a/n: for some reason none of my edits went through? i'm so sorry there weren't any italics i promise it wasn't meant to be like that
"Kumiko? Kumiko, is this your apartment?" Kumiko looked up from her homework as someone incessantly knocked on the door. Dropping pages of math and music sheets in a flurry of paper, she dashed through the hall with her socks scree-ee-eeing across the sleek wooden floor. Mamiko looked up from a magazine she happened to be reading as she leaned against the wall, but Kumiko hardly paid her any heed. She would have knocked her out of the way if she hadn't stepped away. "If this is the wrong apartment, then I dearly apologize, I was simply looking for my gal-" Kumiko flung the door open to see Reina, soaked through by the rain with her clothes clinging to her figure as she held a broken umbrella in her hands.
"Reina?"
"-pal," Reina finished.
"W-why're you here? The storm's crazy out there, you won't b-be able to get home in this weather!" As if to prove her point, a particularly loud clap of thunder sounded at that moment, and Reina jumped.
"I was, erm, hoping to pick up some of my notes that I left here a while ago." Reina seemed bashful, almost.
"So you came here in the middle of a storm?"
"It wasn't quite this bad when I began to head over here. By the time I recognized my, ahem, error, it was too late to turn back."
"Well, uh, I guess you should come inside, then." Reina shook out her umbrella before setting it down on the floor. Mamiko walked out the door with a wave of her hand, slipping away without another word.
"Your apartment is nice," Reina noted, already heading in the direction of Kumiko's room.
"You've been here before."
"Still, I suppose the storm outside casts it in somewhat of a different light." She had a point - the darkened sky, combined with the seemingly endless flashes of lightning, made the small apartment feel surreal, almost dreamlike. It was a feeling that Kumiko was familiar with, but she found herself unsettled by it nonetheless. The building trembled beneath her feet, and her phone beeped with some message she didn't care to check. Reina shivered.
"H-hey, do you need a blanket or hot chocolate or something? I don't know if I'd be able to forgive myself if you caught a cold."
"You have a blanket draped over your bed, would it be alright if I used that?" Reina pointed to a ratty, fuzzy red blanket barely clinging to Kumiko's bed.
"Yeah, sure. I'll go and make some hot chocolate for us, okay?" Reina nodded and immediately bundled herself in the blanket, looking like a very cold and very tired cocoon. Kumiko walked back to the kitchen before Reina could see her cheeks turning red. "Crap, of course she just comes here out of nowhere," Kumiko muttered as soon as Reina was out of earshot. "I'm not going to survive this, am I?"
After ten minutes, a mistake involving a fair bit of steaming milk on her arm, and several self-imposed pep talks, Kumiko returned to her room with two mugs of hot chocolate in her hands.
"I was beginning to get worried," Reina said, looking out the window at the pattering rain. The color had started to return to her cheeks somewhat, and her hair stuck up in places. "I thought that you might have needed to go outside for something." Kumiko handed her one of the mugs, which Reina gratefully took into pruned hands.
"S-sorry about the weird mugs, they're my mom's." Reina turned around the mug to read the caption.
"A yawn is a silent scream for coffee. Fair enough."
"Yeah." Reina remained silent for a few moments as Kumiko sat beside her.
"How long do you think we'll be trapped here?" Kumiko shrugged.
"P-probably just twenty more minutes or so. It doesn't seem that bad." Just then, Kumiko's phone beeped and vibrated itself out of her sweater pocket.
"Is that a message from somebody?" Kumiko picked up the phone, a strange feeling of fear entering her mind as she read the text.
Severe Flood Warning
Please Stay Inside Your Homes
"Oh," the two said.
"I suppose I'll be staying over for a bit longer than expected," Reina sighed, burrowing further into the blanket. The dark gray sky outside made it seem as if evening had already come, but Kumiko knew from a brief look at a clock that it was really only mid-afternoon.
"T-that's fine! We can just watch a movie or something, maybe it'll be fun!"
"Could we watch something besides High School Musical this time?" Reina's mug of hot chocolate was already half-drained, and Kumiko wondered just how cold she was. The thought of offering to cuddle and provide heat crossed her mind for a moment, but she shook it away.
"Sure. How about that show you used to really like, about the, uh, teenagers from space?" Reina flinched.
"No. Not that one. Never that one, Kumiko."
"Oh. Right." There was a brief pause in the conversation, after that, and Kumiko began to fidget with the ends of her carpet. Lightning illuminated the room for a split second, just quick enough for Reina to miss it entirely after blinking.
