Yukia completed his rounds the next morning with record time. He readjusted medications and recorded data on clipboards before whisking himself to the kitchen, where once again the neighborhood mothers flirted, teased, and fed him until he left to do something else.

Yukia had kept a close watch on Ruri, who he thought had spent the whole day following him around. It seemed that wherever he turned, Ruri was behind him, sitting in a corner casually chatting with someone, or reading a book. He noticed that Makoto had instantly taken a liking to her and had practically become her tail. Yukia knew why: not only was she beautiful, but she was cool.

Ruri was a different kind of beauty, however. She had scars on her face that was from acne, but her eyes were a deep dark blue. She had thick, long lashes that looked like they were soaked with mascara but in reality, there was none there at all. She did wore thick black eyeliner, however, and applied a smoky eye shadow that made her alluring. Her lips were pert, puffy, and attractive, fitting her heart shaped face quite nicely. When she had washed her hair it turned out choppy, cut in a sleek style that showed traces of dark blue dye in it. But while she was a gorgeous girl, it seemed like there was something off about her. The women tended to not like her and would ignore her until she walked by them, in which they would quickly whisper to each other. Men shook their heads at her and boys, while also impressed with her looks, seemed afraid of her. Yukia didn't understand why, but he didn't care enough to try to find out. He figured the truth would come out on its own.

While wiping a few grains of rice from his mouth, Ruri got off of the armchair in the corner and approached him, her high tops echoing.

"Hey. So, how's my auntie doing?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"She's doing well," Yukia responded, nodding to her. "I've set her on blood pressure medication and a small dosage of nitroprusside."

"Is it gross?"

"What?" he asked, blinking.

She pointed to her nostrils with two fingers. "You know… you have to stick those tubes up her nose."

"Well… yeah, I guess that was gross. But I mean, I'm a doctor."

"I thought you told them you were a freelance surgeon!" Makoto's voice protested.

Yukia looked down to see that Makoto had approached Ruri from behind. Ruri simply smiled.

"Yukia, if you're not busy, would you like to go and run around with me?"

"Yeah!" Makoto agreed.

"Actually, Makoto-chan, I was thinking that it would just be me and your brother," Ruri protested gently, still ever so sweet.

Makoto shrugged her shoulders. Even for a child rejection didn't bother her too much. She just turned around and walked away—Yukia wondered if consequently she would lose interest in Ruri. But Ruri didn't seem like she was the type of girl to care.

"Run around where?"

"The beaches! Let's go see if we can salvage anything," she said.

"Alright," Yukia answered affably. "Sure, I can go with you. We'll take my bike."

Yukia retreated to his bedroom and quickly changed into a fresh pair of clothes—a regular pair of shorts and a t-shirt. He snagged a baseball cap and placed it over his messy hair as he quickly checked himself in the mirror.

He then headed back out, and finding that Ruri wasn't waiting for them, exited to the outside where he found her straddling his bike. As she leaned her body over the handlebars, he noticed how long and lean she was. She made him a bit nervous, and he averted his eyes as he approached and climbed on his bike.

She sat precariously on the tray behind him, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"Let's go," she told him urgently, and he released the brakes and glided down the hill.

The sun was so amazingly bright and the weather was beautiful. Clouds drifted by in pleasant shapes, moved by the tender, cool breeze. The sea sparkled invitingly, and even the warm yellow sand which was littered with trash seemed agreeable.

Yukia took her down a little path that his father had shown him when he was little, and had taken him swimming. He recalled the memory with a fondness, as it had been the first outing that he and his dad had ever gone on. Somehow, a part of him nagged to show this to Ruri.

He brought the bike down the path and parked in the sand. Ruri flung herself off of the bike and then raced around, her long legs gracefully guiding her to wherever she wanted. Yukia smiled and carefully shuffled forward, allowing the tips of his toes to brush against the large piles of sand. Laughing, she flew her head backwards, placing her hands on her hips, and then looked back at Yukia.

