I'm hungry… I'm so hungry. He's barely feed me done I've gotten here. All I have to eat these past free days was a couple of cabs of soup, I'm grateful they were at least warm, but I've never been this hungry before. He's threatening to take away my food if I can't write a song. He also wants me to make a dress, and a dance. How?
I hope my sister knows where I am by now. Someone has to know. Someone should know. I hope someone knows where I am.
Oh god. What if I'm in here for the rest of my life? What if I wind up like the girls who are kidnapped and never seen again? Mom, I hope someone gets here soon. If I wind up like them I might ju
She dropped the book while she was in the middle of her sentence. The sound of the metal door opening scared the shit outta the poor Kurosawa. She tried to hide it under her pillow before he could come in. As the door opened, she scrambled to her feet as best as she could with chains holding her down.
As Yamada made his way into Ruby's little basement dwelling, he looked less than pleased by what he was finding.
"Ruby honey. What's going on. Trying to hide something from me?" he asked.
"No sir. I'm not." She quickly responded.
He walked over to her, she panicked and backed into the wall. "Ruby please. Hand me the book."
She tried desperately to escape the current situation at hand. "What? What i… uh?" Ruby tried lying, or at least coming up with something.
"Ruby I told you awhile ago I wanted to hear you make a song. I want to see the progress you've made." He told her.
Ruby started to cry. "I… I didn't…" He bent down and grabbed the notebook. Ruby tried to stop him, but was unsuccessful. As he flipped through the book, his face seemed less and less satisfied. In fact it grew more into anger than anything else.
Ruby, realizing how screwed she was, tried to talk to him. "Sir, please. I can't do anything down here. I can't write, or come up with lyrics or-"
Smack.
Ruby hadn't been able to finish her sentence before she took a hand to her face. She practically spun around as she fell back into the wall again.
"Ruby. What the fuck is this?" he asked calmly. "I told you to write lyrics for a song. Not to write an Anne Frank diary." He told her, closing the book and tossing it onto the floor.
"I'm… I'm … sorry." she whimpered out.
"No Ruby, sorry won't cut it. You have to do what I told you to." He told her. "If I have to tell you that again, you're gonna have more than a little mark on your face."
Ruby cowered her face into a ball with the rest of her body. "Please stop." She pleaded, trying her best to block any incoming attacks she might face.
For a few terrifying moments, there was absolute silence. Nothing but the sound of her own intense breathing, and fearful shivering. Then. "Fine. I won't hit you anymore today."
Ruby slowly came out of the ball, poking her face out to see what was going on. He was genuinely not going hit her?
"But that unfortunately means you're going to have to go hungry until you make some lyrics." He said as he made his way to the door.
"What? NO." She already was hungry as hell, haven't had a good meal since she was kidnapped almost a week earlier. Now she was being told she wasn't going to eat until he was satisfied with her work.
"Now Ruby. These are the consequences of not doing your work." He told her. "You don't want to be physically punished for what you've done, then I'll have to do something else. And trust me, you don't want option 3." He told her ominously, slamming the door as her left. He left Ruby crying on the floor. She curled up in a ball again, this had become her default position. There wasn't much she could do in response anymore. She was too weak to fight or resist him, and she was too scared to speak out against anything he did. She didn't even know if her sister was okay.
What's worst was she was too afraid to go the extra mile and take matters into her own hands, or rather she was too afraid of what would come after. If she took her own life in response. She had all the tools necessary, but deep down she truly believed there was hope.
All that was left for her, at the moment anyway, was a fetal position to cry in. She looked back to her notebook, the one she had been using as a diary up to this point. Her tears made it difficult to see much, but she knew it was still there. She reached and grabbed it and flipped to a clean page.
She tried to sit back up so she could write. Unfortunately she couldn't find the motivation to do so, and wound up just staying there on the floor. She took her pencil and tried scribbling something down. She stayed slouched over.
He just took away my food. I don't know why he's doing this to me… why? Why? If he's my fan, then why is he torturing me like this? Why does he insist on going out of his way to hurt me like this? Oh god… sis, i hope you get to see this some day. I hope i get to see you some day.
I hope i'm still recognizable when you see me again.
She stopped after that sentence. What was going to happen to her? She might be down here for a very long time, and well, in the short time she's been here, she's been beaten and now officially, starved.
She cried as she tried to finish her next diary entrance.
Please sis… i just want to come home and see you again… please help me.
…
"Well where the fuck is she then?" An angry mother screamed.
It had been a little while since Ruby had vanished and her family knew Ruby had been kidnapped. In fact, the whole town knows she was kidnapped. The Kurosawa household was quiet, aside for an angry mother learning the bad news.
The officer simply sighed as he finished the bad news. "I'm sorry Mrs. Kurosawa. I'm afraid there isn't much of a way to track her at the moment." He told her.
"It's been almost a week and you don't have a fucking lead as to where she is?" She asked again with even more spite this time.
"No ma'am. I'm afraid that the testimony that Dia gave us isn't enough to go on. And without any security cameras to catch this in action…" He paused. "You might never see her again." the officer told her.
