Chuuya had stopped asking questions a long time ago.

There was no point. Every answer came laced in needles, in pills that twisted his insides, in sharp, clinical stares from people in white coats who called him by a number instead of a name. The only thing that ever made sense anymore was the cold metal of the exam table beneath his back and the steady, quiet presence beside him: Dazai.

They were both fourteen now—the oldest ones left in the lab. That wasn’t a good thing. It meant they'd survived what the others hadn't. It meant they'd been poked, sliced, injected, and broken more times than they could count. Most kids didn’t last past twelve. Chuuya sometimes wished he hadn't either.

But then there was Dazai. Stupid, sarcastic, brilliant Dazai, who always found a way to crack a joke even when their lungs were filling with blood, or when their skin was boiling from some new “treatment.” Dazai, who stared at the scientists like he saw right through them—like he wasn’t afraid. And maybe he wasn't. Maybe there was nothing left in him to scare.

Chuuya used to hate him. He was obnoxious, too smart for his own good, always acting like none of this touched him. But after years in the same cages, same rooms, same hell, Chuuya couldn’t help but cling to the familiarity. They’d both been here since they were tiny—barely old enough to talk. They didn’t remember the outside world. All they knew were the pale walls, the flickering lights, and the endless list of trials and experiments.

Some days, they were burned. Other days, they were frozen. Sometimes they were made to go days without food or sleep, just to "observe the limits." One week, they were both injected with a disease that rotted the brain from the inside out. Chuuya still had a tremor in his left hand from that. Dazai still heard voices sometimes. But they lived. And that meant another round of testing.

Living here wasn’t really living. It was surviving. It was watching another kid disappear behind a door and never come back. It was counting how many meals you missed, how many cuts hadn’t healed, how many times you blacked out from the pain.

But no matter how bad it got, Chuuya always woke up to Dazai beside him. Smiling. Mocking. Breathing. And that mattered.

They weren’t friends, not really. Not in the normal sense. But they were bound to each other. By pain. By history. By the fact that they were all they had. The last two standing.

“Subjects 003 and 005,” the intercom crackled again.

Chuuya glanced over at Dazai, who didn’t move at first—just stared up at the ceiling with that empty look he wore when he was bracing himself for something new.

Then he smirked, rolled onto his feet, and offered Chuuya his hand like they were about to go dancing, not walk into another nightmare.

“Shall we, partner?”

Chuuya rolled his eyes but took it anyway. Because here, in this place that chewed kids up and spat out their bones, a hand to hold was the closest thing to safety.

And Chuuya didn’t plan on letting go.