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[Warning, some of the last posts contain more adult themes. Read at own discretion !]

The walk from the cemetery had seemed both impossibly long, and too short. Before he knew it, before he'd had time to really let what had happened sink in, he was walking through the school gates, barely noticing the damage there that had not been present when he'd left. It didn't matter what had happened here while he was out of town, nothing mattered right now. Nothing but getting to his room, and.. And what? Locking himself away wouldn't help, not really, and there was so much scattered around his dorm that would remind him of her.

Broad shoulders rounded, and he adjusted his grip on his bag as he made his way across the lawn and towards the familiar gloom of the ghost dorms.

So many emotions were circulating through him. Everything from pain and sorrow, to rage. Yes, the break up at hurt, but what was worse what he'd never seen it coming. Never known that Junko had been unhappy, because instead of facing her issues she'd decided to shove them away, to ignore them, until they'd finally overwhelmed her. He felt like a Jacking fool. What was he thinking, proposing?

Oh yeah, that's right. He'd loved her. He'd loved her, and he'd wanted to show her how dedicated he was to her. well hadn't that just blown up in his face? It was almost funny, almost, if not for the sharp ache in his heart like someone had driven a blade between his ribs.

All the same he'd cracked an unpleasant smile as he'd descended into the dorms, an cold chuckle beginning to trickle from his throat as he made his way to his room. By the time he'd gotten to his door the chuckle had grown to a laugh, but as he opened the door, looked in on the unexpected damage that had befallen in his absence, that laugh melted into a sorrow filled scream, if you could call the growling, eruption of sound that. He screamed, and dropping his suitcase, he brought his hand up to slam curled knuckles into the wall beside the door frame. Over and over, until black blood began to drop from his hand.

Lost in his sorrow and pain, the ghost boil was oblivious to what was going on around him. Not until a familiar voice spoke up did Seiji really remember where he was. It startled him, and he jerked back from the wall, almost stumbling on his own suitcase that had been left on the floor. "Sarias." One word, acknowledging her there before him., and although he'd been screamed only seconds before his voice was lower, a little horse, and generally numb.

The banshee had been gone for a while, almost a year. So long in fact that Seiji had nearly forgotten the incidents that had happened between them. The fights, and the confessions. All of it had been buried under so many other things. Had she showed her face a year ago, when those memories were fresh, he'd have likely looked at her with anger, but now?

He just stared at her a moment, glowing eyes beginning to take on that bruised look of one that was carrying far too many emotions. Of all the people that could have stumbled upon him in that moment of broken weakness, it had to be her.

Usually he'd have come up with a snappy come back to counter her comments, but nothing came. He didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. Instead he looked away. First at the wall beside his door with it's dark smear of ectoplasmic blood, then to down to his knuckles and the darkness that stood out against his gray skin. Broad shoulders rounded, that tall from hunching a bit as he released a sigh.

"What do you want, Sarias?" Maybe later he'd be curious about where she'd been, but right that matter nothing really mattered. He didn't want to deal with her craziness, or her vindictive nature.

Hollowed eyes narrowed at her as she mentioned hunger pangs. First in confusion, and then in spite. Did she really think he'd been standing there, bloodying his hand against the wall, shrieking, over being hungry? Probably not, but she had liked to needle him in the past, and that didn't seem likely to change over time and separation. Their last meeting had been strange, and very awkward, and before that they'd had that friendship shattering fight. No, she wasn't so cavalier to assume his pain had anything to do with his stomach.

He shook his head at her, a few loose lengths of black slipping from their tail to frame his face. "I'm not ruled by my stomach," he tossed at her dismissively, turning to grab his suitcase before moving into the room.

The door was left open behind him. It wasn't really an invitation for the banshee, but if she followed him in he wasn't sure he'd really care right that moment. Not even Sarias' presence was enough to distract from the hollow ache in his chest. Cleaning the ruin of his room might be, but everywhere he looked there were little reminders of Junko. Ribbons, decorative sticks, sewing supplies, even clothing. Small, seemingly unobtrusive little things that he had never noticed before in day to day life, and now they stood out to him as if they glowed.

