Noticing that a lot of my more active readers haven't left reviews yet made me realize it's finals time! So, in efforts to support you all in your final tests, whether that be in middle school, high school, or college, I've put forth an extra update in support. May it serve to give you a moments relief from the stress.

^.^You can do it!

Love, LoweFantasy/Taylor

Chapter 7

"Something I always have to remind myself when faced with the ugliest side of humanity is that there is opposition in all things. It's one of the most basic laws to existence that has been proven true time and time again. Wherever there is light, there is darkness. Darkness is the lack of light. Light the lack of darkness. Thus, for all the rapists and drug dealers and murderers, there are those of angelic nature who would sacrifice their life to save the least of the human race. For all the wars and calamities in the world, there has to be somewhere of equal peace and beauty to match. For all the pain, there is also joy and pleasure.

Which makes me all the more intolerant of those petty souls who chose to deal in filth and human suffering. With all the world at your disposal, all of that potential and beauty, what made them think it would bring them happiness to make others suffer? To gain at the expense of the innocent?

That right there is the most elementary definition of evil. The children's cartoon villain, cackling at the suffering of those beneath them, especially those who are weak."

-Oliver Davis in White, under a different name

When I passed out trying to get out of the bed, I ended up having Naru hovering outside the shower curtain, with my second addition to the boy collection snoozing in his plastic cradle in the doorway. Apparently the sound of water did the trick for Eugene.

"If anyone needs a shower, it's you," I said, insisting on keeping myself covered up as I didn't want him to see my post baby, flabby stomach. "I can smell you from in here. You could have called Takigawa and asked him to bring some clothes or something."

"I already did, but he's a bit preoccupied with picking up my parents and Lin from the airport."

"That was quick."

"Yeah, well, they were planning on coming soon anyways. They just didn't tell me, like always, because they knew I'd just to duck away or something."

From my place on the old person's seat, I could hear his wariness. Though he loved them, Naru's parents could be a bit overbearing at times. Having lost their other son could do that, but it also came from the fact that they had lived for so long without children that it pained them to be without them. That being said, I knew they had spent an awful lot of their fortune just traveling to Japan and back and couldn't help feeling sorry that we had insisted staying in Japan until the pregnancy played out. I had been sick and anxious, and so not really into the idea of jumping into a jet to live in a foreign country for the rest of my life. One big change (like having a baby) was enough, thank you.

Pink water ran down my leg, as it had been since I'd gotten in. When I had looked back at my bed, I noticed for the first time that I had been laid out on a pad of sorts, and despite the cotton underwear and pad they put on me, the bed pad had been scarlet. From how much blood I was losing, I wasn't surprised I was passing out, but then the nurses had told me that was normal. Something about creating a lot of extra blood when you're pregnant.

Thinking about it, I shuddered. At least I didn't have any stretch marks on my stomach. They were only on my thighs and hips, which now looked like ground beef...

"You doing okay?"

I broke out from my thoughts. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"If you feel like you're going to pass out, let me know."

"As you've told me twice already. Naru, please, try to relax. You're going to make yourself sick."

"Well, if you had been in my shoes you'd be rather traumatized too."

"Yeah right, you're face was gaping in wonder when you got to hold your son for the first time." I let out a little squeal-a soft one, so as to not wake the baby. "Adorable."

"Wonder with him, not with the whole process. Whoever says birth is beautiful is sick. It was terrifying."

"Really?"

"If you want to know, look up a video, because I'm done talking about it. Just remembering..."

Now that I was remembering too, I could empathize. That hadn't been fun. At all.

"Yeaaah, let's not do that again..." I said.

"Let's."

Since I was enjoying not being in a bed and gross, and also because if I moved too quickly I'd get light headed, Naru's parents arrived before I had finished bathing. He rolled out Eugene and brought me a change of clothes, along with a tote of new essentials a nurse and brought by. Good thing my old person chair had wheels so I could scoot over to the fleshy-pink colored tote. Really, someone should rethink the colors of this place. The blinding white of the bathroom wasn't exactly comforting either.

