Author's Note: As you all notice, I was absent for more than a year and didn't published any stories I have ever since. That's not because I got lazy, or I have the common writer's block you all be talking about.

No.

Some f- ing senile took my laptop, thought it funny to format it without my consent, and that fucker deleted 25 waiting to post chapters for FGO Extra, 8 long chapters for DORAC, and 5 scripts for Tossing Stones. The flow for the Grand Order Extra is dead, DORAC- unplotted, Tossing stone didn't even breathe!

I am Mad.

I have not even look at my laptop ever since. I lost my urge to type it again, because those determined all night typing and making it into something decent was FUCKING deleted for FUN.

GONE. WITH. THE. WIND.

So you all don't mind me if I ignore you for so long, because I am still pissed off. I'm posting right now because I owe you an apology for the abrupt absence. This might take a while and I might not have the same vigor and long ass chapter like before. Because fucking shit it hurts to remember all your efforts be wasted by someone who fucking doesn't know what love for writing is.

Congratulations if you ever see this asshole, this is dedicated to you. My MIDDLE finger salutes you.


I pursed my lips, staring at the closed door, hearing those wilting sobs rocking the widow's lungs. I gripped the black devilish bunny on my hand- Hatter, as Yuzu called it- and the other at the control stick of my wheelchair, holding it like a life line.

It's been quite a few days since we move into the house we are in. White and ordinary, common in guise on the western compound our father had left. It is small but comfortable, with three sets of bedrooms, one big bathroom and one connected between mine and Yuzu's room. Two storages and a terrace at the upper portion of the hallway down. It seems not much but more than enough, a little bright, like a new and fresh start to begin another chapter of life.

My birth mother loved it. Yuzu adored it. And I despise it.

Five excruciating days of tension, silence and hollow movement.

Hundred hours of pretending to ignore the elephant on the room.

Thousands of minutes trying to act the way it once was.

Hundreds and thousands of seconds burying grieves and phantom agony of hearts.

I hated it.

The pretension, the hanging bluffs of words, the fake smiles and happiness intoxicatingly intolerable.

How had it come to this? How can my mother make herself wilt at my presence? How can my sister genuinely smile at the day all the time? Why are they avoiding the scarcely ignorance of our father's absence? How can they just… simply exist like there's no choice and matter at the outcome of his death?

But with all this madness, comes my pitiful state.

What can a small child do? A child who can't recall her accident. Who can't walk on her own. Who can't comfort others. A small kid who's just plain burden who can't move!

I gripped Hatter, busy gnawing my teeth until I can feel the tangy taste of blood on my gums, down and dripping out my chin.

My mother might denied it but my state of paralysis must have cost a fortune. A fortune she needs to pay for our expenses for years, gone like my useless limbs. I wonder why she didn't leave me then, so she won't care for this burden and enjoy life with Yuzu in this bland house.

She must've regretting it now and those fake smiles of hers has been getting more permanent as time goes by. She won't even look at me in the eye now.

And as much as I ignore it, it hurts me bad like a foundation of my being crumbling beneath the pressure I attune with my mind. My own mother, unable to face acceptance takes the blame on me.

Yuzu too, she must've felt it- the agony and rift in our family. She thought it good to pick some cash, went to the store and dye her hair blonde so we would look like our father, twins in the same pod.

Mother cried that day, not of happiness Yuzu's brain would make out, but out of despair. She saw her husband towards her hair and it brings such wound. What's more if she looks at me, a spitting image of the man she lost?

I hate it.

I hate being hopeless. I hate this body, I hate this limp legs.

Those doctors said it would be a smooth recovery. Bullshit. I can't even feel up to my waist, and would realize too late that I exert my waste and pee on my short when I smell those feces on my chair.

This feeling of uselessness. The stupid incapability to move and do something without being notice is unbearable.

It eats me. It burns me out.

I wish she let me out of her life. I wish I won't feel this attach to the bond we have. I wish she's not my mother. I wish Yuzu's twin died.

So when I feel the soft hands on my cheeks I pulled away, I trashed and thrown Hatter, screams and punched my legs like there's no tomorrow. It's suffocating, the feelings in my chest. I want to tear it out, I want to hear a lie that doesn't look like a lie. But I can't! This ability to detect through lies, this dreadful feeling inside-

"Why don't you let me die!?" I shout at the top of my lungs, inflamed throat squeezed in painful chokes, tongue bitten by sharp canines.

My mother's cry.

My sister's smile.

My doctor's words.

Fake.

Fake.

Fake!

"Yozowa! Yozowa! Maman! MAMAN YOZOWA'S BLEEDING! IT WONT STOP!" I heard it but I can't stop. Make it stop.

Make it stop!

MAKE IT STOP!

The pressure doubled and I snapped.


The next thing I knew it was warm. Not uncomfortable but definitely strange. I can limitedly sense a cool miasma, touch by sterile scent. With my sense of waking, I can feel a smooth and light cloth wrapped on my body, from my shoulders down passed my stomach. Then, the tender arms holding me close to warm mounds of flesh rocks me in comfort, a thudding noise reverberating from within adding to the tranquility a lullaby upon someone's lips ushered in my ears.

