The fire in the hearth had burned low by the time silence returned to the villa.
Their footsteps outside my door had faded. Or maybe they hadn't, I could never tell anymore. They had a way of moving like shadows, silent until they wanted me to notice.
I peeled off the red dress, hating the way it slid down my skin like a caress, and tossed it across the room. I refused to wear their fantasies any longer.
I wanted answers.
And I wanted leverage.
That was when I noticed it.
The crack.
Near the baseboard by the bookshelf so small it would've been invisible if not for the candlelight flickering across the wall. I crouched, pressing my palm against the wood. It shifted, just slightly. Hollow.
My heart pounded.
A hidden door.
I glanced at the room's entrance. No sound. No voices.
Carefully, I pried at the edge until the panel clicked and swung inward with a soft creak.
A narrow stairwell spiraled down, swallowed in darkness.
I hesitated.
If they caught me…
I gritted my teeth. Then they'll finally see I'm not their doll.
I slipped inside and pulled the panel closed behind me.
••__________________________••
The air grew colder as I descended. Damp. Heavy. Like a cellar that had been sealed too long.
Each step groaned beneath my bare feet. I counted them in whispers to steady myself.
Ten.
Twenty.
Thirty.
A faint light glowed at the bottom..candles. Dozens of them.
When I reached the floor, my stomach dropped.
It wasn't a cellar.
It was a shrine.
Pictures of me lined the walls, pinned in uneven rows. Smiling at a café. Sitting in class. Reading in the library. Some looked stolen from my bedroom window.
Every inch of stone was covered with me.
Notes scrawled beneath each:
perfect smile
ours
never let her go
My breath hitched.
Then I saw the doors.
Three steel doors in the far wall, bolted shut with heavy locks. My pulse quickened. I stumbled toward them, hands shaking.
The first door wasn't locked. It screeched open
And I screamed.
The stench hit first. Metallic. Rotting. Thick enough to choke.
Inside, dozens of bodies slumped against the walls and floor, piled like discarded mannequins. Faces swollen, bruised, lips split and crusted with dried blood.
And in the heap..I saw him.
"...Eiji?" My voice cracked.
The boy from my literature class. He'd once asked if I wanted to study together. I laughed it off.
Now his eyes were glassy, his chest unmoving. He was dead.
I staggered back, gagging, covering my mouth.
The second door. I shouldn't have opened it. But I did.
Another room. Another graveyard. Dozens more. Boys stacked and broken, their limbs twisted at unnatural angles, hands mangled beyond recognition.
And among them..The boy from the café I always went to on Fridays. His kind smile forever froze in slack, lifeless flesh.
"No… oh God, no…"
The third door.
My hands shook so hard I could barely lift the latch. But I did.
The room was packed wall to wall. Bodies pressed against each other like meat in a butcher's freezer. Their cloudy eyes stared in every direction, empty and unblinking.
And at the front of the pile...
A boy I'd only spoken to once in the cafeteria.
His face stared right at me. His body is cold. Lifeless.
All of them. Gone.
Because of me.
Because of them.
I stumbled back, hitting the wall, sliding to the floor as bile burned up my throat.
The sound of footsteps echoed above. Slow. Deliberate.
No.
No, no, no..-
I scrambled to my feet, wiping tears, trying to push the doors shut again, but my hands wouldn't stop shaking.
The panel at the top creaked open.
A shadow moved against the candlelight.
"Kitten," Kuroo's voice drifted down the stairs. Calm. Smooth. Dangerous. "You weren't supposed to find this yet."
More footsteps followed.
Atsumu's lazy drawl "Told ya she was too curious."
Oikawa's soft sigh "Now she knows how much we've sacrificed."
I pressed myself against the wall, trembling.
"You… you killed them," I whispered. "You murdered them!"
Bokuto's voice was broken, desperate: "They didn't deserve you. They looked at you wrong. They didn't love you like we do."
