Believe Me

By xannychan

Standard Disclaimers Apply: I don't own characters.

Notes: A What-If story. Don't kill me. Re-posted because of some grammatical errors. If any occur again, tell me. Thanks.

What if Hatsumi hadn't been saved Ryoki and Azusu's manager?

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Chapter One: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Please…!

I'm so sorry…

Her world was shattering around her feet.

Faces swam in front of her, their mouths, their words, their eyes blurring together into a strange mix that resembled him and she couldn't do anything about it.

She couldn't think of anything else. I'm so sorry. That was all that was echoing in her mind.

She didn't think of how he had betrayed her, how he was hurting her, how she wasn't really involved, how she couldn't understand, how much he must have hated her family to do this to her. She couldn't think of these things, because it meant that she would have to acknowledge the fact that she loved him and he hated her.

She couldn't find it in her heart to hate him or the unknown model-friends of his, because all of it was meaningless. Because she couldn't admit that she knew that everyone who she ever loved would break her heart.

She wanted to die.

Here she was, pinned on the bed with six, seven, eight, however many men surrounding her, leering at her, her lips sealed behind a hand, her fingers clawing at empty air laden with implications, insinuations, injuries so deep that she could have bled to death from her soul. And all she could think was I'm sorry.

She hoped he could see it in her weeping eyes because Ryoki could see it and it's what made him stop with his pen-daggering and knocked him out with a punch in the nose. Because her eyes were screaming it. Because her entire life was in a careful balance right now and she wanted to vomit as it tipped towards destruction.

I'm so sorry…

She couldn't close her eyes, even when one of the faceless men entered her.

She couldn't close her eyes, even when another threatened to rip out her throat if she kept screaming.

She couldn't close her eyes, because she was staring right into his with the camera rolling and her world collapsing. She hoped that when everything was over she would just die and leave him with that scene forever in his mind, forever reminding him that

She

Was

So

Sorry

She couldn't close her eyes, even when the tears began to spill like the blood that she imagined was dripping from her heart in his hands, crushed into a thousand pieces.

That was the night she stopped looking people in the eye.

Because she always, always, always saw him.

And because Hatsumi was always a mild-mannered girl and always will be, she saw it only fitting that her innocence was the first to be stolen without mercy.

She remembered only bits and pieces after that.

Ryoki's body, moving farther away than she could bear.

Collapsing in front of her bedroom door.

And always, always, his eyes.

Azusu's eyes. Only his.

Tears running down his cheeks.

I'm sorry.

That was all she could think, bleeding between her legs and haunted for the rest of her life.