Author's notes: Well, shit. This is the first story I've published in since my Clannad stint almost… two, three years ago I think? Why did I start writing again, you ask? Long story short, I watched a few animes, read a few books, took up some classes and ended up growing a boner for wordsmithing again. Nothing substantial, just something to let myself publish a few thoughts. A more sophisticated form of masturbation than anything else.

This story, well I suck when it comes to summarizing things so instead here are some general things to consider before reading it: It features Sayaka, Homura, Kyosuke and other PMMM peeps, it's pretty long—clocking in at 13k words when I last checked—and at most times it sounds like it's been written by a scumbag so there's that. Also, there will be a load of TL;DR and Wall of Text so if you're not so hot with that, then avoid this fic. It just so happened that I was drunk reading The Brothers Karamazov when I wrote the other things here hence why they're like that. Don't worry though, they're all in the second part of this fic so you shouldn't worry about it (for now, at least...).

One final thing, when I checked how many stories are in this fandom I think I shat myself when I saw 1.6k coming out of the story count next to name on search. I wonder how many days it would take before this one gets piled over with all the other stuff after this gets put into the site. Oh well, whatever.

Still here? Fuck. Okay, just one little wish (if I'm even in the position to make that sort of thing), please drop comments once you've actually finished the story so I'll be able to use them in improvements of my writing style and other things. Fanfiction's the only place I can get useful criticism these days, so I'll really thank those who would leave their thoughts in the review corner. In fact, here's a thanks in advance for reading this far. Oh, and here's a gold star too.

Jesus, I should get off the Waffle Tacos before someone sues me...

(Update; 1/28/15 - Due to multiple atrocities (literary, moral or otherwise) committed in this fic, I will revise TWoHS in February... by adding more atrocities. Though I cannot promise better reading quality, what I can say is that this thing will be fortified with 100% more scumbag-ishness, arrogance, incessant swearing and a crackdown on the wordcount. This thing needs to lose some pounds! A Yo Momma's so fat joke would be appropriate for this fic...)

000

It was morning in Mitakihara Middle School. The early classes brought in students just coming in, most barely making it across the five-minute late period. It was like a beehive, buzzing with activity as they went around looking for their classes, or jabbering in the halls about this or that topic. The sky was clear and dust shone in the sunlight that reflected through the glass walls. The perpetual din of people talking floated in the air, the usual morning scene.

Sayaka Miki closed her eyes, taking in the sounds in her ears. They always calmed her, anchoring her axis to the earth, putting her feet onto stable ground. A good way to get a grip on things. She walked idly towards her classroom, arms swaying carefree, thinking about what was to come in today's period. Another brain-melting sesh of the history of the Tokugawa Era, or a lesson on mono-cytosis, or maybe the effects of the half-life of Plutonium on the Earth's atmosphere. They might as well teach the language they use in Mars, for all she cared. School was school, mornings were mornings, and Sayaka's quality quiet time was the only time she wanted for that day.

She had no choice not to.

Suddenly some gravitational anomaly latched itself on her shoulder, almost making throwing Sayaka off-axis. Before she had time to react, a boy with green hair was holding her shoulder. "Well you seem kind of spaced-out today, Sayaka," he said.

Kyosuke's hand was light, but it might as well be three units of heavy antimatter. But why was Sayaka thinking of science anyway? In expectation of class? Probably. "Not really," she told him. "Just tuning myself in, I guess."

His eyes went up towards the ceiling, and he swayed the violin case in his other hand. "Tuning yourself in like that might get you a bump in the head. What are you doing anyway?"

She smiled. "Walking, considering the possibilities of skipping class, thinking of antimatter. You know, the usual."

He stared at her for a few seconds before cracking his own smile and letting go of Sayaka's shoulder. "You're being weird again," Kyosuke offered. "As the usual."

She looked at him. "Really? I don't recall being like this." And that was the truth.

"What do you mean you're not like that? You always space out when its' just you." He brought up the violin case, pointing the long end towards her. "Sooner or later you'll bump into a post or something, you know that?"

