Love Flashed Right Before Your Eyes
Chapter II: The Prelude
"Ahh! Save me!" Orihime shrieked as one—no, two, three, four, five, six kids ran through her. She clang onto the Shinigami for dear life, who stood as still as a statue, obviously used to this sort of thing.
"Ahem," it coughed. She immediately release him and he continued to follow after the kids. "Well, come on," it said impatiently. "Look, there you are. Hurry up and follow yourself. If we get out of the range of your memory, we'll just get lost in a dense fog since you don't know what occurred anywhere else, since, well, you were where you were at the time of this memoury occurring." Orihime looked at him oddly. He took that as a "HUH?" and sighed heavily before dragging her to her memory's self.
"Oh, hmm," the Shinigami said. "Interesting. Not many people have very noteworthy memories at such a young age."
She was about five at the time. Her orange-red hair was barely at her shoulders, and she wore little asterisk, snowflake-like, blue clips in her hair that only failed to pull back her bangs which covered her big, shy eyes. She was currently sitting beneath a big, shady oak tree, listening patiently to a very exuberant—
"Tatsuki!" Orihime shouted in reminiscence. "Wow, how nostalgic!" she cried, breathing in the air. "It's exactly as I remember this place to be, at least before that tree was cut down," she sighed sadly.
The Shinigami walked forward. "Well, it should be. It's your memory."
Orihime shrugged nonchalantly as she followed the Shinigami to look at the two children up close. Tatsuki seemed to be enthusiastically demonstrating the punches she had learned in a karate class she'd be taking, and Orihime watched encouragingly. Tatsuki began practicing her very proud roundhouse kick, when suddenly—
A flash of orange.
"Get back here, you Chicken!" one of the boys that had ran through Orihime before screamed.
"Come back here and face us like a man!!" cried the last, knocking Tatsuki over at her most vulnerable moment.
"SHUT UP! Why don't you guys face me like a man then!?" the poor victim being chased yelled back at them.
Swiftly and skillfully amidst running, he deftly grabbed a branch and swung in a loop, kicking one in the back of the head. Unfortunately, the act caused the other four bullies to catch up with him, corner him, and punch him to the ground. Blow after blow, the boy suffered as he tried all he could do to protect himself.
"Why, you—JEEERRKKS!" a female voice screamed, and before the boy knew it, one of his antagonists was brutally knocked over. Before he knew it, the other remaining three boys had stopped tormenting him and turned around to meet their new oppressor.
Tatsuki. And she was fuming. "You idiots! You knocked me down with all your rudeness! And you didn't even apologize! Didn't your mothers tell you you'll never get a girlfriend acting like such a butthead?! Huh!?" she yelled, angrily. However, her speech was wasted.
"Ew! Who'd want a girlfriend anyways? They've got cooties! Especially if she's someone like you!"
"Why… you…" she growled menacingly.
And within a second, she had completely annihilated them.
She wiped her hands clean of all the crap that she had just dirtied her hand touching. "Tch. Teach them to mess with me again. Wimps." She scrunched his nose in disgust and left them for dead.
Orihime, about ten feet away from the scene of the crime (for Tatsuki had warned her to stay back and try not to watch lest she cry… which she had wanted to out of fear), began to walk forward to coalesce with Tatsuki, when she inadvertently but unavoidably looked at the bodies of the bloodied, belligerent boys. "Ah—eh?" she chirruped curiously and so innocently for one who had just witnessed a child's blood bath. She stopped in her tracks.
Tatsuki stopped and looked back at her. "What's wrong? Why'd you stop?" she asked the bright haired girl.
Orihime blinked. "I think that boy… with the orange hair… is hurt."
Tatsuki grunted in satisfaction. "You bet he is. That'll teach them to mess with girls again, especially me. I just hope those wimps won't tell his mommy on me," Tatsuki growled, fist clenched.
Orihime walked up close to the boy in question; Tatsuki reluctantly followed.
"Eh?" Tatsuki said, stopping suddenly. "I think that boy's in my karate class. He's only a yellow belt though... Weird, I thought he was a major wimp, since the first time I beat him up, he went crying to his mom. Never expected him to pick a fight, five to one."
