Damon walked into the hospital, gaining multiple curious gazes. Luckily he'd been given the chance to clean his hands at the police station otherwise people would probably think he had injured himself and call a doctor or something.

No, the curious gazes were focused on his appearance like usually. Oddly, the stares made him feel calm like everything was still the same as before but deep down he knew that wasn't so.

Damon sighed as he walked up to the receptionist and spoke to him. "Hello, I'm here to visit Ayano Kobayashi and Erika Anderson." Damon was polite and concise as he spoke to the man. The man looked as if he'd expected this like someone had told him this boy would visit for these two.

"Ah, we were informed you'd be visiting. It is Damon Jaeger, yes?" the man passed Damon a piece of paper to sign his name on to say he was there.

Damon took the piece of paper and picked up a pen before nodding at the man's question and signing his name on the visitor list and putting the date next to it. After doing this he was told where Ayano and Erika's rooms were and after thanking the man he walked off in the direction of the rooms.

As he made his way towards the rooms, Damon felt his palms getting clammy. He didn't quite know how these two were going to react to seeing him again and he knew even less on how they'd react to him saying he'd be going away for a while.

Damon turned a corner and saw the room for Ayano and Erika which were fortunately right next to each other.

He looked at both the doors, trying to decide on which one to visit first. Damon walked to the left door first; Ayano's room. He came to this conclusion because she was unconscious for most of the time so she didn't see his...episode.

Gently putting his hand on the door, Damon swallowed some spit in his mouth before noticing his dry mouth and hoping there would be some water in Ayano's room. Taking a deep breath, Damon lightly pushed the door open, wondering if he'd ever been this nervous about anything else before.

It was one of Damon's talents to never be nervous about anything because he always found most things easy. But now, as he walked into Ayano's hospital room he felt a rare feeling of nervousness that he wouldn't even feel even if he knew someone was going to try and kill him.

As he entered the room, he saw Ayano looking out of her window with slightly dull eyes. Her face slightly healed compared to earlier and the swelling from the bruises much more reduced as well.

Seeing the bandages wrapped around her head and the gauze secured under it on the back of her head, Damon felt an ache in his heart.

'I really am pathetic, aren't I? I couldn't even protect her...'

Silently closing the door, Damon walked over to the side of Ayano's bed and sat next to her. Ayano seemed to be shocked out of her stupor as her eyes darted over to the person she didn't notice sit down.

When her eyes noticed who it was, they widened in shock as she quickly covered her face with the blanket. "Please, Damon...Don't look at me..." her whispering voice spoke volumes about her agony she was currently experiencing.

Damon didn't quite know what to say to her, all the slight planning he'd done on the way here going out the window as he felt an invisible block in his throat.

So he didn't speak, he just stood up and got himself a glass of water and one for Ayano and walked back over to where he was sitting next to Ayano. Placing the glass for Ayano on the table next to her, he took some big gulps from his quickly finishing the glass of water.

Damon saw Ayano's thin and slender fingers clenched so tight they were bone white and shaking, sending another pang of pain through his heart.

Leaning forward, Damon's head lay in his propped up hands. He searched for things to say, he looked all throughout his head for anything but he just couldn't think of what to say and he could only peek through his unkempt hair at the outline of Ayano's figure.

As he looked at the suffering girl, only one thing seemed to be the right thing to say, so Damon said it.

"I'm sorry, Ayano...If only I was quicker...If I was quicker I'd have been able to stop them..." Damon's voice was incredibly hollow and hoarse, completely different from his usually cheerful voice. Ayano hearing Damon stopped shaking and stopped gripping the sheet over her face with her vice-like grip.

Ayano peeked her eyes out above the sheet and looked at Damon who was now gripping his hair while leaning forward and looking at the floor. Her eyes looked at him with sadness and agony in them, she blamed herself for making Damon do those things and feeling so bad about what happened to her.

"Damon...I...--" Ayano started speaking but when she saw Damon look up at her, she stopped.

There were no tears in his eyes, nor did he say anything but the feelings filling his eyes were enough to get his emotions and thoughts across. Agony, Self-Hatred, and Dejection. The two of them looked into each other's eyes and after a while, Damon spoke up.

"Ayano, I came to tell you that I'm going to have to go away for a while...I killed 4 people and the only reason I'm not in jail is that I've been recruited by an unknown organization for my...skills." Damon's voice was devoid of any energy as he finally said why he was here.

Ayano went wide-eyed as she heard what Damon said, panic surging in her body. "W-what?!" Ayano threw the sheet off her body as she threw herself at Damon and gripped his clothes.

Tears started to fall from her eyes as she pulled herself toward Damon with surprising strength from someone so petite and slender. "Don't leave, Damon...I'm sorry I'm not pure anymore...I'll try my best to be pure for you, so please stay...!"

Damon was taken aback by what Ayano said.

Damon placed his hand on Ayano's back and rubbed her back to calm her down. "Don't say stuff like that Ayano...No matter what happened, you're still pure and besides, I'm leaving because I have no choice. I'll stay in touch with you and Erika through our phones, so you can phone or text me whenever you need to."

Ayano stopped shaking but tears still poured from her eyes and she still gripped Damon's clothes with a grip of someone who seemed like they were going through rigor mortis.

Damon just let her get it all out because he knew she needed to do so. All he could do was hug her and try to calm her down by doing so.