When Sayaka woke up that morning, everything felt unreal. Like she was at the bottom of the sea, exploring its murky depths without a scuba mask or diving gear, watching a living, breathing painting that had its own life in a dimension twice-removed from her own. To put it in context with her axis-anchoring, she was the Captain of a Space Battleship, cruising the seas of Pluto when unknowingly she had entered a rift in time-space, seeing all of the periods of time in one place but never becoming involved. Only an observer on an elevated platform surrounded by safety rails and wired fences for your own protection. She felt like this all morning, being twice, thrice-removed, not all really there. Like she wasn't even supposed to exist.

But why? She forgot. Maybe there wasn't any reason at all. Sayaka spent a few moments of thinking, but thinking wasn't exactly her strong point.

So she gave up."Yeah. When you think of it, looping out randomly is kind of dangerous, huh?"

"Yup, really dangerous."

Sayaka put up a finger. "Two votes dangerous."

Kyosuke let go of her shoulder and pretended to knock a mallet. "Motion passed. To be submitted to the Prime Minister's committee for review."

"The crowd goes wild, cheers, exclamation, Antarctic ice caps restored, world peace, Hokkaido becomes independent, mankind reaches the stars…" She snatched the violin case from his hands. "Bach becomes the catalyst for world revolution!"

"He-hey!" Kyosuke tried to grab it back with both hands, but Sayaka was too fast and he almost tumbled over. "Careful with that, it's a copy of the Stradivarius."

She held the long end with both hands like a bat. "I wonder…"

"You'll mess up the strings, Sayaka. It's a real pain to tune that thing, you know?"

"Tune it, then. You're a master violinist, right?"

"I would if the strings didn't snap half of the time," he said, almost groaning the words with his eyes closed.

Sayaka dramatically put her palm up to her forehead, as if swooning. "Ah, the suffering of a violinist extraordinaire."

Kyosuke chuckled. "The hell? The suffering of a violinist extraordinaire? Where do you get all these lines?"

Where did she get all of these lines? If only Sayaka could answer him. "Nah, I'm just being weird again, is all. My head's still way up there. I think I'll still need some time to re-align myself to reality." Maybe all day, if that was what it would come to.

"Well, take all the time you need. Besides, you're sounding like your old self again anyway. A little drunk, maybe. But it's you we're talking about here, so I guess it's acceptable."

"Ouch."

He sniggered. "I'm kidding."

They continued walking, letting their conversation drift into comfortable silence. Sayaka always felt at ease with Kyosuke around like this. He acted as her anchor to the world of reality, giving her a safe port of call in stormy weather. How many times had Sayaka depended on him like this? She forgot. As much as everything else, really. Vague feelings remained, almost physical but invisible to the naked eye. But never the full, concrete images. More like subjective imprints than real memories. Was that a bad thing?

In front of them, two girls came up from the right corner. They turned to walk in the same direction Sayaka and Kyosuke took, and talked in comfortable but hushed tones. The one on the right had short, pink hair tied in two ponytails like an elementary school student, the other one on the left a long mane of straight black hair that went down to her waist. Sayaka immediately recognized them. Kyosuke too. Their names needn't any introduction.

"Oh, it's those two again," he went on first.

Sayaka squinted her eyes for a few moments, before nodding lightly. "Yep, it's them alright."

"Wonder what they're up to this fine morning."

"Well, you see that they're walking, of course."

"And talking, don't forget that."

"Hmmm, yes, I did not note that. Fine work, my good man."

"Elementary, my dear Watson."

Sayaka turned her head. "And since when did you become Sherlock?"

Kyosuke smiled. "Duly appointed by Scotland Yard, of course."

She stared at him for a full ten seconds before turning her attention again to the duo in front of them. "You're half a nutcase yourself, you know that?"