It felt like it took me almost as long to dress as it did to bathe with my vision blackening every so often, but it didn't, and soon I was picking myself up and out the doorway.

Just as I got a view of Luella and Martin, Naru caught my elbow. I had started to black out, but lucky for him I had been preparing for it and locked my knees, so even though I couldn't see, persay, I could still stand. Mad skills, right there.

Luckily for me the clothes they brought were loose, baggy, and comfortable, because it hurt to sit...scratch that, it hurt to be doing anything except lying down. The bloody bed pad had been changed out for a new one, even though I had one of the monster maxi pads in the hospital cloth underwear.

Eugene started to fuss. But for some reason, even though the crying was picking up in intensity, the volume grew dimmer. The pressure of Naru's grip on my elbow lightened until it vanished completely, and the light blue of the hospital room's walls was replaced by the distant glow of foxfires.

The ghost girl huddled in a ball on the floor with her head between her knees, a puddle of blood leaking around her. Now that I had seen all the blood I could make, it didn't scare me so much. I got the sense that she had been here a very long time, longer than I had been alive, and yet not long at all. Her clothes were quite modern, and she had only appeared in the doctor's office a few weeks ago.

But then that world too began to fade as Eugene's crying pierced through the gloom. I reached back for it, a gut-kneading desperation to reach him, to quail the crying, drawing me back out. As I got closer, I heard Naru shout for a nurse. My bottom half was on something hard and it made my tender half ache in protest.

I made out his face at the end of a dark tunnel. Gone was his famous composure. His eyes shivered, wide and white, and I could see the pink veins encroaching from the corners. That tiny pull out bed couldn't have been all that comfortable, after all.

"It's okay," I told him, aware of my mouth moving from a distance.

"You can't even stay conscious, how is this okay?"

The tunnel was growing longer. Naru's face became a pinpoint that I held hard. Something moved me to tell him-it was very important for him to know.

"She's here."

The end of the tunnel drew to a close. The last thing I saw was his lips, moving, but I didn't comprehend what they were saying. Eugene's crying had filled up the last of my consciousness, flooding it with a blind panic. I had to get to my baby. I had to help my baby.

Then it was black.

Foxfires. The bleeding girl was huddled on the floor, head between her knees; deja vu. The blood around her glistened. I had never seen blood so bright, so red. It made the purple stripes of her shirt look black and her faded out jeans white.

But I didn't draw near to comfort her. Something told me I shouldn't. She thought I had done this to her, after all, and she hadn't believed me when I told her I hadn't. She had no reason to trust or believe me, and for all intents and purposes, she had induced me into pre-term labor. Granted, Eugene was only a week early and therefore okay, but a ghost with the power to do that was not exactly reassuring to have around.

I tried stepping back, and just as soon as I thought it I had put several meters between us. She didn't look up, nor had my movement made any sound. Wary of going too far and getting lost, having had my father bring to my awareness the kinds of things that could happen if one allowed their soul to get lost on the spiritual plane, I hunkered down and settled for watching. If she happened to see me, I could run then.

Now and then I thought I could hear Eugene, crying, but the moment I focused, it drifted away like a dim memory. I found myself growing edgier as I wondered how long I was going to be here, and why I was here in the first place. I wanted to get back to my baby. If I stayed out for much longer, Naru would panic. That almost upset as much as my baby crying for me.

"I think the doctors in the maternity ward get so use to pain and blood, they're desensitized and have a harder time noticing when something's really wrong."

Heart leaping to my throat, I turned my head. As I did so, the spiritual plane morphed, bursting with summer light and green grass. An almost neon blue sky spread ahead, framing more green, either through leaves or curtains, I somehow couldn't tell. I had been taken back to the usual ambiguity of a dream as my brain struggled to process what it was seeing.

And besides me, dressed for the first time in casual jeans and white shirt, was Gene.