"One . . . two . . . th-" Kumiko hadn't even finished when the thunderclap came, shaking her to the very core as Reina let out a tiny yeek and dug herself still deeper into the blanket. "So, uh, how about that movie?"
"Sure." There was another pause. "The TV is in the living room, y'know."
"Oh." Reina stood up, still wrapped in the blanket, and began to hop out the door. Kumiko snorted.
"You're adorable, y'know that?"
"I'm simply trying to keep myself warm," Reina huffed, barely managing to keep her balance on the smooth wooden floor.
"I'm pretty sure that I saw an ad for some, uh, action movie earlier. Maybe that's on?"
"Sure." Reina flopped onto the couch with a plunk.
"H-hey, do you need me to turn up the heating or something? You still seem r-really cold."
"I'm - choo - fine," Reina muttered, trying her best to cover up a tiny sneeze.
"If you insist," Kumiko sighed. Reina pushed magazines aside as she looked for the remote. "I think it's on the table."
"Oh." Both girls reached for the coffee table at the same time, hands briefly touching. Another flash of lightning seemed to light up the small moment, illuminating their hands. Kumiko didn't make any attempt to move her hand, and neither did Reina.
"H-hey, I think it's right there!" Kumiko blurted out. Reina tossed aside another magazine and picked up the remote. Kumiko would have been lying if she had said she wasn't quietly wishing for the remote to be missing, so that she could have been so close to Reina's hand for even another second.
"So it is." Reina handed over the remote before slipping her arm back into the blanket.
"From what I saw in the ad, the action movie was about this-"
The lights flickered.
"Uh, Reina?"
"Yes?"
"Could you, um, m-maybe sit closer?" Reina scooted to Kumiko's end of the couch.
"Like this?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
The lights blinked once, and then, as if resigned to their fate, sputtered out and left the two girls in complete and utter darkness.
"That's why." Kumiko felt around blindly for Reina, trying her best to see without any light. After what felt like hours of searching (despite the fact that Reina was right next to her) Kumiko found something warm under her touch.
"Kumiko?"
"Yeah?"
"Your hand is on my face." Kumiko let out a tiny squeak before reeling back.
"S-sorry!" she yelped. "I didn't m-mean to!"
"It's alright." Reina reached for her hand and held it tightly. "We can probably keep track of each other this way." Kumiko was grateful for the power outage in that moment - it meant that Reina couldn't see her cheeks turning pink. "It may just be the fact that the blanket is falling off, but it's beginning to get rather cold in here."
"Yeah, that's probably, uh, the heating."
"Do you have a fireplace?"
"Do you?" If Kumiko had been able to see, she would have probably seen Reina mirroring her own expression of utter exasperation. "No, we don't have a fireplace. I m-might have some candles lying around, though."
"Where?"
"The kitchen, I think? We never use them." The kitchen, Kumiko knew, was on the other end of the apartment, and it was obscured with several things that would provide somewhat of a challenge, considering the current predicament.
"Do you have anything else? Candles could potentially be dangerous, since we can't see any of the room. I wouldn't want to be responsible for setting anything on fire." Just then, another flash of lightning lit up the room, and Kumiko could see Reina's face for just a split second before being once again plunged into darkness.
"I wish we did," she muttered, nearly too quiet for Reina to notice. Or, it would have been, had Reina not been sitting extremely close.
"Are you afraid of the dark?" she asked. There was no judgement in her voice, no scorn or disbelief.
"Not really." Kumiko looked up at the ceiling, where she knew that lights would be hanging. "I guess I just don't really like it that much."
"Why not?"
"I can't see what's t-there. It reminds me of how big the world is." Kumiko found it easier to speak, somewhat, when she couldn't see Reina's face and may as well have been talking to the void. "It makes me wonder if anything's real."
"Because you can't see it?" Reina shifted in her spot, and Kumiko could feel her head rest on her shoulder.
"Yeah."
"That's one philosophy that's always stricken me as dumb, if you want the truth." Reina sat up.
"Huh?"
"Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening. There are a few theories surrounding that, pretentious ideas meant to twist our brains and make us feel like idiots. Perhaps we don't witness the events, but they occur. The cat still dies, the tree still falls. It's selfish to think that the universe revolves around ourselves and ourselves alone. For example, I may or may not be running a hand through my hair right now. You have no idea, because the power is out and you don't have a fireplace-"
"Why do you have a fireplace?"
"-but it's still happening."