Her friend sniggered at the comment but offered nothing more. The mysterious girl duo before them had become a conversation topic between Sayaka and Kyosuke for the last few days, a funny little caricature in the myriad of characters in their school. Always together, always inseparable, always caught up in Sayaka and Kyosuke's sights. An anomaly that popped out of nowhere in particular, started by the entrance of pink-haired girl's entrance into Mitakihara via sudden transfer from the US a few weeks ago, the only remarkable thing Sayaka could ever recall about her. It wasn't really strange to see girls to always be together in pairs. Heck, she and Kyosuke were in a pair, provided that you considered him a girl. These two in front of them though, they looked strange. Strangeness practically screamed like a phantom in their shadows wherever they went, thus they became a usual staple of Sayaka and Kyosuke's conversations, like rice in meals.

A few moments of silence ensued before Sayaka asked something. "What are their names again?"

It was Kyosuke's turn to stare at her. "Are you serious? They're in your class and you don't know?"

For some inexplicable reason, even these two were just vague imprints in Sayaka's mind too. Implications with no physical form, just a feeling that they were supposed to be in her brain without any label for naming or other. "Apparently I'm too high up there that I've forgotten them."

"Wouldn't want to be you when I have to memorize something," he replied. "Well, the girl to the right over there's named Kaname, I think. The one on the left is named named…" Kyosuke crossed his arms and thought for a while. "Murakami something? I dunno."

"Akemi," Sayaka corrected.

"See, you do remember."

"Yeah, I think so. It's like when you hear the tone of a song and you remember the lyrics afterwards. Unfortunately I don't have first names on them. Got any idea?"

"Why so interested?"

Yeah, why so interested? Sayaka wondered what would be the reason, grasped at it, but never got it completely in her hands. "I dunno. I think it's because I feel that my spacing-out's connected to them somehow." She didn't know exactly how but whenever Sayaka saw the pair, she always felt that there was some intangible, invisible connection between them. In spite of the fact that they've never fully met before, or even talked before.

"Connected how?" Kyosuke asked. "Because they're like us?"

She immediately got what he meant by that. "What, a comedy duo?"

"A regular boke and tsukkomi routine, performers blessed with the gift of gab. They might prove to be worthy opponents once we come onstage with them."

"What are you talking about? We can't be a comedy duo. They'd boo us off the stage and make us pay everybody for moral damages."

Kyosuke looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah, makes you think it'd be useful if everybody had 'bad comedian' insurance."

"Good grief, we were talking about how I think they're causing me to space out and now we're proposing insurance for bad comedy." Sayaka facepalmed. "What kind of nonsense is this…?"

"It makes as much sense as you saying that they're connected to making you groggy like that." In truth, Kyosuke was definitely worried. Sayaka knew that, and he probably wanted answers. "What gives?"

"I can't explain it much but, it's like there's a string attached between me and them. A three-way connection that may only exist because I think it does. They're tugging it, and it pulls a trapdoor under my feet, making me fall out of reality." She paused to think of more words to describe it, but eventually shook her head as if remembering a bad memory. "I dunno, that's as best as I can put it." And it definitely was. Pushing herself to make a much clearer explanation would only end up making things more complicated for Sayaka. She'd never get herself out of this rut like that.

"Hmmm, the red string of fate, perhaps?" Kyosuke offered.

Sayaka looked at him and cracked a smile. "Come on, it's not like that."

She held his chin and her eyes gleamed with interest as she looked at them. "Well it's definitely like that for those two, if you know what I mean."

"You think so too?"

"A hundred and fifty percent. I know forbidden love when I see it. Like rain is wet, the sun is hot, grass is green..."

"Two votes for a hundred and fifty percent forbidden love. That, and you're a pervert."

"Motion denied," he said abruptly.

Sayaka snapped her head towards him, eyes wide in alarm. "Why? Did the Opposition block our vote again?"

"I'm afraid so. They were able to buy off three of our representatives," Kyosuke explained, in a seriously dramatic tone, pushing the bridge of an invisible pair of glasses up his nose. "We'll need at least six more votes and two abstentions before we can apply for an appeal."

