A/N: Quickly continuing this. Since this isn't a huge-ass clusterfuck of a story like EaE. I don't feel like writing that right now! Oh well.
Thanks to I My Me Mine (awesome name, by the way) for the nice and compassionate review. I really appreciate it!
Also, I keep being reminded of how much I hate disclaimers. They seem so stupid. Unless you openly claim to own anything no one gives a fuck. And if they give a fuck, then I don't give a fuck whether they give a fuck or not.
The red numbers on my alarm read 04:23AM.
I could pretty much feel the dark circles under my eyes growing with every minute that passed. But there was no way I would be able to sleep after seeing that girl die. Only thinking back made my head hurt and my still empty stomach turn around. When I tried sleeping I remembered how she had smiled. Somehow I always expected people to look sad or tired or angry before they killed themselves.
She had smiled, though. Without giving a damn, she had happily jumped towards death. It seemed so unreal. Maybe dying in itself seemed unreal and distant to the living. But when you witnessed something like that, you suddenly remembered how very mortal and frail you were. It was kind of sad.
I must have been as pale as a sheet of paper when mom had come to fetch me. There hadn't been any discussion about me staying at home tomorrow. Neither did she bug me about eating. There was no way anything would have been able to remain inside of my stomach for too long.
The numbers had changed to 04:51AM by now.
A sigh escaped my lips. My eyes were stinging and hurting, urging me to fall asleep already, but my mind refused to let me doze off. My lids dropped down and my eyes felt better. This wasn't going to help, though. Only a little.
I cracked one eye open. The numbers read 04:59AM.
Then, the second they switched to 05:00AM, a tune started playing. I sat up way too quickly and felt dizzy, my heart pounding. Oh, it had just been my phone. A faint glow could be seen from the corner of my blanket that was covering the device. When I removed it, the light stung in my tired eyes, but I still managed to bring it to my ear. "'lo, this is... Yuuma speaking..." I mumbled into the tiny microphone and noticed how heavy my limbs and head felt.
On the other side, for a good minute or so, there was silence. I considered hanging up twice, but then, when I had been about to end the call, a girl's voice resounded. "Ah! Sorry, err, hello!"
I blinked. The voice didn't really sound familiar right now, but maybe I was just too exhausted right now or just not up-to-date with my friends' and acquaintances' voices. "Um, who is this?"
My question was being answered with silence for a few seconds. "It's... Yukari. Yuzuki Yukari. We have only met... briefly," she replied gingerly, cautiously weighting the meanings of her words. Not that it would help- I didn't know this girl.
"I'm pretty sure I didn't give you my number, though. Maybe I'm mistaken. Um, can you tell me where we've met?" I asked her, chewing on my thumb. I don't know why I did that. It was a bad habit I couldn't get rid of. Sometimes I'd bite off so much skin that it would start bleeding.
Yukari mumbled something and I could only understand the end of her sentence. "... at the station. I wanted to know if you were alright," she said. I bit down harder, so that it actually hurt down to the bone. I pulled my finger out of my mouth.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I answered and felt like I sounded too tired for it to be convincing. "It's just that you don't see someone committing suicide right in front of your nose every day."
She let out a small whine before she began talking again. "Ah, I see. That's good. I was worried, but if you're fine... then..." A sob was bitten back. "I was worried since it was my fault."
I blinked into the darkness of my room, trying to make sense of that statement. How could someone's suicide be this girl's fault? "I don't quite understand what you're talking about. You don't have anything to do with that girl and her actions."
Silence. Then, with tears staining her voice: "No, I do. I do have everything to do with her!" By then, she was almost yelling at me. "That girl who killed herself yesterday at the station and I, Yuzuki Yukari, are one and the same person!"
My phone dropped from my shaking hand. I could hear her sob quietly from the awfully bad speakers of the phone.
That's when I woke up, covered in sweat and shaking.
My room was bathed in light, soft and warm on the cold grey walls. The numbers on my alarm clock read 08:37AM. It was shocking to me that I must have gotten at least some sleep, despite my mental condition at the moment. My lids weren't all that heavy anymore, my eyes not burning either.
Then I grabbed my phone, staring at the display as though I were expecting it to do anything for a minute. Taking a deep breath, I unlocked it and checked the recieved calls. The last recieved call had been yesterday at 03:58PM from my cousin, Mizki. Reluctantly I also looked through the list of calls that went out. Last one was from yesterday as well, at 06:02PM. That was when I had called mom after the incident.
No unknown numbers anywhere to be found. This had all been a dream. No one named Yuzuki Yukari existed. At least not around me. And yet, that name made me feel uneasy. It must have been the nightmare, I told myself, since it wasn't a good ol' dream. I doubted I could sleep without having some sort of breakdown somewhere in the back of my mind and psyche.
When I got up, the first thing I noticed was that the room around me was spinning. Then, that my knees were shaking and trying to give out under my weight. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose. Releasing my breath, I blinked and went to my desk, sitting down on the chair in front of it.
I knew I was a mess. My eyebags must have been the size of a continent, my head was itching from the grease in my hair, I could barely keep my eyes open and felt like puking all over again. I rested my head in my hands and closed my eyes again. I would have to eat sometime, just because my stomach wouldn't stop complaining already.
After a good five minutes, I actually did go to the kitchen, my head still spinning a bit, but on a bearable level. Mom sat there, a cup of coffee in one hand, the newspaper in the other. She looked up and smiled at me uneasily, putting down the things in her hands.
"You look awful," she said eloquently and by then I knew that I must have looked like shit.
"I didn't sleep much," I replied to my defense and she nodded, standing up to at least toast a slice of toast for me while I sat down. "Anything in the newspaper about..." I swallowed hard. "Anything about yesterday?"
