Kuzma was embarrassed and he preferred not to admit that.

Though the way he hid inside the human's bedroom all night, after snapping out of his less than pleasant memories, was a good enough clue as to how he was feeling.

With his face buried in his folded arms, sitting upright on the soft bed and unconsciously wiggling his toes on top of the furry covers, Kuzma listened around him and distracted himself with the strange yet familiar noises of the outside world.

The sounds of cars a distance away, all kinds of beings talking and breathing and existing, the pounding of the paws of the werewolf pack he had sensed the other day, running around the town's surrounding forest and the loud, piggish sound of the human snoring away outside the bedroom.

He had been doing so since he entered the bedroom and the suspicious man had given up trying to get him out. Kuzma had been listening to the human's snoring, heartbeat and quiet mumbles of nothing as he slept away.

He did so to keep himself sane, to know that he wasn't alone in the maddening darkness.

Just knowing that there was someone close to him, breathing and alive and not a figment of his imagination, comforted Kuzma and that fact made him hate his existence even more.

He closed his tired eyes and sighed, unwinding his tense body and opening his eyes again to stare at himself.

I am so thin, Kuzma thought as he eyed the skinny legs covered by large pants. He hadn't seen himself properly in a long while so he didn't know what he looked like as an adult and truth be told, he didn't want to for he knew he was grotesque without the aid of a reflection. His captors had made that clear.

He put his hands in front of his face and stared at his bony wrists with a blank stare, thinking he would've needed to trim his nails.

Then his left hand moved to his still bandaged neck, tracing the reddish material covering the most disgusting part of him yet.

His hand moved up his face, feeling his hollow cheeks, the bags he knew were under his eyes, his chapped lips and his pointed ears before he took a fistful of his hair and hunched forward, taking deep breaths, making a bad attempt at calming himself.

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it, you fucking fool!

He bit his lip hard to keep down his cry of pain, feeling the whips hit his back again and again but they weren't there. He knew they weren't there. He had escaped, it was in his mind.

Right?

No. You are free. You escaped. You're free.

Am I?

"Hey...You're still here."

Kuzma removed his hand from his hair and glared at the human at the door.

The beastly man looked even messier than before, his body odor making Kuzma's nostrils itch.

"Here I was expecting you to be gone with half my things by now," the human said, having the audacity to enter without being invited in, as he yawned and shuffled towards the closet at the end of the room.

"I am no thief," Kuzma growled, his anger surfacing at the accusation as he watched the man grab some clothes and stumble towards the bathroom on the left of the bedroom door.

"Hmm. That's cool. Dancing is a great hobby. Jumping and spinning and--" the human slurred, stumbling into the white colored bathroom like a drunken fool.

Dancing?

Kuzma had thought the human was a little strange, for lack of a better word, but hearing him talk sometimes gave him the impression that the man was mad.

There was also the man's reaction to Kuzma. From what he had known about the humans his people avoided, they were meant to scream and cower at the sight of the unknown. In the human's case, the unknown was Kuzma. The sirin expected the man to call his authorities, take his picture and share it with the world. Even lock him up in a room. Anything but what the human did, which was cleaning him up, serving him food, talking to him like it was all just normal and acting weird.

From the man's previous question about what Kuzma was, he knew that the human hadn't been informed about his world.

Why did he give me his bed? His clothes? Why did he let me stay in his home? This doesn't make sense.

At first, Kuzma had thought it was because the man expected something in return, and he was still prepared for that, but he wasn't even sure anymore.

"Human," Kuzma called out as he heard the sounds of water dropping, like mild rain.

"Yeah?"

"...I do not know what it is you want from me. Is it that you don't know and are thinking of some kind of payment? Know that I am inherently stronger than humans and I will no-"

"Hey, Kuzma?" the human cut him off over the spray of water, exhaustion in his deep, calm voice.

"...What?"

"I'm just being nice."