Thank you for reading the previous chapters. Special thanks for BlondiePsycho, and purpleYumi.
Chapter 3 :
"Rin, please, just let me answer the phone!" Her twin brother begged, resting the palm of his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to calm the storming blond girl down.
"No! I already told you it's from the hospital! Don't you understand?! The hospital, you fool! What good could be coming from that call?! It's my phone! Just leave me be!" She sobbed loudly holding onto her cellphone, tears streaming down her face like the rainiest night in the darkness of winter.
"Let me answer the damned phone, you nutjob!" Len yelled at her, holding onto her arms and shaking her back and forth violently. "Give me your phone!"
"Why?! So that they could tell us that our mother had died?! So that they could ask us the same old questions for the one hundredth time?!" Rin snapped at him, pain fueling her rage. She took a breath and continued screaming at the top of her lungs, with a disgusted expression on her childish face, mimicking the voice that always calls them from the hospital:" 'Had the patient traveled anywhere in the last few days before she was infected? Was she in touch with any animals? Was she on any drugs? Was she involved in an intimate relationship? Had she taken part in any rituals or activities that require breaking skin?' Was the patient an alien?! Did she worship Satan?! What the hell, Len, I don't want to answer the same questions every time they call, I don't want to hurt all over again!" Her voice broke and she collapsed on the floor, wailing and sobbing, incomprehensible words escaping her burning throat.
Len himself wasn't any tougher than her, his sister's break out brought tears to his eyes and his knees gave out, joining her sobbing on the floor. He truthfully did not want to answer either, but it had to be done. Eventhough it was a very tiny chance, but what if they were calling because their mother was finally getting better?
"I'm sorry." He mumbled to his sister, wrapping his arms around her sick-thin fragile figure.
"I'm sorry too." Rin apologized back, returning his hug with a similar one. What's got into her? Len only wanted to do the right thing, why was she so illogically mad at him? Why was she so angry and emotionally unstable like that? She did not know. Or perhaps she did know, but she couldn't stop herself anyway.
That was not the first time something like this happened, but frankly, it was how their everyday life went. Every so often, one of them would snap or break down, and let it all out on the other one. Every so often one of them would start raging hysterically, or become suicidal, it was no more than their new everyday life, and yet they could do nothing about it. Rin even liked to think that she didn't have to do anything about it. Wasn't it miraculous enough that they were still alive after everything they had been through?! They both freaking survived it! When their mother was condemned to death, or worse, when she became the specimen or the guinea pig or whatever the hospital's lab is working on, they survived! When their father had left them for more than three months now, not bothering to call them or send them money or food, they still survived!
Both of them managed to keep up an acceptable picture in public. They still went to school even if they didn't actually try to pay any attention, Len got himself a part-time job, Rin was in charge of the house chores, they didn't always manage to do a perfect job, but all in all they managed to survive completely on their own.
And now what, she also had to bottle in all her rage at the world? She had to freeze her lips in a fake plastic smile all day long? She had to keep up her new routine like everything was going so smoothly and happily?
No. All that crap she had to go through everyday had to leak out every now and then, or else she would explode under the pressure, and same went for Len. It was perfectly okay for them to go crazy on each other's and to go all suicidal from time to time, they were only humans after all.
As Rin's phone started ringing so annoyingly again, she grimaced, gesturing for Len to answer it, and got up from the floor running to their bedroom.
She threw her weary body on her bed, wishing that she'd be thrown into her coffin for her eternal rest sometime soon.
Tears were not coming from her eyes, no, they were coming right from her heart, from her whole being. With every cry she let out her chest hurt, her whole body cramped with pain, her heart burnt harder with every beat ,and oh how she wished she could silence it with a stab or two.
Whether killing herself was right or wrong was beyond her messed up logic, but as long as Len was there for her, she had to be there for him. He was in pain as much as she was, and they both needed love and care, which in their case only they could provide to each other's.
Everyone else was a freaking selfish moron.
Oh how she wished her mother would find out how much of a monster each and every one of their relatives was, including their father. At first, all of them showed sympathy, but inwardly they were as selfish as anyone else out there, they never actually offered to help, and even when they rarely did, they didn't really mean it, it was more of an etiquette thing. They never called or visited, or even wondered how could the two kids live on their own.