I didn't even have to face her to know she was frowning uneasily. "On page 4. But I don't know if you really want to read that," mom said and the sound of the toast being pushed down in the toaster interrupted the beginning silence.
"It's okay. I'm just thinking. Since, y'know, I... saw her before that, too. Maybe pay that girl some sort of tribute today... um..." I mumbled and found that my words didn't seem to want to connect to some sort of logical sentence. "Err, I mean I'm thinking about looking her up and maybe attending her funeral. Or telling the police something. Even though it's pretty obvious what happened."
As I fipped through the newspaper and arrived at page 4, mom merely ruffled my already messy and greasy hair. Dreading the things that would be written there, I sucked in a sharp breath and looked the page over. A small picture of the cleaned up train with a few traffic cones around the scene grinned at me. I swallowed the rising vomit in my throat.
"Yesterday evening at about six o'clock a young woman committed suicide at XXX-station. She jumped down onto the rails and got caught under a moving train. The girl could not be identified yet. The police is accepting clues for the young woman's identity."
Mom set down two slices of toast with honey and marmalade on them in front of me. Despite my stomach feeling strange again, I picked up the one with the honey on it and took a bite. It was weird to have it in my mouth, but only when I tasted it did I realise how hungry I was. Then I dug in. "Try keeping it down there, will you?" mom asked me after I finished eating and I nodded.
"I... think I know that girl's name, mom. I read it... somewhere on her stuff," I said and looked at her. Of course I wouldn't tell her that I had had some nightmare and now believed in the prophetic skills of my dreams. My mind had probably picked up that name somewhere, but I wanted to go. Maybe, just maybe, that name actually was hers. And I was going insane.
"Do whatever you think is right, honey. But don't throw up again. So much puking isn't healthy," she said and patted my back. That just made me feel sick on my stomach, but I smiled up at her, despite my ill-being. "Oh, and Mizki wanted to call in the afternoon. You know how much she likes talking to you."
I sighed. Mizki was my least priority.
As embarrassing as it was, mom had helped me get cleaned up. I had been about to faint in the shower due to my circulation doing whatever it pleased. I really was a mess and couldn't help that right now.
I asked her to drive me to the local police-station, too. I didn't like going by bus and the subway wasn't an option for me at the moment. I probably would have puked again if I only saw the rails.
"Will you be fine, dear?" she asked after me when I got out of the car. I turned around and nodded, though my hands were trembling in my pockets. She sighed, leaned across the seat to close my door and drove off.
This was it. I would walk into the station and tell them to check on some girl named Yukari. I couldn't do much, after all, but maybe my mind would be relieved if I knew I did do something in her name. If that was her name.
... Was what I was expecting myself to do when I walked up to the receptionist. But now, I was setteled in an uncomfortable plasic-chair with a scruffy elderly man behind a computer. He hummed something and I bit my thumb.
"So, you're here because you know that girl's name?" he asked, his bespectacled gaze fixed on the screen before him. "It's hard to determine who that bunch of gore is." It was so sensitive of him. My teeth were digging deeper into my finger.
"Yuzuki Yukari," I said, ignoring his comments for the sake of my stomach's contents. He typed something before looking at the keyboard as though it had just revealed the truth of the universe to him.
"We'll look into it," he assured me and nodded, looking at me for the first time. As I stood up, he kept staring and I was beginning to wonder if something looked wrong about me. Except my gigant eyebags and messed-up looks. "Pink."
I blinked. It took me a few seconds to register the meaning of that simple word and another few seconds to understand what he was talking about. "Ah, yes, it... just is that way..." I said and ran a hand through my hair- naturally pink.
"Only ever seen girls with that," the police-man shrugged and turned back to his computer, staring at the screen this time. "Leave your data, just in case," he mumbled and that's what I did.
Once I was outside again, I pulled out my phone, ready to give mom another call. It said it was 04:52PM. And just then, it rung. I looked at it, the ID not displaying any number. Neither was it displaying that it was an anonymous call. There was just... nothing there.
I picked it up with a trembling hand. "Hello?" I asked into the device, my voice coming out shaky and hesitantly. I had a really, really bad feeling.
"Um, it's me," I heard a faintly familiar voice speak. "Don't hang up on me! Please! I just... um... I'm just very glad you did that," she said, relief in her tone.
"How are you talking to me if you're dead?" I wondered aloud and could hear her let out a whine on the other side.
"It's... it's your phone. I can only talk to you. Via your phone," she answered, expecting me to understand what she meant by that. I cleared my throat. She let out a sound of surprise. "Oh! You meant that... um... I... killed myself, yeah? Since I did that, I can't go to Heaven or Hell or be reborn or whatever. So I'm stuck here with things I still want to do and say," Yukari explained, almost vocally shrugging.
"So I have to do the things you want me to do and then you'll leave me alone?" I asked her and she let out an affirmative hum. I sighed.
"That's basically it. Please, Yuuma, I know we don't know each other, but I was stuck with you and it's not too much I'll ask of you, anyways!" she pleaded and I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep away my building headache.
"How much will it take?"
"About a week and an open ear. Maybe some travelling," Yukari said, business-like and I could hear an almost cheerful hint in her tone. "So... without knowing me?"
"Everything as long as you stop haunting my subconscious..." I mumbled and the line went dead.
I stood there for a few seconds, staring at the now turned-off display. Then I unlocked it again. I almost dropped it. The time read 04:51PM.
This was strange, to say the least.
A/N: GHOSTS! GHOSTS! GHOSTS! TOAST!
Sorry to those who were expecting a good story. I just screwed this over. Forgive me.
I totally got hooked on reading Chemistry and Physics books. I dunno why, they're just so cool and interesting! And... they smell like attic. That's a great smell.
Also, yay for new manga-chapters this week. They always come at once, don't they?
