Suffer the little children.

"Tag."

Suffer them unto me.

"What?"

"You're It, Miss Class Representative."

Make them suffer.

"Tag." He gives her a light tap. "You're It." On the shoulder.

"I am not!" With a highly indignant sigh of frustration, she blows a rogue curl out of her eyes. "I'm not a part of your silly little games, whatever they are."

"How… disappointing." He feigns a pout of displeasure, but cannot keep the edges of his lips from turning up in a supercilious smirk. "Madame Representative is too busy for anything but work."

"Speaking of work," she spins on her heel and gives him a glare, "Don't you have some that you should be doing?" Her tone is patronizing, but a treacherous undercurrent of fear and confusion trembles just beneath the calm surface, belying her true feelings.

"Oh, but I've finished all of my work for today. That's why Bunny and I are playing a game." He cradles his stuffed rabbit as he speaks, and slips one insidious hand up beneath its little dress; she is shocked to find the motion both obscene and erotic. "Won't you play too?"

Her gaze is drawn to the movement of his fingers between his toy's cloth thighs, covered thinly by the hem of its skirt and yet still fully obvious in their intention. "I hate you," she whispers. Little black beads stare up at her relentlessly–for they were not blessed with eyelids upon their creation–and she can almost swear that the rabbit is alive and conscious and reproachful as white spots of reflected light dance merrily upon the dark plastic.

"Oh, no, Madame Representative," he smiles at her, and she can feel the heat of her blush climbing her breasts, her collar, her neck, her cheeks, "No, you only hate bad little boys who throw their trash into the wrong bins." Wheezing, asthmatic laughter punctuates this thought from a short distance behind her, and she glares; she can't stand to have them both laughing at her. "And I've been so good lately."

With a jerky, impulsive swing of her arm, she smacks the stuffed rabbit askew in his arms so that its eyes are no longer trained on her. "There!" Her shrill, nearly triumphant cry doesn't echo within the labyrinthine coils of medical and scientific equipment stacked around them. "There! Now your stupid bunny is It! Now leave me alone!"

For the briefest of moments, she is almost–almost–afraid that she has made him angry, and she hates herself for that suggestion of fear and feminine timidity. And yet she is still irked by his honest, placid reception to her own outburst; so she hates herself even more.

"Bunny is It… and Bunny tags me," he manipulates the stuffed toy's plush, immobile arms accordingly, and she wonders whether being jealous of an inanimate object is a sign of impending lunacy. His eyes catch hers with their glint of nasty, malevolent humor. "Ah, but Dr. Hwan has had enough of my touching her for today–" Another rasping giggle highlights his innuendo, and she is sure that her blush has deepened to a humiliating shade of crimson. "–and so perhaps I'll go and look for someone else to play with."

His footsteps are cushioned by his soft bedroom slippers, and she does not hear him leave. She hears nothing but her own heartbeat, pounding away maliciously at her eardrum until she is afraid it will break her.

But he leaves. Yes, he leaves.

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