Suds
She saw her breath touch the door as she exhaled dramatically when she found her key inside her war zone of a bag. The chill settling over the whole city that year was bordering on unnatural. The cold went straight through her bones and came back to wrap around her again. Unnatural. I should move somewhere with flamingos in their natural habitat.
Pushing her reluctant door open with her shoulder, she threw her shopping bags into the apartment, disregarding womanly grace. Kaname Chidori had a bad day.
The train to work that morning was late due to a fuse or some other electrical problem that took ten years off her life to fix. She spent an insufferable eight hours dealing with an intern's unforgivable accounting blunder. She only had time to eat a plain roll for lunch. Her bag of groceries tore once she got to the station an hour later than usual. An old pervert managed to cop a feel, a grave mistake he soon realized at the sharp end of her heeled shoe. The cold made banging her head on concrete less painful.
And on top of all that, she missed him.
She missed him so much she often forgot what day it was, and that salt was different from sugar.
He had been deployed to Bolivia. He had warned her that the mission might extend up to three weeks. Eighteen days have passed since they last saw each other by their bedroom door.
She threw a fit before he left as she always does. After several hours, they apologized to each other as they always did. She often postulates that she would be more emotionally steady if only their mutual apologizing didn't always leave such a searing, sensual memory for her to hold on to while he was away.
Dummy.
She shed her bonnet, her wet boots, and her coat as she meandered towards the kitchen. She could clean that mess up later, she thought. She didn't, however, notice a very small mound of dry soil near the door's hinges.
The wall clock read 8:43 p.m.
Where's the chocolate?
Something inside the refrigerator looked different. She remembered she had a bit of milk before she left that morning, even checking if it wasn't spoiled before she poured some in her coffee. The trash bin below her sink cradled the empty container. She felt unusual with the faint, but uncertain memory of putting the carton back where she found it.
After a moment, she shrugged and closed her eyes.
"You've been tired all day, old girl," she told herself as she bent backwards in an attempt to stretch. Without sparing another thought to the other recent oddities inside her apartment, she made her way to the bathroom. A very long bubble bath was on her agenda.
Kaname peeled her clothes one by one on the hallway. Off came her blouse, her skirt, and her accessories. She was about to unhook her bra when she suddenly came to a halt, the heel of her right foot suspended from the wooden floor.
The lights of the bathroom were open.
If there was one habit she picked up living alone, it was turning off all power switches inside her apartment when she left. She had been living alone for ten years since she was a teenager, and rent along with utilities payments didn't become cheaper through the years. The milk carton could be a simple lapse in memory, but years of energy-saving wasn't.
Feeling the itch of beading perspiration all over her skin, she tiptoed back to the kitchen and retrieved a metal baseball bat inside one of the lower cabinets. She had no idea where Sousuke kept his guns, and she refused to entertain the idea of using any of his weaponry to disable an unwanted intruder. She had her reliable swing and her distracting state of semi-nakedness to her advantage.
She started her slow and silent trek in the direction of the bathroom, her heart banging against her chest with every step.
What could he possibly want inside the bathroom? He's probably peeing. Great. His pants are down. Easier for me. Just great.
Feeling a surge of adrenaline course through her limbs, Kaname kicked the bathroom door and stormed into the tiled room.
I'll swing this thing at his disgusting, revolting, repulsive, hideous, vile, disastrous excuse of a pe—
Her arms froze in mid-swing.