The girls sat around at the family owned burger joint in a comfortable silence. Max's Burgers had been around for decades and had been a favorite haunt amongst the youngsters since forever. Yui had fond memories of coming here with her family before her parents had died in a small plane crash during one of their global travels when she was just fifteen... and Ui, only fourteen.
Mio gave Ritsu's roommate a cursory glance. The bassist quietly inferred that the girl was thinking about something unpleasant perhaps related to her sister's death. Mio didn't have any siblings of her own, but her heart still went out to the quiet girl imagining what it would be like to lose a close family member.
Yui fidgeted a little bit in her seat. This dinner was less awkward than she had originally feared. Having Ritsu and Mugi, two familiar and friendly faces, around really helped ease any sort of potential awkward silence between the two ravenettes she had not met until today. She was certain that they were all nice girls, as she highly doubted her roommate would have any bitchy friends, but it still didn't make the first few minutes any less uncomfortable for the odd one out-Yui. Her sister had played guitar, not she. She could talk about music with them but only in a compositional theoretical sense, and if you didn't know much about it then it'd only bore the listener to death. Yui understood this herself firsthand, often being the one to doze off mid-lecture.
Ritsu came back from the beverage section with the last of everyone's requested drinks. She slammed Yui's and her own drinks on the table and slid into her side of the booth pushing Yui into Azusa lightly. Yui mumbled an apology to the shorter girl under her breath, being especially careful about it as she had a sense that the girl wasn't too fond of her, and gratefully received her drink from Ritsu.
Azusa blushed still feeling a little embarrassed about all the assumptions she had made about the girl sitting on her left earlier. She had no idea what her background was and she still opened her big mouth and called her "irresponsible." Even though the other girl would never find out she still felt guilty for passing judgment on the college freshman so quickly. Unfortunately for Azusa, Ritsu noticed HTT's lead guitarist's struggles.
"Watchya doin' squirming like that, Azuny-?"
"NO."
Yui looked puzzled. "Azuny...?" She repeated looking lost. Had she been calling the guitarist the wrong name the entire time. She could've sworn that the girl had introduced herself as "Azusa"... maybe that was why she didn't like Yui very much. She'd been calling her the wrong name...?!
Recognizing Yui's confusion, Ritsu stepped back into the fray. "Well, Yui," she started. "The fact is that Azusa's true name is Azunya-ack!" Ritsu reached down under the table and rubbed her shin not missing the warning glance from Mio across the table. Ritsu cursed Mio in her head. The bassist seemed to be even more insufferable than usual today. The drummer was determined to not let this sour her mood though. She wanted her roomie to relax maybe just a little bit.
Ritsu went to take a sip from her drink but then realized the straw wrapper was still partially on the straw. Ritsu grinned to herself.
Heh. A chance for vengeance.
The drummer kept the idle conversation going about the latest side project from one of her favorite contemporary artists, Dave Groehl, and removed the straw from her drink as subtly as humanly possible. She eyed Mio, mentally locking onto her in her mind. Ritsu lifted up the straw to her lips with all intentions of blowing the remnants of her straw wrapper at the bassist. However, HTT's resident keyboardist caught Ritsu in the act.
"MIO, WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!" The blonde girl yelped uncharacteristically and tackled the bassist down into a duck in their booth. The straw wrapper was actually too wet which led all of Ritsu's futile blowing efforts to be for naught as the wrapper couldn't even leave the straw.
Oh, and Mio was in mid-sip when Mugi jumped on her. There's that too.
Mugi quietly gave her apologies to Mio as they had both gotten sprayed by Mio's Sprite. However, the blonde's apology went in one ear and quickly out the other as she affixed a deadly glare in Ritsu's direction. Immediately, giving the responsibility of the blame to Ritsu. Azusa sighed, glad that Yui seemed to have lost interest about her nickname. Yui gulped in slight fear wondering if she was gonna have to find a new (living) roommate. And Ritsu...
Ritsu just gave Mio the biggest shit-eating grin.
"Order number sixy-four is up. Order number sixty-four!"
Mugi and Mio hurriedly got up and went to wash up in the bathroom. Before leaving the table Mio hissed at Ritsu to pick up their table's order. Ritsu kept on grinning and went over to the other side of the restaurant to grab the burgers. It was just Azusa and Yui now.
Yui and Azusa.
Azusa and Yui.
The high schooler felt eyes on her so she turned to look at the only other person left at the table. It had gotten pretty quiet after the other three girls had left, but Azusa couldn't help but recall her mother's advice regarding pets and small children: you should be the most worried and concerned when they get quiet. That generally means they're about to cause the most trouble.
"Umm...?"
"Azunyaa...?"