With an emotion choked grunt the boil strode through the wreckage and into the bedroom, tossing the suitcase on the bed, and grabbing an empty shoe box from the closet. An earring, a pin cushion, and a length of ribbon well found their way inside before he'd emerge back into what amounted as his sitting room and work space, and he set about gathering up any little trinket that had belonged to the ghoul that would not be returning.

He wasn't paying attention to Sarias, wasn't even aware if she'd bothered to follow him. In that moment he needed to rid himself of those little things. Each one a new stab of pain in a heart that felt glacial and cold.

Sarias might as well have not even been there for all the attention he paid her. He was too focused in his task, too hell bent on ridding his room of every tiny reminder. His movements jerky, almost erratic as he as gathered up the small keepsakes. They needed to go, every single one of them. He needed not to see them, not to be reminded of her right that moment.

His name fell on deaf ears, at least until the banshee stepped into his path and forced him to stop and stare down at her, eyes a little too wide. He didn't even respond to the insult, not so much as a twitch of lips, but merely gazed down at her, the raw hurt of what had happened only a few hours previously still so fresh in his glowing eyes.

The ghoul before him wasn't someone Seiji would have considered a friend, or someone to confide in, but she was there. Right place, right time. It didn't matter what had happened in the past, not right that second. He needed to tell someone, to make it reall. Despite his desperate hope that it was all just some great big lie, or nightmare, and he'd wake up from it and find the futakuchi-onna laying beside him.

But that was the lie. She'd never wake up in his bed again, nor he in her's. There would be no more hugs, no kisses, no laughing over home cooked meals, no intimate secrets. Nothing.

He had to swallow before he he could speak, and his eyes dropped to the box in his hands. Quickly he shoved it away onto the dresser that stood beside him. "I asked Junko to marry me." He sounded strained, wounded. "She turned me down, then broke up with me." It was said so matter of factly, as if showing no feeling would make it hurt less. It didn't.

The jikininki wasn't so far gone that he had forgotten who Sarias was, and he braced himself for the triumphant ring of 'I told you so'

The gasp had red on black eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Surely there was more to come. This was Sarias. Where Sarias ventured, cold sarcasm, and vindictive taunts followed.

Except apparently for now. He blinked at her, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but all that followed that gasp was disbelief and befuddlement towards the implications that Junko had been the one to end things. The insults had pointed teeth gritting, an automatic response to any harsh word aimed towards the monster ghoul, but he didn't try to defend her, not this time. She'd lost that right when she'd given him up.

As for him allowing it? "I wasn't going to fight her on and insist she stayed. She would have just resented me, and I think I deserve to be with someone that wants to be with me, and isn't just there for guilt or obligation." That wasn't to say he hadn't argued with her. You couldn't exactly call what they'd done fighting, but he had raised his voice at her. Not that anyone could really blame him, given the situation.

As the banshee carried on he found himself feeling even lower, though somehow he got the feeling that wasn't really her intention. Usually it was, but not right now, in that moment. He stared at her as she expressed the outrage he should have felt, and waited to feel angry when she called Junko a b***h. There was the slightest twinge, but that was it. That all on it's own made him feel even worst, and he leaned back to rest his hips against the dresser, raising both hands and pressing them against his face as he lowered his head.

He didn't see the slight mistiness in the banshee's eyes, or how angry this seemed to be making, but even if he had he wouldn't have understood it.

Mismatched hands dropped back to his sides just in time to catch the banshee wiping the blood tinged tears from her eyes to flick the droplets against the wall. He stared at those brightly colored little drops, brows pinching above his nose. Tears, for him? For what?

He looked at her then, searching her face as she compared Junko to a lowly pet, and again he waited for the surge of anger that should have come, but there was nothing but a hollow numbness. It was a troubling thing, but not half so curious as the emotion Sarias was showing to him. She had agreed with him as well, and for some reason that made him feel just the smallest bit better, granted the rest of her rant didn't help nearly so much. It was a round of about way of telling him that she told him so, in far more, and more subtle, words.

