[i]I don't want Mei to insult me further, and throwing a hissy fit would make her insult me more,[/i] were Osamu's thoughts. He desperately wanted to either punch or shoot her, but he knew that would be juvenile, and he did not want to [i]look[/i] juvenile. But, in the end, he was not experienced enough for this, and the next time he looked at Mei, it was with a mix of anger and exhaustion.

"Is your venom exahusted yet, you snake?" Gods, he knew he [i]cannot[/i] win a contest of insults with Mei, but the words still came out of his mouth anyway. "If this were a fairy tale, you'd be the sister whose mouth vomits up snakes and toads with every bad word. You know nothing about me, you know nothing about the Akiyama family, and you should just focus on backstabbing and backbiting others to get more power, because, speaking of sleeping with people, if power took the form of a person and invited you to lay with them, you'd do so in a heartbeat."

He then turned away, knowing that Mei would just retort with something more cutting, or even slap him; he didn't care. What he cared about was the fact that he had failed to be wiser than his years, that he kept picking fights he couldn't win, that he felt extremely disgusting to himself, failing to live up to his own bravado. Yet, despite all that...

"Don't leave," the thirteen year old continued. "Insult me, slap me around, but don't leave." [i]I don't want to be alone, not when I've exposed myself like this, not when I've opened myself to the truth of my own weakness, not when I really have better things to fear than her.[/i]

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