CHAPTER ELEVEN

"I'll see you tomorrow at school, guys."

Aoi waved at her friends, Misaki and Manami as they left the library. It had become got late while they were inside and it was almost dark as the three girls walked down the steps to make their way home. Aoi lived in the opposite direction to her friends, so she was going to make her way on her own.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" asked Misaki; both she and Manami wore identical expressions of concern. "Maybe you should call Kaoru-kun to meet you. We can wait with you until he gets here."

Aoi breezily dismissed their concerns. "It's okay; Kaoru said he was going to meet me halfway, so I'll be fine." Promising to call them when she met Kaoru, they waved goodbye to each other.

As she walked away, Aoi wrapped her coat more tightly around her slight frame. She and her friends had spent most of the afternoon and well into the evening in the library, studying for exams that were coming up in a few months' time. All three girls were straight-A students and studied as fiercely as they had fun.

She yawned. Maybe they had spent too long with the books this time, she thought ruefully, rubbing her forehead at the faint headache that was beginning to make itself felt.

"Aoi-chan!"

She turned around as a black convertible sports car pulled up next to her. "Kagashima-senpai! How are you? It's been a while."

Kagashima Haruhiko was a good friend of her brother and his father was a business associate of her grandfather. He was two years ahead of them at school and often visited their home, so she was very familiar with the handsome senior.

There wasn't the usual ease that she would have felt at seeing him this time. He hadn't visited her brother for a while and she knew that was her fault.

He had asked her for a date three months ago, but she had turned him down. As fond as she was of him, she saw him only as a brother-figure similar to Kaoru.

She regretted that her refusal had put him off visiting since, but a small part of her was relieved. When she had refused him, a strange expression had come over his face that had made her feel uncomfortable for the first time since she had known him.

She knew Kaoru was puzzled at the abrupt change in his friend, but neither Aoi nor Haruhiko had told him anything that had happened.

He smiled at her now as he got out of his car and leaned on the side of the bonnet, looking wealthy and slick. Seeing the bright expression on his face, she wondered whether she had imagined the strange expression on his face after he had asked her out.

"I'm fine. How are you, Aoi-chan? What are you doing out this late on your own?" he asked.

Aoi was relieved that senpai seemed to no longer be uncomfortable around her and she decided to take a leaf out of his book by being the same.

"I was at the library studying with Misaki and Manami. But it's fine, because Kaoru is meeting me half-way and he's going to walk me home."

"You shouldn't be out here on your own; there's nobody about if anything happens. Come on; get in and I'll take you to where Kaoru's meeting you."

He was looking at her intently as he smiled at her and she felt a frisson of unease down her spine, but put it down to the fact that this was the first time that she had spoken to him since he had asked her out. She shook her head and said over-brightly, "No, that's fine, Senpai; I don't want to put you out. I could do with the exercise anyway," she fibbed, smiling. "See you, Senpai. I'll let Kaoru know I saw you."

She turned and waved at him, preparing to rush off. She could have kicked herself. There was nothing she had to fear from Kagashima-senpai; she had known him since she was small. As she had her back to him, she didn't see him move swiftly behind her. She stiffened as his arms came around her from behind and struggled in shock as she felt him place a sweet-smelling cloth over her nose and mouth.

"Senpai–," her muffled voice came from behind the cloth before she felt a stygian darkness descending and her knees buckled. I'm going to break my nose, she thought confusedly as the pavement rapidly approached before everything went black.

"The next thing I knew, I was waking up with a pounding headache and I was sitting on a chair with my hands tied behind my back."

Yankumi was astonished. "He just kidnapped you off the street? How did you get away?"

"Kaoru had asked my grandfather's driver, Madarame-san, to drive him to pick me up from the library and they arrived in time to see someone bundle me in a car and drive off. They followed and when they arrived at the empty warehouse where I was being held, my brother told Madarame-san to call the police while Kaoru came inside to look for me."

"Madarame-san wasn't happy about that, but Kaoru was proficient in martial arts and he thought he could handle himself. He was wrong."

"What happened?" Yankumi asked softly.

Aoi took a deep breath. "Kagashima-senpai had left me alone for a moment when Kaoru found me. He untied me and we were on our way out when he came back in. Kaoru looked so shocked," she remembered painfully.

Knowing that it was his friend who had abducted his sister had left Kaoru stunned, but he hadn't let it slow him down in his effort to get Aoi away.

