Marluxia closed the door behind Lumi. Inside, the house smelled as if no one had lived here in a few weeks. It wasn't the smell of a house that had stood empty while its owners were on holiday; this was an abandonment that had gone on longer. It smelled slightly dusty, and yet almost sterile underneath that. No one had cooked, cleaned, or breathed here with any regularity in a while.

The first door on the left was ajar, and Marluxia pushed it open cautiously. The hinge creaked at the end of its swing, revealing a living room that may not have been that often used anyway. There was a television, a sofa, and a single chair. Saix and Vexen clearly hadn't been the entertaining type, and Marluxia suspected the chair existed so that one or the other could sit here without it seeming like an invitation to the other, and the sofa was because they had occasionally chosen to sit together.

There were books on shelves around the room, an entire bookcase in one corner with some gaps in it suggesting someone had removed books and not returned them. The decor left something to be desired, but that was Marluxia's opinion of the house in general. He preferred the finer things in life, and whoever was responsible for this room had been much more pragmatic. It did what it was supposed to, and wasn't out to impress anybody with the fact that it could do that.

"I'm impressed they haven't been broken into," he said, his voice, like their footsteps, intrusive in the quiet of the house. Empty houses attracted that kind of thing, but, perhaps, people knew the inhabitants were with a clan, or perhaps they knew they had little to steal. There were a multitude of reasons possible for why no one had bothered.