Closed Doors

After lunch ended, Lily takes a nap in her room, so Ryan slips out and begins his preparations. When he went to grab the extra cookies for Lily's story time, Ryan happened to meet Billy who gave him his new orders:

'Do everything you can to make sure Lily would never want to leave this place before the week is over. But it can't be anything forced. She must come to love living here on her own terms.'

With his new orders along with being notified about the extra guards that will be nearby, Ryan quickly heads over to a vacant room that he was given permission to use for his mission.

"Just you wait, Miss Lily. I'm going to make you the happiest little girl in the whole world. You're gonna forget about living with your grandfather who never really treated you well in the first place."

Tying an apron around his waist and a handkerchief around his nose and mouth, Ryan begins taking out all of the old boxes and trash so that he can sweep up the dirt and dust the corners. With the help of some of the other men, the transformation of the vacant room is underway.

—

"Ryan?" Lily yawns as she wakes up from her nap. Looking around the room, she finds Ryan, covered in dust with spiderwebs in his hair, sleeping at the edge of her bed. She giggles to herself and crawls over to his side to pick the spiderwebs off. However, one of the spiderwebs still had a tiny spider residing on it and hops onto Lily's hand, causing her to jump up and scream and waking Ryan up.

"Miss Lily! What's wrong?" Ryan reactively asks, half-dazed from abruptly waking up. After gaining full consciousness, he sees Lily jumping on the bed and waving her arm in the air.

"Spider! There's a spider!" Lily cries as she continues to flail her arms around.

Due to her panic, neither Lily nor Ryan notices how close Lily is to the edge of the bed until her foot slides off. Instinctively, Ryan lunges across the bed over to Lily and catches her in his arms before landing on his back, slightly knocking the air from him. "Are you okay, Miss Lily?"

"I'm sorry. I'll be good. I'm sorry. I'll be good." Lily repeats those two sentences like a broken record with the most terrified look in her eyes as she covers her head as if she's protecting herself from getting hit.

"Miss Lily?" Ryan mutters as he sits up against the bed. "What's wrong?" He reaches out his arm to try and comfort her, but Lily flinches once she notices that his hand is out of her field of vision. Trying to figure out why Lily became like this, he feels a sense of anger boiling inside of him as the thought of Lily's grandfather comes to mind. "No one else other than her grandfather could have done this to her."

Knowing he has to report this to Lucario, Ryan reluctantly gets up and leaves the room but not before getting one last look at the little girl huddling in the corner still repeating those two sentences to herself. "If her grandfather really is the one who caused her to be this way, I will personally see to that fucker's death."

It isn't long after Ryan leaves Lily's room that he arrives at Lucario's office. "Boss, may I come in?"

"Come in," Lucario nonchalantly answers as he continues to look over some documents on his desk. "Why are you here instead of with Lily?" Noticing that Ryan isn't giving an immediate answer, Lucario looks up to reprimand Ryan for not responding but stops once he sees an intense expression on Ryan's face. "Report."

Clenching his fists that rest at his sides, Ryan grits his teeth. "I have come to discover something frightening regarding Miss Lily." He does his best to not get enraged by the memory of Lily's terrified expression, but this leads to him clenching his fists so tightly that it draws blood. "Miss Lily was jumping on the bed after her nap and slipped off the edge. I caught her in time before she got hurt."

"If she's not hurt, then that's all that matters," Lucario comments as he watches the blood drip from Ryan's fists. "However, I'm assuming that there is more to this story that you're telling."

"She began to repeat 'I'm sorry. I'll be good.' over and over again. When I tried to comfort her and tell her that I'm fine, her whole body flinched as I raised my hand."

Lucario doesn't say anything which is probably the most frightening part of his reaction to Ryan's words. However, his cold sharp eyes say everything that he's feeling. "Billy, come to my office," Lucario commands from his office phone.

As if his butt was lit on fire, Billy darts over to his boss's office because he knows that if Lucario calls for him from his office phone, it is extremely serious. "You called for me, Boss."

Shifting his cold gaze over to Billy, Lucario gives his orders. "I need you to find out how Lily's grandfather treated her once she was in his care along with how everyone else treated her. Don't hurt anyone while you're investigating. That will affect the child's decision to stay here. I don't care how many men you need or how much money it costs. You have until tomorrow night to report everything to me."

"Yes, Boss," Billy firmly answers before leaving the room. He had questions that he wanted to ask, especially since he has grown fondly of Lily, but he knew that it would be detrimental to his life if he tried to pry into the situation at the moment.

"Men!" he shouts once he's in the living room. Almost immediately after Billy calls for them, a hoard of men file into the living room in a pristine formation. "We have been given a mission from the boss." Seeing the darkness in Billy's eyes despite his innocent smile, the men that had gathered instantly knew something happened and froze in fear.

While Billy is coordinating with the men and Ryan is seeking treatment for his hand, Lucario walks over to Lily's room. When he opens her door, Lily is still repeating the phrase that Ryan told him about, but this time, she's half-asleep yet still protecting her body from getting hit. Lucario's heart wants him to get closer; however, he knows that even if he did, it wouldn't help anything. He grabs a chair from the table in Lily's room and places it at the end of the bed so that he can see her and she can see him but isn't too close that might worsen her condition.

"Lily, I don't know what's wrong, but I just want to let you know that I'll be waiting right here until you feel better." Lucario watches in both anger and agony as the little girl becomes an almost near perfect mirror to himself when he was younger as he recalls his life as a child growing up.

—

"You are the next heir to the Buenavista Family!" a man shouts as he whips a younger version of Lucario with a willow tree branch. "You can't be so weak that people will take advantage of you. You must be mean! You must be strong! You almost got killed because of the Kang Family!"

"I'm sorry, Father! I'll be better!" cries young Lucario while huddling himself on the floor to try and withstand the non-stopping whips. "I'll be stronger, Father! I'm sorry!"

"Apologies do nothing but show weakness!" the man continues to berate. "Buenavistas never apologize!"

"Yes, Father! I'll be better!" young Lucario whimpers, internally begging for his father to stop.

—

"No one understands the pain caused behind closed doors," Lucario says to himself while looking at the palm of his hand. The clear wound marks that have healed over the years remind him of his struggles. "People only see what happens when the doors are open, but sometimes what they see is the product of what happened when the doors were closed."

"I'm sorry. I'll be good. I'm sorry. I'll be good," Lily mumbles in her sleep as her safety position starts to break from exhaustion.

"A reaction like this only forms through repeated occurrences." Shaking his head, Lucario leans back in the chair and stares up at the ceiling. "This is why I didn't want kids," he sighs to himself. "It could remind me of my past, and I'm scared I might turn into my father."

In the midst of the silence after Lily has finally fallen asleep, she begins to mutter something else. Lucario can't hear it, but when he goes over to pick her up and place her on the bed, his eyes widen as he hears the words coming out of Lily's mouth.

"Mr. Luca… is nice…"