I opened my eyes, adjusting to the dim light above, overshadowing my mother's figure and showing out the outlines of a deep grief of bags in her eyes. When I inhale, I realized a mask holds my throat open, and a gurgling noise I made in confusion. My throat burns and my pipe constrict into the plastic deep inside me. I tried to claw it out, but my hands trapped between my mother's arms.

She looks at me calmly, and I in hers.

Her eyes looks devoid of hope, but when I stare those orbs flickered like a candle's light. Slow, wavering in the wind, but held long it burns bright and steady.

It didn't last long before that eyes moisten and tears run through her eyes down to her chin, falling on my cheeks and mixing on my tangled strands above my ear.

I let her be, as a sob racks her frame. What can I do? I'm still the useless babe. A child who burdens her so.

"My Yozora… baby Yozora…" she weeps, clinging more than ever, burying herself on my tresses. I stared, non-comprehensive, until a moot noise of multiple gasps did my focus draw to the side.

Several doctors and nurses looks at me, baffled. Some even have tears in their own eyes. They held joy and disbelief. I blink at them, realizing I'm again inside a hospital building.

A bald doctor came rushing to the other side I can't see, but I heard a click of a button, before a machine opens and I can inhale a liquid air, making it easier to breathe.

"…. Yozora?" there I heard, Yuzu's voice unlike before. It feels solemn, no optimism- just plain question. I might try to smile as it would be the first time she told my name correctly.

However, I feel no victory as she appears to the doctor's hind. She looks dead on her feet, just like mother's but she looks more gruesome- a mess of a child.

Then without warning she launched at me, surprising me as she crawled up to the bed higher than her faster than I could see before she bawled in my chest, uncovered, slick with a cool sensation.

"You died! I feel it! YOU DIED!" she cries, "I ca- can't feel you, I thought….. I- I tho- thought y- you were go- gone! I- I dunno wa'! I don't want you ta' leave! Yozora do't leave me!~!" she came a blubbering mess, telling nothing but saying something more than I can comprehend yet again.

I died. Again.

I survived, again.

I wished it, and it was fulfilled. My mother cradle my head, and she kissed me so tenderly I produce a whimper when she pulls away. She looks at me lovingly, entranced- determined.

I feel nothing but pity to myself and mother saw and she puts a genuine smile for me, even with those tears she speaks with those comfort. She tell no lies.

I felt at ease. I felt the demons in my head backing away to her affections towards me.

"You had a heart attack, my love…" she slowly hushed, brushing my bangs like I was a newborn doe. "… Post traumatic emotional sensory overload. I could've been there but I-I… I mourn still. You keep it in so well. I… I didn't.. doesn't want to see it and I-….. I lost you because of it….." she sobs, but she's happy. Truly happy to have me. "It won't happen again, baby. Mommy's here. I won't run away again. I'm so sorry. We will make these work. Please just-… just hold on for me, okay?"

She begged and I am to comply.

The concerns and hate. The pressure and future ignored. In favored of these moment, wherein the truth may be painful, but the honesty I desired.

I wept and wept, sanctifying troubles, giving chances to what ifs. I still dislike my circumstances, but in these moment- Mother, Yuzu and I holding and giving out of love I treasure with my new heart. Burdens so deep I dug and throw. Future ahead in brink of changing but still in my hands to stay the same.

Mother promised that we would make it work and I believed.

I caught Yuzu's green gaze and I took her hands in mine to place on my cheeks. The same hands I pulled away and leaned with a kiss.

She gave me her megawatt smile, put an unnoticed Hatter in my lap and promised in silence.

We're okay.

I'm okay.

I am safe.

I am loved.


In my reminiscence, I drew the line between alive and living.

Year had gone by and I felt the husk of a person revive like a competent living creation emerging from the murk of indifference.

It takes weeks getting used to my body and relying to others on how to move and adapt in my weakened state.

It takes month before I can feebly walk on my own no more than a few feet away with the assistance of walls.

Half a year I used to settle in with my limitations and a year to accept I would not be a normal child from now on.

It is difficult to accept I would never have the same good health I had, always expected to be waiting inside the house, resting, watching and reading; three things I enjoyed but the most that I could do. I can't cook, do laundry, can't clean my mess, can't walk down the stairs and can't even go outside in fear of any casualties.

I was threatened like a fragile glass, always on hearing range and given anything that I asked.

However, what I wouldn't trade for the world are my mother and sister's undivided compassion to make me self-aware that they are always close at hand, not because of responsibility but because of their own will to make me happy. Grandmother, while not fond of Yuzu and mother, have supported me in my education, doting me like a princess she said I was. She would support me in my health bills also, if not for mother's refusal to the money grandmother gives for me.

Mother said grandmother is buying me so I would choose my ancestral family on my father side, and she would not let me go out of her protection much to the elder's bitter sarcasm.