Dia sat nearby her mother, a bandage wrapped around her head. Her father stood behind her trying to comfort her. She kept her head down on a table in shame. She knew what this meant. She had failed it protect her little sister from this.
Truthfully it wasn't Dia's fault, she just felt like it was. As her mother finally felt fed up with the police's inability to find her daughter, she sent the cop away.
"I'm truly sorry." He told her as he left.
As the officer left, she finally snapped. She turned around and started screaming rage and profanity more than a sailor would. "God fucking damnit." She yelled, throwing a vase as she dropped to her knees in tears.
"Mom…" Dia tried to speak up.
"Dia just give me a minute please." She replied, trying to calm down.
"Mom I'm sorry. I lost her." Dia apologized. "I should've taken better care of her when I was there." she felt a set of embracing hands on her shoulder. She looked up to her father, who had the same solemn expression on his face.
"It's not your fault." Her father told her. "We'll find her, don't worry about that." He told her, holding her. "We'll find your sister one way or the other."
"But how dad?" Dia asked. "Even the police can't help."
"We'll find her." He told her. "I don't know how, but I swear to you, we're not going to let her just vanish out of existence. We'll find her eventually."
Over the past few days, they've been talking day in and day out with the local police about where she could be. Dia had already given a general description to the cops of who had taken Ruby. There was no security footage of what happened, so no one knows who took her.
A sketch had been made with what little Dia could remember, but given she had received a head injury just after the encounter, which resulted in a trip to the ER, her account of what happened isn't considered very reliable. But since it was the only thing the cops had to work with, they had no choice but to reluctantly use it.
It's been almost a week and no progress had been made. This news came to the rest of Aqours, which had been rough on the whole of the group. Particularly Hanamaru. When the news reached Chika, talks began about disbanding, until she could be found again.
As the mother of the Kurosawa's finally started to calm down again, a knock at the front door was heard. Dia moved to answer it, but her father stopped her.
"Hang on sweetie. I got it." he told her as he answered the door. Dia watched as he opened the door. Chika stood at the entrance, alongside You and Riko.
"Dia." Chika called out as she let herself in.
"Hey Chika." she replied. Her father sighed as he realized they were going to be hanging out for a little while.
He gestured to Riko and You to enter as he returned to his wife. "This about Aqours?" He asked his daughter.
Chika and Dia nodded.
"I'll leave you to it." He replied as he picked his wife, doing his best to comfort her as they left their only remaining daughter to her business.
When the two finally left, it was down to just Dia and the Second years. Chika was the first to ask the question on everyone's mind. "So. Any luck?" she asked.
Dia shook her head.
"Oh… I see." She replied.
You came forward. "So there's nothing you can do?" She asked.
"No. The police don't have anything to go on. I had a concussion so…" She paused. "They don't want to use anything I say because of it."
"How is your head doing by the way?" Riko asked.
Dia sighed. "I take a couple of Ibuprofen pills every once in awhile, but in other words fine." She paused. "I'm just worried about Ruby. She isn't the kinda girl to fight back." She paused again, before finishing her thought. "I'm worried what might happen to her."
"We all are." Chika replied.
Dia returned to the main point at hand. "You said this had something to do with Aqours, what is it?"
The expression on Chika's face changed to a very solemn appearance. "About that…" Chika groaned. "I think it's best I'd Aqours were to… cease for now." Chika explained. "Without Ruby, Aqours isn't Aqours. Besides, she's our friend, and your little sister. I don't personally think it would be appropriate to continue without her."
"So what'll we do about the Love Live? Will we be able to do anything about the school closing?" Dia asked.
Chika at first seemed confused but then replied. "Oh. The school?" She thought for a moment. "Dia. I want the school to stay but… Ruby is more important than the school. I want to help the school, but if in order to do that we have to pretend like one of our members was kidnapped like this… I don't think it will be worth it to continue without Ruby."
Dia sighed, realizing what that meant. "So I guess we're done then?" She asked, I reference to Aqours.
"Yeah. That would be how it seems." Chika replied.
"The whole school knows by now." Riko told her. "Everyone is on the lookout for her now. If they see her, they'll say something."
"Everyone wants to find her." You told her. "Even members of other schools are looking for her."
"Sarah and Leah are even keeping an eye out in Tokyo. So we got people all over looking." Chika told her.
Dia smiled. "Thanks guys. You really are helping a lot." She sighed. "Of course, with the amount of help the cops have been giving, literally any help you give is substantial."
"We're gonna find her. Then Aqours will be complete again." Chika told her.
Dia smiled. At least her friends were there to support her. Hopefully soon, they would find her sister. No one liked the idea of not having Ruby around, especially since she brought so much light to the group.
Dia slowly stood up, she wobbled around a bit. "Okay. Are you hungry at all. I can get you something if you want."
"Should you really be walking around like that?" Chika asked.
"I'm fine. I can still walk, just a little dizzy as all." Dia reassured. Her concussion was slowly healing. "Come on. There's not much we can do right now. Let's go get some food."
A/N. That's the end of this chapter.