Well, well, well, look who's showed up again, and this time in the AzuDai fandom! It was only a matter of time, seeing as I'm a huge shoujo ai fan and this series is a dream come true. Honestly, I'd seen a few episodes back in '04, but didn't really get into the series till recently, when I rewatched the whole thing over a weekend.
Warnings: shoujo ai, violence, character death
Enough of my blabbing, enjoy.
Sakaki was thirsty.
That was the only thought the taciturn girl's mind managed to form before she was suddenly bombarded by pain. For several minutes Sakaki failed to even register her own identity, instead clamping her jaw shut against the serrated scream slicing her esophagus into ragged, bloody strips. Gradually, however, the agony faded into a numbness the girl wasn't sure resulted from the chilly weather or shock, and her higher processes once again resumed functioning.
Once again her calmer, more rational self, Sakaki mentally extended gentle hands to gingerly try to piece together the jumbled scraps of memory into a coherent whole. She could remember Chiyo's exciting, albeit unexpected, phone call announcing that she'd be back in Japan for Christmas and that she planned to invite her high school friends to the summer home for the holiday. While the older girl at first failed to see the logic behind this arrangement, Chiyo had insisted that the seaside was perfectly gorgeous during the wintertime as well as summer (especially when it snowed), and Sakaki…well, she could only hope the penguin suit would be making a dramatic reprise.
While she had yet to witness the glorious return of the penguin suit, however, it soon became clear after arriving at the Mihama residence that the high school's two most widely known female employees planned to yet again chaperone the trip. Hiding her disappointment at Chiyo's "father's" absence, Sakaki had been looking forward to the trip regardless, if only because she planned on sharing the recent artwork she'd composed in the drawing class she attended at her college. Perhaps she'd ask Kurosawa-sensei if the high school would be offering any positions for art teachers in the future.
Sakaki smiled at the thought of guiding a roomful of eager Chiyos to create adorable pictures of kittens, but reality roughly slapped her across her face as the grin aggravated her split lip, causing it to bleed profusely. Wiping the blood onto the back of her hand, the girl noted her skin's icy temperature and unbidden, a much more recent memory settled into her lap. Only a short time ago, she'd been in excruciating pain, mostly emanating from her right leg. Cautiously, Sakaki swiveled her head in that direction, her scalp brushing against some sort of low ceiling. Momentarily distracted, she looked up, and decided that either both the floor and ceiling of the rented car had been upholstered exactly the same, or the vehicle was upside down.
In her peripheral vision, the driver and passenger seats of the car loomed like stalactites, their headrests pointing toward the ground. Definitely upside down, then.
Grunting softly, Sakaki finally turned her attention to her leg, only to sharply gasp when she realized the bloody chunk of flesh protruding from her torso actually was the limb in question.
"Nasty, isn't it?"
Sakaki started at the sound of a voice, sending another searing spurt of pain up her spine. But the fact that someone else was conscious besides herself soothed her mounting anxiety, and she looked to her left to see Yomi's face peeking out, also upside down, from the space between the middle row of van seats and the roof of the car.
After examining her leg, Sakaki felt prepared for anything, but the other girl's condition seemed infinitely worse. Though she could only make out her friend's face, she could see that her glasses were shattered, only a few sharp pieces of lens remaining around the edges of the frame, the rest embedded in Yomi's cheeks, nose, forehead, and…
"Your eye," Sakaki rasped, just now remembering how thirsty she was. Yomi responded with a rueful chuckle.
"You're one to talk. Sounds like you won't be showing me up if we do karaoke tonight," she quipped, then sobered at Sakaki's silence. "Sorry. Too much time around Tomo, I guess."
Tomo.
"Where is everyone else? What happened?" If she couldn't force the puzzle herself, perhaps Yomi could help.
"I don't know about everyone," the brown-haired girl sighed, "but Tomo's back here unconscious. Since I can see her breathing, I guess that means she's not dead. There's a huge hunk of metal pinning her by the lower back though, and I bet she's hurt pretty badly."
Sakaki nodded; she understood that, though the injuries might be serious, for right now at least two of her friends were alive.
"As for Kaorin…" Yomi trailed off, and the taller girl felt her stomach tighten. Though all throughout high school she'd been dogged by admiring "fans," Kaorin had at least made honest attempts at getting to know Sakaki personally, and since graduation the two had become closer, though perhaps not quite what one would call intimate friends. Sakaki suspected that there was more to Kaorin's devotion than she cared to disclose, but she never pried into the subject; just as the shorter girl never challenged her idol's fascination with all things cute, the athletic loner neglected to demand exactly what significance each exclamation of "Sakaki-san!" carried.