It is cunning, I would follow through that if I didn't realize it from the very start. But mother have also chose pride over what's the best move for me to sustain those support. If she agreed then she wouldn't have a hard time by now. Grandmother has wealth and mother doesn't see it the way I do.

Maternal instinct at stake, almost as deadly as manly pride.

It was a trial, especially for them as mother hold true to her word. She never leave us alone, always at living room doing the paper works her occupation required her to keep contrasted to the manga series depiction of her business, always out and going, barely at home. Yet, there she was, agitated but stubborn to break her promise, until she had no choice leaving for the sake of our future. It was a hurdle, to see her conflicted with what she will do.

But it was a must; our money would not last long. My medication could be at stake and my mother knows not to cross the what- if for the third time when it comes to my body. I gave her the leeway, freeing the bird that she is and assuring her I am able to do simple things with myself.

She concedes, but not before she told Yuzu to take care of me and the new neighbor to watch for me if able. Yuzu whole- heartedly agrees, blonde locks not even making her natural color peek. She had ground herself like a dog, poetic at best, talking about make- up and boys she saw on the playground.

In those sweet moments we create the bond cut by death, letting me read for her and her to sing me lullaby at night. While she went into school and forge bonds, I am stuck at home, schooled by grandmother's chosen tutor. She would ask me for her studies and I would ask of her feet to get me in places my mother would openly forbid. One time we snuck out on Christmas, me at her back while Yuzu thread a path in the snow filled ground. There I saw another character, a pink haired girl named Matsuri, playing to herself, just like in the page of a flimsy manga. I know not what to do, yet Yuzu and Matsuri have gone along well, as if my presence have not tilt the axis of balance of the world I'm in.

However, for all this similarities I dove in contemplation when one apparent clause have pulled itself into my brain.

I remember they are inseparable, always at the house of the other and sleeping next to each other.

Months have passed and I haven't seen Matsuri at our house. Not even once she visits.

"Yuzu-nee…" I called once. My sister stopped what she is doing, pausing her favorite cartoons. "… where's Matsuri- chan?"

"Who?" and with that question I grew unsure.

"The girl at the park…. Haven't you seen her lately?"

With recognition my sister nods in vigor, but she wilts not seconds after. "Uhm, I saw her a few times when I was going home. We greet each other then she would be drag by some woman, Matsuri- chan said it was her nanny." She explained, perfect clarity compared to her passed slip of tongues.

"Don't you…. Want to play with her?" I asked carefully, crawling on the couch to her side, which she aids me with her strong arms. She nods, smiling.

"I like to play with her, but I don't have time."

"But… you have many free time?" furrowing I gave her my best confused tilt of head. Yuzu blinked at me, before she giggles kissing my cheek.

"I do not! I'm taking care of my Yozora- nee, it's not free time!"

"But… you're just watching TV? Why won't you play with Matsuri- chan outside?"

"Silly Yozora- nee, I'm here with you! I don't want to play outside when Maman's not here, you know! I'm good with you here, I don't need anyone else even if I like Matsuri- chan much you're still my number one!"

And like a bucket of water, it drenched me from head to toe. I flinched, heart thudding as I remembered what should have happened which did not happen.

It's been going on for days now, but when I thought it all the more, the less I am assured of the same plot happening in the manga series. I have planned it, to stay away from the important events to the future where I would go to the State with my grandmother, to avoid changing things.

But with this outcome, I dread of what kind of Yuzu would come. I have seen it, the way she preferred to stay home than to play outside, to read academic books than to gush about magazines and boys or how she would prefer my company to her friends at school. I am quite positive those girls are her best of friends before she meet the girl who will make her heart bleed.

And Matsuri. Matsuri is an integral piece of character that sets motions of reactions in the manga. She is close to Yuzu, bordering obsessive and it scares me what would happened if she's anything but the cunning vermin she is in the chapters I read.

I inhale, leaning close to Yuzu. It still can be arrange. We still have twelve years to work before we go into a different city. I would hope there's no major plot that would change then.

"What if… what if you invite her here, Yuzu- nee?" I carefully plant the seed, my sister patiently listening. I know she would do it, there's no such thing as 'no' to Yuzu when it comes to me. "Let's play here, with Matsuri- chan. Yuzu- nee, Matsuri- chan and me."

Yuzu's brow rose, but her smile widens, pleased with my words. "Are you sure? I mean- what if you grew tired? What if you don't like the noise? I know how you hated it when I'm loud or someone comes in and-"

"We have many things and I can handle anything if you're with me," I swipe my hands to our living room, ready to be played with. "And Matsuri-chan seems quiet, like a good girl who will enjoy anything with someone she knew. Tell her to come here and play with us so she won't come with her nanny from now on." Hook.

"Are you really sure?" I nodded, smiling lightly. Line. "You're okay she'll be here more often then?"

I agreed again. "The more, the merrier." Sinker. Yuzu beams, hugging me close before darting out the balcony, yelling at the top of her lungs searching for Matsuri.

I fold to myself, smile thinning into line.