To Seek Love or To Seek Ruin
Disclaimer: I don't own Jigoku Shoujo, thus I do not make any money off this story. I just have fun with characters from time to time.
Warnings: Slightly dark, mentions possible character death, and may be difficult to follow at times. Rated T.
Summary: Katrina Carson is haunted by memories of her past and present. Rumors spread about a certain website and she becomes haunted by dreams of this mysterious Hell Girl. Her father comes back and she wants revenge. Will she pull the red string or will she kill herself? What happens when she meets a certain person? Ichimoku Ren x OC
Short AN: Hey guys! I know it's been forever since I've updated and everything, but I hope I haven't lost you guys. I want to thank you for all of your support through reviews, alerts, and favorites. I wasn't and haven't been in a very good spot life wise but I'm doing much better now and, since school is finally out, I won't have anything keeping me from updating! Yay! With that said, I hope you enjoy the third installment of To Seek Love or To Seek Ruin! PS: Please forgive any missing words, mixed letters, or mistakes (I suffer from minor to moderate dyslexia and dyspraxia so typos are a natural thing sometimes; hopefully not all the time!)
Chapter 3: Nightmare or Premonition?
The next morning Katrina wakes up and groans. Last night did a number on her energy; physically, mentally, and emotionally. She hates dealing with lost souls that are demons in disguise. They are the most taxing entities she has ever come across. As she rolls over she goes over all of yesterdays and last night's events.
First she woke up and went to the bakery, like her mother asked for. Her father shows up, her parents argue, and she takes Mori to the nearby park. She meets nineteen year old Ren Ichimoku , he asks a her few curious questions, she confides her hatred or dislike for her father in him, and tells him that she's thinking about accessing the site even though she thinks it won't help her situation at all. Her dad angrily stomps into the park and heads for Mori on the slide. Katrina saves Mori but accidently leads her father to the willow tree. He screams and yells at her and Ren and accuses Ren of being a drug addict. Her father throws punches at Ren but Ren dodges each and every one of them effortlessly. Her father eventually gives up and leaves but Katrina bursts into tears with Mori. Ren comforts her, she falls asleep, and he eventually leaves.
She and Mori head home, Ren returns and catches her as she reaches the end of the street, and she freaks out and runs into the bakery near her house. She, Ren, Mori, and the stray cat Katrina found head back home after Ren insisted to walk her home. Mori falls asleep on Katrina's back and Ren and Katrina have a rather deep conversation. Georgie shows up, Ren learns that she's a Medium, and he asks her a strange question that he later plays off as being curiosity. Finally, she goes home and walks inside the house with Kuri, the stray cat she found and later named 'Chestnut' for his fur color. Her father is nowhere in sight and her mother is dead asleep upstairs. She tucks Mori into bed, gives the Kuri some water, food, and makes a makeshift litter box using a small amount of sand from the bag of sand in her father's shed and a plastic box.
Katrina rolls back to her other side and groans. She will have to get buy supplies for Kuri today, get some groceries, and take care of her mother some more. As she closes her eyes in an attempt to go back to sleep that same scene from the other night pops up into her head. The guy in a jacket with hair over his left eye looks familiar but she can't place where she's seen him before. She gives up on trying to go back to sleep and instead gets ready for the day.
As she walks downstairs she receives a shock; her mother is up and about making pancakes. Katrina rubs her tired eyes to make sure they're not deceiving her and smiles happily.
"Good morning, mother." Her mother turns around and smiles in return.
"Good morning, daughter. Would you like some pancakes?" Katrina nods her head. Her mother puts a plate down in front of her and continues to work on the stove. "Thank you for going to the bakery yesterday to pick up some bread for me, Katrina. I'm sorry about your father. I put a restraining order against him last night before you got home so he won't be back. Also, I finally signed the divorce papers. We are officially divorced." Katrina blinks a couple times in both shock and confusion.
"Really," Katrina asks skeptically. Her mother smiles happily again.
"Really," Katrina jumps up and down in joy.
"That's great, mother! I'm glad the bastard's gone." Her mother frowns at this.
"I wouldn't call him a bastard, Katrina. He was a kind man at one point in his life." Katrina quickly sobers up.
"Maybe, but I'm still happy nonetheless."
"Oh, me too; and the best thing about the divorce is that I get full custody of both of you." The mother and daughter sit in a comfortable silence for a while until her mother breaks it. "Katrina, do you mind waking Mori up?"
"Not at all, mother." Katrina gets up and heads to her younger sister's room. She doesn't see the frown on her mother's face.
