A pounding headache drilled the back of Shinya’s head and his neck throbbed. He raised his hand to the pain and circled the round puncture marks on his throat. He turned over in his hard loft bed, to realize that it was much softer than usual. It smelled like dried rose petals, not the usual mildew smell of this time of year. The scratchy, wool blankets that usually covered him felt silken under his bare arm.

He opened his tired eyes and shot upright as he looked around the enormous, unfamiliar room. The walls were covered with bright blue, silk wallpaper. Large, Persian carpets was in the center of the floor of blue and white and all other ornaments and covering, including his blankets, were blue. Across the room from the bed a roaring fireplace warmed the room, for outside it was pouring rain and thunder. The only sound in the room came from that fireplace, the crackling of burning wood.

As soon as he had sat up he heard the door creaking and a tall man entered. He was wearing a red suit and a matching top hat. His face was painted pure white with thick black around his eyes and on his lips. He smiled and came towards the bed.

"Hello. My name is Kozi."

Shinya looked to Kozi’s hand. He was holding Chinese exercise balls, they look like bloody eyeballs.

Shinya didn’t answer. He looked around confused and then fell back onto the bed, weak. He raised his hands to the wounds again. He could remember only bits of the night before. He remembered being ravaged by Mana, the magician and being on stage before that. But after that, there was nothing.

Kozi sat beside him and touched his forehead. Shinya jerked a little. "I didn’t mean to scare you." Kozi removed his hand. "Mana keeps me here as sort of a…physician for his guests. He told me you were quite ill and wanted me to come check on you." He touched the wounds on Shinya’s neck, Shinya allowed him to somehow feeling trust in this man. "He really dug into you, didn’t he?"

As soon as his words were spoken the doors to the room were slammed open and Mana himself sashayed in. At the first sight of him Shinya gasped and remembered everything from the night before. He pulled away from Kozi and tried to stand. A wave of nausea hit him and he fell to the floor.

Mana was kneeling beside him. "Don’t be afraid, little Shin-Chan." He held out his hand to help Shinya to his feet but he rejected it. He grabbed a curtain of the window beside him, trying to pull himself to his feet with it. He started to pull back.

Mana let out a terrified scream and jerked Shinya away from it and threw him up onto the bed. The curtain fell obediently back into place.

Stunned, Shinya looked up at Mana, who was shaking and Yu~ki held him to stop it. Yu~ki was glaring daggers at Shinya.

Mana stood tall, as tall as he could, and put the cold mask back on his face. "I always keep the curtains closed during the day, I never open them except at night." He turned to Yu~ki. "I would like to sleep now."

Now? It’s the middle of the day.

Shinya watched them go, Yu~ki of course following like a puppy.

As soon as they were gone Kozi smiled at Shinya. "Mana wants you to have dinner with him tonight. But first he wants to have you prepared." He clapped his hands and four young maids entered. Kozi introduced them as Kyo, Toshiya, Kaoru, and Die. "They are to attend to everything that Mana has ordered for you. It should take all day." With that Kozi left.

Kyo smiled and came towards him. Shinya noticed that Kyo, and every other one of the maids had very pale skin. He wondered how often Mana let them go out of the house. He was the shortest and, Shinya felt, was the cutest. He brushed a lock of blonde hair out of his eyes and touched the skin on the side of Shinya’s face. "Oi," He said to the others. "He is very pale, naturally I can see. Though much more now that Mana has got to him." He pulled on Shinya’s arm. "Stand up."

Shinya stood up beside the bed. "Oh! I want to do his hair and his makeup!" The girlish Toshiya bounced over to the bed and started playing with the blonde hair.

Die came over and ran a finger down Shinya’s arm, making him feel like Die was undressing him with his eyes. "Kyo, we can do his clothes, ne?"

They all heard clapping behind them and looked up. Kaoru stood with his hands on his hips and glared at the excited others. "First," He said coming over and moving towards Shinya, "he has to be bathed. Ugh! He smells like the forest!" Kaoru took an offending step back to be glared at by Shinya. He ignored it. "Kyo, you and Die go boil water for the bath." They both frowned but obediently left the room. Kaoru placed a loving hand on Toshiya’s shoulder. "You can go get anything for his hair or makeup that you wish."

Toshiya beamed and ran out of the room to get them.

Shinya and Kaoru were left in the room alone together. "So you are his new toy." Kaoru said, it wasn’t a question.

"Excuse me?" Shinya watched Kaoru’s face. "Mana attacked me…why am I here? I want to go home!"

Kaoru nodded and looked sad for a second. "We all do. But Mana wants us here. So you might as well make the best of it. Do you have a wife, or family? Anyone that would miss you?"

Kaoru was now standing directly in front of Shinya. Shinya nodded and looked down at the floor. "No. No one. I live with my grandmother, but she doesn’t care if I stay or go." Kouru nodded again.