"..." Azusa pretended she didn't hear it trying her best to forcefully ignore the entire weirdness of the situation. As long as she didn't figure it out she was sure the quiet girl would drop it eventually. Azusa wasn't aware of the other girl's intendancy to take things to the extreme.
"Azunya...b?" Azusa felt her eyebrow twitch. Okay, fine. She just needed a distraction. A different subject...
"Hasn't the weather been nice lately...?" Yui's unblinking stare didn't leave her face for a moment.
"Azunya...c?"
"..." Azusa was beginning to get slightly uncomfortable.
"Azunya...d?"
... Dear lord. Was this girl going to go through the entire alphabet?
Remnants of Consciousness I
In the silence of the dingy bathroom Mugi and Mio did their best to remove the unwanted moisture from their clothes. It was just Sprite though, so it was a little beyond the blonde as to why Mio was so insistent on going to wash out the "stains."
"Mio?"
"Yes?" The bassist answered tersely. Clearly, Ritsu had managed to jump right onto her last good nerve. Mugi knew that her best friend had no ill will towards her and felt safe to continue her line of questioning.
"Was there really a need to rush to the bathroom right away?"
"Well..."
"What's the matter Mio? Is something wrong?"
"I just wanted a break from that idiot. I can only stand her in small doses."
"Ah, you're referring to Ritsu. I see."
"Th-there's nothing to see, Mugi!" Mio knew that the dangerous glint in her roommate's eyes wasn't a good omen.
"Hmm... I wonder..."
"I-it's just," Mio dryed off her hands hurriedly. "You know, she's always so cold to me even though I've never, like, wronged her or anything. She's just so irritating sometimes..."
"In her defense, you did kick her pretty hard under the table..."
"That's not what I really meant. I mean, she's so much nicer to you Mugi..."
"It's okay, Mio. I'm only into older women..."
"What...?" The bassist couldn't conceal the blank and shocked look on her face as she turned to her roommate.
"What?" Mugi mirrored back equally as confused as Mio.
Mio loved her best friend to death, but sometimes she had no idea where that girl's mind went. Mio found that more often than not that their thought processes were running on two completely different tracks.
"Hmmm..." Yui, still alone with the senior in high school, stared out the window deep in thought. Azusa literally had no idea when the last time this enigmatic girl had blinked. It's had to have been at least like five minutes by now, right? That just couldn'tbe healthy, the guitarist mused not realizing that she was now staring back at Yui. "Azunya...m?"
Azusa flinched a little bit at the noise, reminding her that she was staring intently at this girl she had just met today. After a few seconds, she chanced a quick look at Yui through her peripheral vision. As time went on Yui's guesses had become further and further apart. At this rate the most recent guess was probably the girl's last one. She was so close, assuming that she would've continued down her pattern of alphabetical order, but Azusa prevailed. She let out a sigh in relief.
With a somewhat-creepy glint in her eye, Yui quickly turned to the guitarist pointing at her violently. "Azunyan!"
"Dammit."
Ritsu had accidentally grabbed the wrong order so it had taken her a while to settle things correctly. Eventually, she did return though with everyone's burgers and fries and Mugi and Mio came shortly after she did as well. The five girls enjoyed their brief dinner together and the other members of HTT warmed up to their unofficial (previously anonymous) melody writer as well. Yui enjoyed spending time with everyone as well, but was a little confused as to why Azunyan hadn't introduced herself using her real name.
She figured she'd ask Ritsu later. It was a bit after seven and Yui decided to head directly back to the library as studying in the room with Ritsu was hard because the drummer's antics always distracted her. Not that she minded at all, but she did kinda have a huge midterm to cram for and time was most certainly valuable tonight.
It was too bad though. She got inspiration to write a new melody. It was stuck in her head. The young composer figured it would have to wait until later. Maybe tomorrow if she made it through the midterm. The brunette whined a bit to herself as she marched up the stairs to the quieter second floor of the library. She was so full and now sleepy.
She found herself a nice carrel in a scenic spot by a large window. It was starting to get dark out, but Yui decided to hunker down and get to studying. Now, if she remembered correctly at least a third of this test was going to be on aural skills...
Mugi bid everyone else a pleasant farewell and started walking towards her house. She walked down the cobblestone street and passed one of the two unused yet delicately preserved shrines in Lux. This one in particular had engravings of the sun in it's columns and the coloring suggested that it had been vibrant shades of orange, yellow and red along with a dash of white back in the day. Lux was a historical town with a very interesting history.
Some of the town's history was very well documented. Mugi's father, the current mayor, had seen fit to reconnect Lux with a sense of its past and made specific efforts to enlarge the town's library and allow free access to ancient records for all to learn from.
