The next morning, Henry seemed really out-of-shape. It was the first day since forever that he didn't make a racket in the morning. He just lay in his bed with his face faced down on the pillow while he made noises with his throat. ‘brrrrrrrrrrrrr…’ I heard him hum in the cotton cushion. It really bugged me. When our room mates rapidly ran out of the room, I realised just how irritating that sound was.

‘Hey Henry, I don't know what’s gotten into you but you’ve got to stop making that nerve wrecking sound,’ I mumbled directly above his head.

He stopped almost immediately.

‘Sooooz, Kyuhyun… I don’t feel right today. I think I might be sick… uhhhhh.’

‘I told you not to call me that in front of everyone.’

‘But there’s no one else in the room.’

My spine chilled from a second at the fact that Henry was able to keep track of his surroundings even in his sick condition. I ‘wowed’ quietly to myself.

‘O~K~ Kyu, can you do me a favour and call me in sick? I can’t even feel my face.’

‘… Um your face is buried in that pillow.’ I added wordlessly.

‘Oh yea, that’s right…’

‘Henry, do you remember what you did that might’ve caused your illness?’ I asked.

‘Errrr… no…’ he whispered. ‘OUCH! Argh, my arm hurts again. What’s with the wound-treatment liquid?  It stings like crazy!’

‘What? Let me see that. You sure you applied the right thing?’

I unrolled his bandage only to find a foul smell and almost purple coloured bloodstains. His wound looked like a slight cut by perhaps a kitchen knife or fork, even. But the way that his flesh was strewn all over and pus oozing through hard bumps looked just as disgusting as the wounds I treated before.

‘Oh no…’ I breathed.

‘What? Is it bad?’ he asked.

‘No…Henry, you’re not sick… this is poison. The medical supplies were contaminated.’

So that’s what he did, I thought, as I searched my memories for the ridiculous clown. If I could use 100 words to describe him, listing from nice to nastiest words, it’d begin with ridiculous. That wasn’t necessary though. I had to tell someone. Knowing the situation alone wouldn’t save Henry and the rest… and the first person that came to my mind was Sunny.

I held Henry by his other arm and dragged him from the room. His breath was weak and trembling like enduring a lot of pain. I dragged him through the cold corridors, twisted and turned a lot of identical corners across the castle until we finally arrived at an office. Before the demon inside was aware of us, Henry coughed at the front door. At that moment, drops of dark red liquid splattered across the glossed ground. The red color tinged green from the reflection of the hard floorboards.

The demon inside heard a sound and opened the door, only to find a puddle of thick blood and two boys. One injured and the other not.

‘Goodness, what is going on here?’ he exclaimed with a posh tongue.

‘H-help. This is my friend… I think he’s infected by some sort of poison.’ I startled.

‘And how may you explain where that poison came from?’ He said, sounding rather unpleased.

‘Um… I…I think someone must’ve contaminated the antiseptics…’

‘Who were in charge of the medic rooms?’

‘It… it’s us…’

‘Well then, the boy’s as good as dead. If the upper-men knew about this they’ll have him executed right away.’

‘What?! But we didn’t do anything!’ I raised my voice desperately. ‘Please, give him a cure first. I think I have a fair idea who poisoned the supplies.’

After my sentence of pleads, his eyes gleamed a glance of sympathy.

‘Hum… well then. Come inside.’ He sighed. ‘You. You can leave Henry boy with me. Go and find the man or woman or whoever it was. Otherwise I can’t guarantee either of your lives.’

For a minute there I was shocked to hear him say Henry’s name, though I hurried off with the clown in mind.

 Hi, it's Pawprint again... as usual :)

how'd you find this chapter??!!  (tell me right away!! i demand comments~ hehe~ just anything!!)

ya see, this chapter has a slight turning point, which is good, because that means 'action' is coming!!!

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so um... I'm going to continue the talk from last chapter here...

today I'll tell you about this 'setting'... DEMON'S REALM

so what it actually is, is a WORLD parallel to the human world and can be entered by portals located at certain places of the world. You can understand the portals to be like tubes connecting to the insides of 2 cubes.

but the thing is, there isn't only 1 portal in the world. Infact, there's 5 of those, all connecting to different 'REALMS'. As we know now that DEMON'S REALM is one of them, there are actually 6 different realms.

they are named by their dominant species; human, demon, ghost, spirit, god, and shinigami

(will continue with detail at next update) :) happy reading~