Sayaka turned away and rubbed the back of her head with her hand. "Seriously, we need to lay off all those political dramas we watch at your house…"

"Which reminds me—" Kyosuke turned his head. "Are you coming over today?"

"Afraid not. Apparently, we have this thing. It's called a project, and it so happens that you, Hitomi and I are partners and we're supposed to actually do something and not laze around at your house."

Kyosuke clapped a palm to his forehead. "Oh, right…"

Sayaka folded both her arms. "You forgot, didn't you?"

He gave her an apologetic look. "I have violin lessons all the time, Sayaka. Cut me some slack."

"You suck."

"At least I'm good at playing the violin," he said, exhuming confidence.

"Good at having a big head, if you ask me…"

"Being really confident is a marketable skill too, you know."He paused for a few moments, letting the conversation's silence segway him into another segment. "Anyway, just forget about that trouble in that head of yours. Red string or not, there's really no reason for you to let yourself fall into some sort of funk just because of some random thought."

"It's just that..." Before she could say it, the words terminated, pulling a grenade and detonating themselves rat than to be captured, eliciting a deep sigh from Sayaka. "Whatever. It's hard. Everything's out of place, artificial. It's like I'm watching a TV show and I've already read the script and met the cast, but I didn't. The willing suspension of disbelief's already been cast off; out of the airlock and into the atmosphere. Only the fakeness remains. Tell me, am I even making sense?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you're in your period."

If she didn't know any better, Sayaka would have already punched him in the face. But she only sighed again. "You're a dolt."

"No, I'm serious." And he was. Kyosuke stared at her with a straight face. "Get it out of your head already. You're just imagining things. You don't have to gripe over it. I mean come on; you don't even know those two. Get a grip. Whenever you see Hitomi and I together, does it disturb you?"

Sayaka had some answers to that, but she chose to keep them to herself. "Not really, no. Besides, you two are different."

He raised a brow. "Different? How?"

She gripped the violin case a little tighter than she would have liked to. "They're just friends. You're a couple."

When it came out of Sayaka's mouth, the word 'They're' sounded like 'We're'. For some reason, she meant it to be that way.

"I don't see the difference," he told her. "Besides, you shouldn't think about things like this in the first place. Stop thinking too much and just enjoy yourself. That funk you're in right now is doing nothing but getting in the way of your happiness."

Getting in the way of your happiness. She wondered what the cause of that was. Ahead the pair in front of them split to let someone else come between them. Hitomi politely excused herself and greeted both Sayaka and Kyosuke with her usual refined tastes.

For a moment though, Sayaka thought that she had caught Akemi's eyes. They were blue and shined as if they were observing some grand secret. Before the thought could fully consummate itself however, she had already averted her gaze and walked away with her companion, Kaname.

"Good morning, sweetie!" Hitomi beamed at both of them, but most especially at Kyosuke. She even brought up a lunch box for him. "How are you today, Kyosuke?"

"He was hitting on girls at the street," Sayaka said nonchalantly. "Wowing them with his violin skills and promising them dates left and right."

Before the thoughts could even register in his head, Kyosuke turned to look at her. "Wait, what…"

Hearing this, Hitomi's face shifted, sagging from her bright and colorful expression to a near-deathly look of sobriety, her eyes grey and dull. "…is that true, Kyosuke?"

"It was crazy, I tell you," Sayaka continued. "He just kept wagging his violin and they all just went up to him. Most of them even offered to pay for the date themselves and they gave him scented pant…" Sayaka paused. She wouldn't make the joke too extreme, of course. "Letters."

"Wait, what the hell?!" He sputtered, "S-Sayaka! Nothing like that happened!"

"He even tried to win me over and I can say Hitomi—this boyfriend of yours, you should probably put him on a leash." She put the back of her hand against her forehead again, as if swooning. "Even if you're my friend, I can only hold out against him for so long…"

"Yes Sayaka, I was thinking of whether or not I should buy my puppy a steel chain for a leash." Hitomi put a hand to her chin and looked at her boyfriend menacingly. "Maybe I should order extra..."

