Oh Holy Goddess, Please Bless Your Unworthy Follower…
"Please, oh benevolent Goddess, you have to!" Reiji Uno said to the highly perplexed Emi Sendou.
"YHT!" Eiji Saga repeated, using the first letter of each word as was his habit.
"Umm, you haven't said what you wanted me to do." Emi was right; Kamui's friends had run up to her and Mai as they were headed to the toy store to get some new dolls that had just come in, and got down on their hands and knees and started begging her for her help.
"Oh." Reiji laughed nervously. "Right." He and Eiji got up, Reiji cleared his throat. "Miss Emi, the Great Kamui Katsuragi has fallen terribly ill, so if you were to go visit him, it would really help him to have a speedy recovery."
"SR." Eiji said. "Please, Goddess, please!"
Emi looked to Mai; sure, she had nothing against Kamui, but she really didn't want to leave her best friend all alone like this. "If you two would come with me," Mai said, "I'm sure Emi would be more than willing."
"You don't mind shopping with them?" Emi tilted her head a bit; sure, Aichi had no problem going into the store with her to get her things, but Kamui and his friends seemed much more concerned about their 'manly image' than that.
"Nope; besides, I'd like to try out those new cute cards you got me." Mai said with a smile, and both of Kamui's friends took a big breath through their noses.
"It would be our honor to escort the Goddess's best friend!"
"GBF!" Eiji then put a piece of paper with directions to Kamui's address into Emi's hand. Stiffly they marched away with Mai, who giggled at how silly they were being.
Emi then returned home, which wasn't far, prepared a light lunch, packed it up, and followed the directions, stopping every so often to ask someone nearby and make sure she was on the right track. Finally, she found her way to Kamui's house, a pretty small one all told, though it did have an empty driveway, which meant that Kamui's family had enough to own their own car. "Excuse me." Emi knocked on the door, waited for one of Kamui's parents to answer it; it would probably be his mom, but there was always the possibility it might be his dad. "My name is Emi, I've come to visit Kamui." There was still no response, and she began to think that there was no one home at all, but how could that be? How could Kamui's parents leave him all alone while he was sick? "I'm coming in." She turned the doorknob, found that it wasn't locked, and so she entered Kamui's house.
It was a very messy house on the inside, it was clear that no one had swept or mopped or anything like that in a long time; no wonder Kamui had gotten sick, Emi thought to herself. She stamped down the impulse to start cleaning everything up, she already had enough on her plate having to take care of Aichi, making sure he got up on time and ate his dinner and such. There was only one floor, so it didn't take long to fine Kamui's room. "Hello?" She knocked on the door.
"Boo is it?" Either he was really stuffed up, or his tendency to mix up his words had gotten even worse.
"It's me, Emi; your friends asked me to come visit you."
"My Goddess?" She could practically hear his head steaming up. "Please, come out!"
'In', she figured he'd meant, and so she opened the door to his room; the walls were covered in Vanguard posters, there were action figures on the shelves, and the floor was littered with hot-blooded action manga. Kamui himself was buried up to his nose in his sheets, his eyes averting her. "Here, let me check real quick." She put the back of her hand to his forehead, and pulled it back right away; yeah, he definitely had a fever all right. "I thought you might be hungry, so I fixed you some rice balls; I hope you'll be able to stomach it."
"For my Goddess, I could stomach horse!" Kamui shouted, then coughed and hacked so much that Emi almost ran for the phone. "No, it's okay, I can bleat." He then wiped his sleeve off on his sheet, and she could see the evidence that this was not the first time he'd done this.
"I'll be right back." Emi said, setting the food down in front of him while she went into the kitchen to grab some paper towels and napkins and tissue paper…well, she found napkins, the other two were not to be found anywhere. "Kamui." She said as she came back in, half the rice-balls already consumed; clearly she'd been in the right to bring food with her. "Are your parents really busy or something?" She said as she started wiping up his sheets as best she could; they would have to be washed, but for now he needed them to keep warm.
"My Dad's always stuck working long hours, sometimes he doesn't even get to come home at night, he has to sleep in a big boob…" Kamui got such a mortified look on his face that Emi thought he was going to faint dead away. "I mean tube, tube!"
Emi just giggled. "And what about your mom?" Maybe she was like hers and Aichi's Dad, always off on a business trip or something; it would certainly account for the state of the Katsuragi residence.
"She and Dad got deported when I was really little." He said with a shrug. That statement took Emi a moment to decipher.
"You mean, divorced?" Emi felt her stomach tighten a bit; she'd been judging Kamui's house ever since she'd stepped foot in it, and she didn't even know. "Why?"
"Eh?" He looked off-guard, like he didn't even think that was a question someone might ask. "I don't know…Dad says he and Mom just…fell out of love, started biting a lot."
"Fighting?"
Kamui nodded. "Yeah, but like I said, I was real little, so I don't even remember any of it; all I really know is that my Dad wanted to raise me, so he got sole custody."
"Oh." Emi sat down, and watched as Kamui ate the rest of the rice balls.
"Thanks, Miss Emi, they were really good." He smiled, and then started coughing; Emi was on him right away, putting a napkin over his mouth, waiting for him to be done. "I'll go throw this away, and get you something to drink."
As Emi walked away, she thought to herself on what a wonderful thing it was that Kamui had found Vanguard and made so many friends through it, including her big brother. As she poured his glass, she decided that when he got better, she was going to fight him; he'd probably like that a lot.