He'd dropped his eyes around the time she'd mentioned him not allowing the futakuchi-onna a place on his bed, but he looked up again when she insisted he was better off now that Junko was gone. That he was pitiful and sniveling. He didn't see himself that way, but then again, he hadn't seen a mirror yet.

"Why such emotion, Sarias?" He nodded his head towards the crimson tinged tears still decorating his wall. "That's not like the Banshee I know." He'd gone back to watching her, trying to figure her out. He hadn't forgotten their last meeting, or what she'd admitted to him. Curiously he wondered if so little had changed for her since that time. Her emotions, her motives, were a welcome distraction from the howl pain that throbbed within his chest.

"Oh, of course. Silly of me to assume your heart was capable of such things." His voice was dry, and he'd brought his arms up to cross over the wide span of his chest. Glowing eyes narrowing slightly. He was starting to remember how insufferable she was. How stubbornly cold and condescending.

But what was that about punishment and trials of pain? He blinked, looking at her a little more carefully. Beyond the crimson rim around dark eyes there were marks on her arms, scars by the looks. What were they from? Did it have anything to do with why she'd been gone so long? Did it have everything to do with it? He might have reached out to catch her wrist for a better look, might have actually asked, but she spoke first.

He couldn't say he hadn't been expecting those words, but that didn't really make them any easier to hear. He didn't quite flinch when she asked him if anything she said was false. To that their was no denial, because while he still didn't see the monster as unworthy, she had been the one to end it all. Of course within all the biting, prickling gloating was the shadow of a compliment, and it made his brows arch, just a fraction, before she was floating towards him. Her hand rose to his face, and he bared those pointed teeth before those pale, pale fingers closed around his chin.

Her face was so close, had he been bothering to breath he might have held his breath at that point, because a sharp inhale might have brought them together. She was complimenting him, or his former self. More words of kindness then she'd ever bothered to share with him when they'd actually been friends. They were meant to sting, as she resumed insisting that he was a weak, shell of himself, but that didn't erase what she'd said before.

She released him so suddenly that he might have stumbled if he hand't already been leaning on the dresser, and his own arm shot out to catch a hold of one thin wrist as she sought to wipe the feel of him away on his own shirt. Yanking on her, he pulled her back the few inches she'd retreated, and his voice purred with anger as he spoke. "I am not weak, Sarias." Hurt, hollow, numb, but not weak.

Dark lip pulled back in an angry sneer, and the ghost boil couldn't help the satisfied that threaded to split is own. She'd had her fun rubbing it in his face that she'd suspected all along that his and Junko's relationship would end badly, but now it was Seiji's turn to turn the tables. She'd reminded him actually, that he wasn't just some love sick puppy to shatter and fade under the weight of rejection. He was a jikininki, and he was no ones punching bag. Especially not her's.

The hiss brought a sound of hollow amusement from him. More a rumbling sound then an actual laugh. And thick fingers tightened on that dainty wrist. "No." She could tug all she wanted, but he was much stronger then her.

She was getting angry now, and call it petty, but seeing all that wrath boiling within those narrowed eyes was making him feel just a little better. The ghoul could call him what she willed, but her insults weren't penetrating anymore, not now that he'd gained the upper hand. Another sneer pulled a smirk from his own lips, and he chuckled again The sound dying just as quickly as she leaned in close to him, almost nuzzling against the side of his head. Her breath an angry hiss along his ear. It made him stiffen, but not from her words. A moment past, silence following her last point, before he turned his head so his cheek slide along blue curls, his own lips moving dangerously close to her ear now. "Are they?"

The words were a challenge of sorts. He jerked on her arm again, drawing her against him so he could catch her waist with his free hand so she couldn't back away from him. She'd wanted that so badly once, but now she claimed it meant nothing to her. Well, now was her chance to prove it. If she could.

"Would you walk away now, Sarias?" It wasn't wise, baiting her. He couldn't honestly say that he wanted her, not after everything she'd done, but she was there. A wonderful distraction, and so very angry at him for having allowed himself to fall for the monster she loathed above all others.