"A leash? Hitomi, she's lying!" Kyosuke begged and begged, but Hitomi was simply not listening as she took him by the ears. "Ow! Hitomi, not there!"

"Should I smash this Stradivarius now?" Sayaka offered to Hitomi, holding the case like a hammer.

"No, its fine Sayaka." She put out a hand. "Give it here. I'll dispose of it later myself."

As Sayaka handed the violin to her friend, Kyosuke gaped in horror as he heard the orders for its destruction. "No, don't destroy it! It costs more than a year's tuition!"

"Then I think selling it off online would be better," Sayaka suggested.

"Yes, and I can use the money earned for our dates," Hitomi chorused.

"Both of you are insane!" Kyosuke would have shouted more, but Hitomi tugging on his ears cut them short, replacing them with a shrill kind of screaming.

"Well Sayaka, it's been good seeing you this morning. Let's talk more at class, okay?" Hitomi was about to turn to her boyfriend when she paused, as if forgetting something. "Oh yes, let's talk later about the project as well too. Farewell!"

And Hitomi waved happily at Sayaka as she pulled Kyosuke by his left ear, who was screaming.

"SAYAKA-!" he cried, his voice echoing into the halls depths.

Like that, Sayaka was all alone again. But nothing took away the feeling of fakeness that had taken hold of that morning. It was a pure white cloth, stained by the hard brown mess of realization, never to come off.

It became worse at midday. The fakeness had turned to nausea, making Sayaka ask the teacher if she could go to the nurse's office.

"Miss Akemi, please bring Miss Miki to the nurse's office," he ordered, barely looking at them from the blackboard he filled with arcane, algebraic symbols.

Before Sayaka could even reject the offer, Akemi had already made it to her desk. She loomed over Sayaka, her tired blue eyes gazing upon her with a sober, nonchalant stare. Sayaka felt chills seeing them, and she shook her head. But her body did otherwise; it followed Akemi out of the classroom.

Weaving through the halls and the glass corridors, they barely opened their mouths save for pithy, one-word directions. More like orders than anything else. Sayaka kept a few meters distance from Akemi, and it was certain that latter wouldn't make any effort on her part to bridge the gap either. Being with her was like being in a gravity well, Akemi being an extreme antimatter core that seemed to suck the life out of everything she went near or touched. Everything died in her wake, or if it survived it wouldn't be the same again. She was a very charming person to be with.

When they came up to the nursing office, Akemi merely waved her hand towards the door and turned away without another word. She had very good manners too.

Somewhere down the end of the hall stood Kaname, looking over the corner with her eyes locked on Akemi until she came near. Kaname smiled as she came near and Akemi slung her arm around her shoulder as they disappeared to the left. When Sayaka saw that, she didn't know what to think, and merely scratched the back of her head.

The Nurse gave her an aspirin and asked if she was in her period, among other things. Sayaka couldn't explain that there was this nagging joke in the back of her head that pulled a plug and caused her brain to go woozy.

While the nurse spoke about eating the right food and getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep, everything started to break down in Sayaka's perception, becoming only their component parts. The nurse's office was turning into a room with four walls and a few pieces of furniture. The medicine cabinet turned into a closet full of bitter things. The bed turned into a clump of foam covered in cloth on a metal frame, the nurse a bag of flesh and organs that was worried about loans, tax exemptions, overtime pay. The transformations around Sayaka scared her half to death, but even her feelings turned into just electric impulses triggered by hormonal secretions by some gland or other in her brain. In order to stop fearing something, one must understand it first. But Sayaka had the misfortune of understanding what her fear is, making her fear the fact that she understood it in its entirety.

Does that even make any sense? She asked herself as she laid down on that piece of foam on the metal frame, staring at the blocks of plywood painted over with white that used to be a ceiling. She managed to fake her sickness to let her have 3 hours, 180 minutes, 10800 seconds of rest. Or to put it in other terms, a period where you lie still and keep your eyes open, hoping you don't vomit.