"Ayano?" Damon looked down at her as he heard her lightly breathing and saw that she wasn't moving much anymore. Checking a bit more thoroughly Damon saw that was asleep and guessed the mass of emotion that she'd just experienced plus what happened to her earlier had worn her out.

Damon carefully lifted her off of himself and lay her back on her bed before tucking her in.

Finished, he turned around and walked toward the door. He was slightly thankful that she fell asleep because from how she was just acting, Damon knew she wouldn't have let him leave easily.

At the door, he turned back and looked at his childhood friend one last time before he exited the room and walked toward the next one. The clamminess returned as he stood outside Erika's room but this time he got on with it and quietly opened the door and entered the room.

As if a mirror image, Erika was blankly looking out of her window, her cuts and bruises slightly healed as her swollen face from earlier had lessened quite a bit. Unlike Ayano however, Erika didn't have any bandages or gauze on her body.

Her red hair was sprawled across her shoulder and chest, looking messy but at the same time beautiful.

Sadly, her dull blue eyes and dull expression took away from her beauty at the moment, not that Damon was really looking at her for that. He quietly walked over and sat on the chair next to Erika.

Erika's head shot toward the direction of Damon, the adrenaline from earlier not quite worn off yet.

"Damon!" as soon as she saw him, Erika perked up a bit and her guard dropped slightly but the fact it was still up hurt Damon a little bit despite him understanding why she had it up. Damon tried to smile to encourage her but his smile was crooked and looked incredibly fragile.

"Hello, Erika. How...how are you holding up?" Damon's voice was light as he worriedly looked over Erika's face for any tell that he could use to tell how she felt about him.

Toward Damon's question, Erika seemed to sink into her bed as she averted her gaze from him. "I'm...uhh, I'm as good as I could be at the moment...after what happened..." her voice was as fragile as Damon's smile earlier. Damon mentally slapped himself for even bringing it up to her but his mind was in shambles at the minute and he couldn't quite sort it out fully.

"I'm sorry, Erika. I'm just so, so sorry." Damon's voice was shaky as he looked at Erika with pain in his eyes. He knew his childhood friend like the back of his hand and he knew she always tried to hide her problems from other people to avoid being a burden.

Erika shuddered as if shocked by something as she looked at Damon. "What...?" her voice was barely a whisper but Damon heard it fully as he carried on.

"I'm sorry I wasn't quick enough, I'm sorry I couldn't stop them before they did what they did but most of all...I'm sorry I showed you such a sickening side to me..." Damon covered his face with his hands, gripping it like he was trying to crush it.

"I'm sorry I let this happen to you and Ayano...Such a terrible, horrific thing happened to you two and I couldn't stop it because of how pathetic I am...I--" Before Damon could carry on, Erika grabbed his arms and somehow pried them away from his face showing his widened, red-rimmed eyes and the lunacy flowing around in his yellow irises.

"None of that was your fault, Damon!" Erika yelled at him with tears pouring out of her eyes. "It was those pigs who did this, not you so-called patheticness!"

Damon's eyes seemed to go blank for a minute before he smiled in a self-deprecating way. "Wow, how much of an idiot could I be, right? I was meant to console you but here you are helping me out. You really are a good friend, Erika..."

Erika looked at Damon with worry in her eyes and Damon looked at Erika with worry as well, but there was still guilt in his eyes but there was no self-hatred accompanying it.

After Damon's brief episode of self-hatred, he and Erika talked about how he was going to have to go away for a while. Erika was distressed by this fact as she revealed that she had wanted to stay in Damon's house for a while, saying that the blond-haired boy made her feel safe.

Damon replied with the fact that wherever he was going, she'd be able to text him whenever she wanted and even call him to which the redhead cheered up slightly.

"Erika...I don't have a clue to the amount of pain you're going through and you're free to tell me to fuck off if you want but I think it'd benefit you to speak to someone about what happened today, along with Ayano as well. I...This will probably leave a mark on your psyche and take it from me; you don't want to leave that stuff unattended." Damon weakly smiled as he said this. He didn't want Erika to end up like him; someone who was quite mentally 'unique'.

Erika seemed to think for a while before finally nodding her head. "I'll give a try." her voice was light as she looked down at her lap and started fidgeting with her hands.

Neither of them spoke for a while but Erika looked like she wanted to say something. Damon could take a guess that she wanted to bring up about seeing him kill but he cut her off. "Don't, Erika. You don't need to console me about the killing. I'm sorry to say this, but that organization recruited me for a reason; I'm a born killer. There's no going back for me now."

As he said that he got up and went to walk away but felt a tug at his shirt. "Please...stay a little longer..." a whisper filled with hope sounded out behind him and Damon turned around.

"Sadly I can't--" Damon pressed his finger into a specific place in her neck and Erika simply widened her eyes and passed out.

But as she was falling back into the bed she heard what Damon said next. "--because if I stayed any longer, I wouldn't want to leave..." and she saw his brilliant smile one last time before the darkness took over.

Damon quickly left the room and the hospital before quickly getting back to the car Nox was in.

Before entering the car, Damon looked back at the hospital as a single tear rolled down his cheek.

'Goodbye, Ayano, Erika...'

And with that, he wiped the tear away and a smirk spread across his face as he entered the car.

"So, let's get these tests over and done with." Damon looked at Nox and said in a carefree way and before he knew it, they were off.