However, some parts of the town, like the shrines for example, had little to no information to be found in these older texts leading many historians to believe that for some reasons the information concerning those places was transmitted only orally. Unfortunately, nobody in the town remained that knew if there were any stories behind these shrines. Sadly, the history of these historical sites seem to be lost forever.
It was very interesting how Lux had a lot of history in some ways, but not a lot in others. The juxtaposition of the information asymmetry was fascinating to many scholars. Mugi wondered whether the town used to be a lot different in the past. Was the town less safe back then and maybe some essential pieces of text got destroyed in conflicts?
Well, given a particular event that had happened in the last year was Lux really all that safe?
•••
Mugi had been walking home from the supermarket. She had practiced with her band earlier that day, but instead of going home she decided to go to the food store instead. It was a temperate summer afternoon and the blonde felt no need to take the car for the two mile round trip if she took the longer scenic route. She didn't have much to buy so carrying the groceries wasn't an issue either. All she needed was enough for a dinner for her mother, father and herself.
On the way back though she got distracted talking to LWU's president's daughter, Nodoka, they were classmates in high school and both girls would be attending LWU together. In the midst of their conversation, Mugi happened to get a glance at her wristwatch and realized that it was almost six already. She bid her goodbyes to Nodoka and started trotting lightly back towards her house. She decided that in the interest of time that she should take a shortcut through a smaller, significantly less populated side street to hasten her return home.
Huffing lightly the blonde jogged at a pretty good clip down the alley and turned the corner sharply about to enter the side street.
The milk she had bought almost landed on her foot as the sight before her stunned her to the point where the blonde could swear she was having an outer body experiment, or that she was stuck in a dream, no, a nightmare.
There were two prone bodies on the cobblestone road. Fresh mixed with somewhat dried blood was scattered around both of them. Mugi bit back her scream and approached, groceries forgotten, trembling and fumbling her brain short-circuiting as she tried to remember where her cell phone was. She quickly called for emergency services and managed to not have a complete nervous breakdown, but she knew she'd never forget the sight before her.
One of the girls was on her stomach, spread-eagle. The other girl had significantly more blood surrounding her most likely caused by the fact she was mortally wounded-clearly having been stabbed. Mugi wasn't even sure if that girl was alive anymore. The blonde's eyes watered. They looked about her age and just judging by the similarities in hair color alone... they were probably siblings too.
What could those girls, only in their late teens, could have possibly have done to warrant getting attacked so brutally? Especially, in this small quiet town of Lux. The keyboardist sank to her knees breathing heavily.
She couldn't even move to acknowledge the approaching screech of the ambulance as the emergency workers scurried by her, thanking her for alerting them, carrying the bodies into the car. She only really came back into her own when she heard the last of the ambulance's doors shut and only the police and detectives remained. The blonde caught a glance of the detectives talking amongst themselves and only saw a lot of sighing, shaking of heads, and wearied glances.
Their body language clearly displayed that they had no idea what was going on and most likely no leads on the situation either. Mugi picked herself up and called her family and filled them in on what happened as to not alarm them about her unusually long absence. With the scene of the bodies still staining her mind, she found herself asking the officers whether the girls were taken to a hospital locally or out of town. They gave exchanged melancholic looks with each other and informed her that they were taken to the nearest hospital-Lux Municipal Hospital.
The girl's purpose for asking the question was very clear and one of the officers offered to give her a ride to the hospital. The girl obliged and numbly got into the police car. The entire ten minute drive was silent. The keyboardist spoke only to thank the police officer and pivoted and stiffly walked towards the hospital's emergency room entrance. Conscious of the no-cell phone policy she quickly called her dad and told her what was going on and before he could ask too many questions she uncharacteristically told him to turn on the news and hung up in a rush. She had no intention of being rude to her father, but her nerves were too frazzled to endure a worried parent's questioning. She was fine.
She knew who wasn't though.
As she waited them to finish their operations, Mugi wondered if she should text any of her friends about what she had seen. She decided against it especially after imagining Mio's reaction to the gory news. They'd hear about it eventually anyway. Mugi's involvement was of little consequence to whatever had taken place. She could always share at a later point if she felt up to it.
There was a gurney rushed out and a lot of staff shuffling about here and there. Mugi's eyes followed said gurney to one of the individual rooms on the emergency wing. Before she knew it she found herself following it closely behind skirting confused hospital personnel effortlessly.
She was eventually stopped by a nurse outside the injured girl's door.
"Are you her family?"
"No, I'm the one who found them in their state."
"Ah, I see. Well, you shouldn't-"
"Please just let me stay here until she wakes up. I don't think she should wake up alone given whatever happened."