"Love?" I spat, my voice cracking. "You call this love? Locking me in here with corpses?"
Terushima stepped closer, his grin sharp in the candlelight. "Better dead than near you."
Osamu's gaze softened, almost pleading. "We only did it to protect you, Y/n. You belong with us. Only us."
My knees buckled. I wanted to run, to scream, to claw their eyes out, but the room was too small.
Too full of ghosts.
Suna tilted his head, studying me with those lazy eyes that weren't lazy at all. "Don't cry, princess. This is proof. Proof we'd do anything for you."
Tears blurred my vision. "You're all monsters."
Tsukishima's lips twitched into something between a smirk and a snarl. "Maybe. But we're your monsters."
The others nodded. As if it was the most natural truth in the world.
I shook my head violently, backing toward the shrine wall, pictures of me fluttering with the motion.
"I'll never forgive you," I choked out.
Kuroo descended the last step, his eyes locking on mine. Calm. Patient. Unyielding.
"That's fine, kitten," he said. "We don't need forgiveness. Just forever."
The walls pressed in.
The smell of rot, the flicker of candles, the way their shadows stretched across my pictures like claws everything felt suffocating.
I shook my head again, harder, trying to keep the tears from spilling. Don't let them see you break.
But my voice cracked anyway.
"You're sick. All of you. I should be dead before I ever let you touch me again."
Atsumu's grin faltered. He stepped closer, his usual arrogance dimmed, and for a moment his voice sounded almost… hurt.
"Don't say that, princess. Don't talk like leavin' us is even an option."
Oikawa crouched near me, his eyes gleaming like polished glass. "Don't you see, Y/n? Every man who looked at you every fool who thought they could have you we erased them. For you. To make this world smaller. Safer. Perfect."
I pressed myself harder against the wall, my hands curling into fists.
"Safer? You think I feel safe here? Surrounded by corpses? Surrounded by you?"
Bokuto flinched. His whole body seemed to sag, like I had struck him. His golden eyes glistened.
"We gave you everything," he whispered hoarsely. "Everything. And you still look at us like we're the villains."
I laughed sharply, broken.
"That's because you all are the villains. Murderers. Psychopaths. You've ruined my life."
Semi's voice broke in, quiet, almost reverent.
"We didn't ruin it, Y/n. We shaped it. We cut away the distractions. The parasites. Now there's only us. Only what matters."
Terushima's grin widened, teeth flashing in the candlelight.
"And deep down, you like it. Don't you? The way we fight for you. The way we bleed for you. No one else will ever love you this much."
I spat at his feet. "If this is love, I'd rather die."
The room froze.
Silence thickened the air.
Then..slow, deliberate footsteps. Kuroo closed the last inch between us.
He crouched so we were eye level, his face only inches from mine. His eyes gleamed like molten gold in the firelight. Calm. Cold. Unshakable.
"Then die, kitten," he said softly. "But you'll die with us. You'll die ours."
My chest heaved, panic clawing up my throat.
Suna leaned lazily against the wall, his gaze unreadable. "You don't mean that, Kuroo. If she died, none of this would matter. She's not leaving. Not now. Not ever."
"Not after seeing this," Tsukishima added, his voice was like ice. "If we let her go now, she'd run to the police. Tell them everything. And we can't have that, can we?"
I shook my head violently. "I wouldn't-..I swear I wouldn't..-"
Oikawa's laugh cut me off, smooth and cruel. "Don't lie, sweetheart. It doesn't suit you."
Osamu crouched down next to Kuroo, his hand brushing the floor near mine, not touching but too close.
"Stop fighting us, Y/n. Stop hating us. We did all of this because we love you. Because you're the only one worth saving."
"Saving?" My voice broke into a scream. "You butchered them like animals!"
The echo of it rang through the shrine.
The boys didn't flinch.
Instead, they looked at each other. And then, like rehearsed, they all smiled.
"And we'd do it again."