Soon Kyo and Die returned with the water. They each held two large buckets of steaming water and trudged into the bathroom with them, complaining underneath their breath. They filled the tub and as soon as Shinya walked into the bathroom Kyo and Die started to strip him of his clothes, when Toshiya returned a second later he started to help as well.

"Wah! No, stop!" Shinya tried to pull away.

"Don’t worry, Shin-chan! Toshiya giggled. "You have nothing more than we have."

"Ahh! But he does had more than you Die-kun!" Kyo laughed as Shinya was completely stripped bare. Both Shinya and Die blushed all the way to their toes and Die landed a hard fist on the side of Kyo arm.

"Iitai!" Kyo rubbed his arm.

Kaoru helped Shinya into the porcelain tub, making sure that he would not slip.

"Wah!" Shinya made the loud noise and shielded himself as they all started to scrub his skin viciously. "Iitai! It hurts! Stop!"

Toshiya giggled again. "Sorry." They started to go slower.

Shinya blushed the entire half-hour that it took them to finish. Toshiya had gotten soap from washing his hair in his eyes about four times, making small tears trickle down his cheek. "Don’t hurt him, Toshiya!" Kaoru scolded over and over.

As Toshiya washed and rinsed his hair the rest of them did his body. Shinya thought he was going to die of embarrassment.

When the torture was finally over they made him stand up out of the tub while they all scrubbed his body with towels. "Iitai! Do any of you know how to do anything gently?" They all laughed at him of course. Toshiya was gentle on his hair this time, feeling guilty for getting all the soap in his hair before.

"You should feel lucky," Die laughed, "we all have to wash ourselves!" Kyo laughed with him. Shinya blushed an even deeper red, as bright as the tomatos his grandmother grew in her garden.

Kaoru helped him to put on a silk bathrobe and they ushered him into a dressing room. Shinya had not seen this room before. It was lit with at least a hundred large candles. One wall was covered completely with a mirror. In the center of the room a thin, blue, satin couch faced the mirror. At the left side of the room a large, redwood dresser was overflowing with clothes and on the right was a large table covered with the cosmetics and hair accessories that Toshiya had brought in.

They pushed him down onto the couch.

Kyo and Die started rifling through the dresser and Toshiya grabbed a brush from the table. Kaoru sat down beside Shinya and put his arms up on the couch. Shinya sat nervously, playing with his hands. Kaoru grabbed his right hand and looked at the fingernails. "You’ve chewed your nails all the way to the nub." He grabbed a file off the table and started to fix the nails.

Shinya bit his lip. "You really don’t have to do that."

Kaoru smiled. "I do. Mana sama wants to see you perfect at dinner."

Shinya felt Toshiya started to brush out his hair and drying it with a towel.

They all looked over as Kyo screamed. "No! That would look horrible on him!" Die was holding up a blue satin gown with pearl embroidery. "I want him to wear this!" He held up a bright blue, velvet suit and a ruffled dress-shirt. Die scowled. "Ugh!" They both turned to Kaoru. "Which one?" They asked in unison.

Kaoru’s eyes flew open, "Why are you asking me!"

Toshiya smiled. "I like the suit! The suit would look better on him!"

"Yes!" Kyo jumped and stuck his tongue out at Die. Die glared over at Toshiya, who merely shrugged. Kyo ripped the dress Die was holding out of his hands and flung he back over his shoulder. "Stand up, Shinya!"

Kyo helped him to dress and went back to arguing with Die. This time over which shoes to wear. Kaoru rolled his eyes.

They chose black velvet with silk lining. Kaoru and Toshiya thought they were hideous, but they were the only ones that Die and Kyo would agree on. Toshiya clipped Shinya’s hair back and let some strands frame his face and then applied very thick white makeup, making him look like a ghost, then applied dark blue makeup all around his eyes and clear lipstick.

"Oh! You look wonderful!" Toshiya said, Kaoru scrunched his face. "It’s too much!"

Toshiya stuck his tongue out. "Well, I like it!"

For the rest of the day Shinya was left to do nothing but sit around. He played Chess once with Kozi, but he was so much better at it that Shinya felt it was no fun for him.

But time sunset hit and darkness came and the moon rose up into the sky Shinya had been sitting out on the balcony of the room he awoke in for nearly two hours. Mana’s house and land was beautiful. His balcony looked right over a cliff of the ocean. The landscape was decorated with various trees and flowers of all different colors of blue.

To the left of the white castle there was the beginning of the forest. It was dark and gloomy and just the sight of it frightened Shinya. He knew that the town was buried somewhere with these trees. He saw a few blank spots, perhaps one of those? In the center of the trees, partly close to the cliffs was another castle. Unlike the white castle he sat in this one was black, and not as big. The towers just peaked up over the tops of the largest trees.