The nurse raised an eyebrow at the blonde's sudden outburst. "Yes, well, the detectives are certainly hoping that Ms. Hirasawa will have some leads for the apparent murder of her sister."
"The-they were sisters...?" Mugi's initial hypothesis had been correct, much to her horror.
The nurse sighed solemnly. "Yes, records show that they were a little over a year apart in age. Those two hadn't been in town for a while. They had decided to go on a trip to honor their parents' love of travel after their death a few years back..."
"So that means this Yui is...?"
"All alone." The nurse's empathetic grief was present in her eyes. "Yes, she's survived by no family it seems."
"If that's the case, please let me stay!"
"Just... contact the staff if or when she wakes up, okay?"
"Of course."
It was just about midnight and the girl hadn't stirred from her position on the bed. According to the heart monitors she was stable, with some nasty burns and lacerations. It was strange seeing that her sister only had one stab wound. Yui Hirasawa, slept on to the beat of the buzz of the hospital.
Mugi was glad it was summer break as she didn't have any early plans tomorrow. However, she was worried that Yui would wake up after she left. Visiting hours were most certainly going to be over soon and she couldn't imagine how terrifying it would be to wake up in this sort of situation. Tsumugi couldn't help, but worry about the girl her own age, yet had seen a considerably more vicious side of life than she-or just about anyone else-had.
It was getting really stuffy in the room so Mugi decided to crack a window a slight bit and let a cooler evening breeze float into the room.
"...e..clipse..."
The shades fluttered slightly and the keyboardist heard a slight groaning sound and the sound of cotton on cotton as the occupant of the bed came to. Mugi whirled around to face her and was immediately at her side leaving a respectful amount of space between herself and the recently hurt girl.
Yui made a noise of pain and Mugi subtly hit the call button, remembering the nurse's instructions to contact the staff in the case that Yui woke. Mugi lifted her hands up to steady the girl and went to do so, until she recalled it'd be best not to disturb her. She quietly watched the girl's eyes attempt to focus and her struggles to push herself up, taking her IV wires with her as she sat up in bed.
"Ui..." The girl murmured under her breath not noticing the mayor's daughter's presence at all. Yui's eyes watered.
Mugi bit her lip tentatively. Did Yui already know Ui's fate?
Both girls were broken out of their own respective reveries when the hospital staff intervened quickly and checked the Yui's vitals. Mugi wasn't quite ushered of the room yet, most likely because she was completely overlooked by the frantic hospital nurses. Apparently Yui had stabilized and her wounds had stopped bleeding. The doctors left the room, but as quickly as they came a lone detective came in.
Mugi frowned at this. The girl had just woken up. The pianist was aware that information that Yui could have could be time sensitive, but pushing Yui too hard could put an immense physical and mental strain on the poor girl. The detective must have deemed her to be well enough to ask some preliminary questions though.
"Do you remember you name?"
Yui nodded.
He went along these lines asking her basic questions to test her memory such as her age, her birthday and so forth. Eventually though, much to the blonde's displeasure, he asked another question-a different type of question.
"Do you know who attacked you and your sister?"
Yui, who was more or less silent and despondent during the whole exchange, suddenly started and jolted upright. Her eyes dilated as everything came rushing back to her at once. She shivered for a moment then froze, with a deadly stillness. There were no tears though. Perhaps, something worse...
"UI!"
A ragged scream echoed throughout Lux Municipal Hospital. The detective looked a mixture of apologetic and panicked as nurses on call flooded the room and escorted him out. Feeling that it was inappropriate to stay any longer at this point Mugi rushed out as well. She briskly walked down the hallways and the moment she exited the hospital she called her parents. Not feeling the tears rushing down her face.
Yui cradled her sister's head in her arms as she watched to her horror the red spread onto Ui's clothes more and more. Yui was choking on air and felt a mix of emotions coalesce within herself as she stared down at her dying sister's face.
Yui couldn't tell if it was just her or whether the ground beneath her kneeling legs was actually shaking. For all she could know the world could be tearing itself apart right now.
"Sis... it's okay..."
There was so much blood.
"How... is this okay?"
Pain. Pain had engraved herself squarely into her younger sister's body. Pain and blood that there was so much, too much, that it was gonna take her sister away now-to another place separating her from her last living family member.
Yui wanted to scream. Yui wanted to shout. Yui wanted to cry,
yet she could only whisper.
"Just promise me..." A shaky intake of breath. "That you'll love... with your whole heart... and fearlessly... because.. tha... that's who... you are..."
"Ui! NO!"
"Be true... to yourself, ... Yui."
Ui Hirasawa made her last smile ... and drew her last breath.
•••
Please let me know what you think, thus far. Pairings will become obvious (if not already) as the story continues.
