IT'S BEEN A REALLY REALLY REALLY LONG TIME SINCE I'VE UPDATED! MY GREATEST APOLOGIES!!!! And this is definetly not the greatest chapter in the world, nor it it very long at all, but school/life has been kicking my butt so it's going to go a lot slower from now on! But I would feel bad if I didn't finish it, so even though I started it a long time ago, I still want to at least try and finish it! (Ugh, but I've still got a long way to go...gah...)

So we left off with Mori giving Rini a hug, right? Okay...

Chapter Ten: Episode Four, Part One: The Fear of Children

Rini's skin was too cold. The rain from outside was still clinging to her hair, making her shiver in the hospital waiting room. She was trying desperately to quiet her baby brother, Yuki, who was crying because it was late and he wanted to be at home asleep in his crib. He didn't understand that their Mother was dying.

They have to save her, Rini thought desperately. Please, she has to be okay, she has to-

"What's wrong?"

Rini started. A boy had suddenly come up to her. He stared at her with serious eyes, eyes that didn't belong on such a young face.

Rini was scared. Perhaps he was angry that Yuki was crying. Perhaps he was annoyed with her. She said, "M-m-my M-Mama is sick."

Yuki suddenly let out a high-pitched wail, more miserable than ever. Rini bounced her knee, her face knotted unhappily, her face burning with embarrassment and stress. "Sshh, please, Yuki-"

"Hey, kid!" A middle-aged man, the only other person in the room since the last couple had left, was glaring at Yuki and Rini as if their presence was personally offending him. He looked like he'd been there for a long time. His flushed face was irritated. "You need to get that kid to shut up-"

The boy suddenly lunged, drawing back a quick fist and punching the man directly in the nose. The man leaped to his feet with a barrage of swears.

"Why you little punk-!"

"Mr…. Schwartz?" Miraculously, a nurse had appeared with a clipboard in hand, and was surveying the nearly empty room with the look of someone who was bored with her job. "Mr. Schwartz? Michael Schwartz?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," the middle-aged man said gruffly. His nose had begun to bleed. When the nurse saw him, her bored expression vanished.

"Right this way, sir," she said, grabbing his wrist and almost dragging him toward the restrooms. Perhaps she didn't want him dripping blood on the floor.

As the nurse pulled him along, the man shot one last dirty glance at the boy before he disappeared down the hall. The boy had stood tense the entire time, both hands balled up into defensive fists. Like a dog with its hackles raised, he didn't budge until their footsteps had completely receded into silence. Then he turned around.

"Are you all right?"

His fierce expression had abruptly vanished. Instead he was regarding Rini as he would a baby, or maybe a wounded animal he didn't want to scare. Rini stared back, completely speechless. Yuki's crying had finally faded down to a whimper.

"Y-yes. I'm okay."

Rini blinked, confused for a moment about where exactly she was. Then, of course, she realized that she'd been dreaming again. Remembering the boy in the hospital, the night her mother died.

She hadn't dreamed about him in a long time. But seeing him again in her mind, it suddenly became very apparent that the boy bore a striking resemblance in both looks and personality to Mori. She almost might've jumped to the conclusion that Mori was the boy. Though the idea made her shudder with delight, she knew that it was very, very unlikely.

At the time of her mother's death, they had been living in Sweden. Yes, the Ootori's influence extended even outside of Japan, but more importantly, at the time their mother had been too sick to travel all the way to Japan. So what were the chances that Mori had been in Sweden as a child, in the middle of winter, at that particular hospital, on that exact night, between the hours of nine and eleven forty-five? For Rini and Yuki had been left in the waiting room for almost three hours, during which the doctors tried everything they could to save their Mother. The boy had showed up at 9:05, and hadn't left until Rini's Father – a shell-shocked, remnant of a man – came to take Rini and Yuki home.

In many ways, Mori was like the boy. He was tall. He was strong. He was kind. He gave Rini a warm, unexplainable feeling in her chest. But there was just no way it could've been him. It would be too much of a coincidence, and though Rini didn't have any grand ideas about fate or how the universe worked, she knew enough about how her own life had progressed thus far to know that these kinds of things just didn't happen to her. It would be too good to be true.

Ring ring!

Rini jumped out of her skin. On her nightstand, her cell phone continued to sound off until she snatched it off the table and flipped it open. Glancing at the number on the screen, she was thrust into a panic when she recognized it to be from the hospital. Specifically Yuki's room – they had a special room just for him, sort of like a second bedroom, except with lots of fancy medical machines.

"Hello? Yuki?"

"Rini…" Yuki's voice was small. And scared. "I'm sorry for calling you, b-but Papa's phone's busy and I didn't know what else to-"

"It's okay," Rini said, trying to soothe him. She was reminded of the memory she'd just been dreaming about. "What happened?"

"I…I found out this morning that they're doing a new test. It's never even been done before, I mean, not on a person or anything." Rini could hear his voice trembling. "Th-they said there were some uncomfortable side affects and that it would hurt a lot. I could do that and be okay, b-but it's just that, well, it's brand new and maybe it's not going to work and then the pain will be for nothing-"

Rini's heart sank. Why did they have to scare him like this? It wasn't the first time the doctors had informed Yuki of a new, experimental procedure they were going to inflict upon him with no guarantee of it actually succeeding. It made their Father furious, but as the contract was written, the doctors were allowed to do virtually whatever they wanted to Yuki in their efforts to learn more about the disease and find a cure. Rini just hated how little they cared about Yuki's feelings. After years and years of treating him this way, the leading researchers and doctors barely saw Yuki as a human anymore. Just some strange medical phenomenon that they couldn't figure out.

Rini was already getting out of bed. "I'll be there in half an hour," she said, cradling the phone on her shoulder and pulling her nightgown off over her head.

"You don't have to do that, I just wanted to talk to you before it started so I could hear your voice-"

"No way." Rini raced down the hall into the bathroom for her toothbrush. With a twinge, she realized that the procedure was likely to happen in the late morning, which meant that she would need to skip school today in order to stay with Yuki. Which meant she would miss seeing the Host Club…specifically dealing with Mori after what had happened the day before…

Well, there was nothing to do about it. There was no way she was going to leave Yuki alone. She was supposed to take care of him. It was what she'd always done, and it was what she always wanted to do for as long as Yuki needed her.

"Are you sure, Sis? I don't want you to come if you're missing something important. What about the Host Club?"

Rini spit into the sink. "It's okay." She saw Mori's iron eyes in her mind. "I need time away from it to think for a while."

All right! I'll try to do better next time and write more! Thanks for reading, everyone, you don't know how much I appreciate it!

MLTA,

*~Suki~*