Katrina slowly walks into Mori's room and sees that same girl from yesterday. What's Ren's cousin doing in here…? The girl, Kikuri, catches site of Katrina and immediately runs out of the room, down the stairs, and out the door. Katrina blinks. Weird. She shakes off this encounter and starts waking up Mori. Mori just rolls over to her other side so her back is facing the door and mutters something unintelligent.
"Mori-chan," Katrina starts, "Mori-chan, it's time to get up. C'mon Mori-chan, get up. Mom's up." Again, Mori just mumbles something and goes back to sleep. Katrina frowns. Finally, she just picks Mori up and carries her down the steps. Mori starts to stir in Katrina's arms and starts to frantically mutter, "Hell, Hell, Hell." The chant makes Katrina extremely unnerved. Then, Katrina puts Mori down on a chair in the kitchen and she finally wakes up fully aware of everything.
"Mom," the girl shouts and jumps out of the chair to hug her mother around the legs. The woman in question just laughs lightly.
"You didn't have any trouble waking her, did you, Katrina-chan?"
"No, mother," she blatantly lies.
Once their mother finally finishes making pancakes she hugs Mori tightly and tells her the terrific news. Mori jumps up and down in the air and Katrina sees a true smile grace her younger sibling's soft and rounded face. The giant eye that has been plastered against the ceiling all this time vanishes.
Hone-Onna, Ren, and Wayuundo look at each other curiously. Ren decides to start first.
"Their parents are getting a divorce." The other two nod at this.
"That's a great thing then, isn't it?" Hone-Onna asks.
"I don't know. When the mother said this and Katrina-chan left the room she frowned. Then she muttered 'It's not so much a divorce, but they don't need to know that.' You don't think she's going to contact the site herself, do you?" Ren asks curiously. The other two shrug at this.
"Human emotions are so complex it's hard to tell what she meant by that." Wayuundo says. Then, much to everyone's displeasure, Kikuri appears.
"If she pulls the string, she's going to die!" The other three blink curiously at this.
"How do you know, anyway?" Ren bites back bitterly. Kikuri turns her violet eyes on him and smirks evilly.
"Because I just do!" Ren scoffs at her childish reply. Then Ai appears and says, "We have a case."
As Katrina heads to the park with Mori, her younger sister begins to cough violently. Katrina begins to panic when she sees that Mori can't breathe. Finally, just as soon as Mori's coughing fit appears, it vanishes. Katrina kneels beside her younger sister on the sidewalk and asks if she is okay. Mori shakes violently for a while before she points a shaky finger straight ahead. Katrina frowns as she looks in the direction Mori is pointing; there is nothing there. After a while, the color starts to come back in Mori's face. Wordlessly, Katrina picks up her younger sister and carries Mori the rest of the way to the park. The two sisters say nothing about the freak occurrence and pretend it never happened.
Before Katrina lets Mori run off and play, she checks to make sure her younger sister is all right. When everything checks out, Mori runs and heads straight for the swings. Katrina looks around and finds it odd how almost no one is at the park. Then, she suddenly becomes overwhelmingly tired and falls asleep.
Katrina looks on sadly as her younger sister is hooked up to life preserving machines. Every time the heart monitor slows down to a two-minute interval Katrina thinks Mori is dying. Not too long ago the doctor announced that Mori was in stage four kidney failure; they had to put her on emergency dialysis otherwise Mori would surely die. Now as she watches the machine suck out the black flecked blood and insert clean, new blood she ponders how no one knew Mori was slowly dying. Katrina remembers the doctor's confused look on his face when he found that Mori never was diabetic nor did diabetes run in the family. He told her mother the fact that a child as young as Mori had fallen victim to kidney failure with no history of diabetes is extremely rare, almost paranormal. Of course, he added the last comment as an exaggerated joke which neither Katrina nor her mother thought was funny.
Katrina shakes the painful memory from her head and stares on through the glass. It has been four months since then and Mori has still not gotten better. Mori looks so peaceful that, for a brief moment, Katrina can believe her younger sister is just asleep. However, that fantasy shatters as the hospital bills and insurance bills are too real for Mori to be asleep. Recently Katrina had to pick up two jobs with her mother just to help pay off the bills. She rarely shows up to school now and university looks to be out of the question in the future because no higher education school would want a student that rarely shows up to school, no matter how well she keeps up with the school work and keeps her high grades.
