y/n] tailed off quietly. Aytsa raised a brow.

    "Stop what?" he asked.

    "Please let me go," she rephrased, hoping that would get the message across better. Aytsa let out a light laugh, removing his hands from her shoulders. Just as [Y/n] was about to breathe out a sigh of relief, he instead wrapped them around her waist and rested his head on her right shoulder.

    "No can do~" he sang, the happy tone never once leaving his voice.

    "Aytsa," [Y/n] muttered more firmly this time, "does it look like I'm joking to you?" At first [Y/n] assumed her words had caught him off guard as he removed his head from her shoulder and his grip on her loosened, but the series of giggles that followed his actions made her rethink her prior analysis. The boy then stood up, still laughing, and walked over to his workbench. He didn't stop. He could if he wanted to, but seeing [Y/n]'s expression begin to grow uncertain in the small mirror he'd been making made the boy all the happier.

    Then, silence. He turned around, all traces of a smile gone.

    "First you'd rather spend your time with Laion, then you try to boss me about..." he tailed off, shaking his head.  "It makes me kinda sad, [Y/n]."