Tea Leaves and Red Silk

Winter

Here are some quick notes to prevent confusion during reading:

Hetalia/Tea Leaves: Ju, Yao, Qian, Junjie, Gana, Snake, Szu, and Jia Long

Durarara/Wonderland: Mikado, Masaomi, Shirley, Chiharu, Noriko, Keiichi, Kurumi, Mairu, Mari and Aoba

D.Gray-Man/Dying Dream: Ophelia

Match Nineteen: Winter:

Ophelia could only see an endless sea of black. Her body float in the emptiness. The only thing company was the judgmental voices around her, screaming at her.

Slut!

Tart!

Whore!

Murderer!

Whore!

Whore!

However below her, she heard different voices that did little to ease her nerves.

December 23rd, 2013.

Zhong Junjie sat in a noodle bar having a late dinner. Tonight was a rather slow night. For weeks, his father nagged him about getting married some.

"You are twenty-four years old!" his old man said. "You can't be fooling around and doing useless crap anymore! Get married and live up to the family name!" Junjie frowned and rolled his eyes. Stupid old man! He stuck up his hand in the air.

"Oi!" he shouted. "I want a doggie bag!"

"Coming up!" the cook shouted back. Thinking about his father made Junjie lose his appetite. He didn't feel doing much anymore and he didn't want to go home either. The cook walked over to his table.

"Here you are," he said. Junjie paid for his dinner and walked out of the restaurant.

"Hey, Zhong," the cook spoke up. "What happened to that pretty little thing you were always with?" Junjie rolled his eyes and walked out the door.

- Ikebukuro-

Shirley stood backstage of the main part of Red Bunny. She waited with bated breath in her black suit. Keiichi went over the plan with her before she left the house.

"You sure you want to do this?" he asked at their apartment. "You can back out of it if you want." Shirley shook her head.

"I'll be fine," she assured him. "I can do this." Keiichi pressed his forehead against hers.

"Please be careful," he told her. Shirley nodded.

"I will," she said back. Sliver Dreamer waited for the MC to call her up on stage tonight.

Meanwhile, Mairu turned to her sister.

"Kurumi-chan!" she said. Her sister looked up from the TV. Mairu came within inches of her face, grinning.

"You know what we should do?" She didn't even wait for her twin to answer. "We should sleep with Aoba-kun. I bet he's virgin." Kurumi broke into a little smile. That alone told Mairu that she was keen on the plan.

"I'll call him," she said. The younger twin got on her phone and called up Aoba.

Mikado had his earbuds in as he lay on his futon. This would be the fifteenth time that he had heard these tapes. This time, he was looking for something in particular. Tape number sixty-four sounded low if you didn't know what you were looking for. Mikado tried to focus on through the muzzled silence on the tape.

"Untie me."

There it was. That small message, only two words, made Mikado sit up every time. He tried to figure out the identity of the speaker. From what Mikado could gather, this was probably a young woman tied up in Chou Mori Institution. She could be a potential victim in the Angel Project. He rewound the tape and took another listen.