The whole situation left her with a sense of responsibility for the eccentric girl, which explained the apprehensive sensation beginning to seize her stomach.
"Yes?"
"I think she's dead. No, I don't mean that—she is dead. There's…ah, I'm not really sure what it is, but some sort of debris or something…" Yomi's one good eye, her left, rolled up and down nervously as it stared at something off where Sakaki couldn't see. For the first time, she noticed that the pupil was dilated and its expression a bit crazed; she must not have noticed earlier while she was gaping at the way Yomi's right eyelid had been neatly cleft in two by a piece of lens and was now curling up unnaturally while milky white ocular fluid seeped from between the other jagged bits of glass.
"Well, anyway, whatever it is smashed her head into a…ah, pulp or something. There's a lot of blood and…is that…brains…?"
"Yomi," Sakaki croaked suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"How're you?"
Silence.
"Not so great."
The Lone Wolf nodded; she hadn't thought so. "How bad?" she asked, already anticipating the answer.
"Besides the eye, there's glass all over my body. A really huge chunk that I guess came from the rear windshield went right through my—"
"Okay."
"Yeah. I've been bleeding for hours. It feels like hours anyway." Yomi frowned, furrowing her brow and causing the glass shards jutting out of her face to shift. She expelled a sharp hiss.
Hours?
"You've been awake this whole time?"
"Unfortunately, yes. I don't know exactly what happened, but sensei slammed on the breaks and swerved for whatever reason, and then I think we rolled down a hill until we hit something. My glasses shattered and for awhile all I could think about was my eye, so I didn't even notice the…other thing." She grinned humorlessly yet again. "You'd think my fat would've cushioned the crash a bit, eh?"
Sakaki leaned back against the door behind her and closed her eyes, barely registering Yomi's second hushed apology. Silence lapsed between the two of them, moonlight filtering through the darkness inside the mangled car and casting eerie, ethereal shadows. Both girls were sure that Osaka would have some remark to make about the atmosphere had she not been unconscious—or dead.
"It's snowing," Yomi stated some time later, and her companion shifted slightly to gaze behind her and see that she was right. The taller girl blinked disinterestedly.
"Hey, Sakaki?"
"Yes?"
"I think I'm going to go to sleep for a bit. You know, I haven't gotten any rest since this whole thing started." Sakaki was no doctor, but she was fairly certain that abandoning consciousness when a one had gone through severe physical trauma and lost a great deal of blood was not a good idea. Yomi's tone indicated that she too was well aware of the implications.
"Oh, ok."
"Um, and Sakaki?"
"Yes?"
"Would you do me a favor?"
Oh no, not this. By veiling her true intentions with a casual comment about how she needed rest, Sakaki had assumed that she and Yomi had entered an unspoken agreement about how this situation was going to be handled. The shy girl failed miserably in these kinds of circumstances and even now was unsure of how to react. Following a few moments of internal debate, she chose to humor Yomi; she owed her at least that much.
"Sure."
"Look after Tomo, will you? I know she's a moron and a pain in the ass, but she's a great friend when you get down to it. And, well, she needs someone to take care of her. Pretty much all the time. I know it's a lot to ask but…"
"I'll do it."
"Thank you, Sakaki." A small, relieved smile seemed to spread across Yomi's face, but the taller girl wasn't sure if it wasn't instead a trick of the moonlight. "I think I'll have that nap now."
Stillness gelled around Sakaki as she once again reclined against the door of the car, prepared to keep a vigil for an undetermined amount of time until Tomo came around and there was someone else to talk to. The loner, not for the first time in her life, was aching for human communication when a streak of pale light unexpectedly illuminated the previously shadowed area in front of her, and she caught sight of a bloody, ratty pigtail…
A few more notes because I don't know how to shut up: I realize Yomi is a little OOC here, but I really couldn't find a way to satisfactorily rectify it, so my explanation is that she's suffering a bit of emotional damage; this will be a chaptered story, each installment focusing on a different character while still advancing the plot (chapter 2 is actually already started); since I most recently watched the series subbed, I'll use honorifics (though that'll probably be the extent of the actual nihongo in the fic--English and Japanese don't mesh well); and as always, reviews and concrit are welcome because Lord knows I can always improve.