Fortunately, her mother's parents are helping to pay the bills but how long can that really last? Eventually they will run out of money and Katrina, her mother, and Mori will pay the price; plus, insurance only pays a quarter of the cost and leaves the other seventy-five percent up to Katrina, her mother, and her grandparents to pay out of pocket, on top of utilities, food, and rent. It won't be long now before Katrina and her mother will have no choice to either quit treatment or move in with her grandparents. Which really wouldn't be too bad but Katrina still doesn't like the thought of having to burden her grandparents with their presence. After all, Katrina and her mother would be two more mouths to feed; especially when the fact that hospital and insurance bills still have to be paid are considered.
"Still no sign of recovery?" A young male's voice says, startling Katrina out of her thoughts.
"No, Ren," Katrina answers sadly, her eyes never leaving Mori.
"You don't think she is going to die, do you?" He places a comforting hand on Katrina's shoulder as he asks this.
"I really don't know, Ren. It's been four months now and the dialysis is still not working."
"She will make it, Katrina. I promise you." Katrina turns around and glares at Ren.
"How do you know?"
"I just do. I have that feeling." Katrina scoffs but says nothing more.
Katrina suddenly wakes up and looks at the orange sky. She begins to panic and look towards the swings; Mori is no longer there. She immediately gets up and runs over to the playground only to breathe a sigh of relief when she sees Mori playing on the jungle gym with Ren; Kikuri is nowhere to be seen. Katrina happily walks up and Mori quickly climbs off the jungle gym and hugs Katrina tightly.
"Oh, you're awake," Ren says kindly.
"Yeah; how long have you been here?"
"For about a couple hours now. I saw you were asleep and you looked tired so I didn't bother you. Mori was happy to see me and I pushed her on the swing for a while before we went over to the jungle gym." Ren smiles at her and she returns his friendly gesture.
"Well, thank you for watching her. I should have been keeping an eye on her, but I was just so inexplicably tired—I don't know what happened," Katrina admits sheepishly.
"Anytime; I love children," Ren easily says. Katrina smiles brightly and decides that it's time to go home.
Katrina let's Mori run inside and turns around to Ren when they reach her stoop. Ren raises his eyebrows slightly. "Hey Ren, can I talk to you for a few minutes?" Ren frowns slightly but agrees anyway. Katrina sits down on the banister and Ren leans against a nearby light post.
"So, what did you want talk about," he asks pleasantly. Katrina frowns slightly.
"Well, I had this bizarre dream right before I woke up. Mori-chan was in the hospital hooked up to all kinds of machinery, as she had to undergo emergency treatment for stage four-kidney failure. She was four months into the treatment and she still showed no signs of getting better. Well, mom and I were struggling to pay the hospital bills so we both had to pick up two jobs just to pay them off and even then, my grandparents had to help us. Everything looked like it was just getting worse and it seemed that mom and I were going to be forced to make a decision—move in with my grandparents, her parents, or stop the treatments and let Mori die. As I was looking at Mori-chan from behind the hospital glass, you walked up behind me and told me that she was going to better just because you had a feeling she was. Then I woke up." Ren, who has been paying apt attention to Katrina this entire time, frowns.
"I'm sure it was just a dream, Katrina-chan. I wouldn't think too much about it," he says in an honest attempt to comfort her. Katrian shakes her head in disagreement.
"That's the odd thing about it; it didn't feel like a dream…it felt…more like a premonition. I get them sometimes…" Ren frowns at this comment.
"Well, I'm sure that's not the case. The way it sounds to me, it's more a nightmare then premonition." Katrina smiles at his comment.
"Thanks Ren, you always seem to make me feel better," she says as she hugs him. He freezes slightly before he hesitantly returns the hug. 'How long will it be before she figures out that I'm not actually human,' he asks himself as he looks out over her shoulder. After all, she is a medium.
A/N: Dun, dun, duuuunnnnnnn! I've finally updated this story! :D It took a long time as no matter what I did I just wasn't happy with it. In all honesty, I'm still not very happy with it. However, I carefully checked it over. It seems to make sense and it appears it does not need any further edits. I could be wrong, so do tell me kindly! I don't accept flames as they are discouraging, make me want to quit updating, and are very unhelpful. Anyway, thank you for all of those reviews, favorites, follows, and alerts! They are what give me the drive to actually update and finish stories.
To celebrate, I know it will be lengthy and tedious to some, but I plan to make a special call out to all of you guys out there (if you still are) from when I first published this story because it means that much to me (I suffer from minor dyspraxia and dyslexia so forgive me for any mistakes in pen names). :D So…
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With love and care,
ferret nin