"Come on, come on!" she cried out, her eyes sparkling as she grabbed his hand.

Yukia felt the warm touch of her hand and he blushed violently as she pulled him towards the water. The smell of the salt was strong today, and the tide was high. He had only walked a few steps in with her and found that his shorts were already dampening on the ends.

But Ruri was not phased by any of this. She waded deeper and deeper into the water, and her shorts that scarcely covered her pelvis to begin with were now almost completely submerged. Her wet t-shirt billowed out from under her like a long gossamer gown. She splashed around in the water and then plunged her head down; flung it back and droplets of the sea danced through the air.

"You're a strange girl," Yukia mumbled, embarrassed as he watched her from where he was. "And you should be careful too, so that you don't get any cuts on you. There could be broken glass in the water."

She laid herself on her back and smiled at him. "How about now? I'm not touching the floor." She kicked her feet, curving them as she did so, and returned to Yukia's side. She pursed her lips and looked up at him expectantly, but he could only stand there and stoically admire her beauty.

There wasn't a girl like her at his school.

There wasn't a girl like her in town.

Not in all of Honshu.

And there most certainly wasn't any other girl like her in Japan.

He knew, somehow from instinct, that Ruri was unique. She was special, and he knew that the moment he had set eyes on her, he had gotten sucked into her. And he wanted her, so desperately that it was in actuality quite sad.

Bored with him, Ruri returned to the beach and shook out her hair which was curling and crinkling from the water's ingredients. She sunk her toes into the sand and let out a happy sigh.

"Freedom!" she shouted, pumping the air and whooping. "Finally, freedom!"

"Freedom from what?" Yukia waded back to shore.

"Oh," she sucked in air through her teeth, "oh, just from… from everything!" she whirled around to face him, her eyes wide. "It seems that every one of my family has been choking me, you know? Trying to get me to go their own way. Like, if I had wanted to go to the beach, you know what my mother would have said? My father? Even my own aunt?"

"What?"

"They would have just told me to… to not go," she sputtered out.

He chuckled at the simplicity of her words. She placed her hands on her hips.

"I guess you don't see the point," she told him. "My point is, 'Why not?'"

"You sure are a strange girl…" he wandered away from her, examining some of the rubble.

"And you're a strange boy!" she cried out, clinging to his arm.

He felt her warmth press up against his side and he lowered his cap over his face in hopes that she could not see him blush.

"Tell me about yourself," she ordered. "I want to know all about you."

"There's not much to know." He pulled away from her and sidestepped over a fallen log.

"Oh come on, really? Okay, fine. Let me start. My name is Ruri Takada, and I am 21 years old. I live with my aunt because my parents were narcs who sent me away when I couldn't get into a college they wanted me to go to. I like punk rock and J-pop, and I'm from Akita, which I've grown up in my whole life. I have never been a straight A student, and I can't keep friends for very long."

She drew quiet then, suddenly. Yukia glanced back over his shoulder at her.

"Why is that?"

"Uh uh," she protested then, jerking her head up and looking him in the eyes. "No. You have to go now."

He chuckled. "I told you, nothing about me is really that interesting."

"Bull!" she cried out with laughter, socking him in the arm playfully. "You live with an unlicensed surgeon who evades the law for a living, and have two twin sistersand your life isn't interesting?"

"Alright." He sucked in air through his teeth. He didn't tell people this. But she should know. "When my real mom got pregnant with me, my real dad took off. She moved in with my aunt and uncle, who treated her like dirt because she was going to have a bastard baby, and she also never did anything good for herself. She was a teenaged ne'er do well, you know? A little while after I was born, she was killed in a car crash. So I was raised by my aunt and uncle."

"This doesn't sound anything like your life."

"It's a long, boring story," Yukia added before continuing. "And my aunt and my uncle were a pair of evil bastards who did nothing but berate me, work me, and punish me in bizarre ways. One day, I was sent down to do something… and as I was crossing the road, a truck hit me. That's how my father met me. He performed an operation on me that saved my life, and instead of charging a super high fee, he convinced my aunt and uncle to sign over custody to him."

