There he was, standing in front of her, a look of pure loathing on his face. There was Hinata, the boy she had come to love over her time in the Afterlife Battlefront.

It was just after the baseball game with Angel and her team, Hinata had called Yui over while the rest walked back to Anti-Angel Headquarters. Yui's shirt was wet with perspiration from the said game and her face was pink with the exhaustion. She remembered that moment when she wrestled Hinata, just as he was about to catch the ball. She couldn't help it; she didn't want him to disappear so…she did it.

"I hate you. You simply annoy me, just by being." The words cut right through the girl; she was struck dumb by the iciness of Hinata's words, her eyes growing wider as the impact of the words resounded in her head.

"You think you can just barge in, just when a member of the initial Afterlife Battlefront disappears, and attempt to replace her? Don't you know how many people were sad about Iwasawa?" Hinata continued. Yui gasped. That was never an intention of hers. She had admired and respected Iwasawa like an idol, her 'cool beauty' disappearing had caused her many tears, especially when she was among those standing in the mosh pit for what she thought was going to be another heart-pounding concert.

"She was so shaken up by it…" Hinata whispered, suddenly looking towards the ground, downcast.

The moment of sudden weakness and the weight of the sudden silence allowed Yui to recover and clear her mind. She started trembling, her vision blurring and a thousand thoughts bouncing around in her mind. What was this feeling?

I never wanted to come off like that…I just wanted everyone to start smiling again…Hinata… The name echoed and a tear silently slipped out from her pink eyes.

"Do you know how much I wanted to catch that pitch?" Hinata muttered.

Yui saw something dancing in his eyes, a longing to go back and change that moment when the pink-haired girl had wrestled him to the ground.

"I didn't want you to disappear…nobody did" she mustered the words in her head.

Hinata's head snapped back up. "Shut up. I don't want to hear your voice. Just…leave me alone from now on."

Yui bit her bit. It wasn't the playful "shut up" she had gotten used to. And how could she possible leave him alone? She loved him, for crying out loud.

"HINATA!" A troubled Otonashi came running. Sensing the atmosphere, he stiffened, and then coughed once.

"Yuri started raging at Angel for the match and then the Vice got angry and..." he took a deep breath, "they're fighting now."

Hinata nodded and proceeded to follow Otonashi to the fight.

Yui stared at the fading back of the boy she had loved for so long. Her lip was bleeding from the earlier biting she had subjected it to.

Finally, like Yuri's newly wiped sniper scope, everything in Yui's head became clear. She broke down.

"Don't you remember, Hinata?" she choked between her sobs "Back when we were living?"

"Stop it! Why are you fighting us?" a girl with pink hair shouted over the noise and bustling of bullets firing.

There, in the range of fire were Noda, Shiina and Takamatsu, firing at none other than fellow comrades, with a blank look in their eyes.

"Yurippe, I'm here!" Hinata shouted over the gunfire.

"What about Yui?"

"Forget about her, I'm here to help!" he snapped, firing a few shots at Angel and the Vice.

"How troublesome." the Vice sneered, an eerie red in his eyes "Don't you know how to accept defeat?"

Suddenly, Shiina drew her knives, poised to attack, aimed at the leader of the Battlefront.

"NO-!" a larger figure dove and shielded Yuri's body with his own. Hinata squeezed his eyes shut, preparing for the blades against his skin…

It never came.

An audible thud has heard was a mass of vivid pink hair spilled onto the ground.

The raging battle was silenced and everyone turned to look at the fallen pinkette. There was multiple piercings along her side, chest and neck, when blood was starting to flow from.

"I guess...we're done here." The Vice took a step back, the red from his eyes fading, and then he walked away, leaving Angel. Shiina, Takamatsu and Noda dropped to the ground.

"Quick, we have to help them!" Yuri screamed.

Yui heard approaching footsteps as her vision got foggy. There was so much blood around her; it made her feel so dizzy.

"I-It's okay," Yui mustered up the strength to speak as she saw a hand extended to her, "I'm not going to make it this time…I'll…just rest up in the infirmary."

She saw a blurred face nod and then move away.

Finally, all Yui could hear was the fading footsteps and the rain that was starting to fall.

"You're such a fool, trying to take that blow. You'll never be a real Afterlife Battlefront member. You're just an extra, barging into our afterlives like that. From now on, leave me and Yuri alone."

The words struck Yui with such force; the wounds on her petite body didn't even matter anymore. She could feel the footsteps of the boy that she had risked her safety for, and how they left her so mercilessly in the cold of the rain.

Yui lay there, in the cold of the dark, as she simply waited to die. She felt neither the pain nor the cold, she just hugged herself, her eyes and mind equally dull and blank.

H-He loves Yuri...

As a pair of brown eyes stared down at her, Yui's own fading pink eyes started to close…

"Isn't it painful to have the one you would fight for...be the one to hold the gun against your heart?"

Yui felt herself being lifted up and carried away…

Then nothing.