"I'd be happier if I knew you were there, though. It's . . . it's kinda scary, only hearing your voice."
"Well, if you truly feel that way, there is one thing I could do. I was going to keep this off, in order to preserve the battery life in case my mother called, but I suppose I could make an exception." Kumiko could hear Reina digging through her pockets until she stopped and took something out. It was her phone, Kumiko realized once it began to turn on. The light from screen wasn't much - all she could see was Reina's face, glowing in the bright artificial light - but it was enough. It would have to be enough.
The two girls talked by the light of Reina's phone for an hour or so after that - Kumiko honestly couldn't tell, what with the clock being engulfed in the darkness along with everything else. The storm, persistent and loud as ever, continued to rage on outside. Kumiko soon found herself growing sleepy, everything she could see in the room (which admittedly wasn't much) becoming softer and blurred. It wasn't long before she slipped from consciousness entirely.
"Reina?"
Kumiko was in a field of yellow-orange flowers, she idly realized as one does in a dream. Her hands were clasped behind her back, some kind of thread tightly wrapped around her pinkie finger. The sky was clear and blue overhead, and the air tasted sweet, like a garden in the beginning of summertime. Kumiko took a deep breath, savoring the utter peace of the moment. The thread on her finger tightened, and she turned around to see a long, thin red string tensely strung along something she couldn't see. Squinting against the bright sunlight, she tried to figure out what - or who - else was tied to the string.
"Oh, you're here." Kumiko's eyes widened. Reina stood on the other end of the field, perfectly still, and not a second passed before Kumiko began to run towards her, trampling the delicate golden flowers in her wake.
"Reina!" she panted, reaching out with shaky hands, but Reina still wouldn't turn around. The string was beginning to tangle, now, and clouds started to close in on the blue sky. "Reina, I'm h-here!" The sky had almost completely dimmed, now, the only thing still visible the red string on Kumiko's hand.
"So you are," Reina said, but her voice was further away now, as if she had traveled a hundred miles in the seconds since the sky went dark.
"Reina, w-where are you?" Kumiko reached for the empty air, desperate, but all she could feel was the thread tightening around her finger and the flowers underfoot. "Reina!" Kumiko clung to the string for dear life, but it seemed as if it stretched forever. The only comfort she seemed to have was the fact that there was still something on the other end, that it was tangled and stretched but hadn't fallen to the ground. It hadn't broken. It hadn't broken. It hadn't-
"Ow." Kumiko was woken, rather suddenly, by the feeling of a leg of the coffee table sharply jabbing her thigh. "Reina?" It was still dark, still bleak, still raining, and Kumiko blindly felt for the other girl's form on the couch, but all she found was a pile of blankets. "Reina, w-where'd you go?" Foolishly, Kumiko looked at her hand, but there was no red string to be seen.
"I'm here." Kumiko breathed a sigh of relief.
"Uh, where's here?"
"Follow the sound of my voice." After quite a few minutes of stumbling through her own apartment, Kumiko found her way to Reina, who stood by the closed curtains that concealed the closed doors. "The storm's let up, I think. It's just raining now."
"Your phone died."
"It dies quickly, I've found, especially when someone uses it for over an hour with no breaks." Kumiko looked down at the floor, feeling the carpet beneath her toes.
"Sorry," she mumbled.
"In any case, there still is one way to allow light into this dull apartment."
"What's that?"
"This." Reina pushed aside the curtains before flinging open the doors, the light from the city below flooding in. She leaned over on the balcony, letting the sudden rush of wind and rain push themselves against her, her hair flowing behind her.
"H-hey, you'll catch a cold if you do that!" Kumiko yelped, stepping tentatively towards Reina.
"You should try it," Reina murmured, closing her eyes against the wind as the rain streamed down her cheeks, a blissful smile on her face.
"What's so great about standing in the middle of a rainstorm?" Reina took Kumiko's cold hand into her own, pulling her out into the open.
"This. It's wonderful, isn't it?" The rain stung for a moment, jarring and cold against Kumiko's skin, but she soon became thankful for the feeling. It was a reminder of sorts, she figured. It was a reminder that things were fine, that she was here and Reina was here and she wasn't alone in a flower patch with nothing and nobody to keep her company. It might have been a trick of the light, or the weariness from the dream, or simply the delirium that standing so close to Reina in the evening light caused, but Kumiko could have sworn that she saw a flash of red between herself and Reina, some kind of small promise that didn't go unnoticed.
"It is," she murmured. "It really is, Reina."