The bad thing about getting rest is that everything after it is so much worse. She came out feeling crappier than she did coming in. She could barely keep her head together during Science class, and heaven forbid she focus in Algebra. When English rolled along, Hitomi came with her khaki-green waves of hair and glowing green eyes, looking as if she was really concerned for her project partner. "Sayaka, are you okay?" She cocked her head to the side as if observing a cute puppy. A sick, nauseated, to-the-point-of-blowing-chunks sort of cute puppy. "Are you feeling ill?"

Sayaka would have loved to look at her with her head tilted slightly to the back while smiling and say, "Nooo, I'm not feeling ill. I'm not feeling ill at all. I'm just training for an Academy Award for Nauseatic Acting." But she decided not to. It wasn't worth the trouble. Especially since it's just Hitomi. She didn't deserve to have Sayaka dump all of this on her. "I'm just a little under the weather, but I'm fine, yeah." A little acting goes a long way. "What seems to be the trouble?"

Hitomi stared at her for a few more moments, thinking of whether she should take that load of bull or not. She closed her eyes and decided that it would be better if she just took her friend's word for it. It was not a can of worms she wanted to open, unlike everything else in her life as much as Sayaka was concerned. "Well Sayaka, Kyosuke and… well, mostly I actually, were thinking if we should start discussing what we're going to do for the project later after school…" They were going to eat out at Mitakihara mall and Hitomi was wondering if Sayaka didn't mind to join them on their little date. She didn't exactly say that, but that was practically what the whole message said. Sayaka would love to join them, and she had a lot of good ideas for the project anyhow so it would really be great if they could talk about it right away. As in the minute the school bell rings they should be out of there immediately. No butts, no waits, no nothing. Just get out of school as quickly as possible.

"Ummm, okay," Hitomi agreed, nodding. "We can do that."

Anything to forget something called nausea. Anything to think that there's something beyond this fakeness. Or at least anything that will hide it long enough for Sayaka to forget that it existed. Would that be possible? Why, of course. As long as you set your mind to it, everything was possible. All you had to do is scrub on the stain hard enough until everything is deleted from your memory.

Everything should be fine.

"Okay then Sayaka, after school it is." And she left, going back towards Kyosuke, who was waiting at her desk with a notebook in his hands. They were already discussing the project. Sayaka was just a fixture, added clout to make it look like there was a choice of free will in the first place. She was aware of that the first thing she got in the middle of their relationship. To Hitomi she was the buoy she could hold onto in case her ship sunk into the sea, to Kyosuke she was the childhood advisor he could depend on for sagely truth. They both wanted to be with each other, but they were both afraid of being alone with each other too, afraid of floating into space just by themselves. So Sayaka was their anchor to Earth. To reality.

But what if Sayaka has lost her own anchor to Earth? What will happen to everybody holding onto her?

What the hell was she even thinking? Wasn't she supposed to have nausea?

Sayaka wanted to bury everything into the ground. She wanted to hit Mitakihara Middle School with the Wave Motion Gun. She wanted to stalk from classroom to classroom with a Kalashnikov 7.62 caliber fully automatic assault rifle, dealing hellfire by the drum mag at 3000 rounds per minute. She wanted everything to just disappear.

What was eating her? What the hell could she do to get rid of it?

She looked around the classroom, imagining bodies flailing, glass walls shattering, screams mixing with the clink of falling bullet casings within a fragile crystal palace. In the middle of the chaos someone was standing, reproaching her, saying something. The person's lips didn't move, but they were saying something. Unspoken mental communication, telekinesis, voices in your head. I'm the one who's doing this to you. I'm the reason why your head hurts so much, it said. Hurt me, punish me, whatever you want. Just do something. Anything. Anything at all.

But Sayaka didn't know who that person is, nor did that person have the courtesy to introduce itself.

She did find herself staring at Homura Akemi though. Talking with Madoka Kaname, as always.

Sayaka put a hand on her forehead, her palm trying its best to become some sort of abnormal brainwave detector. Christ.

"Well, shall we be off?" Hitomi asked, slinging her bag over her shoulder.

