@strxight-up-villxin || Continued
He didn’t understand. Well. He didn’t understand much of anything, really. His head was fuzzy, like it was stuffed full of cotton. Sometimes it got scratchy, like the cotton was angry. Did that make sense? Nothing much made sense so it was about on par with everything else.
He knew that he was himself. The people he had been with before called him an ‘it’ but he knew that was wrong. Probably. He was pretty sure. He had held onto that pretty tightly, since it was one of the few things he knew.
He also knew that he didn’t like being hurt. On top of that, he knew that being out of his tank meant he was either going to be hurt, or be made to hurt something else. He knew he didn’t like either of those things. He knew he wasn’t supposed to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ anything.
... And then something had happened, there was a lot of noise and new people and suddenly he was somewhere different. The things he knew didn’t seem to work anymore. He wondered if he was still a ‘he’, since what he knew wasn’t right.
He had figured out a few things. The small bed in that room was like his tank. If he stayed there the new people thought he was sleeping. He knew they brought him food and tried to talk to him, but he didn’t usually understand what they were talking about. He knew they had a different name for him - that one had taken a while to figure out, but no-one called him ‘nomu’ and they seemed pleased with him when he answered to ‘Hitoshi’ or ‘Shinso’.
All that being said... he still wasn’t sure what they wanted from him. He knew whatever it was, they weren’t getting it. He could see it on their faces whenever they left. They were disappointed by something about him. He lay in bed, back to the door, as he tried to figure out what they were looking for. He couldn’t have failed that badly, because he hadn’t been hurt.
Oh. That name again. Someone had come in, but he had been too focused to realize. He slowly sat up, his spines raising a little defensively, and looked over to... someone. Someone... important...? Maybe he was supposed to listen to them...?
Hitoshi was a sorry sight, honestly. The most obvious things were the spines that started right where the base of his skull connected to his neck (half-hidden by his hair) and ran all the way down to his lower back., as well as the holes in his shoulders, right on his collarbones. There were more holes along his sides, too, between each rib. Thank goodness there was some sort of muscle keeping them closed, for the time being.
There were less obvious signs of his deterioration, though. He was thinner, and pale, making the huge bags under his eyes stand out all the more. His hair was flat and a little matted, and his nails were long from staying untrimmed all those weeks.
He tilted his head a little at the newcomer, wondering if he should get up.