"Really!"

"Yeah, really," Yukia said, grinning. "My dad's pretty cool like that. He's a nice guy, but a lot of people make him out to be a monster, just because he charges so much for money. They have no idea what we've been through…" his eyes widened as scary memories from his early childhood and time with his parents came rushing back. "…no idea of what hell we've been through at all."

"So… bad childhood?"

"Oh no," Yukia protested, shaking his head. "No, but there was an incident… never mind, it's not really important. Anyways, my childhood was good. I spent it with a loving mother and father, a cool uncle, and rambunctious little sisters."

He stopped and looked at her, still grinning. "See? I told you I was boring."

"That is nowhere near as boring as my story!" she laughed.

And then she raised her arms to stretch to the sun and he noticed something very strange. The veins on her arms… a few of them looked damaged.

He chose to ignore this piece of evidence, and simply shook his head and kept on walking with her.

They spent the whole entire day together, travelling around that beach. They joked, they raced each other, they swam, and had elaborate, deep conversations that were stimulated with detail. When the sun was setting low on the horizon, Yukia grabbed his bike and started back up the hill with her. They walked the entire way back, as the sky bled orange and grapefruit pink, and the clouds became purple as they started their slumber.

When they reached the house and they parted ways, Ruri gave him a squeeze of his hand and a soft, sugary smile before she skipped off to do whatever. Reeling from the events of his day, Yukia stumbled into the house and mumbled pleasant hellos to those who walked by him. He glided to his room, on a high from being with Ruri, and slowly floated down onto his bed with a happy sigh.

"You went out with her, didn't you?"

Yukia groaned at the sound of Katsu's familiar voice. He grabbed his pillow and aimed it at his doorway, prepared to launch it at him.

"Seriously?" Yukia demanded. "What is it with you and coming into my room? You're not welcome in here!"

Katsu hobbled over to Yukia's window and examined the rows of books that he had on his shelves. The bookshelf stacked all the way from the bottom of the floor to the top of the wall, squished against the floor of the ceiling.

"Katsu," Yukia snapped, "what the hell are you doing in here?"

"Look," Katsu retorted, turning to face him. "You're the only doctor that we've got in town, and we all need you to stay focused."

"I am focused! What, I can't go out and have a little fun?"

"You can't go out and do drugs," Katsu said in a low, grave voice. "Those women told me about Ruri. She's a smack addict. She was kicked out of her parents' house and taken in by that old lady because that old lady needed someone to help her out."

"She has experienced some weight loss, and I have noticed that she has damaged veins from where she's used needles," Yukia responded. "But honestly? Heroin in this town? There isn't any. We're all white picket fences and picture perfect little families."

Yukia laid his pillow underneath his back. "She's in remission."

Katsu's eyes narrowed. "So you know what she's been doing to herself and yet you don't even care? She didn't tell you, and you don't care?"

"It's not for me to ask. I barely know her."

Katsu set his jaw. "If I were you, I'd be keeping your drugs locked up at night. Who knows what she'd do with them?"

"Well she's not going to be doing anything with them because she's in remission," Yukia protested hotly. "And plus, patients sleeping in there will notice if someone walks in through the door at night and rummages through the cupboards."

"You are so stupid, Hazama! The girl is bad news!"

"I don't recall asking you for your advice," Yukia hissed, glaring at him. "Since we're not friends. So how about you get the hell out of my room?"

Katsu squared his shoulders as if preparing himself not to move. Yukia stood up, equally strong in his power.

"I said for you to get the hell out. Go."

Katsu cast him a warning stare as he exited. Yukia slammed the door shut and locked it, then flung himself back onto his bed. He was exhausted, he was bummed out that he had come off of his high…

And he was even more so bummed out that Ruri, his new crush, had more skeletons in the closet than she was ever going to be willing to tell him about.