"We ran up the stairs in the hope that there would be ladders on the side of the building, which we could use to climb down. We got to the roof and there were ladders but we didn't get a chance to use them. We were too slow because I was still too drugged up."

This was harder than she had thought it would be, but as she was speaking, there was also a feeling of catharsis. She hadn't felt that through all the therapy sessions she had had with the medical specialists, but sitting in an onsen changing room with her sympathetic teacher was working wonders.

"Senpai was there before we could make our way off the roof and Kaoru turned around and confronted his oldest friend. He asked him what he thought he was doing."

Senpai had looked at them, both so similar in looks; one his friend and the other his obsession. "You wouldn't understand, Kaoru," he had said, eyes glittering madly. "I've wanted your sister for a long time now and I tried to ignore the feeling, I really did, but I just can't do it any longer. I asked her to be mine three months ago and I know she only refused because she was thinking of my friendship with you. She wants to be with me. I can't live without her; she can't live without me." He gestured with his right hand and they saw the thin-edged blade he held.

"Haruhiko. This isn't you," Kaoru had said, surreptitiously edging Aoi further behind him. "If you really do have feelings for her, how can you treat her like this?" Kaoru's voice had been quietly entreating as he tried to use reason as he indicated his pale, shaking sister.

Senpai looked at Aoi where she stood, tears streaming down her face, and for a moment, she thought that her brother had gotten through to his friend. And then Senpai's eyes had glowed with unshed tears, knowing that he wasn't going to get what he wanted.

"I asked her to be with me and she turned me away. If she won't be with me, then she won't be with anybody." He lunged in their direction, managing to slice through Aoi's shoulder before Kaoru deflected the blade.

Time seemed to freeze. Kaoru and Haruhiko were a breath away from each other as they stared fiercely into each other's eyes. Kaoru suddenly let out a strange, wet sigh as he fell to the floor, Aoi trying desperately to hold him up. She didn't know what had happened to begin with, it had been so quick.

"I tried to hold him up, but I wasn't strong enough and I was still feeling groggy from the chloroform. I remember just staring into my brother's eyes and I think my hand was hurting from where he was holding it so tightly, but I didn't want to let him go. It didn't seem real."

"I could hear people running up the stairs - it was the police - and Senpai ran over to the ladders and got away off the roof."

"Kaoru and I were left there as the police came running over. I didn't even realise that he'd stopped gripping my hand. He bled to death in my arms before the police even got out on to the roof. He was sixteen years old and that man killed him because he was trying to protect me."

"I went to pieces after that. I don't remember much until I woke up in hospital two days later. I hadn't been able to tell anybody who the culprit was, but it turned out I didn't need to. Senpai left his car at the warehouse and they picked him up hiding at home the same night he killed Kaoru. I never understood why he went home, he must have known they would look for him there."

"It took me a lot of therapy before I could get back to some semblance of normality and I took self-defence lessons so I would never be a burden again. But whatever I do, it's never going to be enough. I mean, how do you get over the fact that your brother died because of you?"

Yankumi comforted her in an emotional voice. "I didn't know him, but I think you're doing your brother a disservice. He obviously loved you and he felt that he was doing what was right. He had to save you; the kind of person he was couldn't let the wrong done to you go unpunished."

"You will never get over what happened, and I don't believe that you should. You just become a person that has that experience inside them. It's a completely different thing to what happened to you, but I lost my parents at a very young age and though I didn't have any siblings, I was so lucky to have a loving grandfather and many surrogate brothers who helped me to, not get over it, but to live with it."

The tears dropped from Aoi's eyes and Yankumi pulled her to her, rubbing her back comfortingly as the young girl sobbed out the bitterness, fear and anger that had been so much a part of her for the last three months.

Feeling more composed and very tired, Aoi made her way back to the room she was sharing with Odagiri and Yabuki.

She opened the door and walked softly inside. Odagiri was sitting cross-legged on his futon, leaning up against the wall as he read a book. Yabuki was lying face down on his own futon, snoring loudly.

"He must have been tired," she said, nodding in Yabuki's direction.

"I think all the travelling tired him out," Ryu replied, shooting her a concerned look. Her eyes were red-rimmed so that he could see that she had been crying. "Are you okay?"

Aoi was quiet. For the last three months whenever someone asked her that question, she quickly replied in the affirmative, primarily because that was how she wanted to feel, but it was also how the other person wanted her to feel. This time though, she gave proper consideration to the question and as she replied, for the first time in three months, she spoke the truth.

"I think I really am."