"Hey, not yet," Kyosuke said, eating his hotdog sandwich. "Let me finish this first."

"Well Kyosuke, you always eat so slowly," Sayaka mused, sitting opposite the two lovers on the table. "If you keep being like that, Hitomi will just go up and leave you behind."

"Sayaka, I wouldn't do that to my dear Kyosuke; I'll always wait for him." She smiled sweetly at him, her face glowing. "Right?"

"Well that's what I like about you, I guess," he said, following up with a chuckle.

Hitomi's eyes widened. "I guess?"

He chuckled again, glad to have the payoff from his little joke. "Just kidding; that's what I like about you, a hundred and fifty percent."

A hundred and fifty percent.

Upon hearing this, she beamed on him. "You're so sweet, Kyosuke!"

Sayaka watched these two on the sidelines, eating her own sandwich, minding her own business, thinking about school and the math assignment that was to be passed tomorrow. The nausea had lifted. She had to think of a lot of other things lately these days. Who knew middle school would actually be this hard? Spending this afternoon in the café with Hitomi and Kyosuke was the most rest she had had in about 2 days. Other than this project, there was nothing much else to do except schoolwork—work that Sayaka was not too eager at all to carry out.

Then again, schoolwork was better than nausea.

Suddenly she noticed something on Kyosuke's arm, the one holding the hotdog sandwich to his mouth. Something was wrong with it, out of place even. She had to know why it was so. "Hey Kyosuke, when did your arm get better?"

He takes a bite out of his food and looks at Sayaka. "What?"

"Your arm," she said, pointing hesitatingly with her finger, "When did that get better? Didn't you get into an accident?"

Kyosuke raised a brow dubiously. "What are you talking about, Sayaka? I didn't get into an accident."

"Is something of the matter, Sayaka?" Asked Hitomi, who apparently did not get the gist of the strange conversation.

Sayaka paused, and then felt as if something was blocking her head. She held a hand to her forehead with the vague objective of feeling if it was warm. "…why did I say that just now?"

Kyosuke put his head forward, concerned. "Are you okay, Sayaka?"

The block became heavier, and Sayaka shook her head. "No, I… I don't think so." She was getting dizzy, and her stomach felt like churning. She hoped to god that it wasn't because of the sandwich she was eating.

It wasn't.

"Yes Sayaka, you look very pale…" Hitomi stood up and motioned to feel if her friend had a fever, but Sayaka declined her hand. She felt like the ground was a very thin layer of existence that would crumble and collapse, letting her fall into some abyss in the darkness. Her body felt loose, as if she was separating from skin to vein to bone, trembling as she did so.

Suddenly, she looked up towards Kyosuke. The way she stared made his spine go cold. A startled, almost perturbed look on her face, her lips barely open and mumbling as if she had found an incantation on Kyosuke's face and committed herself to reading it. The boy was about to say something when Sayaka shuddered and gasped as if just gaining conscience. Her expression changed: it was now of realization mixed with fearfulness as if she had just found a terrible revelation about herself. Her eyes gazed fixedly at his for a few moments, and then slowly turned to Hitomi, and then to the sandwich half in her hand.

She let the sandwich drop to her plate, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato splitting into equal parts, and still remained frozen for a few tense moments. She then broke off eye contact with the air and lifted herself off the table. Kyosuke and Hitomi watched in disbelief as Sayaka walked away, bumping into a man at the café entrance and exiting without so much as a word of apology.

The two remained frozen, and after some time Hitomi glanced at her boyfriend. "What just happened?"

"I…" He stared at the table surface with a blank look before shaking his head. "Honestly, I don't know."

000

Author's notes: Wondered why this fic's titled 'The Worth of Her Sacrifice'? It's in the second part of this fic. Also, wondered why there's lines in between the parts in this fic? Apparently 's text editor doesn't like me putting line breaks in-between the story parts. How to remedy this, its either I forgot or I'm just an idiot. Either way, if anybody has any idea how to overcome this properly, any help will be greatly appreciated.