But screw those fools, Rin wasn't one to accept sympathy or need others' help to live anyway. She'd much rather die alone than ask them for help. And one day, when they will need her help the most, she would spit in their faces and laugh walking away.
She wasn't abandoned, she wasn't alone in her world, she had Len, and that was enough for her.
With these thoughts, she felt somewhat satisfied and closed her lids, letting herself wonder into the world of nightmares, not that nightmares mattered anyway, she'd be facing much worse reality once she woke up, she was sure. Her nightmares would continue, asleep or awake.
"Rin, onee-chan wake up!" The gentle hand on her forehead felt so cold against her skin.
"Len, you're freezing cold." She muttered, with her eyelids half open.
"No, you have a fever, must be from the previous freaking out session." Len laughed good-heartedly. "You need to eat something."
"Look who's talking!" Rin mocked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "You are the one who should eat. Have you checked your banana-yellow skin or toothstick-thin self in the mirror?"
"Well then let's go eat something, I bought us a thing or two on my way back from the bookstore I work at, and I also made us a…decent meal. Decent considering what we have in the fridge." He chuckled.
"What?! I slept for that long?!" She exclaimed, jumping up and racing her twin brother to the kitchen.
"Duh! Bon jour sleeping beauty! Or perhaps I should say Bon soir!"
Rin was seriously hungry, and she enjoyed the meal her brother had prepared, with a light-hearted chat to go with it, she was finally in a better mood today, but she didn't know that her twin still had something up his sleeve.
"Er, Rin, about the phone call…" Len started, successfully catching the attention of his twin who swallowed the bite she had in her mouth and froze in her place, listening to her brother intensively, in discomfort.
"The doctors were clear with us from the start, they had already told us our mother wasn't going to recover or get better, that's no news to us…" The boy paused, phrasing the next sentence in his head "But now they say we can visit her if we feel like it, we won't catch the virus through the airway, it appears. They said they had been testing this discovery of theirs for more than a month now, and no infections happened so…we can really visit our mother!" He finished, hoping that it would actually cheer his sister and not bring her down instead. There was always the chance that seeing their mother helpless, weak, and almost dead wasn't going to do them any good, but on the contrary, hurt them more and drive them nuts…But he was almost sure his sister would love to see their mother as much as he'd love to, and sometimes love could hurt.
"Len…you're not lying are you?" Rin's face went blank for a moment.
"I am not."
Rin could not name that which she was feeling. She had never experienced a more horrible cocktail of feelings inside of her before. It tasted like poisoned honey, so sweet and yet so bitter. It had her both longing and loathing, blue and gleeful, smiling and tearing up. Contradicting feelings clashed inside of her, leaving her heart cracked and weak, open to the attacks of whatever life had in pocket for her.
But overall, she thought she was feeling good, whether that was a good indication or not.
"Len!" Rin jumped out of her chair to squeeze life of her twin brother who was now suffering for breath against his sister's sudden attack of love and happiness.
"Okay, Rin, I'm happy too, can you just let me breath please?" Len struggled to say.
"Oh sure, sorry." Rin dropped her arms, smiling full-heartedly at her brother. "I realize she will be asleep…" She said staring down at her hands in her lap, with a look of melancholy, "But I'm still happy nonetheless. So when can we go?"
"Whenever we gather enough money to go to Tokyo?"
"Yeah, whenever we do. Maybe I'll get myself a part-time job too so we could go as soon as possible." Rin's lips curved into a faint smile.
Len smiled back at his sister, feeling sort of happy and warm-hearted for the first time in a long while. Yeah maybe life was going to smile for them finally, even if it was a false smile.
Their mother wasn't going to just magically heal somehow, but being offered the chance to see her again, they couldn't be really picky.
"Len, get the door, someone's knocking." Rin's voice derailed his train of thoughts.
"Eh? But it's already evening! Besides, nobody ever knocks at our door! I'm sort of worried." He could feel his heart picking up its pace.
"Together?" She offered, and Len only nodded in response.
As the twin cracked the door open together, a familiar warm voice was quick to reach their ears.
"Len, Rin, May I come in?"
"Can't be!" Rin whispered to her brother in disbelief.
If she wasn't entirely nuts yet, their music teacher from school was the one standing at their door. What?!
"Meiko-sensei ?!" The teens exclaimed at the same time.