But Orihime wasn't listening. She gasped. "His nose is all bloody!" she cried, running up to him through all the bodies, him at the bottom (he was rather suffocating beneath the weight). Although not even five at the time, she gently caressed his face as she readied to wipe off his bloody nose with her skirt selflessly, that is, until—
"Ugh, Orihime! Don't use your skirt!" Tatsuki cried, disgusted. "Here," she said, throwing a shirt she had ripped off one of the unconscious boys still on the ground that hadn't awoken and run off for the lives. Orihime wiped his face and cleaned him up (whilst he was making repulsed faces at being treated with a nasty, sweaty shirt), whilst Tatsuki moved all of the bodies off of him.
"Um… were you… being chased by them?" she asked. She never conversed with boys. Not even girls really, just Tatsuki. She usually didn't even start up coversations, preferring just to listen.
"Yeah," the boy said gruffly, lazily, not even looking at her.
"Um… why were you being chased?" she asked again. She had stopped wiping away the blood periodically, but started again as another drop began to flow.
"Isn't it obvious?" he asked crudely, looking at her like she was stupid. He pointed to his hair, almost like a gun to his head. "No one likes my orange hair." He spoke slowly as if she were dumb. She flushed in embarrassment.
"Well that's dumb," Tatsuki said bluntly.
He shrugged. Despite the fact that Orihime was still trying to dress his wounds, once Tatsuki had moved the last body off of his lean frame, he immediately attempted to stan dup, wobbling slightly. "Thanks," he muttered monotonously, almost as a formality than actual gratefulness. Tatsuki scowled slightly at his rudeness, but Orihime didn't seem to heed it any mind.
"B-but, you're still hurt!" Orihime cried as he limped a step. She immediately ran to his side as he began to lean sideways.
"I'm—" he stumbled and fell slightly into her, "—fine."
But everyone obviously knew he wasn't since his body was now being almost completely supported by Orihime, one arm over her shoulder, and Orihime had now attempted to grab his other shoulder to stabilize him, causing her to not be able to move but get a clear shot of his face.
"Look at you," she said softly. "You're not okay. C'mon, me and Tat—"
"I'm fine," he emphasized coldly, looking straight into her eyes. His direct glare scared her into numbness. The yellow-gold of his eyes seemed to not only glare daggers into her but pierce through her soul. Her breath hitched.
He looked away and attempted to push himself off of her. She didn't attempt to help him again, although she ran up to him once as he stumbled slightly.
Tatsuki scowled. "Tch. Just leave him alone, Orihime," she said, turning away to leave. "If he doesn't want our help, then we won't give it to him. It'll be his loss."
But Orihime simply stared as his flaming hair died out in the horizon.
The silence that engulfed the Shinigami and Orihime as her past self and Tatsuki walked away in the opposite direction (with little Orihime casting furtive glances back) was soon broken. The Shinigami coughed.
"So… his is an important event of your life, eh?" it asked awkwardly.
She blinked. "I dunno. I guess. You were the one that played it," she asked innocently.
"But it was your memoury."
"I guess," she shrugged.
"Okay, so, ready to go to the next event?" The Shinigami asked No action was going on and the atmosphere around them had began to haze up—a sure sign that her memoury wasn't as clear as it used to be due to its lack of importance to be remembered.
Orihime blinked. "Eh? Is this trip going to be long? I thought these flashbacks were only supposed to be small fragments of my memories…"
"… They are," it stated dully. "What, those thirteen minutes right there was your entire life? Psh."
She blinked. "But… like, you know how my life is supposed to flash right before I die when I suddenly die?Well, if I suddenly die, how am I supposed to watch thirteen minutes of my life, much less more? If I had so much time to watch my life, wouldn't I just prevent myself from getting killed in the first place?!" She was so utterly confused.
The Shinigami didn't look flustered in the least. "Well, under normal circumstances, yes. Because you have like less than ten seconds to die, we kind of got to cram all these memouries together, but since you're in a coma and we've got time to spare, why not just enjoy the ride?" She simply stared at it in confusion, for it reminded her awfully of a vacation salesman and damn, it was doing a pretty good job with that logic. It lowered its voice threateningly. "Look, P—perhaps you would like to die now, eh? At least this way, you get a couple of more moments to live."
Orihime's face settled in undeniable defeat. Somehow, she felt that the Death God was smirking beneath its hood.
"Alright, next stop!" it yelled barbarically, raising its sword. And in a flash, they were no more.
